Tuesday 6 April 2010

Day 1 - It's On, Baby, It's ON.

It's 'Go!' for the Rock and A Hard Place election 2010.

In a move which makes Jack Bauer managing to save the day in the 24th episode look like a side-punch from out of nowhere, Gordon Brown has named the day. There comes a point in every pirate movie when the lubber on the end of the plank looks back at the cutlasses being waggled at his nethers, decides he might as well take his chances and jumps. This is that point.

And what a day it was. I hope you weren't after a helicopter for anything urgent because most of them were being employed by the news agencies for several hours on end to bring us breaking arial shots of absolutely nothing happening at Buckingham Palace. Every so often it looked like the news editors were simply trying to find an excuse to see if it's really true that the Queen hangs her bras out on the roof to dry. It's not even as if the pictures of Brown's car crawling up the Mall as he tried to find polite ways of asking his driver if he wouldn't mind turning Magic FM down a touch would have been especially useful or illuminating in terms of the story, but they were all up there with their whirlybirds, whacking out a carbon footprint the size of a Nicholas Winterton bellyflop splash pattern.

It's only just beginning of course, but for what is touted as the most exciting and closest election since, ooh, 1992 it was pretty insipid stuff from the party leaders. Big Gord came out flanked by his cabinet in an attempt by the spin machine to dilute his personality. They looked peculiarly like the stilted line-up of a primary school nativity play. It wouldn't have been at all surprising if he'd started up with "And lo! The Angel Gabriel did appear unto the shepherds saying, 'Sorry about all that Foot and Mouth business, I trust I can rely on your support come polling day.'"

David Cameron, looking ever more like the kind of ridiculously smooth public figure who turns out to be in the pay of a massive Earth-coveting alien in 'Doctor Who', stood on the other side of the Thames from Parliament, attempting to look like the plucky outsider. Which is a bit rich. At best it made him look like he'd forgotten his keys and couldn't get into the place, at worst it seemed that he was just trying to minimise the chances of one of his Shadow Cabinet walking by and reminding us all that the Conservative party still does a pretty good line in unlikeable, red-faced snobs. They are a dreadful-looking bunch. For all Brown's actual cabinet's anonymity (go on, could you name over half of the ones standing with him outside Downing Street this morning without having to get your Westminster Top Trumps out?) at least they only look like they might buttonhole you about life insurance. Cameron's lot appear as though they've been pre-caricatured to save the cartoonists time. Good Lord, Michael Gove looks like someone's drawn a cartoon of him being sucked down a plughole.

Nothing much to say in terms of messages from either of them. Big Gord told us that the future was within our grasp, a future "fairer for all." Classic politicianspeak. A brighter tomorrow. How long have they been promising us that? Politics, essentially, is like 'Lost' - they keep telling us there's a solution to everything, but the longer time goes on, the more you get the feeling that they don't really know what it is.

Samcam's husband Dav, meanwhile, referred to "The Great Ignored." Fair play to the lad, he avoided the obviously dangerous Freudian slip of replacing that last word with "Unwashed", although he did keep referring to them as "they", slightly giving off the manner of a posh person discussing cleaners at a dinner party.

Nick Clegg also said stuff, but I've Googled it and I can't find what. So long as it was "Vince Cable, Vince Cable, Vince Cable," he should have some momentum going into May 6th.




4 comments:

  1. "Nicholas Winterton bellyflop splash pattern". Positively poetic although brought up an image which almost made me spill my breakfast.

    Please keep it up over the next month if you can. (ooooh, missus!)

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  2. I'm sure Cameron's been misquoted. I thought it was "the grate ignored" - i.e. everything he says grates, and we ignore it.

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  3. Great blog Chris, look forward to following it through the Election.

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  4. Great. So now I have to follow the election at least slightly, because I want to continue reading this excellent blog. Thanks a lot, Addison!

    Ah well. Give and take.

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