183 Days in.

Ahh, 2017.

We are only just hitting the halfway point and I must say that its been rather hectic. The year only starts to look even crazier when you look at it close up. Lets break this half of the year up by looking at some political happenings that so far, have kept us all looking at our news app’s in disbelief.

It only seems fitting to start off with the leader of the free world. Trump has made this the year of politicians actually communicating with their constituents on the likes of Twitter and Facebook- even if that is blocking them. In May, we had Trump vs former FBI chief James Comey, who has the word ‘former’ in his title due to his odd sacking by the president. The US was thrust in a showdown that made the whole world question the integrity of the current administration- but it made for some great television. May also brought the most iconic tweet mis-spell to Twitter- ‘covfefe’. Most recently we had Donald tweet a video of him beating up an incarnation of CNN- you know, back in the days when he just rocked up at WWE.

May also brought us one of the most surprising election results of modern time- the election of Emmanuel Macron as youngest French president of all time, since the one and only Napoleon. His win was unforeseen as the French people completely disregarded their two main parties and voted for a man who was the Minister of the Economy, Industry and Digital Affairs a just a year prior. He beat far-Right candidate Marie Le Pen by having a vote share of 65.5%, which is quite impressive when you think that Macron has never held political office.

Now of course, what would a roundup of this half of the year be without talking about the wonder that is British politics. We had the budget in March that stated that the UK was the second-fastest growing economy in the G7 in 2016, which is always nice to hear. We also saw £320m of funding for 110 new free schools and grammar schools that was greatly praised by all political parties and spectrums. Then in June, almost a year after the referendum vote, we had the election that made the nation just really baffled. Due to social media marketing, numerous endorsements by different celebrities and rigorous campaigning- it was predicted that we were going to have a Labour government.  What the country woke up to was quite frankly, a bit of a mess. We had a hung parliament after the Conservatives fell short of a majority with having 42.4% of the vote share, closely followed by Labour’s 40%.  We are still in uncertain waters however, as the deal with the DUP is not really that that transparent. I’m sure as we head towards the other half of the year, the country will have a fully- realised government that can actually get their teeth into the crucial Brexit talks.

This year has had some awful and tragic events, with the recent Grenfell tower fire being one of them. The people gave out heart-warming and just brilliant reactions to these divisive acts. The ‘one love’ Manchester concert was a perfect and beautiful way of proving to the world that we are just not going to give in to anything that we see as terrorism. However, with every tragic event that seems to be haunting the news everyday, you have pure comedic brilliance that will over shadow the distressing news.

We have had an MP actually dab in the houses of commons and Elmo running for the same seat as The one and only, Theresa May. Let us not also forget the now iconic Lord Buckethead who managed to earn 249 votes- in the same constituency of the Prime minister. He has been representing the ‘Gremloids’ since the days of Thatcher and made UK twitter go into a complete frenzy. His most popular protest is the widely viewed video of him complaining about the service of Pizza Express; truly, a man for the people.

In summary- politics is baffling. We have only had half a year and I’m starting to think that the madness and the unplanned nature of current events have only just started to begin.

Reading the news every morning has certainly got a lot more entertaining this half of the year. I wonder what political happenings we will be discussing as we enter 2018. Surely there can’t be any more space lords wanting to lead the country?