Sheepskin

13 April

Fur followed by sheepskin? Is someone trying to be funny? I could question the randomness of my new word generating site, or I could just get on with things.

This is officially the entry for the 13th, but I’m now so far behind pretending that I’m writing it on the day is only going to slow things down. So it’s really the 19th April. Are we clear?

That means the election debate on ITV has been and gone, the world is turning into a hoopla of flying Lib Dem birds and volcanic ash. The continent’s planes may well be in more danger of crashing into Nick Clegg’s rapidly inflating ego than they are of their engines being choked by bits of mountain, but while they remain grounded, the election has taken off.
I always thought that the debates could lend a fascinating dynamic to the campaigns. Polly Toynbee in the Guardian last week wondered why Gordon Brown could possibly agree to TV debates when he’s so rubbish at them. Maybe Polly was joining in the “boost Gordon by managing expectation game”, for if she wasn’t she was being uncharacteristically obtuse. Of course Gordon had to agree. He was losing. Anything different could only be worth a try. And he may well have already considered the potential of the Lib Dems to take a wrecking ball to the Tories’ best, but most hollow, election promise:

Change.

I have long pondered why, in the midst of an economic collapse caused by bankers and a lack of state regulation of their activities, that the party of bankers and low regulation should cry “change” and sweep away the Government. It is easy to accept that Labour made mistakes and allowed the crisis to hit the UK harder than most other places. It is harder to imagine that Tories would have done anything different. Indeed they would almost certainly have regulated less, not more.

So the arrival on the scene of Nick Clegg, Vince Cable and their troop of yellow pixies gives the electorate another, more convincing option. A party that may well have – genuinely – opted to increase regulation and diversify the economy: if only because they were never going to be in a position to do it.

Now, finally, Cameron needs to explain exactly what he is for. He can’t just be Change Guy. That’s Nick Clegg’s name. He can try being Big Society Guy, but wait until people clock that he wants people to run their own public services and not give them any money to do it. Brilliant! De-professionalise the public services so they’re run in people’s spare time, like a fishing club or the local drama society. And anyone who’s been involved in such organisation knows how difficult it is to motivate anyone to help out regularly who isn’t retired, slightly mad or utterly intoxicated by the idea of being in charge of something. A bit like David Cameron.

So far, rather than saying anything actually positive, Cameron has instead vowed to vaguely “emphasise hope over fear”. While he said this, his number 2 William Hague was launching a broadside against Clegg’s Lib Dems claiming that they will take us into a European Superstate. Michael Gove called their policies “eccentric”. George Osborn called Nick Clegg a “smug wanker with sticky-up hair”*. Cameron has vowed a new kind of politics, but whenever he is under pressure he resorts to all the traditional ways of doing things – not explaining his policies whilst attacking everyone else’s. He is the proverbial wolf in a sheepskin jacket; a used-car salesman with teeth.

My personal favourite snippet of dire hypocrisy was his warning that voting for Clegg will only benefit Brown. A quick look:

If the same proportion of people (41%) that Cameron need to vote for him to form an overall majority voted for Nick Clegg, the Lib Dems would have a majority all by themselves. So if it’s a wasted vote to vote for anyone who can’t get 41%, why is anyone bothering to vote Tory?

Is it entirely reasonable to suggest not voting for a party that believes in electoral reform on the basis that the current voting system cannot hand them a victory, and instead suggesting voters vote for a party that is the only one pledged to maintaining the current voting system that causing the anomaly that means only they can win?

First Past the Post benefits Labour because in seats where they have no chance of winning, their supporters tend to vote Lib Dem instead, or they have no supporters worth mentioning. The Tories plan to even this up by reducing Scottish MPs, therefore naturally reducing the number of seats Labour are likely to get. The problem with this is that it might address the balance between Labour and the Conservatives, but it does nothing to even the balance between them and the Lib Dems. And, as it seems since the ITV leadership debate, the people are really quite interested in change – they just have a different view about what constitutes change. Fun fun fun.

* OK, he didn’t. Sorry.