Catching up...

I've just arrived back from two weeks out of the country, and quite literally the only fragment of information I've had about UK politics over that period was the tantalisingly brief sight of a headline in a British newspaper reading "Shock poll gives Ed Miliband the lead".  Having finally caught up with the figures, my gut feeling is still that David Miliband will win (on name recognition as much as anything), but could there just be a glimmer of hope that Labour is finally ready to move on from Blairism and rediscover a little of its soul?

The other snippet of news I heard overnight was the outcome of the Swedish election.  It's a supreme irony that the success of the far-right could move the administration to the left by forcing Fredrik Reinfeldt to include the Greens or the Social Democrats in his governing coalition, but of course almost the exact reverse has happened in Germany's recent past - in 2005 the left won a natural majority, but the unwillingness of the Social Democrats to work with the ex-communists necessitated a grand coalition of right and left.  I suppose some will predictably leap on results like this as an argument against PR, but the solution to extremist politics can never be to rig the ballot system - it has to be to defeat the arguments, such as they are.

One man's 'reform'...

It was rather satisfying watching Newsnight Scotland tonight, with Lorraine Davidson and Michael Fry (both of whom I'd disagree with on many issues) doing a grand job of exposing the utterly bogus arguments that underlie this whole 'Devolution Distraction' wheeze. Tom Miers repeatedly assured us that his report was not a right-wing Trojan Horse, but was merely about making the case for 'reform', 'progress', and 'radicalism' in place of the 'conservatism' that has held sway in Scotland since devolution. But when Davidson presented him with a whole list of Holyrood's most radical innovations over the last eleven years - the smoking ban, free care for the elderly, abolition of tuition fees - all he had to offer was a blank look. The game was well and truly given away - for Miers, only right-wing radicalism counts as the real thing, and as Davidson pointed out, the value of self-government lies every bit as much in protecting ourselves from the 'reforms' we don't want as in implementing the ones we do.

One thing that has particularly irritated me about Miers' blitz of publicity in recent days is the way in which he's used smoke-and-mirror tactics to try to paint the reforms he's most interested in pursuing as non-ideological. He points out, for instance, that many of them originate in "social democratic countries". But what does that actually mean? I'm not aware of any country in western Europe that enshrines 'social democracy' in its constitution - except perhaps Portugal, but even there it's a meaningless token. Miers, I imagine, is to a large extent thinking of examples like the Swedish free schools model, which Michael Gove is now so zealously promoting in England. And, yes, Sweden does indeed have a reputation as being generally a social democratic country. Just one snag, though - free schools were in fact introduced during one of the rare periods of right-wing rule, and the leader of the Social Democrats Mona Sahlin has warned us in strong terms about the dangers of establishing them in this country.

Ah ah ah I, I knew I was right

Except in the case of Andorra, who in spite of me wishing as hard as I could failed to make it through. Quite simply, the live performance didn't match the quality of the song (almost the exact reverse could be said of Malta). I also seem to have had something of a blind spot with Sweden, which most people were expecting would qualify but I thought would fall short. Probably it was distinctiveness that won the day there. But the qualifier that completely flabbergasted me was Finland - the song is OK but the performance was as uninspiring as in the rehearsals. It can't be put down to political voting so it will remain a mystery (unless it transpires it was the song saved by the juries). So in the end I only correctly predicted seven out of the ten qualifiers, although in my defence I did say that Israel were the next most likely qualifiers (on the subject of which, what has Mira Awad done with her hair?).

I said last night I would be voting for Bosnia, unless there was some sort of revelation in the live performances. As it turned out, there was a revelation, and ironically it came from a song I already rated highly - Portugal. As much as I loved the song, I couldn't imagine it translating well to the Eurovision stage, but I couldn't have been more wrong. So, for the second year in a row, I voted for Portugal!

Thoughts on the show itself - well, I'm not sure 'magic buttons' are really much of an improvement on envelopes. It's still not too late for a drastic rethink before Thursday night, though. How about a 'magic tree', from which a 'magic apple' falls off every time you give it a good shake. And then the apple 'magically' splits open to reveal the name of a qualifier for the final. No? Oh well, just a thought.

Prediction for Eurovision final (Saturday)

There's an episode of the 1980s sitcom Just Good Friends where Jan Francis' character repeatedly tells Paul Nicholas there's "something missing" in their relationship without specifying what, which eventually results in an exasperated Nicholas screaming "WHAT IS THIS THING?". I felt a bit like that today when trying to make sense of the reports of Jelena Tomašević's performance in the final round of rehearsals. The most frequent comment was that she was in good voice, but that there was "something" missing. WHAT IS THIS THING?

Even leaving aside this missing thing that everyone seems utterly incapable of articulating (maybe Andy Abraham's nightmare vision has already come to pass), I was always a bit sceptical that Serbia could quite pull it off. In my view, it's definitely the class song of the field, but then I thought the same about Serbia & Montenegro in 2004 (they came second) and Bosnia-Herzegovina in 2006 (they came third). So my prediction for Serbia is top three, but without any embarrassing need for Zeljko Joksimovic to present the trophy to himself. ("Great song, Zelkjo." "Thanks, Zeljko, you did a great job presenting too. And I love what you've done with your hair.")

But if not Serbia, then who? The bookies seem to agree (although they've been spectacularly wrong before) that the only other countries in serious contention are Russia, Ukraine, Greece, Sweden, and possibly Armenia. Personally, I just can't see Sweden winning - Hero is slightly higher quality than their usual fare, but it's still sticking to the same basic formula that frequently delivers them fifth or sixth place but no higher. I think Greece and Armenia will similarly come up short, so that leaves a battle between Ukraine and Russia. If that's the case, I feel Russia might just sneak it, if only because it cunningly draws the ice skating and violin-loving demographic into the pool of potential televoters (I'm being flippant).

So my prediction is :

Winners - Russia
2nd - Ukraine
3rd - Serbia

Potential dark horses :

Portugal
Norway (aka 'clearly the worst song in the contest', © Keith Mills 2008)

Mr Mills' musings also lead me to have an even greater interest in the fate of the UK this year. He confidently stated at a ridiculously early stage (when many songs had yet to even be selected) that Andy Abraham was 'certain' to finish in the bottom five, and was highly likely to finish last. I responded that I felt he could achieve the UK's best result since Jessica Garlick, which would mean a top fifteen placing. Unfortunately, I made that prediction before the UK received its lousy place in the draw, so I'm less confident than I was, but to be honest I'd settle for top twenty - since that would be sufficient to show up Mr Mills' "certainty" for the closed-minded nonsense it always was. Here's hoping.