In Britain we know a winner when we see one

There was something special about that football match last night when a little Argentinian man called Lionel Messi scored four brilliant goals for his team Barcelona against the English side Arsenal.

It didn’t matter if you were Spanish, Argentinian or English, for a moment it was obvious that we had a genius winner in our midst. Lionel Messi became the stuff of legends last night and no one is in any doubt about it.

In Britain, we would have liked to have had a politician like Mr. Messi. Someone who was as obviously brilliant at what he does who could be a winner in just the same way. Someone who could get the job done, sort out the nation’s finances and bring back the good times. We would like to vote for that guy, let him get on with the job – back of the net.

Instead we have Gordon Brown and David Cameron.

We don’t like either of them, we don’t want either of them to be prime minister and we don’t believe either of them will turn around our fortunes. This election is going to be a close call because we have that most difficult of decisions to make – we have to decide which unpopular politician to vote for.

I live in Lewes in South East England where our local MP, Norman Baker, is a good constituency politician, with enough of a national profile to bring him respect, especially if we ignore that silly book that he wrote claiming that the Secret Service murdered Dr. David Kelly. He also happens to be a member of the Liberal Democrat party. So we in Lewes are not really part of this election even if our MP might find new prominence as part of a Hung Parliament where the Liberal Democrats hold the balance of power.

Out of the election excitement too are most of the rural areas of Britain where landed conservatism always votes Conservative and as are the great Northern English Cities where the poorest people always vote Labour. Scotland and Wales never votes Conservative so it won’t be decided there either.

So it will be in the marginal seats that our collective boredom will have to be resolved. It will be in suburban centres outside industrial cities or on the fringes of the green belt that the decision will be taken. It is how democracy works when the going gets tough.

The country will be led by the man who the floating voters settle for…..floating voters, let us remember, are the people who don’t really know what to think, often don’t really care either way and who have no loyalty to one or other political party.

Let’s hope they are taking their responsibility seriously this time round – our future is in their hands.

If only we had our very own political Lionel Messi then the decision would be easy….it looks like we will all be losers however wins this time.