Since y’Lord Immaculate is unable to stand at this particular election (a slight funding mishap relating to a horse called Nude Nelly, which broadsided this beacon of virtue on his merry way to the recruitment officer), I will offer my devotees a glimpse of the future. I must warn you it is no improvement on the recent past.
You might expect, in a fair and just world, that the Conservatives would be punished for imposing five years of austerity on the rest of us while ensuring their rich buddies laugh all the way to their banking jobs, but in this world the only realistic opposition is Labour, and they have chosen to saddle themselves with a wet lettuce on legs for a frontman.
The living embodiment of a posh drip schoolboy, stepped out from a Beano comic strip, Ed Miliband is a curious choice of leader for those who seek power. He’s dislikeable, which means he must rely heavily on policy, and unfortunately for all of us he has no idea what real people want from politicians. Even if he did manage to sputter the right words, he is haunted by the spectre of the Blair and Brown era, who reduced trust in their party to a new low (in the 1980s people only questioned its competence, but at least everyone had a good idea whose side old Labour was on. (“The Soviet Union’s”, ventures a wag.)). Oh, you’re the champion of the NHS, are you? We’ve heard that one many times, from many different charlatans. We all know corporations will call the shots and no matter who resides at 10 Downing Street the corporations get what they want. Familiar false claims of loyalty to the NHS will not win Egregious Ed the keys.
Miliband’s intransigence in the face of popular issues, and his consistent dismissal of UKIP’s successes as nothing but protest votes rather than – God forbid! – a comment on the precious federal dream, do not sit well on the lips of an awkward, often obnoxious self-caricature.
Inexplicably, he believes his arrogant refusal to permit the hoi polloi a referendum on European Union membership (Why? The ruling party always wins a referendum, as David Cameron has reminded us twice.) is a vote winner. Good luck with that, Edward. Heaven only knows what percentage of the electorate this willful blindness will set up against him. It can’t have escaped everyone’s attention that Labour has been one of the driving forces behind an EU-phile campaign against UKIP which, although hugely successful with certain demographics – the young and gullible, the trend-conscious, Twitter comedians, BBC employees – has been guilty of slandering UKIP’s ever-increasing sympathisers as bigots and dolts (although the greatest achievement of the EU-philes’ massive indoctrination exercise has been erroneously convincing large numbers of immigrants and ethnic minorities they are in danger of deportation, thereby scaring the daylights out of the very innocents they claim to care about. Congratulations, bastards. The true aim of course has been to protect the EU, and playing the race card was an efficient way of tarnishing their rivals.). This is no way to make friends with the riff raff, Ed.
Labour is doomed to ignominious failure, a trouncing so severe even the SNP won’t be able to save them, and that will leave us with the ingredients for another Conservative coalition. Not with the Lib Dems, who will surely be annihilated for betraying their followers when they jumped into bed with the Tories. The balance of power will lie in the hands of the aforementioned UKIP, much derided and libeled anti-federalists whose band of misfits has grown more popular the louder the ad hominems have been hooted. There’s nothing the public hate more than being told what to think, and in that sense the anti-Kipper campaign has been spectacularly unsuccessful. The mobilisation of TV programme-makers against the Euro-sceptics, with shows such as UKIP: The First 100 Days, The Great European Disaster Movie, Meet The Kippers, and no doubt EU-funded Channel 4’s forthcoming Ballot Monkeys (Ofcom appear to be on holiday) may cower handfuls of UKIP voters out of backing them at the polls, but while some in society go with the flow (I’ve seen people who I know to be racist sharing anti-UKIP material, which demonstrates how shallow the fashion for knocking Farage is), most Britons are far more stubborn and will feel inclined to spite the propaganda-peddlers. I’m almost tempted to do so myself, and cock a snook at the bullies driving the bandwagon, but I can’t because my trusted tea leaves insist that UKIP will join their Tory siblings for another half-decade of applying economic thumbscrews to the common people while lining chums’ pockets. Common sense agrees. Once you have eliminated the impossible – Ed Miliband running a country – what remains is the reality. A Con-UKIP reality.
Farage will take a senior role. Perhaps not Deputy PM, in deference to the pariah status which has been accorded UKIP’s smooth-operating orator by media shepherds and the sheep. The referendum will be a fudge of some kind, and regardless of the options on that little piece of paper, Nigel Farage will learn, as Nick Clegg did, that the establishment does not lose referendums. There would be no ballot if a pro-EU result could not be guaranteed. Every ‘news’ outlet will be marshaled, all but the strongest brains battered into submission. If any actual evidence exists regarding the frequent and unsubstantiated allegations of racism against Nigel Farage that is when it will emerge. Saved for the most damaging moment. Personally I hope it is not true, because I’ve loathed watching a smear campaign based so far on nothing but his belief in an immigration cap (not an end to immigration, not repatriation, not bloody death camps, just control where there is presently a shambles…ie. the Home Office) and those who’ve thrown the mud without possession of any proof don’t deserve to be vindicated through sheer luck.
I share UKIP’s contempt for the EU on the grounds that our own MPs and civil servants are bad enough without subjecting ourselves to those on the mainland, many of whom make our lot look like sparkling Samaritans. A referendum under a pro-EU PM cannot be won by the antis. So, those of us who don’t want Britain to sleepwalk into a United States of Europe will actually find ourselves worse off than before – by hook or by crook the EU-philes will finally have a mandate to carry on with what they have been doing anyway. Whether Farage will remain at his post after that democratic disaster or stand down from his vanity office and trigger another election is the only mystery. As much as I despise Tories, and make no mistake he’s an old-school Tory at heart, he is the most talented talker in the game today. It would be a shame if he disappeared from politics and left us with dull Blair-impersonators as far as the eye can see, or worse if he is unmasked as genuinely being all the things the EU and Labour defamed him as. Then again, he’ll be a lot less easy on the ear when he is defending Con-UKIP behaviour. But a coalition will not get us out of the EU, and UKIP in its current form can never be the majority party (nor should it be, so long as it has a tendency to accommodate unreformed Tory loons with outdated attitudes. We can’t have nutters like the ejected Godfrey Bloom in parliament).
So buckle up for a series of disappointments (unless you’re a federalist, in which case deploy a smug grin), and prepare for another round of working your arses off to make the rich richer.