Bad timing, wrong campaign

Charles Kennedy has stopped playing hard to get with Tony Blair and is now like one of your best mates having an affair with a married man who really does believe he'll leave his wife this time, says Jo Phillips

---

By Jo Phillips

Oh to be a fly on an animal carcass as Labour begins telephone canvassing in Cumbria or the West country.

Jo Phillips

Writer and broadcaster Jo Phillips was head of media in Paddy Ashdown's office when the Yeovil MP was Liberal Democrat leader

Along with a handful of other Ashdown confidants, she was part of the eponymous 'Jo Group' which advised the party leader on his relations - and secret negotiations - with Tony Blair and New Labour

Would the slamming down of phones, the inevitable abuse, tears of frustration and despair surprise those canvassers?

Would they be as startled as Tony Blair always seems to be when confronted by real people?

Would it at last dawn on them that a May election is damn foolish, arrogant and an affront to democracy? One would hope so, but of course it would be too late.

Running scared of recession

Right now, Tony Blair is displaying all the leadership qualities of someone who'd rather go ahead with a bad marriage than cancel the wedding caterers and send back the presents.

This isn't about postal votes, doorstep canvassing or sending out the wrong signals to tourists (unless there are a few who think our elections, like Morris dancing, have to be seen to get the true British experience).

Neither is it about who's more deserving - farmers, miners or steel workers, town or country.

Millbank and the media believe their diaries are more important than everyone else and anyway, they all know the outcome so why not get it over and done with

This is self-seeking petulance which is beginning to look more and more like running scared of a recession that may or may not blow across the Atlantic later in the year.

Call me old-fashioned but how can something that has not been fixed be postponed? I fear it could be that Millbank and the media believe their diaries are more important than everyone else and anyway, they all know the outcome so why not get it over and done with.

How sad that anyone who professes to care about democracy, to be interested in politics and the political process, can disregard the electorate with such utter contempt. That is the signal that going ahead with an election on 3 May sends out - to every voter in this country.

Who will be the voice of the beleaguered tourist and agricultural industries when their elected representatives have to become candidates ?

A classic affair

If ever there was an argument for fixed-term elections then surely it is this fiasco.

But that's the sort of talk that usually comes from the same quarters as the call for proportional representation (PR) - and most Liberal Democrats know exactly what Tony Blair thinks of that.

Blair broke the trust of many Lib Dems over PR by disregarding Lord Jenkins's report and ducking the issue of a referendum. He's now prevaricated even further with even less of a commitment to PR

Except Charles Kennedy, apparently, who has suddenly stopped playing hard to get and is now like one of your best mates having an affair with a married man who really does believe he'll leave his wife for her this time.

That'll be in 2003 when it won't be so much leaving the wife as a "review". Anyone who's had the misfortune to be a mistress will tell you precisely what that means.

No commitment

Blair broke the trust of many Lib Dems over PR by disregarding Lord Jenkins's report on electoral reform for Westminster and ducking the issue of a referendum.

He's now prevaricated even further with even less of a commitment to PR.

While it may be enough of a deal to keep tactical voting alive for this election, it's totally worthless unless Blair is prepared to properly engage in a campaign ahead of any referendum.

But It is quite clear that the only campaign he wants to engage in is the one that will get him back in Downing Street as quickly as possible.

He doesn't appear to have any qualms about asking us to elect him, to trust him to run the country "for better for worse, in sickness and in health" even though he'd rather be fighting an election than doing exactly that.