UK parties struggle to convince voters ahead of election

SEVERAL weeks ago, Theresa May, UK prime minister, called a snap election to take place on June 8. Ostensibly, the reason is to strengthen her hand in the forthcoming "Brexit" talks with the European Union (EU) by being able to vote down people who will disagree with her internally.

As noted by commentators, the subplot is to destroy opposition to the Conservatives for a generation. At the time of calling the election, the Labour Party was a huge way behind in the polls, the Liberal Democrats showed no signs of recovery from their massacre in 2015 and UKIP was falling apart. There is another party of note - the Scottish Nationalists (SNP) - but their influence is minimal in the UK as a whole. Scotland voted not to leave the UK quite recently, the constant whingeing of the SNP for a second referendum annoys people. Expect the SNP to lose seats this time.

Since the election was called, polls have changed in favour of the Labour Party and the gap between them and the Conservatives indicates that the latter will win by a substantial margin, but not by the landslide that Mrs May wants. Jeremy Corbyn is resilient and appealing to younger voters. He, and his party, espouse social equality, globalisation, wealth sharing and national/international initiatives to care for the less well-off, the refugees and all the minority interests. These are noble aims and the sort of rhetoric that would have persuaded me, in my youth, to vote for them. We will ignore their mathematics for the moment.