General Election: Walls come tumbling down

I've been trying to find something humourous to say about the general election, on the lines of my blog about the 2019 version (see here) which, on re-reading was fairly funny, if I say so myself. But I'm not finding this one at all funny or even very entertaining, to be honest. While being beyond parody, this feels like the most predictable general election of my lifetime.

As I've said previously, this election feels very like 1997, with the electorate having decided a long time ago that the government had outstayed its welcome. Nothing shifted the dial then and nothing has much now.

The parties would have you think that the high proportion of those saying they are undecided means the electorate is 'volatile'. It's not. Some of them lie (the famous shy Tories of 1992) but many of them don't know because they don't care, can't be arsed or are effectively abstaining (eg previous Tory voters who've had enough but won't vote for anyone else). Most of the undecideds won't vote and the high number of them means there will be a low turnout.

The main interest is just how far the Tories will plunge, as per my question of a few months ago (Will the Tories implosion end in a black hole? 28 March) where I pondered a defeat heavier than 1997 and maybe even towards that of the near wipeout of the Progressive Conservatives (an oxymoron if ever I heard one) in Canada in 1993. (They collapsed from governing with 169 seats down to 2).

Things haven't got any better for the Tories since I wrote that, with the curious decision to go for an early election and Nigel Farage's direct participation in the campaign. They have run a totally hapless campaign, starting with Sunak's farcical announcement outside number ten in a downpour. 

It was clear within a day or so that it wasn't going to get better when the PM asked voters in a pub in Wales if they were looking forward to the Euros, eliciting the response "we're not in it". "But won't it be good for business?" "Not really".

Sunak's lack of feel for how people think then produced the early retreat from the D Day 80th Anniversary event. 

One couldn't make up anything quite as tragi-comic.

The veteran pollster Peter Kellner has written columns in the last two editions of the Sunday Times giving his predictions in terms of vote share and number of seats for each significant party and why and how he might have got it wrong. The joker is how large the Reform vote will be (as that piles up votes with few seats) but any which way Labour will win big.

Another element is tactical voting, not usually a factor in general elections, though it cost the Tories 30 seats in 1997. But the urge to get rid of the Tories may be stronger this time, especially where there is the opportunity to  unseat big names. On a night when the overall result is not in doubt the most interesting aspect is likely to be the number of 'Portillo moments'. Defeat for Jacob Rees Mogg  would probably bring widespread happiness (and no tears from me), but casualties could easily include Grant Shapps, Penny Mordaunt and Jeremy Hunt. 

The latter two would be a loss to the Tories and Parliament given the dearth of almost anyone resembling the big political beasts of the past.  Hunt in particular strikes me as a decent politician. He restored a semblance of order to health after the ill thought out Lansley reforms and clearly wanted to resolve the tainted blood scandal while health secretary but was told by the Treasury (i.e. Sunak presumably) compensation would have to come from existing budgets, prejudicing more patients. As chancellor he put this right, I guess using his unsackable status after the Kwarteng debacle to convince the PM. Whatever one thinks of Tories he's a decent chap who also restored order and calm to the Treasury albeit while still coming across as rather timid.

Nevertheless the Tories have forfeited the right to govern by making us share their lengthy and preposterous  psychodrama and are neither 'up to it or up for it' as last Sunday's Times editorial put it. 

So could there be a near wipeout and would it matter if there was?

I think it does, though not because of fears of a 'super majority', an American concept that doesn't apply here because a government with a 150 seat majority doesn't have any more power than one with 50. It potentially limits the effectiveness of the opposition, especially if the Tory wipeout reached the scale some were suggesting a couple of weeks ago which, if Labour does well in Scotland, could see Sir Ed Davey installed as leader of the opposition.

I've always thought Davey to also be a decent chap but his wriggling response to questions about his time in government as minister for postal affairs and his pusillanimous responses to questions about 'breaking promises' regarding tuition fees have tarnished him for me. That's even without him being, as Robert Colville put it, 'a Mr Tumble look alike who has spent the election campaign pratfalling around the nation's amusement parks'.

Colville argued that, with no clear manifesto, once in government Labour's instincts will push it to the left to keep its backbenchers and supporters happy just as the Tories instincts pushed them to the right when things weren't going well. He said Starmer's government needs to be held to account from the right rather than the left for spending too much of our money, intruding too much into our lives and failing to reform public services. I'd add that Labour may be vulnerable to pressure from a gamut of single interest groups and may get distracted from the main issues, even with Rachel Reeves reminding them 'it's the economy, stupid'. 

The other point is that, if the Tories crumble to a very low baseline, it becomes difficult if not impossible to launch a serious bid for government next time round, giving Labour a free ride. Starmer has done remarkably well to turn Labour round from a heavily defeated left wing rabble to a serious option for government in one parliament: it took Kinnock and Blair three general elections. I can't see the Tories managing that, especially if they turn to  Badenoch or Braverman.

There are differences from 1997 though. David Smith noted that inflation has fallen back to target levels, consumer confidence is improving and interest rates will soon start to fall (they maybe should have done already but the Bank didn't seem want to appear to be intervening in the election). So better times lie ahead for the economy but not, as he put it, in time to save this government. And this is far from 1997 when Ken Clarke handed the gift of a strong economy to Gordon Brown, one of the best situations an incoming chancellor has ever had.

That wasn't enough to save the Tories then and so just bottoming out was never going to save them this time.

The other difference is that Blair had a vision and Brown was ready to roll with good ideas such as Bank of England independence which he implemented only 5 days after the election. Other than promises of sound finances we don't really know what Labour intends to do.

A party that is likely to appoint a foreign secretary who says he is for nuclear weapons having said the very opposite less than 5 years ago may prove to be as erratic as the Tories.

The challenge will come for them if economic growth remains sluggish. The Tories implied cuts baked in to their forecasts will then collide with expectations of better services and benefits without further tax rises.

PS I posited the other day that the Tories real fall from popularity came long after they had stuck with Johnson over the partygate stuff only to ditch him over the rather daft Pincher affair. Would they be polling so low if he was still Tory leader, I wondered? Mrs H thought they probably would but I'm convinced they wouldn't be anything like as low as 20%. I'm not saying that I agree or support that, just that their base would have stayed much more loyal. Instead Labour could win a record majority with a vote share less than 40%. The Tories got 42% in 2017 but no clear majority, though Labour had a working majority in 2005 with 35% so not as freakish as it perhaps would seem. But Con + Reform are currently polling at 37% compared with Labour 39% according to BBC' poll of polls, which makes one wonder. Perhaps Tory supporters lost faith when the party lost belief in itself

PPS Paul Weller's Walls Come Tumbling Down came to mind because of the brief lived phenomenon of the 'blue wall'. But there's also The Clash lyric 'kick over the wall, cause governments to fall'

Macca messages me

Some of my firends do Facebook, some don't. For a few It's the only way I can raise them, they've given up on email. Oh I'm fairly paranoid too - I don't give Zuch my real date of birth and I don't post personal info or family photos and definitely not those things that some folk post - "here I am at the airport", "here I am on a cruise ship" or whatever, d'oh! Nor politics as a general rule. You'll find lots of snaps of places we've been, on holiday or walking but never till after we've got home. 

I do follow a few sites but I rarely comment (ok, Democracy Man, your page might be an exception to that, you probably feel my finger twitching as soon as you've posted something). And it's always better for one's mood not to get into an online spat.

One of the sites I follow is a Beatles site called Abbey Road Tribute. It's actually to promote a USA based tribute act but does much more than it says on the tin, ranging across all matters Beatles related. There's a chap called Boris, a Russian living in Russia, who has access - I don't know how - to an enormous archive of rarely seen photos. For example, recently there was a batch from Paul McCartney's 21st birthday party, held at his Auntie Gin's house. It must have been a fairly large house, though there was also some kind of large tent in the garden, as the Fourmost played and the Shadows and Billy J Kramer were there as well as all sorts of friends and relatives. Here's a photo of Macca with Jane Asher that day:

Another showed him blowing out the candles on his birthday cake.  I've learned a lot of stuff from the site; it's very well curated. 

Recently there was a tribute - well more of a critical review - of the Abbey Road album. It caught my attention partly because of its starting proposition - that the Beatles were hoping to bounce back after the "serious downer" of the Get Back sessions and wanted to make "one more like we used to" as Paul phrased it to George Martin. But also because it said, as commonly held, that the band still weren't getting along, their musical interests continued to diverge, John didn't really want to continue with the Beatles and while Paul did, only on his own terms which meant setting the pace and getting what he wanted. Which was all pretty much the received wisdom from the well known arguments between the band at the time.

The review went on to say, if this was really to be the end, "what a finish...a band still in its prime, capable of songwriting and recording feats other groups could only envy". Lauding many of the tracks, even the two "silly, childlike" songs Maxwell's Silver Hammer and Octopus's Garden the only track that didn't hit the spot for the reviewer was Lennon's I Want You (She's So Heavy), saying

"..if you've never seen the attraction of [John's song] and sometimes find yourself skipping ahead to George's... "Here Comes The Sun"...[it] is certainly a singular item in the Beatles discography with its extreme repetition, stark simplicity.... it requires a certain kind of mood to appreciate"

So what did I make of that? Having recently watched the full 468 minutes - just shy of eight hours - of Peter Jackson's Get Back it was clear that, while there were still tensions, the relationship between the Beatles at that time was much more complex than the daggers drawn story usually held to be the case and indeed shown that way in the original, heavily edited 80 minute long Let It Be film of the same sessions, leading up to the famous rooftop concert. So this time I did comment, on the following lines:

"Having watched all of Get Back it's not clear to me that John didn't want the Beatles to continue in some way. He was still firing ideas off Paul and was pleased to record Ballad of J & Y with him. George was also pondering how they could do solo and joint projects. After all, they were back in the studio recording Abbey Road within a month or so of the end of the Get Back sessions. Recruiting [Allen] Klein probably soured it permanently, though it's not clear that was John's intention. Be that as it may (or not) I'm grateful that they made Abbey Road, my favourite album of theirs (and probably of anybody's) even though I've never liked Maxwell's SH. It's in the tradition of Beatles songs though. I Want You isn't but I've always LOVED it."

Soon afterwards my phone pinged and there were several "likes" for my comment. Including a "heart" emoji from - er, Paul McCartney (see third on the list here):

Oh yeh, I thought, why do they let someone use that as a pseudonym? Except on checking it came from Macca's official Facebook page, which is definitely pukka and features well curated material on his current activities, solo career and the Beatles:

Now I'm not daft enough to think that Sir Paul McCartney, the first British musician to be a billionaire according to this year's Sunday Times Rich List, was reading my comment at 9am, wherever he was in the world that day, and messaging me. He no doubt has a large PR team who carefully monitor what's being said about him and are delegated to reply, perhaps to encourage any rewriting of history that suits their current message, maybe that he and John were aways really friends and quite possibly would have worked together again one day had John lived. 

But it was curious to see a response from "Paul McCartney" pop up on my phone. Especially as I don't like Maxwell's Silver Hammer.

P.S. I may get round to writing a review of the Get Back film to save any of you having to sit through all 8 hours of it though, for keen Beatles fans, it's a must; absolutely fascinating. The biggest surprise to me, given the received wisdom above about Lennon wanting to end the Beatles, was his attitude and demeanour. Oh there were tensions alright, mainly between Paul and George. But Lennon was generally Tiggerish in his enthusiasm, had boundless patience (well you obviously have to in a studio, especially one that hasn't been set up properly, while engineers fuss around you) and permanently constructive. There was little if any of the biting sarcasm and scepticism that I'd expected. And his face frequently lit up in delight when he liked something Paul came up with, sometimes bouncing off his seat (Yoko sitting silently next to him on his amp of course) to join in with a guitar riff, for example. Or fooling around filling in time (and having loads of fun) doing silly accents with Paul on endless runs through of the song Two Of Us. Indeed George's face lit up many times in similar fashion, especially once they got out of the ridiculous film hangar at Twickenham and repaired to the (part built) recording studio in the more familiar surroundings of the Apple Savile Row offices. But there was so much more to report on, so maybe I will get round to my write up. And my personal theory of why the Beatles break up became so acrimonious after Abbey Road was in the can.

The Abbey Road Tribute site is on Facebook here (https://www.facebook.com/AbbeyRoadTribute?locale=en_GB)

Paul McCartney's official Facebook site is here (https://www.facebook.com/PaulMcCartney/?locale=en_GB)

My "official" (haha) Facebook site is here (https://www.facebook.com/phil.holden.7758). It's great if you like photos of Anglesey in particular. You don't need to have a Facebook account to view it

There's something going wrong around here

When Mrs H and I walk (which we do a lot) we shoot the breeze. Well, as it's the north Wales coast it's usually more than a breeze. And we - OK, I mainly - don't so much shoot it as machine gun it. We cover a lot of ground...

Walking along a promenade a while ago, I interrupted the flow of conciousness to burst into song, or at least I started droning the start of a song lyric:

Pretty women out walking....

Mrs H immediately hissed "Stop it!" as she knows exactly how this one goes:

...with gorillas down my street...

The reason she told me to desist was that the words were clearly apposite and she often warns me my voice travels further than I think.

If you are wondering what this is all about, it's the superb 1979 song by Joe Jackson Is She Really Going Out With Him? which is one of my all time favourites and has a pithy lyric summing up part of the vulnerable male psyche. She can't really be with him, can she?

The song continues:

Look over there (where?)
There, there's a lady that I used to know
She's married now, or engaged, or something, so I am told...

..here comes Jeanie with her new boyfriend
They say that looks don't count for much
If so, there goes your proof

The song has a staccato bass line and feels a bit stop/start like the Stones Honky Tonk Women, a comparison I've only just thought of after 4 decades, bursting into a very singable chorus:

Is she really going out with him?
Is she really gonna take him home tonight?
Is she really going out with him?
'Cause if my eyes don't deceive me
There's something going wrong around here

Released in the New Wave era, Jackson says the song was inspired by the spoken first line of the Shangri-Las Leader of the Pack, although in that case it's female gossip not male angst. It was a slow burn success, failing to chart on first release but later stumbling up to the top 20 in Britain and a few other countries and the top 10 in one or two others. It's one of those songs that has grown more popular, become better known and more widely played on the radio over the years. But the critics loved it straight away: I bought it on the back of one of the Sounds writers saying he'd bought about a dozen copies because he kept giving it away to people, saying he just had to make sure people heard it. (You couldn't just stream it on your phone in those days, youngsters. Sometimes it was easier just to take a punt and buy it). And in due course Jackson got the first of his six Grammy nominations for Best Rock Vocal Performance on the song.

It rapidly became one of my favourites. Indeed, for several decades it would have been my choice if asked for my all time favourite pop single*.

Why pretty women walkdown your street with gorillas was covered in a Roger McGough poem, called Fancy Goods, performed by The Scaffold in 1969. It refers to:

...young ladies...with an eye for the well padded wallet. Or fly...

Which surely must be the answer. Else there's something going wrong around here quite often. Do I hear you say personality, ladies? Do gorillas have personality? People say ugly dogs can have a lovely disposition... 

Nah, he's got to be loaded...

* I think I first asked myself what was my favourite all time single, rather than my current favourite, in 1967. It's a pretty meaningless question at the best of times, but becomes more so, or at least harder to answer, as you get older. Having considered Pink Floyd's See Emily Play and various other candidates from the Beatles to the Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix, I decided the answer at that time was Traffic's Paper Sun, which in turn got displaced by Smokey Robinson's The Tracks of my Tears. Singles became less significant in the prog rock era before reasserting themselves with punk and new wave (and now streaming). For most of the time since 1979 I'd have gone with Jackson's song although sometimes it might have been Bob Marley's Could You Be Loved. 

The last time I gave this question much thought was in the context of @Mikey47 drawing my attention to the Guardian's list of the greatest ever UK number ones, published in 2020. Now everybody else's answer to this sort of question is, almost by definition, risible and that one was compiled by a committee, but the Grauniad flummoxed me by nominating The Pet Shop Boys song West End Girls. Eh?

Mrs H and I put our heads together and with not much anxious thought came up with Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody as a more plausible suggestion, though we both went for The Stereophonics Dakota as our personal choice. That was a number one, Is She Really Going Out With Him wasn't so didn't come into consideration. But what's the answer I would give today if asked to name my favourite all time single (British or otherwise, number one or not)?  I think I need notice of that question.

You can hear Joe Jackson's Is She Really Going Out With Him here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kSlXAeDO08)