The closer we get to May 6th, the more this election feels like a Hollywood "B" movie. We first saw the main party leaders dragging their wives onto the campaign trail. Then we saw their faces in a 3-way debate on ITV last week. And we are now told that there will be another two repetitions of the same soap before polling day.
Brown and Cameron may be advised by former members of Obama's election team, while Clegg has hired a former manager of Thatcher's favourite spin doctors, Saatchi & Saatchi. But if this is how they hope to lure voters into the polling booths, let alone increase their votes, they may have a big surprise awaiting them!
"Hung" parliament or not, hang it!
In addition to anticipating a record low turnout, what seems to worry the two main parties is the possibility of a "hung" Parliament, in which neither of them would have a workable majority.
This is why minor Labour grandees like Adonis have been calling on the LibDems to stand down in Labour seats where the Tories might be in a position to defeat them in a 3-way contest.
Meanwhile, opinion polls seem to show that some Tory voters are so unconvinced by Cameron that they may switch to the LibDems - and prevent the Tories from achieving the sweeping victory they were hoping for. Hence their new election slogan: "voting LibDem is voting Labour".
Opinion polls are just snapshots of the electorate and their results can be easily massaged. Nevertheless, both Labour and Tory are manoeuvring to try to frighten voters with the alleged "threat" that a "hung" Parliament would represent for the future.
For the working class, this is a non-issue: "hung" or not, Parliament only helps politicians to protect the interests of the capitalist class on our backs! And, in this respect, the more we see the party leaders' faces, the more obvious it is how wafer thin their differences are.
Of course, Clegg, the LibDem leader, managed to top the poll organised among viewers after last week's debate - and by a big margin, with 43%, against 23% to Cameron and 20% to Brown.
But then, it is not hard for the LibDems to appear more outspoken (and somewhat more honest) about issues on which their rivals would rather keep quiet and make no commitment. After all, not having a chance in hell of getting into Downing Street, Clegg can afford to make all the election promises that voters might want to hear. But this does not make the LibDems any different from the others. That they should get some credit, only exposes the fact that there is no voice in this election for the working class majority of the electorate.
Their common agenda: turning the screw
Regardless of how they try to sell it, the substance of what the three parties have to say and offer is indeed remarkably identical.
They all talk about "economic growth". But none of them has anything to say to the millions of us who lost jobs or homes, or both, nor to those who have been made to work harder for less, under the hypocritical pretext of "saving jobs".
When they talk about "recovery", they do not mean a "recovery" for the jobs and standard of living of the working class. No, they only mean a recovery for shareholders' dividends and company profits to their pre-crisis level, if not higher!
Nor is there anyone among them to say loud and clear that the days of "economic growth" they all hark back to, only fed the present crisis. These were days in which the bosses' profits exploded thanks to casualisation, forcing workers into low-paid, part-time jobs and cutting our standard of living. And these record profits went on to generate a deadly speculative bubble.
What will keep the capitalists from turning the screw even more on the working class or their pals, the bankers, from feeding yet another speculative bubble and paving the way for yet another crisis? Nothing in the policies of the main parties!
Politicians throw figures at each other about tax and public sector cuts. But they all agree that the capitalists should not really pay more taxes, not even those who benefited from the bailout. No, it is down to us to foot the bill with cuts in our jobs and services, which they won't spell out until after the election! But we know what they have in store: how many tens of thousands of jobs have already been cut in vital services like Royal Mail and Network Rail, among others?
So, no, there is no stake for the working class in this Muppet show. Our future will not be decided in the ballot box, but in the streets and workplaces when we decide to take it into our own hands!