‘It’s not good enough just to appear on your doorstep at election times,’ says the leaflet from Chuka Umunna, my local Labour candidate. Which is presumably why he hasn’t.
This is not to imply that I have never seen him. I once caught a glimpse of him galloping past my house. I think he was speed canvassing. One of his helpers knocked on my door for a chat, though, which was nice. She was one of those cheerful, ruddy-cheeked, capable-looking community organiser types. The kind who knows how to administer basic first aid to a severed artery. She wouldn’t necessarily save your life but she’d make you a bit more comfortable while you were dying.
She wasn’t at all fazed by my ranting on about how civilisation as we know it was falling apart. She just smiled and thrust a leaflet at me inviting me to an ‘Ed Miliband climate change event’ at Streatham community centre. What this was I have no idea because I didn’t go. Possibly Mr Miliband single-handedly cooled the area down with the power of his aura.
Mr Umunna’s election leaflet is just as mystical. ‘Chuka is a 21st-century candidate,’ it proclaims, which makes him sound like the bionic man, a sort of Lee Majors with nuclear-powered limbs come to save the people of south London. Married couple Alice and Jonny, smiling in a park, are quoted as saying: ‘We really like Chuka’s positive approach: he’s more likely to talk up our area and promote the talents of its people, rather than do down the place.’
Hmm. Either Alice and Jonny were beamed down from another planet where they think ‘do down the place’ is a decent stab at earth-speak or they have had this written for them by an election leaflet-producing centralised computer.
‘I am sure Chuka will be the best possible candidate for our locality,’ says the retiring MP Keith Hill, improbably. No one says the word ‘locality’ except at election time. I’ll be glad when all this madness is over and we can go back to saying ‘local area’ and ‘round here’.
A leaflet from Rahoul Bhansali, the Conservative candidate, does little to cheer me up. ‘Labour have run Streatham Pool into the ground,’ it says, annoyingly making my brain work overtime to conjure an image of a hole in the ground being driven into the ground. ‘Labour-run Lambeth are now directing our swimmers to pools miles away in Wandsworth and even Merton!’ Dear god, the filthy, evil swines, do they have no shame, sending swimmers to pools not in their locality? Seriously, I’m willing to accept it’s unfortunate that a swimming pool has closed but I’m not sure I would call it a ‘Leisure Centre Disaster!’ In my book that’s when the leisure centre falls down, or someone drops a vial of anthrax in the pool during the 5 p.m. Aqua Yoga for Beginners class.
But election time means overreaction. It’s the law. Like overindulging on sprouts at Christmas, politicians are primevally driven to gorge on self-righteous indignation in the run-up to polling day. They also can’t help overdoing the alliteration. ‘Back Bhansali to boot out Brown,’ says the Tory, before telling us that he is ‘Caring and campaigning for our community’. Not being boring and banging on about the blindingly obvious.
And so to the Lib Dem candidate Chris Nicholson, who declares that he will, as predictably as night follows day, be ‘putting local people first’. I’d be more impressed if he said he was ‘putting my wife and kiddies first, then my old mum, then the party whips, then the local association chiefs, then supportive businesses, sponsors and donors, then I really must get that filling redone that’s been giving me toothache …oh, and then local people’.
Chris has been ‘getting things done for years’, apparently. ‘What will Chris do for you as our MP?’ Well, when he’s finished untangling his pronouns he’ll be helping ‘ordinary families’, of course. To be fair to him, at least he doesn’t include a picture of one of these ordinary families, which is a blessed relief. To look at any election poster or manifesto cover you would think that all Britons are grouped neatly into units of four, two big people, two small.
No other type of person but a hardworking mum or dad exists at election time, with the limited exception of the elderly, who are allowed to exist for short periods, but only with lots of grandchildren around them.
Hardworking families. Repeat to fade. Never mind the millions of us sat at home eating shepherd’s pie for one, talking to ourselves and watching Pineapple Dance Studios on Sky. We are merely a figment of our own overactive imaginations. As you can see, I’m struggling to get into the spirit of things.
Melissa Kite is deputy political editor of the Sunday Telegraph.
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