Gone to Ground
A dark cloud rode in from the shore in the days after the election. Charles Kennedy, Michael Howard and the Dear Leader himself...they were all feeling fearful and bruised after the campaign, only for a hearse full of fresh hell to descend.
There is paranoia in the trenches. The public is no longer to be trusted...although, for once, the exit polls were. How the hell can they understand us now? Blair put his faith in us and we Let Him Down by having our own opinion on the war. And we were a tricky nettle to grasp from Howard’s perspective...he never did find out exactly what we were thinking.
But Charles Kennedy is the most cheerful of the three. His party did well, but he will be brooding more than ever about what the party would have achieved under proportional representation. The Independent’s front page today is concerned with this, which is more than the Liberals gave the impression of doing during their campaign – a calculated omission to stop the public twirling their index fingers at their temples and muttering “oh no, not again”.
Tony Blair, though, is nursing a bad headache; he sits in his office surrounded by election detritus – a ripped poster here, an unconscious PA on the sofa there – and believes that the world is out to get him. He is worried because he fought a campaign focusing on what the party has achieved and how the Tories would shat on it. This was their strategy, to avoid focusing on Blair...and now the strategy takes its revenge. He is the lonely king on his throne who escaped the battlefield only to find all his subjects have been slain...or, indeed, have found other flags to worship.
A quick head massage and an encouraging pat upon the rump from Peter Mandelson will cure his headache. And once that has passed his choices are stark. He will either turn his grimace up to 11 and dig in for a few years until a few local elections yank the rug out from the party’s demeanour, whereupon he will disappear like a rat down a drainpipe. Or he will flick a nervous glance over the Atlantic and wonder whether George Bush can keep his signature away from the more military documents...perhaps he will realise he cannot tread the same tightrope of legality as last time now that the whole country is throwing stones. He will then heave a sigh and let Brown have his day.
The latter is unlikely because he feels he is Right, and the world is Wrong. His response over Iraq bears this out. New Labour is his party, and along with his inner circle he has controlled every nuance, every facial tic of the government for the last 8 years. To leave now would not be the actions of such a man; he needs his legacy, even if the hand of history on his shoulder is executing a Vulcan nerve pinch.
The Tories, though, have bigger problems. Michael Howard’s leaky boat has finally sprung a massive leak; Oliver Letwin, Nicolas “Fatty” Soames and Tim Yeo have all resigned, with Howard himself deciding to step down once they work out how the hell a successor can be elected.
Howard is too dejected to keep bailing and this means, according to Tory donors and senior figures, that he is failing to capitalise on the government’s post-election “moment of weakness” (the Guardian). In fact nobody wishes to lift their head above the parapet right now and this is no surprise...Blair has nothing to say about his rivals because they both were successful in acquiring votes from Labour. Kennedy and Howard have nothing to say about each other because the results show how little voters moved between the two parties...their paths barely crossed in the end. And they do not attack Blair because, after all, he won.
The remaining parties are irrelevant...even Galloway, who won in Bethnal Green & Bow, exposed himself as the minnow he is by “doing a Kilroy”, sabotaging his interview with a series of silly playground responses that he believed was in some way standing up to the dreaded Paxman. Paxman, of course, gave him very short shrift and then, bored with Galloway’s non-answers, turned away and started to talk to someone else.
But we were talking about Howard. He is presently confused over whether his immigration campaign was fundamentally flawed or not; tales from the doorstep suggest that he was wrong to back down on immigration towards the end of the campaign. But he has also realised that many non-core voters were alienated by the immigration stance. So what is a poor bigoted immigrant leader to do? Well... we already know the answer to that. Follow Iain Duncan Smith and William Hague down into the needle-strewn alley down behind Tory headquarters where all the bloodied and beaten souls gather, the ones who took on Blair’s overwhelming and omnipotent Chaos Engine only to be drowned out by the thumping of pistons and the broadcasting of endless sound and fury.
Despite sleek metal blades and pipes belching thick smoke, this machine is a harvester more than a thing of war. It is able to pull voters up from neighbouring fields and claim them as its own. People who would vote Tory but have the nagging feeling that Labour is achieving their dirty little agendas better than the real party of the right. Tactical voters who dislike the Tories and centre left voters who would vote Lib Dem if only they thought they had a chance. Pragmatists who haven’t seen anything Evil escape from the machine’s sights to feel they need to cast a more extreme vote.
Above all, the machine has been efficient...but its insurance policy has a brutal force majeure clause that kicked in over Iraq and ever since the party has had difficulty in rebuilding the damaged components. The engine blew a few gaskets too once the blueprints began to circulate...the public began to understand the arts used by Labour to control its environment, and felt uneasy when they saw how they were being manipulated.
Hmm. A strange metaphor and one that deserved to be worked at sometime, if only for the elegance of the Victorian steampunk imagery. But all I have now is flights of fantasy; I missed the weekend papers and so I was unable to soak up the immediate aftermath of the election. I do not know how the media reacted except for the 3am edition of the Guardian on the morning after. Some of the writers were filing stories as late as 2am, which meant the paper was able to treat the election as over bar the shouting. The trouble is that the media used up all the interesting analysis during the campaign. With all the what-ifs already explored, they now have little to do but dig around in the dirt for any meagre new facts about the figures.
From my perspective, I discovered the most important result on Friday night whilst sat in a blues bar in Amsterdam. When all the votes were counted, Wild Turkey beat Jim Beam by a considerable margin...although there was interference by a group of 50 year old women from Nottinghamshire who bothered the returning officer with requests to hold their cardigans whilst they go and dance to a calypso version of Hotel California.
Hurdy ho. Of course there are other stories about Amsterdam but I realise that most people have exactly the same stories, so it seems pointless to rake over those coals. After the fiftieth anecdote about space cakes the audience begin to defocus somewhat... All I need say is that the Bulldog is a fine hostel with an admirable 24 hour policy and a staff who know precisely what its clients want from a weekend in Amsterdam. And we will leave it at that.
There is paranoia in the trenches. The public is no longer to be trusted...although, for once, the exit polls were. How the hell can they understand us now? Blair put his faith in us and we Let Him Down by having our own opinion on the war. And we were a tricky nettle to grasp from Howard’s perspective...he never did find out exactly what we were thinking.
But Charles Kennedy is the most cheerful of the three. His party did well, but he will be brooding more than ever about what the party would have achieved under proportional representation. The Independent’s front page today is concerned with this, which is more than the Liberals gave the impression of doing during their campaign – a calculated omission to stop the public twirling their index fingers at their temples and muttering “oh no, not again”.
Tony Blair, though, is nursing a bad headache; he sits in his office surrounded by election detritus – a ripped poster here, an unconscious PA on the sofa there – and believes that the world is out to get him. He is worried because he fought a campaign focusing on what the party has achieved and how the Tories would shat on it. This was their strategy, to avoid focusing on Blair...and now the strategy takes its revenge. He is the lonely king on his throne who escaped the battlefield only to find all his subjects have been slain...or, indeed, have found other flags to worship.
A quick head massage and an encouraging pat upon the rump from Peter Mandelson will cure his headache. And once that has passed his choices are stark. He will either turn his grimace up to 11 and dig in for a few years until a few local elections yank the rug out from the party’s demeanour, whereupon he will disappear like a rat down a drainpipe. Or he will flick a nervous glance over the Atlantic and wonder whether George Bush can keep his signature away from the more military documents...perhaps he will realise he cannot tread the same tightrope of legality as last time now that the whole country is throwing stones. He will then heave a sigh and let Brown have his day.
The latter is unlikely because he feels he is Right, and the world is Wrong. His response over Iraq bears this out. New Labour is his party, and along with his inner circle he has controlled every nuance, every facial tic of the government for the last 8 years. To leave now would not be the actions of such a man; he needs his legacy, even if the hand of history on his shoulder is executing a Vulcan nerve pinch.
The Tories, though, have bigger problems. Michael Howard’s leaky boat has finally sprung a massive leak; Oliver Letwin, Nicolas “Fatty” Soames and Tim Yeo have all resigned, with Howard himself deciding to step down once they work out how the hell a successor can be elected.
Howard is too dejected to keep bailing and this means, according to Tory donors and senior figures, that he is failing to capitalise on the government’s post-election “moment of weakness” (the Guardian). In fact nobody wishes to lift their head above the parapet right now and this is no surprise...Blair has nothing to say about his rivals because they both were successful in acquiring votes from Labour. Kennedy and Howard have nothing to say about each other because the results show how little voters moved between the two parties...their paths barely crossed in the end. And they do not attack Blair because, after all, he won.
The remaining parties are irrelevant...even Galloway, who won in Bethnal Green & Bow, exposed himself as the minnow he is by “doing a Kilroy”, sabotaging his interview with a series of silly playground responses that he believed was in some way standing up to the dreaded Paxman. Paxman, of course, gave him very short shrift and then, bored with Galloway’s non-answers, turned away and started to talk to someone else.
But we were talking about Howard. He is presently confused over whether his immigration campaign was fundamentally flawed or not; tales from the doorstep suggest that he was wrong to back down on immigration towards the end of the campaign. But he has also realised that many non-core voters were alienated by the immigration stance. So what is a poor bigoted immigrant leader to do? Well... we already know the answer to that. Follow Iain Duncan Smith and William Hague down into the needle-strewn alley down behind Tory headquarters where all the bloodied and beaten souls gather, the ones who took on Blair’s overwhelming and omnipotent Chaos Engine only to be drowned out by the thumping of pistons and the broadcasting of endless sound and fury.
Despite sleek metal blades and pipes belching thick smoke, this machine is a harvester more than a thing of war. It is able to pull voters up from neighbouring fields and claim them as its own. People who would vote Tory but have the nagging feeling that Labour is achieving their dirty little agendas better than the real party of the right. Tactical voters who dislike the Tories and centre left voters who would vote Lib Dem if only they thought they had a chance. Pragmatists who haven’t seen anything Evil escape from the machine’s sights to feel they need to cast a more extreme vote.
Above all, the machine has been efficient...but its insurance policy has a brutal force majeure clause that kicked in over Iraq and ever since the party has had difficulty in rebuilding the damaged components. The engine blew a few gaskets too once the blueprints began to circulate...the public began to understand the arts used by Labour to control its environment, and felt uneasy when they saw how they were being manipulated.
Hmm. A strange metaphor and one that deserved to be worked at sometime, if only for the elegance of the Victorian steampunk imagery. But all I have now is flights of fantasy; I missed the weekend papers and so I was unable to soak up the immediate aftermath of the election. I do not know how the media reacted except for the 3am edition of the Guardian on the morning after. Some of the writers were filing stories as late as 2am, which meant the paper was able to treat the election as over bar the shouting. The trouble is that the media used up all the interesting analysis during the campaign. With all the what-ifs already explored, they now have little to do but dig around in the dirt for any meagre new facts about the figures.
From my perspective, I discovered the most important result on Friday night whilst sat in a blues bar in Amsterdam. When all the votes were counted, Wild Turkey beat Jim Beam by a considerable margin...although there was interference by a group of 50 year old women from Nottinghamshire who bothered the returning officer with requests to hold their cardigans whilst they go and dance to a calypso version of Hotel California.
Hurdy ho. Of course there are other stories about Amsterdam but I realise that most people have exactly the same stories, so it seems pointless to rake over those coals. After the fiftieth anecdote about space cakes the audience begin to defocus somewhat... All I need say is that the Bulldog is a fine hostel with an admirable 24 hour policy and a staff who know precisely what its clients want from a weekend in Amsterdam. And we will leave it at that.
posted by Jamie at 4:20 PM
1 Comments:
Ah, thanks Pete.
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