Aphrodisiac elections

Jan and I will mark X next to our chosen candidate for our constituency tomorrow. We can walk through winter rain joyful in the knowledge that starting Friday we can engage in a prolonged period of erotic enthusiasm. This is what our current Prime Minister has promised us if he is chosen to lead our country. He tells us that he correctly predicted before the 2012 London Olympics that the Games would be such a success that Britons would become so hyperactive in the marital bedroom (or in his case anywhere else, one gathers) that the birth rate would increase substantially. He likewise predicts that Brexit will stimulate further reproductive excitement.

Who could resist voting for a man possessed of such priapic predictive powers? However, it seems that in 2013, following the Games, the birth rate fell. Perhaps the British electorate will suffer a profound Brexit anticlimax.

In case my friends overseas think that I am making this up and that nobody running for public office, let alone an aspirant to lead our country, could say something so preposterous, let me introduce you to “Boris being Boris”. This is the phrase used by his Conservative party colleagues to reassure the public that he is just a jolly British eccentric, a political Billy Bunter, whom we should so love that we fail to consider whether what he says is true or not. “Boris being Boris” is a carefully constructed contrivance designed to allow him to lie and dissemble shamelessly without any consequences.

The reference to the 2012 Olympic Games is part of this contrivance, because Mr Johnson was Mayor of London during the Games. He was therefore constantly in the media and claimed credit for the success of the Games. However, he was first elected Mayor of London in 2008, after the Labour government had won the bid to host the Games. The planning and most of the execution was carried out by Labour politicians. Thus, Mr Johnson can claim little credit for the Games, but that does not prevent his doing so.

Behind the jolly japes, untruths and boundless bluster and false bonhomie, lies an ugly intent. During the tenure of the Conservative government the number of foodbanks in our country has increased many fold. The uncomfortable fact that destitution and hunger have increased under Conservative rule does not quite fit the jolly japes picture. When one of Mr Johnson’s colleagues, the Home Secretary Priti Patel was challenged about the increased reliance on foodbanks to feed families, she stated that the government bears no responsibility for increased destitution. This, she declared is the responsibility of local governments whose funding has been decimated under her party’s rule. Do you think she cares or that a government in which she is a senior minister will do anything toreduce poverty?

The party that now promises us a “Points-based Australian-style immigration system”, has been responsible for deporting British citizens (who just happen to be of Caribbean heritage) because they could not produce sufficient documentation to satisfy Ms Patel’s department. In other words, the government does not have to prove that one is a citizen with full citizen’s rights, the citizen must prove it (unless he or she is of the correct colour). Recently, the Supreme Court ruled that Ms Patel’s department has illegally imprisoned victims of torture seeking asylum, with inestimable damage to their mental health. And the Conservative Party manifesto promises to make life difficult for Gypsy and other traveller communities.

Can anybody guess for which party I will cast my vote tomorrow?