What has happened since the election is supposedly a taste of what will happen if we ever get proportional representation. Count me as a convert. What we have here is information we don’t get when the winner just ends up outside Downing Street looking smug and standing on a big pile of votes. We get a plain view of how the senior political classes behave while under pressure; how they behave towards their frenemies in the other parties, how they react to the various gurglings and moanings from within their own ranks. We see the media throwing up all commitment to the pretence of objectivity in their reporting – we get to see the narrative being constructed rather than having to guess at that through how it being plays out. 

We get to judge the capabilities of politicians conducting their everyday tradecraft – and my, doesn’t Cameron look the weak willie? There’s still a remote possibility that he’ll have his coalition snatched from under him by the party sixty seats behind: a week ago his party was talking about storming into No 10 even if they didn’t get a majority. In fact, this may be working to his temporary advantage if it really has led people in the Labour Party to rediscover the virtues of principled opposition. More generally, we get to see all of them squirming about in the petri dish. We become a more educated electorate. Hell, Sky should have sent Adam Boulton home with some powerful tranquillisers days ago and hired David Attenborough to cover for him.

This is from the wiki about human sacrifice among the Aztecs: 

 What we can glean from all this is that the sacrificial role entailed a great deal of social expectation and a certain degree of acquiescence. Sahagun's informants told him that key roles were reserved for persons who were considered 'charming…quick..dances with feeling.. without [moral] defects … of good understanding … good mannered'(Sahagun Bk 2: 24: 68-69). 

For many rites, the victim had such a quantity of prescribed duties that it is difficult to imagine how the accompanying festival would have progressed without some degree of compliance on the part of the victim. For instance, victims were expected to bless children, greet and cheer passers-by, hear people's petitions to the gods, visit people in their homes, give discourses and lead sacred songs, processions and dances …  [and] these [pre-sacrificial] rites were performed in the case of all the prisoners, each in turn. 

It should also be remembered that these sacrifices were ritualistic and symbolic acts accompanying huge feasts and festivals. Victims usually died in the "center stage" amidst the splendor of dancing troupes, percussion orchestras, elaborate costumes and decorations, carpets of flowers, crowds of thousands of commoners, and all the assembled elite. 

This is basically what Cleggy and the Lib Dems were subjected to this weekend, an intensive process designed to socialise – hypnotise, almost – them into propping up a Tory government under circumstances that would lead to their annihilation, with Cameron playing the role of Mexica high priest and “the markets” playing the role of Huitzlipochtli and kindred other Gods whose anger needs to be appeased. See also the solar king myths of prehistoric Europe. 

As it happens, the LDs are showing some signs of resilience to this process. But we shall see.

UPDATE: Scratch all that. David Cameron is Edward Woodward.

So Cleggy boy meets Brown, while carefully not having a face to face with Cameron. Not bad. Obviously, he’s not so lost in the creamy embrace of the Cameron-media complex to exclude a bidding war. 

Here’s a scenario, based on 

i) final abandonment of the idea that anyone is “acting on principle” 

ii) not getting electoral reform is suicidal for the Lib Dems 

Absolutely desperate for some kind of deal to reverse Clegg’s apparently irresistible drift towards the Tories, Brown offers proportional representation without a referendum, to take place at the next election, whenever that is. 

Clegg takes the deal, and immediately precipitates an election. Labour duly get hammered. So do the LD’s. But they still come out ahead in seats because their votes are now proportionate. 

Clegg goes into coalition with the Tories. 

Woe, beating of breasts, laments for the progressive coalition, etc, etc. 

As I say, just a thought. It’s probably more likely that he’s stringing Brown along to get more out of the Tories.

John Harris, writing about the PM’s bid for the votes of people who deal with customers on a daily basis, says: 

This may sound tangential, but I'm rather reminded of a passage from a Tony Blair conference speech that both set out New Labour's credo, and captured its essential pathology. "The character of this changing world is indifferent to tradition," he said. "Unforgiving of frailty. No respecter of past reputations. It has no custom and practice. It is replete with opportunities, but they only go to those swift to adapt, slow to complain, open, willing and able to change." That doesn't describe Gillian Duffy, nor millions and millions of other people. And in this awful episode, here are the wages of that ever-festering disconnection. 

Me, I think Mrs Duffy’s adapting quite well: 

Gillian Duffy is being represented by a public relations agent and will not be giving any further comment this evening on her dealings with the prime minister, the BBC understands. 

I look forward to next Sunday’s News of the World with interest. Once more, Prime Minister, welcome to the world you made.

Watched The Debate this time. Ho Hum. Brown was a bit better than I thought he’d be. I imagined a conveyor belt filled with rubble chugging its way through the studio, discharging nuggety factoids at random. But he managed to make his personality cohere, more or less. Not a hugely appealing personality, consisting mainly of a lot of statistics held together by a gluey sense of entitlement, but we already knew that. 

Cameron was Cameron. Some of the stuff he was coming up with sounded like the kind of thing people who like that kind of thing like to hear, though it’s a different matter whether they like to hear it from him. He’s caught in the Blair trap: the more sincere he sounds, the more he conveys the feeling that he’s putting one over. 

Cleggy boy ain’t all that. I mean, he’s alright in a "doesn’t wipe his nose on his sleeve" sense, which seems to be all that’s required right now. He sounded a bit apologetic about his best policies, ie on immigration and Trident, which is a mistake. He didn’t exactly squirm; it was more a slightly queasy appeal to reason, with lots of stuff about kicking things into committees. His position on both these issues cries out to be presented aggressively as “plain common sense” and he couldn’t shape up to that properly. He really should have mocked Cameron over his China comments last week. 

Sky had Osborne on afterwards, congratulating them on holding such a wonderful debate, which raises the underlying meta-issue in the election: 

Last week, the Lib-Dem candidate Nick Clegg—the third party candidate in the race—did so well in a television debate that he began to emerge as the logical alternative to Labor. This has caused the Murdoch papers to unleash a full-scale attack on Clegg—with hardly any pretense other than to help Cameron—now known as the “Kill Klegg” campaign. 

First I heard of it, though it’s quite good. 

In turn, the Independent newspaper ran a front pager yesterday with the headline “Rupert Murdoch will not decide the outcome of the election. You will,” challenging the Murdoch coverage of the race.

 Later in the afternoon, in a coming-apart-at-the-seams scenario, Rebekah Wade/Brooks and Murdoch’s son, James—who will both face the wrath of Murdoch senior if they don’t produce a winner—stormed over to the Independent, breached its security systems, barged into the offices of the Independent’s editor-in-chief and top executive, Simon Kelner, and commenced, in Brit-speak, a giant row. Their point was that newspaper publishers don’t slag off other newspaper publishers in polite Britain, but also the point was to remind Kelner that he wasn’t just slagging off another publisher, he was slagging off the Murdochs, damn it. Indeed, the high point of the screaming match was Wade/Brooks, in a fit of apoplexy and high drama, neck muscles straining, saying to Kelner: “And I invited you to Blenheim in the first place!” Blenheim being the Murdoch family retreat and the highest social destination for all Murdoch loyalists and ambitious Brits in the media. 

 This is one way for empires to end. 

Osborne’s comment showed that the Tories’ loyalties are still with the Empire. Nick, I suspect, will be happy to do business come the glorious day. Shame really. Some indication that he wasn’t could see him really attack the Labour core vote, and maybe get not a few Tories on board too. 

Incidentally, I was impressed by the way Clegg used the Lib Dem position on EU membership – an in/out referendum – to encourage Cameron to present his right wing for plundering by UKIP, which Cameron duly did. Maybe that’s a bit premature in terms of votes this time, but I am amused by the combination of “plucky outsider” “Mr honest as the day is long” and “cute as a shithouse rat.” There was the tzzzzeeep of the stiletto about the thing. I just wish he’d done it on Trident.

In re: the Volcano Flight Chaos, as all the TV stations seem to be calling it. I just heard the Tory transport spokesman say that what we needed was a “Dunkirk type flotilla of little boats” to rescue our fellow citizens stranded in, oh I don’t know, Frankfurt and Milan and places like that I suppose. In fact she said that she knew for sure that there was one raring to go right now, but it was being held back by the Border Agency, the same one the Tories say is helpless to prevent anyone coming or going from the UK. 

I also know of lots of people who want to solve the whole volcanic ash problem by blowing upwards through a really big straw. I have informed the authorities of my fine plan in many, many e-mails. But instead of rewarding this act of individual initiative and mutual aid, they simply fail to respond.