Sons of Loki

Well, it’s been another strange week, but like Sunny at the end of MGS4 it looks sort of like the sun is rising again, and … I still don’t know what I’m going to end up doing. And … well.

Anyway, election debate! I rather got more excited than I expected, staying up until 4:30am for the start. I even had some popcorn. It was a weird experience. Seeing the leaders all in the same room was weird. Actually, seeing them outside of press conferences and the Commons was weird.

It was hard to concentrate on the actual content of the debate when there’s a whole Twitter storm going on. I know it’s a bit naff to go on about social media, but it was a strangely social experience, to be plugged into the thoughts of thousands of other people watching the debate.

It’s more an opportunity to just get a sense of what these people are like. They’re all going to lie, and spin, but you can get a sense of what sort of person they are from how they act up there. Cameron spun out some Daily Mail-style anecdotes about “broken Britain” with an amusingly PC cast of women and blacks and druggies. Brown tried to point out policy successes and statistics, but sounded too much like he was on a script with some painful zingers shoehorned in.

And then Clegg. Clegg! From zero to possible hero, the clear winner of the debate with 43% on ITV. I liked him. He took no bullshit, and called out the other leaders, at one point asking exasperatedly: why do you say you’re for reform and change, and then vote against it?

I’ve always liked the Lib Dems, for the simple fact that I liked the underdog. Now I’m older and wiser, I still think they may well do a better job than the others. And they have policies I agree with. I’m not sure Clegg’s leader material, but he’s my favourite.

And the most exciting thing is that a lot of people around me feel the same way. It’s a biased sample of 20-something students, sure, but I’m sure there’s enough of us to sway the election. It’s damned exciting, the prospect of real change, of a historic upset. It happened with Rage Against The Machine, even though it seemed ridiculously impossible at the outset. Could we be in for the first Liberal Democrat government ever? Probably not. But I’ll be interested to see the polls.

(And I will kick myself if my proxy form’s got lost in the post and I miss my chance to take part in an a historic election.)