OK, so I hope you all realised that last entry was an April Fool and an utterly pathetically rubbish, dire one at that - turning out more as a bad parody than a seriously-facaded publication intended as a joke. As I said in my first entry on here, this blog was not created with the intention of backing any particular party, but more to just observe and analyse and at times bitch or laugh at the crazy world of British politics. However, anyone who knows me even slightly, knows that the opinion I expressed in my last blog entry is completely contrary to my most basic and core beliefs. So I hope you weren't fooled! Anyway, we'll set that one to rest now. Onward and upward, as they say...
Today was a particularly significant date on the political calendar - Gordon Brown has finally called the election date, and it is not surprisingly the widely-anticipated date of May 6th. It is only today that it dawned on me just how close this makes the General Election - exactly a month's time! It's crazy how time flies.
Too bogged down in my Italian work, unfortunately I didn't manage to catch much of the coverage, but from what I can ascertain it was a pretty standard day with nothing too out-of-the-ordinary going on. Labour doing their best to defend their working class roots, as they've become particularly pressured to do so of late, while David Cameron was busy promising a 'fresh start' with 'modern Conservatism'. (tautology, much?). Nick Clegg promised 'real change' but gave no real indication on how the Liberal Democrats plan on delivering this.
Brown and Cameron are extremely close in the polls now; it's dangerous and critical times for both parties. In spite of this, there was no obvious hoo-har between the two leaders, and certainly no real-life spectacle of Gordon Brown telling Cameron to 'Step outside, posh boy' outside Downing Street (as a friend of mine remarked in a Facebook status update yesterday he'd like to happen).
It is the last point here that I intend for this blog entry to focus one. While my April Fool was a reckless, hurried, last-minute jobby with no clever pun or reflection of the times, the Guardian certainly did theirs very differently.
Being the gullible fool that I am, I actually managed to fall for the article (you can view it here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/apr/01/labour-gordon-brown-hard-man) for all of two minutes, the caption 'Vote Labour. Or else.' being the bit that really confused me. However, I soon came to my senses and laughed along with the rest of them. Only in all honesty, I didn't really find it that amusing.
Perhaps it's because of the inseparable truth that the joke relies on in order for it to work. Labour *are* using class issues as part of their campaign. And this not only aggravates, but scares me.
While I wouldn't go as far as Ken Clarke on Question Time a few weeks back, declaring it 'discriminatory' and 'ludicrous', comparing the idea to racism, I do see that it perpetuates the divide in our already 'broken' society. While I maintain that class issues are unfortunately still relevant today, I do not agree that it is something that parties should be basing their campaigns on. Even if Labour was originally the party of the working class.
I make a point of using 'originally.' And perhaps that's why they are now resorting to such childish, petty and at certain times irrelevant class politics to play the election campaign game. They want to go against what so many people realised a long time ago - that Labour are nearly every bit as middle class as the Tories nowadays.
By creating this division, Labour are trying to set themselves as far away from their opposition as possible - positioning themselves as the 'fair' party; the 'party of the pauper' while still representing and caring for the interests of the rich and super-rich. But will it work? I have my doubts. What Labour ought to be focussing on is their policies, which should speak for themselves, instead of spending money covering billboards about how they aren't as 'posh' as the Tories.
Because at the end of the day, it isn't about that. The Conservatives couldn't have won the election in 1979 without the working class vote. Margaret Thatcher herself was the child of a greengrocer. I did a charity hitch-hike about a week ago and one of our lifts was from a friendly director of Education and shiny Volvo driver who'd studied Economics at Leeds Uni. My friend was trying to talk economics with him, asking whether he liked the crossover between politics and economics. And what Dave (the Volvo driver) answered was something I am in utter agreement with. Basically, stuff the class politics thing. Stuff the economics. What is mostly relevant to politics is social issues, and whether at the end of the day you think more about other people (Labour) or more about yourself (Conservatives). And there we have it. Not very political, not very technical, but still in my eyes, damn accurate.
So when you do vote in the election a month today, vote with your heart and keep this philosophy in mind. I can pretty much guarantee that the policies we will see from whoever our new government is will opeate broadly in accordance with it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8603591.stm
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