Is there going to be a General Election this Autumn? No.
No, most of the evidence says not (unless the Darling Chancellor knows more about the economy than he is telling… but we can trust him, can't we?). That doesn't stop Mr Frown from having JOLLY FUN teasing us all along with his will-he won't- he act, though.
By now we are expecting him to appear on television during the middle of Mr Balloon's speech to the Conservatory Conference:
"Right, now that I've bug… jiggered Balloon's media coverage, I can tell you the answer is NO! ho ho!"
This would be PRETTY STUPID as the media would get quite cross and they'd still be able to play Mr Balloon's speech on the DVD recorder. But it would not be ENTIRELY untypical of saucy prankster Mr Frown's sense of humour: who can forget the JOLLY JAPE he played on Mr Balloon back in the budget – robbing from the poor to pay for a 2p tax cut for everyone else, and Mr Balloon falling right for it.
To an extent, of course, the media only have themselves to blame. If they are going to ask silly questions like "are you going to call an election this week" then OBVIOUSLY they can only expect Mr Frown to hem and haw. After all, if he said "no" then he'd be stuck answering the same question every week until June 3rd 2010. Or, actually, seven days before then (since if he's not called one before 26th May 2010 he's DEFINITELY got to call one in the next week).
This actually reminds me of an old PARADOX – Mr Frown promises that he will call a SURPRISE election one week sometime between now and the end of the Parliamentary Session. Well, that means that he could call it in ANY week… except the last one, because if it got to the last week then it would not be a surprise.
So, what he's ACTUALLY saying is he'll call a surprise election sometime between now and A WEEK BEFORE the end of the Parliamentary Session. Except that means he cannot call it in the last but one week either, since by then it would not be a surprise either.
So, what he's ACTUALLY actually saying is he'll call a surprise election sometime between now and TWO weeks before the end of the Parliamentary Session… and so on and so on… so in fact, he can't call a SURPRISE election in ANY week between now and the end of the Parliamentary Session… so he must call one right now!
But then that won't be a surprise either.
Anyway, unless the banking system really IS about to crash, every cow in the country about to turn up its toes and drop dead of Blue Tongue or the Unions are planning on shutting down everything from the London Tube to the Fourth Forth Rail Bridge Mr Frown is NO WAY NOT NEVER EVER going to call an election because the Labour are still too broke, the nights are drawing in and the weather getting worse, and Mr Frown hasn't yet had time to
Just because Mr Alexander Douglas Fir is saying "The Labour are ready," does not really mean that they ARE. It is just the latest phase of Mr Frown's plan to get Mr Balloon into a TOTAL TIZZ.
It's working, too.
He hardly needed a "great clunking fist"; it has taken barely a TAP to cause the wobbly wheels to come off of the Balloon Bandwagon. And if the Conservatories are this confounded after only a hundred days, what sort of a state are they going to be in in another six months after Mr Frown has had time to pick over their hastily launched policy review proposals? Just like with their political supporters, he will have picked out the best bits and ridiculed the rest.
Mr Hefferlump in the the Torygraph puts forward the idea that having wound everyone up to a FEVER PITCH, Mr Frown cannot back out of an election without looking a TWERP. However, anyone who remembers last year's "coup" against Lord Blairimort will know that winding people up to a fever pitch and then backing out is not something that Mr Frown hasn't done before. Mind you, Mr Hefferlump then goes on to suggest Mr Frown learn from the example of HITLER so it's possible that his historical analysis is a bit WONKY!
In fact, more convincing is the argument that – having learned from Mr Balloon's "PR stunts instead of policy" policy, Mr Frown has been OUT-STUNTING the Conservatories, but that the stunts cannot go on forever.
So Mr Frown's electoral calendar looks like this:
Next April, that 2p tax cut I mentioned will be jingling in wallets across key Conservatory/Labour marginals; next May Mr Boris will make an EMBARRASSING Old Etonian MESS of himself and the "Dave Balloon's Conservatories" brand in the London Mayoral Elections; next June, see if the sun is shining and call an election.
Meanwhile, he's just MIXING IT.
Oh yes, today's title – Mr Frown, our old friend the SECRET STALIN, has penned a little red piece of HILARIOUS Double-Think called "Extending and Renewing Party Democracy" or "Removing and Exterminating Party Democracy" as Marxism Today has wittily re-titled it.
The basic premise is this: in the olden days, the Labour used have their annual conference and the delegates would come and vote on what the Party Policy was supposed to be, a bit like our Liberal Conference Representatives still do to this day.
This meant that the delegates had a say in Party Policy and could vote against the Leadership.
A lot of people were unhappy about this. Well, by a "lot of people" actually I mean "Lord Blairimort and Mr Frown".
So Lord Blairimort got rid of most the voting on policy and replaced it with a National Policy Forum or "talking shop". Kindly he left the Annual Conference with a small sop called the "Contemporary Resolution", like what we call an Emergency Motion, that were still debated and voted on. Which meant the delegate might not have a say in Party Policy any more but they could still vote against the leadership.
Well that was just embarrassing. What is the point of participative democracy if you're not allowed to participate? So Mr Frown has made plans to restore democracy to his party by… er, it says here getting rid of the "Contemporary Resolutions" too.
Actually, he goes a lot further than that. The National Policy Forum is clearly still giving the members too much say, so there is to be a "Joint Policy Committee" (Mr Frown's hand-picked placemen) to take over the "executive function" of the Policy Forum, while the members participation in policy is to be "extended" by giving them a One Member One Vote decision on policy. Sounds good? Well, it will be a One Member One Vote referendum on the decided policy platform… all of it, all at once. An all or nothing vote. So, not exactly NUANCED, is it. Oh, and they get a to vote once a parliament. ONCE.
Funnily enough, I imagine that if they've just won an election, the members will be asked to approve the winning manifesto and please shut up for five years, and if they lose then the members won't get asked their opinion until just before the next election when it's too late to make any difference anyway. But perhaps I am just VERY CYNICAL.
Now, does ANY of this REALLY sound like the actions of a man who is going to trust his shiny new job to the choices of people?
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