The Best Misdirection Joke Ever Told

Here at You Didn't Win, we've been pretty consistent in directing our anger at the current government's decisions against the man who, let's face it, makes them: David Cameron. Occasionally, we also include Dave's loyal sidekick, Chancellor of the Exchequer George 'Gideon' Osborne, in our attacks: the coalition is stealing our money and giving it to bankers and George is, after all, the bagman in this little caper. But, by and large, we've kept aloof from what's currently the most popular bloodsport in current political commentary: beating Nick Clegg repeatedly like a human pinata covered in Lib Dem rosettes.

Others, however, have wholeheartedly joined in the Clegg Abuse. We think this is a mistake; below, Neil Ackerman, one of our new Guest Bloggers explains why. - AJ

When David Cameron responded to the fact he had named Nick Clegg as his favourite joke, I don't think even he realised how right he was. Most of the anger aimed in demonstrations over the past year seems to have been aimed at the best joke Cameron ever told. While yes, the feeling of betrayal from Lib Dem supporters may be justified; and yes, promises have been solidly broken; and yes, Nick Clegg has made some monumental judgement errors, where is the criticism of Cameron?

There are people asking questions of him, and since Nick Clegg pulled on his big boy pants and disagreed with him over AV I think this will continue and grow. However, it does seem that most of the questions that Cameron and co. should be answering are being directed towards the Lib Dems and Clegg. Cameron should not be under-estimated; he is exceedingly clever. He has made a man who seemed weak and naïve, but kinda cute, into a man who seems weak and naïve but no longer cute. Clegg is now a dangerous and evil liar who must be stopped. For a young generation claiming to be politically savvy, we have fallen for the most basic trick in the book: “he did it”.

But Clegg didn't do it. Cameron is behind the cuts, Cameron raised tuition fees, Cameron is making changes to education that will damage social mobility for decades to come. Guess what, we're falling for it again, the most basic tricks in the book. He is waving the hand puppet of Clegg manically while quietly doing everything that matters with the other hand. Anyone who's ever done any kind of basic magic trick knows how misdirection works; and as I said earlier, Cameron is not to be under-estimated. He and those behind him are masters at magic tricks and have found the perfect misdirection instrument for us in Clegg.

It can't be assumed that in the next election all the disgruntled Lib Dem voters are going to go with Labour and that the Tories are going to go crashing out with a nationwide yell of “Jenga!”. Recent local council elections in England showed that the Tories are getting Lib Dem votes too. Labour made themselves incredibly unpopular, so the three main parties are all in the dog house. The Tories just haven't been in power long enough to be in there properly, so what's to stop much of the Lib Dem vote going to the Tories? Sitting in Scotland the whole idea of doing that seems unrealistic, but England is not Scotland, and Scotland's vote doesn't particularly matter in Westminster as can be made obvious by looking at the election map.

But Clegg made it all possible, right? No. If the Lib Dems hadn't formed the coalition with the Tory party, a coalition made up of Labour and all the independents and smaller parties would have been so weak it wouldn't have lasted a week. The Lib Dem choice took many, including myself, completely be surprise and many, including myself, were very angry. However, if you were in Clegg's boots, what would you have done? Suddenly you have the chance to be in power, a thing beyond your wildest dreams on the run up to the election. A very seductive Cameron says you can get your AV referendum, and after support from some big names and players over the election campaign you feel cocky. Also, if you're Clegg, you've probably not slept in 48 hours. A few months in and you realise the winning feeling you had at the start has just turned horribly Charlie Sheen.

I'm sure we can all remember going to a party when we were kids: parents have gone away for the week, it's summertime so nobody has school, the person you fancy is going and you just bought some snazzy new jeans. Everything is going well. Suddenly you realise nobody has any alcohol and nobody is old enough to actually buy any. What do you do? You find someone who either has fake ID or who is old enough to buy alcohol and phone them pretending to be their best friend. An hour later they arrive like a hero returning from a Spartan war with their shield of clinking carrier bags. Everybody makes awkward conversation with them for about half an hour before ignoring them. Suddenly the unsuspecting buyer of the alcohol realises nobody actually likes them at the party; they have just been invited to make the whole thing possible. They then spend the rest of the night watching a bunch of kids have fun then vomit all over one another.

Clegg is now a lonely figure in a dark corner of a party that he shouldn't have been invited to in the first place. All the while he's digging a grave for his party with a shovel bought for him by his “new best friend” Cameron, tied in a pretty blue ribbon. Little does he know that when the parents get back and find their best vase broken and their child in hospital with alcohol poisoning, he's the one who's getting the blame.

The Cuts Don't Work (but Dave and Gideon don't care)

Remember David Cameron's shiny-faced pledge to 'cut the deficit, not the NHS'? Of course you do. Like a badly-airbrushed ghost, Cameron's pledge has came back to haunt him recently in the wake of the reforms to the NHS spearheaded by Health Secretary Andrew Lansley. But there's another reason to keep Dave's promise in mind: because, even as his health reforms begin the slow destruction of one of the greatest achievements of postwar Britain, an uncomfortable fact has come to light that - for any rational observer - casts doubt on the Tories' whole cuts programme.

Put simply, it isn't that Cameron can't cut the deficit without cutting the NHS; in fact, despite all the cuts he and his chancellor George Osborne push through, they can't cut the deficit either.

The False Economy blog has the facts:

'The latest official data for public borrowing show a sharp monthly rise to £9.9bn – a record for April. They also show that the government’s cuts policy has failed to work even for its stated objective: reducing the deficit.'

They further note that there was a fall in the deficit over the course of the previous year, but Dave and Gideon have kept schtumm about that because of an inconvenient truth:

'...the trend towards lower deficits has largely been ignored because they have nothing to do with government ‘austerity’ measures. The improvement in the deficit began in April 2010. The election didn’t take place until a month later and the Comprehensive Spending Review didn’t take place until October.  During that time government spending was largely untouched.'

In other words, the fall in the deficit was the work of...Labour. The bad old previous Labour administration which, we've been told again and again, ran Britain into the ground, 'maxed out the national credit card' and left us with 'no money left'...actually initiated the policies which brought down a deficit caused, let's not forget, by the greatest economic crisis since the Depression of the 1930s. Not bad going for a supposed bunch of spendthrifts.

Whereas the hard-headed (and harder-hearted) cost-cutting of Messrs Cameron and Osborne, far from pulling us out of the deficit, has made it even worse:

'...central government borrowing is £2.6bn higher than last April’s total of £10.5bn...what we are seeing now is just the effect of initial cuts, plus falling confidence. Things are about to get worse and those arguing for even deeper cuts would make them worse still.'

So a government which failed to win an election has also failed to achieve its stated aim of reducing the deficit. But don't expect them to reverse course anytime soon. As many have pointed out, deficit reduction has always been little more than a cover for the Tory-led government's real goal of reimposing their brutal, Thatcherite ideology on the country. The announcement today that the government's new sexual health advisory panel will be advised by an anti-abortion group gives a flavour of just how distasteful that ideology is.

This morning, at a momentary loss for something to read, I pulled my copy of the Rapid Eye Movement anthology from the shelves and reread Simon Dwyer's article, 'Brazil'. Named after the Terry Gilliam film, Dwyer's long essay is a detailed examination of Britain under Tory rule in the 1980s. A country in which civil liberties are curtailed, opposition is spied upon, sexual minorities are persecuted, media are censored and the populace are 'educated to once more know their place' by a government in harness to neoliberal free-marketeers and what Dwyer rightly calls the 'pseudo-Christianity' of fundamentalist outfits like the sinisterly-named Festival of Light.

And now, in Britain 2011, a Tory-led government, helped into power by a media machine which hacks into innocent peoples' voicemail, imposes a neoliberal, 'shock doctrine' financial ideology on the country to help bankers get richer, talks of abolishing the Equality and Human Rights Acts, and tries to limit womens' right to abortion and introduce abstinence-only sex education to schools while restricting access to further and higher education on an unimaginable scale.

David Cameron can airbrush his face all he wants, but the ideology of the worst parts of the Tory party never changes. The deficit was only ever an excuse to implement policies driven by that ideology. Now the figures prove Tory policies have failed to reduce it, the deficit excuse will be quietly dropped, and a new justification for the programme will be found. But whatever it is, that justification will be as false as the deficit lie: because, in a country where a majority didn't vote for the current administration's policies - and where even those who did vote Tory voted them in on the basis of promises Cameron had no intention of keeping - the wholesale destruction of the NHS, state education, and civil liberties on which they are embarked can never be justified.

End of the Beginning

So here it is, May 11th, the anniversary of the day the farce of an election no-one won ended in the tragedy of David Cameron being invited to form the government no-one elected. And now, the final day of our campaign to remind Cameron that we're all too aware of the fact of his non-victory. Have we succeeded? In our original aim, yes. But in doing so, we've set our sights higher and have decided to focus on some bigger goals in future.

The You Didn't Win campaign had its genesis in an angry outburst inspired not by the Prime Minister, but by his lackey, the Chancellor George Osborne. On budget day this year, one of our organisers was listening to Osborne talking about his 'budget for growth' (a budget which, by the way, is leading to UK growth forecasts being revised downwards  yet again - go go Gadget Gideon!) and she heard him come out with the opinion that 'you get a lot of political capital from winning an election'. Shocked at the casual revisionism she was hearing, she exclaimed 'But You Didn't Win!'

In that moment, our campaign was born. But it had to wait a while for us to get going. This writer had to take part in the March for the Alternative first, and then we were all busy with work for the next week or so, but after a week, through the magic of Twitter we got together and got the ball rolling. We came up with the idea of the postcard campaign, started the blog, set up facebook and twitter accounts, began getting the word out both online and in person, designed the official cards, came up with the text for them, dealt with printers, posted cards to Dave and cards for other people to send Dave, leafleted, made alliances with people in other campaign groups, and generally hustled our asses off, all in the name of pissing David Cameron off just a teeny little bit...of letting the Tory-led government know that we aren't going to sit back and let them rewrite history to claim victory in an election no-one won.

That's what we've achieved. Cameron and his staff at Number Ten - whatever names they're using - have seen our cards and know that people all over the UK are refusing to buy their triumphalist narrative. For a campaign whose nerve centre has consisted of precisely three people (yes, the vast numbers of staff toiling at the You Didn't Win HQ could fit in a Mini and leave one seat free for a box of postcards), that's pretty good going.

But with this year's campaign coming to an end and giving us time for a breather, we've decided to set our sights higher for next year. Remember, this year's campaign was organised on the fly by, yes, three people with very little experience of campaigning, basically making it up as we went along in a brief window of about five weeks between the end of March and today - a window which included two four-day Bank Holiday weekends which really screwed with our lead times. Next year we plan to start preparing and running the campaign earlier, making more links with the media, organising more impactful publicity stunts, pacing ourselves a little better...and involving more people.

Yes, we want you to be more involved in You Didn't Win 2012. We're looking for guest bloggers to write pieces for this site (we already have one), people to organise postcard distribution around the country for the next campaign, people to design new postcards and other items for next year (ecologically-conscious as we are, we will be reusing this year's cards too - but it's still nice to have new things as well!) and generally just boots on the ground to help us get more stuff done next year. You know the drill by now - contact us at youdidntwin@hotmail.co.uk, via our Twitter feed or on Facebook and tell us what you'd like to do. Together we can make the second anniversary of the election no-one won even more memorable for Cameron...

But for now, today sees the end of the first phase of the You Didn't Win campaign: a movement born in rage and improvised pretty much every step of the way. But, to quote a Tory coalition leader of sterner stuff than Dave, this is not the end, or even the beginning of the end. This is just the end of the beginning. We'll keep updating the blog, our Twitter and Facebook pages over the next year when there are things we want to talk about; and then at the start of 2012 we'll kick things up a notch and ensure that once again, Dave is reminded that...

well. You know what to say by now. ;)

And now, all rise for John Lydon pulling faces and having a good old shout...

Run Extended Due to Popular Demand!

Well, we here at You Didn't Win HQ sent our cards today, and we've been hearing from people who've sent cards all day, all over the country. Those cards will arrive at Downing Street tomorrow, just in time to put Cameron in a bad mood as he tucks in to his post-referendum kedgeree. But something we hadn't expected to happen has also occurred.

As we and others have tweeted and talked about the cards we're sending today, more and more people, hearing about the campaign, have expressed a wish to get involved. And that's why we've decided to extend our campaign a little further - as of today the deadline for sending your You Didn't Win card to Number 10 Downing Street (London SW1A 2AA, remember) is now May 11th. This is the anniversary of the day last year when Our Own Dear Queen Bess, Gawd Bless 'Er, invited David Cameron to form a government - despite his failure to win the General Election (no disrespect meant to Her Maj - it's her constitutional role and she has to do it. But we like to think she was giving Cameron the Royal V's behind her back with her left hand while she shook his right).

So don't despair if you've missed today's post - there's still time to send your cards! You can get official cards from us by tweeting us your address, or sending it to youdidntwin@hotmail.co.uk, but remember that you can also send local postcards from where you live too if you don't have an official one. We do ask that you take a photo of you sending the card and post it somewhere online - tagged with 'youdidntwin', naturally - and you could even send them to the aforementioned email address if you want - we'd love to put peoples' postcard pics here on the blog to celebrate our campaign.

A campaign which is well under way now: tomorrow David Cameron will see the first signs that the people of Britain remember that he didn't win the election. Let's keep up the pressure and keep sending him messages right up to next Wednesday!

The Final Week

So here it is. One week left. Orders are still pouring in for official You Didn't Win postcards, and we're sending them out as fast as we can, but if you don't have time to get them, remember that you can send any postcard you want to 10 Downing Street, as long as you write a 'you didn't win' message on the back! And don't forget to take photos of your cards and upload them using youdidntwin as a tag!

Remember that we want cards to be sent early on May 5th to arrive in time for May 6th, the anniversary of the election no-one won. And remember the address you need to send cards to: David Cameron, 10 Downing Street, London SW1A 2AA.

Now for the new stuff. For this last week, we want to let as many people know about the campaign as possible. That's where we need your help. We want to get #youdidntwin trending on twitter this week. So tell your friends about it. Tweet people you think will RT the hashtag. Email people. Talk to people about it! Contact your MP and see if they want to get involved - we're really pleased that Washington and Sunderland West MP Sharon Hodgson has agreed to take some of our cards and distribute them. Obviously it helps if your MP is Labour but don't forget that, as we've said here before, recognition that Dave didn't win extends across the political spectrum. If you have a really right-wing Tory as your local MP they might feel Cameron needs a reminder of his failure to carry enough of the vote at the last election to form a majority government too!

Remember why we're doing this: Cameron's Tory-led government needs to be reminded that it has no mandate for its policies; that they failed to secure a big enough parliamentary majority to form a government on their own. Cameron's support for the 'First Past the Post' electoral system has been all over the news with the referendum approaching - if he supports the system so much he must also be aware that he failed to win under that system. So why does he press on with ideologically-driven policies which not enough of the electorate supports? Why does he keep acting as if he did win, bullying and patronising opponents and refusing to accept criticism or moderate his policies? Because he can get away with it: because even when people mention that he didn't win, they do so in passing and move on to other matters.

To resist the Tory-led government's policies we must stress their lack of legitimacy. David Cameron's failure to win the last election should not be something we stress in passing, it needs to form the core of our opposition to the government he leads. Our aim in this campaign is to remind Cameron that he can't pretend he won anymore, and to put his failure to win at the centre of political discourse about this government.

And that is why, during this final week of our campaign, we want the words You Didn't Win spread far and wide. Please help us do that in whatever way you can.