Political Piss Take

The thing I probably write most often about is not having anything to write about, or else having far too many options and not knowing which one to go with. Either way the topic of my daily five-hundred word diatribe is often only decided as I start to flail away blindly at the keyboard. You can usually tell whether the post has undergone a long gestation of cautious deliberation, or whether it has been rattled off in ten minutes. Yes, you guessed it, the spontaneous ones generally get the best reception, while the idea-eggs I lay many hours before sometimes hatch out as ugly ducklings, rather than the regal swans I imagine them to be. That’s my problem, I reckon; overthinking.

Thankfully such affliction is rarely visited upon our glorious leaders. On Thursday night Ed said there would be no deal with the SNP, by Friday even his own supporters were briefing that of course there will be, if it proves politic. A Ukip spokesman said cap immigration and the very next day Nigel Farage said don’t. David Cameron supports Child Benefit which he would never discuss the possibility of maybe considering thinking about possibly reforming, but that doesn’t mean a cut… and the next day still nobody knows what he intends. And some time ago Nick Clegg said something about tuition fees, but I expect that will have been forgotten by the time you read this.

You’d think that maybe they could have had a meeting, or at the very least sent a round-robin email. Given that the election campaign is effectively their job interview you’d imagine that every political party would want to look less like an Alan Sugar's Apprentice-style Team-Tossers and a little bit more Red Arrows. They wouldn’t even need to fly in such close formation so much as just travel more or less in the same direction. Maybe they should all get a Digby Jones or a Gordon Ramsey… or a Bear Grylls to boot-camp them into shape before letting loose their half-assed ideas on an increasingly difficult-to-please voting public.

I can just about begin to see the appeal of Russell Brand, or Natalie Bennett; they may have ideas that would make a box of frogs appear sane, but at least their lunatic inconsistencies have a bizarre internal logic of their own… for all we know their policies may make perfect sense on their home planets. But we are not electing entertainment; we are trying to pick a team to compete on the global economic stage. Is it too much to ask that they at least get their lies straight? Because we know we’re being lied to, of course, it would just be nice for it to look like they’d made the effort to pretend otherwise.

Now there's an idea!

What’s the alternative to the traditional hustings hysteria? What could replace the good old stump when you need a tub-thump? What could a party do to convince us that they meant business, that they were a serious concern with a mission they intended to see through to the bitter end? I’ve had enough of weasel words, I want to see a potential future government in action. To that end I suggest that they all compete to organise a practical task; gather a bunch of unrelated people in a traditional work place, ply them with booze and get them to thrash out their differences. At least that way we could finally get to elect a party that can actually organise a piss up in a brewery.