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For all the fuss, I suspect that the outcome of the General Election will still be a Cameron Government, the situation is rather more like the vote in Northern Ireland yesterday over Policing and Justice. For all the fuss made by the Unionists, interventions by George Bush and so forth, the vote got a substantial majority as it had to.

Sure there are doubts, quite serious ones: For Sinn Fein, they needed Policing and Justice to be “local” to undermine the “British Rule” slur put out by dissident Republicans to justify illegal behaviour. The Unionists understood that but doubted whether it would undermine the ‘die-hard’ elements… but really there was little choice in the matter, for good or ill, it was an inevitable step forward albeit it, into the darkness.

The General Election

The General Election will be about the same: Yes people have doubts about Cameron but mainly fears about ‘cuts’ which Brown is playing on dishonestly. However, whichever party gets power, the electorate know that there will have to be savage and immediate cuts to prevent a collapse of Sterling so who to choose ? Public sector workers don’t want to lose their jobs, women want “family friendly policies” which are unaffordable. “Cling to Nurse for fear of something worse…” comes to mind as a motivation for the current opinion polls – how sad are we now as a Nation !

Brown is Cameron’s greatest electoral asset because Gordon is ‘politically stupid’ and in going full term and holding a Budget on 24^th March, he has assured his own defeat. The Budget will be the watershed, either Darling comes clean about how bad things are (I personally suspect that is his nature, he would want to be honest) and then the electorate will cease to be frightened of Cameron and the Tories, Labour lose. Or, Brown prevails and Ostrich like, Darling delivers a Budget that ignores reality, Sterling will slide on the exchanges before he sits down in the House, overnight the price of fuel and goods rise dramatically, again Labour lose but by a landslide.

Yes, voting for Cameron is a step in the dark but I suspect that a combination of Labour no-shows at Polling Stations on the day plus the really weak performance of the LibDems, will see Cameron home on a likely low turnout.

PR would be better…

We don’t need PR in any form because as is clear by the total failure of the LibDems to break through against a very unpopular Labour Government, the population seem to prefer First Past the Post. One would have expected the public to have turned to the LibDems who should now be neck and neck with the Conservatives with Labour consigned to 18 percent of the poll but, it just hasn’t happened, why ? If the public really wanted a hung Parliament or PR, one would expect to see at least a 30 percent level on all three parties in the polls…?

The solution to the “Party Funding” question and better representation at Westminster requires not one jot of legislation to be passed, all it requires is for the public to vote for independent local candidates to represent them at Westminster which, is what they are supposed to do anyway. PR will merely perpetuate the “Party System” indefinitely when probably what you and I want is greater not less democracy.

Fixed Term Parliaments

The world of British politics has changed dramatically over recent years, we are no longer totally dedicated to one party based upon class background. The average voter may be a ‘bit of a Tory’ on some issues but rather ‘Socialist’ on others. Politicians won’t change but we can !

An interesting side issue might be that by accident, we could effectively end up with fixed 5 year terms because if the majority of MPs were independent, the Queen could call on anybody in the House to form a Government who was ‘popular’ in the House. During the course of a Parliament, you could allow particular Governments to fall, it wouldn’t necessarily trigger a General Election but also, if there was no person in the House who could ‘command a majority’ then a ‘Dissolution’ would be automatic to allow ‘the People’ to decide at the local level what they want, quite a thought really isn’t it and very ‘democratic’ ?