There’s a Harry Graham poem where a man said, not of his enemies but his children: “It must be ages since I ceased / to wonder which I liked the least.” With an election looming it keeps inhabiting my brain.
In theory, of course, we vote for something – for the careful financial policies, the wise innovations, the careful preservations of this or that, but in practice a good deal of the time it’s mainly a question of which we like the least – with several contending hotly for the label.
Traditional Conservatives can’t see why these stupid town-dwellers don’t care enough for horses or the country; successful business people think pinkos simply don’t understand financial reality. Long- term lefties distrust tax-dodging fat cats, heartless toffs and so on, and are currently furious that we are having the row about selling off council houses – right to buy – all over again.
What will determine my vote will be the argument which could have the most far-reaching consequences of all: over possibly leaving the EU. That rules out Ukip obviously, but now Nick Clegg has lost my vote by saying he’d support an in-out referendum – thus risking our decades-long peace in Europe. You could say that if the powers that be can’t somehow solve the bloodless difficulties we may now have with Strasbourg, they ought to ask themselves how they can really be confident we’d win the next war.
What do you think? Have your say below
