And finally, in this week of anniversaries, a pre-anniversary.
There are precisely six months to go until Thursday 6th May 2010, which is the most likely date for the next General Election. Today is also precisely 4½ years since Tony Blair triumphed in the UK's last General Election. Which makes today precisely 90% of the way through this Parliament. With 10% still to go.
Here's that "10%-to-go" in a meaningful graphic. Not long. And yet ages.
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2010
When the election comes round, it's a pretty sure bet that we're in for a change of occupant at Number 10. This means that Gordon Brown will have survived just over 1000 days running the country before the country kicks him out. He only became PM in the middle of 2007 (I know, seems longer doesn't it?), so there's still one sixth of his Premiership to go.
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As for the current Labour Government, which kicked off with Tony Blair's red dawn way back in 1997, that's now 96% complete and only 4% remains. New Labour is now Very Much Approaching Retirement Labour, and remains in power only because no General Election need be held until the PM's forced to hold one. That's how democracy works in this country - you don't have to be the most popular party to govern, you just have to have been the most popular on the one day when the electoral snapshot was taken.
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The UK's political pendulum has already swung back into the blue, in one of those great mood shifts that comes along every half-generation or so. Unless David Cameron is suddenly outed as Adolf Hitler's grandson (and even that might not be enough), he'll be celebrating a landslide election victory in precisely six months time. There'll be rapturous applause from the press, and a honeymoon period with the public that might last months or even years, and then all the usual scandals and crises that beset every government we've ever had until eventually everybody hates the Conservatives as much as they hate Labour now and the whole utterly predictable cycle goes round again.
70 years of political power
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2010
Six months until everything changes. Which will either fill you with joy or with fear. Hold tight.
