You can pinpoint the moment Labours fortunes changed. Blair gave up on things and Brown made himself comfortable. Rather than having the decency to call an instant General Election he- with a galling sense of entitlement befitting a depraved Roman emperor - dismissed any notion of that the will of the people counted for anything and after decades of lusting for it in romantic and epic proportions, embarked upon his vanity project.
Right there David Cameron had a touch of the vapours. The thought that Brown could click his fingers and call the people to vote was unnerving. If decency was alien to Brown surely he'd be compelled by strategic astuteness?
Well maybe. Brown might have been comically inept in many ways but its not really fair to call him dumb. Luckily we had George Osborne hard at work behind the scenes and with a serious of manoeuvres epitomising sure hands with a deftness of touch, a keen guile bordering prescient and above all near super human grace under pressure, Osbourne was able to infect Brown with a bad case of Infirm Of Purpose. The unelected PM lost the magic moment when Labour victory would of been a certainty.
This moment of recent history is comparable to many inspiring moments that fascinate military historians. When an outnumbered army on an unfamiliar terrain wins a seemingly impossible victory it tends to be noteworthy. And many of the big names today, had Brown been made of sterner stuff, might today only be known in Westminster circles and beyond that marginalised to foot note status.
After Brown went weak at the knees and totally bottled it , all the Conservatives had to do was let Brown be Brown and heap gaff upon gaff upon gaff culminating in the operatic climax that was an elderly lady having to endure him inviting himself round to her abode so he could apologise for referring to her as a 'bigot'.
With Brown forever exiled to the wilderness Labour could of started taking thing seriously right there. To some extent Brown was inflicted upon them and could be regarded as small print stipulation of the contract they had been made to sign by Blair.
But then they went for Ed. There was simply no excuse for this, and it is confounding yet somehow endearing that Ed thought he had the 'right stuff'. But even more confounding is that Labour somehow shared this delusion- particularly when his brother, standing right fXXking next to him, who they could have chose instead ,who MIGHT CONCEIVABLY ATTAINED A VICTORY FOR LABOUR was told that he was made of lesser leadership material than a man owned by the unions and ascetically deficient.
Conceivably there is a sequence of events and policy announcements Ed could have engineered that made possible a Labour victory. Instead he choose to opt for the being a total fXXking spanner model that Brown favoured and soon out gaffed his predecessor in a photo finish masterful 'Im going to put a big rock in Number Tens back garden if I win please vote for me'.
The once respected craft of predictive opinion and intention polls told us it would be a 'to close to call' result but really the minds of the British public chose long before election day; viscerally and subconsciously. Substance matters, of course it does. But voters are only human and when it comes down to it will prefer to vote for someone who seems human, given the chance.
Last election you put forward your B team and an open goal as captain. For the next election you have decided just to go with an open goal.
While its amusing you put forward a really shit version of Ben Kenobi who probably didn't have a mobile phone before he became leader I think you should stop this silliness now. I see how this new figure into the forefront of UK politics does have (in the minds of some) a vague Biblical appeal- the old man who waited in the wilderness who emerges as prophet to save the day. But in actuality you've put Worzel Gummage at the control's and if we spend money we earmarked for election campaigning on a global survey of average number of peas in average household fridge that will be a more productive use of money.
Do the people who voted for him actually like the ghost town that is Labourville these days? If they do, then Corby makes sense. Maybe comparing tumble weeds while from the deserted saloon that D;ream song plays again and again always slowing in tempo because you cant afford to upgrade your jukebox but somehow never stopping in a mocking codifier of irony and despair has an allure to some that's unfathomable to others. Maybe poverty of decisiveness is addictive. If that's the case , keep it up.