Monday 11 June 2018

The Blues

I am older than half the population. Although I don't, I am old enough to have children of voting age.

Yet you can be as middle-aged as I am and still have no real memory of Conservative Governments as anything other than ramshackle affairs of undisguised mutual hatred, torn apart by irreconcilable disagreements over the EU, and with tiny or no majorities propped up by dodgy deals involving Northern Ireland. Anyone with any proper political memory of less than 30 years cannot remember a Conservative Prime Minister who was very much more than a dead man or woman walking.

The self-styled "natural party of government" has failed to win outright at five of the last six General Elections, and it has enjoyed an overall majority for only two of the last 21 years and counting. It is wildly unlikely that any party will win outright at the next General Election. But is is absolutely certain that the Conservative Party will not do so. 

No one, including David Cameron, expected that party to gain an overall majority in 2015, so there are those of us into middle age who have no meaningful political memory of that party as anything other than the one that was at best going to fail to win outright as soon as the General Election came around.

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