Mileage

30 April 2010

It's a amazing how much having a life gets in the way of having a life. It would have been very kind of Gordon Brown not to call an election at the same moment that I was starting the cricket season and appearing in a play, but I suppose he'd run out of choice. June would have been almost as bad, though I might have got into a rhythm by then.

And so I'm still behind - it's May 8th and the British political system is in chaos. Sort of. Rather, we're facing what most other European nations - including our more successful rivals Germany and France - have to deal with all the time: coalition politics. At the moment Clegg and Cameron are playing footsie under the table, but there's an elephant the size of Canary Wharf in the room (well, obviously if it's that big it can't be in the room. Unless the 'room' is the O2 with the walls demolished and it's lying down. Which it probably is - if you're that big you'd need to lie down a lot). If Clegg wants power, he has to give up electoral reform but doing decreases his chances of ever properly getting power. If Cameron wants power on majority terms, he has to agree to electoral reform (or a referendum on it at least), but doing so decreases his chances of future power for him and his party, since the majority of the population still fear and despise them.

Who will budge? I'm not sure there's much mileage in a Lib-Con pact, but we shall see.