'A unnatural marriage of inconvenience made in Hell'

I haven't posted anything on this blog since last Sunday. Some people have been kind enough to comment to the effect that they they enjoyed this blog. Therefore, though there is no longer an electoral purpose behind this blog, I will post something from time to time.

Many people have been more than kind in their messages of sympathy at my losing the election 'big-time' and, of the messages, I have been particularly touched by three, one from a superb supporter in Ely who wrote, 'What a shambles our lovely country is in.' Another was from a greatly valued Swaffham Prior-based friend, who wrote, 'Well done Geoffrey. A great effort.' The third was addressed from the President's Lodge of one of our major Cambridge colleges. It read, 'Congratulations on an energetic and dignified campaign!'

The word 'dignified' in the last-mentioned message rather got me and, though it might be wise to continue in a dignified fashion and, perhaps, to desist from criticising the 'unnatural marriage of inconvenience made in Hell' that is our new Government, I am throwing dignity to the winds and saying, right away, 'It can't last and it won't last.'

The electors did not vote for a hung parliament: they voted - in the main - for political parties with specific policies and agendas. I actually wanted a hung parliament because I wanted Labour and the Conservatives to work together (as the late Mr Ramsay MacDonald and the late Mr Stanley Baldwin did in 1931) to a limited agenda, for a limited period and for a specific purpose, namely, to ensure sufficient support for an economic recovery (which was achieved following 1931, despite popular myths to the contrary). I neither won nor did I get what I wanted and I am not complaining about not winning because independents invariably have a hard time and I felt in the final few days of the campaign here a hunch that the old adage (from Hilaire Belloc's 'Jim') was coming into play, 'Always keep a-hold of nurse, for fear of finding something worse.'

But we have a hung parliament and this 'unnatural marriage of inconvenience made in Hell.' Gordon Brown, the graceless and unattractive Scotsman of true substance, has been ousted, greatly to the delight of many English people who only saw the gracelessness and the unattractiveness and the Scottishness and chose to ignore the true substance, and we have in his place the pair of pretty public schoolboys (as portrayed so brilliantly in today's Times by cartoonist Peter Brookes) who are untried and untested and who, until a few days ago, detested one another and whose respective parties and party members still detest one another. That is one of my reasons for asserting that this unnatural 'marriage' can't and won't last. I know only too well the party system in this country. The Conservatives loath Labour. Labourites loath the Conservatives. But the Conservatives and the Labourites go way beyond loathing in their lack of regard for the Liberal Democrats: they detest them. Cameron and Cleggy are now bosom buddies but their respective supporters 'in the country' are appalled at them getting into bed together. We shall see proof of this in the up-coming Thirsk and Malton election where, unless orders come from on high that the locals must be lovey-dovey, inter-party tensions are certain to come to the fore. For a Yorkshire take on this extraordinary situation go to -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/may/12/thirsk-malton-election-coalition-government

So far as 'my' issues are concerned, I have become deeply pessimistic.

1.  'Our boys' are going to be mired in the muck of Afghanistan for the foreseeable future. President Obama has already commended Mr Cameron for his adherence to the American 'strategy' over there.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/may/12/barack-obama-david-cameron

2.  Unless Caroline Spelman, M.P. for Meriden, of 'Nannygate' notoriety -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Spelman#.22Nannygate.22_controversy

- and now the new Defra Secretary, is prevented by 'Boy George' Osborne from wasting more money, she and her Liberal Democrat colleagues will continue Government funding of the wasteful 'Wicken Vision' scheme whereby the National Trust is taking over and ruining thousands of acres of our finest food-producing Cambridgeshire Fen land.



3.  And, horror of horrors, I now hear that there is every likelihood of a Government-led or Government-sponsored attempt to overturn the Hunting Act 2004 under the cloak of repealing other pieces of legislation. If this is true, then the unnatural Cameron/Clegg ‘marriage’ is doomed for divorce on the grounds of cruelty and deceit.

I received an indirect assurance from the Liberal Democrat candidate in South East Cambridgeshire that he would vote against 'un-banning' fox hunting and hare coursing. I wonder what this earnest and otherwise honourable young man is now thinking.

My thoughts are for our country, our British people and our animals. I repeat, I am now deeply pessimistic.