Daniel vs. The 2017 General Election

A post about the 2017 Election, originally posted on voting day.

So I guess it's time for my annual political message. Before we start, here's a quick recap of the election campaign so far.

1. Labour's poll position swings upwards as soon as election rules require a balance in coverage and so people start to see that actually, Corbyn is a good'un, and that maybe he'd make a pretty decent statesman and negotiator given how he's come through all the shit that's been thrown at him over the last two years
2. May meanwhile begins to look more and more like a slightly malfunctioning robot
3. Blue tabloid media becomes oddly concerned about how Corbyn talked to the IRA decades ago in effort to make peace, says little about how May went to Saudi Arabia two months ago to sell weapons
4. Conservative manifesto introduces hugely unpopular dementia tax which lasts for about as long as it takes to become disliked i.e. one day
5. Conservatives attempted to idiomise 'magic money tree' in the face of Labour's fully-costed manifesto, despite the fact that their own contains no numbers at all
6. The prime minister refuses to engage in democracy by debating with her opposition, seeding doubt about her negotiating skill in the immediate run up to the most important negotiations in a generation
7. The Guardian attempts to steal May's crown of 'Best Election Campaign U-turn 2017' by remembering it's supposed to be a liberal newspaper and deciding to support the man it's been shitting on for two years
8. Blue tabloid media screams itself hoarse with hatred because there's a chance that the party who gives its' owners tax breaks might not steamroll this after all, non-rich people are expected to read it and think yes I agree, please tax me more instead
9. Terrorist attacks lead people to wonder where all the police have gone, but the Home Secretary who got rid of them all is unavailable for comment because she's too busy 'thinking about Brexit' and pulling hilariously memetic faces
10. Prominent horrible conservatives mysteriously disappear because they're not exactly vote-winners, and it wouldn't be right to show the country what they're voting for (seriously, where are Gove the backstabber, Hunt the NHS Judas, and Fox the all-round twit?)
11. Conservatives call out Labour MP for having the gall to similarly disappear on legitimate grounds of ill health, because no-one in blue wants legitimacy to come anywhere near this election
12. Conservative placards start to appear solely around all of the nearby mansions. Labour placards start to appear in the windows of houses on my street.
13. Corbyn speaks to crowds of thousands, May' s events are full of cardboard people cut-outs.
14. Blue tabloid media abandons all illusions of sanity and starts calling Corbyn a terrorist and calling for the abolishment of YouTube (no seriously, that's The Sun today)

I gotta say, it's been a real wild ride, and that's only the cliff notes version. You can probably guess which way I'm leaning given how kind the above notes are(n't) to the Tories, but do you know why, and why I urge anyone thinking of voting Blue to go Red, or whichever candidate in your constituency can beat Blue? It's because, for the first time since ever that I can recall, we're faced with an election that isn't about the lesser of two evils. There's a definite evil, the one that has been running our country - into the ground - for the last seven years, turning it into a nastier, poorer place to live, the one that called this election out of hubris and is now running around like a maniac hoping to not come out of it looking like twats (too late, idiots). And then there's the side led by a man who is that rarest of things, a politician who people actually like, and who wants to enact genuine change, and who has lit a fire under the young in an unprecedented manner.

Last year, I urged my elders to listen to the young, and the need for you to do so has only gotten more pressing since then. No matter what Bob Geldof might think, this isn't just a Brexit election: there's a chance to bring some hope back to Britain, to start realigning this country as a positive force, a place I for one can be proud to be a part of again. And while part of me wants to enjoy the schadenfreude of watching the Conservatives deal with the Brexit beast they unleashed, the greater part of me fears what lies ahead, and worries a lot about facing another five years of Blue insanity. So yeah, I'm voting Labour, and I hope you are too. I don't even mind that we may not win: the cat is out of the bag, now, and unless the Conservatives absolutely nail Brexit, which, based on this campaign, they won't, then, come 2022, there will be a reckoning. I'd just rather not wait that long to be heard.