Well, it’s nothing to do with us, but vote us

back in anyway. We’ll give you a house. All

of you. Everyone in Britain gets a house.

And a pony. We’ll raise the money from

somewhere. Same place we’re getting the 8

Billion for saving the NHS I expect.

nd we thought the 2010 election was

mad. Welcome to clusterfuck central:

with politicians, never the most popular

people on the planet, having fallen

steadily from favour throughout the 21st Century, their

image taking heavy blows from such events as the Iraq

War, the various expenses scandals, the sheer anti-

charisma of the likes of Charles Clarke...

It was inevitable, really, that after

thirteen years of increasingly

divisive Labour Government under

Blair and Brown, the electorate

would lose patience and reject them

in 2010. But even then they were

insufficiently enthusiastic about

anyone else that a coalition had to

be cobbled together out of

ideological opposites. And when

that failed to be any better — in many respects worse —

the electorate finally threw their hands in the air and gave

up altogether. Many went over to the far-right likes of

UKIP out of fear, bigotry or a paucity of other options,

even though there was a perfectly good Green Party right

there. The end result is an election with no frontrunner,

both main parties neck-and-neck, with neither one

heading for victory, and various smaller parties suddenly

with legitimate roles to play in the bigger picture. The

lesser-of-two-evils factor is starting to die off as the

electorate is presented with a massive feast of evils to

choose from. The BBC’s swingometer this year is

apparently going to consist of five swingometers layered

on top of each other to cope with the incredible strain. By

2020 they’re probably going to need some kind of 4-

dimensional astrolabe.

This situation would be perfect if only

we’d passed the Alternative Vote in

2012. It could even have acted as a

springboard toward full proportional

representation. But unfortunately, AV

was turned down by a populace

calculatedly bored to tears of the whole

debate by an establishment with a

vested interest in keeping them docile

enough not to realise who

disenfranchised they were. With the cheerful

collaboration of the likes of the Socialist Worker, who

sneered at it on the grounds that it was just a small slice

of reform, and if they couldn’t have the whole cake right

now, no-one would ever be allowed to have it, ever.

Hence being stuck with the blatantly undemocratic First

Past the Post, because apparently sticking with a broken

system is better than reform that takes multiple steps.

And for many of us, that means the national election is,

in practical terms, irrelevant — because we can’t vote for

who we really want to because they won’t get in where

we live. Case in point: us.

his venerable organ is headquartered in a

constituency that has in 2015 found itself a

marginal seat for the first time in decades.

Cornwall North is rarely given any

national notice, and to be fair it’s not exactly lighting up

the campaign this time around, but it is suddenly a

legitimate battleground, with the Lib Dem incumbent (a

nice guy, even if he did sign his name to that petition

throwing out Charles Kennedy) practically neck-and-

neck with the Tory challenger (a venal prick-a-ma-clot

with douchebag sideburns).

Now, given a real choice here, we would vote for the

Green Party. In

previous elections

it would have been

Labour. We have

never voted for

either, however,

because there

would be literally

no point. This

constituency has

been Liberal or

Conservative since

the year dot; there

has never been any

point in voting for

anyone else. And

there still isn’t,

despite the UKIP

surge; the Tory

vote doesn’t (at this admittedly early stage) appear to

have been significantly split; opinion polling has seen the

Tories catch up with the Libs and occasionally overtake

them. Anyone could win here, and it’s a dizzying

experience to see national parties give a flying fuck about

us for a change. The Tories have been billboard-bombing

us since March — the latest one a horrified account of a

country suffering under Prime Minister Miliband,

alongside some copy explaining that we can change it by

voting Tory. Which, to be fair, isn’t untrue: in such a

close election, every seat counts. No-one’s getting a full

parliamentary majority here, but either Labour or the

Tories are going to have the most seats (although an

absolute dead-heat certainly isn’t impossible), and that’s

going to influence the shape of the Government we end

up with after the votes have been counted — assuming

the system itself doesn’t just collapse from exhaustion (for

more information on the next Government might be put

together, turn to the last article in the magazine).

ntil it became clear that there was a real

danger of a Tory victory in our

constituency, we were unsure for whom

to vote. The polls, and the imminence

of the election itself, crystallised it as a simple choice, a

more vital version of the usual binary decision: to not

vote is to vote Tory, so Lib Dem it is. Tactical voting has

come in for a bad press at times, but thanks to our broken

system it’s unavoidable in some situations. We’d have

voted Green (or Labour) if there was an equal chance of

any given candidate winning, but there isn’t. There are

six names on the ballot, but only two who have a realistic

chance of winning (the disturbing possibility of UKIP

managing to provide a third appears to have been

avoided). Therefore, whatever you do at the election

ultimately feeds into them in some way, including not

voting at all. Under AV, we could vote for the Greens,

then Labour, then the Lib

Dem, all the way down to

UKIP, who we’d put

below even the guy who’s

pissed £500 away on a

confused campaign to do

with reforming child

custody laws. But that

horse remains dead, and

bringing out the billy-clubs

for — what, the third time

in this introduction? —

won’t help anyone.

The point is, the bizarre

combination of the same

old system and a strange,

fractured political

landscape has led to the

question: who are you supposed to vote for in a

landscape filled with bastards, collaborators and losers?

Well, the answer is: anyone capable of blocking a

bastard, that’s who. Keep an eye on your constituency

figures; check out the exhaustive BBC website (and bear

in mind that the Tories and UKIP want it dead) and see

who the frontrunners are. And then prioritise according

to your own preferences. This could be painful; if you’re

in a constituency where UKIP and the Tories are neck-

and-neck, you may need to find it within yourself to vote

Tory under the “I might be a cunt, but I’m not a fucking

cunt” principle. Bring a bucket.

That’s right: this election is so confusing and insane, it’s

thrown up circumstances under which we’re prepared to

recommend voting for the Conservative Party. Enjoy the rest

of the magazine; we’re going to take a shower.

Edward Samuel Dibdin Miliband was born in Fitzrovia, London, to two filthy immigrant

bastards, both Polish Jews who ran away from Nazi Europe like pussies. Cuh. They lived in a

house on Primrose Hill (it’s windy there, but the view is so nice) which the family still own to

this day. Specifically, his brother David.

Ralph Miliband, Ed ‘n’ Dave’s father, was a well-regarded left wing thinker, though an

academic rather than a politician, whose distaste for Britain’s hand-rubbing glee at the start of

World War II was wilfully mistaken for a despisation of the entire country and everything it

stands for by the Daily Mail. Ed, by all accounts, is less left-wing than his dad. It’s hard to

imagine him making a pilgrimage to the grave of Karl Marx.

After graduating from Oxford (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) and his Dad’s old

stamping ground the LSE, Edward went into the media, albeit the political media, getting a

job as Andrew Rawnsley’s brain on the Channel 4 series “A Week in Politics”. This

somehow got him noticed by Harriet Harman, then Shadow Deputy Chancellor, who

poached him away to work as her chief speechwriter and research bod. When Blair took over

and reshuffled Harman to the Shadow DTI, Miliband stayed put at the Treasury to work with

Shadow Chancellor Gordon Brown, except for 1995, when he took the year off to go back to

the LSE and get his masters in anticipation of Labour’s inevitable return to Government.

When that did indeed happen Miliband again stayed effectively where he was, only for

realsies this time. He was special adviser to the Chancellor for five years, before taking

another year off to go to school — this time, as a teacher rather than a student, at Harvard

University. He did so well that he stuck around for an extra term teaching a course about

what “left-wing” actually means. Upon his return, he was put in charge of the main Treasury

think-tank, with responsibility for long-term economic planning. Oh, well.

In 2005, Miliband changed tack. With Hague’s Tories having failed to make a dent in the

colossal Labour majority from 1997, a third straight election victory was inevitable, as was

the Blair-Brown swap. With this in mind, Miliband decided the time was right to enter

parliament. The safe Labour seat of Doncaster North — it went red in 1983, that’s how safe it

is — had recently been vacated by the late Kevin Hughes upon his diagnosis of Motor

Neurone Disease. Miliband stepped in and was duly returned as MP. Technically this means

he was an MP for even less time than David Cameron was before becoming party leader, but

the difference is that Miliband had spent well over a decade beforehand working with the

Labour Party in Opposition and in Government, whereas Cameron had spent the decade

before becoming Tory leader flogging knackered digital television channels showing repeats

of Home to Roost and Perfect Scoundrels. Channels which failed so fast they were actively

dying whilst transmitting.

Anyway, once Blair had finally been prised out of Number 10 in 2007, Miliband was

appointed to the fresh, new Brown Cabinet as Energy Secretary, where he made waves by

putting heavy restrictions on any new coal-fired power stations. When the expenses scandal

hit, he was notably untouched. All this possibly helped build his image; he would have hoped

for “squeaky-clean and strong” but in the event he ended up with “dull and nerdy”. This

didn’t stop him surprisingly winning the Labour leadership in 2010 after an exhausted Brown

stepped down. His brother David, formerly Foreign Secretary, was the early favourite, but Ed

pushed ahead with union support. The Tories have tried to spin this as an act of actual

fratricide, but the Milibands never said they wouldn’t stand against each other. In the election

campaign of 2015, Ed finally started to appear Prime Ministerial for the first time ever, and

not a moment too soon.

every leap

every

headclutch every P45

every graph

every

bollocking every guzzle every punch

every boondoggle

every every forecast

painkiller every invoice

every downward spiral

Oh God what are we going to do

aith, Family and Flag.” Not the most progressive slogan in the entire world; you can see similar

slogans associated with several conservative think-tanks in the English-speaking world. It was

even the subtitle of Sarah Palin’s autobiography. It suggests every insular, closed-minded

opinion one might associate with the woman who might be President right now in some ghastly

alternate universe: a demented devotion to looking after one’s own first and foremost. It would be a decent slogan for

UKIP, now we think of it.

But it’s actually the slogan of one of the most talked-about factions within the Labour Party in the UK, a trend created to

change the party’s fortunes and help them win this election. Sure enough, its teachings echo through a large chunk of the

resultant election manifesto — although far from the whole thing. Miliband has his own ideas.

For much of the year after the 2010 election, all the talk was of Blue Labour, newly formulated by Maurice (Baron)

Glasman and John (John) Cruddas a year earlier, when Labour were still in Government but facing inevitable defeat to

Cameron’s “revitalised” Tories. At first glance, Blue Labour looks like the most depressing thing imaginable — New

Labour without the pretence. At second glance, it’s much more complicated.

hat it categorically isn’t is a return to New Labour. Glasman and co reject the Blairite economic

shift rightwards to a mealy-mouthed acceptance of Thatcher-approved neoliberal capitalism. But

they’re hardly Clause IV-toting redder-than-thou ideologues either; they’re as sceptical of the state’s

capacity for running an entire economy as they are of the invisible hand. Instead, they advocate a

revival of the old and uniquely British notion of Guild Socialism—where industries would be owned by the state, but not

controlled by it. Instead, a system of national, democratically organized guilds (hence the name) run by the workers

themselves and ultimately answerable to the people, would make the decisions. This is quite a neat idea: not a stone’s

throw from Co-operation, libertarian with a small “l”, the kind of thing Bertrand Russell would and probably did nod

solemnly at.

So far it’s all sounding pretty good. It’s when we reach the social policy that the wheels come off. The economy isn’t he

primary concern of Blue Labour. The primary concern, it appears, is getting Labour elected, and the best way to do this,

they think, is to lurch to the right on social matters. Labour is traditionally the party of the working-class, or at least that’s

the idea. In reality there are plenty of working-class strongholds that wouldn’t touch them with a bargepole; the rural,

farming communities in places like Norfolk and Cornwall (the poorest country in the UK), who usually vote Tory, which

on the face of it is like a nation of turkeys electing the Christmas Every Day Party. Glasman and company naturally

wondered why that is, and apparently came to the conclusion that most working-class people are selfish, racist and

reactionary, and that for Labour to survive as a political force they need to pander to these instincts. Hence “faith, flag

and family”. Words like “home and community” run through the Blue Labour ideology like Blackpool rock. Keep

everything local; decentralise everything, especially the welfare state. And massive limits on immigration, because Mr and

Mrs Working-Class Britain are terrified racists.

This is an oversimplification, but then so is the logic that Cruddas and Glasman are following, which has led them to their

“if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” conclusion that, in essence, isn’t really that different from what Blair was doing twenty

years ago, wooing the electorate not by trying to sell left-wing ideology to them, but by adopting what we perceive as their

inherent right-wing bias and uncomfortably shifting the party around to fit. This worked for Blair, of course (although

even Michael Foot’s Labour would have been favourites against the exhausted, embattled Tories of 1997) inasmuch as he

got to be Prime Minister, but in the long-term it marginalised traditional leftist thinking in the very place where it’s

supposed to live, and by pandering to prejudices rather than challenging them, normalised them. Blue Labour is preferable

to New Labour — the revival of Guild Socialism in particular is definitely worth looking into — but in its willingness to

embrace social conservatism, it throws into sharp relief the one important factor that it’s missing: the ability to prioritise

ideology over votes. Do we want people to vote Labour? “Sure, we all do!” But we’d rather they voted for genuine Labour

policies, not just the name. Blue Labour is a manifesto for the party, not the country. It’s still 900000000 times better than

Cameron or Farage, though.

David William Donald Willoughby Jenson Smythe Windsor Cholmondely Dibdin

Hednesford Godmanchester Saxe-Coburg-Gotha Fauntleroy Bush Twysleton-Wickham

Cameron, III, Eighth Viscount of Pissbury, was born on the 9th of October, 1966, probably in

a fucking castle or something. He was born by caesarean section, owing to the solid platinum

soup spoon protruding out of his already hateful mouth. He was raised, appropriately

enough, in Berkshire, and attended Heathedown Prep School alongside Prince Sodding

Edward, and finally Eton, the nation’s top school for the kind of people who never grew a

personality because they always had vast sums of money.

After “graduating” from Eton, he studied Getting A First Class Honours Degree at Braying-

Shitnose College, Oxford, where he graduated with First Class Honours. Among his

classmates were the King of Norway and Boris Johnson, Billy Bunter’s idiot savant cousin.

Having graduated from Braying-Shitnose, Cameron was given the complimentary lifetime

membership in the Conservative Party, where he was seconded to Downing Street to work

for then-new Prime Minister John Majors as speech polisher during Prime Minister’s

Questions. During this period, he was largely credited with making Majors seem like a

vaguely human person, rather than a light grey blur in the corner of an entire nation's eye. It

may even have contributed to the Conservative Party's intensely depressing victory by default

in the 1992 General Election. In which case, Cameron is directly responsible for a large

percentage of suicides in the UK around that period. Probably.

He left this post in 1994 to join giant faceless media joycrusher Carlton as Director of

Corporate Affairs, presiding over their ultimately successful quest to ruin ITV forever. He was

also instrumental in the giant clusterfuck of ONdigital, later ITV Digital, which turned out to

be a giant coin-haemorrhaging engine which died on its arse early in the twenty oughties.

Among the problems were an outdated encryption system, (so old a backward farmhand

could knock up a fake card and sell it for £400 to people sufficiently desperate to watch

repeats of “Dandelion Dead” on Carlton Select); the fact that Carlton and their partners were

so monumentally tight they wouldn’t directly employ any staff for the digital company,

meaning key managers could leave at any time, and indeed did; and the fatal and desperate

overpayment of several hundred million pounds for the dregs of the football league. During

its collapse, Cameron, as DCA of Carlton, was even reduced to ordering the Sunday Express

to lie about their number of subscribers.

Cameron jumped ship from Carlton (just months before ON rebranded itself as ITV Digital in

a doomed attempt to get people to pay attention to them) to run for parliament. He’d been

selected before, but now he was being offered a safe seat—Witney—which he duly won. He

spent much of the next four years quietly insinuating himself into the shadow cabinet,

eventually ending up as shadow education secretary, before Michael Howard confirmed that

he was a big soft pussy by resigning after one poxy inevitable defeat in the 2005 election.

Cameron, despite only having been an MP for four damn years, was soon elected—beating

off Kenneth Clarke and David Davis in the process* — as leader of the Conservative Party

and immediately began a policy of wholeheartedly believing whatever the person in front of

him wants to hear, until his inevitable ascendancy to the Premiership in 2010. And we all

know what happened then.

*sorry Originally published five years ago, way back in issue one. Call us a bunch of lazy bastards if you like, but this was a bitch of an issue and it’s not as if his past has significantly changed, so fuck all a’ y’all motherfuckers.

BEAST

You’ve probably seen the latest set of election posters from Team Tory. Alex Salmond with Ed Miliband in his pocket.

Nicola Sturgeon playing Ed Miliband like a puppet.

The implication is pretty clear. Ed Miliband only gets into Downing Street with the support of the SNP, and that

means everything he does will clearly be dictated by the Salmond and Sturgeon power-couple. The next five years will be

ones of ruin, decay and probably a minor apocalypse, when God Himself strikes these islands from the sea to quell the

evils of socialism.

There is, however, a small problem with that implication.

It’s ridiculous. It’s pointless. It’s borderline insane.

Miliband has been somewhat cavalier toward the SNP, rebuffing them at every turn. Because he knows he can

afford to. Barring some kind of polling-day swing even Robert Mugabe would be embarrassed about engineering, they will

be getting a lot of seats. But seats don’t translate to influence.

Nicola Sturgeon has already committed her party to pulling down any minority Tory government or Tory-led

coalition. The idea that they could ever enter into some kind of agreement with them now is laughable.

And that means pretty much whatever Ed decides to do in government – renew Trident, look at the Barnet

formula, rebuild Hadrian’s Wall – he’s going to get their support. Where the fuck else are they going to go?

If they decide not to support Labour and force another election, that’s just going to be seen as giving

the Tories another chance and their support will evaporate. If they don’t support Labour on any key

votes, that’s seen as siding with the Tories and the same happens. If they abstain, Labour and a few

straggling Lib Dems and Greens form a workable majority from what’s left.

Ed doesn’t need to offer independence to get their support. He doesn’t even need to offer devo-max,

though he probably will. He just needs to not be David Cameron, and he’s had five years of practice

at that.

None of this is particularly controversial. Even senior Tories have acknowledged it’s basically true.

So why would the Tories be spending their war chest on a campaign that, even by the standards of

political advertising, is reaching new heights of idiocy?

To explain this, we need to go back a few years.

It's pretty safe to assume that in the heady days of March 2010, no-one saw this coming.

We knew about the concept of a hung parliament. It was something they had in Germany, and the

Netherlands, and other such heathen, backward places. It was the deserving fate of countries so attached

to 'fairness' that they used proportional representation, a ridiculous system designed to make votes

actually count.

In the UK, of course, we knew better.

We had the vastly superior first-past-the-post, which let the two biggest parties fight for a few floating

floaters and trade the government between them every ten years or so.

"An Outside Context Problem was the sort of thing most civilisations encountered just once, and which they tended to encounter

rather in the same way a sentence encountered a full stop."

- Iain M Banks, Excession

BORDER

THE

ABOVE THE

If you happened to not be one of those two big parties, you could resign yourself to about as much political

relevancy as a mouldy cabbage.

But then we had 2010. The basic assumption was that Dave Cameron would sweep into power - we'd had 13 years

of Labour and despite wanting it really, really hard, Gordon Brown just wasn't that good at being Prime Minister. History

said it'd be an easy win.

But that didn't happen.

Despite being educated at Eton and having a very shiny forehead, not all the country recognised Dave as their

natural leader. He's never really forgiven them.

Instead, he was forced into a coalition with the Lib Dems, whose support - based it was almost entirely on left-

wing protest votes and promises they wouldn't need to fulfil - promptly collapsed.

Now, possibly the more astute political observer could have guessed, about halfway through this parliament, how

this election was going to go.

Dave, apparently, isn't one of them.

We can tell this by his reaction to the Scottish referendum. The vote for independence failed, of course. It was

always going to - fear of change is strong, and while the SNP had managed a narrow majority (even in a proportional

representation system - take that, Germany), not everyone who voted for them wanted independence, and most people who

hadn't definitely didn't.

Dave could have taken his victory with good grace. He didn't. Instead, he put everything he'd promised Scotland

on the same timetable as 'English votes for English laws', something no-one's been able to agree on for 40 years and

counting.

The SNP got a huge upsurge in support, not that Dave cared. They were a minor party, and they were only taking

Labour and LibDem seats. Seriously, who gives a fuck about Scotland?

And that kind of thinking even makes a twisted kind of sense, if you can get yourself a majority just from the votes

in England.

Unfortunately, Dave, you can't.

The SNP are the Tories' Outside Context Problem. They didn't imagine they'd ever be a problem. But with them in

serious running for 50 seats and brandishing a pledge to bring down any Tory-led government, they've become a very big

problem indeed.

And not only is it a problem, it's a problem they have no idea how to fight.

The fact is, more of the country is left-wing than right-wing. But the Left has been split into factions, whereas the

Right has only had the Tories. More recently, they’ve also had UKIP, though the polls are currently suggesting that shark

has been quite thoroughly jumped. This has meant that before, the Tories only had to worry about beating the biggest party

the Left had to offer.

Now, they’ve got to beat everyone.

Dave’s problem is that no matter how you spin the numbers, it’s not looking likely that he’ll be Prime Minister in a

couple of weeks.

The Tories and Labour are both on course to win about 280 seats. Out of all the other parties, only the Lib Dems

and UKIP are willing to work with the Tories, and on all their best days that coalition doesn’t quite hit the magic 323 seats

needed for a majority.

But Labour has the SNP and anything the Greens and Plaid Cymru can pull together, along with the Lib Dems

since they’ll quite happily work with anyone.

Put all that together, and you get a majority bigger than Tony Blair had in 2005.

The real horror for Dave is that there’s not really anything he can do about it. North of

Dumfries is a dead zone for the Tory vote. If the SNP do win fewer seats in Scotland than everyone’s

expecting, it’ll only be because Labour’s taken them instead.

All he can hope to do is convince Labour voters in England that they

should be voting Tory. Trying to convince them on policy grounds isn’t going to cut it

– if you didn’t vote for the idea of a Tory government, you’ll be fucked if you’re

voting for them after five years of the reality. Y’know what, I didn’t like the sound

of kicking people out of their homes for being poor, but now you’ve done it to

200,000 people I’m coming around to the idea!

Attempting to convince people that any Labour government will be pawns of the

SNP is ridiculous. It’s pointless. It’s insane.

But as Dave well knows, it’s all he’s got left.

Anatomy OF A TURD

Manifesto attack In which we effectively judge the five main national

contenders by their covers, and also some of their

contents. Thierry Henry Thoreau reads this shit so you

don’t have to.

COVERS

Labour have by far the worst cover among this election’s manifestos. Consisting solely of text is bad enough, but it’s incredibly

dull and uninspiring text, and in that off-putting post-New Labour font they’ve used for altogether too long now. Whatever

happened to serifs? Anyway, if this election was fought on manifesto design alone, which thank Christ it isn’t, Labour would be

completely annihilated.

The Lib Dems’ effort is better, if (presumably) inadvertently reminiscent of the BBC’s design for their election coverage:

diamonds! It’s a useful way of summing up their key polices right there on the cover without it necessarily seeming cluttered.

Also, a diamond of kiddy handprints for absolutely no reason at all.

The Tories are being all stentorian and serious and statesmanlike, with a solemn picture of choice Cabinet members sitting in a

row, with Dave at the centre flanked by Gideon on his left and Theresa May on his right. Also present are Education Secretary

Nicky Morgan and former CBBC presenter Esther McVey, thereby greatly overestimating the amount of women in the Cabinet,

and Sajid Javid, the British Bobby Jindal, because he’s the only ethnic they could find. The whole tableau is eerily reminiscent of

the Australian Liberal manifesto for 2013, only marginally more natural looking. Say what you like about Cameron — no, really,

please do, at great length if possible — but at least he’s not Tony Abbott.

Talking of Australian politicians having a surprising influence in this country,

the Greens’ manifesto is striking but generic, with its cropped stock photos

of Manifesto-Type Stuff: some houses, some kids presumably in a school of

some kind, a few banknotes, a bloke in a hardhat. They do make probably

the best use of their signature colour, though: the Lib Dems barely use it at

all, Labour just use it on their text, and the Tories soak their manifesto in

blue, they seem to have deliberately picked the most authoritarian, least

friendly shade they could find. The Greens at least use multiple shades and

interesting uses of contrast. Like we said, it stands out.

Impossibly, the best designed manifesto of the

election belongs to UKIP. The far right are

usually terrible at design—view any given BNP

manifesto (although there isn’t one this year,

because the party’s in critical condition).

Sometimes, however, chance throws up a

Goebbels or a Speer, and we end up with the

striking didactic iconography of Nazi Germany.

That’s what we have here. Like the Labour one,

it’s text-heavy, but the text is light on dark

purple and comes in multiple sizes for

emphasis, making it part of the design, and not

just a dull paragraph. The UKIP logo is

conspicuous by its absence (again like the

Labour equivalent), replaced with a logoized

campaign slogan and Union Jack as

punctuation. And it’s in landscape instead of

portrait just to be different. A party like UKIP

have no right to such a well-designed

manifesto. Fortunately, it’s what’s inside that

counts...

Economy

Labour open their manifesto — which is just as dull

within as without — with their high falutin’ Budget

Responsibility Lock, that (it says here) ensures that

every single promise, every offhand comment,

every full stop and eroteme in the benighted thing

is budgeted and paid for. Honest to fucking Christ.

They pledge to cut the deficit every year, to the

point where they lay out the first line of Ed Balls’

first budget: “This budget cuts the deficit every

year”. It’s like a magical mantra. Still, they’re not

the first party to effectively put “clap your hands if

you believe in fairies” in their manifesto. In fact,

that’s more or less what every manifesto ever

written has said.

Having unexpectedly found themselves in

Government for past five years, the Lib

Dems have more to prove than most, and

they employ a gimmick whereby their

“achievements” in the Coalition are listed

alongside their promises for a potential

second shot, which might as well consist of

free ponies for the under-fives for all the

chance they’ll have to actually live up to

them. Normal service has been resumed,

then.

With austerity being less popular

than Windows ME, and their

Coalition partners

understandably refusing to take

credit, the Tories are very

carefully trying to lay out a vision

of a future Conservative

Government that’s identical to

the present one, without actually

looking like it at this stage. They

can promise to “pursue”

whatever “ambitions” they like;

that doesn’t require actual

concrete results, after all.

“Politically Correct spending programmes” could, frankly, mean almost anything, but in practice it means anything to do with

foreigners and browns: foreign aid, in particular, is apparently sick and wrong and will be destroyed under the nightmare

scenario of a UKIP government. And Scotland counts as foreign aid. Otherwise, of course, their economic policy revolves

around quitting the EU, and the tremendous savings we’ll make from that. There are two major factors against this: first, that

since the vast majority of the money that goes into the EU funnels back to the UK, we won’t actually save very much at all; and

second, the crippling damage to the economy caused by pulling out of the world’s largest trading bloc out of narcissism and

pique would at the very least cancel those savings out, even if they existed in the first place, which they don’t.

The Greens’ manifesto is written in friendly, conversational language, which is pretty cool. Their economic plans involve

scrapping zero-hours slavery, boost the public sector (creating an extra million jobs, they reckon), and increase the minimum

wage to a tenner an hour by 2020. This is all costed, apparently, largely by taxing the rich. The danger is that the sheer

amount of extra taxation will just cause the rich to fuck off out of Britain altogether. They don’t have an answer to that yet.

IMMIGRATION

Here’s Blue Labour’s influence: for some reason,

the traditional party of the Left thinks it needs to

pander to the knee-jerk intolerance of the average

UKIP voter, because that’s what the working classes

are these days. Perhaps acknowledging that a

hardline anti-foreigner sentiment runs somewhat

counter to their traditional stance, they attempt a

compromise by saying “we don’t want people to

stop coming, but we do want to make it as difficult

as humanly possible for them to settle here.”

The Lib Dems just scowl at Labour and

provide a few token assurances to try and

placate people on both sides of the political

spectrum. Again: normal service has been

resumed.

The Tories obviously want to win

votes back from UKIP, so they

spend this part of their manifesto

effectively beating their chests

and yelling about how much

more manly they are and how

they hate wogs and frogs more

than anyone ever forever times a

billion. Again, notice the promise

to effectively aspire to

something, but not necessarily to

achieve it. It’s a very Tory

combination of honesty and

dishonesty simultaneously.

The Greens give the unavoidable sense that they’d rather be talking about nationalisation or homeopathy or something, but

the manufactured topic of immigration is a major one in this election, despite the presence of actually important issues. So

they have to come up with something. Unlike everyone else in this election, their policy is actually to encourage immigration

by removing the extant skills and family restrictions. Maybe it’ll help pay for their other great-but-expensive ideas.

This is the second-biggest deal for UKIP, of course: the party is all about despising foreigners, including but not limited to the

Scots. Of course, they can’t say that out loud because their success depends on the pretence that they’re not a bunch of cunts.

So instead they grit their teeth and basically lie about being compassionate and caring and not having a problem with

migration and how it’s nothing to do with race (which, to be fair, it isn’t; being white and not British is plenty) while

simultaneously setting out policies including an explicitly draconian points system based on the one Australia uses — you

know, the vast, empty country so terrified of immigrants they put them all in concentration camps. Read issue 22 if you

weren’t aware. That’s what UKIP want Britain to be, that is.

THE NHS

Labour have the bragging rights of having invented

the NHS, and they bring this up over and over again

in their manifesto. They also promise two and a

half billion quid’s worth of new nurses, GPS and

midwives and the integration of health and social

care under the NHS banner. Most importantly, they

promise to repeal the Tories’ NHS Privatisation Act

(that wasn’t what it was called, but that’s what it

was). If they get in and don’t do this, we should

hound them out of office with pliers.

The Lib Dems have some pretty thin gruel in

terms of actual Coalition achievements with

regards to the NHS. 400,000 more people a

year on talking therapies. That’s nice, but it’s

not the sort of thing we’d feel the need to

go tell on the mountain or anything. They

promise the same £8 billion investment out

of god-knows-where as the Tories, plus an

investment in care for mentalists.

This section of the Tory

manifesto has a lot of heavy

lifting to do ever since Gideon

Osborne panicked and pledged

an extra £8 billion for the NHS

out of thin air. They’re stuck with

that one now. Perhaps that’s why

they’ve also pledged to cure

cancer. Which one will they

manage first?

Still, the Tories must be giggling at the Greens’ promise: an extra £12 billion for the NHS. Bear in mind, however, that the

Greens are (uniquely) starting from a position where they’re not already spending that much on Trident. They would also roll

back privatisation and repeal the Tory Fuck The NHS Act, or whatever it’s called.

Where UKIP are getting their twelve billion, however, is anyone’s guess, since they’re keeping Trident. Oh, wait, it’s from the

unimaginable riches we’ll end up with when we leave the EU and stop giving aid to countries that aren’t even British. That’s

the only thing that can result from either of those policies, of course. Their main policies with regard to the NHS are firstly to

scrap hospital parking fees, which, okay, but you know there are other problems with the system, right? And of course, being

UKIP, they have to tie every issue in with the invading foreign hordes, hence a lot of paranoia about “health tourism”, which in

reality isn’t a thing at all, except maybe once or twice. But then reality and UKIP don’t get along at the best of times.

TM

Socialism. It was nice while it lasted.

We can’t have nice things

TM

A DIVISION OF THE MAMMON CORPORATION TM

Nicholas William Peter Iscariot Clegg was born on the 7th of January 1967 in Chalfont St

Giles, Buckinghamshire, which sounds like a made-up stereotype of a posh British location

but is actually real. He is also descended from Russian nobility. Maybe we shouldn’t have

been so surprised when he sold his centre-left party out to the Tories.

Clegg went to Cambridge in 1986, where Sam Mendes gave him AIDS. In a play. He also

joined the Cambridge University Conservative Association in. We probably should put

“allegedly” here because he claims to have no memory whatsoever of this, but the CUCA

kept records, dumb-bell, and he’s listed as a member for the 1986-87 year. Possibly he left

when he realised that “Conservative” and “Liberal” meant different things. Possibly not.

Since, as far as he can recall, he was never there, we may never know.

After graduating with an upper second (in social anthropology, for what it’s worth), Clegg

spent a few years as a sort of academic globetrotter; a year at the University of Minnesota

(writing a thesis on vaguely Gaia-type deep ecology), a couple of years in New York as an

intern at The Nation, fact-checking Christopher Hitchens rants. He wound up in Belgium,

spending six months bumming around the post-Cold War Marshall Plan before going back to

University yet again — this time in Bruges, where he got both his masters and his wife.

After getting his masters, he continued drifting through Europe as a utility lobbyist and

political handyman; he worked for a couple of years for Libya’s PR company. He also wrote

articles for the Financial Times, winning the inaugural Peter Thomas Prize for Turning Out

Some Quite Good Stuff. In 1994, he joined the European Commission, again working to help

reboot former Soviet countries. He did so well at this that he was poached by no less than

Leon Brittan, then Vice-President of the Commission and Trade Commissioner, as an advisor

and speechwriter. Because of this, when China and Russia applied to join the WTO in 1995

(they both made it after several years of tedious negotiation), Clegg was the man in charge of

the Commission’s negotiating team. We may end up hearing more about Clegg’s time in

Brittan’s office when the Goddard Inquiry gets started; so if his name does unexpectedly

show up, that’s why.

In 1999, Clegg made the leap to the European Parliament, for the East Midlands. As an

MEP, his main achievement was build up his own standing within the party. Having got his

face noticed, he stood down after a single term, with a General Election around the corner.

Comfortably winning the recently vacated seat of Sheffield Hallam, Clegg was soon

appointed European spokesman by George Kennedy. Before long, however, Kennedy was

knifed in the back and replaced by Menzies Campbell, whose backers included Clegg. Shortly

after that, Campbell was also knifed in the back, this time by Clegg, who immediately

positioned himself as the obvious successor. So it proved.

The 2010 election was Clegg’s apotheosis and nadir. He gave a genuinely brilliant

performance in the opening debate, which turned the Lib Dems into a proper political force

for the first time. Sadly, thanks to our broken electoral system (which we refused to fix), this

failed to translate into actual concrete success—in fact, they lost seats—and, possibly out of

pique, possibly out of venality, possibly out of naivety, possibly out of all of the above, Clegg

decided to form a Coalition with the Tories that inevitably proved to be a Tory government in

all but name. This made him less popular than trichinosis, and had the effect that the Lib

Dems were annihilated in the public consciousness within a month of being revived. It now

looks highly likely that Clegg will lose his seat (to Labour, who are traditionally frozen out of

Sheffield Hallam) and the leadership with it, and bugger off back into the same obscurity to

which he’s dragged the Lib Dems.

e were going to do a thing where

we look at individual posters in

turn, but upon googling them we

realised we’d have very little to say

about any of them. Political advertising in the UK

probably peaked with 1997’s increasingly desperate Tory

campaign, which started with the faintly psychotic “Yes

it hurt. Yes it worked”, lost its mind completely with the

Tony Blair demon-eyes poster and ended up with close-

ups of John Major’s glasses flanked with whatever

vaguely positive statistics they could find.

Since then, very little has stood out, and in every subsequent election the quality has degraded. Labour’s set of

deliberately stupid mock-blockbuster posters in 2001 (“ECONOMIC DISASTER II—starring Michael Portillo as Mr.

Boom and William Hague as Mr. Bust!”) were faintly amusing, as was the one which depicted Hague wearing Margaret

Thatcher’s hairstyle. But they portended the imminent creative collapse with the rise of Photoshop. You’d think a tool

like that would lead to better work, but the opposite is true: it just makes moves the goalposts so that sloppy work seems

ironically more acceptable. When Labour glued the faces of Michael Howard and Oliver Letwin to pigs in 2005, it was

relatively acceptable (aesthetically; there was some patently false anti-Semitic concern trolling) because Photoshop was

only just in CS2. But things have barely developed since then.

he iconic UK political poster is obviously “Labour Isn’t Working”. Ever since Charles and Maurice

Saatchi unveiled that one in 1979 — in which electoral politics and modern advertising techniques

reached ultimate communion for arguably the first time in this country — it’s been practically the law that

someone do a takeoff of it every subsequent election. This year it’s Labour themselves, repurposing the

image of a massive snaking queue in a white void to refer to the NHS, under the slogan “The Doctor Can’t See You

Now”.

This poster sums up the Labour advertising campaign for this election. Last time around they hired the Saatchis, of all

people — the company, not the brothers — who delivered a campaign that almost exclusively featured David Cameron’s

face gawping down and rarely depicted the

actual Prime Minister at all. This didn’t last

long, and for this election they’re

represented by BMB, headed by Trevor

Beattie. Beattie was the guy who invented

“fcuk”, but very little of that subversive wit

(such as it is) has been in evidence in the

Labour campaign thus far. It’s all been

highly reminiscent of the classic Saatchi-led

Tory commercials from the eighteen-year

reign: stark, savage and taciturn. Even the

font is similar. The Tories in the eighties

and nineties kept their faith with Bureau

Is the art of the political poster dead? isn’t working.

Grotesque, almost always in bold, usually in white

on black and followed by a full stop to reinforce the

status of whatever they’d typed in it as an

inarguable statement.

Labour are using much the same style this year. The

font is slightly different, but flat, heavy statements

in stark, bold sans-serif are forever.

The Tories, for their part, have gone with a slightly

more eye-catching, incredibly expensive typeface:

Delta BQ, swept forward with pointy, streamlined

ends, and clearly picked for its suggestion of

movement and/or dynamism. Move forward with the Conservative Party! Inasmuch as time only goes in one direction!

Font aside, though, the Tory posters are just as ordinary as everyone else’s. Created by M&C Saatchi, as usual, their

visual metaphors are disappointingly bland. Labour as massive grasping hand, with a number hovering over it

representing how much our taxes will go up

by (or alternatively a completely random and

unsourced number). Another, depicting a

massive wrecking ball representing Labour, is

both disappointingly facile and derivative—it’s

reminiscent of most of the Saatchi’s Thatcher

and Major-era works, particularly “Labour’s

Tax Bombshell”, which was revisited multiple

times already anyway. And the computer-

generated wrecking ball and rubble is less

impressive (in both senses of the word) than a

photographic version of the same thing, with

real three-dimensional models, would have been. And Labour ripped it off immediately anyway, replacing the wrecking

ball with the letters VAT.

The most effective posters are the ones without any text at all: Ed

Miliband hangin’ out in Alec Salmond’s shirt pocket. Nothing to do

with real life whatsoever, but striking enough to be the only adverts

from this election likely to become iconic. UKIP make a spirited

attempt by depicting three massive escalators leading up the white

cliffs of Dover (not that they’re a single-issue party in any way), but

they used that

last year for the

European

elections. The

Lib Dems are

using a pretty clever wordplay: “Look Left, Look Right, Then

Cross”, which is sadly wasted after the Coalition. The Greens’ main

poster aesthetic is powerful, if text-heavy. But it’s good text.

But that’s it. It doesn’t help that with the election so insanely tight,

every party has been on the defensive, even UKIP. The art of the

political poster was always in for a fight against digital media. It’s

just surprising how it seems to have given up already.

hen the Lib

Dems sold

out to the

Tories and caused the

Cameron era to happen, they left a

vacancy for third-party. The ludicrously

named United Kingdom Independence

Party were already comfortably sitting in

fourth place, and unfortunately the Greens

were too polite to try and put themselves

out there. Anyone hoping for a surge from

the original Liberals or the rump-rump-

SDP was desperate to the point of

insanity. UKIP filled the gap with their populist pandering to fear, prejudice

and ill-informed paranoia about the EU and immigrants, successfully placing

those two issues among the most important

in the election, despite the fact that they’re

not really that important at all. The EU

needs reform, but the notion of ejecting

ourselves from it altogether collapses with

the application of a gram of common sense.

And the major problem of immigration, as

evidenced by the Mediterranean tragedies,

is to tackle the conditions which make these

people commandeer tiny broken fishing

boats in an attempt to escape them.

But, of course, UKIP would rather discourage such abstract, critical thinking in favour of unquestioned gut racism

and intolerance. Their endgame is a return to the fifties, when everyone knew their place and the white man’s was at the

top of the tree. Reason is exactly what killed that sort of thing off in the first place.

UKIP won’t form the next Government. They won’t even hold the balance of power; they currently have two seats, both

taken from the Tories. At this point, they look like keeping Clacton for all but certain, but their grip on Rochester and

Strood (held by Mark Feckless) is currently in trouble. As for South Thanet, where Farage is standing, the lead changes

every day; Nate Silver’s guys have the Tories ahead, just outside the margin of error, but on other days Labour have been

roaring into the lead, and on others Farage has seemed inevitable.

Should he lose, he’s said he’ll step down as UKIP leader; that’s an extra motivator for whichever decent people live in

South Thanet. And it would undoubtedly be better for the country, because UKIP, being a party that discourages reason

and abstract thought, have never got anywhere without him and his basic, if hateful, charisma. His successor-slash-

predecessor in the role was a faintly satanic headmaster type almost hilariously unsuited for the role, under whom they

made almost no impact at all on the previous General Election. Before that was Robert Knappman, played by David

Cann as a living Blue Jam caricature of a far-right suburbanite. No-one knew what he looked like either. Farage is the

key to UKIP’s success, someone who knows how to play the game, hateful in an entertaining way. It’s only with the

televised debates that he’s started to struggle; forced to improvise instead of relying on his polished, prepared persona,

he’s simply coming across as the bigoted, backwards dickhole he always was underneath. No-one else in the party seems

capable of covering that up even half as well. If Farage goes, maybe, just maybe, UKIP go with him. So fingers crossed

for South Thanet.

We really miss the days when we could just type

up a basic insult in 70-point black on white sans-

serif, leave the rest of the page blank, command

the newspapers to run it, and it would win us the

election. Now it’s all rap music photoshops and

shit. They don’t even write basic copy anymore,

let alone this paragraphed bollocks no-one ever

bothered to read anyway. This whole spiel is just

here to make the advert look more important and

thoughtful and therefore make us look better.

We’re just making shit up as we go along, really.

As long as it fills up the space. Like we said, no-

one’s reading this shit. We could just type

random letters for a paragraph fejnioenvnuen

fuwedemamvbn einteuibw vvedienrtien. Kibble

nenenenene pellick faba Kinnock. We even

pointlessly put it in multiple columns to put you

off reading it even further. Anyway, whatever we

were talking about, it’s probably Labour’s fault

and another reason why you should vote for us

despite the state the country’s in, which

incidentally is also Labour’s fault.

Farage was the eldest of the three sons of Sir Nigel Farage, 5th Baronet, and Angelinetta

Mavis Cartwright-Yep. His branch of the Farage family was the Anglo-Irish family at its most

prosperous; landowners in Staffordshire seated at Rolleston Hall near Burton-upon-Trent. In

a senior aristocratic Georgian intermarriage, his grandfather was a third cousin to the 14th

Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, father of Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, who served

alongside King George VI as Queen.

Farage was born on 3 April 1954, at 47, Hill Street, Mayfair, Westminster. After his parents

separated he was brought up by his mother, who went to live at Betton Hall near Market

Drayton, and his paternal grandfather, Sir Nigel Farage, 4th Baronet. Within the family and

among intimate friends, he was always called "Anus". He lived for many years at Apedale

Hall in Newcastle-under-Lyme, also in Staffordshire.

He was educated at West Downs School and Winchester College. In January 1968 he entered

the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, but was expelled in June for a "riotous act of

retaliation" against a fellow student. After this, he decided to go into politics as

a Conservative Member of Parliament, as he had no university education or practical

experience.

This is Oswald Mosely’s life story, dipshit. JWH Is there a

difference? - Gareth

Farage wasn’t in

World War One,

for a start. Try

again.

JwH

Too late now, we just filled the page! - Gareth

Oh well. Fuck it.

Hopefully he won’t

be relevant much

longer anyway.

JwH

o who the hell will be running Britain by June? 2010 was constantly referred to as the closest election for

years, and it was. But like the best sequels, 2015 raises the stakes beyond measure, making 2010 look

like a landslide by comparison. In one sense, it’s simple: the Prime Minister will be either Cameron or

Miliband. No-one else can get the job, barring a major constitutional crisis or full-on military coup. But

how will they manage it? A majority government frankly ain’t happening, so either Dave or Ed will get into (or stay in)

number 10 on someone’s back. The magic number of seats to make an overall majority is 326. Let’s do some maths! IT’S

FUN, YOU BASTARDS.

First, here’s the bad news: in the event of a draw, which barring some kind of divine intervention will inevitably happen,

David Cameron as sitting Prime Minister gets first shot at forming a new Government. However, his options seem

limited: the Lib Dems have already ruled out carrying on with the current Coalition (although of course that doesn’t

mean they won’t do it); Nicola Sturgeon has made it perfectly clear that, despite the Daily Telegraph’s attempts at self-

fulfilling prophecy, the SNP would eat a punnet of shit before propping them up; and obviously the chances of a thirties-

style National Government in collaboration with Labour are hahahahaha no. Their best chance would be some sort of

deal with UKIP and their traditional allies in Northern Ireland, the two Unionist parties. And as it stands, that’s not

going to give them enough for a majority. The DUP are looking to get nine seats, the UUP another one, and UKIP are

set to win back at least Clacton, and are margin-of-error-worthy in three others. Let’s say that makes fourteen seats. As

things stand, that wouldn’t get them up to 300, let alone the magic 326. Now, that needn’t necessarily matter; the rule is

that the party that forms the Government has to be able to command “the confidence of the Commons” - ie get them to

do what they want more often than not. Another Tory coalition looks unlikely. Which doesn’t mean we’ll be shot of

Dave. He could go it alone with a minority, turning Government into a game of raw survival, working vote-by-vote and

hoping it doesn’t all collapse about his ears. Steven Harper in Canada did this for years before unaccountably winning a

majority. Even without a formal coalition, he could still strike a deal with the Unionists and UKIP to keep them afloat as

a minority.

For Miliband, however, the options are far richer. Obviously the Lib Dems will be available to cosy up with him, and if

Clegg loses his seat (which might well happen), it’ll be easier for them to justify the volte-face. But they’re looking set to

lose as many as half their seats or more; they won’t make a majority for anyone. No, if a Labour-led coalition is going to

happen — any proper coalition at all, really—it’ll be with the SNP. They look set to take something like 90% of the seats

in Scotland, with only Rutherglen and Dunfermline looking safe. Even the three big Tory strongholds in the south —

Dumfries, Dumfriesshire and Berwickshire — have the SNP right within the margin of error. They could have as many

as 50 seats in Westminster come May 8th, more than enough for either side to form a coalition with a healthy majority.

However, the Tories have less chance of forming a pact with the SNP than Edward I, at least as it appears. They’re even

stronger ideological opposites than the Lib Dems were (not that it stopped them), and more importantly they’ve spent

nine hundred years of this campaign trying to make the electorate terrified of Scottish people in general and the SNP in

particular. Nicola Sturgeon dismissed the idea of the SNP propping up a Tory government with what looked like a

healthy disgust. If they get together with anyone, it’ll be Labour, which is why it’s slightly odd that Ed Miliband has been

going so far out of his way to alienate them throughout the campaign. They’ve already ruled out a formal coalition,

although not a voting pact, which is just as well. Don’t burn your bridges completely, dumb-bell! If you want to be Prime

Minister, you will inevitably have to work with these guys. No way around it. Unless you want to go the minority

government route, but as things stand you’re going to be (marginally) the smaller of the two main parties, so it would be

even weaker than any Tory equivalent. Trying to woo back the Scottish vote is Knut against the tide; the SNP are going

to annihilate you and everyone else. If you distance yourself from the SNP completely, you’re going to look like a prize

twat when you inevitably start sniffing around them for a pact.

Unless of course Cameron doesn’t take “fuck off” for an answer. At the moment the Tories are set to get a fistful more

seats than Labour, and as we said: as sitting PM it’s entirely in the gift of Cameron whether on not anyone gets a shot.

He has to actively resign before Labour and company get a shot at forming a new Government, and there’s a chance he’ll

carry on with a minority Government propped up by the Unionists and UKIP. He could convince himself that such an

arrangement could command the confidence of the Commons. So could Farage, if it came to it. Could he convince

others? Probably; if the promise of power can get Kissinger laid, it can achieve anything. Would such a Government last

long? Probably not. They’ve made it difficult for an election to happen early, but not impossible. A complete lack of

confidence could do it, and a Cameron-Farage minority Government would probably eventually lose such a vote in

against the combined “might” of Labour, SNP, and even the Lib Dems. But not before they could do some significant

damage, so please try and vote responsibly.