Betting the House Ross and McTague

Tim Ross and Tom McTague, two experience political commentators, have published an excellent but limited account of the 2017 General Election, Betting the House, limited because the main contenders have not participated openly. The book is also written based on having an appeal to all wings of all political parties and therefore criticism is muted.

The first fact avoided is that Teresa May, perhaps the most hypocritical of post war Prime Ministers, sanctioned a dirty and unscrupulous character assassination campaign against Jeremy Corbyn just after she made her speech on the steps of Downing street in 2015.  The book also underplayed the extent to which individual members of the Labour Party in House of Commons planned to oust Jeremy from the leadership despite believing that some of their number would lose their seats. It was a perfect storm which most of us outside mainstream media and the Westminster bubble were able to see, and the sad aspect is that they appear to have learned nothing and believe that with time and mastery of the latest technique in public manipulation. The party-political class in Britain remains delusional which makes our future dangerous and unpredictable

Having said this credit has to be given to the Parliamentary Labour Party because without the open rebellion and plotting with mainstream journalists and political commentators by a number of Labour Members of the House of Commons, Mrs May would not have believed the Opinion polls and the advisers who said an early election would give her the kind of majority to secure her premiership and negotiate a form of Brexit likely to appeal to the majority rather than those in the Tory party who have been able to imprison her until she had served their purpose, together with the racists and the political morons who formed a good chunk of those voting for Brexit.

There is also not much in the book that has not already been revealed by mainstream media and Parliamentarians over the six months that have followed. There was one piece of information which helped to explain the attempt to protect May’s effective Deputy Prime Minister, Damian Green, that his wife had been her  tutor at Oxford. The second came at the end when faced with open talk of pressing her to resign, she persuaded the 1922 committee membership to give her a chance by admitting to them she had got it badly wrong, was accountable and would work to make it right and would go when they asked.  However, having played the humility card then, she is wrong to believe, along with Jeremy Hunt, that eating humble pie now about the NHS and Community Care crisis before the Commons return will save them from the wrath of their own Party and that of the majority of the House of Commons. She cannot sack or move Hunt without sacking herself. If the Tory Party is to continue in power for the rest of this parliament and then not face electoral disintegration of the order which Blair achieved in 1997, then she must fundamentally change the face of her government, and then its policies, which means getting rid of her Chancellor, Boris and Hunt and making space for Grieve, Morgan and Soubry. She lacks the mettle to do a Corbyn and appoint only those who share in her vision if she has one. The truth emerged in the book at the point when the authors commented that her closest advisers acted more like well-intentioned parents than staff, Labour's strength is now more than Corbyn’s brilliance. The Genie is out of the bottle and May and her party have a choice between a long and painful political annihilation or a quick one -Betting the House Paper edition Biteback Publishing.