UK Election 2010

As predicted by many pundits at the start of the election campaign, the UK has a hung parliament – the first time since 1974. And at time of writing, Gordon Brown is still clinging onto power – or squatting - by his chubby finger nails courtesy of an unwritten constitutional convention. It all adds up to one of the oddest general elections in living memory, not least the disjuncture between opinion makers, pollsters and the British public. As Brendan O’Neill has already explored on spiked, their screeching prediction that Nick Clegg would smash the mould of British politics looked embarrassingly off-beam by Friday morning. Acres of favourable TV and press and still the Lib Dems actually lost seats rather than the expected miraculous breakthrough.

For the Midnight Bell, Cameron’s cardboard Conservatives did slightly better than expected or feared. By Friday afternoon, Cameron’s oily slick PR delivery on the news was already inducing mild nausea. It’s not so much that Cameron is too-posh-by-half, but that what he says is so utterly devoid of any real meaning that it becomes impossible to listen to him. Cameron actually had an easy ride by the media, with the Murdoch papers backing him all the way, and it was only Time Out’s Rachel Halliburton who put him under any real interview pressure. Of course, Brown was never fit to run the country and his dithery weakness as leader, and that stupendously revealing gaffe, only amplified these glaring horrors during the election campaign. Brown’s refusal to let go of power indicates a singular lack of public awareness. No doubt Brown will cling on as leader of the Labour Party rather than doing the decent thing and resign (though subsequent events have proved this prediction wrong!).

And so the big talking point of the election campaign, the televised leadership debate. To a certain extent it briefly stimulated interest in the campaign, but the viewing figures were woefully down on the predicted 20 million. Alongside boring viewers to death with the paucity of their ideas and vision, it reduced an active general election to a passive couch-and-pizza affair. As a sign of contempt for the public - or they simply couldn’t be bothered - canvassers were rather thin on the ground. The entire campaign was seemingly conducted in TV studios, save for the odd dash around the country by party leaders who then revealed that they didn’t like the public very much at all. Nevertheless, people wanted to discuss the election as serious adults and be part of civic society. So while there maybe understandable cynicism towards the major parties, there wasn’t cynicism towards the idea of democratically elected government. The public are open to future orientated ideas but none of the parties rose to the challenge.

As for the minor parties, the dreadful Greens won a seat in Brighton and already friends who live there are quickly stock piling proper light bulbs. The Midnight Bell was delighted that the BNP failed spectacularly in Barking and lost all of their council seats as well. Whilst not indulging in the pantomime hysterics of the radical left, it was important that the BNP did badly in order to silence the white-working-class-equals-racists-in-waiting sentiments of the political elite. A lot of their authority rests on the dangerous notion that freedoms should be curtailed to save society from the racist mob. Curiously enough, the fact that Nick Griffin was pelted with tomatoes by white working class youth was barely highlighted in the press. This was clearly a case of behaviour not fitting the preordained script written by liberal broadsheet editors and journalists.

There were moments of enjoyable farce during the election. Whilst obviously horrifying and very nearly tragic, Nigel Farage’s plane getting tangled up in his UKIP banner and crashing had a whiff of Carry On slapstick about it. The guy dressed up as a ghoulish Jesus in Cameron’s constituency was something else again. But he still wasn’t as bizarre as Andrew Neil’s VIP boat party as part of BBC 1’s election coverage. In between constituency election announcements, we’d be offered up political opinions by such political titans as Joan Collins, Bruce Forsyth and a very pissed Martin Amis. Neil’s giddy, hyper-ventilating interview technique contributed to the cheesy queasiness of it all. The message from this odd looking boat party was that if you were not here then you’re nobody (although most of us would prefer pins poked in our eyes than climb aboard). Still, the aloof-from-the-public atmosphere of Neil’s boat party, whilst spouting absolute drivel, perfectly captures the uneasy tone of the General Election.