Oh, God.  It’s already started.  The 7th of May 2015 is over three months away, but it’s already started.

In an effort to stay informed about what’s occurring on this daft little ball of land, water and reality TV, I rely on a number of respectable news sources.  And then, when I’m feeling bored, I click on the most-visited English language “newspaper” website in the world, the MailOnline.

Before the page finishes loading, I set my neuroreceptor filter to “wry” to reduce the chance of being tricked into caring about its insultingly simplistic, hypocritical and inaccurate portrayal of modern life.  And normally the wry filter does the trick.  But I think it’s going to be different this year.  Because it’s already started.

“It”, in this context, is electioneering – a conversation that, in many ways, never stops.  The Right constantly bashes the Left with its jewel-tipped cane and the Left responds with anything it can grab hold of, be it a pint glass, crowbar or Little Red Book (in hardback of course).  The sensible souls in the middle alternate between dodging the swinging cudgels and using Right or Left as a human shield against the other.

It was ever thus and there’s nothing to gain from preventing different viewpoints across the political spectrum from being vented.  Provided that the right people, that is politicians and the public, are doing the venting.

Unless you live under a rock, you’ll know that the MailOnline and its parents (the Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday) lean to the Right.  There’s nothing wrong with that; there’s also nothing wrong with biased journalism.  Every news reporter has Limb Length Discrepancy of one form or another and witnesses events from a certain personal or paymaster-mandated stance.  That’s why the wry filter works most of the time.  It allows broadly intelligent folk to see beyond attention-grabbing headlines and over the top of lenses through which the writer views the facts.  It’s basic source analysis that kids are taught on day one of their GCSE History curriculum.

Problems arise when newspapers go a step further: when they stop reporting on the news and begin to make it up, crossing the line between informing readers of their take on an event and just filling eyes and brains with unadulterated prejudice.  News agencies often overstep this line, sometimes with little fallout.  But in an election year, it’s especially troubling when the tail (or the Mail) begins to wag the dog.

Take yesterday, when the MailOnline published a “news item” under the morosely uninspired headline, “Is that you in Plasticine, Mr Miliband? New Shaun the Sheep character bears uncanny resemblance to Red Ed”.  Reading on, the “story” concerned a trailer lasting 2 minutes, 27 seconds for the latest children’s film to trot out of the Aardman Animations stable.  The trailer features, for less than one hundredth of its duration, an unamused waiter who, journalist Sian Boyle claims, “bears an uncanny resemblance” to the Labour leader.  Ha ha!  He does a little, if you sort of squint and ignore the dramatic differences between their hairstyles, face shapes and skin colour.  Wicked!  You’re great, Sian!

 

Even if we were to accept Sian’s assertion that the clay creation looks like Miliband, this isn’t a news story.  It’s simply an excuse to remind the readership how odd a potential leader of our country looks and subliminally to bawl at them: IS THIS WHO YOU WANT TO REPRESENT YOU?  THIS WEIRDO?  IS IT?  YOU MAKE ME SICK, YOU COMMUNIST BASTARDS.

Of course, Miliband looks odd and is almost unrewardingly easy to laugh at, especially when undertaking herculean tasks such as eating food, ingesting fluid and, well, breathing.  But since when has looking odd been a bar to public office?

Look around Europe.  Who’s the best at securing the most beneficial outcome for their country?  Angela Merkel.  And that’s despite the fact she has the sort of build and features that would make you suspect that Germany’s been led by a helmut for 34 of the last 41 years.  Looking inwards, this country has a rich history of strange looking premiers.  So much so that Miliband probably wouldn’t even make it into the Top Ten of Ministerial Mingers.

So why does Sian care about his looks?  Is it because she’s as shallow as a camel’s piss puddle?  Or because she was put up to it by her overlords?  Or, as seems most likely, both?

A quick google suggests that Sian (who continues to spell her name with a circumflex, despite the casual disregard shown to such archaic niceties by email addresses, twitter handles and this blog) had the good fortune of avoiding the ugly stick which beat poor Ed (but spared his brother), unless she’s just better at troweling on the Clarins.  Either way, with or without any slap, she’ll never be accused of falling out of a Play-Doh pot.

But less charitable people could mistake her for having stumbled off the set of a production even less sophisticated than an animated sheep guiding his flock away from the Big City with hilarious consequences: TOWIE.  Shame on you, uncharitable people.  However, Sian would do well in the Land of the Vajazzle if we trust the veracity of the article she had published in the Independent last year, entitled “Cameron Diaz is wrong about pubic hair. The bush is not back”.  With the following opening (if you’ll excuse this clumsy term), it’s no wonder the MailOnline snapped her up to write about politics: “DON’T ELECTROCUTE MY CLIT!”, I screamed as I writhed on the table.  I wrenched off my goggles, panting, before the bemused beautician lowered the Intense Pulsed Light laser gun.  “Don’t worry, it will be fine”, she said, before duly zapping away at my crotch.”  Insightful stuff, I take it all back.  Until I get to this line: “It’s a cruel analogy, but the staunch defence of hairy fannies reminds me of very overweight over-eaters who say they’re “happy as they are”.”  Just wow.

And what would lead us to suspect that Sian was encouraged by her bosses to lampoon a man who may be uglier and less likeable than a flatulent Chinese Crested dog, but who has more intellect in his little toe than Sian has in three generations of her family?  Well, who can forget Geoffrey Levy’s charmingly tasteful article published on the MailOnline on 27 September 2013, headed “The man who hated Britain: Red Ed’s pledge to bring back socialism is a homage to his Marxist father.  So what did Miliband Snr really believe in?  The answer should disturb everyone who loves this country” and the somewhat unapologetic editorial that followed.  Or this hyperbolic headline to Matt Chorley’s piece published on 12 November last year: “Miliband is the least popular leader EVER: Devastating poll reveals just 13% think he is ready to be PM as Tories build 3-point lead“.  Circumstantial evidence, I agree.

A bit like the pubic hair Sian detests so much, I’m straying from the point.  The point is that organisations such as the MailOnline have a huge amount of power at their disposal and must wield it responsibly.  If they keep crossing the line between reporting and creating news, they can quickly manipulate swathes of the electorate into thinking about things that shouldn’t matter.

In any General Election, we should focus on one question: who’s the best person and party to lead our country?  Yet it’s a sad fact that on the 7th of May, many voters will shuffle along to their polling stations and vote according to familial or class-based influences, or simply because they’ve seen countless occasions where David Cameron photographs better than that funny looking one who likes cheese and crackers.  And that isn’t the sign of a healthy society.

For example, I consider myself reasonably informed on politics, but could I honestly tell you in any detail what Miliband stands for, other than the buzzwords routed into my ear canals by the mainstream media: NHS, mansion tax, public services?  Do I know how my life would be directly affected by a Labour-led government?  Do I know Miliband’s views on foreign policy?  Or his relationships with the international leaders and businesses on which we now depend?  No, not really.   But I do know that his black-suited bodyguards will twitch every time the man picks up a sandwich.  I rely on the newspapers to fill in the blanks for me but they rarely do.

So something’s clearly going wrong.  Over the past decade, there’s been no shortage of navel-gazing over in Westminster about why people are so disillusioned with their elected representatives.  “Ah,” they say, “it’s because of the Iraq War!  No, it’s tuition fees!  Expenses!  Launch an inquiry!  And another!  That’ll make the plebs happy!”

Well, yes, momentarily.  Until the inquiry takes several years, we move on to raging about something else and forget why we were so angry about the issue in the first place.  Then what do we do?  We comfort ourselves with the thought that it’s just stupid old British politics and go back to our box-set tales of cover-ups and political manoeuvrings somewhere more glamorous.  Oh, but the people in those programmes are so much more watchable.  And wasn’t she in Forest Gump?

But the constant clamour for inquiries misses the point because here’s the crux: British people aren’t really disillusioned by what politicians do.  They’re disillusioned by what they think politicians do.  The average person doesn’t get to hear the good things MPs do day-to-day, how hard they work, how much they’d earn in industry if they were less concerned with creating a better country for everyone to live in.

Instead, he or she reads lurid headlines and watches teary statements read outside family homes when one’s caught doing something he (and it’s usually a he) shouldn’t.  They get no sense of what these people are or what they’re about.  Instead, the public’s left with a budget version of Take Me Out for ugly people hosted by Huw Edwards.  Is it any surprise they no likey?

What’s the answer?  There must be a way of shedding some lighty on the real meat of politics.  It won’t start on the MailOnline, even if we want it to.  The reason it succeeds is that it couldn’t care less whether we like what we read.  All that matters is that the MailOnline’s lovers and haters click on it every day (for that reason, I’ve avoided hyperlinking any of the articles referred to above).

No, the revolution needs to come from the very top.  Somehow, the party leaders need to realise the nation hates all of them, just some a little less than others.  When that penny drops, these smart people should think collaboratively how to get better publicity for the political classes.  Start by giving credit where credit’s due, recognise successes, end the knee-jerk trash talk.  It shouldn’t take a war or commemoration service for people who supposedly want the same thing (i.e. the country to succeed) to stand shoulder to shoulder.

It’s radical, but it can only help.  Something has to change because , in the words of Elvis, “all this aggravation ain’t satisfactioning” anyone.  There needs to be a little less conversation, a little more action, please.

The revolt could begin right now by cutting out the expensive American-style posters attacking each other in a way that would embarrass a teenager and make politicians of yesteryear spin in their graves.  But it won’t happen.  The Conservatives have fired the starting pistol with a series of crudely photoshopped efforts to convince would-be UKIP voters they risk handing the keys to Number 10 over to Red Ed, Tartan Alec and Balaclava-ed Gerry.  Labour will inevitably respond, portraying Cameron as a member of the smug landed gentry, running around quaffing “sticky” in NHS waiting rooms while Gideon Osborne sits next to him absentmindedly tearing the heads off fox cubs.

If all this doesn’t stop, where are we headed?  In May, low voter turnout.  Before then, the Tories responding with a poster of Miliband’s weird head crowning out of a middle-aged woman as several doctors look worried, mouthing: “OLD LABOUR: OLD DANGER”?  And what then?  A Labour parry-riposte showing Sam Cam’s head stuck onto a porn star’s body while she fellates CEOs of various corporations and informs the viewer that “DAVID LETS BIG BUSINESS TAKE WHATEVER IT WANTS”?

Stop.  We’re just giving them ideas.