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Some Vague Opinions about Politics

I’m chilling in the Babylove toilets when a twitchy slimeball sidles up and asks to buy some mephedrone.

“Uh, like, even if I had some, I wouldn’t sell to you,” I say, feeling like someone off The Wire.

“Please!’ he cries, a tear running down his cheek. ‘I’m desperate! I’ll do anything! Listen, I’m editing Cherwell this term. Sort me out and you can be our new political columnist. What d’ya say?”

I feel torn. Primarily because I don’t really know anything about politics. I haven’t been obsessively following the latest polls. I’m not totally up to date with every bit of campaign minutiae. If you looked me in the eye, I couldn’t tell you which party stands where on any issue. It’d probably be a bad idea. But I thought again, and realised that I make up for my so-called ‘fundamental lack of the basic knowledge that might conceivably qualify one as a political commentator’ with an overwhelming and undying love for NICK CLEGG and the LIBERAL DEMOCRATS.

Yep. The Leaders Debate? I watched it. I hunkered down cross-legged in front of the TV with popcorn and a look of wide-eyed fascination as the man who would rule the country and my heart debated Gordon and Dave out the room.

Before that night, I was a lost child, running haphazardly through a political wasteland, futilely tripping over legislation and erratically bumping against random scraps of opinion like a fly in a greenhouse. But Nick’s free spirited laissez faire free market ‘fuck the man’ attitude to the political institution set me free. I didn’t know who this young Che Guevara was, or what he stood for, but I knew he could shake things up and I wanted part of that.

I leapt into action. Would you believe that before the debate I wasn’t a member of any political Facebook groups? Well, that changed very quickly. Modifying my status to something pro-Nick and vowing to disown every Tory voter I knew was only the start. Soon I’d filled my entire news feed with manifesto links, invites to LibDem events and photoshops of Clegg as the nietzschean ubermensch. To my friends I was a hero. I was Paxman. “Don’t thank me,” I said. “Just doing my job.”

But a terrible realisation crept in. I was not Oxford’s only newly-forged post-debate hotshot politico. My voice was lost against all the bickering and white noise. I realised that people might simply ignore my opinion, mistaking me for all the others. It was crushing.

Which is where this column comes in. My big chance had arrived. I decided.
“Ok,” I tell the editor. “Deal. But you have to give me a handjob as well.” He nods dejectedly.

Student journalism rules.


Next week, T-Pain has some wildly inaccurate thoughts about OUSU Constitutional Reform.

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