Miliband’s tablet of stone may cost him my vote

You have the advantage over me. You know the result of the general election, whereas I do not — a consequence of the moronically linear progression of time. Indeed, you may already have fled to one of those countries with a much lower tax rate and less fantastically irritating politicians — Algeria, for example, or Benin. Or Chad. And you are reading this digitally on some patched-in fibre-optic service, the electricity generated by goats trotting forlornly around a gigantic hamster wheel outside — but you are nonetheless delighted with your new life, despite the flies and the occasional gang of marauding, maniacal jihadis.

At least you’re not here to experience Britain being well and truly sturgeoned. No vaulting ginger munchkin can get her greasy paws on your wallet. It may well be that by the time you read this, the only people left in the country will be me, David Hare and Eddie Izzard, plus a few boatloads of newly arrived immigrants from the Islamic State. But that’s OK. David can write one of his excruciatingly boring bien-pensant leftie plays, Eddie can star in it, perhaps wearing a nice frock, the immigrants can watch it and cheer and wave their black flags, and I’ll write the spiteful review. We’ll get by, inshallah.

So, you know the result of this calamitously inane election and I do not. In which case, this next assertion of mine is a hostage to fortune. I might be proved horribly wrong. But my suspicion is that Ed Miliband’s pledges, etched onto an eight-foot tablet of stone, will not hugely increase the number of people who vote Labour on 7 May. Some 40 or 50 imbeciles may think to themselves: ‘Well, it’s etched on stone, so he must be telling the truth. It’s much harder to alter something written on stone than something written on paper, isn’t it? You can use Tipp-Ex if it’s written on paper, whereas you can’t with stone.