Suddenly, a Liberal Democrat appears

So there's an election over here in a couple of weeks and thanks largely to the two televised debates between the leaders of the main parties, it's shaping up to be quite a contest.

For the last 30 years if not longer, the UK has been a largely two party state. The LibDems have always held a few seats, even when they were two seperate parties, but they've never really been contenders for government, thanks in some part to the other two parties constantly trying to tell people that a vote for a third party is a wasted vote (It's much easier to campaign against a single opponent). Now that Gordon Brown has fucked the country, it looked a few months ago like a landslide by the Tories was in the offing but sadly for them, people have long memories and can remember how shit Thatcher was, plus the expenses scandal hit the toffs particularly badly with their moats and duck houses so people were looking for an alternative.

Originally, Nick Clegg wasn't going to feature in the tv debates, it was going to just be Dave and Gordon but apparently Dave thought having the LibDems up there too would give him easy points scoring opportunities. Silly Dave.

What has happened is that given a very public forum, Nick Clegg has shown himself to be if nothing else, a much better public speaker than the others. On top of that, LibDem policies are getting much more of an airing than they otherwise would and across the country more and more people are switching their allegiance to the Liberals.

I don't think they'll win the election but if opinion polls convert into election success they're looking like being the main opposition party, ahead of labour. Unless of course there's a hung parliament in which case they'll be a very influential second party to the Tories or possibly even the majority in a Lib/Lab coalition.

Either way, it's looking like we're going to have a radically different government in a couple of weeks. As part of a coalition agreement, the LibDems will certainly demand at least a referendum on a switch to Proportional Representation in future and a number of LibDems will join the cabinet, includign probably Vince Cable as Chancellor and Lewes's own Norman Baker as Transport Secretary.

So to all my fellow Englanders, who are you supporting and why? Have you watched any of the debates and what did you think? Are you even going to vote and if not, why not?

The Septics managed to fill a whole subforum with their Mickey Mouse election so a change of government in the birthplace of parliamentary democracy deserves at least a thread.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

It's getting harder and harder to tell the difference between real party posters and the parodies on b3ta, certainly. I didn't watch the first debate but last night's was great, although a lot of that might have been down to the wine and gin. Clegg's a really good public speaker and his closing speach last night would have been perfectly accompanied by Land of Hope and Glory or something. I can't believe the news is saying it was a close run thing last night, Gordon looked an idiot again, Cameron just spouted party spin ad nauseum and Clegg kicked arse.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Well that's why things will be so different if the Libs insist on a PR system as a condition of forming a coalition, it means in future they'll get be serious contenders as a political party. It makes me laugh when ardent supporters of the two old parties (As Clegg kept refering to them last night) bang on about how if we had PR we'd always have hung parliaments in future as if having people of different parties with different ideas coming together to run the country is automatically a bad thing. I think having a main party but tempered by a few different ideas can be a good thing as it means we're less likely to get stuck in the sort of political rut we've been in for the last ten years or so.

I got quite annoyed today watching This Morning when their analysis of the debate focussed entirely on what the leaders look like and how they were dressed, dismissing what they were saying as boring. It's idiotic programming like this that has led to the dissaffection of so many people in this country when it comes to politics.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

There is something to be said for tactical voting to keep out someone you particularly don't want but over here at the moment we have a situation where an awful lot of people don't want either the Labour party or the Tories so the tactical votes are going to the third option, something that's not happened for a very long time. It's a shame that by all forecasts the Liberals are only going to take about a fifth of the seats in the country while getting at least a third of the actual votes, if not more but hopefully that'll be enough to force a coalition and we can see some electoral reforms get underway.

The third debate started well but got a bit dull in the second half when they all descended to petty name calling and answering what they wanted to answer, rather than the actual questions. It was a real shame that they guy who asked about why politicians are so detached from normal people's opinions qualified the question by adding "Particularly about immigration" as it gave the leaders a chance to talk about immigration and duck the question about how they can possibly relate to normal people when they're all living on £60k a year in second houses bought by the tax payer.

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Well the results so far are still inconclusive. Locally, we retained our LibDem MP which is a good thing but fuck only knows who'll actually end up running the country. I suspect we'll see Gordon Brown getting the boot and a Lib/Lab coalition taking power under a new leader, hopefully with the promise of electoral reform.

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Well if we are to believe everything they've said so far, the new government might turn out ok. Income tax threshold up to £10,000 (Although an extra 1% on NI), a referendum on electoral reform, more money pumped into the NHS, it all looks good on paper, although having a hardline tory warmonger as defence secretary is a little alarming.

Cameron's paying his first visit to Scotland as PM today. I'm almost hoping he turns up with a full tank division behind him, tells the Scots they're back to being a purely subservient vassal state and then kills every first-born son to get his point across. Seeing as how we have the most English government for decades, we might as well put the boot in to the provinces while we have a chance.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?