What a difference a day makes - as the song goes.It seems the UK is to have a coalition government.
Things looked pretty bad over the last day or so. This by contrast to that seems not quite so worrying.
We are seeing a hint of light at the end of the tunnel and hoping against hope it is not the 17:15 to Cambridge and we are not all about to become the stuffed toy on the front of the dust cart, to mix and match metaphors.
Suddenly being polite and reasonable seems to be the order of the day. I do wonder about the timing of Gordon Brown's resignation and if it's timing was designed to strain the chances of a Liberal Democrat/Progressive Conservative Coalition.
Suddenly everyone is busy saying what a statesman he was as if he was dead, I guess he is politically - so I shall refrain from mentioning any inconvenient truths, the gold reserve or pachyderms quietly milling about in the corner of the room.
Experience suggests that the chances are a coalition is likely to come apart at the seams. Driven apart by internal fault lines when push really comes to shove - look at the Lib-Lab pact. Things are certainly going to get difficult before they get any easier, are the Lib Dems up to it?
Still maybe Cameron and Clegg are really serious about government in the national interest and may really be able to drag enough of their parties along with them.
One way they could save a huge amount of money would be to demand Thatcher's negotiated payments discount back from the EU that Blair blithely gave away. Maybe ask for a bigger one of their own.
The UK pays a disproportionately large amount in to the EU to pay for civic improvements in the likes of Portugal and allow French farmers to continue to live in the manner to which they have become accustomed, etc.
Not likely to happen one suspects what with Nick being a Europhile, still it would plug a big hole in the nation's finances.
Maybe we’ll get the best of both Liberal Democrat and Conservative policies and less useful ones will somehow cancel each other out.. Keeping each other honest with each party will acting like the other’s watchdog.
Maybe to save money they will have to hold back the expansion of the state and buy us some breathing space. Maybe some of them will actually even want to do that. Shame that the Liberal Democrats, like Labour and in favour of robbing the dead in the form of low thresholds on inheritance tax. Penalising the south disproportioantely.
I am keeping my fingers crossed - but I am also keeping an umbrella handy against the chance flying pigs coming home to roost turn out to have minimal bowel control.
Goodness knows we need politicians to get over confusing the national interest with their party's interest or even their own personal interest. The thought of them actually doing it seems almost too much to hope for or to actually believe.
Still, they say a cynic is a disappointed optimist, It seems there is a tiny bit of optimist left in me that can still occasionally and probably briefly surface...
It’s only a tiny ‘Obama moment’ of hope that I’ll probably pay for later.
