JLF’s Guide to the British General Election

Alphen, Netherlands. 1 April. Today is April Fool’s Day so it is entirely appropriate that I write a blog on the forthcoming British General Election, which officially kicked off this week with a sustained barrage of lies, nonsense and utterly disingenuous disinformation.  Therefore, for those of you out there who suffered the ignominious moral turpitude of being born on the wrong side of the Atlantic and/or English Channel (if you were born on the wrong side of both at the same time you have no-one but yourselves to blame) here you will find all you need to know about the forthcoming hustings. 

Core message: The most important thing to understand is that General Election 2015 is a good old-fashioned 1960s-style class war.  The British political Right is primarily the preserve of the Eton College-educated aristo űber-class, “make ‘em cheap, flog ‘em high” ultra-big business, and gin and tonic-drinking, golf-playing small business.  The political Left has been finally, irrevocably and completely captured by British university lecturers (‘intellectuals’), their former students and their utterly unworldly view of everything and everyone.  Indeed, what passes for ‘debating’ these days in British universities normally involves the far Left debating the utterly implausible with the hard Left, fuelled by politically correct but completely irrelevant research and, of course, copious amounts of cheap booze (alcohol). 

The Conservative Party: (Motto - “Long-Term Self-Importance Plan, small government at any cost, and a rollicking good time for the chaps”.)  

Leader: David Cameron (Old Etonian ‘OE’, Lord Blagger and Upper Class Twit of the Year). 

Policies: Whatever big business wants.

Aim: To be in charge as that is what we ‘OE’ types do – noblesse oblige and all that.

Assessment: Bonkers rich, in the pocket of big business and but determined to achieve a champagne surplus by the end of the next parliament in 2020 at whatever the cost.

Supporters: In-bred aristocracy, Old Etonians. bloody big businessmen, landed gentry, women in tweed suits and sensible shoes, and nouveau riche (“oh please”) small business-type persons in the process of being house-trained. Intellectuals-banned (apart from Oliver Letwin (fellow ‘OE’)), no university lecturers welcome.   

Views on the EU: Somewhere over there, I think?  Didn’t Boris go to Brussels once, or was that London?  Full of the French, or is that Belgians? Hun not too far away either.  But big business paymasters say we must stay in EU to ensure cheap labour, so we will con the peasantry with a pretend in-out referendum.

The Labour Party:  (Motto - “We grow money on trees, and spend even more.”)

Leader: ‘Ed’ “Keep the Red Flag Flying” Miliband (Belgian Socialist of the Year, Chief Hampstead Intellectual. Call sign: ‘Geek’, aka ‘Wallace’). 

Policies: Soviet-lite statist

Aim: Re-nationalise everything and anything that moves under the rubric of ‘fairness’.  However, under no circumstances tell anyone until after the election.   

Assessment: Really bonkers. No idea where the money comes from but can think of a zillion ways to spend it.  We are all immigrants really.

Supporters: Power-hungry class warrior trade union barons, ageing trade unionists in south Wales who still think Labour is working class, minorities of various persuasions ‘invited’ to Britain by the last Labour government to re-create class war, everybody on benefits, lefty ‘wimmin’ who think men should be banned in the name of equality, AND mid-ranking university lecturers who are by and large lefty ‘wimmin’. 

Views on the EU: No referendum - far too democratic. Britain should be part of Belgium.

The Liberal Democrats: (Motto: “More Europe, Scrap Britain!”)

Leader: Nick Clog (Dutch Liberal of the Year and pretend Sheffielder). 

Policies: Not immediately apparent.  However, if they ever had any policies other than their traditional “we disagree with both Conservatives and Labour about everything” they were abandoned some time ago when they joined the Coalition Government and became yellow Tories. 

Assessment: Nothing to assess but clearly completely bonkers.

Membership: Declined somewhat in recent years.  There is apparently a nice lady in Chiswick, another rumoured to be hiding somewhere around Cheltenham, and an ‘activist’ (oxymoron if ever there was one) at the University of the M6 near Keele.  The remaining three are high-ranking university lecturers teaching semantics.

Views on the EU: Closet and not-so-closet Euro-federalists. Want to rig forthcoming British EU referendum by giving everyone in the EU a vote.  Whatever Brussels wants goes.

 

United Kingdom Independence Party: (Motto - “What do we want? The 1950s! When do we want it? Then!”)

Leader: Nigel (‘Nige’) Farage (Pretend Bloke and Beer Drinker of the Year). 

Policies: Rebuild the British Empire in Essex

Aim: To get everyone to accept that Johnny Foreigners were essentially a mistake but can be corrected with an Australian immigration points system.  Burn all intellectuals at the stake.

Assessment: Certifiably bonkers.  And, as the Aussies can’t count, UKIP’s one policy could prove problematic.

Supporters: Everybody over 70, anybody BUT university lecturers (“lefty, pinko, Trots”) and their fellow travellers in the Metropolitan (London) liberal elite….and no foreigners!

The Green Party: (Motto - “All power is bad. Back to the fifteenth century!”)

Leader or chair or “really slightly more equal than the rest of us” person: Nathalie Bennett or Caroline Lucas or as it is a Wednesday Claire from Bristol.

Policies: Romantic tree-huggers.  “We will let you know”.  Yet to be decided. Need to consult the runes and the druids. 

Aim: To move everyone to the other planet upon which the Greens live.

Assessment: Clinically insane.  The Greens are in effect an anarcho-syndicalist union who want to save the Earth by living on planet cloud cuckoo. And, anyone who asks a serious question is an oppressor. 

Membership: Very clearly clinically insane members of the philosophy faculty at Sussex University, i.e. all of them.

Views on the EU: The Hapsburg Empire is a good thing – no power.

Scottish National Party: (Motto: Referendum? What Referendum?)

Leader: Alex Salmond or is it Nicola Sturgeon?

Policies: Nationalist romantic. 

Aim: To really piss off the English and to claim the ‘no’ vote in the Scottish referendum never happened.

Assessment: They have been at the Scotch far too long.  Their one and only policy is Scottish independence and to hell with the rest of ye with an independent Scotland funded by a a petro-economy, albeit without the petro.  Consequently, Scotland would revert to what it has always been – a rock stuck on the end of England.

Supporters: Assorted members of the Clan Lunatic Celtic Fringe all of whom suffer from an inferiority complex caused by the Scottish Football Team repeatedly, usually and always losing to England.  In fact, losing to England at everything, all of the time apart from some irrelevant little skirmish back in 1314 which they forever bang on about.

Views on the EU: If it really pisses the English off it must be a good thing.

Plaid Cymru (Motto: “Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwilliantysiliogogogoch–easy for us to say”)

Leader: Indecipherably Welsh

Policies: Unutterably Welsh

Assessment: Impossible - Welsh

Membership: Unspeakably Welsh

Views on the EU: Is Welsh the official language?  Brussels seems to speak the same gobbledygook!

On Thursday 7 May millions of ordinary, decent British people will need to decide a government from a ‘choice’ that ranges from the clinically-insane to the terminally self-interested.  In the end it will come down to either Prime Minister Dave “Lord of the Blaggers” Cameron or Prime Minister Ed “aka Geek, aka Wallace” Miliband.  Not surprisingly the bulk of the British people are as confused and as undecided as I am, not least because they are now daily bombarded with ‘facts’ that taken together represent the greatest work of political fiction since Victorian Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli wrote “Sybil”. Disraeli once also said, “lies, damn lies, and statistics”.  If he were alive today given the disinformation all the parties are peddling he surely would have said, “lies, damn lies and politicians”.  As Winston Churchill may well has said, "Never has so much nonsense, been peddled for so long, by so many".

Hey ho! Only 37 days to go!

Julian Lindley-French