For me, the election war is over

“For you, Tommy, ze war is over!” The Germans always said this to captured British soldiers in the war films that were such a staple of my childhood.

Of course they were completely wrong, as Tommy invariably joined an escape committee and made an ingenious exit from his prison camp a couple of reels later.

But for me the General Election certainly is over, because I cast my vote on Saturday.

It feels wrong, just sticking an envelope in a post box rather than making a cross with a stubby pencil in a rickety plywood booth, after joshing with the party canvassers outside, and being ticked off the register by an official.

Not that there were many canvassers to be found outside the long demolished Callaly Women’s Institute hut, where I cast my last vote in person in Northumberland.

The election after that I was away on business so I asked for a postal vote, expecting it to be a one-off, but it turned out to be a permanent arrangement.

Now, I can see in theory that voting 12 days before the polls open is completely wrong. One should hear all the arguments before taking a view on any debate.

But leave it too long and you start to worry about your vote missing the count due to postal delays. And you end up, as I did in 2010, driving to the nearest polling station to hand over your postal vote in person. Which seems frankly ridiculous.

In any case, personal acquaintance with one candidate, and the conviction that she will be an excellent constituency MP, made her my absolutely obvious choice. I’d like to think I would still have voted for her if she had not been standing for the party to which I owe well over 40 years of tribal loyalty.

Naturally I’m going to feel pretty sick if, in the last week of the campaign, someone uncovers a secret off-manifesto commitment to slay all first-born sons, ban the wearing of ties or make forehead identity tattoos compulsory.

However, the chances of this seem slight. And now that I have become a mere observer of the various campaigns, rather than a potential voter, I can watch the contenders slug it out with the same sort of relaxed detachment with which I always approach the Oxford and Cambridge boat race. (Because, although I went to Cambridge, I have absolutely no interest in rowing.)

This election bears some similarities to that race with its two evenly matched teams slogging hard for the finish line. Though for the comparison to work fully we would have to add an SNP speedboat weaving back and forth across the course, threatening to upset the Conservative and Labour eights in its wash.

Plus a UKIP cabin cruiser, well stocked with gin, a Green pedalo, a Welsh Nationalist coracle and a Lib Dem submarine (actually a sunken coxless four).

The one and only time I went to watch the boat race, because I lived in London and could think of no excuse, it did not happen because Cambridge sank before the event had even started.

At least there is no chance of being denied a fascinating and unpredictable spectacle on the night of May 7th/8th, for which I will lay in Champagne either to celebrate or to drown my sorrows.

I have sat up for every election since 1970, when I enjoyed my first “Portillo moment” as the outgoing Labour foreign secretary George Brown lost his seat at Belper. That was an election the Conservatives were not expected to win; I can vividly remember the BBC bringing on a signwriter to paint some more digits on the Tory side of their swingometer.

The election of 1992 was also a pleasant surprise for those of a Conservative persuasion, though I don’t suppose there is any hope of Ed Miliband holding a triumphalist rally in Sheffield and repeatedly yelling “We’re all right!” to repel wavering voters.

Still, once every couple of decades the pundits seem to get it wrong. Let’s see if the pattern holds next week, with an unexpectedly decisive result for either would-be Prime Minister.

As I always say at weddings, may the best man win.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

You've let me down again

Like every right-thinking columnist in the country, I am extremely disappointed with your performance in the European and local elections.

I should perhaps clarify that I mean “right-thinking” in the sense of “correct” (though not, heaven forfend, politically correct) rather than as an indicator of my own allegiance.

Unlike many, I am not annoyed that 27.5% of you who voted chose a party led by Viz comic’s “Man In The Pub”. That is your prerogative.

But I am beyond furious that 66% of you could not be bothered to vote at all.

What on earth was so utterly riveting that it prevented you from nipping out at any point between 7am and 10pm last Thursday and marking a simple cross on a piece of paper? A journey that you could have avoided, as I did, by requesting a postal vote.

Don’t say “It doesn’t change anything” and “They’re all the same”. Because they’re not, as the triumph of The Man In The Pub demonstrates.

I keep hearing radio interviews with people banging on about how we need to increase numbers on the electoral register and perhaps extend the franchise to 16- and 17-year-olds, but surely this pales into insignificance compared with just persuading the two thirds of the electorate already on the register to get off their backsides and at least feign an interest.

Our former third party used to be fond of arguing that we would all be more engaged if we made every vote count by abolishing the unfairness of “first past the post”. In the circumstances, it would have taken a heart of stone not to laugh at the almost complete destruction of the Liberal Democrats under a system of proportional representation.

It had all the appeal of watching a famous big game hunter being trampled to death by an angry elephant.

Not so long ago “I agree with Nick” was the political catchphrase on nearly everyone’s lips. Now the only person likely to utter it is Mrs Clegg, and he probably can’t even count on that.

The ejection from the European Parliament of that other Nick from the BNP was another bright spot, burnished by his explanation that the electorate had “voted for UKIP’s racist policies instead”.

Meanwhile Labour are furious with what remains of the white working class for daring to vote for The Man In The Pub rather than their union-appointed leader, who has performed the great feat of making Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock look like top Prime Ministerial material.

Among the erstwhile major parties only David Cameron seems to be avoiding serious questions about his leadership by keeping his head down and praying that his natural supporters will now return to the fold after registering their “protest vote”.

Over the coming months we will grow very weary indeed of hearing “Vote Farage, Get Miliband” trotted out as the entirely negative argument for voting Conservative.

Where are the positives? I am a natural pessimist, but even I am weary of the endless doom and gloom that passes for political debate in this country today.

Britain is a great place to live. (Clearly it must be, or immigration would not be such a big election issue.) The North East is the best place to live in Britain (as I am reminded every time I have to leave it to earn a living).

In my view we all have much to be grateful for but, if you don’t agree, you have the power to change it. Thanks to the Fixed-term Parliaments Act of 2011 we already know that the next General Election will be on May 7, 2015. So you have nearly a full year to practise going out of the house or to get a postal vote lined up.

If the two thirds of you who did not bother to vote last week could be persuaded to do so, all the polls and calculations will go out of the window because literally anything is possible. Surely that thought must excite you just a tiny little bit?

If not, please remember that those who do not bother to vote automatically lose all entitlement to that most cherished of benefits: the right to moan about the result.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Dumbing down politics to the level of "I'm A Celebrity"

The great British public loves voting: the entire weekend TV entertainment schedule, from The X-Factor to I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, is based on that simple fact.

More than 11 million of us tuned in on Sunday evening to enjoy the self-inflicted humiliation of Conservative MP Nadine Dorries in the Australian jungle, no doubt particularly looking forward to the appearance on the menu of the customary marsupial unmentionables. There will surely never be a better excuse for a heartfelt nationwide cheer of “Go Nad!”

And yet, at the same time, the great British public hates voting when it comes to trekking out to some dimly hit church hall on a dank November evening to make a cross on a piece of paper with a blunt pencil stub.

Which is why it is so widely predicted that turnout for the Police and Crime Commissioner elections this Thursday will make the notion that the winners possess a democratic mandate completely laughable.

The mechanics of this election have been dreadfully handled. The timing could hardly be worse unless they had chosen to hold it on Christmas Day.

Because my work takes me away from home a great deal, I have long been on the electoral register at two different addresses. As I write three days before the vote, I have not received a polling card at either of them.

I have no idea whatsoever who is standing in one area, and am only dimly aware of two candidates in the other, though I believe that there are others.

What has the Government done to inspire me or anyone else to go out and vote? Indeed, what is the point of this exercise at all?

Where was the popular demand for us to vote for the people in charge of our police forces? Did some bright spark in a think tank note that the Americans vote for their sheriffs, and conclude that we should import the concept here?

Where is the evidence that the current system of oversight by police authorities is failing, or that their replacement by individuals is going to achieve anything useful?

Particularly when the brilliantly designed system has managed to debar some seemingly promising independent candidates on the grounds of trifling childhood misdemeanours, while holding the door ajar for superannuated Westminster politicians we fondly imagined we had dismissed from public life forever.

Vera Baird, defeated as MP for Redcar in 2010 on the biggest anti-Labour swing in the UK; now Labour's candidate as Police and Crime Commissioner for Northumbria

The only explanation I can see is the same one underpinning the Government’s desire to inflict elected mayors on as many communities as possible (and don’t imagine for a moment that having voted against this once will be the end of it).

We are assumed to be far too thick to see beyond one high profile individual, or to understand the workings of a council, committee, cabinet or Parliament.

Why settle for a dull old Watch Committee when you could have another Boris?

It is the application to the world of politics of the same shallow celebrity culture that dominates the TV schedules and the popular press, and I loathe it as fervently as I detest the sort of creepy-crawlies whose starring roles ensure that I will never willingly watch I’m A Celebrity.

I am old enough to remember when Clive James used to mock exactly this sort of thing by running clips from a hideous Japanese TV game show called Endurance, which I used to watch through clasped fingers with the horrified superiority of one who mistakenly believed that his own culture would never stoop so low.

Perhaps, of course, our leaders are right, and we really are this dumb. In which case, may I respectfully suggest that the next round of Police and Crime Commissioner elections is held on prime-time TV, with candidates afforded an opportunity to explain themselves and voting lines opened so that we may express an opinion from the comfort of our armchairs?

Because if they are determined to make public service a branch of celebrity culture, that is surely the only way to go. We might even introduce a bush tucker trial and induce Nadine Dorries to stand for election.

Because, let’s face it, she is highly likely to be looking for another job if she ever returns from Down Under.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.