Theresa May Abdicates From Reason

Anyone out there not counting down the days to the General Election has been reminded that it is not only getting close, but also that the Tories are getting increasingly desperate, by perusing the Mail On Sunday’s front page splash, where readers are told “MAY: SNP/LAB PACT ‘WORST CRISIS SINCE ABDICATION’”. Who may what? Ah, the perils of ambiguous surnames quoted out of context.

"Worst Crisis"? Aren't we forgetting something?

Home Secretary Theresa May has waded into the election campaign with a finely crafted intervention. Sadly for her, it is also finely crafted bullshit: since the Abdication “crisis”, which wasn’t much of one, we’ve had a World War - you’d think the Mail titles would remember this, as their man lost it - as well as Suez, the Cuban Missile Crisis (which really was a crisis), oil crises (plural), and a whole lot more.

And the MoS has another problem: very few voters will remember the brief reign of Edward VIII, and even if they do, the monarchy was in those days so distant as to be largely irrelevant to most ordinary peoples’ lives. Moreover, as the monarchy’s power has been little more than ceremonial throughout recent history, whatever happened during that brief period in 1936 would have remained largely irrelevant to all those ordinary lives.

In any case, Ms May’s intervention has got very little to do with what happened round at Buck House in the mid-30s: her actual intention is to question the legitimacy of the next Government before we’ve had the election. In other words, it’s a variation on the theme devised during the 2000 US Presidential Elections by Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse) when they called Florida for Dubya before it had been declared.

Here's a little reminder

That made Al Gore look like a sore loser when he called for a recount. The idea for next Month’s contest is to declare that, whatever the numbers, any Government that relies on the SNP - who have made clear they would never support the Tories - is somehow invalid because that party supports independence for Scotland. However, and here we encounter a significantly sized however, this is total crap.

Every MP elected under the SNP banner would still be an MP: we don’t have different classes of them. So they would be part of the 650 total, and using them to get over the 325 “majority line” would be no less legitimate than relying on the DUP and UKIP - which the Tories would have to do. And the one about nationalist MPs not having legitimacy is also bullshit - as it’s happened before.

Before Ireland was partitioned into Northern Ireland and what was at the time called the Irish Free State, Irish MPs sat in the Westminster Parliament. Most were in favour of what was called “home rule” - just what the SNP wants. They propped up a Liberal Government. That Government’s legitimacy was not questioned; it enjoyed a Commons majority, it could get its legislation through the House, and it was a relatively stable alliance.

Theresa May is taking out of the back of her neck. So is the clown who wrote today’s MoS editorial. But good to see the right-wing press admitting that they are trying to get their preferred party into power by whatever underhand means they can.