LETTER FROM LONDON
Thursday, December 12, the British are called to the polls to renew their House of Commons: 650 MPs must be appointed or confirmed at their posts.
Including the referendum on membership of the European Union (EU) 2016 and the European elections of May 2019, it will be the fourth national poll in three years. This is a lot for citizens deemed to be tired of politics.
But this popular consultation has an exceptional character: it takes place on the threshold of winter. We must go back to December 1923 to find a precedent in the history of the country. It obeys no less a few great invariants, which are part of the "folklore" of the British elections.
The rosettes. Essential accessory for "MP" candidates (Members of Parliament), they distinguish them from the troop of activists. They display it at each public appearance, always on the left side. The color code is well established: red for Labor, blue for conservatives, orange for Liberal Democrats, yellow and black for the SNP (Scottish independence movement).
This showy decoration is no surprise to anyone, even if it looks a bit like politics to beasts of agricultural competition. Except when Jacob Rees Mogg, Minister of Relations with Parliament, comes out of two weeks of media diet, on November 24, wearing a really huge blue cockade. Known for his snobbish manners, the candidate for re-election in Somerset had slipped early in the campaign, implying that he was smarter than the seventy-two victims of the terrible Grenfell Tower fire (in 2017).
Door to door. Another unavoidable: everyone is working to doorstepsespecially in the evenings and weekends: volunteers, activists, and candidates themselves. The goal is to engage the conversation, but especially to identify the sympathizers, block by block. For the day of the vote, or the day before, come again to remind them of their duty as citizens. Twitter is full of selfies, with candidate in the foreground, cluster of activists around, hat on the nose but smiling, emerging from the gray and self-congratulating for the "good" session of the day.
The election in December poses a major problem, when darkness falls in the middle of the afternoon: people rarely open their doors. The doorsteps were reprogrammed in the late morning and early afternoon. But activists find more doors closed than in the evening.
