11 Instant reflections on #ge2015
- In the snug womb of the polling booth, people default to self-interest - unless they’ve been given a really amazing reason not to. Poor Ed Miliband won’t be the last politician unable to summon up a purpose stronger than MONEY.
- Lynton Crosby must be one scary ice man. I mean, wasn’t he even tempted to bring out the dancing girls and pull some crazy stunts? To be convinced that Cameron and team should just keep saying “long-term economic plan” must take some nerve.
- Me, I think the Liberal Democrats behaved with great integrity in 2010 and will rebound strongly in 2020.
- Tony Blair?! I mean, really. Like a slapdash CEO, he abdicated responsibility for economic affairs to his finance director. Then he shattered the delicate equilibrium of the Middle East. Then he did play-tinkering with the British constitution leaving us, 18 years later, with a precious union that’s falling apart at the seams.
- Andrea Jenkyns – and, it has to be said, Ed Balls – restored my faith in politicians with a seriously gracious performance when she snatched the Morley and Outwood seat from the former shadow chancellor.
- Sleeves rolled up are the new soapbox.
- I can’t help but feel that lurking behind nice Nicola Sturgeon are some fairly mean SNP dudes.
- How pissed off must Mark Reckless feel?
- The BBC needs to up its game on election night. Too many superannuated commentators (Peter Mandelson, FFS!!), not enough of the sharp stuff that was taking place on Twitter. This lack of imagination was made worse on the woeful Question Time on Friday night, where Alastair Campbell and Paddy Ashdown were dragged out again for yet another dreary performance.
- If people in Sunderland can run so fast, how come there aren’t more famous Sunderland athletes?
- We feel like a divided country. It’s all right for us lot in the south with our rising house prices and access to the City of London and international markets bla bla. Life clearly feels very different in our former industrial towns in the north of England, and it’s the responsibility of a well-run Conservative government to start to bridge the divide.
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9 年'Bla has an 'h' on the end. Blah.
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9 年A lot of people have dismissed the pro-Conservative vote as self-centred. I didn't vote that way myself, but I suspect many people will have done so because they didn't trust the alternative. Ed M had started (too late) to bridge the 'emotional' gap but the detached, cold 'will this work or won't it?' anxieties were never addressed, particularly once it became apparent (according to the ultra-reliable polls) that he'd need the support of the SNP, which he was declining. I don't think all Conservatives are selfish. The idea that you need to produce wealth to fund the NHS etc. is obvious, so looking after the wealth-makers is essential (and Labour this time around seemed openly hostile towards them). Unfortunately, and this is where the Tories and I part company probably irretrievably, my reading of history is that if you leave the wealthy to their own devices they hang on to their dosh rather than use it for the greater good. Hence the need for the NHS, the Living Wage, rights for minorities (remember the 1980s when that was dismissed as 'loony left' thinking?) - and a competent, balanced party of the middle ground.