Dear Philippa,

 

I expect you’re looking forward to the Election, the most uncertain and thrilling and pointless for decades. If you are, think of us in the constituency of Malton and Thirsk, the only constituents in the country not to go to the polls – we’ve been called off and shall not be consulted until three weeks after the results are in. Disenfranchised and early to bed sober on Thursday night. Why? Because one of the candidates has died. I have voted in every general election since the mid-sixties, and I can recollect no other occasion when this happened, though in fact it has happened eight times since the First World War, most recently at the last election. How did I miss it?

 

Our great fear here is that if the result is very close we shall be visted by hoards of high profile politicians, smiling and lying and oiling round us and trying to kiss our babies (have they been CRB checked?) a prospect repulsive to any sane voter. It has been my good fortune to have met very few politicians, and the occasions when I did were not inspiring. I met Portillo once when he was in the street spreading his personality about like cheap margarine in the hope of attracting votes and I was hurrying home to my wife who was in the midst of a fit of projectile vomiting, and he seemed a decent enough cove for a Tory but I had little time for him, and I stood next to Poor Old Dobbo in an Italian deli in Soho and had the exquisite pleasure of hear him ordering “a pound of mousetrap” in a very loud voice, but I did not tremble with excitement at the proximity to celebrity. I may go away.

 

I belong to an age group that can more or less be relied upon to vote (50+) but Mr Brown is troubled by the overall decline in turnout, quite rightly. An obvious and inexpensive solution, if there is one at all, would be to do what the French do, not usually my first choice as exemplars, and hold elections not on Thursdays but on Sundays, the day of the week least complicated by pressing commitments. But his solution? To extend the franchise to the section of the population least likely to vote (18-25) by lowering the age to sixteen – thereby at a stroke lowering even further the percentage turnout. Not a man to overlook the ideas of others he has turned to the cleverness of a Labour PM even more successful than himself, Harold Wilson, who slyly thought that he had appealed greatly to the youth of the country by awarding MBEs to the Beatles and sought to cement his popularity by lowering the age from 21 to 18, with a predictable result. Wilson did have one good idea and it wasn’t this – it was the Open University.

 

Well, the MBEs were returned in due course, except I think by Ringo, and the following years were followed by social unrest under Labour governments and by Margaret Thatcher and Cecil Parkinson. What possible good does Brown think it will do to place the levers of power within the reach of pimply sixteen year olds whose chief concerns are sourcing cheap alcohol and getting enough sex, reasonable enough ambitions but hardly the basis for sane voting intentions.

 

Anyway, think of us when you vote. And think of us even harder when, as I predict, The Prince of Darkness  comes among us with all his hobgoblins three weeks later. Which reminds me – I saw another polititician once; I stood by Mr Balls in W H Smith on York station. I was greatly struck by his scarily staring eyes, and I was acquainted with fear. Has he been CRB checked?

 

Best wishes

 

Howard