Observing, for the sake of election day propriety, a rare neutrality, Salut! will say only that, as the splendid Oysterband once put it, it'll vote a certain way (they said which way), but it won't inhale.
Back in the UK for a short time, I watched the last of the Brown-Cameron-Clegg debates and was appalled by one of the three, left cold by another and, well, left cold but unrepelled by a third.
I also went to see the play Enron and wondered mischievously how long it would be before British clones of its anti-heroes were appointed to high office.
Otherwise my general election can be summed up in a series of bullet points:
*
the Tories have learnt from Nicolas Sarkozy. Foreign correspondents in London said they were left in no doubt that they didn't count, and would get no top-level access or even, on occasions, the right to ask questions at press conferences. When Sarko's people refused the Beeb an interview in 2007, the decision was rationalised by an aide's shriek of "you've got no votes".
*
I felt like turning the sound up for my younger daughter's benefit each time the post-election menace to tax credits (she's a single mum) was mentioned.
*
Two cheers for my local paper in France, Nice-Matin (my ediiton is called Var-Matin) for twice in the same article referring to the prime minister as George Brown. An apology crept in a couple of days later.
*
my apologies to Aminur Rahman, one of a small group of supporters of Kabir Mahmud, an independent candidate I met in Poplar and Limehouse, but whose views and photograph in the event could not be included in my report. Aminur - pictured (right) with Mr Mahmud - is a Bangladeshi minicab driver in a constituency where an estimated 35 per cent of the electorate comes from his part of the world. "I used to be labour," he told me, "but it is time to give someone else a chance. They couldn't be worse. I support Kabir because he wants to help ordinary people in this area."
*
The Tores sounded confident about winning the seat, even though that old Glaswegian maverick socialist, George Galloway, standing as another dissident leftwinger (how many splits can the Labour vote there take?), assured me nothing of the sort had happened "since the days they were still stuffing children up chimneys".
*
writing a piece about the fringe candidates, I could not resist reflecting on the first such character of whom I was ever aware, Screaming Lord Sutch, though I struggled to remember any of his tunes.
It has been a tight campaign - or seemed one - but not an especially invigorating one. How can it be when only the fringe candidates, some of them - unlike poor, harmless Sutch - really quite obnoxious or representing obnoxious philosophies, are really saying much that sounds so very different. The three main parties witter on about their policy nuances, but are all terrified of offending the Middle England electorate.
And if Britain really does want change, and gets it, will it turn into France and quickly rebel against that change once anyone actually tries to implement it?
Now, off to school to cast my vote(s).
Update: civic duty done (in parliamentary and borough council elections) - and I had to brave a lunatic Espace driver, and traffic wardens (no change on me, nowhere legal and free to park), in order to perform it.
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