Cameron Behind

A report in The Huffington Post this morning suggests that Tory activists have been using tactical voting methods in the London mayoral elections in an effort to push Liberal Democrats candidate Brian Paddick into a humiliating fourth or fifth place.

Even The Huffington Post's own article suggests that the number of voters using this tactic may be very low, but it is sadly indicative of the times that it should even have been formulated.

Ever since the Tories romped back to power, they have behaving like someone who has stepped in something, desperately scraping the soles of their shoes in order to remove the Lib Dems. Indeed, for the first year of the coalition government both Labour and the Conservatives found common ground in their desire to return the Lib Dems to their former state of total unelectability.

That was all very well when the Conservatives were working towards the idea of a clean victory in 2015, but right now hopes of that seem to be draining away.

Moreover, events may yet conspire to strengthen the Lib Dems' hand. Remember Business Secretary Vince Cable, whose responsibilities to oversee News Corp's bid for BSkyB were removed from him and given to Jeremy Hunt? At the time Cable was made to look very stupid by a Daily Telegraph sting (which was later the subject of a successful complaint to the Press Complaints Commission). Now, however, he looks remarkably like the only British politician to shake hands with the Murdochs and retain his small change & pocket watch.

To a different extent the same can be said of Clegg himself. Having been variously depicted as hapless, clueless and ineffectual, he can scarcely be portrayed now as having anything more than a bystander role in the policies that have proved most unpopular for the coalition. While George Osborne was preparing his politically catastrophic budget, Clegg & Cable were pushing the idea of a "Mansion Tax".

As fig leaves go it may be small, but it beats going around stark bollock naked.

Of course, the recovery in Lib Dem fortunes has been predicted more often than the end of the world, the only difference between them being that at some point the world assuredly will end. Of less concern to the Conservatives than the rise of the Lib Dems, however, will be their own fall: something in which they are likely to prove the principal architect. Had they kept the Lib Dems relatively strong, they might have prevented Labour from jumping from third place into first in the Birmingham council elections last night.

In an ideal world the Lib Dems could act like a hedge fund for the Tories: an opportunity to invest both in ice creams and umbrellas. Right now - as Britain wrings out its prematurely knotted handkerchiefs beneath the pitilessly grey Spring skies - Cameron seems to have gone full-tilt into the ice cream business.

Those Nine Preferences In Full

Under the Alternative Vote system, voters would get (would have got) the ability to register up to nine voting preferences, which is all very well and good, but I got to the Voting Station this morning and made a disturbing discovery.

I don't even have a first preference.

While certainly I have been an undecided voter in earlier elections, this is the first time that I have looked at the voting form without having given any real thought for which party I would like to support with the mickle might of my vote.

Moreover, this was not just a "Lib Dems or Labour" thing. Even David Cameron - a man who probably used to wear a morning suit to buy his morning newspaper but now makes much show of not being able to put his hands on one for a Royal Wedding - was in with a chance of the Sordellian imprimatur.

Nick Clegg, aka the Leader of Her Majesty's Opposition, could well have swung it for the Lib Dems. Ediband The Unknown could have taken it for Labour. It was certainly not unthinkable that the Greens would stand secure beneath the impregnable aegis of my cross.

The problem, though, was not a lack of interest, but a genuine lack of what for want of a better word one must call an Alternative. If it's true that the Eskimos have an unusually large number of words for snow (and according to Wikipedia it isn't) then we had better start working on a larger vocabulary for the otherwise indistinguishable shades of political platform upon which we are invited to lavish our electoral enthusiasm.

It's a sad day for something-or-other when one has a more decided preference on what socks to wear than one does for which party should govern, but that seems to be my predicament.

(Admittedly, Sordel is unusually attached to socks, like a recently-liberated house elf.)

Still, it's comforting to think that despite my near-complete aporia, my vote will have been registered with the same vanishing significance as someone who actually cares.