Madrid: Elmo was happy. The big red floppy Muppet character won three votes on Thursday, and Bobby Smith in the costume was seen on national television — and maybe even around the world — sharing the same stage in the Maidenhead constituency of Prime Minister Theresa May.
She had the redder race, though.
The mysterious Lord Buckethead also stood on the stage too, his face as always covered by a ridiculously large black, top hat — like costume. Given the way results unfolded across the UK, May probably wished she could hide her face in that top hat.
Instead, with a voice shaking and unsure, heavily made up to hide heavy eyes, she faced the nation.
“At this time, more than anything else, this country needs a period of stability,” she said. “Whatever the results are, the Conservative party will ensure that we fulfil our duty in ensuring that stability, so that we can all, as one country, go forward together.”
She called the snap election seeking an increased mandate to put her government in a strong position with Brexit talks due to start on June 19 with the other 27 members of the European Union. That was the end of April. Now, in June, it was the end of May as a strong and stable leader.
She leads a party weakened by failing to win a majority and one that is now relying on the support of 10 Members of Parliament from Northern Ireland, all members of the Democratic Unionist Party. Their price for supporting her is ensuring that there’s no special deal for the province, or one that might open the door to a vote to reunify the north with the Republic of Ireland to the south.
DUP supporters will be ecstatic that they are power brokers — the real truth is that the EU27 hold all the cards now. May gambled and lost, and is playing with everything squandered and little if anything to win.
“Mayhem!” the Sun’s headline screamed. And instead of being an Iron Lady, like Margaret Thatcher, May is a “Wobbly Lady”, according to Der Speigel, Germany’s tabloid equivalent.
Standing on that Maidenhead stage with Lord Buckethead, and as the results were being read out in an orderly and ever-so-British style, including an explanation of the reasons why a handful of votes were spoilt, May would have had ample time to reflect on where and how it all went wrong.
Was it the fact that she appeared to be slippery, never seemingly able to answer a simple question honestly?
Maybe, it was keeping the press locked up in a room for more than hour while she went on a carefully controlled walkabout in a Cornwall factory?
Maybe, it was the fault of former Scotland Yard officer Peter Kirkham, who blamed May for police cuts during her six years of Home Secretary, when 20,000 officers were axed from front line positions, after terrorists struck the UK for a second time in two weeks?
Then there was the Donald Trump factor. She’d met him three times, and hadn’t strongly condemned his pulling out of the Paris climate agreement.
There was the decision to allow a vote on fox hunting in the new Parliament. The “sport”, where packs of hounds and riders on horseback chase a single little furry fox around the countryside until it’s caught and killed, was banned in 2005, much to the chagrin of many rural Conservatives and landed-gentry types.
And there were U-turns, on the dementia tax, on increasing taxes for high earners, and on calling the election in the first place when she had said for almost a year that there was no need.
There was the photograph too of May talking away to factory workers — but they were all wearing earplugs.
Then she was caught off guard by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Both had declined to participate in a televised leader’s debate, only for Corbyn to make the announcement on the morning of the debate that he was taking part, and she was caught wrong-footed. And not for the first time.
Once it became obvious that her party would not win a majority in the predawn hours of Friday, she worked the phones back to Belfast and the DUP. May was determined to cling to power, one way or another. She’s done that now, but at what price to party principles and party principals?
At least Elmo didn’t sell out his fellow Muppets, nor the three who voted for him.
