“What the fuck!?”: Students react to the snap election call

Following the surprise decision by Prime Minister Theresa May to call a snap general election, two of our writers give their take on the news.

Reece Goodall

Theresa May’s announcement was a canny one for two reasons. Since the referendum, losing players have pulled every trick out of the hat to try and subvert or frustrate Brexit – the sheer number of barriers in and outside Parliament to merely trigger Article 50 would surely set the scene for the battles ahead. Winning an election and gaining a stronger mandate gives her more power to actually get on and do the job.

This leads on to the second reason – she is almost guaranteed a strong win because of the sheer lack of opposition. Labour has been bleeding support under the non-leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, so her main rivals are Tiny Tim Farron (forever claiming to be democratic as he seeks every option to deny the results of a democratic vote), and the SNP. The political logic of calling this election now cannot be ignored, if only to put a stop to the continued scaremongering by the pro-Remain parties.

This election gives us a chance to have a say in the direction of the country in the immediate future. I hope that May will claim her increased mandate, giving her the ability to finally put the result of the referendum into action.

Jennifer Barnard

I am so confused. Theresa May called for a General Election on June 8^th and nobody knows what’s going on. What the fuck!?

So my initial reaction to the news was that she must have done it because she obviously can’t hack it being PM and a general election might give her some sort of escape route. Until I thought more about it and listened to the news. Now I think she’s done it as she is so confident she’ll win even more Conservative seats.

I am honestly not surprised that she wants to be voted in by the public; I can imagine that she constantly feels undermined in her own government by individuals pointing out that she wasn’t chosen by the people. She has claimed that it is ‘the only way to guarantee stability for the years ahead’. I listened to approximately 30 seconds of her speech which promoted the power and finality of Brexit before I started to feel queasy.

Part of me wants to believe that this may provide an opportunity for more Lib Dem seats to occupy the House of Commons and therefore make Brexit negotiations a lot trickier for her, as Conservatives want a hard Brexit and Labour are sort of just standing by and letting them do it. However, judging by the current political climate, it would be just our luck to see Theresa May voted in again with far more Tory seats and a lethal plan for Brexit that frankly just scares me.

Theresa May has been the MP for my home town since the year I was born, and honestly, I do feel sort of embarrassed to admit that, especially now.