Kevin Myers on the Nature of Most Politicians re.The British Election or any Race in Illinois

Roland Burris: "Well, ain't you gonna press the flesh, Pappy? Do a little politickin'?"

Dithering Dick Durbin: "I'll press your flesh, you dimwhitted sumbitch. You don't tell your pappy how to court the electorate. We ain't on-at-a-timin' here. We're mass communicatin'!"

Harry Reid "MmmmmmHmmmm."

Irish Independent's Kevin Myers on the British Cluster Cluck!

The three main contenders are personally no more substantial than fifth-formers at a third-rate public school, and with brains to match

The British general election campaign, now breathing its last, has been about as fascinating as a local government contest in Oslo. Even now, I'm unaware of any real difference between the candidates, and assume their promises are as genuine as a whore's orgasm. What's left, after such tissues of persiflage and deceit? Not much.

Outsiders glimpse voting statistics, but they do not know why people vote, not least because voters themselves probably don't. Electorates are like luminous molecules in a stream. The molecules usually don't understand the dynamics of the surrounding liquids, but merely obey the strange compulsions of mass-movement.

This is true of all electorates, everywhere. . . .No result today, thank God, is likely to be part of such a comparably malevolent cycle. For the three main contenders are personally no more substantial than fifth-formers at a third-rate public school, and with brains to match.

Brown is an obsessive control-freak, a scowling, bullying stamp-collector. Clegg is the annoying, smirking twerp who sits at the top of the class, hogging teacher's attention. And Cameron is the first trans- sexual head-boy, an insincere, sermonising and simpering hermaphrodite.

Who will win? And who cares? After all, politics is perhaps best left to the mediocre charlatans whom it usually attracts.