Not Much Support Here

It is the morning of Tuesday 9th June and it's raining again. The Meteorological Office tells us that it is the European Monsoon. First, I have heard of it. Is global warming shifting the climate of Asia towards Europe? Or are they just feeding us rubbish? Yesterday was a day of gloom and political analysis as the newspapers and pundits sought to explain the European Election results. Overall it seems to me that not much changed either in the UK or in Europe generally. It was clear that, in spite of the EU spending £18m of our money on advertising and promotion of this election, not many people bothered to vote. The Europe wide voter turn-out continued its inexorable decline. Out of a total electorate of 375 million, a substantial number [210 million] did not bother to vote. The UK was one of the worst - we have never had much interest in Europe - and that is the prime reason why I think that no one should take too much notice of these results. It was a triumph for the Tories, of course - or at least that's what Diddy "Call me Dave" Cameron told us. In fact the Tory share was a mere 1% better than Michael Howard achieved in 2004. This, in spite of Labour doing worse than they have done in any election since about 1918. They came behind the Tories in Wales for the first time ever; indeed, the Tories have not been the leading party in Wales since 1859. But just how impressive is the Tory result in reality? Nationally, the wondrous Tories got 27.7% of the vote and since our turn-out was only 34.3%, that means that just 9.5% of the total electorate voted Tory, while UK Independence Party [UKIP], Labour and the Liberal-Democrats each managed to persuade between 4.7% and 5.7% of the total electorate to vote for them. Nothing to suggest a ringing endorsement of any party. Surely, Labour must believe that no matter how useless their own performance, the Tories are not exactly running riot.

The fact is that no matter how much we dislike Labour we do not have any overwhelming desire to be ruled by a bunch of rich, inexperienced, arrogant Old Etonians. I constantly harp on about this useless government but I have no confidence that electing Diddy Dave and the Tories will improve matters. Dave's own experience is in marketing - or what we could call commercial spin. Just the man we need to run the country.

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