Things can only get better...

Here we f***ing gooooooo! Election is on!!!

Despite the past five months being a non-stop “will they won’t they” about the election being called, Wednesday’s announcement that we will be going to the polls on 4 July still came as a shock – not least to Conservative MPs (I saw one Tory, who is not planning to stand, tweeting how she and the team expected to have a few more months in the job).

The announcement was the worst kept secret in Westminster, of course, and so once again I found myself googling the freeview channel for BBC News, and sitting watching the black door and the appearance of the lectern. There have been so many elections and Prime Ministerial resignations since 2015, watching that door has become something of a national sport.

I think it’s fair to say the announcement did not go to plan. As the rain threatened to drown out Sunak desperately trying to list his achievements in office – including policies that now have a vanishing chance of ever becoming law – a musical note cut through the speech. Things… You could see the irritation on Sunak’s face as he realised the music was forcing him to raise his voice against the competing noises of rain, camera clicks, and this rogue sound system. Then the realisation dawned on him, on the camera people, on the newscasters, on the watching public-aged-over-35. Things… Can only get better. It wasn’t any old song. It was not even a braying man bellowing stop Brexit down a megaphone. Can only get better… It was, as Ian Dunt put it, “the song of his enemies.” In the rain, listing his now-cancelled legacy policies, Sunak was drowned out by the New Labour 1997 anthem.

Better!

As Kathy Burke tweeted afterwards: it was really very funny.

If he wasn’t so utterly unlikeable, so unable to crack a joke or turn the situation to his advantage, one would almost feel sorry for Sunak. But I’m not in the mood for sympathy. I simply found it hilarious.

So here we are. Election time! We got so used to having elections every two years, having one now after a cool four and a half years feels quite discombobulating. And I think it’s fair to say that things are not going well for the Tories. Even today’s Daily Mail is running a Reeves pro-Labour message. Even the Express is leading with Gove’s departure. Sunak has apparently taken the day off. To paraphrase Ed Miliband, hell no he’s not tough enough.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the politics of the last 14 years over recent days – a politics that has left Britain a more divided, poorer, greyer place. Politics has been marked by a race to the bottom, of doing whatever it takes to marginalise the already marginalised. Austerity, one of the most destructive policy choices in recent history, destroyed the social safety net so that when Covid hit, the structures that could have saved more lives and livelihoods were already frayed, creaking the edges, broken. It meant that when the cost of living crisis followed the once in a century pandemic (please god!), those who were already struggling had no place left to go except destitution. And for what? Austerity got the deficit down, not that getting the deficit down made any difference to people’s lives. We were told it was done to relieve the debt burden on future generations – generations who are now growing up into a depressed economy which staggers along at just above recession levels, in a country where nothing works and where the water is full of shit. What was it for? It’s the biggest failure, the most discredited policy – or, at least it was, until Brexit.

And let’s not even get started on Brexit, the one thing this government “got done” but with no discernible benefit to anyone’s lives and which more and more, people are starting to regret.

When we look back at the Tory majority government since 2019, there’s a weird conundrum at play. On the one hand, they seem have wreaked a huge amount of damage in very short time. Immigration policy that has left more than 70,000 people in legal limbo, denied asylum but unable to be deported or removed. Protest bans and new offences that are criminalising increasing numbers of people who can’t be sent to overcrowded, decrepit prisons that are infested with vermin and where men are forced to shit in buckets. A continued economic policy that has pushed more and more people into poverty, with life expectancy falling and children growing up unusually short because they are malnourished. A benefits system that has been condemned over and over but which was judged as too far gone to be reversed.

The trains don’t work. The rivers are polluted. There are potholes everywhere. The NHS has gone from being the most successful health service in the world, to being a desperate system of long waiting lists and frustrated, sick patients. When I was in Kharkiv, watching teachers make schools in subways, the news at home was that school buildings were falling down due to RAAC concrete. Kids were learning in portakbins, like they were when I was at school under the last Tory regime.

No one feels like the country is better. All the Tories have left, all they can campaign on, is division and hate.

Sunak’s line is that he called the election now because inflation is back to normal and this shows his economic plan is working – that people are feeling the difference. It’s a pitch that shows just how horribly detached his party is from the reality of people’s lives. No one feels better off, except, I guess, really rich people like him. But in the supermarket aisles, people are still struggling to make ends meet. Food prices are still shockingly high – I saw a bottle of olive oil on sale in Asda for £15 this week. In Asda! No one is feeling the effect of the “plan working”. Even with inflation back down, millions of us are still living with mortgage deals made in the wake of the Truss crisis, and renters are paying the higher rents that her economic madness helped to fuel. Again, it’s such bad politics it’s almost funny – a man on the Sunday Times rich list asking people to feel grateful for the economic plan working, when they can’t afford to feed their kids.

Personally, I think he called the election now because the energy price cap is coming down for the summer, which he can claim as being part of his plan working, but will go up again in the autumn, when it could be blamed in him. But that’s my hunch, I don’t have any evidence for that.

Anyway, because the plan is manifestly not working, I predict the campaign is going to get nasty. The nastiest we have seen. We already have Boris Johnson in today’s Mail repeating far right conspiracy about Starmer’s time as DPP. I think what we are going to see is the Conservative machine pushing its increasingly nationalist populist message in order to whip up more fear, more hatred, and more division. And I worry the result will be a very different Conservative Party going into opposition from the one that took over in 2010: one that is hard right, nativist, nationalist and authoritarian, as Paul Mason tweeted today “Fidesz on Thames”.

One final thought: Sunak said on Thursday that no flights removing migrant people to Rwanda will take off before the election. This means, if the polls are right and Labour wins, there will never be a Rwanda flight.

This is good news.

But what an example of the absolute shitshow of this government. Its flagship policy. Will never happen. The policy that has dominated our political space. Zilch. Over.

Since the scheme was announced in April 2022, millions of pounds have been spent on a policy that will never happen. Endless hours have been wasted debating a policy that will never happen. International law has been degraded, Britain’s standing in the world has been weakened, reality has been upended (just declaring Rwanda is safe now and forever more, because you want it to be), for a policy that will never happen. Imagine what could have been done instead! What laws could have been passed, investments could have been made, if Parliament was not snarled up with the Rwanda scheme!

Most importantly, hundreds of people have been living in fear, in anxiety, in desperation, because they have been told they will be forcibly removed to a country they did not consent to go to. People who have faced violence and persecution, who have fled war and oppression, who believed Britain would offer them care and compassion and sanctuary, have been bullied and detained and forced to live in a frightening limbo. All for a policy that will never happen.

Nothing defines the outgoing Tory government more than the flight that will never fly. Nothing better illustrates its fecklessness with money, with law, and with people’s lives, than that grounded flight.

Even if for nothing else, for that the Tories deserve to lose this election. They also deserve to lose it for leaving behind a country that is poorer, sicker, sadder, more divided and more afraid than in 2010.

That’s why, on 4 July, I will use my little pencil to put an X next to name of my brilliant Labour MP.

Obligatory book plug

This week I am going to Skopje to talk about the book! That’s exciting. The beautiful Balkans in the springtime. And I also had very exciting news that the book is coming out in Japanese! I am going to get a t-shirt made that says: she’s big in Japan.

Don’t wait to read it in Japanese though: buy it now.

What I’m writing

I did a follow up to my prison’s investigation, following the urgent notification issued to HMP Wandsworth.

Yes, HMP Wandsworth is dangerous – most prisons in England and Wales are

What I loved

I was actually going to write about Kharkiv this week, but decided to write about the election instead. That said, I want to take a moment to write about Kharkiv.

The last few weeks I have found it almost impossible to concentrate on work, on life, on anything, as the Russians advanced on Kharkiv Oblast, invaded Vovschansk, killing civilians and destroying homes, lives, just like they do wherever they go. How can we be expected to go on with normal life, when Kharkiv is being bombed day after day? I watched the Maria Avdeeva video on Thursday as 10 missiles rained down on this wonderful city, burning a publishing house to the ground and killing seven people. She was posting from a street I recognised, a street I feel I know well, as a huge explosion fell behind her.

That sound, I also recognised.

I am so angry, not just distracted. The fact that Russia was able to launch this offensive in the region is a damning indictment on the failure of its western allies to provide arms and aid in time. And an indictment on the international restrictions that say Ukraine cannot actively defend itself, it can only contain… the rule that prevents Ukraine from striking military targets in Russia. What does the west expect to happen, if it ties Ukraine’s hands behind its back?

Anyway, Kharkiv’s story is not mine to tell, so I am sharing the wonderful article from my friend Anna Vlasenko who writes so beautifully about her fears for her village, her family, the rose her grandmother planted in her garden.

And this from Luke Harding, whose brave reporting from Eastern Ukraine is needed so much. While we all become occupied by UK news, let’s not forget Ukraine – and Luke’s writing means we don’t forget.

What I’m reading

I did a lovely event with my friend Maya Oppenheim and her book The Pocket Guide to the Patriarchy.

I enjoyed Rebecca Makkai’s I have some questions for you – so many good feminist thrillers around right now.

Speaking of, I devoured Truth Truth Lie, the new Claire McGowan which had shades of And then there were none and which was just great. I love her books!

And I’m in a bit of a Spanish Civil War tip right now, so reading Never more alive by Kate Mangan.

What I’m watching

Seinfeld! I’m so boring.

That’s it for this week. Let’s get out there and vote Labour!