100 questions that need answering before the election - PHOTOS, VIDEO

  08 May 2015    Read: 1963
100 questions that need answering before the election - PHOTOS, VIDEO

1. Can we be honest here, it’s time for a written constitution, isn’t it?

2. After Cameron’s comments to the Daily Mail and LBC questioning the “credibility” of a Labour government, how long will he squat at No 10, like Howard Hughes with rolled-up sleeves, ordering in takeaways and watching The Iron Lady on repeat, refusing to resign?

3. Although, he is entitled to for a while – so are all of these questions of legitimacy even relevant?

4. Can’t people just read the Cabinet Manual (PDF), which is pretty clear on the rules?

5. Ed, speaking in 2010 makes it clear too, doesn’t he?



6. Can we not all just agree, then, that a government is formed when a majority in the Commons passes a vote of confidence?

7. The SNP probably wouldn’t dare to vote down a Labour Queen’s Speech and therefore isn’t Ed Miliband right to call their bluff?

8. And what is the SNP’s true position on calling a second referendum?

9. Do we believe SNP deputy leader Stewart Hosie when he threatens to hold Labour’s budget to ransom in return for a promise on a second referendum?

10. Or Leanne Wood when she says Plaid Cymru could also vote against a Labour budget?

11. Leanne Wood’s great, isn’t she?

12. Is any party capable of just telling the truth regarding them not having a hope in hell of winning a majority?

13. Or capable of answering a straight question at all?

14. Will a minority government just fall apart like a biscuit in tea, triggering a second election by Christmas, as Clegg suggests?

15. Why are all the supposedly unionist parties content to treat the Scottish people like shit? Pretty much even before the No vote was fully in.

16. What are the parties’ positions on “English votes for English laws” (otherwise known as the West Lothian question, otherwise known as Evel?)

17. Did all the people now realising what a goddamn mess our parliamentary system is vote yes to AV in 2011?

18. And how would this election be looking if AV had been implemented? (It’s actually not good news for the Lib Dems or Labour…)

19. Should Sinn Féin stop pissing about and start sending their elected MPs to actually sit at Westminster?

20. What, exactly, does Ed Miliband have in his pocket?

21. Is he hiding some kind of claw in there?

22. Can the Tories and Question Time audience members stop making comparisons to Greece, when the British economy was never anything like it?

23. Can we all agree not to vote for people who use the terms “Grexit” and “Brexit”?

24. Does anyone remember, as Paul Krugman points out, that John Maynard Keynes wrote this: “The boom, not the slump, is the right time for austerity at the Treasury.”

25. Where are the £12bn of spending cuts proposed by the Tories coming from (just £2-3bn has been accounted for)?

26. No but, actually. Where are they coming from?

27. I’m deadly serious: does anybody know any figures on this?

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28. Whose idea was the #EdStone and on a scale of 1-10 how mortified is that person?

29. Why was The Sun’s headline on this not “ED’S STONE(D)”?

30. Might Labour have used said stone to build some houses?

31. Speaking of houses, have the Greens worked out how they will build 500,000 social rented houses in five years? Because their costings still look a little loose, and last time that question was asked it wasn’t answered very well…

32. Is it awkward that one of Labour’s policies is to allow the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) to “independently audit every spending and tax measure in the manifestos of the main political parties”, when the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has pretty much slagged them all off?

33. And do people actually even trust the OBR?

34. Clegg is probably going to stay in Sheffield Hallam thanks to Tory tactical voting. He’s actually been pretty good this campaign, no?

35. What are we going to do about the duopolies that fund our parties? (Tories backed by big donors to the tune of £1.36m, as revealed by new Electoral Commission figures; Labour relying on unions.)

36. Is it fair that Lycamobile UK, a telecoms firm which has not paid corporation tax in Britain since 2007, should be allowed to donate £124,450 to the Tories?

37. If you are suddenly run over by an ice cream van on 7th May and whizzed to hospital, can you still vote? (YES, if run over before 5pm).

38. Whose great idea was it to rename fracking as “onshore unconventional oil and gas”?

39. Which party is the best on climate change?

40. Who will be the one to tell Nigel Farage that his beloved Australia is, you know, founded on immigration? I’m talking right back to the Pleistocene Aboriginal migrants, mate.

41. How disgusting did those sardines and lemon sound that David Cameron “whipped up” in his video for SunNation?



42. Does Russell Brand regret encouraging people not to vote, and then holding his interview with Miliband and U-turning to tell people to vote Labour after the voter registration deadline had passed?

43. Will this have any effect on youth voter turnout, especially in the 18-24 age group? (At least now he is doing his bit).

44. Or is a drop in voter registration thanks to Individual Electoral Registration (IER) reforms, resulting in halls of residence no longer being able to register students en masse?

45. That was a canny bit of legislation wasn’t it?

46. It’s not really fair that 16-year-olds can go to war for this country, pay tax in it, but not vote, is it?

47. Did the Greens have to pay royalties to John Lennon’s estate for this passage in their manifesto?

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48. Has Natalie Bennett said “the common good” so many times that the syllables turn to mush in her brain?

49. Would Labour agree that they formatted their manifesto oddly, so we have unfortunate looking pages, such as page 8, which looks like this?

50. Isn’t it quaint how the Tories started to add the word “major” to their “world’s fastest growing economy” line, when people pointed out that, say, China and India had grown faster?

51. Wait, and isn’t it true that growth just plunged in the last quarter to 0.3%?

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52. What are the differences on Labour and Tories’ tax pledges on national insurance, VAT and income tax? And are they workable?

53. Cameron suggests his promises on tax should be statute. As if bobbies will come a-knocking on No 10 otherwise. Kind of hypocritical for Osborne to have said this then, isn’t it?

54. Wasn’t exactly wise for Miliband to make his cutting the deficit year-on-year pledge either, was it?

55. Is Liz Truss OK? Or is she still concerned about cheese?

56. Why does William Hague’s voice sound like he is holding in a sneeze and straining at the same time?

57. Would John Humphrys’s specialist Mastermind subject be bias in political interviews?

58. Shall we all take a moment to remember David Cameron’s Freudian slip?

59. And Miliband’s literal one?

60. Hard-working families, hard-working families, hard-working families…WHY DO ALL PARTIES HATE SINGLE PEOPLE? WHAT DO THEY OFFER US?



61. Is the idiom “putting food on the table” redundant in the era of TV dinners?

62. Where is this year’s Gillian Duffy or a Joe the Plumber? Are we going to have to rely on Gareth from Hampstead Heath or the “hi Dave, alright mate” guy from the Question Time debate?

63. The Lib Dems have already published five red lines. Is their manifesto just a child’s scribble in red Crayola?

64. Has anybody seen the Respect party these days? (Apart from George Galloway trolling on Twitter.)

65. What’s all this about the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), potential Tory kingmakers, being homophobic?

66. Didn’t their health minister, Jim Wells, resign just last week after saying: “You don’t bring a child up in a homosexual relationship. That a child is far more likely to be abused and neglected”?

67. Meanwhile, who even are the Social Democrat and Labour Party (SDLP)?

68. But why is nobody paying attention to the Cannabis is Safer than Alcohol party (Cista)?

69. Will Labour’s pledge to reduce tuition fees from £9,000 to £6,000 actually help wealthier students, rather than the less well-off?

70. And will Clegg ever be allowed to shake off his broken promise on tuition fees, betraying those who voted for him?

71. He can probably console himself with some council seats though in local elections, which I guess is something?

72. Isn’t the Tory idea to introduce right-to-buy social housing just a gimmick which is largely unworkable?

73. Like, honestly, is it not just a truly awful policy?

74. How fantastic is it that three of the party leaders – Natalie Bennett of the Greens, Nicola Sturgeon of SNP and Leanne Wood of Plaid Cymru – are inspiring women, and that this photo exists?

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75. Can we all agree that Nicola Sturgeon’s sarcastic line about Nigel Farage having “obviously come here to win friends and influence people” during the first TV debate was the best of the campaign?

76. And if Farage does not win South Thanet, will he just slink off back into his cave, nursing a pint, occasionally venturing out to stop passersby in the street in the hope that he can convince them that he isn’t really posh, not in the true sense of the word?

77. Is the fact that 1.1 million people used Trussell Trust food banks in the past year an indictment of the previous government?

78. Or, as the Spectator’s Fraser Nelson argues, (and Isabel Hardman too) are food banks “a sign of the big society in action” and something Cameron and co can be proud of?

79. Do you really want George Osborne or Boris Johnson, as a future prime minister? Larks aside now, guys. Because this might happen – and before 2020 too – if Cameron stands down and a second election happens before Christmas. Or, if a no-confidence vote is passed, possibly within the next 14 days…

80. Do you want to possibly re-elect an education secretary to cabinet who talks about exams being “resitted”?

81. Shouldn’t it concern us all that our prime minister is a man who cannot say the word “tampon” out loud?

82. In a country in which mental health issues account for almost a quarter of the burden on our NHS but receives just 13% of the funding, how, exactly, is the Liberal Democrats injection of what sounds a very generous £3.5bn going to come close to what is needed?

83. And with just 6% of the mental health budget spent on children, despite three-quarters of mental health problems presenting before the age of 18, what else are the parties pledging towards making mental health care better in this country?

84. Will Labour be able to stick to its promise to introduce 8,000 new doctors and 20,000 new nurses? Will we never have to suffer again?

85. Labour pledges to raise the minimum wage to £8 per hour and the Greens to £10. But does Cameron know how much the current living wage is?

86. Have we decided yet on whether zero-hours contracts are an abomination, or a means for small businesses to thrive?

87. But we all know that pulling out of the EU would be anathema to business, right?

88. And we’re 100% clear on the fact that many of the business leaders who signed the letter to the Telegraph in support of the Conservatives didn’t actually sign the letter in support of the Conservatives?

89. IS TRIDENT A GOOD THING Y/N?

90. And which party is for which number of submarines and what level of at-sea deterrent?

91. Can we have less of the partners of party leaders featuring in the next campaign?

92. Who looks best in a hard hat, because that is going to be a deciding factor in our votes, yes?

93. Ditto how a leader eats a hot dog, bacon sandwich or other working class foodstuff?

94. Has this woman been the true star of the election campaign?

95. And am I the only person currently working on a screenplay shipping Nicola Sturgeon and Ed Miliband?

96. Shall we just get rid of incessant polling – doesn’t it just annoy the public? –or would that leave Lord Ashcroft at rather a loose end?

97. And are the polls proving right, as stagnant as they have been, or are we in for a shock?

98. Don’t all the party leaders look tired?

99. Aren’t we all just, so, so tired?

100. It’s only just begun, hasn’t it?

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