Tuesday 11 May 2010

David Cameron now commands less authority, less legitimacy and less popularity than John Major did at his lowest ebb. Traditionally, incumbents only lose support, but it's hard to imagine how one can go down from auctioning off cabinet posts to the third party in the hope that their back-benchers will vote against their own consciences.

There are those who wonder why people of my generation are disillusioned with politics: they ignored us when we took to the streets in our hundreds of thousands against the Iraq war, they blamed us for breaking Britain, saddled us with mind-boggling debt, then they said "There's no jobs, son, you're out of luck" quickly adding "now move out of your parents and get off benefits, you're a sponge" and now Clegg woos us only to submit sickeningly to an Etonian slug and his party of cannibalistic lizards.

One can only guess at the grand perversion of the initiation ceremonies that have exhausted the Lib Dem leadership since election night as they have pawed, sucked, grimaced and flexed their way to some hollow facsimile of the taste of power. Their every spasm, their every whimper, their every submission a betrayal of every voter who, disillusioned, cast their lot for the unsullied idealists.

We were wrong to believe.

Wednesday 5 May 2010

A breakdown of my thinking for tomorrow's elections:

Tories: toxic for those who are victims of recession, bad luck, bad health or bad treatment. If you've got a safe job you might pay a bit less tax - otherwise, you'll find everything gets more expensive as an old Etonian plays make-believe economics and tries to socially engineer a world he simply is not acquainted with. Was once stuck behind Cameron in the queue at Boots - he's not a confident or commanding chap, though I don't doubt he's nice enough; overly self-aware, uncomfortable in his own skin, louder than he thinks he is. I sympathise, but I'm not impressed.

Labour: took us into Iraq, a war that has a cost countless innocent lives (a hundred thousand? a million? I hear different figures), because a failed Texan oil man wanted to retire comfortably. I'll never forgive that raft of lies and scaremongering. In addition, their leader was the chancellor who presided over our worst financial meltdown in seventy years. No-one understands the tax code, no-one understands the benefit system, no-one believes a word they say. Tired government with no will left to reform, thus they are the safest vote.

LibDem: OK, maybe they have chance now, but when they wrote their manifesto, when they formed their vision of what a LibDem UK would look like, they didn't seriously believe they'd be implementing it. I predict that chaos will reign as one ill-conceived, costly program after another falls DOA into the exchequer's expanding deficit. The party of Lembit "I'm with a cheeky girl" Opik, Charles "One for the road" Kennedy and Nick "Comfortably Dull" Clegg.

Greens: Single issue, fuck the mainstream, protest vote. At least I live in Brighton Pavilion, so it will count - unlike everywhere else.