the corner office

I love that line. The kind of thing you could use as an email signature.

Peter Mandelson's memoirs (serialised in The Times) are getting mighty juicy. Yet if Labour had won the election it'd all still be waydago Gordon and platitudes all round as the piggies remained ensconced at the trough. So how much is fact and how much is fiction? In a way, it doesn't matter. If only a fraction of it is true, it still paints 'em all as rotten, rotten people.

A big reason for not trusting in governments' ability to Make Everything Right is that the more power there is up for grabs, the more attractive it is to those least deserving of the privilege of wielding it.

It's almost as though the Telegraph is playing whack-a-mole with politicians and expenses. No sooner is Laws out and Danny Alexander in, and they're running a story about how replacement Danny Alexander dodged CGT.

One could be cynical and say they're targeting Lib Dems (they're not called the Torygraph for nothing, after all), but at the same time the Lib Dems made a big thing of how untainted by the expenses scandal they were. And it's worth making a thing of a Lib Dem Treasury Secretary who ducked CGT (whether he broke the rules or not), while the coalition's pushing through the Lib Dems' contentious CGT rises.

David Laws seemed like a switched on dude and it's a pity that he's resigned. It's also a pity that we still live in a society where some people still feel that they can't be open about their sexuality. Already tonight Nick Clegg got on the 'did it to keep his life private' bandwagon. What this boils down to, though, is "I screwed the taxpayer out of forty thousand quid because I didn't want people to know I was gay."

Doesn't cut it. Nobody held a gun to his head and told him to run for parliament. No matter how good a Treasury Secretary he was shaping up to be, he stole money from taxpayers. End of story.

Update: a real pity.

A good quote:

The Tory immune system is already immeasurably stronger than it was on May 1. All these Lib Dem antibodies will make it that much harder for the recovering Labour Party to claim that all the new Government’s measures reflect class politics and are designed exclusively to feather the nests of the rich.

Good for Tories, but what about the Lib Dems? I think the big problem the Lib Dems face is that their support comes from both those with genuinely liberal (or whatever passes for it in 2010) views, as well as those who aren't particularly liberal, but want to signal their disdain for 'the right' (or the wealthy, or the establishment, or whatever bogeyman du jour you care to conjure) by supporting a 'left-leaning' party.

For liberals, seeing policies actually being implemented in a coalition government would presumably be seen as a good thing, and the Lib Dems would enjoy renewed support for their achievements. For anti-right signallers though, policy doesn't matter: sleeping with the enemy would be unforgivable, and off they'll go to Labour.

But enough of the old, and in with the new. Sneaking a look at the news conference this afternoon all I could think was 'aaah, young love...'

But let's not forget that they're politicians, which means that they're very good at saying what people want them to say, very accomplished at not doing what they say, and masters at not accomplishing what they think they can.

So anyway... if this all goes well that would not be a bad outcome for the country, but if it doesn't, either because they can't achieve what they promise they can (see previous paragraph) or because they can't actually work together after all (see previous paragraph) then things are going to go very, very badly for them at the next election. Moreso for the Lib Dems, I think, than the Tories, but I'll save that for another post.

I ended last night's post with a grumble about the Labour party but edited it out. I decided it stood better as my 'good riddance Gordon' post.

Already, as Labour (perhaps unsurprisingly) eagerly embrace their new role as the opposition (and how they'll get to pontificate as others get to clean up their mess), we're hearing nice things being said about Labour and about Gordon Brown. I'll say just this (again): everything comes at a cost, and Britain has paid plenty and will continue paying plenty for the lovely things Labour will have claimed to have achieved.

Some might think the cost worth it, and that's their right, but even more will be led to think it cost far less, if anything at all. And in 5 years' time, very few will remember what it cost at all.

Sir Fred Goodwin, aka Fred the Shred, erstwhile head of RBS and erstwhile chum of the outgoing Prime Minister, presided over a bank which ran aground. For his sins, he was vilified, pilloried, harangued, hounded out of the country as his home was attacked and vandalised. The mob bayed for his blood, incensed at the size of his pension, not happy with anything less than his utter destruction and ruin. To this day, Sir Fred is the poster boy for the perils of incompetence and hubris... even his old friend Gordon Brown couldn't resist a snipe during the election debates.

How different, then, to preside over a country that has run aground. Gordon Brown bows out this evening, to a chorus of dignified words and respectful thanks from all sides. With a patently ridiculous 'most important job of all' pop truism - tell that to the parents of dead soldiers, for starters - he signs off, to a life of quiet contemplation, a cushy career on the speaking circuit and a nice, comfy pension.

And what has he left behind? A government that adds an extra 160 billion pounds to its total debt bill, every year, that pays out over 30 billion pounds in interest every year, and worse yet to come. Billions wiped off the value of homes, of pensions, of shares. Companies bankrupt, innocent people unemployed and impoverished by a bust that had supposedly been eradicated. Savings and investments eroded by ever-growing inflation while Gordon Brown proudly announced low interest rates as an achievement of his term in government, and an aspiration for the future.

When we stop to consider all the people whose lives will become harder due to the higher taxes we know are coming, who will lose their jobs because of budget cuts we know are coming, who will we blame? Let's set aside the suffering that's to come, and consider the past 13 years: when we think of how much money the current government has wasted, how much real-world wealth and opportunity and prosperity has been lost and destroyed and our money, past and future instead poured into ineffective government departments and bureaucracies and state-sanctioned corporate monopolies, who will we blame? When our children and grandchildren are still paying off debt that an incompetent and hubristic Gordon Brown foisted upon us, who will we blame?

Will people be upset to know that Gordon Brown will still be entitled to his pension?

Like a kid who won't get off the see-saw. People try to say nice things about Gordon Brown and his earnestness and good intentions, but at some point you have to consider his refusal to relinquish the job, despite the rather blunt rejection by the voters, to be a sign of some serious personal deficiencies.

From my perspective, a Lib-Dem/Conservative entante, as I heard it put today, is not a bad outcome, if they can make it happen.

Ah, it's all quite exciting, rosettes and the big BBC shindig and fancy touch-panel displays and swingometers (except poor Jeremy Vine, who has to walk around some of the kakkest-looking CGI backdrops ever).

The big story (or is it always like this?) is around voting booths closing at 10 and leaving queues of people being 'denied their right to vote.' Nothing makes the TV people happier than having something to get really exercised and pissed off about. Outrageous! Scandal! What a mess! Country going down the drain!

On the one hand, you could just tell people to go vote sooner. On the other hand, it's not always that easy if you're working or can't get there sooner. So if the lawmakers really care about the issue, they could take a lesson from South African elections (and many others, I'm sure): make election day a bank holiday.

It's incredibly unfair that Labour and the Lib Dems could end up with an equal number of votes, but with Labour having 3 times as many seats in parliament. It rankles, and given that our borough is likely to be a safe Tory seat, I briefly wondered this morning whether to vote Lib Dem as a 'protest vote'.

I like the Lib Dems when they talk about civil liberties, I like it when they have sensible views on things like immigration and schools and not invading other countries. I like it when they say they want to reduce the tax burden for the least well off and I respect the fact that they'd probably slash corporate welfare long before they start nibbling away at social welfare. In many ways they all seem like nice people.

I don't like the Lib Dems when Vince Cable starts squawking his anti-wealth, anti-market rhetoric, though. I don't like the Lib Dems when they're pro EU, when they think joining the Euro was and probably still is a good idea, and I don't like the Lib Dems when a great many in their ranks would rather side with Labour than with the Tories in a hung parliament.

So yep. While Greece goes up in flames, a bunch of Euro-sceptic hardarses who're 'ideologically' predisposed to hacking away chunks of government in order to balance the UK's books again don't seem like such a bad prospect to me. I might not agree with many of their policies, they might be so centrist and similar to the other parties as to render most of this academic, they may be a party of posh people and nasty people and whatever else, but if they can clean up the mess that a Big State Labour government has left behind, then the Conservatives get my vote.