Steroids, ovens and empty chairs: week one on the campaign trail | thearticle

Having not left the European Union on Halloween, it is as if the high priest of poetic justice refuses to let Britain off the hook. Last week, Parliament dissolved at 00.01 AM on the 6

November – one minute after Bonfire Night. And after the ensuing general election campaign, the makeup of the new Parliament will become apparent on Friday 13th. You couldn’t make it up. And

what a start to the election campaign we have had. Or rather, a non-start. At the time of writing, over 70 MPs have decided to stand down, including the Father of the House, the Deputy

Leader of the Labour Party and Winston Churchill’s grandson. Numerous parliamentary candidates have been forced to withdraw after making offensive remarks, and last Wednesday Sky News

anchor, Kay Burley, interviewed an empty chair (the Tory Party Chairman, James Cleverley, didn’t turn up). Former Labour grandees and current Brexit Party candidates advise us to vote

Conservative, and former Conservatives advise us to vote Lib Dem. Jeremy Corbyn began his campaign by portraying a Boris government as ‘Thatcherism on steroids’, yet research by the

Resolution Foundation highlights that government spending will return to 1970s levels regardless of who wins the election. Indeed, on Friday Britain’s credit rating was officially

downgraded. At the moment, the Tories are far ahead in the polls, but boy did they get off to a sluggish start. Their campaign launch was nearly an entire week after Labour’s and, as for

Boris, when not mixing up ovens and microwaves, he wrote a _Telegraph_ column that compared Corbyn to Stalin – an odd way of reaching out to floating voters. Surprisingly, the _Telegraph_

published sections of it in large type on their front page – the last time they did that, it was Nick Timothy’s catastrophic 2017 manifesto. Up North, Nigel Farage channelled a strange mix

of Michael Portillo and Rocky Balboa when he launched the Brexit Party’s campaign in bright yellow trousers in a boxing ring. Of course, he is targeting Labour Leavers, but perhaps he missed

an opportunity in not launching with the slogan: “Labour isn’t Workington”. Meanwhile, Jo Swinson, seemingly forgetting the prime ministerships of Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May, is

running on the platform of “women can be prime ministers too”, and has threatened legal action against the broadcasters who excluded her from the televised election debates. All pretty

standard for a week in politics – and the first election week at that. There have already been a series of awful gaffes, like _Spectator_ columnist Rod Liddle calling for an election to be

held on a day when Muslims can’t vote, Jacob Rees-Mogg implying that the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire lacked ‘common sense’, and Andrew Bridgen suggesting that Rees-Mogg would have

escaped the fire because he’s ‘clever’. And low and behold the former Speaker John Bercow has said that Brexit is Britain’s ‘biggest blunder’. Bercow’s exit was accompanied by what seems to

be a rite of passage for retiring parliamentarians: posing for the camera. Pictures were released of him walking cheerily to work across Westminster Bridge, which is odd because Speakers

don’t need to walk to work (they live on the Parliamentary Estate). But Bercow is not alone – many of the MPs who are stepping down, like Nick Boles and Sir Alan Duncan and Gloria De Piero,

have shared vainglorious leaving selfies on social media. And what to make of that bizarre picture of Bercow’s successor, Rodney Trotter lookalike Sir Lindsay Hoyle, in his living room? In

other words, if you’re hoping for a less dysfunctional and attention-seeking Parliament next time round, you might be disappointed. Of course, we are yet to see the various manifestos or the

election debates, and the polls, as ever, do not agree – both a hung parliament and a stonking Tory majority seem to be on the cards. But whatever Friday 13th has in store for Britain,

brace yourself for a winter of discontent.