May's election of arrogance

Here’s a tip, if you’re going to call a vanity election as a cynical and opportunistic power grab because your party’s 20 points ahead in the opinion polls and the opposition are seemingly on their knees, don’t go around threatening and patronising your core voters by telling them you’ll take their house off them if they go doolally so they can’t pass it on to their kids. And if you’re running a campaign that’s totally based around your personality, make sure that you’ve got one instead of coming across like a Dalek.

And all this after spending the 12 months since David Cameron did a runner after Brexit repeatedly telling us there was no way you’d hold an election before 2020 because the country needs stability. So now May has had to go cap in hand to a bunch of Flat Earth lunatics in Northern Ireland in a desperate bid to cling on to power. It’s about as strong and stable as the Tories’ billboard van which blew over on the M6 a few days before the country went to the polls – as one wag on Twitter suggested, after it performed 12 U-turns in four minutes.

There’s supreme confidence and then there’s downright arrogance. Mrs May thought she could ride roughshod over everyone and ran an evasive campaign full of empty soundbites and meaningless catchphrases, even telling a nurse in the TV debate she bothered to turn up to that “there’s no magic money tree” despite spending £130m on an election nobody but her wanted.

Still, our local MPs kept their seats. Cat Smith’s tireless campaign helped her increase her majority while David Morris was elected with an increased number of votes. But if he’d like to keep his seat at the next general election, I’d suggest he shows his face around here a bit more because, judging by comments on social media, the people of Morecambe have seen more of Diego Lemos in the past year than they have of him.