FROM WASHINGTON:

It’s strange to think now that a year ago, or just under a year ago, when Theresa May moved into Number 10 Downing Street, she looked invincible.

And that when she called a snap election, it looked like a brilliant coup.  Brexit had triumphed.  Labour was in a shambles, hemorrhaging votes in its industrial heartlands and captained by a man who looked more like a bitter ex-husband (“her” government, Corbyn would say in Prime Minister’s Questions, she said, never mentioning May by name, while May coolly and scrupulously called him the Right Honourable Gentleman) than a prime minister.

Now the Tory manifesto is foundering, inconsistent, today on income tax, just yesterday on public housing, earlier on insurance of the self-employed.  (The older inconsistencies in the Conservative Party are also lurking just under the surface, and came up again during the 31 May BBC debate, when Caroline Lucas of the Greens reminded Amber Rudd of her past as a Remainer.  But more on that later.)

Corbyn, against all odds, is looking splendid.  Remember the referendum campaign, when old Labour voters were voting Out just to spite the spindly, finger-wagging Islingtonian?  Theresa May, who looked capable and confident every Wednesday for months, is now in hiding. She literally hid on the 31st, of course, by not showing up the debate.  But look at her interview with the Plymouth Herald, the newspaper of a strongly Conservative town in the Conservative, Brexiteer stronghold of Devon.

“Three minutes of nothing,” the Herald reporter said.

This was no master class on the subtle art of evading questions.  It was a point-blank refusal to say anything.  Sam Blackledge of the Herald asked four questions, and look what responses he got:

On visiting a marginal constituency like Plymouth only twice in six weeks:  “I’m very clear this is a crucial election for this country.”

On whether the Prime Minister will protect Plymouth from more cuts to their vital military infrastructure:  “I’m very clear that Plymouth has a very proud connection with the armed forces.”

Bloody hell, Theresa.

She didn’t answer anything, because she really has nothing to say.  For months now the Prime Minister has relied on a few rhetorical formulae — STRONG AND STABLE, STRONG AND STABLE, over and over — because STRONG AND STABLE is stronger, and more stable, than anything the Tories can offer.

The Prime Minister’s colleagues are doing the same thing.  See Amber Rudd’s “money tree” line in the debate, which constituted about half of all the words she uttered that night.  Maybe she figured that the old “money tree” line would be enough, that it would resonate with elderly voters in Kent who had themselves droned on and on about money trees in their own living rooms.  It would be a tactic rather similar to Paul Nuttall’s insistent accent, which is admittedly more convincing than any of the monosyllables he typically manages.  But given Rudd’s face throughout the evening, I’d say she’s not particularly convinced herself.

 

Other takeaways from the debate, besides the May Queen’s absence, Rudd’s visible discomfort, and Nuttall’s juvenile blathering?  Corbyn looked… all right.  He was more comfortable than we’ve seen him in a while, perhaps because between the left-leaning audience (note the applause) and a field that skewed left, with Labour, the Greens, SNP, Plaid Cymru outnumbering the Tories, Lib Dems, and UKIP, he could speak as a leftist and not in an unconvincing pretense of centrism.  Was that an “exploitation of the workers” I heard at one point?  The honesty of it was actually refreshing.

Tim Farron’s performance was brilliant, and even his anecdote about his mother’s illness came across as something emotionally genuine — so many politicians make stories like that sound cheap and tawdry and exploitative.  Although his snide comment about “hair shirt Muesli eating Guardian readers” was revealing about who Farron is and what a strong Lib Dem voice in government would look like.  His Brexit policy has always felt strongly anti-democratic.  A second referendum seems dubious, like a coworker that asks you out every day in the hope that eventually that stars will align right and you’ll say yes; and, like liberals from John Stuart Mill to Wolfgang Schäuble, Farron seems to prefer a strong technocracy to a messy democracy.

Nevertheless, I wish Corbyn had been as adamant about staying in the Single Market as Farron and Robertson had been.

Angus Robertson was tough and intelligent, as he always is.  His clash with Corbyn over immigration was fascinating — Corbyn pulling on his coveralls and no-slip boots to demand better control of immigration, and Robertson condemning him for borrowing a line from UKIP.  It was a bit of dishonesty on Corbyn’s part, though, because now that the UK is leaving the EU, it will be that much harder for British businesses to hire in or from countries were wages are low, like Poland, and because fewer immigrants does not correlate with higher wages.

The real solution, of course, is a consistent floor under wages across the EU and a recycling of industrial surpluses back into places like Poland and Romania to support it.  But that would require a number of impossible conditions, like a political union on the Continent and a changing of the guard in the Bundestag.  Oh, and for Britain to be in the EU.  That would be important, too.  Corbyn, in the meantime, can be forgiven for his olive branch to the voters in the Midlands and Wales, however ill-plucked.

Wood and Lucas performed marvelously, considering how unlikely they are.  Wood seemed not to have considered matters of security at all, and looked confused by the question.  And Lucas gave us the quote of the night.  Nuttall, in the Reddit-mysognist tradition that comes naturally to UKIP, declared that he wanted to make no “divorce payments” to the EU.  Lucas asked him if he’d do the same thing in real divorce.

“We all know blokes like you,” she said.  Indeed we do, Madam, indeed we do.

So here’s the part you were waiting for.  The Windrose endorses the Labour Party for the 8 June 2017 general election — except for the constituencies within Scotland, for which the Windrose endorses the Scottish National Party.  (Up Scotland! Free and European.)  And let Rudd and the May Queen be strong and stable on the far benches, where no one will ask them any questions.