Is Theresa May on borrowed time?

Socialists, Lib-Dems, Greens and other progressive thinkers, take heart, a minority Conservative Government is NOT sustainable.

Theresa May is in a real jam. She has failed to deliver the thumping majority she promised and has been forced, like David Cameron before her, to ask another political party to prop her up.

So what now? It's natural for a pragmatic party like the Conservatives, faced with these unstable circumstances, to shift policy to the left. There's signs of a shift to the left being planned already with Theresa May stating shortly after the election results that she wants to govern for "all the people", but there's a problem - a colossal problem. At the same time as needing to shift to the left to head-off the increasingly popular Jeremy Corbyn, Theresa May, to get the Remain orientated Soft Brexit she believes in, has got to placate the influential right-wing hard Brexiteers embedded within her own party. This reality is incompatible with need to move left and it is this that will haunt Theresa May until she resigns.

It's an unenviable position the Prime Minister finds herself which is why the Conservative Party has allowed Theresa May to stay on as leader - for now anyway. This flimsy state of affairs is not possible to sustain for long and another election (before too long) is inevitable.

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General Election 2017 | Corbyn phobia & Conservatism

Thanks to Tom Scott for creating this image

There's been a lot of talk on Social Media speculating why the Mainstream Press won't back Corbyn. There's was even speculation among the political class whether the left-leaning Guardian think it's possible that a Corbyn led Labour Party can win a General Election, so what's going on?

While no one should underestimate the Mainstream Press's  ability to steer public opinion away from anything remotely radical, I think there's something else going on within people that explains the aversion to an alternative voice. A psychological something so powerful that many feel unable to turn away from the perceived safety of Conservative Party paternalism. 

For large numbers of voters, the Conservative Party seems to act as a kind of universal comfort blanket used to protect those too afraid to allow themselves to think about the malign forces operating behind closed doors organising their lives.  Put simply, it appears to me that too many people are hopelessly happy to leave political affairs to others. It's as if, justice, equality and fairness is non of our business and instead the inately deferential English seek solace in the Daddy-Knows-Best paternalism that Theresa May and the Conservative Party do so well. 

The difficult circumstances people find themselves following the austerity policies of the Conservative Party, rather than causing them to rise up and challenge the system, actually seems to make people cling on even tighter. To the cap-wringing and hopelessly deferential, middle income Tory voter, maybe struggling to run a new business, automatically accepts the decisions "their" Party makes without properly considering the alternative point of view. The way I see it, and despite Jeremy Corbyn closing in on May in the polls, the difficulty the Labour Party still faces, is that any idea, or individual articulating opinions in opposition to the status quo, triggers a knee-jerk reaction that, not only stifles the ideas, it kills rational argument stone dead. 

Whether it's Jeremy Corbyn choosing not to sing God Save the Queen, or more serious issues, like contracting out National Health Services to private business, hiking University Tuition Fees, or Thersa May's Social Care Plan, alternative opinions trigger a kind of phobia that's remains hard for the Labour Party to extinguish. 

If the Labour Party are to be elected in June, it's leadership and their grass-roots supporters need to stick to the arguments, and  I am sure that, day-by-day, the phobic reaction and the aversion to real change in Britain will soften. Only then will the value of Jeremy Corbyn's policies for Britain be acknowledged and more generally accepted by the public, if not the Conservative controlled press. 

More on: Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party

A version of this article was first published in September 2015.

Why do Conservatives fear change so much?

Conservatism means leaving things the way they are for fear of change.

The fear of change is not felt by those surviving each day using food banks, or by those who can only find work on a zero-hours contract. Hard working families unable to afford a home to live in don't fear change either. No - the fear of change, the fear of a more equal society, isn't felt by the disadvantaged, it is felt by the land owner, the million pound a year CEO and the very wealthiest in our society that stash their wealth offshore so they don't have to pay their share towards our country's armed forces, the police, NHS and schools...

I want change and think it's essential to create a fairer and more equal society. I am voting for change on June 8th.  

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Labour Leadership 2015 | Why I voted for Jeremy Corbyn

Jeremy Corbyn | The return of conviction politics...

I am uncomfortable with the idea put about by Yvette Cooper, Andy Burnham, and even Hilary Benn, 
that the only way for Labour to win power is to appear more like the Conservatives. I prefer instead a Labour leader unashamed of socialist values and not afraid to challenge a political system that threatens the weak and impedes progress towards achieving a more equal society.

With more people suffering from austerity policies designed to clear up the mess left by the collapse of the banking system in 2008, now is not the time for Labour to give up on itself, or its core supporters.

If you believe in Conservative values, right-wing ideas on austerity, dismantling the Welfare State and privatising (contracting out) the NHS, then you already have a party to represent you. What I and millions of others would like is a political party that puts an alternative view. I want a leader of the opposition that votes against measures designed to damage the Welfare State set-up by the Labour Party after the Second World War and not one that supports the Conservative Party by sitting on their hands and abstaining.

The fact is that, unless David Cameron makes a calamitous mistake on one of the big issues the British public are stuck with a Conservative Government for the best part of another five years. What the Country needs right now is a strong opposition to Conservative ideas on Welfare, Housing, and Education and, in my view, the only candidate with the ideological backbone to challenge those ideas, is Jeremy Corbyn.

Tuition Fees Wipe out Lib-Dems

Lib-Dems to be wiped out in Southwest for proping up Tories & increasing tuition fees to £9000 a year #ELECTION2015 pic.twitter.com/XaPO9ruiPK
— Anthony Bounds (@AnthonyBounds) April 20, 2015

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