How did it happen that the United Kingdom has elected as Prime Minister a proven liar, someone who does not know how many children he has, and someone who uses facetiously racist and misogynist language? How did it happen that he achieved a Conservative majority for a monumental act of self-harm to the United Kingdom, namely Brexit?
The Conservative Party had hardly any activists; they have less than 70,000 members, mostly elderly (by contrast Labour has half a million members). Those of us out on the doorstep never saw a single Tory campaigner and very few posters. The Conservative manifesto was sketchy, prone to vagueness and double counting, as in the number of hospitals to be built or the nurses to be recruited. By contrast, Labour had an exciting and ambitious manifesto, representing the outcome of years of hard work, especially by the shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell. It included a green new deal, big commitments to public services and utilities, and innovative proposals like public service broadband.
Boris Johnson made gaffe after gaffe – stealing a reporter’s phone after he took a picture of a sick boy on the floor of a hospital, hiding in a fridge to escape the media, not turning up to hustings on climate change or in his own constituency, refusing to be grilled by Andrew Neil of the BBC even though the other party leaders had done so on the clear understanding that the Tory leader would also be interviewed, to name but a few of these incidents.
