The TV debates between the three main party leaders engaged millions of people and reversed the trend of dwindling voter turnout, but shifted the focus towards physicality and personality. Suddenly Gordon looked very much like a stranger in a very strange land, his face a tad saggy and that weird thing he does with his lower jaw - a movement so grotesque and pronounced it suggests he's attempting to dislocate it in order to feed upon freshly aborted foetuses - cast the fellow in a poor light indeed. He even had the temerity to refer to a person expressing unequivocally bigoted views as 'bigoted' (actually, I have to defend Gordy on this last point. Were I caught in an unguarded moment discussing the chauvinistic, xenophobic, small-minded views of that woman, then on April the 29th I can assure you that instead of 'Bigotgate' we would have been confronted with 'Ignorant Fucking Dickheadgate' which is far more lyrical, but perhaps a little too unwieldy to form a tabloid headline).
So it's May the 7th and there are 5 other people in the office, none of whom have voted and are happy to enunciate their bafflement with the difference, or lack thereof, between the 3 parties. A 6th, with a little gentle probing, reveals that her vote has been cast in favour of the Lib Dems as "I could never vote for Gordon."
I voted Lib Dem once.
Just the once.
And I was rather young.
An abandoned sofa in the bushes bordering Hazel Grove Cricket Club was an unconscionable eyesore which marred my otherwise idyllic walk to the train station. A letter appeared in the Stockport Advertiser on the Thursday and by the Friday morning - late and running frantically for the 08:03 to Manchester Piccadilly calling at Woodsmoor, Davenport, Stockport, Heaton Chapel and Levenshulme - I noticed it had gone. Buoyed by this prompt restorative community action I voted for the Lib Dems at the next local election.
I think it might have been a week later when I was confronted by my Father ('Dad' never carried the right amount of respect. From time to time I'd even throw in a 'Pater'): "You voted for the Liberals, didn't you?" he said in a level tone which nevertheless dripped with both accusation and disappointment. I looked down uneasily. A "What the fuck were you thinking?" hung uncomfortably in the air between us and remained unspoken. In my panicked defence I offered the settee, but Basil Tracy Creese Sr picked more holes in it than the abused and forsaken piece of furniture which kicked this episode off in the first place. He challenged me to read about the Liberals (this in the days before the internet - I had to traipse to the library to complete my task) and then try and justify a vote for their party. I did. And I couldn't.
I was thinking about this when the country fell in love with TV Nicky and the Lib Dems enjoyed their poll bounce. And when Shirley Williams, at the beginning of Election Night, forecasted 80-90 seats for her party. And when I saw William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Gove acquire their new posts within government (the last of these twats actually said the following: "The liberation of Iraq has actually been that rarest of things – a proper British foreign policy success. Next year, while the world goes into recession, Iraq is likely to enjoy 10% GDP growth. Alone in the Arab Middle East, it is now a fully functioning democracy with a free press, properly contested elections and an independent judiciary... ") And when Nicky and Davey C had that cringe inducing press conference on the lawns of No. 10. And again when our new coalition government announced that they were abolishing the Child Trust Fund.
I bought the manifestos for all 3 parties prior to the General Election for just such an event. The Conservatives made no mention of abolishing the CTF. Their policy was to cut back government funding to the poorest families. Nope. The abolition of the CTF is exclusively a Lib Dem thing as outlined on pages 16 and 102 of their manifesto.
The difference between the wealthiest and the poorest of our society is now a yawning chasm. The CTF was an attempt to reduce this inequality. Research by the Children's Mutual shows that the people saving into the funds were in the lower income bracket and children in this band would have no prospect of enough funds at 18 to kickstart their adult lives.
The CTF has been described as "the most successful savings initiative there has ever been". The number of people saving monthly, long-term, for their children, went up threefold, and the amount they were saving went up by 60% since its introduction. It is important to note that whilst the CTF is being abolished more expensive tax reliefs on middle class savings – private pensions and ISAs – are staying in place.
Since the credit crunch the dialogue has been about the need for personal saving and its importance for the financial health of the nation that this is encouraged. The one initiative which attempted to address this is to be axed. It's so spectacularly short-sighted it could only have been devised by incompetents or elitist numpties. If you see Nicky ask him how the dissolving of the CTF squares with their manifesto title of 'Change that works for you: building a fairer Britain.'
I couldn't understand why the country would vote for avowed representatives of the privileged to skew the game for their own ends, until I watched an episode of Fawlty Towers a couple of weeks ago. My namesake is looking rather smug having terrorised a working class oik for daring to breach the threshold of his hotel: this is in direct contrast to the deference with which he treats, say, Lord Melberry or the Psychiatrists. Sybil passes acid comment;
Sybil: You never get it right, do you? You're either crawling all over them, licking their boots, or spitting poison at them like some benzedrine puff-adder.
Basil: Just trying to enjoy myself, dear.
It's what we British do. We despise the working class and the fact that most of us are working class. Blair, Mandelson and the rest of the middle class New Labour acolytes embodied this contempt: Mandy saying the Labour Party didn't need any more "oily handed sons of the soil". They strategised to seduce the Great Satan Murdoch and enthusiastically implemented the inherently divisive Tory fiscal blueprint which has borne bitter fruit.
They say you get the government you deserve, but looking at the numbers the majority of us voted for the progressive, centre-left parties: 85% in Scotland, 70% in Wales, 67% in the North East of England and 61% in the North West. It was this flawed voting system which won the Thatcher Conservatives 4 elections on the spin. The seat numbers reflected the inaccuracy of the system, not the strength of the Tories, who at their very best only achieved 43.9% of the electorate.
So we've entrusted our future prosperity to the posh boys again. The diligent subscribers to the notion that if the rich get richer, we all benefit - they'll look after us and make things better, won't they? Did you know that Nicky has a blue-ish tinge to the sanguine fluid coursing through his veins? Yeah. Turns out his grandmother was a Russian baroness, whilst his great uncle was bludgeoned to death by his own peasants...
...Nah, too easy. I'll leave it there, I think.
