By Hubert Williams

Boston, Massachusetts, May 24, 2017 – THE horrendous bombing of innocent youth at the Manchester Arena in the United Kingdom has forced a recast of this article, for it strengthens even more the prospects of a huge victory by Mrs. Theresa Mary May’s Conservative Party at the general elections scheduled for June 8.

The earlier draft a week prior had seen Mrs. May triumphing over the New Labour Party’s socialist elder Jeremy Corbyn. Now stark tragedy will more favour her, as it swings the political pendulum further to the right… the direction in which all Western Europe will likely move in the foreseeable future.
Eastern-style Socialism will find few credible adherents within Western democracies.
Mrs. May will not welcome the fact, but terrorism now rears its ugly head as the most prominent factor likely to be in people’s mind when they cast their ballots at the June poll… for the question they will ask themselves is: which of the two leaders in the major parties is more capable of overcoming both externally-generated and home-grown terrorism.

She and her intelligence, military and police leadership might well ponder (even if immediately discarding) the strategy one famous female shared with me when asked why was her party’s youth group engaged in hostile activities in some villages along the East Coast of Demerara, Guyana, South America: “Hubert… greater terror is the most effective counter to terrorism”…. A view likely to be shared by the United States, given its recent use of the 22,000-pound Mother Of All Bombs (MOAB) against terrorists in Afghanistan.
By calling the June elections so far ahead of schedule, (elections for a 5-year term were last held on May 7, 2015) in the quest of her own mandate (she had succeeded to office when David Cameron resigned following his failed referendum on the UK’s continued membership of the European Union), Theresa May demonstrated to the nation and the world that she is a woman of courage.

The same factors – Britain’s changing ideological stance to the right – that had brought Mr. Cameron victory at the polls and allowed him to jettison former coalition partner Nicholas Clegg of the Liberal Democrats – also undermined him at the referendum and resulted in BREXIT.
Some of Mrs. May’s critics might contend that she has moved inadvisedly because elections for the 650-seat House of Commons were not constitutionally due before May 8, 2020.

I think she is inspired by the exploits of Margaret “Iron Lady” Thatcher as well as encouraged by the widely-perceived sharp British/ Western European swing towards the right, and growing fear of Islamic terrorism – both hidden within migrating millions and home-grown – as so tragically demonstrated by Sunday night’s horrendous Manchester Arena bombing.
It helps her victory prospects too that the New Labour Party is evidently in some disarray under Jeremy Corbyn, an outspoken, aged and life-long socialist, as well as quite a believer in marriage – having gone through it three times (shades of Donald Trump ! ). Recent British newspaper polls are suggesting some resurgence of Labour, but I don’t think that matters much.

With Corbyn still battling to unify Labour’s divided streams behind him and the Liberals emaciated, there seems little prospect of them frustrating Mrs. May’s objective of returning to 10 Downing Street for a full five-year term. Welcome back, Iron Lady No. 2.
The world will recall the dramatic days of “Iron Lady No. 1” Margaret Thatcher – the first British Prime Minister to serve three consecutive terms (virtually bringing unions to their knees with harsh conservative measures) and gave ‘Thatcherism” as an ideology to Britain’s political, economic and social life.
She transformed the country’s industrial scene; put a more scenic British stamp on global politics; approved sinking of the Argentine destroyer “General Belgrano” with a nuclear missile in winning the May 1982 Falklands War; and gladdened the hearts of Americans through her warm ideological embrace of President Ronald Reagan, including full support for the US invasion of Grenada in 1983.
Since Mrs. Thatcher’s 3-peat only Labour’s Tony Blair has managed the feat, which many consider the glory days of Labour as a political force, now sharply on the wane.

(I was privileged to meet her on several occasions and was very pleased when at a Commonwealth Summit Conference in Lusaka, Zambia, August 1979 (Godfrey Wray’s and Sandra Baptiste’s first major overseas assignment: I flew in from Barbados), she instructed that I be the only non-British journalist allowed in when she was giving special daily briefings to only the British Press representatives… and every briefing she would ensure I got in my questions by pointing towards me and saying over many upraised hands “Mr. Williams next”)… And when there were open Press conferences for the full Commonwealth corps, much too large to be accommodated, she ensured that I was among the attending small group who would later share the information with those who, because of space limitation, could not attend.)