Bill Carmichael: Debunking myths of the General Election

WHEN I awoke following the General Election last week, I thought I had emerged into an alternate universe.
Theresa May remains as Prime Minister, despite losing her Commons majority.Theresa May remains as Prime Minister, despite losing her Commons majority.
Theresa May remains as Prime Minister, despite losing her Commons majority.

There was Jeremy Corbyn celebrating Labour’s famous victory and his shadow Foreign Secretary, Emily Thornberry, was making plans for the Queen’s Speech and boasting of forming the next government.

Many students I follow on social media were cock-a-hoop that, with Corbyn now safely ensconced in Downing Street, they would not have to pay tuition fees next term, and plans were well afoot on how they would spend the refund for fees they had already paid for.

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I blinked a couple of times and looked for the hundredth time at the seat totals there before me in black and white. Are these people completely mad?

To be fair the frankly bonkers narrative that “Labour won the election” was pushed so hard by the mainstream media, including normally sensible commentators, that it is little surprise that the more gullible characters actually believed it was true. It is just one of the persistent myths that have been thrown up around this truly remarkable election. Time, I think, for a bit of debunking.

Myth Number One: Labour won the election. No, they didn’t – rather it was a miserable and emphatic failure for the third General Election in a row.

Yes, Corbyn and Co didn’t do quite so badly as some predicted, but they are still a country mile from forming a majority government or even a viable coalition.

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Labour’s front bench has big problems understanding numbers so let me help – 318 is a bigger number than 262. Got it?

To put this into perspective, when Gordon Brown lost the 2010 election he ended up 48 seats short of the Conservative total – a result Corbyn described as a disaster for Labour.

As a result of last week’s election Labour are actually in a worse position – 56 seats short of the Conservative total, but somehow we are supposed to believe this represents a famous victory. Don’t fall for it – the numbers do not lie.

Myth Number Two: The Conservatives lost the election. The reverse of the same coin – and equally wrong.

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The Conservatives ran a campaign of stunning ineptitude and as a result they went backwards and threw away an overall majority. Legitimate questions can be asked of the leadership and their advisers. But the simple, unmistakable fact is that the Tories won, whether you look at the number of seats (by far the most important element) or the popular vote.

In fact Theresa May’s share of the popular vote – 42.4 per cent – is higher than any General Election victor for almost 20 years and is within a single percentage point of Tony Blair’s “landslide” of 1997.

Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell’s inflammatory demand this week for mass protests to oust May from power is nothing short of anti-democratic insurrectionism. We had the opportunity to oust Mrs May from power on June 8 through the ballot box and, as a country, we declined to take it. That’s how it works in peaceful, democratic countries, John.

Myth Number Three: The election result is a rejection of Brexit.

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This, I think, is the most bizarre of all, but it hasn’t stopped everyone from David Cameron to John Major calling for a rethink and for the more extreme Remoaners demanding Brexit be abandoned entirely.

The evidence that people were voting against Brexit last week amounts to precisely zero. Both the Conservatives and Labour entered the election on firm commitments to leave the single market and end free movement – a position erroneously known as “hard Brexit”.

Between them these two pro-Brexit parties garnered more than 82 per cent of the total votes cast. In contrast the anti-Brexit parties – the Lib Dems, the Greens and the SNP – were absolutely hammered.

The Lib Dems offered a second referendum, and saw their share of the vote slump even further from their disastrous 2015 performance, with Remoaner in Chief Nick Clegg thrown out of his Sheffield Hallam seat.

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In one of the key targets for the Greens – Sheffield Central – former party leader Natalie Bennett was beaten into third place by the Conservatives. She was beaten by the Tories. In Sheffield. Just let that sink in.

Any interpretation that sees this massive surge in support for pro-Brexit parties and a haemorrhaging in support for the Remoaners as an indication of popular support for staying in the EU is simply perverse and flies in the face of all available facts.