Dissolution

You know how sometimes you intend to blog about shit and then by the time you get round to it everything's changed and you realise that, actually, you can't be arsed? Well watching the last two weeks of the LDP imploding has been like that. But with more alcohol. And less being arsed.

So. The LDP lost the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly elections two weeks ago by almost as much as I like to tell people they lost by. Which is shitloads. They no longer hold the majority, that now goes to DPJ, Tokyo Network and assorted cronies. Unfortunately hardly anyone voted for the SDP, but then that's no surprise. There are still people who don't wash their hands after they use the toilet, so I guess some people just refuse to be civilised.

Obviously Aso tried to limit the damage by telling people that the Tokyo Assembly elections weren't indicative of how the party would do in the general election because they deal with entirely different issues. Naturally, everyone knows that's horseshit. They're going to lose spectacularly in the general election. Not spectacularly because they'll lose by much, but spectacularly because they've only been out of power for nine months out of the last 54 years.

Aso needs re-inflating again.
That's not to say that they've had a solid monopoly over Japan for all of those years. Since Koizumi they've had a litany of popular failures and private disasters. The best way to imagine the LDP's situation is to picture a man falling down an up-escalator for three pathetic, bone-splitting years. Like the LDP's approval rating the man seems to be constantly falling, with all the associated pain and embarrassment, but always miraculously stays in the same place. We have to wait for him to finally hit rock-bottom to see whether he'll lie there and bleed out with the remains of his dignity or whether he'll lurch like Frankenstein's monster back to the escalator of government.

Aso has dissolved the Lower House in preparation for a general election on the 30th of August. This obviously means that there is effectively no government in Japan at the moment. Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Cos I'm pretty sure this means Japan is ripe for a coup d'etat. If we can barricade ourselves in Aso's office so we've got the Prime Minister's Throne on the 30th of August then it's legal, right? Isn't that how it works?