1417: David Cameron, on the trail in Southampton, goes into a toyshop and buys a plastic knight worth £2.99 for his son. He then pops in to a card shop, joking that he and his fellow campaigners have "probably frightened everyone off". As he leaves, a woman wearing sunglasses urges him to give "some detail" of his party's policy. Asked about the Lib Dems' manifesto, he jokes: "There are a lot of numbers in it, but there are a lot of numbers in Sudoko." About 81, we think????
Ahahahahaha. Oh you witty types down at the BBC, forcing yourself to laugh at a man whose main talent is not making jokes: hence why he's a politician and not a stand-up comic. In fact, the BBC have tried so hard to make the joke sound funny, they've gone and spelt Sudoku wrong. Oh noez!
See, this is why it's not always easy to be proud of being British, even though I'd like to be: because, to quote Saatchi and Saatchi, the establishment isn't working. In fact, such is its inability to adapt to change that it appears intent on rubbishing Twitter whilst at the same time constantly posting ON TWITTER. Remind me how that works, exactly?
So at the moment, the only thing that's saving David Cameron is that he's slightly less establishment-based than Gordon Brown is, which is not exactly what you would call a compliment. Though, in fairness to the man who could be king, he might well be able to turn that into a majority yet.
You see, this is the problem for the Conservatives and Labour. Clegg is annoying. A pest. A threat to the two-party system. He gets barracked at Prime Minister's Questions in a manner similar to Greg Rusedski's rant at Wimbledon in 2003. And then he has the nerve to say the first-past-the-post system needs reforming. Well, that's just not cricket, you Euro zealot!
In my opinion, Clegg is still somewhat of a lightweight: he only just beat Chris Huhne to win the Lib Dem leadership contest in 2007, which is not quite the same thing as winning a General Election. But although some of his policies do need quite a bit of scrutiny - the last time someone tried to scrap council tax she had to resign after several riots and a cabinet revolt - he will still happily talk about the elephant in the room, which is electoral reform.
I'm occasionally vague about where I stand - I've been invited to become both a fan of David Cameron and to take part in National Not Voting Conservative Day. But to borrow a phrase from one of the Conservative frontbench team - it's that Michael Gove again - the first-past-the-post-system is "eccentric". And politics is not currently the best place for people to be eccentric. A duck moat? That's a great idea! After all, nothing wrong with being eccentr... dammit.
This chaotic mess is shown brilliantly by the establishment itself (ta very much beeb), with the seat calculator. I've been mucking about with it, and how's this for a statistic...
If Labour were to get 51% of the vote, they could get 500 out of 650 seats. So 51% of the vote effectively translates into 77% of all total seats.
I'm not a mathematician, but that seems a bit messed up. That would be like doing 5,000 words on my dissertation and being given a first for it. Or when the bowling computer decides that, actually, you did knock down all the pins, even though you could have sworn that last one was still standing.
The issue that's risen to the boil today is this scenario: Labour comes third, but wins. Confused? Well, if the Liberal Democrats get 31%, the Conservative Party gets 30%, and the Labour Party gets 26% (with other parties getting 13%), then the number of seats goes like this.
Lib Dems - 123 seats
Conservatives - 229 seats
Labour - 269 seats
Other - 29 seats
So under our system, Brown would then stay as PM: and perhaps reasonably, Clegg says that's a farce. Wouldn't you?
Well, if you support the two main parties, you do at least have a number of reasons for suggesting why not. Firstly, hung parliaments usually don't end very well for the party running them - the Conservatives got mauled after a coalition in 1945, both parties changed their leader shortly after the hung parliament of 1974, and the Lib-Lab pact ended in Margaret Thatcher winning.
So as Gordon Brown and David Cameron both have a chance of being the largest party on May 7th, but also have a chance of having no majority: well, you can see why they might have the odd nightmare.
And if they were to introduce proportional representation: why, that could make it worse! What if the SNP was to win the most seats in Scotland, just like it has in the Scottish Parliament? Or, perhaps more reasonably, if the BNP were to win a seat? Because I am with the Conservatives on this one: the idea of the BNP or UKIP getting into the House of Commons is not a pleasant thought.
However, the answer to such a problem is simple: treating a party like the BNP unfairly gives them an excuse to preach unfair values back. If you're not going to advocate proper democracy, then why on earth should they? Proportional representation may not be perfect, but if it allows racist parties to fall flat on their face (and it generally does), then I'm for it.
The European Union has been brilliant at tackling this: it has a policy of proportional representation, and last year the BNP picked up two seats. Not exactly what I wanted to hear. And yet, their effect so far has been... what, exactly? Plainly put, if you give a party like that free speech, you'll be surprised how quickly they put their foot in their mouth. Question Time being a great example.
As if to then mock his constituents in Manchester, where he is an MEP, the BNP leader Nick Griffin is now running as the MP for Barking. Oh yes, I take the Manchester-Barking train all the time. Only takes three hours and a change at Euston and Embankment. Maybe he should be a councillor in both those places? After all, if he's going to be passing through them every day, he might as well.
Oh, and the suggestion that the first-past-the-post system is the best way of getting rid of the BNP, a former splinter-group of the National Front? Well, 43 years of the latter's existence would suggest that argument needs work.
Don't get me wrong. I'd like to go back to before New Labour in ways: life definitely seemed simpler back then. But then, it's like trying to find eternal youth, or wanting to Fire Up the Quattro. Yessir, nostalgia is a powerful thing. But as far as I know, we're mortal, you can't actually go back in time (believe me, I've tried, but that Tardis in Cardiff is locked shut), and there's a fine line between preserving the past and obsessing about it.
Learning from the past: good. But trying to make the past the future? You might want to leave that to the writers of Doctor Who and Ashes to Ashes. I may not have decided who to vote for, but I've decided this: it will soon become a question of when, and not if, the first past the post system will have to allons-y.
But, but, my precious...
Shush, or I'll set Wormtongue on you. After all,
Cameron has always been our friend and ally...Aaaand that's enough Lord of the Rings references, I think.
Thanks for reading,
Chris
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