What the election won't be about

Mario Cuoumo said that elections are fought in poetry but governing is in prose. Our's is being fought in half truths and downright lies in a concerted effort by all parties to hide the truth and avoid frightening the electorate. As Britain's problems  grow, elections have to be fought in Fantasyland not the real world.

Take Europe. Theresa May claims that the main issue will be Brexit and that Britain needs a stable and strong May  to get a good deal. Both untrue. The health service and the pains of austerity will be more important and the election result will have no bearing on the EU's decisions. Witness the way in which the Greek referendum to reject Europe's tough terms actually angered the EU into toughening  them.

Opposition wants to get a soft Brexit or a No Brexit Brexit but the terms depend totally on what the EU decides to offer. Will it decide to punish Britain pour decourager les autres or just sit us on the naughty step for a bit. Nothing the opposition can do about either.

Horrendous problems are best ignored. Britain can neither pay its way in the world nor afford  the structures of welfare education and health a modern electorate demands along with the defence and aid requirements of a great power.Solving both problems requires an increase in taxes and a painful industrial policy to rebalance the economy. Neither is mentioned. Indeed the merest hint from the government that it wants to be free of manifesto constraints so it can freeze pensions and increase taxes on government finances has been denounced by Labour which prefers to denounce a race to the bottom on tax cuts and at the same time propose an increase for the rich.

All the other pressing problems, the strains on an underfunded health service, on education and social care all demand more money but are reduced to a confusing half full or half empty glass argument by government claims that funding has been increased and opposition's unwillingness to say how it will be paid for. 

Housing has become a serious crisis thanks to long years of underfunding by both parties . The Tories help ownership which pushes up prices .Labour demands more public housing for rent but doesn't propose to boost the counci housing which it undermined by privatisation. Name calling and arguments about who did what and when drive out understanding  and confuse a public half of which watches Location, location,while the other half is in despair. 

This election is being decided not by rational debate on Britain's problems and how to deal with them but by like or dislike of Theresa May, obsessive attacks on Jeremy Corbyn and feelings about  which of them you'd rather drink with in a pub with (if you can find one open).