Electoral circus

Last night's news left me more despairing about this election than I can ever remember. And the inane phone-in on BBC Scotland this morning hasn't helped. How can anyone pretend that they never express private opinions at odds with their public face? The idea that it was somehow heinous for Gordon Brown to smile (and smile, and be a villain - see, Shakespeare knew it all) at that woman (no - by the 10pm news she was "a pensioner" - instant pathos) and then allow himself a private girn in his refreshingly original accent (not the rather more bland public one) is simply daft. Or mischief-making. Ok, it was singularly silly not to remember he was wearing a mic - but it happens. And usually it's a laugh.

One look, a moment later, at shiny Dave; one flash of the steady Honest Gaze of The Clegg - how can we take this seriously? Brown is like the rest of us, maybe - willing to put on a smile to ease the situation, honest enough to collapse in unguarded fury afterwards. He may well have made mega-mistakes in government, but no-one's really talking about them any more. This election, mates, is a circus.

Ok, the woman was pissed off at him. And she may well change the voting habits of a lifetime because of that. But must the rest of the electorate join her?

Ethnic change?

I was tickled by this headline in today's Guardian:

Anglo-Saxon villain turns European visionary

Who is the villain? None other than Gordon Brown, the PM. A Scot. One of the least Anglo-Saxon-looking men I've seen in a long time. Can it be that he's suddenly wanny us because, as the Guardian puts it, he alone is the only head of government among last night's 27 who understands what he's talking about? The story, by Ian Traynor, even compares him to Wellington.

Good grief.

It ain't what you say ...

Just watched a few snippets of Gordon Brown's interviews on the evening news. So ... he's serious, has a difficult smile, knows it. And he's Scottish, and sounds it. Apparently all this makes him an electoral liability. He's made mistakes, and knows it. And he's just admitted it. To my simple reasoning this makes me more hopeful rather than less - I can't bear the fast-talking smarm of the kind of politician Brown says he is not.

I suspect this may be a nationality thing. Despite what I wrote the other day about the wonderful disengagement of having autonomy as a nation, I feel no hostility towards Brown. Exasperation, perhaps, but no more.

And I can't help reflecting on the years spent under PMs who sounded ...well, English, actually.

Darling? I don't think so

Almost exactly two years ago, I wrote to the then Chancellor of the Exchequer - now, of course, Our Great Leader - more to vent my spleen about Inheritance Tax than in any hope of a sensible response. This is a part of that letter:

Dear Mr Brown

Yesterday my sister and I paid a total of just over £££££ [an amount which seemed a very large sum of money to me] inheritance tax/Capital Gains Tax/whatever on our late mother’s estate. In pointing out to you the circumstances under which this estate was accumulated, I am looking for someone – yourself, a minion – to convince me that this is reasonable. As a member of the Labour Party for some 15 years, I am not averse to an equitable distribution of wealth, but have never considered my family to come into the ‘wealthy’ category.

My parents were both teachers in the State System – not much chance to avoid paying taxes there. My father died four years after retirement at the age of 65. My mother, deprived of the companion with whom she might have taken expensive holidays, lived modestly in the family house that they had bought in 1955 in the West End of Glasgow. She had some investments, which she guarded against the possibility of extreme old age and ill health.

In the event, she lived in that house until she was 92, when a stroke meant she had to move into a nursing home. She died a year later. When we sold the house, it made what to us appeared an impressive price – the basis of the estate on which we are now taxed.

How would you have avoided that tax? How should we ensure that our children do not suffer the same burden? And how, finally, will we feel if the law is changed in the near future to raise the threshold for paying inheritance tax?
Rhetorical questions for a busy chancellor? But this retired teacher suddenly finds herself in sympathy with a group of people with whom I have never before identified. Convince me, please.

Yours sincerely

He - or rather some minion - did reply, to the effect that, you know, the country couldn't manage without this tax money, and come on, old thing, you're obviously rolling in it. Actually I made that last bit up, but the firm tone of the letter left me in no doubt that without Inheritance Tax the Treasury would grind to a halt.

Do I feel pleased at my clairvoyance? Huh. Will I vote for Flash Gordon's lot again? Your guess.