Chaos theory

I'm Mark Lancaster, standing for the party that's headed Britain's coalition government for the past five years, and I approve this message.

The party election leaflet from our local Conservative MP recycles two of David Cameron's riskier election soundbites, 'Competence and a clear plan' versus a 'Coalition of chaos'. Probably not the best choice of words to big up the record of the biggest party in Britain's first coalition government since 1945.

It's not the only weird bit of Conservative electioneering that's been going on lately - there was that odd blip when the attacks on Ed Miliband decohered from consistent jibes about him being a spineless, ineffectual dweeb to the paradoxical hypothesis of Schrödinger's Ed, a being who exists in a state of helpless, invertebrate dorkishness whilst simultaneously being a ruthlessly efficient political assassin and major babe magnet. I guess neither version is real until an observer opens the ballot box.

John Lanchester detected a Cunning Plan behind the apparent electioneering chaos. His theory was that the strange change of taunts from "Ed the loser" to "Ed the unstoppable Terminator sexbot" was a calculated piece of positional warfare, intended to secure the Conservative right flank. Lanchester's theory was that the Conservative election machine deliberately talked Ed Miliband up as a credible threat, in order to to traumatise the lost children of the Conservative family in their adoptive Ukip home. The plan was supposedly to frighten the little mites into believing that a vote for cuddly Uncle Nigel would let Ed the scary wardrobe monster into their bedrooms and make them all come running back home to mummy:

The idea was to get Kippers imagining Ed in front of that very same Downing Street backdrop, launching a new initiative to open the country’s borders to HIV-positive transsexual terrorist Roma benefit scroungers. This might have had the side effect of making Ed a more imaginable prime minister for some centrist voters – I think it probably did, a little bit – but those aren’t the voters the Tories are after. They want the Kippers to think that a vote for Nigel is a vote for Ed, and that Ed is their worst nightmare. 

All part of a plan so cunning you could stick a tail on it and call it a weasel? Or just an unsightly tuft of random stubble in need of a quick shave with Hanlon's Razor ('Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.')? You decide.