Oh God. Of all the things that we don’t need right now surely another national vote is at the top of the list. We’d actually be better off with another huge outbreak of foot and mouth. Or a petrol strike. Or a Spanish Flu epidemic. If recent history has proved anything about the political instincts of homo sapiens it’s that they really shouldn’t be trusted with democracy. It’s like putting a set of lorry keys in the hands of an Islamic Fundamentalist.
After the usual nail-biting announcement that there was going to be an announcement, when the actual announcement eventually came it was pretty much the announcement most observers were expecting. What else was Theresa May going to announce? The earth is flat, the Pope is Jewish and her knicker drawer is haunted? The nation’s press got all excited and probably did a bit of wee in their pants and then came the brick wall of analysis and prediction and hot, hot air. 10,000 atmospheres worth of dank, cloying air that will cling to us for the next 8 weeks and choke us in our sleep.
You see, the problem is that we don’t really understand how to vote anymore. Whichever way we voted on Brexit the other half of the country told us we were wrong and now we’re all confused about whether we want a hard, up against a skip in an alleyway, kind of Brexit or we want a soft Brexit with flowers and chocolates but the faint possibility of a chloroform soaked rag chucked in for good measure. Some people still think we don’t have to have a Brexit at all but they’re all just deluded.
The truth is that there is no good option any more. The Conservatives can’t seem to appear happy and dominant despite the fact they have no credible opposition. The Labour Party are a disgrace to themselves and that’s not all Corbyn’s fault. The Liberal Democrats have fewer seats in Parliament that there are round my dining table and a leader that looks like a hunched bird with low self esteem. UKIP are just grim.
Yesterday on that green bit outside The Houses of Parliament Channel 4 News sent out the infuriatingly smug and perpetually interrupting force of nature that is Krishnan Guru-Murphy to interview the great and good. Sadly the great and good weren’t available. In fact they couldn’t even muster the mediocre and passable so instead I had to endure a hellish trio of repellent politicians instead. The bad, the worse and the unthinkable.
First came Diane Abbott, a peculiar lady with a face made of dough and skin like a greasy apple and what looked like a cheap wig but probably wasn’t. She burbled on for a bit about how she wasn’t even contemplating the Labour Party not winning this election. These are the words of someone well past realising that they are demented. The only appeal was watching her enormous mouth to see if any bats were going to fly out. There is something deeply unlikable about Diane Abbott. It has nothing to do with gender or race or size. She is somehow the political equivalent of Vanessa Feltz. And that isn’t good.
Next Came Paul Nuttall, unbelievably a party leader. Though this is slightly less unbelievable when you realise he’s the leader of UKIP. I kind of zoned out when he spoke because he’s full of rubbish and I’m still annoyed with UKIP for stirring us out of the EU, all the while still being an acknowledged as a useless political force. If you’ve never seen Stewart Lee’s brilliant live sketch about Paul Nuttall then please seek it out. It’s even better because he did it a few years ago when no-one had ever heard of Paul Nuttall. A state of affairs I long for today.
Finally we had Peter Mandelson, who continues to look like a cut price vampire. Why anyone would value his opinion is quite beyond me. I’d sooner stroke a sleeping grizzly bear than cross paths with him. He oozed with what he probably considers charm and once in a while he smiled. A warped grin that reminded me of the days when he and Blair were grinning this country into oblivion. I would include Gordon Brown but as we know his grin looks like he’s trying to piss barbed wire.
My point is that this is what we’ve got to go on. Is that all we have? We’ll have to listen to these three and a hundred more before we have to make our minds up which party makes us feel like reaching for a crossbow the least. Please don’t vote for a party because you think they’ll lose anyway because we’ve been there and done that and look where we are now. Don’t listen to the Scots because they only care about themselves. One senior SNP member stated proudly last night how well the SNP were doing in Scotland. You can work out for yourself how retarded that statement is in the context of a general election.
So, the next 8 weeks will be jam packed with moronic asides and banal analysis and pathetic, childish point scoring and by the end of it this general election will be about as appealing as having a leaking anus. That’s what politics really is in this country at the moment – an unstoppable leaking anus. But at least it gives me something to write about.
G B Hewitt. 19.4.2017
On stupidity......and other causes for concern. 