Thoughts, schmoughts

Our Dear Leader, who inexplicably bothered acquiring an Oxford degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics, has announced that from now on, intelligence and reason are no longer required to be a politician.

"For me, politics shouldn't be some mind-bending exercise. It's about what you feel in your gut – about the values you hold dear and the beliefs you instinctively have. And I just feel it, in my gut, that AV is wrong."

Lovely. I look forward to the return of hanging, book-burning, paedo-lynching and all the other manifestations of nice, decisive gut-following. Clearly having an ideological vision of the ideal state is old hat. We just want knees jerking in unison, not mature reflection in response to changing events and contexts.

Unless… you don't think that he's posturing as a populist simply to pander to the prejudices of the Sun and Daily Mail readership do you? Surely not. That would be desperately cynical.

Anyway, I'm keen to hear what his 'gut' tells him about the Public Sector Borrowing Rate, what the maximum PPM CO2 level should be, where interest rates should be and all the other intricate decisions that need a little more thought than an instant 'reckon'.

He agrees with Nick

This is David Cameron. Unfortunately, he's the Prime Minister. He's campaigning against the Alternative Vote electoral system. He says it will let in extremist parties like the BNP, Britain's Nazis.

This is Nick Griffin. He's the leader of the BNP. He's campaigning against the Alternative Vote system too. He probably thinks it's foreign.

This is Paul Uppal. He's not campaigning on anything because he's got money to count, but if he was, he'd be supporting his leader and the racist BNP because he does what he's told without the teensiest hint of mental activity behind his eyes.

Personally, I tend to think that the Conservatives are wrong about everything. When they're agreeing with the British National Party, they really need to reconsider their ideological positions.

Choosing sides

I agree with Nick. For my overseas readers, this is an ironic echo of the 2010 UK election, in which the Labour and Tory leaders found themselves using the phrase every time Nick Clegg, Liberal Democrat party leader, said something reasonable. This was before it turned out - to everybody's surprise - that the multimillionaire financier was just another smooth-tongued liar. But that's another story.

I agree with Nick about the upcoming referendum on the UK's voting system. The choice is between the current first-past-the-post (meaning that if there are three candidates in a close race, you can get elected with 30% of the vote) and Alternative Vote, in which you list the candidates in order of preference. If nobody reaches 50% on the first go, the last place is eliminated and his/her voters' second choices are counted. And so on.

Nick described AV as a 'miserable little compromise', which is true. We both want Proportional Representation, as they have in the Scots and Welsh parliaments: it gives you a house of representatives exactly matching the wishes of the electorate.

However, AV will do for now. Anything that the Tories oppose is a good thing, I find. David Cameron's wandering around shouting that extremist parties will win big with AV, which is a lie. We can test this.

What side are the Nazi British National Party on?

Oh dear. Seems like they agree with the Conservative Party on this, as with so much else. If you ever want to know whether something's a good idea or not, see what the BNP are doing, and vote the opposite way.