Fall Out: A Year of Political Mayhem

by Tim Shipman

The moment most Conservatives abandoned hope even of a majority came at 2.17 a.m., when Labour seized Bury North on a 5 per cent swing. Like many Tory MPs who lost that night, David Nuttall had seen his vote go up but was swamped by Labour, who added 12.5 per cent to their vote share in 2015. ‘Darlington not coming to us was bad,’ a Tory aide said. ‘Losing Bury North was curtains.’

Just as Corbyn was finishing his speech the BBC reported that Labour had taken Canterbury, a seat that had been in Conservative hands since 1874, again on the back of student votes. Four hours later they would grab once-true-blue Kensington as well, by the princely margin of twenty votes.

Strictly speaking, under the terms of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, May did not need to go to Buckingham Palace at all. She remained prime minister until she resigned or was forced out after a vote of no confidence. But her advisers recognised that half the battle in moments of constitutional tension was to look and behave like a prime minister. Driving to the palace in her official Jaguar, stalked by news helicopters, was what prime ministers did. The only problem was that May was not looking at all like a prime minister. Shortly before she left for the palace, May once more broke down in tears. The make-up artist who had been called in to help her prepare for her audience had to do May’s face again.

The fury of MPs was immediate and pronounced. That afternoon a senior Tory MP told ITV’s Robert Peston, ‘We all fucking hate her. But there is nothing we can do. She has totally fucked us.’3 A senior backbencher added, ‘Most colleagues want her to go but I think she should dangle – from a rope.’

The most significant intervention was that of Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 Committee. A committed Brexiteer, Brady believed it was better to keep May in place rather than risk a leadership election which might unpick the Lancaster House approach to negotiations. By the time he saw May in her Downing Street office, around 2.30 p.m., Brady had been inundated with messages from MPs urging him to convey their disgust at May’s lack of penitence and use his influence to demand the heads of Timothy and Hill. Brady told May, ‘It’s important that you stay. I think colleagues will support you,’ but urged her to apologise to the party and make ‘personnel changes’, stressing that it was a ‘universal view’ that the chiefs had behaved badly. According

The campaign had begun with Labour on course for its worst result since 1935 and ended with it increasing its share of the vote by 9.6 per cent, the biggest uptick during a campaign since 1945. Corbyn secured a higher vote share than at any time since Tony Blair’s second landslide in 2001. Crucially, Labour was now second in more than fifty seats with majorities of less than 6 per cent, which left the Tories looking over their shoulders and keen to avoid another election.

May had survived as prime minister because Eurosceptics had concluded that she was best placed to deliver the Brexit they wanted. With that in doubt, for the fourth time in six months – after the general election setback, the Grenfell Tower disaster and her meltdown at the party conference in October – May’s humiliation unleashed the beginnings of a campaign to oust her.

The question for Labour was whether the fourth worst defeat in their modern history could be considered a victory. It certainly felt like one. Corbyn had added thirty seats and 9.6 per cent to Labour’s vote share. His 12.9m votes were the best performance since Tony Blair’s second landslide in 2001. However, a Labour official said, ‘Jeremy’s programme moved people and the Tory campaign was a disaster but the reason we were up 9 per cent was that the Liberal Democrats and Ukip have basically ceased to exist. Once you remove their decline, the swing to us was only 2 per cent. That is not a big swing. Our haul of seats is the fourth worst in our history since 1935. By those definitions it’s not a good result. But it’s a great result because we were so far behind.’ A source close to McDonnell said, ‘We’d gone through a year of people telling us we were going to take the Labour Party to the dogs and now we’ve given it the first injection of life it has had in ten years. We’ve energised politics on the left.’

Theresa May’s challenge of handling a bitterly divided cabinet in the midst of Brexit negotiations was perhaps best summed up by the comedian Frankie Boyle, who said, ‘The Tories are at pains to make sure that Brexit is being done by the book; sadly, that book is Lord of the Flies.’