Waking Up to a Massive Election - Part I

Phew! That was exhausting, wasn't it? In spite of myself, I've been pretty captivated by recent proceedings. Maybe I'm not so jaded and cynical after all?

As promised previously, here are my thoughts on the whole shebang:

The campaigns

Were strangely muted, I thought. They would have passed under the national radar almost completely had it not been for the "innovation" (that they've had elsewhere for upwards of half a century) of TV debates. They're a mixed bag, certainly, but they drew surprisingly large audiences and brought the parties' ideas to whole new audiences. I'm pretty sure that many (most?) of the people that watched the first debate, for instance, had never seen or heard of Nick Clegg. For that reason, the Lib Dems got the most out of the debating thang (or so we thought, before we saw the results). Why Cameron and Brown agreed to have the Libs in them is still beyond me. They (possibly correctly?) misunderestimated the yellow peril big time.

My main concern with the debates is that they take us one step further down the line to presidentialism (which would be fine, but that we simply do not have that system here. Maybe we should, but that's another debate). Another issue I have with them is that they're pretty rubbish as information sources go. I for one was spending all my time trying to "score" the leaders' performances, rather than listening to what they had to say (which was largely drivel, to be fair to me). The parallels with boxing were incredible. People were actually talking about "knockout blows" and "points victories", an effect that was only heightened by the other politicians' wildly biased "interpretations" afterwards - all declaring their man to be the winner. Silly stuff. Such concerns are largely irrelevant, though (my views? Irrelevant? I hear you splutter), as leaders' debates are here to stay. You can't put the democratic genie back in the bottle (happily). Anyone complaining about them now is pissing in the wind, I'm afraid.

To vote, or not to vote?

As you may be aware, I am, customarily, a non-voter. I've given all my reasons here before, but, basically, it's partly about not making a difference and partly about not being interested in choosing between a douche and a turd. This time, though (my first time since making said resolution, rather embarrassingly), I crumbled. It was after the first debate. I'm a lot close to the Lib Dems, politically, than the other two. Part of the reason I wasn't planning to vote for them this time is that I assumed (correctly, as it happened) that they had no chance of, y'know, winning. That debate and particularly the Cleggmania that followed it, led me to think otherwise. Silly man. It's clear, now, that the Libs will never get a majority under First Past the Post (not that their, what, 23% of the vote would have won under any system). Cleggmania, in hindsight, was a case of the media getting ahead of themselves, but it was based on solid(ish) numbers of viewers that took to Clegg, due to his masterclass in not being the other two. I think people will look back and see this election as born of the expenses scandal. Nobody trusts politicians and as soon as the novelty wore off and people realised Clegg was one, they left him at the altar. Naughty electorate. Such a tease.