We were constantly told by politicians and commentators that we had decided to withhold an overall majority and that we had determined that there should be a hung parliament.Did we? Because I must have missed the meeting where we all agreed to do that. I naively thought that we all voted for the party that we wanted to win the election and the outcome came about because we lacked sufficient unanimity about which party that should be.
But the media knows best so it stands to reason that we also 'decided' that the Conservatives should do a deal with the Liberal Democrats. And that makes us the biggest bunch of matchmakers in the world and means we share responsibility for the most unlikely of arranged marriages.
The funny thing about arranged marriages is that they often work. Perhaps it's because the happy couple can't fret about whether they made the right choice... because they didn't make one. And maybe the same will prove true of Cameron and Clegg. Having been pushed together by a crafty electorate, perhaps they will learn to love one another and forge one of the most constructive relationships in political history.
I still wish I'd been at that meeting where we decided all of this though.
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Well, now we all know the outcome. And Brown can take that up that new career suggested at weekend
(Malcom Tucker's outbox, May 7th):
Dear Gordon... I sense it is time for us to step aside. The truth is, mate, our time has passed. The dusk is gloaming. The lights are going out all over Basildon South and Thurrock East.
If it is any consolation I think I too will be heading off into that great unknown. To my great good place. McKinsey's or Deutsche Bank. You can of course devote yourself to running the World Bank and the IMF and the chain of independent fair-trade specialist secondhand economic bookshops you have occasionally talked of. Set yourself up as the moral bulwark to Blair with his cult centre in the Middle East for swingers and worshippers at the altar of the tanning salon.
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