The tone for this election was set on the very first day of the campaign. Writing about the early hours of April 6th The Evening Standard said,
“Mr Brown started at 7am by asking senior aides at No 10, ‘are you ready for it?’, before sitting down to egg on toast.”
Egg on toast. If egg on toast had indeed been a key tenet of Labour policy then at least they’d have galvanised the support of more voters than they look likely to get on Thursday.
Eggs have played prominently throughout the carnival of bone calcifying drivel that has passed as Election 2010. David Cameron got egg all over his back back when he was used for target practise by a student in one of the most genuinely political statements of the whole sorry shebang. And Gordon got egg all over his face when he called that bigoted woman a ‘bigoted woman’ while still wired up to a van full of Murdoch ear wiggers.
But as flimsy as eggs and hot bread would have been as a policy, at least it would also have offered some kind of clear commitment of what they plan to do if elected. This is something that has been sadly lacking in this election. It is a horrendous situation when none of the three major parties will say what they plan to do after if you vote for them. Without that information democracy doesn’t work. It’s impossible to make a proper decision.
What we do know is the Tories want to cut more harshly and more quickly, but that is hardly news to anyone with a memory or access to the Internet. The Tories cut services recessions or not. They can’t help it. It’s something of a reflex reaction for them. Like sneezing for normal people.
Ever since the first TV debate an endless stream of people I love and respect, be they friends or characters in public life, have been rushing around enthusiastically saying “This is the most exciting election ever!”.
I suppose it is exciting in as much as the result will be close, but the politics are pretty close too. Which means that for me, it has been one of the most bland and unedifying elections ever – a bunch of clapped out reactionaries and greasy little social climbers slugging it out in the hope of a career in parliamentary cretinism.
This election is only exciting if you make the fatal mistake of buying into personality politics.
Think about those debates – part bad Kraftwerk tribute act part, part Moonies recruitment video, part a desperate contestant pitching their doomed idea for self-tying shoes laces on Dragons Den. They all trotted out versions of the same free market message, no genuine choice was put on the table.
Although history tells us the Tories would be a bit worse. The outcome will be more or less the same whoever wins. It is the realisation of both the Thatcher dream and the Blair betrayal.
Truth be told, I suspect that Labour would almost like to loose and leave the Tories and the currently unsullied Lib Dems to spend the next few years doing the dirty work, wielding the axe like a tree phobic lumberjack fighting his way out of a forest.
The thing that infuriates me is that the general public is hugely to the left of the three main parties on a myriad of different issues, yet this is simply ignored in order to serve the interests of business men often like Murdock, with no vote in this country.
Dressing up the destruction of hard won public services and working rights as getting the country back up on its feet sickens me especially as – to the backdrop of bankers being paid billions in bonuses out of taxes – it is so clearly dishonest and unfair.
The other thing giving an election erection to those who have been seduced by Nick Clegg’s non committal showboating, who incidentally appear to be the same easily led groupies who fell for Blair in ’97, is the idea of PR. Now I’m all for proportional representation but, even if achieved it will only do so much to rectify this problem with our mockery of a Parliament. Anyway, that is some way off. The hatchet job will be getting underway long before then.
Labour, Tory and the Lib Dems - It’s all egg on toast, and poached, scrambled or fried whoever wins none will have a mandate for the cuts they want to bring in, as none of them have told us what they’ve got in store.
So while they all salivate over how they are going to carve up power and fight over whose going to flick the switch on their Frankenstien’s monster style mish mash of backroom deals and quid pro quo comprises, it seems important to me we get ready to dig our heels in.
They are closing ranks, so it’s crucial the people under fire do the same by fighting back to defend their rights and living standards as aggressively as the next sorry bunch in charge try to destroy them.
