And they're off!

And they're off! The British election phony war is finally over, and the metaphorical tanks have begun rolling through the Ardennes. We Brits are in for four weeks of wall-to-wall politics, until we're all completely sick of it by May 5th.

While I'm not really much of a political pundit, here are a few of my predictions as to what we might see over the coming weeks:

• It's going to be the dirtiest and most negative election campaign in British history, as both Labour and the Tories try to fight the election the Karl Rove way. The turnout may well be the lowest in history, as a direct result of this.
• There will be disputed results due to alleged abuse of postal ballots, accompanied by much gloating from the Americans who deservedly took so much stick about Florida. Expect at least one resulting by-election where the number of dubious ballots exceeds the winning majority.
• At least in England, it will be a three-party election, which means the assorted would-be fourth parties such as the Robert 'Ronseal' Kilroy-Silk's xenophobic Vanitas and George 'I Love Saddam' Galloway's Stalinist-Islamist unholy alliance Respect will fail to get a significant vote anywhere.
• Since I live in the most marginal constituency in the entire country, I won't be able to move for bloody election workers for the next four weeks.
• The most exciting moment of the whole campaign probably won't be the deputy Prime Minister getting into a brawl with a guy with a mullet.
• Transport won't become an election issue. Both Labour and the Tories have reason to keep quiet about their past record. Who was it who gave us the quite literal trainwreck of railway privatisation, and who else has spent eight years doing nothing whatsoever to repair the damage?
• The influence of the Blogosphere will be over-hyped, and exaggerated. The influence of Rupert Murdoch will not.
• Regardless of all the above, Labour are still going to win.
• At least one of the above predictions will turn out to be wrong.

This post also appears on Blogcritics. I've chosen that Amazon link there for a reason....