‘YOU’RE joking! Not another one,” said Brenda the pensioner when Sky News stopped her on the streets of Bristol to ask her what she thought about Theresa May calling a snap General Election.
“For God’s sake, I can’t honestly ... I can’t stand this,” she added. “There’s too much politics going on at the moment, why does she need to do it?”
Brenda spoke for us all. Here, in no particular order, are 10 jings, crivvens, help ma boab moments of the General Election campaign 2017.
1 Theresa May’s risk-averse strategy
Theresa May hired top election guru Lynton Crosby to run her campaign. The Wizard of Oz, as he is known, is legendary in political circles for his ruthlessness, and ability to find a killer campaign line and hammer it home.
This was to be a no-risk campaign, perhaps because, more than most, Crosby knew the Prime Minister’s weaknesses. The lines were simple: “strong and stable” versus “coalition of chaos”. And on no account should May actually have to meet or talk to people.
On her first trip north of the Border, the Tory leader was so scared of actual crowds that she held a campaign rally in a tiny village hall in Aberdeenshire. The only people let in were loyal activists. May had previously said she was avoiding the televised debate so she should could meet real people. May told ITV’s Robert Peston: “The sort of campaign I want to run is one that is about getting out and about, getting across the whole country, meeting people from all sorts of communities, communities that have felt people have ignored them, and not taken their concerns seriously,”
As satirist Armando Iannucci pointed out, the only person the Prime Minister debated with on live television was her husband Philip on the BBC’s One Show.
2 The voter who hid from Theresa May
In fairness though, the Prime Minister did go on a very, very short door-knocking run with Ruth Davidson and the candidate in West Aberdeenshire. Unfortunately for the top Tories, nobody answered their doors, and the only real person who was out and about, a woman doing her gardening, simply said, “no thank you” when May ventured close.
Down south, too, the voters were hiding from May. David Bryan, 29, from Southampton, said he was “scared to talk to her” when he saw the PM walk towards his door.
He hid and pulled out his camera phone. I’m not politically inclined to talk, and I didn’t have anything I wanted to talk to her about. I didn’t want to waste her time.”
3 Naughty Theresa May
The Prime Minister was asked about her childhood by Julie Etchingham on ITV’s Tonight programme. She was asked to tell the nation about the “naughtiest” thing she’d ever done. “Oh, goodness me. Well, I suppose ... gosh. Do you know, I’m not quite sure. I can’t think what the naughtiest thing is ...” she said.
“There must have been a moment,” pressed Etchingham.
“Well, nobody is ever perfectly behaved, are they? I mean, you know, there are times when ... I have to confess, when me and my friend, sort of, used to run through the fields of wheat. The farmers weren’t too pleased about that.”
As far as naughty goes, it’s probably not enough to get you taken off Santa’s nice list.
The confession prompted a lot of ridicule online, and #fieldsofwheat even started trending at one point. Former First Minister Alex Salmond got involved in the ribbing, posting a picture of himself standing in front of a field, a serious look on his face. “Tempted to be naughty” he wrote.
4 Naughty Jeremy Corbyn
“What’s the naughtiest thing you’ve ever done?” someone armed with a video phone asked Jeremy Corbyn on Wednesday night.
“It’s far too naughty to talk about” he said, before walking away.
5 Willie Rennie
“In this world, nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes – and Willie Rennie standing in a farmyard with a weird prop saying naw to an independence referendum,” as Benjamin Franklin would undoubtedly have said if he was alive in 2017 and had an interest in Scottish politics.
This year, Rennie has posed for photographs with a butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker, and visited a scrapyard, a cheese factory and a fish and chip shop. He went all Back To The Future by posing with a DeLorean, for reasons that nobody is really very clear about at all.
But perhaps the pinnacle came with a visit to an alpaca farm, and this is a direct quote, “to challenge the SNP to cancel their divisive independence referendum”.
So maybe the alpacas aren’t in favour of indy, but we hear the ostriches are all far having Scotland’s future in Scotland’s hands.
The real reason Rennie doesn’t want a second independence referendum is because he’s running out of campaign photo ops
6 Theresa May in a removals warehouse
Like Willie Rennie in a scrapyard, Theresa May’s campaign visit to a removals warehouse was maybe not the best “optic”.
7 U-turn
Nothing has changed, the Prime Minister insisted. Nothing.
Has. Changed. When historians look back on this Tory campaign, the inclusion of the dementia tax in the manifesto is going to be a key moment.
The original social care policy would mean people paying more towards the cost of care, with the value of their home being taken into consideration.
This was a policy which would have kiboshed elderly parents’ plans to leave property to their offspring.
May held a press conference less than a week later to announce there would be an “absolute limit” on the amount people will have to pay for their care.
Nothing has changed, she told press. It’s definitely not a U-turn.
8 Tim Farron asks a voter to smell his spaniel
“Smell my spaniel” the LibDem leader said to a man in Cambridge, in an exchange caught on tape by the BBC’s Daily Politics.
Though Farron has a spaniel, Jasper, he didn’t have it with him at the time, which left a lot of people puzzled. “Jasper believes passionately that Britain should remain open, tolerant and united,” a LibDem spokesperson later said.
9 Greg Knight’s jingle
The Rt Hon Sir Greg Knight MP, drummer with the parliamentary rock group MP4 (this genuinely exists, the SNP’s Pete Wishart is the keyboard player) came up with an incredible piece of music for his campaign.
In a video on his website, Knight walks into his office and asks people for his vote. And then there’s an awkward, long, difficult second before the jingle kicks in.
You’ll get accountability with conservative delivery Make sure this time you get it right Vote for Greg Kniiiiiiiight Knight told BuzzFeed News: “A lot of candidates go around with loud speakers; instead I play the jingle.”
The full version of Knight’s composition lasts three minutes.
10 Strong and Stable
Seven weeks ago, this was, the Tories believed, their killer card. They would offer you strong and stable government. They were serious, clever politicians. Give them that big majority and watch them become even stronger, even more stable.
Unfortunately, this has been the least strong, least stable campaign the Tories have ever run. It’s made Michael Howard’s 2005 effort look positively Frank Underwood-ian.
It’s the sort of campaign that’s left you hankering for William Hague in a baseball cap on a log flume.
Remember in 2015 when David Cameron tweeted: “Britain faces a simple and inescapable choice – stability and strong government with me, or chaos with Ed Miliband“ Has the United Kingdom ever been less stable and less strong?
Still though, the Brexit negotiations start in 11 days.
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