Paul McCartney for Downing Street?

In its rolling news feature, the BBC reports at 1552 "As the Lib Dem leader arrived at a community centre in Penny Lane, one onlooker said disappointingly, "I thought the VIP was going to be Paul McCartney" ". The BBC's Fiona Trott in Liverpool for the election puts this in as vital news.

I wonder what this says about it all. Are the electorate interested in this election, long awaited as it has been? Although I'm fairly involved in political thought it still amazes me that many people don't know who their political leaders are. Nick Clegg is relatively unknown we are told, but surely at a political event during the election the person was never going to be Paul McCartney. Or am I just too much out of the loop?

General Election 2010 - May 6th

So Gordon Brown has uncorked his bottle at last. I can't wait. Today is 6th April. One month to go - 6th May - and the former beau of Prudence (the politically incorrect keeper of the prime ministerial moral compass) will be kicked out without ceremony or sentiment.

As I say, I can't wait!!

Stuart Wheeler wheels out his Trust Party

So Stuart Wheeler is spreading his bets by hoping to be elected as Trust Party MP for Bexhill & Battle. Did he pick this seat because he wants a battle on his hands? Surely Greg Barker is not the best target to complain about politicians with a past. I would have thought he might have picked an opponent with a "bit of previous".

And why start a new party? He gave money to UKIP. He knows Nigel Farage is trying his level best to get rid of the Squeaker in Buckingham. This just divides the anti-sleaze brigade's forces. And if UKIP is now not to his fancy why not sidle up to the Jury Team boss, Sir Paul Judge? I get the impression that the minor parties like to think the forthcoming general election is a bit like the Grand National. A mad rush over the jumps and the possibility that the favourites will fall. It's wishful thinking.

I wish Stuart Wheeler well in his campaign. But that's as far as it goes. However, if he wins, then his own battle will enter the electoral history books.

Blair to rally Labour supporters

So the Spiv-in-Chief is coming out from the deep recesses of his counting house to speak to the faithful in Sedgefield. Lots of cries of "Tor-Nee" will go up from those who still think he is a saviour of sorts.

The Conservatives think he's got a lot to hide. That counting house has some very odd contraptions in it for counting the cash in a special way. It's got Cameron's lot somewhat excited. However, they should be a bit more circumspect before casting aspersions. After all, Lord Ashcroft sees fit to live and breathe part of his existence in Belize because he fears being a pauper in Britain. If I were confronting Ashcroft I'd tell him straight. Dump this central American existence and be a real John Bull.

Tony Blair was depicted as being a political actor in BBC4's "How To Win An Election" last night. This was predicted in 1964 by Sir Alec Douglas-Home. Or at least the possibility of having an actor in politics. What Home would have made of Blair I do not know. However, Blair is totally unruffled by criticism. He seems to relish the fight. The Conservatives would do well not to give him so many free plot lines for his propaganda.

Gordon Brown? Can he hang on?

All of a sudden the talk is not so much of us having a hung parliament but whether Gordon Brown can actually hang on. Hang on to what, exactly. The New Labour greasy pole? That's a tall order. No, it seems he may be able to do a kind of John Major 1992. This is all deemed possible by the British public settling for the devil they know, rather than plump for someone else, namely David Cameron.

There's a saying in Yorkshire, or at least there was. It's "There's nowt so queer as folk". This queer just means odd or peculiar and not the more recent usage. In fact, I haven't heard the word queer for ages, so perhaps nobody in Yorkshire says this anymore. Perhaps they should. We should all sit up and wonder if we are not all going a bit peculiar. How can a man who Richard Littlejohn describes as being sociopath have any chance? In fact, Littlejohn says in the Daily Mail, "For the entire time that New Labour has been misleading, bullying and cheating the British public, Gordon Brown has been at its dark heart, first as chancellor, then as prime minister. Brown's Britain is a failed state, led by an unelected Scottish sociopath and a gruesome gang of crooks, liars, political pygmies and smearmerchants. He has bankrupted the country, smashed our once gold-standard private pensions system, sold out our sovereignty to Europe and destroyed the special relationship with the U.S. over the release of the Lockerbie bomber for the sake of a squalid, sectarian squabble with the Scottish Nationalists. We have a ruinous welfare culture which rewards the feckless and a taxation system which punishes enterprise and the traditional family. Economically, he peddled us a false prospectus and has succeeded in beggaring the country for generations to come."

So, who could possibly think of voting Labour? Apparently quite a few. What on earth could they possibly get out of it? Well, I suppose plane-grounding strikers, a train-stopping union, bonus-grabbing bankers, climate change zealots, gravy train europhiles, equalities quango merchants and grumpy health service know-it-alls could make up a coalition of the politically corrupt and try to hallucinate the nation.

On, and there's talk of Blair going on the election campaign trail. The cherry on the cheesecake?

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1261026/RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN-The-pygmies-sleazebags-whove-wrecked-Britain-I-nearly-Labour-MP.html#ixzz0jYld2fTY

General Election or General Selection?

The general election is nearly upon us. The British people will have their say in whether the Prime Minister gets the bum's rush or gets the cherry on the cake. Personally I'm hoping for the former. However, there may be a nasty sting in the tail, or will it be tale?

The simple truth is that Britain is a democracy in a muddle. Most people think they are voting for a party to be in government. This will be enhanced even more by the three leaders going live with their "presidential" debates. But Britain doesn't have a proportional representation system. It has a simply majority system based on individual constituencies. And currently there is a multi-party scramble to elect MPs. The British people have a dog's dinner of a system, inherited from the grand old days when people were either little Liberals or little Conservatives of Gilbert and Sullivan style. When there were two parties it all made sense. Now its not quite senseless, more a bit sensitive when adding up the democratic benefits.

There is talk of a hung parliament. There are mutterings from the right that David Cameron may just not get enough seats. There are mutterings from the left that Gordon Brown will have to do a deal with the LibDems. But it's also said that Nick Clegg doesn't want to be with Brown, he'd prefer Cameron. The trouble here is that Clegg's backbenchers won't sit with the Tories. It has all the makings of 1974, except that there are now far more parties vying for votes, so we could end up having elections just giving us hung parliaments.

In my own case of Solihull, I am completely divorced from the Labour Government and its antics. No Labour candidate will ever win here. This is a battle between the LibDems and the Tories. Whoever wins will not have any effect on the Labour benches in the House of Commons. And that is the point. We elect MPs in individual consituencies. Some could win by getting less that a third of the vote. So a skewed result at Westminster is perfectly possible. In technical terms the pundits call this a hung parliament. Opinion polls mean very little, except that they provide an income to pollsters.

Gordon Brown could be defeated in the popular vote but get enough MPs for him to do a deal. How far will he stretch his honour? It is up to the Prime Minister to continue or to resign. Mere voting does not necessarily push him out of office. It is perfectly possible for him to convince the Queen that he can indeed "command a majority of his peers". Those MPs may well be a rag-bag of assorted parties or form the basis of a nod-and-a-wink agreement, but Gordon Brown's political arithmatic is not connected at all to the adult suffrage of the people.

So in the scheme of things winners can be losers and losers can get a second chance. General elections may have a tortoise and hare aspect, but this particular election could well ressemble a farmload of animals suddenly let loose. Who ends up where is impossible to guess!

Cameron's patriotic moves

There was a time in the Sixties when certain opinions were commonplace. One such opinion was that the Labour Party was nothing better that a Trojan horse for the Soviet communists. After all, they sang the Red Flag and they wanted to nationalise most things. Many were closet republicans, a lot were ban-the-bombers and they were keen on dismantling the traditions of the state. In short, they were not patriotic and needed to be defeated. Then the Berlin Wall collapsed and the soviet empire went with it. It seemed little point singing the Red Flag with such gusto, and opponents were less charged by Labour Party views.

Tony Blair and his New Labour control freaks decided that all the commie stuff had to go. If he controlled the party it could look like a new party with fresh ideas. Not really. The icing on the cake changed but the rotten fruit inside just got re-hashed.

Now we have Harriet Harperson pushing so-called equality laws on us, we have a meddlesome mattie in charge of the Charity Commission and quango chiefs all on the fiddle or the cover-up. New Labour is a frightful mixture of control, sleaze, hypocrisy and whitewashing episodes.

So is David Cameron right in saying that it is his patriotic duty to try to remove these people? I suppose it depends on what you think Britain should be and remain as being. A conservative's view of patriotic duty is in honouring and maintaining the institutions of the state. If that duty is challenged by those who want to destroy the institutions, then it is a patriotic duty to stop it. We do live in a changing society but too much change is detrimental.

When it comes to the voting, though, we may have a result that in no way reflects our views. According to the YouGov poll published in the Sunday Times, the Conservative lead over Labour has narrowed to two points. It suggests that 37% would vote Tory, while 35% would opt for Labour and 17% for the Lib Dems. This, the Sunday Times says, could give Labour 317 seats, nine short of an overall majority, with the Tories on a total of 263 MPs. So Gordon Brown could remain prime minister (with some backing from minor parties) even though he did worse in the voting. Do we really want that?

35% would vote Labour it says. But how many does that 35% represent of the total electorate. If the stay-at-homers are the largest group, then active Labour voters are a real minority. Perhaps that's why Harriet Harperson is so keen to promote minority causes. She knows she's a minority in a minority which in turn is in a minority. It's like a television camera looking at its own monitor. All you get is a load of television sets leading to oblivion!

Tory totty won't help Cameron!

Serious commentators are now wondering whether the Conservative Party under David Cameron's leadership can actually win this forthcoming election. All the pointers suggest he won't quite make it. Not that Brown will win either. My guess is that the Conservatives will get around 290 seats making it necessary to do a deal with the LibDems.

But the real message of the election will be the size of the vote for the minor parties and the size of the stay-at-homers group. If these combine to be more than two-thirds then our democracy needs some kind of medication - FAST!

Simon Heffer asks in the Daily Telegraph "Can anyone explain what the Conservative Party stands for?". Currently I'm not sure there will be many rushing to say they know. It seems that several ding-dongs are going on between A-listers and constituency associations. Internal democracy in the Tory Party is on a back burner.

Heffer says this - "We do have a number of respectable (and, in the shape of the BNP, non-respectable) fringe parties who will hoover up votes from the main ones. The BNP believes it can win a Labour seat or two, and it may be right. The Tories are also finding it desperately hard to gain footholds in big urban areas outside London, with their potential working-class supporters now in some cases edging towards the BNP." The Conservatives have no answer to this.

The trouble is that all the major parties have colluded over their expenses, over the economy, over immigration and over the management of government. The people of the UK feel hurt and aggrieved. They see bankers wallowing in bonuses only available because the dimwitted Labour government saw no reason to curb their greed. I hear angry mutterings in shops, walking about town and from people I use to think mild-mannered conservatives with a small "c".

Simon Heffer also thinks that UKIP can "damage Tory interests, notably in the West Country, where the agricultural and fishing interests have had enough of Brussels, and this damage is potentially huge." The Conservatives need to wake up to the fact that it is not just the Labour Party that the country is cheesed off with, but the whole system of sleaze and spin.

Maybe we need some body scanners for politicians. Get them passing through the warts-and-all machines. "Sorry, Mr.Cameron. Machine says you don't have a clue!" Now there's a thought.

Snow surprise then?

We need a big umbrella over Britain it seems. We can't cope with snow, we can't cope with rain, and we don't appear to be able to cope with hot days. In fact, whilst there is a minimum temperature for working conditions, there is no such equivalent for high temperatures.

David Cameron is now beaming down from posters proclaiming that he'll get us out of the mess we're in. Perhaps the best policy he could construct would be one containing lots of joined up thinking. Britain suffers from short-termism. Just getting by is no longer any good. We need to learn from our mistakes and try our very best to get it right. So let's have some policies that actually mean something and let's have them without spin.

It was refreshing to hear President Obama tell the intelligence community they had failed to "connect the dots", adding "That's not acceptable, and I will not tolerate it." I hope the British voters will not tolerate any politician who is incapable of connecting dots.

Blair seen as a liability

When was it ever different, I said to myself on seeing this piece in The Times. Apparently senior Labour figures have voiced concerns that Tony Blair’s appearance at the Iraq inquiry in the coming weeks will wreck any prospect of him helping the party at the general election. Helping them out? They'd be far better advised giving him a wide berth. The man is generally seen as being trouble on two legs. Blair's entourage are none too pleased with their hero being asked to explain his fibs and foibles. There is growing criticism being voiced within the former Prime Minister’s inner circle about Gordon Brown’s decision to hold the inquiry with public hearings in the run-up to the election. It was nicely put by a stooge as “The whole f***ing thing is Downing Street’s fault.” And these people used to run the country?

These Blairite types want him to "nuance" his testimony at the inquiry. What's new. He's nuanced everything since he knocked on his housemaster's door seeking attention. He nuanced his politics, he nuanced his religion, and he's currently nuancing his lucrative business career. He nuanced the Labour Party and no doubt nuanced all the mirrors in his house "Well, yeah, mirror, mirror on the wall, who is, yeah, the greatest nuancer of all?" "Oh, you are, Great Nuancer!"

Gordon Brown has had his Granita days. Tony Blair is not much use to the election or the future. New Labour dies a death in May!

There was a crooked man!

Gordon Brown can't even give a straight answer about whether he is being straight with the British public. Here we have a prime minister who has completely thrown his moral compass out the window. He has also ditched all concept of presbyterian prudence when it comes to finance. 99% of Presbyterian ministers will preach that profligacy is an unacceptable form of stewardship. They will also tell you that money doesn't grow on trees. Yet Gordon Brown is heaping truckloads of political manure around the bases of his money trees in the hope that they will drop more than pennies next year.

Brown has lived in a political fantasy world for far too long. Watching him on PMQs is very painful. He never answers a question from David Cameron. He just turns it all into some fake diatribe against the Tory Leader. Perhaps it should be call PMIs. "Prime Minister's Insults".

The plain stark truth is that governments do not have any money. They only have money taken from the citizens. If we want more government spending we either have to raise taxes or borrow money from foreign outfits. There is a third way which is the government selling bonds and investing taxpayers money. However, the debate is all about "spending" as if there is a bottomless pit somewhere. Or perhaps the money trees!

I am fed up with Brown's platitudes. All his talk of spending his way out of this recession holds nothing for me. It was he who as Chancellor sat around encouraging the banking spivs and the crooked investors. Mandelson was slithering around with all sorts. Surely Brown got some clue given to him? What about Balls? Did that expenses cheat not whisper anything in Brown's ear? They are moribund when it comes to honour.

We are looking towards pensions being a farce in the future, to jobs being meaningless for many and a huge government debt that politicians are seemingly oblivious of. But the biggest sin is that prices are being pushed in such an uneconomic way that businesses are collapsing under the strain. We seem incapable of paying our way in Britain. The next general election will be about truth and honesty not spin and deception. Those candidates that state honestly what will happen should win the election. However, if the cheaters and deceivers win, of whatever party, then we have only ourselves to blame.

Gordon Brown's "friends" start writing on the wall!

The walls around Downing Street are getting a good lashing of political graffiti on them. David Blunkett has come out to say that he thinks Gordon Brown should "draw a line in the sand" and get back to "old-fashioned politics". Too late for that now. Gordon Brown is fast becoming a spent force. In fact, he was never really the choice of the Labour Party. He just bullied them into accepting him as Buggins to Blair. It was his turn, he claimed. In fact he reckoned he should have been there instead of Blair. They just wanted the grumpy sulking to stop.

Now Brown is being cautioned against bullying. Charles Clarke has entered the fray to say that he has become "ashamed" of being a Labour MP. In some ways it's hard to know what Labour MPs are meant for now. Socialism is a dead concept. New Labour is hardly socialism. The Red Flag is in some cupboard getting dusty and the likes of Jacqui Smith and Tony McNulty see making easy money a better option. I get the impression that McNulty would explode with indignation if he were asked to embrace socialism.

Stephen Byers has popped up to add his ten cents. It's becoming very clear that Brown should be circling the wagons rather than running down to the beach with a stick to draw lines in the sand. David Cameron is waiting to take over. He says that Gordon Brown is "rapidly running out of political authority". That's fairly generous. Most of us feel he's completely out of gas!

The question is - do we have to wait a whole year for a general election with the Prime Minister in the meantime YouTubing us messages and giving the House of Commons' spiders a dose of unfair competition? May be might just run away!

Cameron's Conservative Conundrum

There would be a time when I couldn't wait to vote Conservative. With both my head and my heart! The very idea of voting Labour filled me with a shiver. After all, they were a bit "commie", wanted nationalisation, were into pip-sqeaking taxation, and generally were economic trouble. It was a no brainer for me.

Then two things happened. The Berlin wall collapsed, so who were now the socialists, who were now the anti-capitalist campaigners? And along came Blair, a political hybrid with a "well, yeah" response to all matters in his way. We now have a three party set-up in a two-party system.

It was all so easy when it was just Conservative and Labour. Straight fights were the norm. The Liberals came in just for the ride. They had to do deals with the Conservatives in Bolton and Huddersfield just to get a couple of seats!

Now the voters have a multitude of choices. The Electoral Commission is registering a new party a month! The Conservatives should be an easy bet for winning the next election. But that's not a dead cert. Why? I think the first is for the reasons above. Thatcher and Blair between them blew the party bedrock apart. Now all parties are vying for a similar base.

But the main reason is loyalty. People no longer feel they belong to a party or that a party belongs to them. Once the Conservative Party had a huge number of members. Members create activists, and activists bring in the votes. If you lose the members the whole thing starts to unravel. So those who used to be Conservative activists are now either armchair philosophers or are in other parties such as UKIP, English Democrats, or even the BNP! Some have defected to the LibDems (a hybrid party) or to the Greens or the Nationalists. There are others in minor one-man-band parties, such as Veritas and the New Party. All these people are lost to the Conservatives. And the internet is giving them the chance to air their views.

The Labour Party is now worried by the lack of support it is getting. "Ominously for Labour there are warning signs that southern discomfort is re-emerging in a new and more complex form." I wouldn't think it that complex. Just that these conniving New Labour spin merchants have been rumbled for what they are. Those now disaffected with the Government may well serve up a bashing. But will it be to the Tories advantage? I can see Hove going Conservative but maybe the Greens could win in Brighton? That's the conundrum across the country- and it's heading us to a hung, or divided, House of Commons, I think.