It was eight years ago today that I started this website – it seems a world away from now as we look to another new year with, mostly, very different faces among the world’s leaders.

I had recently come out of hospital after a life-threatening illness and some of the events of October and November passed me by. I had been an excited follower of Barrack Obama’s campaign for the American presidency and I had heard some news of things going wrong with the international banking system. I think, if I remember correctly, that I was feeling optimistic about the future. Then I suffered a major brain haemorrhage that took me away from current affairs until around the time that I started to write these pages.

Eight years on, I’m now completely recovered but I wish I could say the same about the world as we leave 2016 for a worrying 2017.

So who were our leaders in 2008? I was surprised to see just how different things were then. Take a look.

Well, yes, all seemed possible when Barrack Obama was elected president and we shall miss him when he stands down in just three weeks time. If the Republicans in Congress hadn’t set out to block his every move, we’d have had more of his legacy than Obamacare, Marriage Equality,  the Paris climate change summit, the Iran nuclear deal, the death of Osama bin Laden, and that sense of the  world’s strongest country being in the hands of a civilised, benign and intelligent progressive. Congress, to its eternal shame, consistently blocked his attempts at gun reform and at closing the infamous Guantanamo Bay.  He knew what he wanted as far as America’s wars were concerned and stuck to his principles, mostly, over limiting American army ‘boots on the ground’ even if the results were the rise of ISIS, the tragedy of Syria and the rise and rise of those frightening drones. In spite of the down bits, I shall be sorry to see him go.

He may have been a grumpy old thing but Gordon Brown was a great deal more than just a safe pair of hands when he succeeded Tony Blair as prime minister of the United Kingdom. Britain doesn’t like to admit it these days but  without Mr Brown at the helm when the great 2008 financial crash occurred,  Britain’s  economy could have gone through the floor with catastrophic results for employment, industry and what was then  hopeful signs in the country’s health and education systems. Well, he was chucked out and, yes, the rest is history. I wonder how many people would have voted him out if they could see where we are today.

The political alternative for Britain in 2008 was the pleasant enough but hopelessly upper class David Cameron whose idealism and cynicism was mostly held  in equal balance due to his posh debating society view of serious issues. In the end he was always going to be alright, no matter what happened to the rest of us.

There was a new kid on Britain’s political block in those days – the fresh-faced, bright-eyed and new-sounding Liberal-democrat leader, Nick Clegg.  Britain, in optimistic mood, thought for a time that he would be a genuine dose of fresh air for a country too long governed by the two major parties. It didn’t quite work out that way but, for a moment, he sounded like a nice British Barrack Obama.

There may have been some fresh smiling faces at the top of the West’s political parties, but it was a harsh and brutal world out there in 2008. No single figure haunted our imaginations more than the head of that murderous organisation Al Qaeda, whose shadow darkened all our lives with its members’ policy of mass murder in their blasphemous rewriting of the great faith of Islam.

Other leaders who sat pretty on the horrors of their regimes in 2008 were also perverters of Islam – Muammar Gaddafi of Libya and Bashar al-Assad of Syria. It seemed, back then, that they would be the next candidates to fall, when early signs of the 2011 Arab Spring painted these men as political dinosaurs. If only. Libya got shot of Gaddafi but it is now in chaos and, well, Syria, with Assad still stuck to its boots like a piece of old sticky tape,  has become the biggest tragedy since the Second World War.

Iran didn’t feel much better in 2008 under the premiership of the wild-eyed and wild-mannered Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who managed to remain leader in spite of, or because of, his indifference to human rights,  international relations, diplomacy or the dire economic consequences of his ultra conservative political agenda. People have forgotten how big a deal Obama’s  2016 Iran Nuclear Deal actually was. Please take note President-elect Trump.

In 2008, unlike most other Middle Eastern governments, Israel and the Palestinian Authority were being led by two intelligent, diplomatic and peace-loving men in Salam Fayyad of the P.A. and much-missed (and now disgraced) Ehud Olmert of Israel. When chaos was looming elsewhere in that region, there were reasons for hope in these tow prime ministers negotiating skills but, as we now know, their efforts led nowhere.

Meanwhile China was basking in the faint light of Paramount Leader Hu Jintao who, in spite of the financial catastrophes elsewhere, succeeded in building up the Chinese economy to such an extent that it was only time before we all got to realise that soon China was going to be the world’s next economic super power. It was he who managed to build the economy without releasing his government’s tight hold on repressing any possible social liberalisation.  China’s current Paramount Leader,  Ji Xinping is a bit nastier, just as economically savvy and just as careful not to give away many civil liberties but he’s far better than his rather dull predecessor at giving us a smiling face.

There was some hope too in 2008, in an uncaring kind of way, that the Eternal Leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Il,  might have been not long for this world. Eternity in North Korean leaders, luckily, isn’t forever but, those optimists who thought that he might be replaced sooner rather than later by a younger, more liberal and West-friendly Eternal Leader, were to be sadly disappointed by an even worse example of the Korean Democratic People’s Party, unelected ruling dynasty.

And that leaves Europe – or rather the European Union. It might not have been all sweetness and light in the EU in 2008 but, in those days, we were all in it together. Germany and France leading the way, as usual, under chancellor Angela Merkel and President Nicolas Sarkozy, with Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, the colourful but ineffectual joker  having fun on the side, and prime minister Gordon Brown,  ideally suited to be Britain’s semi-detached representative who was loving it all really.  Who would’ve guessed? Whose worst nightmare really imagined BREXIT? Well, not me. Looking at this picture now, I feel quite nostalgic for those days when we thought Sarkozy and Merkel were heartless right-wingers and that things couldn’t get any worse.

Who would’ve thought too that the only leader that can claim to represent the West’s much strived-for liberal democracies, would be the perennial Angela Merkel? The way things are going in the USA and in Europe, we might all hope that she might one day become our very own  Eternal Leader.

Oh yes, I almost forgot… HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone!

The post My website is eight years old today – this was the way we were in 2008 appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

I may be a bit tired after hanging around during the night wondering about the Scottish Independence Referendum results but I feel good today – all of me except the tired bits – all my Scottish, Northern Irish and English DNA (my British-European DNA) is dancing around inside of me. Phew!

If you missed the results, Scotland has decided – 55% of the population said No Thank You and 45% said Yes Please. The turnout was an extraordinary 84.6%.

I’m the son of a Scot who lives in England and who had no vote but opinions enough to be delighted that the No’s have it.

My common sense feels happy too. Well, common sense is that bit of you that just feels what is right so I am delighted that the tiny land mass known as the United Kingdom, the united countries that raised me and my ancestors, has been allowed to stay, yes, united.

I feel good too after hearing that splendid speech by the much missed and much misunderstood former British prime minister, Gordon Brown. I couldn’t help thinking that if, in 2010, more of the British electorate had kept the faith with him, we might not have been  struggling from one constitutional bungle to another as has been the case since Mr David, d’oh, Cameron became Gordon Brown’s successor and, annoyingly, since Ed, where’s-he-when-you-need-him,  Milliband became Leader of the Opposition. It’s a sobering thought that those 84.6% of Scottish voters could turn out to get a solution and yet the whole of the UK couldn’t find a political party that it wanted to elect. In case you’d forgotten, Cameron didn’t get a majority and the Conservatives haven’t had a majority for over twenty years.

If I’m worried about the calibre of our politicians, I’m happy about the inevitable and much needed changes that have now be forced upon them. I, here in Lewes, Sussex, England, UK, would like to be independent of Westminster as much as any Northern Scot, Welshman, Devonshire maid or Yorkshire cricketer. What the Yeses and Nos have achieved for all of us Brits, is the chance to have more say in our own affairs and to be less patronised by that gang of career politicians who still too often think they know what is best for us. There’s now a chance that we might actually feel more represented in what is still a democracy worth defending but also worth improving. We’d get  better local politicians too if the jobs are seen to be worth doing. It’s difficult to get enthusiastic about many of the men and women  elected to councils and devolved parliaments over recent years. Maybe giving the regions more power, would give us a few more brain cells in our representatives.

I’m talking about being happy so, carrying on, I’m also happy to get an itchy feeling in my heart, or wherever these things are felt, telling me that, just maybe, one day, we might really be respected enough by our elected representatives, to look after our own patch but also to feel that we are all, sorry to repeat this, Citizens Of The World.

So thanks for saying No you guys – it’s much appreciated. Thanks too to the Yes voters – your enthusiasm and idealism could be a new electoral lesson for the whole UK.

Just a couple of things:

Please Mr Cameron, if you’re going to inflict another referendum on us can it be less simplistic in future? No more Yes/No or In/Out, OK. We not only want to have more of a say about life as it is where we live but we’d like to be treated with the respect that allows that we can also see the subtleties – there is more to a united country and, for that matter, a united Europe, than you allow in your two simple questions.

The other thing? Oh yes. It’s already bad enough that we as a nation still witness anti-Semitism, racism, Islamaphobia and anti-European zenophobia, let’s not start (or continue) all this anti-Scottish, anti-English aggression. The United Kingdom, for all its faults, is a wonderful mix of nationalities, cultures and skills. Let’s put this debate behind us, learning from it that we, as a united community, have much to share and, I’m dreaming again,  we could even be at the beginning of a brave new era: a country looking for the common cause, learning from our fellow citizens and respecting our differences, looking after our own turf without greedily or suspiciously eyeing up our neighbours, in fact, learning to be grown-up democrats. Other nations could learn from us if we get it right – now that’s a dream worth dreaming.

I feel like listening to some bagpipes to celebrate:

The post Phew! Thank you Scottish No’s. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

I’ve been worried, as have many of you I’m sure, about the way our leaders here in Europe have been handling the economy. I don’t vote Conservative and never have but, even if I were a supporter of the Conservative party, I would have to admit that Britain is suffering under the worst government of my lifetime. Half-way through this parliament, they are trying to re-launch their reputation in our eyes but, sorry, no matter how many policy tinkering announcements they make this week, the central point has to remain that they are failing to sort the nation’s economy.

It seems a long time now since Gordon Brown’s government and it is now a lazy and oft-repeated mantra that the economic crisis was all his fault. Actually the opposite is true but we have chosen to forget that. Poor Gordon, one day, the history books will reassess his reputation and show that without his tough intelligence when the financial bubble burst back in 2008, we would all be in an even more serious mess than we are now.

Gordon Brown and President Barack Obama saw eye to eye at that time and while, Brown lost out to the feeble  Conservative-LibDem coalition in Britain, Obama won a second term and, hardly free from economic difficulties, he is sticking to the Obama-Brown doctrine. Looking from the devastated battlefield that is now Britain, I know which of the two countries is more likely to come out of this economic crisis any time soon.

I am not an economist, but I’m not a fool either and, for some time now, on these pages I have tried to plead the case for Obama-Brown while British chancellor George Osborne recklessly refused to back down from the austerity policy that is only just beginning to reveal its truly damaging potential. What do I know so don’t believe me but read the words of American economist Paul Krugman writing in yesterday’s New York Times. Paul Krugman is one of those brilliant journalists who can make the complexities of economics understandable to the likes of me, I just wish more people would listen to him. Here in Britain, we need to accept that we will never recover unless something is done about George Osborne.

“My spending is your income; your spending is my income. If everyone tries to slash spending at the same time, income will fall – and unemployment will soar…”

“In 2008…governments needed to step in, spending to support their economies while the private sector regained its balance. And to some extent that did happen: revenue dropped sharply in the slump, but spending actually rose as programs like unemployment insurance expanded and temporary economic stimulus went into effect. Budget deficit rose, but this was actually a good thing, probably the most important reason we didn’t have a full replay of the Great Depression. But it all went wrong in 2010. The crisis in Greece was taken, wrongly, as a sign that all governments had better slash spending and deficits right away. Austerity became the order of the day, and supposed experts who should have known better cheered the process on, while the warnings of some (but not enough) economists that austerity would derail recovery were ignored…”

“The really bad news is…(that) European leaders, having created Depression-level suffering in debtor countries without restoring financial confidence, still insist that the answer is more pain. The current British government, which killed a promising recovery by turning to austerity, completely refuses to consider the possibility that it made a mistake…. The truth is that we’ve just experienced a colossal failure of economic policy – and far too many of those responsible for that failure both retain power and refuse to learn from experience.” New York Times, 7th January 2013

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We love our knights here in Britain. There is something special about being defended from evil by these men in shining armour and long pointy swords. That’s why they are all going to the wedding of Prince William Windsor and the young damsel Kate Middleton, soon to be a bit of a Lady Guinevere herself.

Hang on a moment, I may have got this wrong.

I am told that the knights going to the wedding are not heroic fighting figures at all, nope they are mostly old geezers in funny hats with a few younger royals thrown in to flesh out the numbers.

How disappointing that there won’t be a few daring blades there like that heroic knight in the Monty Python film about the Holy Grail who carried on fighting even after his arms and legs had been chopped off.

Well, I suppose, one of those knights of the funny hats who manages to survive as many attempts at chopping him down is the Queen’s favourite son, Prince Andrew, Duke of York, rejected husband of the lovely Lady Fergie, and Imperial Envoy and Ambassador to dodgy businessmen around the World. He will be at the wedding.

Young William is also a knight of the funny hats as is his Dad, Prince Charles, a near-sighted Don Quixote who tilts at windmills such as modern life and who looks strangely normal in this outfit. The royal princes, also William’s other uncle, Edward (who has now given up working because his failures got too expensive) are just some of the honorary members of this noble order of knights known as the Knights of the Garter and they are obviously going to be at the wedding. They are not real heroes though, they are known as supernumerary knights as they are only included because they are royal princes – supernumerary indeed.

No, the real knights are people like this man:

Sir John Major, Lancelot to some but failed Conservative Prime Minister to many others. He is going to the wedding.

Another knight is invited who was never frightened of wielding a sword or a handbag:

The iron lady herself, former Conservative Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher.

The Order Of The Knights Of The Garter goes back to the olde worlde dayes of medieval England when knights were knights and peasants knew their place. The boss knight who gives out these knighthoods is the reigning monarch who, in the case of Queen Elizabeth is no stranger to silly hats.

It is odd how she looks perfectly normal in this gear whilst the others all look like prats. Anyway, in this week of so-called royal wedding fever, the Knights of the Garter business has caused a scandal. Why is it, even stout royalists, ask, why is it that the order of the funny hats get in to that wedding but the last two British Prime Ministers do not? If even the Syrian ambassador gets an invite whilst his government is killing Syrian citizens, how could the last two Labour Prime Ministers be left off the list?

Well, even though as former Prime Ministers, they will get those feathery hats one day, they haven’t got them yet and so, sorry loves, you can’t come in.  I suspect they are not bothered but it says two things about the British establishment. One is that it has become, once again, an aristocratic elite and the other thing is that it has shown its increasingly fumbling grasp on reality.

I bet William and Kate wish that they could have had that small Norfolk wedding after-all.

The post The Knights, without their shining armour, on the Royal Wedding List. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

I wish I understood economics. When I was a schoolboy I wanted to do A level economic history but my school couldn’t make the timetable fit for anyone doing English, History and Economic History so I did music instead.

An apparently wise man, an economist, told me once that no one really understands the economy as it is in the end all about luck or bad luck. Well he seemed wise to me who knew nothing.

During the British General election campaign, that now seems such a long time ago, I listened to the debates believing, in my naivety, that after the worst economic crisis in living memory, the nation, wisened by its often-vaunted long democratic traditions, would look at the economic policies of the rival political parties and attempt to elect the most economically convincing manifesto.

Again, I repeat, I do not really understand economics but I had been impressed by Gordon Brown, the incumbent Prime Minister’s handling of the financial crisis and I, apparently in a minority, thought that his argument that the nation should not start major financial cuts until the economy began to grow again with Government led money supply help from the Bank of England – a policy that was showing signs of working. Mr Brown had been an impressive figure at world economic summits and his ideas were very much in line with the then new President of the United States, Barrack Obama.

The Conservative Party, led by David Cameron with George Osborne as his Chancellor of the Exchequer-in-waiting, disagreed and for once in British politics, the electorate was given a clear choice between opposites. Either take the gradual approach to economic recovery or start immediately with major financial cuts. The Conservatives, propped up by the Liberals, scraped into office and those cuts began.

Meanwhile, in America, President Obama, often much maligned, persisted with the policy advocated by Gordon Brown.

Last week, Britain announced its shockingly bad trade figures with the first signs that the economy was shrinking. Figures were not entirely convincingly explained away when mr Osborne blamed a heavy  fall of snow. I wondered if Gordon Brown might be proven right after all. He warned that the Conservative’s reckless and unproven policy of rapid and draconian cuts would run the risk of a double-dip recession – a return to the bad old days of 2009 before we gave the nation a chance of recovery.

Also last week, the United States issued its financial figures and showed a healthy growth in its economy with increased exports and recovery in domestic consumption. It couldn’t be, could it, that Britain put its money on the wrong horse at the last election?

I so wish I had taken that economics A level but I would be even happier if I thought that our government ministers knew what they were doing.

The post Did we elect the right people to run the British economy? appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

As I have said before in these blogs, I am sure that David Cameron is a very nice chap who would like to do his best. Yesterday, yet again, he was telling us that he is feeling “incredibly optimistic” which was quite sweet but also quite scary as he embarks on the government’s hastily cobbled together plans for reorganizing the National Health Service. This is the Coalition Government’s style: rush in and get things done.

We didn’t, of course, know what we were getting at the last general election. Would it be Labour or would it be the Conservatives? No one really expected this Coalition between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, not even them themselves. So manifestos had to be largely thrown away and the new government began a process of inventing policies as they went along like this new NHS plan. All we could see is that they wanted to do things quickly, change things, make an impact.

One thing they did promise before the election, well the Conservatives that is, was that they would move quickly on making major cuts in the economy even if they didn’t know exactly how they would do it. David Cameron is incredibly optimistic about this too and so our economy is being overhauled with a whistle and a prayer.

Behind all this is the ghost of Tony Blair who, in 1997,  arrived in office as a bright young thing full of great plans for the future and ready for change.

The trouble with Blair, well there were a lot of things wrong with him but that is another point, the trouble with Blair’s first administration was that it was frightened of doing things too quickly, frightened of scaring the City and frightened of scaring the middle Classes so it lost its great chance to change things whilst it was still popular.

David Cameron admired Tony Blair and would love to have his now derided “common touch” – none of the rest of us want another Tony but David is an old-fashioned guy. The one thing he is determined to avoid though is Tony’s big mistake.

So there will be no time for reflection, no time for details, no time for plans B – the Coalition is going to act quickly even if that means ignoring the experts and ruining whole swathes of the country’s infrastructure in the process.

Let’s hope that they get at least some of it right.

Margaret Thatcher, rather surprizingly, was an admirer of the Labour Prime Minister, Clement Attlee who was responsible for introducing the National Health Service after the Second World War even though he knew that there really wasn’t enough money in the till to pay for it. He is reported to have said afterwards that he knew that if he didn’t introduce a welfare state that looked after its citizens “from the cradle to the grave”, no one ever would.  I would love to think that Mr Cameron had similarly great ideas but, as Margaret Thatcher said of the quietly businesslike Attlee, he was “all substance and no show.” not something we could say about Tony Blair or David Cameron.

David Cameron, as well as being “incredibly optimistic” is also, I feel sure, full of good intentions as were most British prime ministers when they were new to office.

‘Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope.’

Well, even her strongest supporters would say that she didn’t do any of that.

New prime ministers deserve a touch of optimism but they also need to get real. Government is hard, change in a modern democracy is complex and frustrating. If you are a bright new broom, like Thatcher, Blair and Cameron it is relatively easy to make big brash speeches of incredible optimism. If you have to try to pick up the pieces after them though, it is another story. Look at post-Thatcher PM, John Major and post-Blair PM, Gordon Brown.

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Peter Mandelson, in case you have never heard of him, was a key figure in the Labour Party over the last couple of decades. He was, in fact one of only three significant figures in the Labour movement in that time and the only one of the three who didn’t become Prime Minister – well not yet anyway.

He is the great survivor so it is an unwise commentator who ever writes Peter Mandelson off even now that the Labour Party has been chucked out of office and its former leaders have all disappeared into the undergrowth for the time being.

Peter Mandelson worked as Tony Blair’s right-hand man, brain and confidant in the creation, with their friend Gordon Brown, of the political phenomenon that was New Labour.

He served in the Blair cabinet, left twice under the cloud of scandal and emerged for a third time when his former friend, Gordon Brown, now Prime Minister, was in desperate need of someone with an instinct for public relations. He was Gordon’s “eminence grise” or, maybe more suitably, his “eminence turquoise” – Gordon had enough grey already and Peter certainly injected a touch of colour into the Brown administration.

So these memoirs have been much anticipated but I am not sure that many people expected them to get out into print with quite such indecorous haste. Peter has not been wasting much time in the two months since the General Election that gave birth to the Cameron/Clegg coalition but then he is a doer, as they say, and, as his brush with financial scandal attests, he is not shy of making a quick bob. The book is bound to make up for the loss of his ministerial salary and the trappings of government that he wore so elegantly.

He must have thought that no matter how much money the book makes, he can never catch up with Tony Blair’s outrageously mercenary post-Prime-Ministerial personal fund raising schemes. We are told also that Gordon Brown is hidden away up in his Scottish home, heads down writing his probably multi-volume history of how he saved the World.

At least Peter has got in first and, more importantly, written an entertaining piece of tittle tattle.

Peter Mandelson is a funny man, good company, I would imagine, but also a very intelligent and effective politician with ample helpings of gigantic ego and ruthlessness that is a requirement for anyone who wants to succeed in politics. So the book ought to have been a significant piece of contemporary history….

…but, entertaining though the book is, it has surprized me that it has reduced the political history of the last thirteen years into the bubbliest and frothiest of kiss-and-tell confessions. The revelations are all in quotation marks…..we already know that the politics of this period was about the clash of two big personalities but Peter fills in the quotes. It is, and there is nothing wrong with this, like a gossipy chat down the pub. I will stick with it to the end.

For all his posturing about writing a serious book, Peter Mandelson’s memoir is packed with Tony said this and Gordon said that whilst I, Peter, mostly got it right. I suspect though, reading between the lines, that Tony and Gordon would have been lost without Peter but then, in the end, they both lost with Peter too. Love him or hate him, the man is a winner so let’s forgive him his vanity.

He makes me laugh, he is never boring and he is, as my grandmother used to say, as sharp as mustard, so I for one will be sad if we don’t hear from Peter Mandelson again.

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Us being the people of the United Kingdom I mean, not us that great band of wolfiewolfgang.com readers who cross all national boundaries and most other superficial classifications too.

We often over-estimate our importance to the rest of the World as was seen this week when the British press and a number of politicians were bleating about the Hung Parliament saying that it had to be resolved in five minutes because of the financial markets which were wobbling.

Amazingly, as I suspect all of of us knew, it was nothing to do with us, it was all about the Greece economic crisis. When Europe acted to put together a financial package, the markets steadied even though Britain hadn’t been panicked into sorting out its election results. It has wobbled again this morning but rallied slightly too at the thought that there might be a Liberal-Labour coalition but it will sort itself out so let us remember that it was the markets who got us into our financial woes in the first place.

There was an opinion poll taken on the day after the General Election where 60% of the sample said that Gordon Brown should have resigned immediately because his party had lost the election.

Well, this position was as ill-thought through as the markets argument.

Gordon Brown would have left the country without a Prime Minister if he had gone last Friday and it gave me a nasty shudder to realize, after all the coverage of this unprecedented moment in our electoral system, that so many people in Britain could just simply not understand what is really going on.

No matter what party you support, or if you support none of them, there was no way that Gordon Brown disappearing last week would have been a good thing for the country. His announced resignation yesterday, on the other hand was considered and dignified. He has opened up the possibility of an alternative coalition to the Liberal-Conservative one and he has strengthened Mr. Clegg’s negotiating hand.

This petulant rushing into change just for the sake of it is a dangerous thing for the British newspapers to be fanning. Our politicians should not be hurtled into a quick fix when there are big issues to be discussed.

Mr Brown certainly did lose the election but so did Mr Cameron and, weirdly, in case you hadn’t noticed, so did Mr. Clegg. So did the Scottish Nationalists and Plaid Cymru too…..etc. etc.

No one party could govern alone so an agreement has to be had or we will have to hold another General Election. That, of course, would be unfortunate too at this time of financial crisis.

There is a majority of people in Britain who did not vote Conservative and there are not enough Conservative MPs to carry their legislation through Parliament so it is perfectly proper for us to look for the best and most stable combinations of elected MPs who can agree on enough principles to form a government. Let us let them sort this one out at a considered pace. It is, and would be if we change the electoral system, a perfectly normal way, and maybe a more intelligent way too, of sorting out who runs the country.

The newspapers are also blustering about Mr Brown’s resignation leaving the country with the possibility of another unelected Prime Minister. This would undoubtedly be true if the rather impressive (well he impresses Hilary Clinton) David Miliband becomes Labour Leader in a dynamic new relationship with the equally charming and impressive Nick Clegg. Let us not think that it is unusual though to have a Prime Minister who was not directly elected…..just looking back at previous Prime Ministers this was also true of Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, Harold Macmillan, Alec Douglas-Home and James Callaghan.

We have to be careful and realize that there seems to be a natural divide in Britain at the moment. On one side is the Conservative Party and most of the national press and on the other side the majority of the electorate so, hey, don’t start giving up the struggle just because the newspapers tell you to.

So I make a plea to the British Press and its more gullible readers, let us all have a bit of patience and let the politicians thrash this out in a mature and responsible way. We had the TV debates, the exciting TV election coverage but this is not Big Brother or the X Factor, this is the governance of Britain.

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You have to be tough to be a politician.

Look at the three leaders of our main political parties here in Britain. They have been travelling round the country electioneering for weeks now, they have appeared in three long and very demanding television debates and now they have been up all night hearing the bad news.

News?

Yes. Nobody wants any of them.

Well, not entirely true. There is our first Green MP, Caroline Lucas. People love her and, no matter what your politics, you have to admire her intelligence, staying power and charm.

Caroline Lucas MP

The nice non-partisan Alliance Party candidate and mayor of Belfast, Naomi Long in Northern Ireland too had a whacking majority, defeating the depressing Peter Robinson, leader of the Northern Ireland Assembly and, I think we could feel the love when she won.

Naomi Long MP

There is that formidable Lady Hermon too, also in Northern Ireland, who fell out with the Conservatives and left the Ulster Unionists and decided to go it alone as an Independent. She got back in and will be a force to be reckoned with in the House of Commons.

Lady Sylvia Hermon MP

They are winners all three of them and, I hope they will have a significance in this new Hung Parliament.

Poor old Gordon, David and Nick though. They didn’t get what they wanted and now, with very little sleep I suspect, they have to fight for their futures all over again. They are all tough guys though so let’s not get too upset by making our politicians work for us.

We still don’t know how it will get sorted but at least we have a chance of changing the electoral system this time to reflect what seems to be a fact that Britain doesn’t recognise itself any longer in the mirror that was the old political system. So well done Nick Clegg even if your party largely failed at the polls, you still might be able to make that difference that you talked about during your amazing rise in popularity.

It is a funny old world but I am still excited by this genuinely historic moment in our political history. I am hoping that the next General Election will see a system where we can have more Lady Mermons, Mayor Longs and Green Lucases. I think it is called diversity.

Oh yes and all those expense fiddling MPs (or the ones who got found out anyway) have now gone too. Now that is something worth celebrating.

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Poor old Gordon! Well maybe not. I have to say though that I am still burying my head in my hands remembering a few things that I have said over the years which I wish I could wipe from my memory.

Well I felt for all three of our potential leaders last night in fact, after their three very long but weirdly entertaining debates here in the United Kingdom.

We have had the chance to hear real debate and at least been able to see at least a bit about what these men, who want to be our Prime Minister next Thursday, are like.

I, like a lot of us, I suspect, didn’t really change my mind about my own political views but I try not to ram my opinions down your throats as you all know by now (removes tongue from cheek).

They are, all three of them normal guys, nice people on the whole, good dads and all pretty intelligent men worthy of their jobs as heads of their respective parties.

They are all, just in case you didn’t know, as tough as they come. Power hungry, brutal when need to be with their own teams, undoubtedly frustrated when they can’t get their own way and, what has to go with those ambitions, they all have very large egos indeed.

So let us be careful before we fall in love with one of the three thinking that there is anything unusual or new about them in terms of their personalities.

They would always have been over-bearing school kids, pushy students and aggressive junior politicians.

So let’s not be surprized by those overhead comments from Gordon Brown then when he called the redoubtable Rochdale widow, Gillian Duffy, a “bigoted woman.” All three of these men are big enough in their own minds to be capable of impetuous, petulant and hugely unfair comments in the apparent privacy of their own cars.

Let’s not feel too sorry for Gordon then…..maybe we should worry if the election is decided by this though.

Maybe our sympathies should be with those much sneered at political and political aids.

Where now Sue Nye, Mr. Brown’s aide?

What did he say again?

Gordon Brown: “That was a disaster. You should never have put me with that woman. Whose idea was that?”

Junior aide Justin Forsyth: “It’s Sue, I think…it’s just ridiculous.”

Poor Sue but on second thoughts, I suspect she is as tough as the rest of them. Nearly as tough in fact as the excellent Mrs. Duffy who dared to say what she thought in spite of the cameras, the politicians and even their pushy aides.

Let’s remember the three debates rather than the biggest story of the election campaign so far and let us vote as a nation this time with more than enough information about these three leaders to decide what we really want to happen to our country next week. Let’s not pretend that they are puppy dogs too because they all have teeth.

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