Kenneth Surin, writing yesterday in CounterPunch …
Labour under Jeremy Corbyn has been gaining steadily in the polls, despite a massive media campaign to undermine him, extending from the BBC and supposedly “liberal” Guardian to the UK’s famously ghastly tabloids. When Theresa May called the election, Labour was 20 or more points behind the Conservatives, but this figure was down to as little as 5 points in some polls conducted before the Manchester bombing atrocity.
The policies put forward in Labour’s manifesto are popular (especially when not identified as Labour’s!), Corbyn has been an effective campaigner, but Labour has also been aided by a woefully inept Tory campaign. The Tory spin doctors and election strategists convinced themselves that the largely untried Theresa May was their trump card, so much so that only her name (with the vacuous slogan “strong and stable”), not her party affiliation, featured on their election propaganda.
While the hunch behind this decision of the election strategists was the marketing of May as Thatcher Mk II, she has been a disaster so far. A stodgy performer in debate, famously unable to think on her feet, May refused to take part in televised debates. Her few attempts at “connecting with the public” have seen the wheels come off the proverbial car.
She scuttled off rapidly when booed on a visit to a social-housing estate in Bristol– people living in social housing have been under an unrelenting cosh since Thatcher became prime minister in 1979, and only someone in a fantasy by Lewis Carroll would envisage a Tory leader being greeted with warmth and affection on a visit to such an estate …
Read the rest here.