READERS of a certain age may remember one of the final scenes in the movie The Blues Brothers when Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi patiently wait in an elevator with Muzak playing in the background as they attempt to beat the police who have been chasing them to the tax office, with mayhem ensuing as soon as the doors opened.
That's a bit what today feels like.
Normal politics is in a state of suspended animation while the polls are open, with mayhem, and - if the polls are correct - the well-deserved evisceration of the Conservative Party waiting to unfold after 10pm.
The UK is about to swap a bunch of lying right-wing British nationalist sociopaths with blue rosettes for a bunch of lying slightly less right-wing British nationalist sociopaths with red rosettes. Isn't democracy a wonderful thing?
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Last week, while the General Election campaign was in full swing, my husband and I were on a trip through southern England to visit family and friends and to go to Cornwall for the launch of my Cornish language map of Cornwall.
The trip took us across the length and breadth of England, through East Anglia, the south east, and the south west.
We drove through towns and villages in the so-called Blue Wall, areas where traditionally the Tory vote is weighed, not counted.
However, it was striking that there was very little visible evidence of Conservative support in these areas, we saw many more Labour and LibDem posters and placards than Tories. In fact, I could count the number of Tory posters we saw on the fingers of one hand.
It's an impressionistic view to be sure. There will certainly be Tory voters in the areas we drove through, but they appear distinctly unenthusiastic about displaying support for their party.
Perhaps the Tories are capable of a sense of shame after all. It's a General Election miracle.
The only real question in this election is the extent to which tactical voting can reduce the number of victorious Conservative candidates.
Some polls suggest that they could be reduced to a rump of less than 100 seats, and up to 16 cabinet ministers risk losing their seats, including the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt. Although it is unlikely, even Rishi Sunak (below) himself could potentially lose his seat in what would be a historic humiliation for a sitting Prime Minister.
You might have hoped that there might be some joy and excitement at the imminent near destruction of the Tory party.
An imminent end of fourteen miserable years of an explosion in foodbanks, a deepening housing crisis, soaring numbers of those in extreme poverty and cruel austerity which has brought public services to their knees while the number of billionaires in the UK has increased from 53 in 2010 to 177 in 2022.
But instead, we are faced with the prospect of a Keir Starmer government which if the polls are correct will be elected with a record majority and which has campaigned on a promise of change but which will deliver no such thing.
That election slogan “change” may only be a single syllable, but it is the biggest and most brazen of Starmer's many lies.
Yesterday at a campaign event in East Kilbride, Starmer got one final and particularly blatant lie in, insisting that a vote for the SNP is a vote for Sunak. This is an egregious lie even by Starmer's low standards.
There are no seats in Scotland where a vote for the SNP could deprive Labour of a chance of taking the seat from the Conservatives. It's a particularly cynical lie given that it's the SNP, and not Starmer's centre-right Labour party, which has rejected Conservative economic policies and their obsession with a hard Brexit.
Labour promises an expansion of the disastrous Private Finance Initiatives which were a feature of the last Labour government of Gordon Brown (below) and which saddled the public with decades of debt. These deals amounted to a massive transfer of public money to the private sector and years later we are still paying the price.
Starmer will most likely win his crushing record majority on the back of 40% or less of the popular vote, he will refuse to entertain proportional representation or a return to the European single market and customs union despite the fact that a majority of people want the First Past the Post system changed and a clear majority think Brexit was a mistake.
Despite previous Labour promises to reform the House of Lords, there are reports that upon taking office Starmer is set to appoint dozens of new Labour peers to the Lords, bloating the number of unelected legislators even further.
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In the immediate aftermath of today's election, brace yourself for a tidal wave of British nationalist gloating if Labour succeeds in overtaking the SNP as the largest party in Scotland in terms of Westminster seats.
A sneering Anas Sarwar (below) will proclaim that Labour is set to win in the Holyrood elections due in 2026 and that Scotland has rejected nationalism - because Labour's brand of British nationalism isn't nationalist at all of course.
But Labour's triumphalism will be short-lived.
Starmer will enjoy only a very short honeymoon in power before the penny drops with the public that his brand of paternalistic right-wing arrogance represents no change at all.
Labour in Scotland will not be able to escape their association with a British government which is likely to be deeply unpopular by 2026 while the Tories are likely to have gone down a far-right Faragist rabbit hole which will render them utterly toxic in Scotland.
By that time people in Scotland will have realised once and for all that meaningful change is impossible under the Westminster system and that Scotland's only hope of building a better country lies with independence.
Starmer might have arrogantly asserted that the UK will never rejoin the EU in his lifetime, but Scotland assuredly will.
This piece is an extract from today’s REAL Scottish Politics newsletter, which is emailed out at 7pm every weekday with a round-up of the day's top stories and exclusive analysis from the Wee Ginger Dug.
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