The Financial Times does it. The Sun does it. The Sunday Times does it. The Economist does it. Negative Soundbyte will now do it over the following few hundred words - an election endorsement.
I think it’s fair to say the UK was in a fairly parlous state in 2010. Not quite as bad as Eskom, but pretty close. The state had literally run out of money; Labour’s former chief secretary to the Treasury confirmed this in a helpful one-line letter to his successor at the time; “Dear Chief Secretary, I'm afraid there is no money. Kind regards – and good luck! Liam.” Apparently Liam is known for his “quirky” sense of humour. Not sure I see the funny side of the state facing bankruptcy but hey-ho the man had been working for Gordon Brown, a man with the face of a bulldog chewing perpetually on a very angry wasp.
Anyway David Cameron and the man-with-the-nice-face, er…Nick Clegg (Cleggie was a real hit in the 2010 debates; he looked intently into the camera and gave voters the feeling that he wasn’t just selling the latest Le Creuset porcelain cooking pot straight from the set of the Shopping Channel) managed to form a coalition and have since governed the UK together in relative harmony.
Of course there have been broken promises along the way. David got his numbers wrong regarding immigration by a factor of a few hundred thousand (these days Pret’s most popular customers at Victoria station are Romanian “tourists” who look like they have walked all the way from Romania; I know this because I am constantly dodging luggage packed with their worldly possessions including chickens!) and Cleggie pissed off every student in the UK by reneging on his promise regarding the scrapping of tuition fees. David put Cleggie over a barrel on that one; it’s not even like he missed his target by a few hundred quid; no Sir – we are talking by nine thousand pounds – and that’s per year! At that sort of rate I would be looking to fit as many courses into one year as possible!
The electorate seem genuinely perplexed – and in some cases aggrieved – when politicians make promises that they end up breaking. I watched a programme the other evening that pitted the leaders of the main parties against an audience that was supposedly representative of the electorate. It was as if Mother Theresa, Jesus, his disciples, Muhammad, the Pope and 80 of their closest friends were interrogating the Devil and his two sidekicks such was the level of righteous indignation emanating from the audience. If I had been up there I would have been tempted to tell them to F%^k off you sanctimonious bunch of dimwits, but the leaders to their credit smiled and pandered away while trying valiantly to deliver messages (and promises!) that everyone had heard before – and would be forgotten once the election had passed (unless it was a broken promise of course). But of course we must hold politicians to a different set of standards to the rest of us; these days you can rob, defraud, assault, abuse, lie, cheat and generally f^&k over you fellow man (or woman – lest I be labelled a sexist!!) and the man (or woman) in the robe and wig will give you a pat on the bum and send you off to do some gardening in orange overalls.
But I digress….back to my endorsement…
So why those Eton-Educated, Toffee-Nosed, Grand Protectors of the Rich?
Well for one they are not Ed Milliband and by association, Labour.
As try as I might I cannot see Ed at the helm of a G7 nation (it used to be 8 but the Russians pissed everyone off by invading Europe and so were kicked out). He just doesn’t look – or even sound – prime ministerial. I get the feeling that Ed was marginalised in the playground and there is no doubt that his brother scored all the birds. (David has that ministerial air.) I bet that Ed excelled at home economics, but was regularly flattened during sports day, most likely by his own team. But there is no doubting that Ed is a shrewd – and calculating – political operator. He stabbed his own brother in the back on the way to becoming Labour party leader and he has kissed some serious union be-hind (witness all the “promises” to freeze this price, increase that tax etc – it’s as if Karl Marx has risen from the grave as Gromit from the cartoon “Wallace and Gromit”). Tell me that Ed is not a shoe-in for Gromit!
It also irks me that Ed constantly mentions me in the same breath as all our imported oligarchs and the playboys from the Middle East who drive their supercars around Harrods – again and again and again. According to Ed I am “rich” because I earn a decent living that every-now-and-then breaches the level at which the highest rate of marginal tax is paid. Last time I looked I didn’t own a football club or drive a Lamborghini or own a palace in Kensington but yet Ed insists on calling me “rich” and wants to increase said taxes to punish “the rich” and by implication little-old-me ☹. Cry-me-a-River I hear you all say…. ☺. Ed also had the temerity to defend Labour’s track record in the lead up to the Global Financial Crisis and baldly stated that they did not overspend! Well it is fair to say a large proportion of the “live audience” found very large frogs in their throats! (Obviously Ed didn’t get Liam’s memo.)
Ultimately no political party is perfect and certainly the Tories have a few policies that I disagree with not least of which is making representations about being the party of the “working class” (I thought that was Labour’s job!) but I do believe they should be given another five years to finish off what they – and to be fair Le Creuset man – have started. The country has been pulled back from the abyss, the economy is on a reasonably steady footing, unemployment is at record lows and opportunities are available for those who choose to help themselves. Of course there are things to be done in relation to the black hole (sorry the NHS), the standard of living (real wages haven’t risen in ages – but then a job is better than no job) and the UK’s relationship with the EU (and potentially a nuclear war with Russia), but no one said it was going to be a cake walk!
So I say keep the Toff in Number 10 and vote Tory!! – (not Tony)