A Deal

It looks as though there’ll be a deal before the day is out.
It almost makes you want to believe in a proportional voting system, with single transferable votes and perpertual coalitions.

But these are very special times.
There’s thirteen years of Britain’s economic and social decline under Labour to sort out. And of all parties the Liberals can least afford a second General Election this year.
So whilst I’m happy to sup with the devil at Westminster, Britain’s third party -- with it’s childish campaigning methods -- is not welcome in Surrey.

The Cameron-Clegg deal will either make or break the Liberal Party.

Always be Nice

For you never know who you might bump into.

A couple of weeks ago Ed Davey was asking directions to get to a meeting in Kingston, and a nice lady assisted -- at which point he rushed off without thanking her.
That lady joined the Conservative campaign team a few days later.

Maybe if Gordon Brown hadn’t been so intolerant of the media they wouldn’t have released the Bigotgate tape?

Vote Conservative on May 6th
A vote for the LibDems is a vote for five more years of Gordon Brown.

Bigotry

Seasoned political campaigner as I am, there’s hardly anything that shocks me on the doorstep.
Except working with a pregnant candidate recently, I’ve encountered bigotry from another age -- the Stone Age.
Admittedly forty years ago it was considered acceptable to believe a woman’s place was in the home. But it really is shocking that in the 21st century some people still think a woman should make a choice between having a career or raising a family.

Today’s LibDem Lie: Sorry this blog will no longer mention the name of Britain’s third party, or the despicable things they say in connection with the above subject.
Fortunately the police have started arresting them.

Hung Parliament

Few people seem to understand the constitutional position in the event of a hung parliament.

For a start Gordon Brown carries on as Prime Minster. He does not have to resign until he were to lose a vote of confidence in the House of Commons. It’s nothing to do with how many seats (or votes) each party has.

Britain’s third Party does not get to haggle over policy, though now doubt Labour will try to bribe them. If they decide not to keep Gordon Brown in power they are automatically locked in to back David Cameron as Prime Minster. They can’t pick and choose policy. Take it or leave it.

Failing that, we have another General Election, brought about by Liberal indecision.

Sore Feet

After two weeks of campaigning my feet have turned red, where the serrated edges of my bicycle pedals have gnawed through the thinnest part of the soles of my shoes.
As I rest up I wonder whether the phone companies have played a trick on the opinion pollsters, and routed their calls through to voters on Mars.
I’m not finding a single person changing their party allegiance based upon the party leaders TV debate last week.
No doubt the legions of uncommitted voters have plumped for one party over another, but their support is very fickle, and many won’t actually be voting.
When I remind them that unlike the prime ministerial contenders, the leader of Britain’s third party had nothing to lose, they admit that closer scrutiny will sway them again.
I repeat: wait until the poll on May 6th.

Vote For Change

Some people question the enjoyment of campaigning for votes at election time. Well for a seasoned politician it is always invigorating.
People always have something different to say, and they can often be more demanding than even Jeremy Paxman, the famous BBC inquisitor.
We had great fun this afternoon bumping into people at the shopping parades in Chessington.
Admittedly there’s a few that are still happy with Labour, and many still unsure. But the majority want to see the back of Gordon Brown.
Just one fly in the ointment though. Those that think voting for Britain’s third party can do the trick. When you point out that historically that Party has always propped up a Labour Government, they come to their senses and agree that the only vote for change is a vote for the Conservatives.

Kingston, worth fighting for!

That is the Conservative slogan to win back control of the local council next month, after eight years of financial mismanagement by Britain’s third party, with now the highest property tax in southern England. Plus a mansion tax in the pipeline!
Over a hundred local residents packed a cinema theatre in central Kingston upon Thames for the official launch of the Conservatives' Borough election campaign this Wednesday evening. A series of polished speeches by some of the council candidates were interspersed with their own video reports on local issues.
Then there were presentations by neighbouring MP Justine Greening and local parliamentary candidates Helen Whately and Zac Goldsmith.
Zac explained why only the Conservatives understand that preserving the environment is about so much more than carbon. For example hiking charges for parking near local shops just encourages people to drive further afield to hypermarkets. And people avoid residential parking charges by paving their front gardens, further blighting the street scene.
Above all, green taxes should no longer be stealth taxes, penalizing past choices, but be accompanied by incentives to promote responsible living.

Out of Power

You don’t need to be a student of 20th century British politics to understand why Britain’s third party have been out of power since the 1920s.
Just come and read the vindictive propaganda they distribute in Spelthorne. Indeed they seem to be resorting to personal attacks right across the land, which will only ever attract the protest vote. It's not the British way.
Last autumn they cheekily questioned whether in fact a retiring local councillor was actually ill, right at the time he was in intensive care at the local hospital.
And now they query the credentials of one of the best up and coming Conservative politicians in the country by detailing his previous applications for vacant parliamentary seats.
The truth is that competition to become a Conservative parliamentary candidate is a hundred times greater for Britain’s third party, so hardly surprising even the best don’t succeed the first time.

Five More Years of Brown?

As I speak to people up and down the land (yesterday in north Manchester), the answer comes back the same:

We do not want five more years of Gordon Brown.

Funny thing is when you ask them if they’ll be voting for Cameron’s Conservatives they don’t seem quite so sure, as if there is some kind of third option for Prime Minister -- which they have to agree there isn’t.
A vote for any of the minor parties is a wasted vote when it comes to turfing out Gordon Brown.
That is the conundrum the opinion pollsters face, complicated by a serious flaw in their methodology.
You see, when you ask floating voters how they voted five years ago they genuinely can’t remember, and so make it up -- and say Conservative if they’re leaning that way now. So their opinion is excluded by the pollsters when they weight the raw data to match the actual result in 2005, skewing their prediction for 2010.
Best hang on for the exit poll at 10pm on May 6th.

Cable ruins Cable

The biggest threat to Cable is Cable.
Cable is the term used by currency traders for the Sterling–US Dollar exchange rate (dating from the 19th century when the rate was transmitted by a transatlantic cable).
The prospect of a hung parliament this spring is sending jitters round the world, and the value of the British pound rapidly towards a 25-year low.
Traders fear the worst if vacillating Vincent Cable were to become involved with Britain’s economic policy.
Far from predicting the current crisis Cable warned merely about personal debt in 2003, and later conceded that the global financial crisis was actually triggered by the US mortgage market about which he knew very little.
Back in 1999 he campaigned vigorously for light touch regulation of financial services, meaning his recent denunciation of market excesses ring hollow.
These conflicting views are typical of Britain’s third party which he represents, and offer no path to recovery.

Hung Parliament II

There’s been a lot of bunkum written about the prospects of a hung parliament, even on this blog.
The fact is no one knows the result of the General Election -- until the exit polls come out at 10pm on the day.
People say coalition governments work well in Europe, but Britain is not Europe, and for those old enough to remember, they never worked well under our adversarial system.
A further constitutional point is that Gordon Brown is not going to resign unless the Conservatives end up fewer than a dozen seats short of an overall majority. Otherwise he will cling on to power, dangling the carrot of proportional representation under the nose of Britain’s third party, something Ted Heath wasn’t prepared to do in 1974.
So to all those thinking of voting UKIP, or any other minor party, the advice is don’t. Vote Labour instead, because the result will be the same, and at least your vote won’t have been wasted.

No Council Tax Increase

Last night in Kingston the Conservatives set out a detailed budget, showing how to freeze the local council tax whilst maintaining services to the public.
Unfortunately this will be of no benefit to residents of the Royal Borough -- who already pay the highest rate of council tax in London -- because Britain’s third party who run the Council imposed a further 1.9% increase regardless.
The same evening Spelthorne joined a long line of Conservative run councils that are freezing council tax this year, specifically to ease the burden on the less well off caused by Labour’s recession.
I couldn’t believe it when one councillor from the minority party criticised the Conservative budget proposal for lacking in detail -- this from a party that yet again failed to present an alternative budget for the 19th year in a row. Nevertheless their lack of support demonstrated a commitment to raising the tax in Spelthorne as elsewhere.

Fin du Régime

I don’t think we need to wait for tomorrow’s TV broadcast of the Prime Minster’s interview by Piers Morgan to conclude that Gordon Brown is finished.
The sheer hypocrisy of criticising David Cameron for talking about his children 18 months ago, and then weeping about his own family is enough on its own.
Wearing his heart on his sleeve so uncharacteristically just smacks of desperation, not something people admire in a politician.
That’s not to say the British election is over, because Labour has built up such a huge client state in the last twelve years: six million on welfare, an extra million public sector employees (all on indexed-linked pensions) and a wave of foreign workers who’ve never had it so good.
Still, at least a hung parliament will expose the minority parties for the charlatans that they are, and remind us why the largest one was thrown out of office nearly a century ago.
Which reminds me of my favourite doorstep question to a Labour voter:

Name me a Labour Prime Minister who didn’t end in economic ruin?

To which the answer came:

Lloyd George.

Update Sunday: Piers Morgan's interview was very entertaining -- Gordon's still dead meat though.

The Game’s Up

I was going to blog today how the game’s up for Labour, but that can keep for another day.
There’s a small minority party -- “the third party” -- who are now resorting to desperate measures to save their seats.
They’ve started this rumour that Kingston Hospital is set to close. A classic wheeze, because they can then campaign to keep it open, and claim the credit when it stays open. Meanwhile everyone gets worried, both patients and staff, and recruitment suffers.
The Conservative Party is the only British political party committed to increasing NHS expenditure, and specifically would impose an immediate moratorium on closures of A&E (Emergency Room) and maternity units nationwide -- services allegedly threatened at Kingston. For more see Helen Whately.
So I warn the third party party: “Be careful what your stir”.

Don’t even mention them

It’s just occurred to me that I’ve not been following my own advice on this political blog, though I’ve only slipped up a couple of times this year.
There is a small British protest party that craves publicity, ably assisted from time to time by the BBC.
The thing they most hate is being ignored by the two main parties.
They spend their time attacking either one of the mainstream parties in the hope of getting some reaction. They make outrageous claims and then hope the main party will hit back.
They even spent their time at the Spelthorne Open Primary taking notes of everything the Conservative candidates said in the hope of catching them out later on.
As I wrote in December, they are the “teenagers” of British politics, and if you ignore them they’ll stop bothering you. (I don’t suggest this for real teenagers, whose angst we must suffer with love).

Chasing Votes

I spent Friday evening chasing Spelthorne’s new Labour Parliamentary Candidate around Upper Halliford -- still wet behind the ears he hasn’t yet learnt to push his leaflets right through the letterbox.
He says he’s going to commute from Staines station -- interesting, as he doesn’t live here. He harks back to 1945 the last time Spelthorne voted Labour. A pity that the only person who remembered him call at their door was a Tory Party member. I’m glad he’s concentrating on Shepperton and Sunbury, areas where Spelthorne's third party rely so much on squeezing the Labour vote.
I found quite a few people interested in next week’s Open Primary to choose the Conservative Party candidate. Funny how people have different views about the same person, but that’s democracy. Gordon Brown isn’t completely written off, and there are worries whether Cameron is Thatcherite enough -- but that’s what they thought about Thatcher in 1978/9, before the word was invented!

Hung Parliament

With practically half the UK population on the Labour Government’s payroll, including six million of working age on welfare and a million extra state employees over the last decade, the result of this year’s election cannot be gauged by opinion polls.
Whilst Britain needs a Government with a clear mandate, at this stage a closer result is more likely.
I would argue that a hung parliament is preferable to a narrow majority -- such as the one John Major had to contend with.
If Britain's third party were to support a minority government it would expose them as immature and priggish, and marginalize them as just the protest party that they are.
They would be ridiculed for propping up a discredited Labour Government, and one false move in any coalition with the Conservatives would earn them the blame for a crisis snap election.