They come around every four or five years, rearing their ugly head
like the estranged relative who forgot your last four birthdays, only to give
you some t-shirt you might have worn when you were 16, the last time you saw
them. The UK General Election is undoubtedly the most covered news story in the
British media, one election barely having finished before popularity polls are
being taken for the next one. We’re told, like an ongoing public service
announcement, that this is our chance to change things, to get involved in
politics, to really make a difference. But is it? Is it really?
Politicians have a reputation for being slimy, dishonest,
self-serving, Machiavellian snakes who survive off the burning dreams of their
electorate: this year, unfortunately, we have a motley crew of competitors of
outstanding boringness. Such is the nature of modern politics that any form of
conviction or real politik has been traded for meticulously planned soundbites
and witty one-liners, with accountability coming in the form of guarded responses
along the lines of ‘it matters what the party thinks, not what I think’.
Cameron’s track record as a ‘chap’ serves him well among the middle
class Conservative voters, who see him as the man with whom you’d like to have
a round of golf, or invite round for a roast.
Miliband, who has fortunately embraced the fact that he is pretty
weird by all standards, is becoming more loveable day-by-day, but in the same
way you might love a dog with three legs and no hair. He can’t even play the
‘class card’ on Cameron, since they are both privately-educated, old Oxonian
Southerners who have about as much in common with the North as the Boat Race.
Then there’s Clegg, poor poor Clegg, sitting dead-eyed behind
Cameron in the Commons, robotically nodding like a trained seal. You can’t help
get the air of a man who has given up on any chance of a reputation after his,
most probably, short-lived political career has ended: once a true Liberal
organization, the Lib Dems are backboneless ‘kingmakers’, whose main aim
nowadays seems to be making up the numbers.
In the role of ‘token right wing offensive’, we have tweed-model Nigel
Farage, whose idea of campaigning seems to be getting squiffy in middle class
pubs in Kent with names like ‘The Fox & Benefit Scrounger’. Alcohol, it
would seem, is the elixir which brings out the inner racist in Farage, a bit
like your uncle after a couple of sherries on Christmas Day: don’t trust any
claim that ‘its not racism, its about border control’, this man’s yellowed
teeth and gout-ridden face cannot be trusted.
Green’s Natalie Bennett is refreshingly new to the scene, but seemingly
inexperienced and forgettable: who can forgot her excruciatingly awkward silence in an interview about housing plans. Nicola Sturgeon and Leanne Wood,
both admirable politicians in their own right, will have absolutely no ballot
presence for the majority of you, so are unfortunately irrelevant. So if you’re
going to vote, vote on a manifesto, not on a candidate: I wouldn’t elect any of
these guys to the parent’s committee, let alone to Number 10.
In the final 100 days, we have the pantomime that is the televised
debates. Now this year worked slightly differently, on account of Cameron’s
stubbornness, or the fact that he’s realised that human beings find it
difficult to empathize with his glowing red face. The trilogy of three-party
debates of 2010 was switched in favour of a one-on-one interview session with
Paxman for Cameron and Miliband, a seven party ho-down on ITV, and the upcoming
‘challenging’ leaders debate with all but the two coalition parties involved.
The debate, unfortunately, is not a process for the parties to demonstrate how
one manifesto is better than the other, but rather a point scoring contest for
the minority parties to take shots at the two main parties.
An ensuing barrage of who can make the best empty promise overwhelms
the event: any voter with half a memory can remember ‘Cleggmania’, the frenzy
that followed the man of the people’s performance, before his moral compass was
surgically removed and crushed by the Conservative freight train. The whole
proceeding was like a junked-up, glamourized PMQs, only with a horde of
candidates who’d never actually been a member of parliament, and so can cast
all sorts of aspersions and make all sorts of statements that they have a
snowball’s chance in hell of upholding.
The next debate, featuring representatives from Labour, UKIP, Green,
Plaid Cymru, and the SNP, has potential to be a real grilling: the opportunity
for the small parties to literally tear Miliband a new one means that this
debate will not be politically enlightening but the nearest thing to televised
torture we’ve ever seen, hosted by David Dimbleby. You can talk about choice in
an election, but looking upon this lot like pre-packaged meat at Lidl and I can’t
help but feel slightly underwhelmed.
The night itself is undeniably an exciting event: fond memories of
staying up till the early hours to hear the result makes this a big event in my
calendar. The spectacle is, however, over-the-top, glitzy, repetitive, and
quite exhaustive: its our only real equivalent to the Oscars, staying up all
night, struggling through all kinds of awards that we just don’t care about
(Best Sound Editing, Blackpool South, etc), until we finally get to the good
stuff at the very end, when your eyes are frosted over with sleep and tears.
A large majority of the night, meanwhile, is not results, but
fillers: Jeremy Vine and his swing-o-meter, the ‘path to number 10’ animations,
and frantic clips of volunteers running around with ballot boxes. Every year,
David Dimbleby looks older and older by comparison to the increasingly
dystopian broadcast studios made entirely out of LCD screens and armchairs. And
then the result finally comes. Or does it? In 2010, it took nearly a week for a
result to emerge: this year, in what is sure to be even closer, it may take
weeks. The party with the most seats, as we have now learnt, isn’t necessarily
the winner.
The General Election reaches its climax: a government is formed,
hundreds of photos are taken with our new Prime Minister waving gleefully with
their kids. And then? Undoubtedly disappointment. All these amazing promises
and goals made in the election to garner popularity, it turns out there’s
absolutely nothing of substance behind them. It took us about a year to realise
that with the Coalition, after George Osborne ceremonially squatted down and
laid a fat tuition fee increase on every student in the country. The sooner we
realise that politicians are pragmatic rather than idealistic, the better.
It’s been a frustrating few months, as you can see. And finally the
big day, May 7th, is round the corner. And I will be voting. I’m not
doing a Russell Brand and telling you to all rebel against the corporatists and
coffee shops and tear up your ballot. Voting is a privilege as well as a right,
and despite the bad name they get for themselves, the majority of politicians
are actually doing a pretty alright job. So I do urge you to do your research,
register, and place a cross in whatever box you see fit: but I don’t ask you to
enjoy it.
