I have a friend, named Lucinda. She is 11,639 kilometres (7,232 miles) away from me. Fourteen years ago, we met in a place that is 4,925 km (3,060 miles) from where I now sit, and is 11,217 km (6,970 miles) from Lucinda’s current location. We met whilst both staying at the Eagle House, a guest house in Northern Thailand that serves as a base for trekking. Within a time so brief it now seems startling, we became friends, and are still friends to this day.

After a few days at the Eagle House, I made my way back to Britain. I was facing a deadline to grow up and become a chartered accountant. Life is funny like that, not that being a chartered accountant is the least bit funny. Lucinda later returned to Canada. As Lucinda was an early adopter of the joys of the internet, it was easy to keep in touch, and some years later I made the journey to visit her in British Columbia. Though only the second time we met in person, I had already grown accustomed to thinking of Lucinda as an old and dear friend. That was also the last time I saw Lucinda.

Time never relents. Lucinda has since married and become a mother, though time and distance have never stopped Lucinda featuring in my life. We exchange emails with lamentably infrequency, but on those few occasions when we do put fingers to keyboards, only the greatest of Victorian letter-writers ever sent correspondence of comparable length. In defiance of the trend that spells everything beginning with ‘e’, Lucinda does receive e-less mail from me once a year. In fact, I got the idea for a festive missive by shamelessly copying Lucinda’s, right down to the way she folded the paper. I must admit that the words I write each Christmas are not uniquely for her. They are shared with an audience almost as large as reads this website, not that the printers would consider my Christmas letter to be a bulk job. Neither of us uses the telephone often enough, but we know each other’s number. Her name also sits on the roll call of my Skype contacts, meaning Lucinda’s voice and image is a tantalizing instant away, if I press the right button and the winds of the internet blow favourably. Skype’s perpetual potential for immediacy is muted by hyper-polite restraint. The ease of throwing yourself into the midst of someone else’s life means that if everyone did it all the time, you would soon find yourself participating in multiple conference calls daily. Freud would have understood our admirable self-control. Our superegos have adapted to the information age. Yet they adapt too well – leading to the paradoxical result that Lucinda and I never Skype each other at all, and I would hardly dare to do so. I also share with Lucinda that uniquely modern second-generation, second-degree version of friendship that is only enabled by the so-called social network. Despite many reasons to do so, neither of us have deleted our Facebook accounts (yet). The phenomenon of Facebook friendship is motivated by intelligence gathering in a free market at least as much by the human need to interact. That is why they make it so easy – and end up making it superficial. But put aside the shenanigans and chagrin of modern commercialism. Whatever the format or gateway, however enabled or why, though we are far apart, Lucinda is my friend.

Are there mathematical and physical forces that help to explain this friendship from afar? Though spread over many miles and years, a friendship need not be based on proximity any more. Language flows at the speed of light; electrons fizz down wires. Though seemingly instantaneous, at 300,000 km/s, that leaves Lucinda’s voice no less than three hundredths of a second away from me, which is tolerable but less than truly instant. Add sundry milliseconds for intervening CPU’s, and the delay when talking might even be noticeable, if we speak too quickly.

It is possible to postulate other, hidden, numbers that prescribe modern friendship. Might it be that I can have a friend anywhere, but that there are only ever a fixed number of friendships in the world? That might mean my making a new friend in Prague causes somebody in Beijing to lose touch with their pal in Cancun. This would help explain the modern trend where we know people on the far side of the planet, but are ignorant of our neighbours. Maybe the mathematics is a little more subtle, and the sum total of friendship embraces quality as well as quantity. Suppose then that ten Facebook friends are worth one regular guest for dinner or a couple of drinking buddies. If that is so, an explosion of social networking might preface the collapse of deep and meaningful friendship, with everyone’s amity spread thin like marmite across a thick piece of toast. That might be to some people’s taste, but not to everyone’s.

Maybe the physics of friendship lies deeper still. Electrons and photons may be deployed to keep us in touch through the wonders of modern communications, but perhaps friendship involves a subtle quantum leap. Scientists believe that pairs of sub-atomic particles can become entangled, so that they remain connected no matter how far they are separated. Because of the connection, to look and learn about one entangled particle is to learn about the current state of the other, wherever it may be. Sub-atomic particles are more mysterious than an Alfred Hitchcock adaptation of Agatha Christie, but the entanglement guarantees that unraveling the secrets of one is to simultaneously resolve the state of its sibling. Einstein called this the “spukhafte Fernwirkung”, or spooky action at a distance. What if, on a humid Thai evening, there was a literal spark between Lucinda and me? Perchance an entangled electron took umbrage with the electrical resistance of skin, and was emboldened by the large volumes of Mekhong whisky drunk that night. The air itself, laden with moisture, was charged with the duty of aiding the electron’s journey. Said electron galvanized itself for a mighty jump, and so conducted itself between the two of us. The electron’s entangled brother was left behind, moribund in its host epidermis. If the spark did fly, then I would share an invisible bond with Lucinda, thinner than gossamer but stronger than steel, instantaneous and absolute, wherever we go.

Einstein derided the idea of the spooky connection; he thought all would be explained by factors that were as yet unknown. Whatever the truth, science has not yet determined the mechanics of friendship. Maybe the hidden variables will one day be calculated. The equations may involve dividing the billions of neurons in a brain with data from millions of users of the internet. For now, I am glad that the foundations of friendship remain ineffable, at least to my humble knowledge. Digging them up will not strengthen them. Belief in friendship’s solidity is what makes friendship so enduring, even when stretched half way round the world. These properties make friendship our most valuable resource.

Happy birthday to my friend, Lucinda.

Wait, hurry up, who are you? Belt off, hurry up, wait. There was a time when air travel was associated with glamour; a world of long-legged elegant women inviting you to converse with dashing uniformed gents as they flew you across the sunshine land that lies above the clouds. Today, air travel seems a lot more grounded. These days planes are as populous as pigeons, and just as unappealing. Vector-like, they spread the human infection from place to place. Not only do airlines provide the means, but thanks to the politically challenged economics of the industry, they also cover some of the cost of the journey. Most flights are effectively subsidized by the loss-making carrier. Even so, perhaps the carrier’s munificence does not go far enough. Too often, I feel like they should be paying me to fly. To be fair, often somebody is paying me to fly. The ironic need for interpersonal contact in an impersonal materialistic world dooms some of us to being regularly flung backwards and forwards across the globe. The rest sit in envy, still seemingly seeing travel through the joyous lens of a 60’s kaleidoscope. To have friends, family, colleagues and associates on another side of the planet would seem miraculous to most people living a few hundred years ago. Miracle though it is, every day spent away from home is a day when I am not a good neighbour or bastion of my local community.

The transitory nature of our modern lives is epitomized in the high church of transit: the airport. It is a place where all your needs are catered for, so long as you only need to shop, eat or use the loo. This place serves the human need to be somewhere else. But do they have to do such a good job in making you want to escape the airport’s confines as rapidly as possible, even though you have no control over the time taken for the ‘minor repairs’ needed by your plane? This church’s eternally refreshing congregation most commonly pursues the worship of the sun, or the worship of the dollar. The airport offers nothing for the soul that the passenger has not brought with them. Most of all, the airport is the place where human relations are most minimalist and utilitarian in nature. There are few friends to be made in this congregation. It is an intersection, and the greatest recognition you can give a fellow traveller is to avoid bumping into them as your paths criss-cross, or to assume your proper place in line instead of cutting ahead. Needless to say, these mediocre hopes are too often dashed by the inevitable dregs of abundant humanity. Even when arriving at your destination, the airport is typically a lonely place. Contrary to the schmaltz found in some movies, few of us are greeted by a happy smiling face and a hug as we make our exit. Being met by a friend would always be the premium class way to end a journey. A man holding up a sign with your name written on it is the business class finale. For most of us, the reward on arrival is to look for those signs that point towards the ill-understood public transport options, and to try to determine the cheapest way into town.

When flying, the principal mode of transport is not flying. It is queuing, so long as you measure the journey in terms of time, not distance. Airports love nothing better than to have everyone queue, in order to maximize the efficiency of their service – which they measure by cost, not quality. No better example comes to mind than the one I went through today, mid-way through writing this post. Arriving at Heathrow Terminal 1 for a connecting flight at Terminal 3, I was obliged to join the back of yet another enormous queue to scan passengers (though I find it hard to believe that somewhere in the airspace between Portugal and Britain I became significantly more dangerous). As I joined the queue, three ladies, seemingly employed to manage the queue, loudly discussed the need to open another one of the scanning machines. Hmmm. They pay people to debate whether expensive machines should be left idle. What an excellent way to anger both shareholders and customers alike.

Saying that, the misery of air travel is not caused solely by bad management. You do not need to be much of a student of the airline business to realize many carriers have gone bankrupt over the years. The only people oblivious to this are striking airline employees, convinced that a broken business model is best fixed by taking a hammer to the few pieces that seemed intact. Losses cannot be turned into profits through the magic of giving staff better pay and conditions. I would be very happy for staff to have better pay and conditions, if I ever felt better treated than BSE-infected cattle, or if a basic level hospitality did not require a seat that costs four times the economy price. The worst example of comically atrocious service I endured came on a flight where the cabin crew decided customers would best enjoy their meal if its remains were left to visibly rot in front of passengers for several hours longer than necessary. With just minutes left of the flight, the cabin crew started to haphazardly collect the offending waste. They did this in such a flurry and confusion that for no particularly obvious reason, mine was left to last. The pilot, doing his job at normal, had long since instructed passengers to belt up and put their seatbacks and trays in the upright position. Fair enough, if I could. But when one of the dim-witted stewardesses reinforced the message, telling me pointedly about my failure to comply with the pilot’s instructions, I was left with no alternative but to point out her rather remarkable failure to do her job as a waitress of the skies. Perhaps the airlines should take a tip from the more static restaurant business, and pay their staff minimum wages whilst encouraging customers to pay tips to make up the shortfall. Doubtless the silly stewardess is amongst the thousands who voted to go on strike. Twenty years of ash clouds loom darkly over British Airway’s future. What joy for their rivals if BA staff can push their employer over the brink of destruction, lessening the competition they face. After all, Britain is one country that is both so highly indebted and so laissez faire in economic culture that a state bail-out cannot be assumed. If the death of BA means an improved probability of flying on an airline that neither needs nor wants to employ bolshy cabin staff, I too would celebrate their demise.

With all the queuing that takes place in the church of transit, human nature dictates that some people tend to over-queue. Training can sometimes be too successful. If your seat is allocated, then why rush to be first in line to be first to board your passenger pigeon? For the longest time I considered an eagerness to board quickly as the product of a mental aberration. Whatever time a person boards, the plane takes off and lands at the same time for all. More recently I have realized the foolishness of my thinking. I was thinking I was such a clever chap, because I travel light and only carry cabin baggage (which saves me from the extraordinary tedium of watching innumerable cases circling the luggage merry-go-round, only to eventually conclude that mine is not amongst them). Yes, I like to think I am clever by travelling light. But when I get to my seat, time and again there is no overhead luggage space remotely nearby. So my precious laptop gets whisked away, placed near someone who might be capable of lying when asked ‘did you pack this bag yourself?’ The surfeit of luggage of all types rather makes me wonder just how much stuff is needless carried around the world. People, when it comes time to travel, please learn to buy smaller tubes of toothpaste.

In the church of transit, nobody knows who you are, but they fear what you might do. This places a lot of emphasis on security – the check for the raw materials of trouble-making. Ask what is in the bags. Scan the bags. Look in the bags. Shoes off. Belt off. Anything in your pockets? A beep and please stand to one side so we can check your person. What is this? A spectacles case you say. And this? A laser pointer. Please open it up so we can see what is inside. You do not know how to open it up? Okay, we had better break the thing by trying to open it up. For all its annoyances, it is hard to argue with the reasons for a security check. What is less obvious is the need for the repeat check. Or for the occasional repeat of the repeat check. Am I alone in thinking that multiple luggage checks are a reason to doubt security rather than be reassured by it? Much the same can be said about verifying the passenger’s identity and that they have a valid ticket. On one occasion at Heathrow Airport, an airport so popular that you would hope their was ample opportunity to learn how to be efficient, I was asked to show my passport and boarding pass three times within the space of ten minutes. On the third occasion, I was sat in the short-term concentration camp now deployed at so many airports to hold the waiting-to-board as opposed to those merely waiting-to-waiting-to-board. As the camp commandants had supposedly limited access to those with the requisite travel documentation, it was galling to then find two people in official uniform, wandering around the passenger pen, asking for exactly the same documents. The two of them, a man and a lady, meandered. They followed no pattern that I could discern, and were oblivious to whom had checked whom already. After a short while, the inevitable happened, and the male half of this wandering pair of passport examiners shambled up to a passenger who had been reviewed by the female half only one minute earlier. The passenger, a polite and elderly fellow, explained he had had his passport checked already, to which the response was a courteous apology. And there you have it: the incompetence and inefficacy of security. Should we expect that, having craftily circumvented not one but two checks already, a hardened criminal, confronted with this last ditch tripwire that might catch him out, will lack the ingenuity to simply say: “don’t look at my passport, the woman’s already done me”?

Flying aboard the passenger pigeon is as close as many of us come to paying for a taste of hell. It is an investment in hope; that the misery of the present moment can lead to the increased happiness of the future. The similarities between the airplane cabin and hell are many in number. To begin with, we tend to imagine hell as a place that is either too hot or too cold. Airplanes are invariably too cold or too hot, and certainly not kept at a temperature with any association to origin or destination. So no choice of travel wear will ever be right for flying. We also imagine hell to be crammed full of forlorn souls. How often do you spend time in a place more crammed than the typical economy cabin? The clincher for me comes from philosophy. Sartre wrote that ‘hell is others’. He may have been thinking of a long haul flight stocked with babies that cry all night, or a low budget excursion dominated by terrifying, braying mobs of drunken merrymakers.

When I got to my seat in the final of the three flights I took today, I feared the worst. The cabin looked virtually empty, but I had still been allocated a window seat next to a stranger. As someone prepared to obey the rules, I do not mind sitting in my seat. What I mind is that everybody else gets to lie down in a row of four seats and luxuriate in an unusual level of comfort, all because the fellow sat next to me is too slow to move when we are allowed to unbuckle belts. And slow he was. The fellow, a South African named Steve, instead engaged me in a tremendous and unexpectedly diverse conversation that ranged from the construction industry to South African economics to how Steve uses the internet to lobby for improved fire safety. Fascinating stuff. The blues have melted way as I traverse a starlit sky; my passenger pigeon is nearing home. Perhaps I will ask one of those long-legged elegant women of Qatar Airways for another drink, and flirt a little when I do.

In celebration of the birth of a new style of British politics, and the overdue education of the British voter about how their constitution really works.

I.

On election day, the voters made their decisions.
Their pronouncement, many interpreted.
Some said people agreed on Tory, or progressive, or none!
But the truth was rather more complicated.
Not one choice was made, but very very many,
Their multiplicity left each other’s frustrated.

Cameron announced he could work with Clegg,
And Clegg was as keen to reciprocate.
For the talks they sent in two teams of four,
Both knew a deal tough to negotiate.
Not just each other they’d need to appease.
Party members and voters they’d have to placate.

Brown sat still in Downing Street,
Prime minister uninterrupted, as per constitution.
When one resigns he recommends his replacement,
No allowance made for any interregnum.
With none in majority and no clear successor,
Brown should continue ‘til the dealing was done.

As Tories asked LibDems to put them in charge,
Labour dared to hope they’d be the ones to remain.
Secret parallel conversations commenced,
With a view to keeping Labour in power again.
Only when all the hands had been on the table,
Would we know who had best played the game.

A noisy thousand marched upon London,
Saying this was the time for a fair voting system,
Or asking to retake Parliament (from who, we know not).
Let’s just say their views weren’t entirely consistent.
It was to Clegg that they made their demands,
Who was polite as ever, and promised he’d listen.

Newscaster Kay Burley moaned at great length
As the protestors walked by her outdoor broadcast.
From the throng Billy Bragg granted impromptu interview,
But hostile in general was the crowd that amassed.
They shouted “Sack Kay Burley, and down with Murdoch!”
“Go home and watch Sky News”, scolded Burley, at the last.

Across television, radio and internet,
Countless opinions were being said.
Some didn’t vote for such-and-such party,
Some didn’t vote for such-and-such government head.
Pretty much all of them were perfectly right,
This system’s just one vote per one MP, instead.

II.

The public faced instability and pacts unwanted,
They fretted over jobs and the public purse.
Would a new government collapse like a house of cards?
Or would poor losers return to office like a curse?
Would the people be served a steady diet of cuts?
Or drowning in debt, would they be further immersed?

A price had to be paid for Labour’s defeat.
One intractable man, the obstacle to coalition.
He’d been difficult with the LibDems before,
And was unpopular with most of the nation.
For Labour to stay, Brown had to leave,
Whether pushed, or going by his own volition.

So Brown said he’d go in four months or so,
Enough time to select his replacement.
A dignified election for Labour leader,
Would compensate Brown’s weighty displacement.
The press mused about Labour’s tactical genius,
But all still depended on the LibDem’s consent.

Labour’s spin doctors were sent out to spin,
Though nobody knows what Campbell’s job’s supposed to be,
It seems you no longer need a proper career,
To be invited to spout off on national TV.
Bolton got riled at being told what he thought,
So he told Campbell off, in a style most unseemly.

Salmond said he’d work with the Westminster parties
As he calls them with such obnoxious conceit.
But he started to consume his humble pie
When he thought his exclusion was likely complete.
There’d be no handsome payout for Scotland
If the coalition had no need for SNP seats.

Who’d dish up the biggest plate of electoral reform?
Hague said the last offer was an AV referendum.
Labour trumped that by offering AV straight away,
Plus a PR plebiscite, as an addendum.
But LibDems worried Labour’s government might not last
Long enough to realize the proportionate intention.

LibDem and Labour made little progress.
Some thought it a ruse to sharpen Tory appetites,
To prompt more compromise from the Tories,
But that Clegg always had Cameron firmly in his sights.
Tories and LibDems were making real progress.
In the concluson, Labour gave up, without a fight.

III.

Brown left office with great dignity.
Not a squatter at all, no matter the report.
Britain’s constitution requires a prime minister,
He left when the contest was no longer sport.
To Buckingham Palace he left with alacrity,
His wife and his children were his escort.

Brown’s recommendation to the Queen was given,
David Cameron would be his successor.
Soon after Cam boarded his silver jaguar,
Taking him to become the big job’s possessor.
With the Queen, Cam’s photo was also taken,
The Queen now become Cam’s political confessor.

Cam returned and he spoke plainly to the press
Standing outside the famous door of number ten.
Nobody knew who would be in Cam’s cabinet,
But by then coalition seemed to be most certain.
Cam looked back and thanked Brown’s long service,
Then looked forward, to good times’ return.

Gordon Brown said his fond goodbyes,
And (rightly) blamed himself for his failing.
To a job in charity he hoped to go,
Though knowing him, it won’t be plain sailing.
He proclaimed himself Labour through and so through,
But it’s his inflexibility that was often cause of his ailing.

The news came out in fits and in spurts,
Over who would sit round the big table.
A double-headed leader would preside over affairs,
Clegg answering when Cam was not able.
Two men of same age with mutual respect.
Born of a familiar breed and similar stable.

Osbourne Chancellor and Cable in Business,
May the unexpected Home Secretary,
Huhne’s job the climate, Hague Foreign Office,
Ken Clarke to deliver justice exemplary,
And whenever there’s cuts that need to be made,
LibDems and Tories as equal accessories.

Cam and Clegg showed their rapport
Hosting springtime in number ten’s grounds.
Theirs was the flavour of this new era,
By blending together, a new recipe they had found.
This the first taste; five years of ham and eggs,
With no Brown sauce or pork for Salmond.

In memory of Britain’s anachronistic electoral system, which hopefully died on May 6, the evening of the 2010 General Election.

I.

He did not wear his azure tie,
For blue is calm but sad,
And fired up was his campaign
Having fought with all he had.
Thirty-six hours on the road,
Killed the battlebus clutch pad.

Then there was his rival,
looking unhappy and grey,
A great weight upon his shoulders,
From saving the world, or just the day.
His wife always at his side,
Was he proving he’s not gay?

And there was the other rival,
The king of TV debate.
Cleggstacy had wowed the nation,
Though discovered rather late.
Would it deliver a big breakthrough,
Or leave the LibDems still third rate?

The Sunderland kids had practiced
Passing the ballot box.
The Returning Officer kept both eyes
Glued to his stopclocks.
But the record survived unscathed.
Too many voters used their vox.

But many others were denied,
In the first tragedy of the night.
They waited in the queues,
But in the end lost their right.
Isn’t this the freedom we speak of,
When we send soldiers out to fight?

The night began with an exit,
Instead of an entrance.
Of the prospect of majority,
Polls said none had the chance.
Though when asked about partnering up,
The parties looked at each other askance.

As the results started to come in,
The swingometer got broken.
The swings could not explain,
How the populous had spoken.
Generalizations were swept aside
Analysis found superficial and token.

II.

As the results started to come in
Cameron watched them down the pub.
Whilst Brown took a little nap,
The Tories, his fellow Scots did snub.
Clegg went down to say sorry,
To those excluded from the voter’s club.

Harman and others started to mention
The prospect of legal action.
Apart from their lack of real power,
Electoral Commission promised reaction.
But talk of court fights all faded
As deal-making became the attraction.

Cleggmania just evaporated.
Tories claimed the voters decided.
Labour said “they’ve not picked a winner!”
“These polls say that we’ve tied it!”
The only thing they could agree about
Was the people were all divided.

In the courting of the LibDems,
They argued about who got the first dance.
Labour claimed home-field advantage and the
Constitution promises them first advance.
But Clegg reasoned Tory seats and votes
Needed the smaller enhance.

Smith finally paid for those porno films.
Ulster’s Robinson was disowned.
The Welsh tired of Opik’s cheek.
Clarke reaped what he had sown.
Rantzen barely registered.
But Balls held on to his own.

At the winning of Brown’s seat,
He gave a valedictory.
When Cameron made his speech,
To the Libs he was unconciliatory.
Clegg said how many more votes
Only gave a pyrrhic victory.

Griffin’s fascists made no in-roads.
Plaid and Scots Nats were unspectacular.
UKIP’s performance was stubbornly earthbound,
After Farage fell out the sky the morn before.
But parachuting Lucas into Brighton
Gave the Greens their very first MP score.

III.

Day broke and people saw in new light.
Labour decided they loved PR,
And the progressive left enjoyed
Their best election ever.
Most of all, their own result
Had beat expectations by far.

The Lib Dems were in a gloomy mood.
No political dawn and no breakthrough.
There were big wins and big losses too,
Yet gold looked pale compared to blue.
In the final reckoning they realized
Deal-making might still deliver something new.

The Tories were being tight-lipped
But clearly were thinking very hard.
Not enough seats for a majority?
Even so, No.10 need not be barred.
Found enough in common with the LibDems
To hold them in surprising regard.

Brown looked a rejuvenated man,
Thanked Mandelson for all that he’d done.
Then Mandelson hinted to the press
What he’d meant by ‘stable government’ all along.
It just meant Labour somehow in power,
Even if that requires Brown be gone.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves
And now New Labour is dead.
Some wield the knife themselves,
Some just say the word.
Mandelson did it to benefit Labour,
At the price of making it absurd.

And perhaps short of a dance partner,
Brown should grasp when to bow out.
Even the greatest fighter should know
When it’s time for his last bout.
The dance music keeps playing on,
And everyone turns about.

Move on. Everyone makes a mistake. Nobody is perfect. There are three phrases you will not hear Peter Mandelson, Harriet Harman, or least of all Gordon Brown utter when talking about their rivals. “It’s the same old Conservative Party” became Brown’s mantra for the third of the three leader’s debates. Well maybe so, but perhaps the penitent sinner, as Brown describes himself, should be more forgiving of others, if he wants forgiveness for himself. David Cameron does not look like he is leading the same old Conservative Party and he was not a member of the government that did the things that Brown rails against. Political parties, like people, have the capacity to change, as was ably demonstrated by New Labour’s total rejection of what remained of its pseudo-socialism, replaced with a snappy line in business-friendly social democracy. I do not know if the Conservative Party has changed. We can only ever know by taking a risk and letting them into power. We would never have known if Labour had changed if they were not elected to government, but they were, and they had. Change need not always be a good thing. Lest we forget, the transformation to New Labour emboldened Brown to do things that Old Labour would never have contemplated – loosening the regulation of banks being a very good example. If you have a vestigial memory that Labour was the party that could be relied upon to be tough on reckless businesses, you might find it in conflict with more recent evidence that their government did quite the contrary.

Move on. But to where? Do many people seriously want Brown to remain as Prime minister now? The man has been subject to countless attempts to dethrone him by his own Labour Party, some of whom seem to utterly despise him. Brown’s continued survival relied on blackmail and bullying, and the startling absence of a decent alternative. If his own party are so unsure of his competence to lead, it is too much to expect the people at large to be more optimistic about keeping Brown in office. Indeed, that seems to explain the Labour Party’s main campaign message – ‘we are terrible but the alternatives are even worse’. If the polls are to be believed, Labour’s attempts to steal the popularity of the Lib Dems by positioning them as progressive but unelectable have backfired. Rather a lot of people would like to see the Lib Dems stop both the Tories and Labour from forming a majority government. Clegg’s successful shtick is that the big two are both as bad as each other. Again, if the polls are right, Clegg is making the shtick stick, and whenever Brown bashes Cameron about the Tory governments of ancient history, he inadvertently bolsters Clegg’s argument.

Move on. The problem Labour faces is that it has not moved on. Brown was so long the Primeminister-in-waiting, but continues to behave like a man both unprepared and ill-suited to the job. Brown did not move on, he just moved up. Nor has his top team moved on. Take a look at who gets rolled out when Brown gets himself into trouble. Peter Mandelson, the exemplar of Tony’s Cronies, is a man who left government not once, but twice in disgrace. Despite the antipathy between him and Brown, Mandelson had to be brought back – and given a peerage – in order to shore up a front bench thinned because of the endless in-fighting. The mind jumps up and down like a pogo stick trying to reconcile those facts with the idea that Labour wants to clean up government or is passionate about reforming the House of Lords. No.2 apologist in the Labour hierarchy of woe is Harriet Harman, a woman who spent most of the time in junior jobs or excluded from government because her colleagues thought she was… well, crap. It would seem that senior Labour MPs regard Harman as a moron, and voters have seen very little evidence to the contrary. Nevertheless, time served has seen Harman elevated to the lofty heights of deputy-head-of-the-country, except that we know Mandelson is the real deputy and that Brown never lets go of the leash anyway. The ‘fresher’ faces in the front bench are Darling and Johnson, both exceptionally competent and balanced compared to their colleagues, but who could never be expected to set pulses racing and hearts aflutter. After them, you have the brothers Miliband and the husband and wife team of Cooper and Balls. The British public are rightly suspicious of the idea of a meritocracy which so conveniently keeps things in the family. But the most bizarre signal that Labour is stuck in a rut came from two improbably cheerleaders resurrected for the tedious ‘Brown won’ chorus line that immediately follows the Leaders Debate: Alastair Campbell and Oona King. Spin from the king of dodgy dossiers and the woman who got beat by George Galloway – is Labour really so short of talent that this is the best they can muster? Is the reason why Gordon Brown had to turn to the GOATS – the government of all the talents – because of the dearth of talent developed by own his fractious party?

Move on. That is what we were told by Mandelson and Harman after Brown’s gaffe on the streets of Rochdale. Brown said sorry, was sorry, felt sorry, so move on. But I would like to linger on this topic a while longer, just like they would like to linger in government a while longer. A 65-year-old grandmother and life-long Labour supporter asks Brown some impromptu questions and Brown snidely calls her a ‘bigot’ behind her back. Who does Gillian Duffy thinks she is? The trouble with Gillian Duffy is that she knows exactly who she is. The trouble with Gordon Brown is that he does not. Duffy is a working class woman from the North of England. She is exactly the kind of person who Brown sees himself working for, exactly the kind of voter that Brown depends on to win elections, and exactly the kind of human being that Brown is completely unable to relate to on a personal level. Brown thrives in the company of academics, politicos and sycophants. With everyone else he struggles. Coming from the North of England myself, I found the most telling feature of the exchange between Duffy and Brown was Brown’s naivety about how working class Northerners converse. These people should be the heart and soul of the Labour Party, but Brown has spent so little time in their company, that he simply cannot talk to them like ordinary people.

Move on. Working class Northerners are always moving on – to the next topic they want to talk about. So furiously do they move on, they have no time to let anyone else finish their sentence. The end result is that they talk over each other, time and again. This may seem strange to anyone unfamiliar with the practice, but it is possible to do it, hear what the other person is saying and keep the conversation going. You need to wait long enough into a sentence to get the gist of how it will conclude, then you leap in and start responding to your interlocutor. It is not a sign of rudeness so much as a sign of engagement – why not talk and listen at the same time, and get double the conversation as a result? But Brown, worried about how he would sound on his lapel microphone, had no idea of how to engage with a Gillian Duffy unwilling to wait for his answers. Frustrated at his own interpersonal weaknesses, unable to relate to the people that he supposedly cares for, Brown ended up talking to himself, whilst Duffy talked to herself. Duffy talked about how she cared for disabled children, and then went on to the topics that worry her: tax on her pension, the debt crisis, benefits for people who do not deserve them, the scale of immigration from Eastern Europe, and tuition fees for students. In his parallel conversation, Brown made some insincere comments about the importance of working with children, gave ineffective advice about Duffy’s tax, listed his plans for how he will reduce debt, said immigration balances out and that tuition fees were needed.

Move on. Brown did, and you could sense he was glad to. He was glad to get away from a woman who has her concerns and, quite reasonably, took her short chance to convey them to the Prime minister. Brown leaped to the safety of his limo, surrounded by his apparatchiks, but in his hurry forgot about the microphone still attached to his lapel. We should be grateful he did forget, because we learned, or rather confirmed, something about Gordon Brown. Behind all the bluster about Brown’s caring nature, the incident reinforced what a two-faced wretch Gordon Brown really is.

“Should never have put me with that woman”

Only a few days earlier, a change was announced in Labour’s campaign tactics. The decision was that Brown would spend more time with real people, and not just surrounded by grinning Labour party goons. I cannot have been the only person to laugh at this change of tack – it seemed so likely to backfire. That the decision was made shows that Brown is badly out of touch. It did backfire spectacularly, because Brown is out of touch. One wonders if Brown has ever been in touch. What we saw and heard in Rochdale was what happens when Brown spends time with real people. Brown’s reaction was genuine, a description that you would not normally give of his public performances. Brown was unhappy to be put alongside someone who made him look bad. You know the type that makes Brown look bad: lifelong working class Labour party voters who respectfully ask questions about the challenges the country faces. Do not put Brown alongside them, because they make Brown look bad. A leader might embrace tough questions as an opportunity to shine. Not Brown, because his answers are so poor. A leader might embrace reaching out to the people whose support he needs to stay in power. Not Brown, because those voters do not understand just how brilliant Brown is, and cannot be educated or told why. They just have to have faith that Brown is best, even if he cannot talk to them in a language they understand. And if they express doubts and fears, then they should not be listened to, because their doubts and fears are plainly wrong.

“She’s just a sort of bigoted woman that said she used to be Labour, I mean, it’s just ridiculous”

Here is one definition of the word ‘bigot’:

A person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices.

It seems clear to me who the real bigot is. It is not the ordinary woman just asking some questions. The bigot is the self-absorbed pretend leader, who secured his position as a hand-me-down by way of an internal coup. The bigot is the leader who can only maintain his leadership by intimidating his own party, and by generating fear and loathing of the alternatives offered to ordinary voters. The bigot is the man unable to explain himself but no less convinced of his utter rightness on every point. The bigot is the person who pretends to serve and care for people, to appreciate their efforts and concerns, and then disparages those same people when he thinks himself out of earshot. And the bigot is someone who simply cannot hear what people are telling him, who only hears a rhetoric twisted by his askew view of the world around them. Look at the excuses given by Brown for the contempt he showed for this one ordinary working class Labour voter:

“It was a question about immigration that really I think was annoying”

“I misunderstood what she said”

“I thought she was talking about expelling all university students for this country who were foreigners.”

If you listen again to the encounter, it is hard to correlate these excuses with what actually took place. The only possible way to reconcile Brown’s actions with Brown’s explanations is to assume he had a rush of blood to the head, got angry (but succeeded in hiding his temper) and simply stopped listening to what Gillian Duffy was saying. Take a look again and try to imagine yourself both actually listening to Gillian Duffy and then misinterpreting what she said in the way Brown says he did.

I can only imagine myself acting like Brown if I assume I hear just one word in three spoken by Gillian Duffy – and that I then fill the blanks by drawing on a volatile reserve of anger, bile and disappointment that must lie in the pit of Brown’s stomach. That bitter brew clogged Brown’s ears and then coated the back of his throat, causing him to spit out his disgust with an ordinary working class Labour voter, who simply did not behave the way Brown wants and expects her to behave. Brown is a bigot, and he expects the working class to behave like some deferential pastiche from a 1920′s newsreel. In the repulsive caricature of working class people that plays in Brown’s mind, they all know their place and express their gratitude for whatever the Labour Party condescends to give them, whilst never questioning what they take away. This campaign has underlined the underbelly of New Labour – that it must take working class voters for granted whilst it chases after the middle class. The political calculation is that the working classes have nowhere else to turn, so can be relied upon at the ballot box. But calculation does not breed affection. This election campaign has ably illustrated the lack of affection Brown inspires in a people for whom he shows no affection in turn.

Gordon Brown does not have a charming bone in his body. More importantly, he is weak at communication, as was ably demonstrated by his moribund performances in the Leaders Debates. The general public concluded that he finished a resounding third best amongst the three leaders, no matter how many times Mandelson, Campbell and King insisted otherwise. One presumes the only people who thought he won a debate where the people as equally bigoted as Brown – those who had decided Brown was the winner even before he spoke his first word. Communication is not incidental to the job of a leader. Communication is a core skill of an effective leader. Brown may be an effective decision-maker, but all those years in Blair’s shadow protected him from a thorough examination of his frailties as a communicator. In this last few weeks we have seen how even Brown’s insincere body language undoes him as a leader. This is most obviously seen in that pained smile he uses to hide his fear on those occasions when he is actually supposed to be projecting remorse or gravitas. The debates and Duffy have given the British public even more evidence of Brown’s failings, when no more evidence was really needed. Brown is a very excellent technocrat, able to manage information and reach conclusions, but he lacks the common touch, does not inspire confidence, and he cannot explain himself. He needs to return to a backroom job, because the harsh light of politics shines too deeply into the dark shadows of his soul.

Move on. Everyone makes a mistake. Nobody is perfect. Brown’s mistake was to become a politician in the first place. He might have made a top-notch civil servant or administrator. Rather ironically, he would have excelled in banking. But all Brown’s great ability is put to poor use when compensating for his obvious flaws as a politician.

Gordon Brown, it is time to move on.