Sometimes

So, the phoney war is over. The doors have been knocked, the babies kissed, the hands shook, the leaflets posted and all the campaigners will be heading home for a good nights sleep before their vigil at the polls. There are a number of things that can happen tomorrow.

1.) It could be the last time that we have a FPTP poll; we could be switching to PR.

2) The BNP and UKIP could win their first seats.

3) The Tories could win, signalling the start of a break up of the UK. Nothing will boost the SNP in next year's Holyrood elections like a Tory win.

4) The SNP and Plaid Cymru might hold the balance of power and we might see some sensible policies on health (no privatisation) and PFI (get rid of it).

5)We could have a Lib Lab pact and have a fairly non -descript government for a couple of years, followed by a PR election. This would be the equivalent of a huge enema for Westminster and would get politics, real politics moving in the way it has in Scotland instead of all the yah boo rubbish.

The butterflies are fluttering above the path and depending on which one we tread on, we will end up at a different destination. There isn't that much in it.

In all of this I have been reflecting on the importance of hope in politics. Hope isn't the dream of fools - it's the very stuff of politics. It's the determination that you will get to a particular destination regardless of the difficulties. And it's about doing all the small things, seemingly insignificant in themselves, that lead there.

Tomorrow we need to do that small insignificant thing. We need to vote. We need to choose our direction as a nation because if we don't do it, rough men will choose it for us. And we need to have that quality of hope to do it. Outcomes aren't inevitable. Bad doesn't always have to triumph. Sometimes things do happen for the best. Sheelagh Pugh sums it up in her poem 'Sometimes'


Sometimes things don't go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war,
elect an honest man; decide they care
enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.


May it happen for you and the country tomorrow.