If you caught a glimpse of the latest Conservative Party election broadcast (a spoof of a broadcast by the Hung Parliament Party, ho ho ho), you will probably by now be hiding beneath your bed, clinging on to your battered childhood teddy bear and bawling for your mother. It was launched by George Osborne and covered with wide-ranging and wild-eyed menace the dangers of a hung parliament – many and various if you believe their take. There might be a run on the pound, a collapse in business confidence, back-room deals, nationwide misery, destitution and a quadrupling in the murder rate (last three not true, but they wouldn’t have felt entirely out of place in the fear-fest that was the Tory press conference).
I watched another video after being scared witless by George (and he didn’t even have a side parting any more). This one is great: it has a clock ominously ticking down, pictures of knives and guns and ASBOs in action and interminable droning statistics explaining how your life will essentially be in much greater danger under a Labour government. It’s like the horror version of Countdown.
And then I remembered Cameron launching his manifesto with the sunny, smiling words:
“If we join together, if we act decisively and move forward with optimism, we can start to fix the economic, social and political problems that threaten the nation. We can bring about the change Britain needs.”
Optimism! Oh optimism. How naive and distant you seem in these ghoulish times. Optimism is now banished to BC (before Clegg); before the TV debates provoked nightmares and the realistic prospect of a hung parliament – the political equivalent of The Silence of the Lambs to any “optimistic” Tory – changed everything. So it’s back to the comfort of fear, the welcoming duvet of threats, the open embrace of empty warnings about how unutterably awful your entire life will be if anything happens on 6 May apart from Dave marching into No 10 and hanging his Lily Allen posters all over the walls. Til then, we will be trembling in our beds (or beneath them, especially if George gets that side parting back on the campaign trail.)
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