Ed Miliband signs up to the Big Society

Well, bugger my toe. Mr Bean has only gone and hitched Labour's wagon to David "Forehead" Cameron's Big Society, talking about people helping each other out and taking responsibility for their own lives.

Cue much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments from the left on Twatter as their darling "left-wing" leader showed that he sees which way the electoral wind is blowing and needs to say all sorts of foetid shit to sound electable. Of course, we all know that he'll just piss our money away in the same old, same old Labour way if he ever does come to power, but what a shock to all the huddled bludging masses!

And yet, and yet ... so much of the speech is just load of empty, meaningless soundbites, if it was presented in an episode of The Thick Of It, our toes would all be curling in gleeful embarrassment.

A dollop of meaningless platitude, a healthy shot of socialist democracy, a long list of vacuous cries for someone other than a politician to have some responsibility, wrapped up in a bow of unsubstantiated claims that the other side have nothing to offer.

I tried, I really did try to read it. But I'd get about three paragraphs in and my eyes would glaze over and I'd start thinking about Marmite, or cake, or whether it was time to get a haircut. For someone who claims to disagree with Blair, he certainly uses the same bloodless waffle, even if he can't deliver it as well.

Political discourse in this country is truly fucked. There is no polite way to say it.

Nobody argues for anything any more. Nobody will challenge the orthodoxy. Every speech requires hours of analysis and repositioning because nobody will come out and say what they mean. The speech is delivered with a couple of vague hooks. Spin doctors then look at how the media and the public react and then spin furiously in agreement or denial, depending on whether the response is positive or not.

Nobody dares to actually say anything, lest the Mail or the Graun or Rupert disagrees.

So we have this tepid, anodyne, hair-splitting bullshit instead. And then politicians moan about the lack of "democratic engagement". Hint: how about you fuckers give us something to engage with? Honestly, if you take out Ed's half-arsed "attack" on the Big Society, is there anything in his speech that would sound odd if it were delivered by Cameron or Clegg?

There is no political interest because none of the parties are offering anything dramatically different. The electorate may be stupid, but it's not that stupid that it thinks these people are offering anything different from each other. The coalition government actually shows that the electorate could see that Cameron wasn't offering anything better than Labour was, but that people were just sick of Labour's hectoring politicians. That's why there was such a low turnout and why there was no clear winner.

And I've said over and over that to a libertarian, there is no difference between a social democrat Tory party, a social democrat LibDem party and a social democrat Labour party. The fact that Ed Milipede can spout something indistinguishable from Big Society while rubbishing Big Society just shows that just like Tories can nick Labour policies with impunity, Labour can do the reverse equally easily.

They are all the same.

And we are all fucked.