News Flash: This Coalition Is A Joke

I'm absorbing Question Time reluctantly and all it's (predictably, these days) generating in me is an intensifying mood of futility, especially after the pathetic Clegg/Cameron long grass double act earlier today. This 'strong and stable government' nonsense is a dangerous misunderstanding on the part, particularly, of the Tories of what the general election result really meant.

People have had a bellyful of 'strong and stable governments' that are basically all mendacious mouth and no trousers, having had 13 years of a catastrophic version of 'strong and stable' Labour government. We're through with elected dictatorships when they're actually elected. But this increasingly disconnected, disingenuous, dysfunctional Libdum/Tory stitch-up version of a 'strong and stable government' certainly wasn't voted for - by anyone! It's the wittiest form of 'strong and stable government' I think I've ever seen. And the joke's on us.

People, if anything can be read into the outcome of the general election (and not a lot can), did not vote for a 'strong and stable government' that would carry on for five years as if Cameron's and Clegg's convenient interpretation was the only one that mattered. What people actually 'voted for' (if a mass ballot really can have a mind and character of its own, which itself borders on insulting inanity) is a weak and unstable government that would have to make policy according to principle, be answerable to the people every day of its existence, and would have to rely on pure guts and political nous just to get through one parliament.

A minority Tory government would have delivered that, and would have shown the country that the party still had a soul and some real courage. It would have earned them a proper victory down the line, too, possibly with a new leader who genuinely represented those erstwhile traits of the Conservative institution.

As it is, forget what I've said before, (although I've been pretty consistent in the post-election propaganda landscape), the middle class Richmond/Notting Hill shits are in charge again (this time with a bluish-yellow hue rather than a red one). They've welded Parliament's doors shut to the likes of me and you, and are now talking to themselves while really, honestly imagining, laughably, that they are running the country.

It did not take long, but the consequences, as the world economy tanks - this time for real - will be awe-inspiring and devastating. We could have had a weak but principled and determined government. Instead, we don't even have a 'strong and stable government'. All we really have is weakness, fudge, paralysis and hot air.

Not impressed. Plus ca change, right?