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Experienced, older MPs have learned to ignore party manifestos. Tories do so because in the last three elections they’ve been such rubbish. We do so because they’ve zig-zagged so amazingly. In 1983 I was going to nationalise anything that moved, pull out of the Common Market, as it then was, and drop nuclear weapons, preferably on President Reagan. By the 1997 election I wasn’t going to do anything very much except smile benignly so as not to frighten the City.
Like many others I`ve got the habit of ignoring the glossy rubbish and urging my own far more sensible policies instead, such as getting rid of council tax, funding care homes and re-nationalising the railways. I’m much happier that way and so, I hope, are my constituents. No one from the party nationally ever notices because they’re too busy avoiding mistakes and keeping John Prescott under control.
This time however there`s a little less need to do this because on so many issues we don’t have a policy at all. Just a review. Asked about nuclear power I`m happy to announce that there will be a serious review of the nuclear power option as soon as we’ve got a windmill on every hill above pimple level, but of course I’ll be opposing it.
Exciting stuff. The same goes for council tax, pensions (are we going to be forced to save or not?), nuclear weapons, cannabis and pretty well anything else which may be contentious or difficult. It’s a marvellous election strategy and a good way of combating the Liberals. They can promise anything because they’re never going to be able to carry any of it out. It’s also more elegant than the Tory policy of picking scabs off old wounds. The only trouble with it is that its just not exciting. But then neither is the election.
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Pundits and polls have all drifted into the settled assumption that Labour`s going to win this contender for the most boring election ever. So Tony’s advisers are dedicating themselves to the problem of what legacy he wants to leave.
The last Parliament didn’t leave a very good monument. Tony fell backwards into it without any real plans. Then declared war on Iraq and was left with only Foundation Hospitals and Top Up fees. Provocations rather than policies. Now the aim is to leave a monument which will distinguish Tony`s record from Gordon`s to whom he’s promised the succession (without first asking the party).
I don’t see it. Tony’s obsession is with bringing the private sector into public services and providing choice in schools and hospitals rather than building a new Britain. None of that is of much relevance to Grimsby. There people want improvement rather than choice. Fat lot of good foundation hospitals do us because they’re miles away and a drain on our hospital. We need better services and they need extra resources applied to the less advantaged hospitals, schools and areas so that everyone can enjoy quality and opportunity, not just the middle classes in the bigger cities. Otherwise Tony`s monument is a nicer kind of Thatcherism: Blairimagery.
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The national campaign, from all parties, is letting the local campaigns down as well as boring the electorate stiff by its obsession with personal abuse, black holes and hypothetical tax hikes.
We’d benefit from following other countries, particularly Australia and New Zealand, by having fixed terms. They have three year terms, and unless things get seriously out of kilter, the last weekend of every third November you’ll find New Zealanders queuing outside polling booths by some Pavlovian reflex, even if a dictator had seized power or bubonic plague were raging.
We should have the same. Perhaps four year terms. We now have them in effect, though the government always wants to keep its freedom to call the poll when its best advantaged or before some engulfing problem which they know about but no one else does. Given the fact that the last year of these de facto four year terms is spent fighting an undeclared election anyway we should have three year terms with a fixed end. Then have compulsory voting to ensure that the people exert themselves by turning out more frequently. That’s real democracy instead of the presidential opportunism which now reigns.
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This must be the first election fought without either candidate posters, or party workers. I don’t mean the national posters which are all over the place, even Grimsby, as if we were having an election too. There are thousands, costing millions, of them and I have to admit that the Tory posters are better than ours or the Liberal Chubby-chops pictures of Charles.
Nor do I mean the national letters we’re all being deluged with. I had one of these last week “from the Office of Charles Clark” which turns out to be in Labour Head Office, not the Home Office, and promises to control our borders which I thought were all sea. He`s the new Moses.
I mean the local posters. In the past you could be sure that the trees were all going to vote Tory, the empty, deserted houses Liberal, and the council houses Labour. Now there aren`t any posters at all, people seem reluctant to put them up and I`m beginning to assume that the only way I`ll get more of my posters up in Grimsby is to buy more houses to put them in. As for party workers, perhaps they’re all on holiday. |
