Joy of British innocent will fill us with regret

May the British never know what it’s like to see their country ruined and left in the economic ditch of Europe

ONE WATCHES the British election campaign with all the tearful tenderness of a battered wife looking at her wedding photos. Or a divorcing couple attending the marriage ceremony of young strangers. Did we ever care so much for our politicians? Can you remember a time when we believed what our politicians said? Were things so very different then, or has time rewritten every line? If we had the chance to do it all again would we? Could we?

I don't think so. We have suffered too much. The joy of a more innocent people can only fill us with regret for what might have been. Jamais, jamais, jamais, as we say in The Irish Times. And there are the Brits, bless them, crowding into pubs to watch the television debates and eagerly setting the clapometer, week after week. They've got so many members of the public wired up to those perception analysers that the whole country looks like a torture chamber. Talk about peaking too soon.

There is a real danger now that their entire population may die of being over-exposed to the instruments of market research. Those lines on the graph – red for Labour, blue for Conservatives and yellow for Nick Clegg – are commonly known as worms.

The British are so serious about their election that they do not want it to descend into a “mere” beauty competition between the party leaders. Oh ha, ha, ha, ha – so sorry, fainted there for minute.

Election fever is not just a phenomenon in the British mainstream press. In the current issue of Grazia, the best magazine in Britain, they have reconstructed a polling station, and talked to two psychologists about which factors can swing your vote. There would be nothing peculiar about this sort of initiative appearing in the New Statesman– although the New Statesmanprobably couldn't afford to do it, poor dears – but, to a foreigner at least, it does seem striking that this double page spread, entitled "The Polling Booth Uncovered", is included in Grazia'sfamous 10 Hot Stories section. The other nine stories include the usual on Cheryl Cole; an article on Kate Middleton and her alleged wait for Prince William; four pages on summer shoes; an analysis of the denim dilemma, entitled "Dungarees: Eek Or Chic?", and a whole lot else besides.

Grazia, whose target audience is supposed to be young women, but is in fact anyone who goes to the hairdressers, took an editorial decision not just on the It bag – it's coming back, apparently – but on national politics. There was a long piece on the election in its last issue as well. Imagine, adults who are not involved in politics encouraging young people to vote! It is as strange to us as all those Monster Raving Loony candidates and the way that Tony Blair used to be declared a winner at his Sedgefield constituency standing beside, if memory serves, a lobster.

It would be a very brave Irish politician who would put the electorate here through another election at the moment. Our politics was too interesting for too long – we are worn out. An election would just infuriate us, at best. It is more likely that we would be driven to violence by it – and that would just be Dún Laoghaire. But the British, with that puppyish enthusiasm which has won them friends the world over, are mad for it. There is a risk now that they are over-excited, and mummies are hovering in the background with the "It'll All End In Tears" T-shirts. For example, last Friday, on the morning after the second leaders' debate, a poll came out showing David Cameron at a 37 per cent approval rating among those who had watched the debate the previous evening, and Nick Clegg at 36 per cent. "Cameron Pips Clegg" ran an – admittedly rather short-lived – headline on the website of the London Times.

Then the former editor of the Sunand now chief executive of News International, Rebekah Brooks, nee Wade, and James Murdoch, son of Rupert, invaded the offices of the London Independentnewspaper to object because the Independenthad urged the British electorate to remember that this was their election, not Rupert Murdoch's. After such a vicious slur Rebekah and James decided to take action. Such larks!

In Britain the electorate is still reading party manifestos, and holding the parties to account for them. They haven’t learned yet that all that printed stuff is only a bit of crack, and will be binned – or very rapidly recycled – before the posters come down.

Most touchingly, the British think they have undergone a major scandal, in the shape of their cute little parliamentary expenses controversy. David Cameron’s cheeks go even pinker when he talks about it. Last Thursday he called the episode “a disgrace”. Ah, dearie me. It’s like watching children congratulating themselves for having survived the bogeyman. May they never know what it’s like to see their country robbed, ruined and left for dead in the economic ditch of Europe.

And we know that the chances are they never will. That privilege has been ours. It has wiped out our politics, and our politicians, who are now regarded as either implicated or incompetent and sometimes, remarkably, both. After what we’ve been through, we can only shake our heads fondly at the British election, and hope it keeps fine for them.