She’s Lying to You

Things aren’t going well.

After the buttock-clenchingly awkward interview that created the life-affirming #fieldsofwheat hashtag, surely a feeling that this person is just so other-worldy from the rest of us must dawn on people?

“Gosh”.

I didn’t know people said ‘Gosh” anymore outside of Downtown Abbey.

What’s the naughtiest thing @theresa_may has ever done?https://t.co/Y8Ys4T2fAT pic.twitter.com/5QvIXVNEl8

— ITV News (@itvnews) June 6, 2017

This was a high stakes election campaign she didn’t need to fight.

Personal vanity, and now, as we see, deep insecurity drove her into this crisis.

As Anthony Barnett writes:

“… the prime minister is irreparably damaged. She had record-breaking personal ratings because she seemed to be different, a woman who did what she said, someone who did not, as she put it, ‘play games’. A woman of quiet conviction. Less belligerent than Thatcher, but all the more Christian and less self-interested. A woman of her word, who got on with the job. Now she has broken her word. One that was much pledged since she declared her candidacy and stated there would be no general election until 2020. A pledge she and her spokespeople have repeated firmly ever since. Now all this has evaporated. She is just like the rest, only worse. She is no longer a woman who keeps her word, she plays the game, she is a fixer like the rest of them. But without the charm, guile or reading, or even a good excuse.” (‘Why is she frit?’)

And – though the campaign seems to be falling apart for Theresa, Ruth Davidson is being crowned, even in certain defeat. But not all is well for the cherubic one. Adam Ramsay and Peter Geoghegan have been exploring Tory dark money and asking: “Where did the Scottish Conservatives get all of this extra cash?”:

“The latest projections show the Conservatives winning up to ten seats in Scotland on Thursday. That’s ten times more than they’ve won at any point in the last 25 years – and as the polls currently stand, it could be enough to decide the UK-wide election result this Thursday. This Tory surge hasn’t come from nowhere: last year’s Scottish parliament election saw Ruth Davidson’s party more than double its number of seats. But new revelations today cast a shadow over that success. While the new Tory gains in Scotland are often put down to Ruth Davidson’s charisma, or to a polarisation on the independence question, this simple fact is often ignored: households in Scotland are being flooded with Conservative propaganda in a way they never have never been before. And it is unclear who is bankrolling it.”

And – if Ruth Davidson’s party is being propped-up by dark money, her own reputation is being exposed. Writing in the Daily Record Paul Laverty, the scriptwriter for I Daniel Blake spells it out:

“Ruth Davidson has a bouncy disposition, a polished soundbite, and a ready smile. Next time you see her talk of IndyRef2, think hunger. Behind her is Damien Green, Michael Gove and Boris Johnson. She is the Trojan horse of Scottish politics. Maybe IndyRef2 will come. Maybe it won’t. If you are upset by it, vote No when the time comes. But if you vote Tory on Thursday, please be aware of this …You are supporting a party who systematically abuse many of our most vulnerable citizens. That is a certainty.”

Even a BBC Question Time audience with more plants than B&Q couldn’t hide the disappointment of the Guardian backing the SNP, saying:

“Thursday’s vote has not been called as a judgment on the administration in Edinburgh. It is about Westminster, where the SNP, led in parliament by Angus Robertson, have offered an effective voice of opposition to Tory ministers. The priority should be to thwart Theresa May’s ambitions for ongoing austerity and a version of Brexit customised to the ideological agenda of the Conservative party’s radical fringe. That requires enough Labour MPs to form an alternative government. In Scottish seats where Tory candidates run the race close, it means preferring the SNP. Mrs May called this election complacently assuming voters across the UK would vastly extend her mandate. Scottish and English voters might choose different ways to puncture that complacency, but its punishment is a common imperative across the union.”

As the ghoulish POTUS trolls Sadiq Khan Theresa May refuses to rule out a state visit to the capital. 

Oh well, at least the placard in this Tory campaign clip has it right:

Oh my word, that placard 😂 pic.twitter.com/sot41StYC8

— Matt Zarb-Cousin (@mattzarb) June 6, 2017

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