Past, Present, Future
This election is tense
Greetings Countbinistas!
I hope you’ve had a wonderful week. We must of course ignore the British weather, which seems determined to give the UK a winter election in mid-summer. (Well, if you will change the climate…). Speaking of heavy weather, and even heavier segues, this week has been Manifesto Week! And the main parties competed to out-bore each other.
I have a new theory about Sir Keir Starmer’s strategy in the election campaign. Keir is a big football fan - by the way, his dad was a toolmaker - and having done my research on the beautiful game, I think he has become the Jose Mourinho of modern politics. He has parked the battle bus in front of the goal, happy to sit on a lead (admittedly a giant lead) and see out the game to the final whistle without passing the half-way line.
That’s a very rational thing to do on a political level. But it’s not much help on an inspiration level. I’ll hazard a guess that Labour’s ultra-cautious tiptoeing to power could cause them problems in the longer run. Sir Keir might have Five Missions and Six First Steps, but I wonder how many voters can name a single one of them. As I discussed on my podcast episode with guest Rosie Holt, really the entire Labour manifest boils down to one word; one ironically predictable word: change.
It might be quicker, cheaper and a smaller waste of paper if Labour’s manifesto was simply a piece of A4 paper with ‘CHANGE!’ scrawled across it in wax crayon. I don’t think it would affect their vote share at all.
Meanwhile Nigel Farage’s Reform UK have been receiving positive polling news at the Tory party’s expense. If replicated at the election, a moderate-strong performance by Reform might only win a few seats in Parliament, but it would help the Lib Dems take a juicy bite out of old Tory heartlands. And if that happens, you’re going to have to brace yourself for the next election, when Ed Davey’s Blue Peter tribute act will have become a template for all leaders to follow. You never know - instead of those pointless TV debates, you’d learn more about your would-be leaders if they took each other on in a special series of Gladiators.
As for me, I’ve been out and about across the country meeting voters. On Wednesday I did a charity comedy gig in London to a wonderful audience at the Museum of Comedy, and on Thursday I travelled to Oxford to visit the Tory Minister Factory that is the Oxford Union. What a curious place! Only decades ago, the likes of Boris Johnson and Michael Gove haunted this place as they honed their skills in sophistry. But I used their record against them.
The motion was ‘This house would fake it till you make it’ and, being an intergalactic space warrior, naturally I was asked to oppose the motion. So my speech began like this: ‘BREXIT…’ and I left it at that. A few moments later I realised they wanted more, so I spoke for another 9 minutes, but I needn’t have continued. Surely young people have been lied to enough? Now, finally, through the medium of a pointless debate, they had a chance to take revenge on those who’d made their future so much shitter, by taking my lead and bringing down the motion.
Did the audience go for my argument? You’d better believe it. My team won the debate by 119 votes to 87. It’s my first numerical victory in a British vote! Keep hope alive!
Speaking of the future, keep watching this hyperspace for a couple of exciting Binface announcements coming your way. I’ll be rolling out my very own 2024 manifesto, and I’ve got an extra treat coming too, no matter where you are…
Till then, to binfinity and beyond!
CB
