Election 2010 Review

This year’s General Election passed by without much fuss, possibly due to the fact that it didn’t pique a lot of interest in this quarter – there was no mandate to extradite Antipodeans – but probably because a lot of people knew nothing much would come of it. Through all the polling, water-cooler chat and leader’s debates, the same recycled themes were being trotted out, with nary a sign of any originality, and certainly a lack of any creative license. Save for the token Gordon Brown gaffe, this was an underwhelming three-way tryst, and one which eventually gave the people of Britain approximately fuck all to get excited about.

For the defending champion, Gordon Brown, a man who seems particularly ill-suited to smiling or any other positive human emotion, this was his election to lose. He was passed a hand grenade by his predecessor: a broken economy and a couple of wars for which the justification is still questioned, but he managed to sidestep those and lose the election all by himself. His chance or genius moment in the sun came so close to the election that the shit still stank and he couldn’t wipe it off. His biggest mistake was to apologise to the ‘bigoted woman’, when he could have retained some credibility in defeat had he stuck to his guns. Nevertheless…

His nearest rival, David Cameron, founded his campaign on being the family man, while also trotting out that well-worn slogan of ‘change’. Fair play to Cameron, who seems like a high-brow John Key clone, but judging by results alone some of the populous were seeking a bit more than just change. He represented the party who hadn’t dragged the country into its current parlous fiscal state, so was seen as some sort of anti-Brown which was good enough for some. However he displayed all the charisma of a Shane Watson interview, while lacking the blond tips that would make him so polarising. This made it difficult to like him or hate him and just added to the bland, ultra-British Mount Rushmore of inadequacy. The shame of it all was that this guy was the favourite.

To paraphrase a brilliant quote from Hot Shots: Part Deux, the third banana in this particularly bland fruit salad was the best of what was left. Nick Clegg, who carried the hopes of the left-leaning Liberal Democrats and those in the UK who don’t like red or blue, thrived on the opportunity to lob grenades at the other two while trying to convince the Kingdom that he was a legitimate ‘other’ option, when in fact the First Past the Post system was never going to allow him to hold the country to ransom in a manner that Winston Peters made his own in the 90’s and beyond. So his hands were tied, but this didn’t stop him from winning the Election 2010 People’s Choice Award, while earning rave reviews in the first ever televised Leader’s Debates. By the way, for a country that has a universal obsession with fame and reality TV, isn’t it weird that Iran had a televised leaders’ debate before Britain had one? Just goes to show how broken this system really is. And yet, I digress.

Clegg’s strength lay in his ability to distance himself from the other two leaders and their parties’ samey-same lines about how they will change the country for the better; unfortunately one of his weaknesses was that he looks like a cross between Brown and Cameron, so while his policies were slightly recognisable, he unfortunately, was not. Brown’s advantage was in his debating, where it was said he crushed his opponents like an iron hammer. This is a ringing endorsement. Unfortunately for Brown, he is Gordon Brown, and this reminded too many people of what happens when you put a robot in charge. Cameron’s strength lay in his ability to not be Gordon Brown, which proved that a blue cardboard box with the party’s policies written on it could have put up a strong fight against Gordy. Ironically his weakness was his whole campaign, because it didn’t convince enough people that red looks bad in a recession. So who won and what does that mean?

Unfortunately for everyone concerned, the result produced a stalemate. Fuck. With the magical number of seats to hold an overall majority in the House of Commons at 326, David Cameron is now kicking himself that he couldn’t eke out any more than 306. Since he is unlikely to form a coalition with the left-leaning Lib Dems (think Labour teaming up with Act, in a bizarro NZ version of the result), his party is unlikely to have a mandate to govern the country by itself. Worse still, combine the total seats gained by Labour and the Lib Dems, and it’s still not enough to form a majority government. Fuckity-fuck. And the loser in all this: Nick Clegg. Due to the constraints of the FPP system, while his party won 23% of the popular vote, they only managed 62 out of 649 seats. Ouch.

But the real loser out of all this? The British public. Faced with a ‘hung’ parliament in which no party has control, decisions will be made with the regularity of an Aaron Redmond century. So the politicians will sit on their hands getting paid and having their moats cleaned, insinuating that they are helping the country recover from its current mire, when in fact this will happen all over again in 6 to 12 months when they call for another election. And then? Who knows, but hopefully Cameron is savvy enough to put it off long enough until the Olympics roll around so he can cash in on some well earned freebies.

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So what do we now know about the 2010 UK election? With a bit of water under the bridge and some new residents at 10 Downing Street we can now make some assumptions from afar.

Off the bat, Labour – or New Labour, as it was reprogrammed by Tony Blair – is no longer in charge. They managed to successfully fuck up the economy like pretty much every other liberal government around, provided the world with two leaders with bizarre speech impediments, as well as the smarmiest looking politician ever seen who also happens to have the strangest hair to eyebrow ratio seen since Scorsese. Strangely, none of this seemed to work in their favour when it came time to vote.

Instead, something weird happened. It wasn’t that it was the first coalition since World War Two. It wasn’t that combining the two leaders’ names comes up with Dick Cleggron. It wasn’t even the fact that two parties with seemingly diametrically opposed ideologies joined together so that they can suck from the teat of power. It was actually the apathetic reaction from the British public that caught me by surprise. I had to double take, but I understood the general vibe to be somewhat hopeful, without any real knowledge as to why.

The Conservative Party finally got over the hump, pairing their 305 seats to the Liberal Democrats’ 57, thus ensuring they had the 326 required to form a majority government. This didn’t happen without some stoic defence of his post from Gordon Brown, who made all the right noises when he realised his days were numbered, effectively telling the country that since nobody had really won, he was still calling shots. But then Cameron and the Tories, realising how close they were to better accommodation and comfier chairs, turned up the heat on Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems. Their offer was probably a bit like when Michael hugged Fredo at Mama Corleone’s wedding: come and join the family again; everything will be fine; we’ll even let you take Anthony fishing every once and a while. Replace fishing with Chief Secretary to the Treasury – a position where power sharing probably isn’t the best course of action – and you can see the hopes of the Lib Dems sinking quicker than we must presume poor Fredo’s body did.

But to be sure, the Lib Dems had to gather as a party and vote on the offer of whether to form a government with the Tories. I’m guessing this vote would have lasted all of fifteen seconds and been as conclusive as it was long. Nevertheless, as the two leaders got together in the gardens at Downing Street and advocated not just a new government but a new type of government, spouting the appropriate rhetoric about togetherness, progress, fairness and prosperity, it was hard not to notice a glaring fact that remained at the end of a madcap couple of weeks. The centre-left parties gained about 55% of the vote, yet the government is anything but centre-left. Many of the people who voted for Clegg did so in the hope that they would not get Cameron. In fact, 4 out of 5 Liberal Democrat voters identified with ‘left-wing’ rather than the right. So if you take that one step further, roughly 55% of British voters were seeking someone left of centre. But they got Conservatives instead.

What happens from here is anyone’s guess. Inheriting a deficit of over a billion pounds is a bit shit, while there are wars to be fought and unemployment – a click over 10 mil – is a pickle. But then, what country doesn’t have these problems? And at least the Olympics are around the corner. Not to mention a certain World Cup march to glory in South Africa. Whatever happens, there will always be Dick Cleggron.

Mackaveli