Enemies of Reason Poundshop potshots at the media moral maze.

Early thoughts on a Tory Government

So, there we are. The Tories finally fell over the finishing line, and Gordon Brown has gone.

Welcome to the new golden age of satire. It begins today. Here come the riots and the electronic music, the new Spitting Image and Poll Tax. Or something. I don't know. It seems like a bit of a shambles for David Cameron, rather than the smooth coronation he must have felt entitled to; so that's all to the good, then. Nothing like a dose of reality to start life as Prime Minister. Can he really be as hated as Thatcher? I think he'll find it hard, though he might try.

I can't wait to see how things are going to pan out. It might sound odd coming from me, but I hope the Tories do the best job they can - this comes out of a sense of wanting the country I live in not to be ruined, not because of any particular hopes I might have for them. I hope the coalition Government isn't a disaster. And I hope that the Liberal Democrats don't sell (or haven't sold) themselves down the river just for a glimpse of power.

This could be the making of the Lib Dems, or it could wreck them beyond all recognition. I know that many Labour types are angry that people voted Lib Dem instead of Labour, that the Guardian supported the Lib Dems rather than Labour. But people didn't just vote Lib Dem to avoid the Tories; a lot of them also did it to avoid Labour - and an even more significant proportion did it because they approved of the Lib Dems' policies.  If Labour think that millions of horrified Lib Dem voters will abandon their chosen party just because they formed a coalition with the Conservatives, then I think that's just plain deluded.

The Lib Dems are not just Labour-Lite or where to put your X if you can't bear the thought of Gordon Brown being Prime Minister; there's an awful lot more to it than that. The 'Vote Yellow, get Blue' Labour fans should try to understand this, if they want to get back into power, and I assume they do.

Having said all of which, I wonder where on earth this leaves the Lib Dems. What kind of concessions have they got and what will they do with them? What kind of Tory policies have they got to swallow, and which more unpleasant pieces of legislation have they put the brakes on? The answers to those questions will determine what small-l liberals think of the Lib Dems' possible coalition.

What will happen, though, is that the Lib Dems will finally be able to show they have experience in Government - forever the taunt at previous general elections was the idea that they were untried and untested, with no experience at the highest level. Well now they're going to get some. Whether that turns out to be a good thing or not, we'll see. The Lib Dems had better hope they don't get used as a handy bolt-on whipping boy for the Tories, whenever things look a little bit shaky. Ah well, the Tories can say, it's them isn't it? Not us. They're the ones holding back all that really important legislation. They're the ones who demanded we jettison all the really important bits of policy; they're the ones who held us to ransom.

It might come to a future general election where the Lib Dem cabinet members can no longer be faced with a charge of "You have no experience" but rather "We now have experience of you, and we don't like it" - from voters and members alike. But that is some way away and there's an awful lot to happen between now and then. I'd particularly imagine, though, that the thought of anyone small-l or big-L liberal being part of a Government will not delight the reactionary forces in Fleet Street, even if it has delivered their chosen golden boy to the top job. Expect Clegg to be portrayed as a ditherer, as wildly left-wing, as a terrible influence, as a bad egg, as a poor politician, as out of his depth... all of those things are waiting in the months to come. It's how they deal with it that counts.

Where do Labour go from here? I hope there is genuine soul-searching and that reasons beyond the simple blaming of the Lib Dems are found; it's not simple enough for Labour to imagine that terrified Lib Dems will come back 'home' to Labour at the next election, because that might not happen. They need to work out why they were abandoned for the Lib Dems (but more often for the Conservatives). I have a horrible feeling that Labour will lurch further to the right, knowing that the Lib Dems are tainted in the eyes of many by their association with the Tories and that, as the only show in town on the 'left' they'll be able to hoover up the loyal voters while targeting even more right-wing and authoritarian policies. I hope that doesn't happen, but it might. It all depends on what kind of Labour Party they want to be.

Rejoice at the complexity!

Ever since the election result I've been thinking of reasons to be cheerful, despite things not quite having gone the way I may have wanted. And I'm still feeling that way. Every time I start worrying that it's going to be awful, something pops up into my head like "Hang on, no more ID cards!" and I keep on enjoying these crumbs of comfort. You may say I'm deluded, but I'm not feeling as shattered as I thought I would be. And certainly not as shattered as I would be at the prospect of a Conservative Government with a landslide majority - and I think that's the key.

So we don't have a strong Government, and apparently that's A Bad Thing because the markets like strong Government. But do I want a strong Government, of whatever colour? At a time of financial crisis, you could argue it's a good thing to have a Government that can't do anything it wants to, and is open to scrutiny from its own backbenchers and political rivals alike. Our own lives aren't simple affairs in which we do whatever we like through 'strength' - our own working and family lives involve all kinds of compromises and deals, all the time, and we don't see it as 'shabby', rather just existing in a community, family, workplace and society. So why are talks between political parties about a solution seen as being A Bad Thing? Maybe this is the election where our democracy in this country finally grows up. But will the press see it that way? Are they able to communicate the complexity, or explain why democracy doesn't always deliver simple results that mean one party governs powerfully every time?

Yet another positive thing to come out of this election for me is that it has made me realise exactly what it is that annoys me so much about the tabloids, and newspapers in general: they don't like complexity.

The odd thing is, newspapers have the scope and the scale, and the resources, to do complexity. They've got acres of pages to look at the subtleties, the nuances, the contradictions, the ups and downs, the big picture rather than X is X, because I say so. But quite a lot of the time - though not all the time, of course, and you'll note that I'm happy to try and couch things this way - I think they just choose not to, and it's baffling. I don't have a theory as to why this might be, but if I were to guess I'd say it might have something to do with the a perceived need to try and explain to even the most bewilderingly stupid; a mission to be concise rather than exhaustive; and the idea that stories get batted around in editorial conferences - and that if you can't sum up what 'the line' is within two sentences then it might be dismissed as being too complicated for the readers, or too hard to understand, or that the complexity somehow diminishes the interest or value of the tale.

To me, though, that just won't do. I don't like the way that time after time, we're forced to settle for stories that don't make sense if you compare them with what people have said or done, or which don't tell the whole truth, just because the story they tell is a more simple, less cluttered and more familiar one than what actually happened - or as close a representation of what actually happened as all kinds of bias, selective interpretation and so on will allow eyewitnesses, official sources and reporters alike to get close to. Instead of having a bash at the complicated truth, too many times I see newspapers going for a type of story, a bit of identikit news. Here's the kind of thing we do every time, so here it is again. That's such a waste.

I reckon readers are more than capable of understanding that sometimes things aren't as trouble-free as we might like: sometimes the good guys do bad things; and sometimes the way to achieve something involves some unpleasant compromises. Because our lives are not simple things. We don't just do exactly what we want, because we want to. There are all kinds of obstacles in our way, and some of them are fair, and some of them are unfair. And that's how it is. I think it's ludicrous to try and present news stories to people as if this isn't the case. But I might at this point add an alternative suggestion as to why they do this: perhaps it's an idealised version of the truth, a version that's satisfying precisely because it's a fantasy compared to our complicated, difficult, struggling lives. When you see Susan Boyle go from nothing to genius, that's pleasing, because it offers hope that these things can really happen, in contrast to our own experience of trying to succeed - you don't want to see the machinery in the background that made it happen, because that ruins the illusion. Maybe that's something to do with it.

I think if there's a thread running through this whole blog, and a reason why I get so frustrated with the way that newspapers choose to cover the news, it's to be found in the words of Ben Goldacre: "I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that". Because I think it is, regardless of what 'it' is. Almost all the time, things are far more complicated than we might like to think. And that's actually something to be delighted with, rather than disappointed by. Rejoice at the complexity! Luxuriate in the conflicting arguments! Enjoy the on the other hands and the neverthelesses. They're what makes life exciting and unpredictable; they're what makes the world hard to grasp, impossible to understand - but wonderfully satisfying to try and get a handle on.

And so, when you get a hung parliament, I reckon it's disliked by the papers for two reasons - well many more than two, if I'm going to try and stick to the principles I've outlined in this post, but we'll start with two and fan out from there. Firstly, their chosen candidates didn't win. That's something irritating, because it makes them look a little bit less than powerful. Sure, David Cameron received 36% of the popular vote, and got 47% of the seats - but it wasn't a convincing victory. Newspapers told their readers to vote for him. They didn't all do that. Now you could say that most of their readers did vote for him, but we have no evidence that's the case. They might have roundly ignored the advice of their inky friends, and put Xs down for all kinds of other candidates. So whatever way you look at it, the papers look like mugs for saying that Cameron was the only hope to save Britain, and their readers said "meh". To them, that's annoying. To me, it's great. But there you are.

The second thing, though, is that the hung parliament is an unsatisfyingly complicated result. It means that newspapers will have to try and delve into the complexity to try and work out what's going to happen. It means that the scale of the result will have to try and be explained with something other than a simple swingometer, because there wasn't a uniform swing, and there were so many regional variations - and the local election results provided even more variety and contrast with the general election scores. It's not as simple as saying that Gordon Brown has been rejected, or that David Cameron has been approved, because neither is quite the case. You can add that locally, the Labour Party seems to be more popular, and managed to get out a good deal of its voters when they were required. Is that disaffection with Gordon Brown nationally, or an increased turnout due to fear of the Tories? Again, the answers aren't easily at hand.

You could speculate that the Lib Dems appear to have trodden water, having increased the popular vote slightly but decreased their number of seats, but this could be because they got no new supporters, or it could be because some supporters abandoned them for the Tories and were replaced by disaffected Labour voters, adding up to a similar total; or it could be more complicated than that, particularly at a local level, when you have tactical voting and boundary changes involved. In my constituency, for example, I previously had a Labour MP who had a large majority, who was replaced with a Tory whose main rival turned out, quite surprisingly, to be a Lib Dem - the tactical voting advice from the Mirror, Guardian and elsewhere to vote Labour wasn't quite right, or didn't work, while the Lib Dem bar charts in election leaflets were (and I'll confess this is a surprise) accurate as they were based on local elections which had shown the trend heading towards the Lib Dems. I didn't believe them at all, but it turned out they were right. Again, the complexity of the situation defeated the simple 'tactical' vote calls. (I voted for who I wanted to vote for, and not tactically, in the end. But I would have been annoyed if I'd voted for someone I didn't want to vote for, and it had turned out to be the wrong decision.)

But I rejoice at all of this. At the complexity of the local results and the national results - and the big result, a hung parliament, could turn out to be A Very Good Thing. I know, I know - call me naive or desperate or deluded if you must, but I can't help seeing the positives in this. Despite resistance from the Conservative Party, we could get some kind of fairer voting system out of this - which would result in many, many more 'hung' parliaments and many more complex results in the future. Which I think is good, for a healthy mature democracy, if it means votes mean more - and if the price to pay for that is Ukip and BNP members of parliament, well, so be it - their record once elected is universally awful, and I think the way to deal with these people is not to exclude them but to outvote them.

I can see the papers describing the coming days as a 'mess' and a good reason as to why the voting system shouldn't be changed. There's a danger that protracted negotiations, even though it's the right thing to do, will be portrayed as 'dithering' and 'damaging'. But let's see past that. There's a real chance for things to change now. When David Cameron said 'Vote for Change' I'm pretty sure he didn't mean this, but this is what he's got. We have to make the best of it, and be unafraid of the continued scaremongering. Now the parties have to some degree to work together, and no-one is in a position to do exactly what they want. Is that so bad? I don't think so. I think there are still many reasons to be cheerful.

More reasons to be cheerful

1. Dimbers. He won. He won the fucking BBC. Wind him up and watch him go. A one-man election. Get them in a fucking room with Dimbers and get him to crack their heads together; I guarantee they'll all be playing nicely within five minutes. Behind those half-moon glasses is an absolute fucking powerhouse. Watch and learn, Nick Robinson. Watch and learn, mate.

2. BNP bloodbath. Beautiful. Bye bye Nick Griffin! Cheerio! Let's revel in it for now, and not wonder where those voters have gone. Political folklore has it the 'white working class' supposedly flit between BNP and Labour; but what if they decided Ukip was OK, or the Tories were tough enough on immigration for their tastes?

3. Pissing on the coronation parade. The Telegraph, Sun, Mail and friends must have been readying triumphal souvenir editions hailing the arrival of the Messiah. Unfortunately it didn't quite go to plan. And a hung parliament means that newspapers are going to have to try and do something they're not very good at: explaining something complicated. I pretty much think they'd prefer a two-party election because it'd mean they'd never have to worry about something slightly ambiguous. But this time they can't.

4. We're doing all right without a Government. Society hasn't fallen apart so far. Do you know, I think we might realise we don't need our hands held and arses wiped by these oleaginous wankers. We're going to be all right no matter how much they squabble. A hung parliament hasn't turned into an absolute disaster. Sure, the 'markets' might not like it, but the markets are as chimp-thick as the press: they dislike anything slightly complicated as well.

5. It's only five years. And it might even be sooner before we're going to get to the polls again. And a few years of Tory Government might remind a few people why they haven't been in power since 1997.

Chins up, chaps! It could be worse, so much worse.

Reasons to be cheerful

One of the main reasons to be cheerful is that this election has made so many people miserable. If you don't like the Tories, you can chuckle at the fact that Lord Ashcroft's millions failed to take them over the finishing line. If you don't like Labour, you can laugh as their seats have evaporated. If you don't like the Lib Dems, you can chortle about how the 'Clegg surge' failed to convert into votes. If you don't like Ukip or the BNP, you can rejoice in their failure to get a seat with first-past-the-post. Pretty much everyone except the Greens did worse than they might have hoped.

And the schadenfreude goes on. Lembit Opik, Philippa Stroud, Jacqui Smith, Peter Robinson, David Heathcote-Amory... we've all got our favourite bits. I've also enjoyed seeing Kelvin Mackenzie and Iain Dale get it spectacularly wrong over the likelihood of a hung parliament... all that 'insider knowledge' and 'expertise' exposed for the cotton wool and gravy it really is. And Bruce Forsyth fans might want to look away around about now...

Ouch. I don't know who's more embarrassed there, him or me. I'll go for me, sinking under the desk as I watch it. Lower, lower! And what do you get for a pair of weaves like Brillo's and Brucie's? Nothing - not in this game. Even Frankie Howerd would have watched that with a sense of mockery.

So, look. It might seem awful at the moment. You might be looking at Nick Robinson on the TV, knowing he hasn't got a flying one about what's going on, or Jeremy Vine's acid trap in the Tron greengrocers or being attacked by giant carpet tiles, and you might be feeling a little bit low. But come on, perk up! Things can only get better. (Hmm. I think I've heard that one before, can anyone help?) It's always darkest before the brightest day (though that's not strictly true). And every cloud has a silv... all right, I'll stop with the empty platitudes now.

Here's the big thing I'm taking out of this campaign: No-one knows anything. You and me, we're in the dark, but it's all right - so is everyone else! And the influence of our beloved media isn't as great as they might have hoped it would be. 70% of national newspapers endorsed David Cameron, with the Sun and Express both laughably claiming that he was OUR ONLY HOPE - but his popular vote was just over 36%. Rupert Murdoch's candidate failed. All hysterical campaigning came to achieve very little. The chosen son, the anointed one, didn't get his coronation. Big Society looked at what he had to offer, and said no thanks.

The Guardian and Independent backed the Lib Dems, but that didn't make much difference at all to their fortunes - in fact they've nudged up the popular vote but fallen back in terms of seats. (Isn't the Mirror sitting pretty, though, backing the only newspaper in the country which backed the choice of 30% of the electorate?) And those much-vaunted TV debates don't seem to have transformed the election in terms of swinging votes - but perhaps in terms of turnout and getting people interested in politics. As for the internet and the blogosphere, it got a look-in on ITN with Will Straw and 'Tory blogger' Paul Staines chirping merrily away in a back room somewhere, and Alistair Stewart and David Dimbleby trying desperately to understand what "The Facebooks" and "The Twitters" were doing, or at least represent that they understood it a little bit. But the web doesn't seem to have had a massive impact either.

It's hard to know why people did or didn't vote, but the scaremongering about a hung parliament doesn't appear to have translated into a panicked rush to vote Conservative - though the scaremongering about a Tory Government may just have met it in the middle and created a hung parliament, who knows. Another reason to be cheerful is that the situation we're now offers a chance - albeit a very slim one, but a chance nevertheless - for there to be movement on electoral reform. Labour rushed to embrace it from 1am onwards today all of a sudden that they saw their majority slipping away. Sure, it's opportunist and it's transparent as anything, but they're there. Perhaps a grassroots campaign for electoral reform, regardless of whether it's achieved by whichever Government gets cobbled together, could be one positive outcome of all of this.

The Tories may be the biggest party, but there are plenty of reasons for hope. So let's be cheerful. And if you start feeling yourself be gloomy, just remember Brucie. Your night could have been a lot worse.

Random election morning emissions

Ugh. The brave new blue dawn. Enjoying it yet? I stayed up till about 3.30am, which was quite a feat of endurance by any stretch, given that last night appeared to be a competition between the TV channels to see who could get the most odious cunts on screen - at one time I swear I went through a chain of hatefulness from Eric Pickles to Ken Clarke to Paul Staines to Rod Liddle all in the space of a few clicks of the remote. It got to the stage where I started praying for a Go Compare advert to come on so I wouldn't feel like hurling an empty beer bottle at the telly so much. And Alistair Stewart saying everything was 'Fascinating' like Spock looking in his monitor at a new planet. No, it wasn't fascinating. It was fucking terrifying. All of it. All of them. And now I've got a Tory MP this morning, to add to everything. Fuck.

Here, then, are some random thoughts as we speed hurtling towards hung parliament at best, Conservative overall majority still a possibility.

1. Isn't it a terribly British to see people queueing, then arguing about queueing?

I saw a lovely queue on my way home from work last night of people trying to vote. Marvellous scenes, I thought. And there's something that feels so right about polling stations being unprepared by a high turnout, not being able to cope, then blaming people for daring to want to exercise their democratic right, then arguing about petty rules to people, then leaving everyone with a vague sense of pissedoffness. Perfect. Those voters who couldn't make it to the ballot box have a sense of disappointment, frustration and powerlessness this morning. But then again, so do many of us who did vote. So, swings and roundabouts. But surely, if you're in a queue at 10pm you should be allowed to vote? Isn't that common sense in this PCBrigadegawnmadisitelfnsafetyIalwaysgetemconfused land of ours?

2. Rod Liddle is a cunt.

I know this isn't a revelation to any of you. I shouldn't be mean and mock his physical appearance - though yes, all right, if you insist, he looks like a five-day-old bloated corpse that's been found floating in a pond by a jogger - but it really takes an epic kind of prick to make Derek Hatton not the most loathsome person in a room. I watched the election night Come Dine With Me, as many did, with that dawning realisation that no, it's not some kind of grumpy literary persona; he really is a deeply unpleasant turd.

3. No-one knows anything.

Seriously, no-one knows anything about anything. I watched, and watched, and watched, the BBC and ITN coverage, waiting for someone to try and unravel it all. But no-one could. It was one of those times when the 'experts' tried to avoid eye contact with the anchors, for fear of being asked to explain stuff they really couldn't explain, and just gazed off into the distance. The Beeb and ITV had men sat at desks whose entire job seemed to be to stare off into space and not do anything all night. No-one knows anything. I know as much as you do. But you know nothing. Because I know nothing. But, comfortingly I think, they know nothing. So we're all in the same boat, heading off the waterfall, together.

4. 'Mandate' just sounds like a 1970s shower gel.

And for all I know, it might have been. I am too tired and emotional to Google it. Every time I see a politician on TV mention 'mandate' I get the image of a soaped-up man's torso in the shower. Maybe you do as well. Maybe you get that image all the time. Maybe you like it. I'm not so sure. I think I just want a big strong man to hold me and tell me it's all going to be all right. Can you do that for me? I'm frightened. Tell me it's going to be all right, big strong 1970s shower man. Tell me.

5. Our voting system is a crock of shit.

It's too early to declare every result at this stage, but even if the Tories do manage to scrape an overall majority they will have got 100% of the power with 36-odd% of the popular vote. If you think that's fine, kill yourself. Do it now, before I get upset with you. This is insane. Don't say "I didn't hear you complaining when Labour won in 1997" because I wasn't writing this then, and besides, I thought the voting system was shite then, so I've got every right to complain, so fuck you, contrarian know-it-all fuckwipe, all right? We're a fucking laughing stock. If we're not a fucking laughing stock, we should be. Except I don't find it funny.

6. At least Philippa Stroud didn't get in.

Well done, Sutton & Cheam, my one-time home town, for rejecting Philippa Stroud. But you know it's a bleak day when you're scratching around for crumbs of comfort like that and getting vaguely pleased that people you didn't want to win didn't win. I suppose we do have a Green MP today as well, so that's something. Like an undamaged bottle of duty free Malibu you find in the aircraft wreckage. It's not perfect, but I'll take what I can get.

7. Manchester City couldn't buy the Premiership.

And it seems that despite the millions of Lord Ashcroft, the Tories might - just - fail to buy the election. This comforts me in some ways, but then I start thinking, well, it's not so comforting to think that a billionaire can come in and splash untold riches on endless bloody leaflets, billboard adverts and signs at a time of economic crisis, especially when the party he wants to win will be sticking as many people as possible on the dole in the coming few years. Doesn't it seem, oh I don't know, a bit vulgar or something?

8. Now it's going to get nasty.

If there is a hung parliament, it's going to get nasty. The pressure from the press will be intense on Gordon Brown to resign. If, on the other hand, the Tories do get in, well, it's going to get nasty.

9. A lot of this is going to be obsolete in a couple of hours' time.

But I don't give a shit. I'm just writing whatever little maggots come crawling out of my brain tissue. All the coffee in the world won't save me this morning.

10. Who wants to get wrecked?

Look, I'm not going to pretend to have any insight other than "Fuck, this doesn't look good." So I'll go with that for now. Who wants to get wrecked on cheap booze all day and then end up sleeping in a skip, hoping this horrible feeling of dread is going to go away. Who's with me? I said, who's with me??!?!?!

Come on Tim!

Do you remember watching Tim Henman bravely battling away at Wimbledon, looking like he might actually win, but knowing deep down in your soul that he was going to throw it all away? It's a bit like how I feel at the moment as the votes begin to get crossed off up and down the country: that sense of unease, despite all the optimism, and the memories of what's gone before clouding every thought of what's happening now. You hoped he'd do it; you wished he'd do it; but you knew - oh, you knew - that it was all going to go a bit porridgey sooner or later. A few double faults here, a misplaced volley there, and that would be that.

It was the battle in your mind between hope and expectation - the hope that things might go all right, and that Tiger Tim would finally triumph over his rivals; the expectation that he wouldn't. That's how it feels to me right now, knowing that there's a Conservative Government in prospect, and that it could claim a huge 'mandate for change' despite getting 30-odd per cent of the popular vote, and that there would be nothing anyone could do to stop them. As someone once said "You can't vote the rascals out, because you never voted them in in the first place." It's the feeling that a lot of people who see themselves on the political left, regardless of where on that bit of the left we might position ourselves, might be having around about now. That sinking feeling. That "here we go again" feeling.

But then again.

There's a chance - and I can't regard it as anything other than a chance right now, and I don't want to think of it as anything other than a remote possibility - that it might be David Cameron who's Tiger Tim in this election campaign, the man who would be champion, the Daily Mail favourite who's going to throw it all away. If that happened, the support of 70% of daily newspapers will have failed and Big Society will have stuck two fingers up at him. And it won't have been because of his background, which he can't help after all, but because his policies just weren't attractive enough to the voters, despite Labour's failures and the desire to make a change. Maybe 'change' itself wasn't the be-all and end-all of everything after all.

But... then again then again. Maybe the scares worked. Maybe enough people have piled in behind Cameron to avoid the horrors they've been warned about in terms of a hung parliament. Maybe the rhetoric on immigration has struck a chord of fear. Maybe people really do think that Cameron is some kind of iconic Barack Obama figure, as the Sun has told them he is. Maybe enough people have swallowed the propaganda from their newspapers wholesale, and are only too happy to stride into a Conservative future. It doesn't need to be a majority, after all; it just needs to be enough.

There are those that say that this would be a good election to lose, that the economic problems facing the country will mean whoever gets in power could be labelled as a failure and become terribly unpopular. I'm not so sure. With drastic situations can come drastic policies, and the usual scapegoats could be scapegoated more than ever before. People on benefits, immigrants, the sick, the disabled, the long-term unemployed... they're all in the crosshairs. They'll all be popular targets for the tabloids and tough action against 'scroungers' will be roundly cheered from the sidelines.

At the moment, though, I'm still in that delirious time when watching Tim Henman, hoping that maybe he's going to do it. Maybe he's not going to throw it away. Maybe it's all going to be all right.

Come on Tim!

The final push

Hope. The message of the Sun and the Telegraph today - though at least the Tele has the good manners to tell you that the message came from David Cameron

'Choose hope over fear' - it's a message a lot of us can relate to. Some might say it's exactly the reason why they didn't vote Conservative. But it's a message that Cameron's cheerleaders have been banging on about since day one,

and it's a theme that has been carrying right on throughout the election. Fear is driving a lot of this campaign - be it fear about immigration, fear about the debt, fear about David Cameron, fear about Liberal Democrats, fear about a hung parliament, or whatever.

Now comes the positive message from the Sun, likening Cameron to Barack Obama. You might think there are very few parallels to draw, and that it's a fairly bizarre comparison - the first ever black President versus the umpteenth Etonian Prime Minister; a charismatic politician versus a leader who fails to spark excitement even among his own supporters; a brilliant public speaker versus someone who, while slick, isn't a cut above his rivals. I think, though, the comparison the Sun would like you to draw is the idea of change and hope - people hoped when Obama came to power that things would change, and that he would bring hope after 8 long years of Bush II. I fail to have that hope for Cameron. He fills me with fear, dread and a certain queasiness, as does the prospect of a Tory Government, as I said yesterday. I don't really know what hope he inspires in others, or whether it's just the idea of change. But I don't think today's Sun front page will go down as a classic or a defining moment. It won't be the Sun wot won it this time around, no matter what they might try and tell you in the wake of the Cameron victory that I hope won't happen. While the Sun might claim it's going for hope, its front page just fills me with fear. And it's laughably wrong to try and compare David Cameron with Barack Obama - so wrong that I'm pretty sure a lot of Sun readers took a look at it and thought: "Eh? What the hell's going on here?"

Not only that, but it's an image that is ripe for spoofing, as this post over at Liberal Conspiracy shows.

The Express, also, go for a bit of hope, though it's mixed in with fear. They claim Cameron is like Obi-Wan Kenobi - our ONLY hope. Then they ramp up the fear factor with a bit of scaremongering about the Lib Dems and a hung parliament, for good measure, to really force home the message. And there's the picture of Cameron, tieless and sleeves rolled up, like anyone gives a shit, the picture he'd like everyone to see him as. Remember these predictions of a hung parliament 'disaster' if it does happen, though, and the papers don't get their way. Let's see what kind of 'disaster' it really is. But then, the Express knows all about predictions. Remember this?

The Express loves a bit of catastrophism. But is a hung parliament really going to be a disaster, as the Conservative Party - and its friends in the press - are saying? Or is it just a tactic to get voters to fear anything other than a decisive victory for the party out in front in the polls, the one which - coincidentally enough - they want to win?

For once you have to say the Mail are actually quite subtle in their pushing of readers.

Don't panic, though. It's just a way of getting you to panic. Panic! Panic about debt! Panic about riots! Panic about Labour and the deficit! Panic about anything other than Conservative victory! Panic! Panic now! Panic about what's going to happen! Panic about anarchy and murder! Panic about everything! Keep panicking until you get into the polling booth... and... relax.

The Times do pretty much the same, though they need a cartoon to nudge their readers in the Right direction:

It's about fear again. Fear of Gordon Brown, the grotesque caricature of Brown they've put in their cartoon, and fear of the deficit. Fear of everything going wrong, and fear of the wrong people being in charge - you know, people who won't look after the rich. It's all about fear.

The Guardian are similar, also tapping into fear. They want their readers to fear a Conservative Government, so have picked the poll which shows David Cameron's shower with the biggest lead, just to emphasise how much they need their readers to get out and vote:

Just look at his face! Look at it! I can see why that tactic might work. It's certainly working on me. I can't help looking at that little smile and imagining it in Downing Street tomorrow afternoon.

But now it's all done. They've had their say. The Conservatives in this election are supported by the Daily Mail, the Sun, the Telegraph, the Times, the Financial Times, The Star and the Express. The Lib Dems are supported by the Independent and the Guardian. Labour are supported by the Mirror. Does that reflect the votes that will be cast today? I hope not, and I'd be full of fear if I think it did break down that way. But that's the final push to get the chosen candidates over the winning line, and to avoid the 'disaster' of a hung parliament. Have the papers had the influence they want? Or does seeing David Cameron mocked up as Barack Obama on the front of the Sun make some people even more determined to stop him from getting the coronation his media cheerleaders so desperately want? We will have to wait and see. I'm still full of hope, but the fear is creeping in too.

Nervous

So, it's come to this. No-one really knows what's going to happen. No-one knows how, when these things which we don't know, happen, what impact they will make. The pollsters have been tripped up right the way through this election campaign, and we don't know if we can trust them or not. There lies before us a bewildering world of colour-coded maps; we've been spun a few yarns from the bar charts in our election leaflets; and the tactical voting or not tactical voting instructions are there, if we want to read them.

I feel nervous. I've had a kind of sick feeling about me all day, and I don't know why. I think I know why it is, but I'm not sure. I think it's picturing in my head David Cameron striding confidently towards No 10 as Tony Blair did in 1997, with that slightly quirky smile of his, then turning to give a speech to the roaring crowds about how he's going to fix Broken Britain and how there are tough times ahead, but how Big Society is going to make it all work out perfectly.

I imagine the champagne corks popping in newsrooms right across London as their candidate, the man they chose to give their backing to - in return for who knows what, or maybe nothing, maybe just for the prestige of being placed close to the winner, hoping a bit of the glitter will rub off - has been returned.

I imagine the delight as they realise that all the scare stories paid off - people were discouraged from how they wanted to vote because of the fear of the unexpected, the demonisation of a hung parliament... and all the fears of everything else, all the dog-whistles about immigration; all the fear that could be spilled out. I imagine them thinking it's vindication of their stories.

I imagine the front pages ushering in this new era of Compassionate Conservatism. I imagine the free rein that the new leader will get in his free reign - like the honeymoon Blair had, when we breezily brushed aside those niggling worries about donations from Bernie Ecclestone and so on, but magnified even more. All the little things that will get slipped through; all the changes that won't be questioned, or opened to scrutiny. The vindication. The sense of entitlement. The sense that the good fight has been fought, and won. The sense that it really was the Sun wot won it, or whoever it might be who'd like to claim that bauble this time around.

I imagine all of that and it makes me a bit queasy. But then maybe me writing that is just the kind of fearmongering I'm claiming that I don't really like, only it's my fears rather than the fears being shouted out from the news-stands, and while they're an army of massive influence and power, I'm just some rather saggy cloth cat sitting at a keyboard pointlessly shuffling out patterns of letters to make thoughts that no-one will read, or take any notice of, or care about at all.

We've probably all been preaching to the converted. We're all in the echo chamber, just some of our echoes are louder than others. We'd be fools to think we could have any influence at all. That's what I hope. I hope no-one has any influence, and that any attempt I could make to express my intentions would be as pointless as the front page of a big-circulation newspaper, and that somehow we're all just pissing in the wind. But I don't think that's quite right, somehow. I saw a huge poster in the newsagent earlier for the Telegraph which announced it was the 'trusted' paper and that's why I should buy its election coverage. I'm not sure I trust it, but then I'm never likely to trust it.

But... I'm still nervous. I'm still nervous because I'm completely powerless. Completely and utterly. My only hint of engaging with the democratic process is putting an X in a box, which I've done already, and then writing about stuff, which eases my mind, if nothing else. And so now I have to wait. Have I backed the right person? Have I been tactical enough? Did I vote out of fear, or hope? Should I have voted out of fear, if I voted out of hope? I wonder all of these things, and I suppose I'm not alone.

What surprises me is how much I actually care. I really do care. I care not out of fear for what might go wrong, or how awful my chosen bogeyman might be, but because these things really do matter; perhaps there is a real chance for some change to be made at this election, though I hope it's not the change that the 'Vote for Change' banners that litter the countryside have been telling me to desire. I hope there's a change to drag this country kicking and screaming into the modern era and reform the voting system, to make it fairer, to make more votes matter in future, to make more people feel that their Xs count for something more than just ushering in the inevitable. I hope that happens, but I know these things can easily fall apart when they're so close.

I care also because if this is the end of 13 years of Labour Government, that will mark a big change, and open up time for reflection. I remember the hope with which I greeted that result at the time, back on that silly night in 1997, and how that I felt that hope was taken away from me, over time. Do I want the Tories in? No, but I find it hard to forgive Labour for some of the things they've done. I'm sure a lot of people find themselves in that position and are still agonising over their Xs. I can understand that.

We don't know. In a way that's good. If this were just a cheery coronation of David Cameron, as at one stage it appeared it might be, then I would be even more nervous than I already am. It might still be that, which is what I fear most. But it might not. There is still, at this late stage, time for a little hope, I think. A little hope. How long it stays for... well, we'll see.