Now that the worst-kept secret in UK politics has finally been revealed, Paul Stamp asks the question: who are you gonna vote for?

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Election

Well we now know when the election is going to be 05/05/05

BBC Election special >> 

So who are you gonna vote for ?

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Well, if I still had a vote in the UK, it would be for Labour, but through gritted teeth. I, and my parents before me, have always been socialist. However, over the years I have come to dislike and distrust Blair with a passion. While Old Labour, with its deals done in smoke filled rooms, had plenty wrong with it, at least at its best it had solid principles and a belief that there was such a thing as society. Noo Labour, with its emphasis on focus groups and image seems to me to be more show than soul. 

I find the Conservatives’ campaign, with its creepy slogan: "Are you thinking what we’re thinking" simply pandering to people’s prejudices. Michael Howard still has more than "something of the night" about him as far as I’m concerned. I think Andrew Marr got it spot on when he said last night on the BBC that the Conservatives’ campaign had more to do with the message of "vote for us, because that will be one in the eye for Labour" than a message of "here’s all our great policies, and that’s why it makes sense to vote for us". It’s interesting, as Marr pointed out, that the Conservatives have appointed Lynton Crosby as their election mastermind who ran an extremely effective campaign in Australia along precisely the same lines. It puts me in mind of magicians, who are the masters of misdirection ("don’t look at my left hand, concentrate on the right"). People continue to be fooled because they simply can’t keep their eye on the real ball…

Lib-Dems? Nice people, hearts in the right place. I also think that they speak more honestly – about the need to raise taxes where necessary, for example. Perhaps a cynic might claim that they can afford to be honest because deep in their hearts they know that they won’t form the next government. Could they be effective in government? I doubt that we will find out this time either.

Labour has done well with the economy, and that comes down to Brown. It seems to me that Labour has to persuade their voters to swallow their distaste of Blair and look beyond him to the handover to Brown, and ideally that should be to pass on to him the office of prime minister, rather than the leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition.

I discovered today that Bill Clinton is also blogging. Naturally, his blog is in a different universe to mine, and all the better for it. Surprisingly, for a politician, he doesn’t seem to pull any punches, take for example this entry on the assassination of Rafiq Hariri.

Update 5th April 2005: I had a feeling it was too good to be true. The blog has vanished, and this entry in the Language Log suggests that it was a fake. First rule of the Internet: No-one knows you’re a dog.