I Don't Believe It!
The Telegraph sketch writer Michael Deacon has some fun in the wake of the general election and adopts Victor Meldrew's advice in response to some of the events which unfolded in the early hours of Friday morning.
Election 2015 sketch: Look. None of the following things actually happened. Did they?
On an almost surreally implausible night for British politics, Ed Balls loses his seat, more or less everyone resigns, and David Cameron somehow wins a majority
Photo: Reuters
By Michael Deacon - The Telegraph
Look. I’m really sorry. I know this is going to seem like an unusual question. After all, this is a newspaper. We’re the ones who are supposed to tell you the news, not the other way round.
But seriously, because I need to know: did any of that actually happen?
Really. I mean it. The general election. Did it happen? Is it true? I mean, I watched it happen, but I’m just not convinced. The Conservatives winning a majority – that can’t have happened. Ed Miliband, Nigel Farage, Nick Clegg resigning – that can’t have happened. Ed Balls losing his seat – that can’t have happened. It just can’t. It’s not plausible. We had opinion polls every day for months telling us that it wasn’t going to go like this. They can’t all have been wrong. Not all of them.
Look, there’s no other way to work this out. I’m going to go back to the beginning. I’ll tell you everything I can remember. You can tell me which bits are wrong.
So: I was in my living room, watching TV. It was 10pm. BBC One. And David Dimbleby was reading out this exit poll. The exit poll, he was saying, suggested the Conservatives had an unexpectedly big lead over Labour. I remember being a bit surprised by that, but not totally shocked, because it wasn’t as if the numbers meant the Tories would win an actual majority or anything. I mean, that would have been crazy.
So yes, the exit poll. And then there were lots of politicians being interviewed, basically saying, “No, of course the exit poll isn’t right, that’s mental, pull the other one, just you wait till the morning.” I have particularly vivid memories of Paddy Ashdown telling Andrew Neil that if the exit poll was correct he’d eat his hat, and Andrew Neil saying all right then, and Lord Ashdown crying, “You can get the hat, providing it’s made of marzipan!”
That’s what it says in my notes, anyway. A peer demanding that the BBC bring him a hat made of marzipan. Clearly that can’t have happened. I must have made it up for a joke or something.
Then there were a few hours of people just talking, more or less calmly at this stage, about how sometimes exit polls were unreliable. But then suddenly – and this is where I must have started hallucinating – all these really important politicians started losing their jobs.
Danny Alexander, the Lib Dem Chief Secretary. He was voted out. Jim Murphy, the leader of Scottish Labour. He was voted out. Douglas Alexander, Labour’s campaign strategist. He was voted out. In fact, according to my notes, he lost his seat to someone only just old enough to vote. Well, at least I know that bit can’t be true. A twenty-year-old student! Defeating a man who was on the brink of becoming foreign secretary! No, that’s just silly. Can’t have happened. Glad I can cross that bit out.
George Galloway, there’s another. I have a weirdly clear image in my head of George Galloway being utterly humiliated. I probably just dreamt that, though. I mean, everyone dreams of George Galloway being utterly humiliated.
While this implausible massacre was taking place, albeit only in my imagination, pundits on the TV kept saying Nigel Farage was going to lose in South Thanet. That made me quite worried, because for a parliamentary sketch writer about 93 per cent of the job is writing about Nigel Farage, so without him I'd be screwed, but then I remembered that during the campaign Mr Farage had taken me door-knocking, and everyone he introduced me to had told us they were voting for him. So there was no way he was going to lose.
For some reason I have this notion that throughout the night lots of broadcasters were interviewing Ed Balls about the exit poll, and he was telling them that the exit poll was bound to be wrong. Hmm. Hang on. Ed Balls. Ed Balls. I’m sure I have some other memory of Ed Balls. Definitely rings a bell. Something else happened involving Ed Balls, I just can’t think what it…
OH MY GOD I’VE JUST REMEMBERED ED BALLS LOST HIS SEAT! HE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THE NEXT CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER AND HE LOST HIS SEAT! HIS ACTUAL SEAT! HE’S NOT AN EVEN AN MP ANY MORE! HE’S NO MORE AN MP THAN THE CAT NEXT DOOR! ED BALLS! ED ACTUAL BALLS!
Sorry, do forgive me. I’ll calm down. For a moment there I got this crazy idea in my head that Ed Balls lost his seat at the general election. Completely ridiculous. Ed Balls can’t have lost his seat. He’s the Member of Parliament for Morley & Outwood. Apologies for any confusion I may have caused.
At some point it was announced that a guy who was junior to me on the Telegraph TV desk a few years back – Matt Warman, that’s his name – had been elected MP for Boston & Skegness, an idea so fanciful that I don’t know why I’m even bothering to record it. I mean, he and I spent three years bickering about the proof-reading of TV listings – you can’t tell me he’s now one of the 650 people in charge of the entire country. So that can’t have happened.
But in any case I had no time to dwell on that because suddenly there were these bizarre images swimming before my eyes of Vince Cable losing his seat. Vince Cable! The Business Secretary! He can’t have lost his seat. As if. Why, only on Tuesday he was mocking David Cameron for even bothering to campaign there.
Anyway, this is where my dream started going really weird. That exit poll, it turned out, had indeed been wrong. But not because it had overestimated the Tories’ support. Instead, it had underestimated it. The Tories were going to win a majority. Their first majority in almost a quarter of a century. Now, I knew that couldn’t be true because I’d heard that even David Cameron and Lynton Crosby thought there was no chance of that. So I quickly discounted it.
But then suddenly Nick Clegg was resigning as Lib Dem leader, and Nigel Farage was resigning as Ukip leader, and Ed Miliband was resigning as Labour leader. Mr Miliband was saying he was “so sorry”. Mr Clegg was calling the results “unkind”. Mr Farage was rambling about a wristband.
And then there was David Cameron, giving a victory speech outside 10 Downing Street, and looking almost as surprised as I was.
Prime Minister: all I can say is, I know how you feel. It’s completely mad. No more Miliband, Balls, Clegg, Cable, Farage. The most extraordinary parliamentary bloodbath in living memory. And, at the end of it, a Tory majority government.
Any moment now, a load of people are going to jump out from behind a door, yell “SURPRISE!”, and tell me it was all just a big wind-up. And I’ll laugh. Because of course none of it actually happened.
It didn’t, did it?
