Saturday 19 September 2009

Want some?

The LibDem leader Nick Clegg has challenged Conservative leader David Cameron to a duel to find out who is 'more savage'. The party leaders who, it is universally acknowledged, were chosen because of their youthful good looks and their charisma are both becoming increasingly concerned that this is the only reason why they were chosen.

Lately it has appeared pointless attacking the Prime Minister Gordon Brown as everyone else is already doing a good job of it. But it makes a lot of sense for The LibDem and Conservative leaders to round on eachother in order to prove which of them is the 'hard man' of politics.

Clegg has accused Cameron of not being 'savage' enough with spending cuts. He has suggested that there should be a longterm freeze in the public sector pay bill, scaling back of future public sector pensions and the withdrawal of tax credits from the middle class.

The Conservative leader who has previously avoided scaring the electorate with drastic spending cuts is sure to hit back with a withering attack on Clegg and is likely to announce broader plans to decrease public debt. Now that the 'c-word' has become acceptable, none of the party leaders can any longer feel shy of fighting in this particular arena.

What is clear is that throughout the past few years the three leaders have worked so hard to cling on to the same ideological turf that it now seems that the only way that any of them can distinguish themselves is by punching eachother's lights out in a public brawl.

7 comments:

  1. As Nye Bevan said, people who sit in the middle of the road are likely to get run over

    ReplyDelete
  2. British politics has more often than not been a scrap over the centre ground.
    Anyone heard of Butskillism?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Fear of appearing different is a terrible thing

    ReplyDelete
  4. Poor old Nick, we all thought that there would be a 'Cameron' effect when he took over. Instead the party has remained in the doldrums.

    ReplyDelete
  5. As anarchists say: whoever you vote for, the government always gets in.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Three cheers for all you cynics out there. At least there is some kind of debate going on. And the 'serious' issues are actually being debated in case you hadn't realised

    ReplyDelete
  7. This should be the most exciting election for a long time.
    Instead it'll be three leaders slugging it out over who is least likely to change the status quo... even though they all claim to represent change.
    Weird, this 'change' thing...

    ReplyDelete