James Delingpole tweeted yesterday: Never thought I'd say this but Theresa May's Conservatives are so uninspiring it almost makes you yearn for the useless Dave. Rod Liddle asked "Is this the worst Tory Campaign ever?" I am not sure I know the answer Rod but as I go to vote in a seat the Tories should be gaining from Labour I do so almost not caring who wins.
The Tory manifesto was a disaster in that its dementia tax pissed off those Labour voters it was trying to woo while all its chatter of workers rights and laws to make business better really infuriated Tories like me. I bet those wonks & career politicians who cobbled this together have never risked a cent of their own capital to create a business. They just have no bloody idea of how hard and painful it is. Of how it is you who will be up until 3 AM to keep the thing afloat as your employees snore in bed.
The enlargement of the nanny state was at the heart of a Manifest presented by an array of folks who indeed made the loathsome Dave and ghastly Osborne look like political titans. Former stockmarket spiv Amber Rudd is just the most useless of an array of talentless bores but Hammond, Fallon even May herself are just dreary and intellectually weak - at heart they all want to manage the Growth of the state, not shrink it.
I think of those chaps I knew at Oxford now sitting on the Tory benches. They never had any ambition other than to climb the greasy pole. They despise ordinary people though they hide it well. Do I really enthuse about seeing them in power for another five years?
And yet I looked at my ballot paper below and there was really only one option. Last time Labour were 4,000 votes ahead of the Tories here in Bristol East but UKIP got 7,500 votes while the Lib Dems got sod all and the Greens did not stand. Our Labour MP, Kerry Mccarthy, is a cold and unloveable woman who happens to be as mad as a nest of snakes. If the UKIP vote shifts as it should and the Greens pinch more from Labour than from Cons - which they will - then the Tory candidate Theo Clarke will win. But she is a posh cow from London who pops in here only at election time - she would not actually want to live among the oiks in this part of Bristol. To be fair neither do any of the other candidates, Bristol East is far too down at heal.
But back to our Tory candidate, hapless Theo. She is a remoaner and she appears not to believe in any Tory values at all - like McCarthy she worships the Money Tree. So do I really care about Theo winning? I do not.
In fact, I note that all parties are run by career politicians, very few of whom have risked their capital to create wealth and jobs or indeed have any real world experience in the private sector at all. As a class I despise the lot of them. Moreover all are deficit deniers - the UK's Government finances are a mess, we are drowning in debt and yet all three parties still believe in spend, spend, spend. There is no honesty from anyone, no admission that things have to change if the UK is not going to go bust.
After Manchester they pretty much all spouted the same platitudes. The British people were dying for one party to say "if folks fight for ISIS or are shown to support ISIS they lose their passport and are booted out without a lengthy taxpayer funded trial encompassing reams of European Human Rights leglislation - just kick the bastards out." Instead all parties thought that quoting Liam Gallagher, not looking back in hanger and warning about a rise in hate crime was the answer. They can all go stock their candles and their twibbons up their arses, for all I care.
So at almost every level I really do not care who wins. Except one. It is clear that Jeremy Corbyn's Labour would really crush the economy and folks like me who risk our capital to create jobs and generate tax. It would be disastrous for the UK economy if Labour won. So much do I despise Mrs May's Tories that I almost don't care about this threat. If Labour win perhaps I can persuade the Mrs that it would be economic suicide for us not to move to a small Greek island to pay less tax? If a Corbyn and the utter destruction of the British economy is the price we must pay to persuade the Mrs to move maybe that is what must happen?
Or maybe not. The Mrs urges me to show my disgust by not voting. I did not vote for our new regional Mayor as I regarded this as another unneeded layer of Government funded by plebs taxpayers like me and created by a political class creating more jobs for themselves. So I had set a precedent of abstention a few weeks ago, the Mrs - a Guardian reading, Sociology lecturer who is a card carrying member of the Labour Party - thinks I should continue in that vein.
I imagined the look on her face if Labour wins. I thought how her colleagues, who bleat about workplace stress as they trouser £45k for doing four hours teaching a week when not on long vacations, will cheer a Labour win with bumper pay rises for public sector workers all round. I thought of how the Guardian, the BBC, Owen Jones, Polly Toynbee, Jon Snow and the C4 Team, my state employed sisters on their 18 hour and 20 hour working weeks would shout for joy if Kerry McCarthy wins Bristol East and if Corbyn heads to Number 10. If folks who are wrong about every issue are so enthusiastic for one side, I knew I had no choice in how I voted.
At almost every level I don't care who wins. As I think of Jezza walking into Number 10, I think of the sunlight dancing on a blue sea near a small house on a very small Greek island with the Mrs , Joshua and I just heading off for a day of fishing. I can hack it. But then I think of the legions of the wrong. These folks have backed every lost cause, every muddle headed idea of the past thirty years. And they are backing Labour with enthusiasm. My vote is below and was posted this week.
