Politics: what’s not to love?

There are bloody awful days in politics. Days when the rain is vertical and you know you have three more hours at least on the doorstep. When doors slam in your face. When people assume you’re in it for all the money you can grasp even as you ponder how you’re going to scrape together enough for the petrol to get you to that marginal you’ve pledged your undying support to. There are times when the Party you love gets things wrong. Either in behaviour or in policy. And these things happen even as the better times start up. Even as the sun starts shining and the voters start to engage and really want to talk.

I will have more days like those. I will return to these themes. There will be times I am sure I will have plenty to say about the Party that is less than wholly positive. And that will continue to be a vital part of our role at LabourList as we agitate for a better and better Party for and with our reader and Labour members and activists.

But right now it doesn’t feel that way. Because it’s election time and there is everything to play for.

This is an incredibly tight election. I don’t know what the result will be and I honestly don’t think anyone else does either. Bets are being hedged all over just as activists are pulling out all the stops. One more garden stake? One last unregistered voter found just in time. Only 8pm? I’m sure we can fit in another round of leaflet delivery. Or if not, let’s get on those phones.

There’s an energy to elections that you only find when you’re out campaigning. I love writing about politics and I love talking about politics but I equally love being a part of something. Meeting people so different from me with whom I share a common set of values and a vital common goal. As I write about politics I too live and breath it. I am my Daddy’s girl in that way. I couldn’t lose that breathless excitement if I tried – even as I understand the cynicism that overtakes too many. Both those who are privileged to report from the front row seats to our democracy and those who feel it has abandoned them.

A close election feels like a rarity. I first voted in a general election in 1997. For several election after that a Labour victory felt almost a foregone conclusion. Not – I stress  – for activists fighting for every seat,  but in everything we read in the papers and heard on the TV. The same felt true last time. The tone of the coverage and the predictions of the pollsters all predicted an outright Tory victory that wasn’t to be. Now, with the polls at neck and neck very few are willing to say with any certainty which way it will go on May 7th.

For five years we have been waiting for this moment. Waiting for the chance to change the country and it is within our grasp. That can only feel exciting no matter what side of the political fence you sit on. With so much at stake, it is no longer the pundits like myself who are the only ones obsessing about the polls, the daily messages from the Parties and the astonishing campaign marginalia the campaign is throwing up. Even I didn’t expect #Milifans and I was an original:

Some of us were in the #Milifandom before it was cool. @KatFletcher @lisaNaomi @Ms_Donovan @thedancingflea @msgracefh pic.twitter.com/UWrPhNTOQW

— Emma Burnell (@EmmaBurnell_) April 22, 2015

Sometimes in the fever of election period it is easy to think that this is what it’s all about. But winning or losing on May 7th will only be the start of the next phase. And these are the more difficult times. Governing is hard as is healing and rebuilding in opposition. There will be times when we despair. The rain will come again. But so too will the sunshine. And we have a real chance to make sure it shines on a Labour government.

When that is as tantalising true as it is today, what’s not to love about politics?