Iain Dale is Presenter of LBC Drive, Managing Director of Biteback Publishing, a columnist and broadcaster and a former Conservative Parliamentary candidate.
I’ve sat here in my hotel room for 20 minutes. I don’t know what to write. It’s 6.30am on this Friday morning. I’ve just spent seven hours presenting the LBC election results show – and am utterly drained.
But no matter how spent I feel, I keep thinking about what must be going through Theresa May’s mind. It’s entirely possible that by the time you read this she may have resigned. Yes, I really have just written that. The blame game has already begun and all sorts of allegations are being made against individuals within Number Ten and CCHQ.
It’s fair to say that Lynton Crosby and Mark Textor are getting the lions’ share of the blame – rather unfairly, in my view. If what I hear is right, it was only in the last week of the campaign he was in total control. However, in defeat, there are many architects. I use that word advisedly. Others blame Stephen Gilbert for trying to copy the Remain campaign’s vision of doom and disaster if the other side won.
Given that the Conservatives won more than 40 seats more than Labour, it is somewhat odd that the media are falling for a narrative that Labour has sort of won this election. They haven’t. They have gone back to their 2010 position. Yes, that’s far more seats than anyone, apart from YouGov and Survation predicted – but a defeat is a defeat is a defeat.
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Are there any Tory winners in this campaign? Yes. One – Ruth Davidson. If the Tories can continue to govern, it will be due to Conservative gains in Scotland, and the fact that Sinn Fein increased their MPs from four to seven. Remember: they don’t take up their seats.
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Yet again people like me, the so-called people in the know, have been completely confounded. Virtually no one saw this coming. I’m man enough to admit it. The Great British Public delight in sticking two fingers up to politicians who sometimes take them for granted, and to the political media who think they – we – know better than others.
You won’t find many political journalists, pollsters or commentators admitting they got it wrong – wholly wrong, so let me be the first to say. I. Got. It. Wrong. Wholly wrong. I should have listened more to the callers on my radio show, who’ve been phoning in to my show day after day week after week. I assumed that it was just the enthusiasts who were calling in, but it clearly went deeper than that.
I ridiculed YouGov and Survation for their methodology, as did all the other pollsters. But they had the last laugh, and the likes of me owe them an apology. And bloody well done to John Curtice, whose Exit Poll was yet again on the money. A senior Tory texted me just before it was published to say it was “implausible”. That went well.
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So what happens now? I’m tempted to say: buggered if I know. That would be the truth – but I guess I had better have a go. I suspect that later this morning we’ll get a ‘helpful’ and ‘oh so helpful’ statement from Jean-Claude Juncker, who will suggests delaying the start of the Brexit negotiations ‘until our British friends sort themselves out’.
I feel queasy at the prospect. David Davis has already said that the new Government will need a new approach to Brexit – and surely that implies a period of reflection.
The more I think about it, the more I feel it will be very difficult for May to stay on. Anna Soubry has already called for her to go. Where one leads, others will surely follow. Tory MPs are very angry, and that anger will have to have an escape valve. Or do they stick with nurse for fear of something worse?
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I hope that, like me, you’ve spent the last few days with your hands clasped in front of you, obeying the message of the hashtag – #prayfordiane.
On Tuesday, the former Shadow Home Secretary pulled out of a Woman’s Hour interview after enduring another car crash interview, this time with Sky’s Dermot Murnaghan. She’s had a shocker of a campaign – so much so that Labour HQ tried to stop her doing interviews.
How strange, then, that although they didn’t trust her to do interviews, Labour none the less expected us to trust that she would be a good Home Secretary, keeping the nation safe. Expect her to be a permanent presence on the media over the weekend.
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I’m afraid I have become a bit of a potty mouth this week, and on both occasions it was the London terror attack which was the cause blame. Donald Trump’s first tweet on the incident was crass in the extreme. He thought it appropriate to use it as evidence of the need for his travel ban. He later criticised Sadiq Khan in a series of ranty tweets.
So instead of expressing sympathy for America’s closest ally and express the solidarity of the American people he felt the need to make political points. I’m afraid I called him an Onanist. Well, actually that wasn’t the word I used, but you get my drift. On Monday, on my LBC radio show, I played the audio of a statement by Melissa McMullen, sister of James, who was killed in the attack. Her voice cracked with emotion, and at one stage she broke down.
At the end, I said: “that was heartbreaking, wasn’t it?” I then found myself saying: “And to the people who did that to her brother, you utter, utter, bastards.” It was a spur of the moment thing, but I think I said what everyone else was thinking.
However, that is a word you are not allowed to say on the radio so I had to apologise afterwards. I was then deluged with hundreds of texts, tweets and emails saying that I shouldn’t have apologised. I didn’t get a single one criticising me. And, I can assure you, that’s highly unusual on social media.