British politics heats up

British politics is getting exciting again.

Well, to tell the truth, I have always found politics exciting but I am a bit of a news nerd.

Now, however, we should all enjoy the fun. The latest opinion polls show that Labour has now caught up with the Conservatives and that those vitally important marginal seats are not going the Conservative way quite as easily as the pundits were predicting.

The Conservative party after many years of failure at elections, has a long way to go if it is to win back enough seats to defeat the Labour Party.

Until recently the party has assumed that they had got the best possible leader for some time….well since Margaret Thatcher, some were rash enough to claim.

John Major, a decent bloke, a bit dull, and maybe not quite as nice as we would like to think, was a fighter and against all the odds he actually did win a general election.

Since then it has been musical chairs in the Conservative Party….. Hague, Duncan Smith and Howard, all electoral losers….until everyone relaxed and thought the keys to Number Ten were a certainty with the nice, pearly-grinning, Blairy-looking, David Cameron.

There really should be no contest if you look at the next election through the eyes of received wisdom.

The country has had the worst recession in almost anyone’s memory, we have been governed by the same party now for well over the traditional length in British democratic tradition and our Prime Minister is not charismatic and therefore not popular with an electorate that is increasingly dependent on tabloid journalism and sound bite politics.

What is happening then?

The British people don’t really like David Cameron, any more than his predecessors and they don’t trust his judgement on the big issues of state.

They say that Governments lose elections and that opposition parties never really win them. Maybe, against all the odds, this government with funny old Gordon Brown at its helm, might actually buck the trend and win. Surely not! That would be truly remarkable. It may well be a hung parliament though with the Ulster Unionists and the Liberal Democrats stepping blinking into the lime light.

Gordon Brown making a speech about the economy

It was difficult to see Mr Brown much in today’s papers, even though he made a rather impressive speech about the economy at Canary Wharf yesterday. Poor old Gordon Brown, he seems to be the only one saying that he actually was right about the recession. He was though.

All the focus was on David Cameron, who had turned down an interview with the thrusting former editor of The Mirror newspaper, because he said he wanted to do something “more substantial.” The replacement interview was with daytime television’s darling, the gardening presenter, Alan Titchmarsh.

Alan Titchmarsh, cutting (h)edge TV gardener

Whilst, Mr Brown was, immodestly, claiming credit for his policy of bailing out the banks which was the major reason why Britain and the rest of the World avoided financial melt-down, Mr Cameron was telling Alan Titchmarsh how Mrs Cameron was soon to start hitting the campaign trail to boost her husband’s chances and what a wonderful woman she is. He also shared with us his enthusiasm for gardening.

Alan and David chat about wives and gardens

He was wise not to talk about his public announcements at the height of the recession when his suggestions would have been almost certainly ruinous to the economy just as he was also sensible not to dwell on the fact that he is prepared to do a deal with the Ulster Unionists, even risking the precarious peace in Northern Ireland, so that he can rely on their support in the case of a hung parliament.

I for one hope that he will have a lot more time for his garden after the May General Election.

For those of you would like to see more of Mr Titchmarsh’s “more substantial” interviewing style, here are two more examples of the programmes, er, style:

Alan tries to find glamour model “Kelly”s erogenous zones

Alan discusses glamourous model’s Katie Price’s weight-loss