Hanging About

Well, this could be interesting. An ambiguous night has yielded a few bits of unmitigated good news. The Greens have a seat in Parliament for the first time; two former Home Secretaries, the loathsome incompetent Agent Smith and the loathsome human turnip Charles Clarke, both lost their seats; as did the sanctimonious crank Philippa Stroud. On the other hand, it appears that the system whereby Daveybloke wished to accomplish his programme of change without really changing very much has failed to deliver him the elective dictatorship which he has considered to be his birthright ever since he and George the Progressively Osborne were belching Rule Britannia in the Bullingdon together and for which, until the expenses scandal and the financial crisis, he never even thought he would have to fight. As a result, the Glorious Successor is making noises to the effect that it will take a squadron of mechanical diggers and possibly a dose of high explosive to get him out of Downing Street before he is ready to give up on the values his father taught him, among which blind obstinacy is outpolled only by meanness of spirit and abject cowardice. Both Daveybloke and the Glorious Successor want Britain to have a government that is strong and stable; the Glorious Successor, with his characteristic puckishness, added principled to the rhetorical pile, which may or may not be a coded intimation of preparedness to do a deal with whoever will keep him from being ejected for a week, a day, or an hour longer than otherwise. If the Liberal Democrats fail to gain enough seats to outvote Daveybloke's doubtless rather irritated cuddlies, we may presumably look forward to a crowd-pleasing Queen's Speech in which Muslim-baiting, refugee-bashing and hard-working families are prominently displayed, before going through the whole jolly business of the past four weeks all over again in a few months' time.