Cameron the small stater.

I'm not quite sure why David Cameron has suddenly started talking seriously about the excessive size of the British state, giving power back to the people and holding a bonfire of Labour legislation, but it's about time. In fact it's actually well past time in my case since overseas voters need to allow time to get postal ballots back or to talk to their proxies. This can be useful if you're an unpopular Prime Minister who might want to reduce a possible protest vote against you from a section of the electorate that you've treated particularly badly, but if you're the leader of the opposition it's counter productive to wait until after people have made their decisions to tell them something that might make them vote for you. To be honest Cameron's sudden interest in these things wouldn't have tempted me into voting Tory even if he'd been going on about it since the day the election was finally called. He's been leader of the Conservatives since December 2005 and unlike Douglas Carswell and Daniel Hannan, who really have been making these noises for some time, he's not said almost nothing about it before as far as I can recall. Four and a half years of silence on these issues followed by a sudden Damascene conversion less than a week before polling day? That might be why I have a hard time believing him.

For the record I asked my proxy to spoil the ballot paper. Having voted in every election since 1992, the year I was first eligible, and having gone to the effort of keeping my vote when I migrated this should say a lot about what I thought of the choices on offer.