ONE message for this election year of 2015 —  the title of a classic ’80s punk single by The Newtown Neurotics, Kick Out The Tories!

Obviously it would help if Labour got some decent policies but, to use one of my favourite analogies, a bucket of sick is preferable to a swimming pool full of vomit and this bunch of abject bankers’ toadies has to go, along with their perhaps even more nauseating, two-faced Lib Dem coalition partners. 

Otherwise, we will plunge into an abyss worse than the one we were in before the creation of the welfare state. 

As for Ukip, they must be combatted head on but I don’t think it’s the right tactic under any circumstances to vote Tory to keep them out. I would rather eat a toothpaste and toenail pizza garnished with my own pubic hair than vote Tory. It is never acceptable.

And in many areas where up until recently a dead hamster would get elected if it was wearing a blue rosette — my own constituency of East Worthing & Shoreham being one – the Tory incumbent — hello, Tim Loughton — is beginning to show signs of being seriously worried about retaining his seat. 

I’m sure I’m not the first person to realise that, given our ludicrous electoral system, we on the left have a chance of using the rise of  Ukip to our advantage. The Lib Dem vote is going to collapse in many areas for obvious reasons. 

If everyone who hates the Tories and Ukip votes tactically for the most realistic left(ish) alternative — mainly Labour, obviously, but Green or perhaps Plaid Cymru in specific places —  and Ukip does anywhere near as well as some pundits are predicting, we could have the delicious spectacle of a whole swathe of “safe-seat” Tory MPs losing their seats with a 60-70 per cent right-wing vote completely split and a 30-40 per cent  progressive vote coming through the middle and getting elected.

In strictly democratic terms perhaps that wouldn’t be fair but it would be extremely funny and I shall certainly be doing my tiny bit locally to encourage this to happen.

The coming year for me sees the 35th anniversary of my first gig as Attila the Stockbroker next September 8, which will also be the publication date of my autobiography, currently standing at 90,000 words and being capped at 120,000 — there’s a lot to leave out after 57 years. 

To get it finished I am doing far fewer gigs in the first half of this year and far more in the last third once it’s out and so my next few columns will be selected extracts from it rather than contemporary tales from the road. I can promise you some stories you couldn’t make up and I think I’ll start with the time I stood in for Donny Osmond at a gig in London in 1991. Honestly. I did. So, there’s one for two weeks’ time. 

But I am of course still doing some gigs and there’s an important one next Saturday at the Union Tavern in Clerkenwell when I, along with excellent poets Janine Booth, Tim Wells and a host of others, will be doing a benefit gig for Iranian activists Shahrokh Zamani and Reza Shahabi, jailed by the Islamist dictatorship for trade union organising.

Before that I shall be cheering on the Seagulls and our longed-for Hyyp replacement, Brighton’s new manager — and former WRP News Line columnist —  Chris Hughton at the Valley in Charlton. 

Happy New Year!

attilathestockbroker.com