Three months ago you thought : If Cameron can’t beat Brown, he should top himself.
New Labour is ghastly. We all know that now.
What a crew, really.
Historians will be astounded when they look at this crew: salesman Tony, grumpy Gordon, menacing Mandelson and Campbell the bully. All thought their main enemy was the BBC.
Those four are beyond belief. Mandy is in the House of Lords and AC does theatre tours. You couldn’t make it up. You could not make it up ! You look at those four and wonder : What kind of country are we living in?
Since John Major took office, politicians have wholly concentrated on presentation, not substance.
Ministers come in to their offices every day and read the papers and ask : What can we do to get some good press tomorrow?
That’s how they operate. That’s why UK PLC has such a massive debts now. They don’t give a toss about future generations. They don’t care that the public hates them or that people think all politicians are liars, that normal, sane middle class people would like to shoot the hundreds of MPs who fiddled their expenses on such a disgusting scale.
What is government anyway? Quite simply, government is the legal right to tax you. They take your money and waste 60% of it.
In Britain, a sophisticated country, we have written records of the taxes paid by citizens since the year 1200.
That’s right, since 1200. And guess what? The taxes you paid when Gordon Brown was Chancellor were the highest taxes ever paid by British people since 1200.
That is a historical fact and a statistical truth. Not only that, but Brown allowed casino banking and we are now in the worst recession for 70 years, caused by deregulated bankers who thought they were the masters of the universe and knew they were Too Big To Fail. Those scumbags should not have been bailed out with taxpayers money and borrowed money. They should be jailed for 150 years.
No wonder people are disillusioned, disconnected. No wonder there was apathy until the X Factor debates got people talking about Clegg, Cameron and Brown.
Three months ago Nick Clegg went out with Vince Cable because nobody knew who he was. Three months ago we all thought Cameron would walk it. We knew, as Tony Blair always knew, that Gordon Brown was unelectable. Brown has no balls and no vision on the way forward. No vision at all. He has only had one idea in his whole life : to be Prime Minister. And we have seen, once Brown got into No.10 he did not have a vision or even half a vision or even one idea !
Now, on the morning of polling day 2010, we can see that Brown has lost it.
But we’re not sure if Cameron has won it.
That’s where we are this morning. Gordon has lost it….but has Dave won it?
How much of the anti-Gordon vote will go to the Lib Dems?
That’s the $64,000 question. How much of the anti-Brown vote will go to Nick Clegg?
Cameron is a PR man with no policies, pretending 2010 is 1980. Maggie said : Buy your council house! Cameron says : Can’t find a school you like? Start your own !
Cameron is posh and belongs in his Wiltshire mansion with a glass of Pimm’s in his hand.
Will the Tories win? We don’t know. Brown has lost it but Cameron hasn’t won it yet and we don’t want a cabinet containing six Etonians.
That’s where we are. If the Tories win, there will be another election in 2011 and we’ll have to go through all this again.
For Labour, this election was never about whether Gordon was elected Prime Minister. It was always about whether Labour would lose so badly that they would be out of power for 12 years.
If I thought it was exciting, if I thought any of the three were credible Prime Ministers, I’d stay up all night and watch the Election. Instead, I’ll get up at 7 a.m. and switch on BBC Breakfast and see what happened.
What’s the first duty of a politician? To get elected. What’s the second duty of a politician? To get re-elected. Tony Blair is the best example of that you will ever see. He won three elections. And, as I say, Tony always knew that Gordon Brown was unelectable.
I’m reminded of a conversation round at John’s greengrocer’s shop three summers ago. John gets up at 3 a.m. to drive the van to the Fruit & Veg market near Heathrow, so he has a kip in the afternoon and sometimes his brother Eddie, an electrician, looks after the shop.
Eddie was a big midfielder who used to play with Stuart Pearce for Brent Under-18s. They played against each other for Willesden Boys and Kingsbury Boys. Later on they worked together as electricians for Brent Council. Eddie said, “He wasn’t the greatest footballer around but he was the most dedicated. And he could kick the ball the full length of the pitch, even then.”
On this particular sunny afternoon the street was quiet and the shop was empty and Eddie and I were standing among all the apples, oranges, bananas and cauliflowers, talking about football to a guy Eddie knows. The guy said he was a Shrewsbury fan.
Then Eddie turned towards me and I saw a sly smile on his face.
“Tell him your three biggest regrets,” he said.
“I never saw Elvis, I never saw Otis Redding, and I voted for Tony Blair in ’97.”