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Groaning, head in hands


So this is heading to be the messiest election in history, and, in sympathy, the media coverage has been the messiest in history. Whilst by no means a Labour tribalist, it’s been dismaying to me to see the news outlets falling over each other in their eagerness to give Ed Miliband a kicking. Rofl he can’t eat a bacon sandwich, lol what a weirdo etc. And the more this sort of thing occurs the more it makes me wonder why the coverage has been so shrill, so personal, so unpleasant.

They don’t think he’ll actually win? Do they? Because it certainly seems like it. There’s been very little in the media about dissection of Labour policies, all the talk is of party rifts, of the Greens nicking votes in England, the SNP wiping them out in Scotland and yet, stubbornly, the polling puts Labour slightly, ever so slightly, ahead.

So the old ways crank back into action, Osborne chucks pensioners a bribe in the shape of a bond, because he knows they’ll vote, the Tories' donors sigh, reach their hands back into their pockets and the Conservative party outspends Labour three to one. The Sun and the Mail launch attack after attack. The possibility of a Labour win, however remote (and history tells us a one point lead in the polls this close to an election effectively rules any sort of majority win out f the equation) or worse, the possibility of a Labour/SNP coalition thows the right into a lather, a frenzy. It’s all rather depressing to witness. So we’re back to the politics of personality, rather than, y’know, policies.

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