The pollsters are predicting a Tory wipeout, the rightwing press are doing their nut and Labour greybeards are warning us not to count our chickens. In my rational brain, I take their point: there isn’t the mood of mad enthusiasm for the next thing that you would normally associate with a great electoral shift. Besides, you should never approach any contest convinced you can’t lose. Unfortunately, when a centrist Dad tells me what attitude to adopt, I find myself constitutionally unable to fall in line, so I’m not only counting chickens all over the place, I’m playing the futures market and counting eggs. The obliteration of the Conservative government may not be a given, but it is likely enough that it’s time to start planning election night.
Run the numbers: a landslide victory for a party you don’t hate will only come along once or twice in your lifetime. It’s a grand climacteric, and OK, ancient philosophers were undecided over whether those were good or bad things, but they agreed: you can’t ignore it; don’t waste it.
In 1997, Labour were so convinced of their win that they hired the Royal Festival Hall, so they could play Things Can Only Get Better on a loop through a decent sound system and gather 2,000 of their closest friends and allies. People were desperate to get into that party, festooned as it was with ironic-Soviet banners (New Labour New Britain). A friend of mine did manage to bust himself in, only to realise after five minutes that he was not among his people. Everyone there was in love with Tony Blair. That night’s delight was layered with emotional contradiction: the joy of seeing Michael Portillo’s defeated face cut through with the rueful, trepidatious knowledge that few of the victors actually looked like the Labour party, its leader so slippery, its big beasts shorn of their beards like lefty Samsons. On London’s South Bank, only euphoria was allowed which, unless you’re feeling it, is a little bit boring.
I was in an awesome Wandsworth pub with 70s decor and the local Labour members (Fairfield ward). That was closer to an authentic mood, as everyone argued about privatisation all night, breaking off to cheer whenever a seat was called, then a sidebar of bitching about the Liberal Democrats, then back to arguing about privatisation (was Blair as idiotically starry-eyed about the private sector as he made out? Well yes, yes he was!). But they were not my compadres, even though I had babysat a fair few of their children; they were my mother’s. They were not at the same point in their life’s journey. What Michael Foot had worn for his conference speech of 1983 was still a live issue for them. They couldn’t smell on the air that the Labour party had fused with the nation and both were irrevocably changed, in a way that was incredibly deep and impossibly shallow. But the real problem was that they weren’t drunk enough. They were all in their 50s and I was 24. How would it have been possible for them to be drunk enough?
You didn’t need social media to know that you were missing out. Elsewhere, people had dazzling parties. You didn’t need to be a New Labour enthusiast, all you needed was a working knowledge of Billy Bragg lyrics, which are not that hard, and a powerful lust for life. My friend had inscribed fireworks with the names of Tory MPs, and the skies exploded with colour to cries of “screw you, David Mellor”. At some point, she ran out of fireworks; she couldn’t believe it. She’d done so many.
The puzzling thing about that election was that it fell the Thursday before the May bank holiday, giving the nation a long weekend, that was drenched in sunshine, shimmering with possibility. Sure, John Major can’t have known the weather when he called it, but he must have known the rest; was it a gift from him? Because he knew he was going to lose and how happy everyone would be?
So remain cautious if you like, it’s not over until it’s over; but also, make a plan. If you don’t see this election in with your true political brethren, you will kick yourself for ever.
• Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
