Election fever and a late goal

I should have been delighted when I arrived home from football early yesterday evening to find out that there was no November General Election. It is not in the best interests of the British National Party to contest an expensive election which it has no chance of winning and which, in the main, provides little or no benefit to the Party.

But I wasn't. I felt disappointed and deflated and that was because for the last three weeks I have been suffering from a bout of election fever. This 'illness' puts one in a state of hyper-excitement every time the word 'election' is mentioned. The buzz is so great that you spend most of your time searching for the word in newspapers, on television and on the radio desperate for any information that helps to raise the temperature.

Make no mistake, election fever is a sickness. When struck down with it, rational thought goes out of the window and the mind is filled with the possibility of attaining the impossible.

Every election campaigner needs a mild dose of election fever when those nomination papers have been handed in to give them the necessary lift to be able to knock on all those doors in the push for victory, but the after effects of the sickness can be debilitating depression and disillusionment.

So there won't be a General Election in 2007. Away can go the maps of the Workington Constituency, the prepared introductory leaflet, the endless financial calculations and appeal letters for funds.

It's back to working on Freedom and preparing notes for a meeting in Carlisle on Thursday. Planning for a General Election has been my over-riding preoccupation for the last three weeks so without it, just for the moment, it all feels a bit empty.

My disappointment and deflation over no General Election was added to by the knowledge that my small wager on a November poll at 6/5 with Betfair was now in the pocket of someone not struck down by election fever. On top of that a superb late summer afternoon at Borough Park was spoilt by an 88th minute penalty for Redditch United which gave them a totally undeserved share of the points.

But that's football and that's election fever.