Thoroughly enjoying the recent spate of cranky old man letters sent to anyone who’ll listen, our hero sets his sights on the Liberal Democrat party and picks some holes in their political approach which will probably leave them unelectable. Again.

Dear Liberal Democrats

Please allow me to offer myself as a replacement for your entire party leadership. While this offer may come somewhat out of the blue, I’m sure you chaps must be expecting a pretty mediocre performance at the forthcoming election.

What makes me certain of this is that you’ve got a pretty average guy as your party leader; he doesn’t stand out, say anything particularly memorable and would have difficulty being recognised in a lineup. I’m sure he’s worked hard for the Liberal Democrat party, gets on well with everyone and has no skeletons in his closet, but that’s more than likely the problem.

People in this country vote for personality above all else – London voted first Red Ken Livingstone then Boris “Foot In Mouth” Johnson as its mayor, neither one of them being the perfect flawless archetype for political office, but both managing to capture the imagination of the electorate, and both having some pretty clear policies to be tagged by.

This is not to say that personality or statesmanship alone is the reason to get rid of Nick “Anonymous” Clegg, although being another Blair/Cameron-alike really doesn’t sell him to me (or, I suggest, the rest of the country), rather the primary reason to dispatch your current leadership is because Mr Clegg and his merry wizards saw fit to inflict “Change the works for you : building a fairer Britain” on the country as the liberal democratic election slogan.

Change that works for you, if that’s okay with you and you have 10 minutes. And Building a fairer Britain because those nasty people got paid more than you.

Folks, you are, I’m sure, aware that liberal democrats are often seen as being a bit wishy washy, a bit bland, a bit boring and frankly not the place of revolutionary politics. With this slogan you’ve merely confirmed it.

What the hell is the problem with the big three parties this time around? Did someone distribute some fridge magnets with the only words you were allowed to use in your election slogans? Was there a parliamentary “construct your election slogan using the words fair, change and Britain only” contest? Come to think of it, “Fair Change Britain” beats the hell out of the wishy washy, non-descript piffle you folks have decided is the winner.

The word “change” is a political red herring, it’s meaningless : moving from 2 million unemployed to 2.1 million is a change isn’t it? Doesn’t say that the change is a positive one. Personally I think that Archbishop Cameron’s word-molesters are insisting he claim to be the harbinger of change simply to play on the fact that Labour have been in the driving seat for a while now so we should just change for the sake of it. That’s democracy at work, certainly. Never mind policies, let’s allow everyone to have a go at some point.

Also, I don’t necessarily want a fairer Britain. Fairer to whom? I didn’t get upset about the banks going belly up, or that bankers were still paid enormous bonuses, or that MPs played the system. In fact I’d have been more concerned if MPs hadn’t played the system as it would indicate that they’d been too stupid to do so. No, none of this aggrieved me in the slightest because I live in the real world, not one where bold type headlines in newspapers or hand wringing televisual pundits dictate my opinion on things. I’m sorry, but “fair” as a force of progressive momentum is deeply uninspiring.

Losers always whine about things being fair. Winners accept that it isn’t and get shit done. It’s also somewhat hypocritical to profess to be moving forward in a fair fashion when you aren’t looking to redistribute wealth according to merit, or ensure full employment regardless of geographic and education factors, or that you’ll be putting the arms industry out of work, or making sure that John Q Citizen’s personal information isn’t abused either by corporations or government. No, not that kind of fair at all, only the kind of fair where politicians don’t scam their expenses and bankers don’t get big bonuses (despite their companies being insanely profitable).

If you want a more effective election slogan, try one of these :

“Please vote for us” – it’s polite, has an action required of the reader and is unambiguous.

“Liberal means progress, democratic means it’s your choice” – reiterating the party name, opening yourself to some online meme action to keep the campaign in public visibility, and seeding some subconscious threats of a bad election result being the fault of the electorate.

“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss” – if you fancied having a pop at the red and blue teams.

All of those need work, but I spent 2 minutes conjuring those up so I could probably improve on them over time.

Fundamentally I need a reason to vote for you chaps and you’re not giving me one. I want a leader I can believe in, and if you don’t have one I’ll do it because I’ll deliver firebrand progressive hardcore liberalism to the masses. The one thing I assure you however is that you will not secure my vote either by not being Labour or Conservative, or by employing the kind of feeble middle-of-the-road slogans, instead I will institute my right to spoil my ballot and I will continue to do until a party wins my favour or someone institutes a “none of the above” option.

References are available on request.

Sam

Fair change Britain, 8.5 out of 10 based on 2 ratings

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 15th, 2010 at 10:14 pm and is filed under Politics, the man. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.