Finally, the moment we are waiting for has arrived. In a speech that will surely go down in history as one of British comedy’s finest moments, thanks to the pissing rain and the 1997 Labour anthem Things Can Only Get Better being blasted on a loudspeaker from Whitehall, Rishi Sunak finally took the plunge last night and announced a UK General Election.
Sunak’s speech was pretty infantilising. He took the opportunity to tell us what a fabulous bloke he is, and what a great impact he’s made on normal British people’s lives. Yet anyone with half a mind can see that the last 14 years of Tory rule has been damaging to the majority of people in the country.
The government’s handling of the covid pandemic cost tens of thousands of lives, whilst making a few cronies extremely rich. The NHS and education system are being eroded in what can only seem like a conscious effort to make a push to privatise them. Environmental and emissions targets have been downgraded, and the Environment Agency has been so depleted that there’s no one to stop sewage pouring into all our waterways. Homelessness is spinning out of control, the care system is in disarray, and the queues and food banks make the country outlook like something out of a Dickens novel once again. Meanwhile asylum seekers are being demonised by our politicians and the media, despite literally washing up dead on beaches in Kent. It’s a grotesque state of affairs.
We need to get these monsters out, yet I’m hardly excited about having a Labour Party in power which, under Kier Starmer, is courting Conservative votes with humane pledges such as to “ensure failed asylum seekers and others with no right to be here are removed”. Plus the Labour leadership’s lack of support for unions and strikers over the last years has been abominable. Why the hell do you think you’re called “Labour”? You absolute morons.
Sorry, I digress.
The election does offer us an opportunity to improve the state of affairs. There are a lot of incredible campaigns that will be using this as an opportunity to shine a light on injustice and opportunity for change.
Outlandish are proud to have supported some important campaign and election tools. Please take a look and support our incredible partners and clients. We have an official policy which prioritises election work during Purdah so if there is something you have a project that you think we can help you with, then get in touch with hello@outlandish.com.
- School Cuts. This campaign by the NEU and partners made a massive impact on how people voted in the 2017 election, and continues to shine a light on defunding state schools.
- Get Voting. This is a new project that Best for Britain has just launched. It shows users how they can vote tactically to have the best chance of getting the Conservatives out in their constituency.
- The Great British Housing Rip Off. This site by Unison shows how out of control the housing market is, and campaigns for better housing policy and provision.
- Big Wave Global. A Greenpeace Campaign to put pressure on ministers around the world to take positive action on the Global Oceans Treaty.
- PNGi Central. Further away from home, this site uses data to map patterns of corruption in Papua New Guinea, and helped to change the government there. We’d love to do something like this in the UK!
