Eridge Village Hall has wooden floors and is surrounded by fields. The dawter went to nursery School there thirty five years ago – ‘Little Acorns’- On Thursday 4th July it was the polling station for the 2024 election.
I looked up how to tactically vote. Over the years I have always voted Green as the Conservatives have always had a safe majority down here.
My area is full of wealthy farmers and selfish landowners.
The farm shop opposite where I live does not allow people to walk the perimeter of the orchard. Rambling is not allowed on the farmers old land. The untermenches are not allowed on aristocratic land.
We have farms with CCTV and signs that threaten to punish commoners should they walk through avenues of old trees and fields of brambles. When we moved here forty years ago, I wrote a letter to the council because a little copse had been chained up and we couldn’t get to see the woodpeckers. I won and the farmer had to untie the chains.
The farm shop had a whopping great sign saying vote Conservative and a whopping great sign with the MP’s name emblazoned in Tory Blue. The tactical website told me to vote Labour.
So I entered the village hall, showed them my driving licence to identify myself and using the stubby pencil I put a cross against the Labour Candidate, had a little badinage with the tellers and left.
It was a foregone conclusion that Labour would win but I didn’t believe it until the proper results were in. Years and years of Tory rule was coming to an end. Years and years or sighing and moaning, of injustice and lies were seemingly going to come to an end. I hunkered down to watch Channel 4, Channel 3, BBC 1 and CNN, flicking through all the stations as Tory Seat after Tory seat fell to the Lib Dems, the Greens and the Labour party. I watched as Clacton voted in Farage and Islington North chose Jeremy Corbyn with a 24,000 majority. I went to bed and got up again to see the results unfold. Weirdly I did not feel euphoric, just a wave of relief like undoing a tight bra, it occurred to me that I had been holding my breath for fourteen years.
There was so much criticism surrounding Starmer and Raynor, misinformation and nasty fake news drip fed over the last six weeks that I tuned out, turned off and kept myself to myself. And then it was all over. ‘The Sun’ endorsed Starmer, Sunak looked weak, Farage looked smug and Boris Johnson had the temerity to resurface. But the game was up. However it’s being described the populace have had enough. Old class politics are back. ‘Them’ and ‘Us’ is being seen for what it is. The Sunaks and the Reece Moggs with their millions patronising the underlings is over. Enough is enough thus spake the country.
Today we went to a 50th wedding anniversary celebration. All the neighbours clubbed together and bought the ‘appy couple a beautiful two seater bench. Some locals stayed at home to watch the football, some stayed away to dodge the rain showers, but most of us raised our glasses and filled our plates with local venison and dried, crunchy shitake mushrooms.
There were fists bumps and toasts but there was also a kind of quiet undertone of ‘what now?’ as we cautiously conversed about the Conservatives collapse.
After years and years of a seen enemy now nobody knows what we have in store. Will they won’t they? Can they can’t they? How to embrace a labour victory. Just how institutionalised have we become with uncertainty, austerity and empty precincts. How to enjoy a victory when everybody knows the new government has been handed a poison chalice. How to support the unknown?
Who will we slag off now? How will we slag off this team of newbies? The truth is that most of us want it to work, we all want them to turn the page but do we trust them to do it. My mate from across the pond said if the government declares that the next two years is going to be hard and bad and tricky and awful then we’ll all pull together. A neighbour said she wanted to believe that the politicians were going to serve us. The doctor from up the hill said he’d watched the new PM, outside number ten, and saw a statesman and that hadn’t been revealed up to this point. The young lefty who lives by the ancient rocks was hopeful that finally we had proper, truthful representation in number 10.
I feel a sort of anticlimactic trepidation, what if they don’t pull off change. What if the medja and the Reform Party make life so uncomfortable that even this newly elected government will be demonised. Secretly I’m choosing to believe that things can only get better. That the rise of the far right in Europe and the spectre of the Orange felon are mere obstacles on the road to a decent world.
The hustings have been dismantled and the circus of stunts has stopped, now we await to see what they can truly achieve. Unity, honour and integrity will replace self serving bigots. As I write I got a tiny explosion of excitement at the thought of it. Only tiny might because the loud buffoons of the likes of Nige and Lee are still around like a smelly fart. Their lingering odour must be squelched, will ‘Karmers’ lot be able to do it?
11 women and 22 men have been tasked with sweeping the shit from under the rug. Today I choose to stand by them, what else can I do? ‘It’s Time for Real Change Rebuilding Britain For The Many Not The Few’
Please God by me.