I expect the Germans have a special word for it. The suppressed-elation-you-are-feeling-that-you-dare-not-wallow-in-too-much-just-in-case-you-jinx-it. This election campaign should have been schadenfreude on steroids, it should have been a non-stop, six-week street party. Instead it’s been a sort of reverse Partygate, with Labour supporters steadfastly refusing to celebrate, even when we really ought to be. It’s been like watching the most brilliant, hilarious in-flight movie – all the while knowing that the pilot of the plane still has to make an emergency landing in a snowstorm. However wonderful the entertainment, it’s hard to relax and enjoy it until catastrophe has definitely been averted.
Of course, the older voters among us have been here before. In 1997, there was a prevailing anxiety that somehow the left would manage to blow it yet again and the Tories would get back in for a fifth term in office. If you never read Things Can Only Get Better, my memoir of 18 Miserable Years in the Life of a Labour Supporter, I won’t spoil it for you by telling you who wins at the end. But there is a section in the final chapter when I describe Labour supporters spending the spring of 1997 in despondent denial, like brides who had been abandoned at the altar, unable to let themselves fall in love ever again.
In the myriad opinion polls during this campaign, one statistic stood out for me. Only 4% of British voters have been “very much enjoying” this election. I am part of that tiny minority, a weird outlier in British politics – someone who believes what the polls are telling us and who really enjoys seeing the Tories getting their arses kicked. I find myself saying to everyone, “Isn’t it fantastic? Don’t you love to see it?” and people around me shake their head and sombrely caution against over-confidence. Something surely must go wrong in the last couple of days; at the last minute, voters will switch back to the Tories after scare stories about tax or immigration or low-grade photo-editing making Angela Rayner look French. It’s like the old saying, “Don’t count your chickens until they’ve all been elected Labour MPs in Surrey.”
I have friends and family in the US and France who gaze across at our election with envy; they would give anything to be in the position we are in. England might be looking a bit rubbish at football, cricket and everything else, but in the World Cup of Elections, it’s “Royaume-Uni – douze points!” But we cannot punch the air just yet, we are so tentative in our delight, so cautious not to celebrate before the final whistle, in case the blue team manage to score those 27 goals they need in the last two minutes.
And it’s a shame that we are all so reticent, because there really has been so much to enjoy. From the first day of the campaign, when the Incredible Shrinking Prime Minister stood out in the pouring rain, his message being drowned out by protesters as he tried to tell us he had a plan, which clearly did not extend to looking out of the window. From that moment on, his party has been desperately scrambling. Rishi Sunak turns out to be the first prime minister in history to be caught completely unawares by his own announcement. The only preparation anyone his party had made was to bet on the election date just before he announced it. I think by now most of us have worked out that the betting scandal goes far, far deeper; that Sunak put a huge bet on the Tories being wiped out and has been determined to make this happen. It’s hard to think of another explanation for why a Conservative prime minister would leave the D-day celebrations early. Unless I have misremembered the powerful opening of Saving Private Ryan, in which Tom Hanks bravely storms the Normandy beaches in the face of enemy gunfire, but then dashes back to England to do a quick interview with Paul Brand of ITV.
It turns out that these terrible people are terrible at politics. Forgive me while I gloat, but for most of my life as a Labour activist this has not been the case. Unless of course this is all part of a cunning strategy to make everyone on the left so totally convinced that Labour is going to walk it, that we don’t even bother voting or we indulge ourselves with protest votes, and the Conservatives leap back out of the grave like a zombie in a budget horror film to wreak havoc all over again.
Because is not yet a done deal: apathy or self-indulgence on the left could still see the Tories do much better than predicted. So unless you wish to assist the Conservatives, do not cast a protest vote or abstain just because Labour don’t represent your feelings on a particular issue about which you are passionate. Do not waver one iota from what must remain our absolute united focus this week: seeing the worst government of our lifetime cast into the abyss. My personal fantasy is seeing the Tories actually come third behind the Liberal Democrats. Just imagine Ed Davey at PMQs. It would be so much more entertaining with the leader of the opposition asking his questions while bouncing up and down on a space hopper.
But none of this is possible unless we vote for it. So try to enjoy the last couple of days of the election if you can – but make sure you vote the Tories out on Thursday so emphatically, so irreversibly, that you will always remember Friday as one of the most enjoyable days of your whole life.
John O’Farrell is a writer and author. His latest book is Family Politics
