Defeat speech

There is a long and noble tradition, in mature liberal democracies like our British one, of people putting up patiently with bitter but polite speeches made by defeated would-be elected politicians, for whom too few had voted.  Speeches, that is, putting these election losers’ spins on events, typically explaining how their defeats, and their conquerors’ electoral victories over them, might only have been merely “Pyrrhic”, after all.  (You know – the Tories won the election, but Labour were the “real” winners, or vice versa – that sort of daft rhetoric.)

MY OFFICIAL DEFEAT “SPEECH”

Thank you sincerely, all 185 who voted for me on 8th June 2017, when I was the General Election candidate for the Christian Peoples Alliance (CPA) in the British North Cornwall constituency.

(Oh yes, and thanks, of course, to the Returning Officer, and all his vote-counting staff, for merely doing his ordinary day job, some of it at night for a change, etc etc.)

I’d also like to thank, belatedly, and sheepishly – because I am embarrassed to have left it so late to say thanks to y’all – the 52 who voted for me on 7th May 2015, when I was the “Let every child have both parents” candidate in North Cornwall, in the previous general election, nominated then by the political party Restore the family for children’s sake.

Fact: Two mainland-British, Christian, political parties, with no presence in Northern Ireland, were in an electoral pact, at the 2017 British General Election.  Together, we put up 33 candidates.

 

The aforesaid CPA (the party that nominated me) put up 31 candidates in England and Cornwall, and The Christian Party put up a further 2 Scots candidates, one in mainland Scotland, and a second in a constituency consisting of certain Scottish islands.

Credit where credit is due.  The two Scots candidates of the Christian Party, each got more votes than any of the 31 CPA candidates down south. Well done, brothers!

Both parties in the mainland-UK Christian electoral pact have a presence in Wales.  In fact, the HQ address of the Christian Party is in a mainly Welsh-speaking part of Wales, I have learnt.  However, I’m afraid neither party in the pact put up any candidates in that much-loved (if hilly) British country, at this election.

Northern Ireland, the part of the island of Ireland that is still part of the United Kingdom, has its own parties (several of them) exerting a Christian influence in politics at all levels, in the six of the nine counties of the ancient kingdom of Ulster that remain in the modern UK.   I anticipate that over the coming months, the whole of the UK is going to have reason a-plenty to be glad of this legacy of a troubled history of the British Isles, especially the history of the second largest, the island of Ireland, which has been partitioned temporarily into two jurisdictions for almost a century now.  (I was praying for the Democratic Unionist Party myself, before the election was called.  I met their former leader once.)

 

Wow!

Very briefly, I will say that the overall UK election result, a so-called “hung Parliament“, is a result that I prayed for, more-or-less from the day when I heard the starling news about what power-greedy Mrs May was apparently trying to pull off.  Greedy Mrs May was gambling on the then opinion polls, striving to turn a comfortable working majority into a landslide election victory for the Tories that would make her the boss of all the Tories, a virtual dictatrice.  Thus she risked what she’s now lumbered with, which isn’t as good for her personal career as she’d hoped the outcome of her gamble would be, but which may not be bad for the country as a whole (I mean the whole UK, not just England) as some commentators suggest.

 

The Tories are back in, but only by the skin of their teeth, and without an overall majority

No party, not even the Tories, the largest party in the new Commons, is going to be able, before 5th May 2022 – unless Mr Corbyn makes the same sort of insane gamble as Mrs May made and lost – to impose its most cruel, idiosyncratic and anti-social policies upon the entire British population, from Cornwall to Shetland,  and from County Fermanagh to Kent.  Not, that is, without persuading at least one of the other parties with seats in the newly elected House of Commons to vote for that party’s own pet brand of partisan, ideological sheer madness.

Hung parliaments are usual, in most democracies.  I remember fondly one Irish Republic general election when, a week after the vote, the newspapers remained unable to report to their readers which party had won the election, if anybody.  At least I went to bed on Friday morning, reassured that none of the “main” British parties had won the British general election in which I been a fringe candidate, an answer to my prayers.

So, Theresa May remains PM.  But not with a “strong and stable” government that can shoot down any opponent, from the hip, without winning an argument.  Rather, with a weak and wobbly government, which (rejoice!) always has to get a second opinion, from at least one of the other parties, the opposition parties.  That should make the governing Tory party more careful.  We are safe, for another five years, from another Thatcher, or another Blair.  Real democracy, for a nice change, in the UK.  Excellent!

 

The election result, the present “hung Parliament”, is exactly what I had prayed for!

Specifically, I prayed for the Labour Party to be soundly defeated.  (I notice, though, that their “boastful little horn” leader isn’t exactly falling silent yet, glad not to have been so utterly rejected by the electorate that his party would want to chose a new leader, and that he would not be able to influence the Brexit settlement at all.)  Mr Corbyn  is already talking about co-operating with Mrs May to enable another “snap” election!  Has he taken leave of his senses?)

I prayed for a few more Lib Dems to get seats, because (for all their considerable faults) they are least least hot on basic freedoms like that of Ashers not to have to produce gay propaganda cakes.  They are a bit confused as to whether they are a liberal party in the original British sense (libertarian), or in the American sense (illiberal bullies), but, when push came to shove, about a personal matter, I found my Lib Dem MP more libertarian than the Tory ex-postman, Scott Mann, who replaced him in 2015, who has broken every promise he has ever made to me.

I prayed for the Tories to be the largest party, but without an overall majority, so that they would not be able to do anything much in government except Brexit, without the support of at least one of the other parties, at each division.  (The Tories are no longer socially conservative, like the DUP and the CPA and the Christian Party here on the UK mainland.  But they have more right wing economics than any of these Christian-influenced parties.)

I prayed for Northern Ireland not to have its devolved power to continue to ban abortion and same-sex marriage confiscated, by Labour’s threat to this constitutional settlement

I prayed for the Brexit implementation to be one that protected the freedom of ordinary, peace-loving Irish people, both British and Éireann, to move and to trade across the border, which has had many crossing points re-opened since the troubles went into remission (until the next onslaught), and families that live either side of the border – a border that ought not to draw attention to itself, having been the source of Loyalist joy, and Republican resentment, but which used to be something of a war zone.

I also prayed for EU migrant workers to be allowed to continue to care for our neglected elderly, and to replace some of the 12 million or so British workers missing from the population because of the 8 million abortions, over the past 49 years.  (I have an interest to declare.  I am a widower, with an exciting and still-new romantic interest in a widow from another EU country, whom I met on Pentecost Sunday 2015 in Lanson.)

The numbers in the new Commons seem like the answer to my prayers.  The empowerment of the DUP, which (deal or no deal) is usually going to be the party least unlikely to vote with a Tory minority British government, will be good for Ireland, I hope, especially the North, and especially the Protestant faith community that votes most for the DUP.

So, the results of the voting for the pact candidates was as follows, according to often reliable sources – for these sorts of facts at least (namely, Wikipedia and the BBC):

Candidate	Party	Constituency	Votes
John Cormack	Christian Party	Na h-Eileanan an Iar	1108
Donald MacLeod Boyd	Christian Party	Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey	422
Kayode Shedowo	CPA	West Ham	353
Katherine Hortense	CPA	Lewisham West and Penge	325
Lorna Irene Bromley Corke	CPA	Wells	320
Morenike Mafoh	CPA	South West Bedfordshire	301
John Wesley Gibson	CPA	Chatham and Aylesford	260
Malcolm Martin	CPA	Lewisham, Deptford	252
Temi Olodo	CPA	Erith and Thamesmead	243
Sid Cordle	CPA	Hitchin and Harpenden	242
Kemi Abidogun	CPA	Manchester, Gorton	233
Maureen Martin	CPA	Lewisham East	228
Ray Towey	CPA	Camberwell and Peckham	227
Des Coke	CPA	Mitcham and Morden	223
David Omamogho	CPA	Croydon South	213
Ashley Dickenson	CPA	Carshalton and Wallington	189
John Allman	CPA	North Cornwall	185
John Boadu	CPA	Croydon Central	177
Robin Rennie	CPA	Colchester	177
Abi Ajoku	CPA	Blackley and Broughton	174
Venetia Rosemary Sams	CPA	Milton Keynes North	169
Steve Ayorinde Benson	CPA	Rochester and Strood	163
Alex Coetzee	CPA	Leeds Central	157
Stephen Todd	CPA	Harwich and North Essex	141
Iris White	CPA	North Thanet	128
Roger James Peacock	CPA	Gillingham and Rainham	127
Rose Doman	CPA	Stretford and Urmston	122
Faith Miracle Fisher	CPA	South Thanet	115
Angel Watt	CPA	Hackney South and Shoreditch	113
Helen Spiby-Vann	CPA	Hornsey and Wood Green	93
Chinwe Nwadikeduruibe	CPA	Old Bexley and Sidcup	83
Edmonds Victor	CPA	Maidenhead	69
Tim Mutamiri	CPA	Leeds North East	67