General Election in Luschia

With the tumultuous political turmoil of April and May superseded by 'Helenian' grace and authority, a General Election has been called in Luschia for Tuesday 10 June 2008. It will be a titantic clash of two political colossi, Dame Helena Bonham Carter and Liberal leader Emmanuelle Béart, with several high-ranking Tory ministers angling as well for the top job. The current party in opposition to the Tory-Liberal Coalition, meanwhile, the Federalist-Republican Party, is dangerously lagging in polls despite the strong leadership of Lord Somerville and the vocal support of such celebrities as Sir John Ross and Fia Marrow.


Lady President Bonham Carter with campaigners in Brada yesterday


Liberal Interior Minister Geoffrey Rush, suspected of being poised to stage a party takeover


Chancellor Amy Adams, tipped to be the Tory party Leadership challenger

HOw is this progressing. THe newspapers, especially the Ducaliantian Telegraph demand to know. WHo has been elected?

There has been a fascinating twist in the heated build-up to the Luschian General Election (in which, if you were wondering, the party with the majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate added together wins government, like a combination of the British and USA systems). At 23:30 last night, Geoffrey Rush was driven to the King Umberto Hospital in Grundia D.C. to visit the Liberal Party Chairman, Kelsey Grammer Viscount Frasier, who recently suffered a mild heartattack.

There, undercover reporters disguised as salmonella confirmed that Mr Rush informed Lord Frasier that he would support him in a surprise leadership bid. This was followed up when, at 5:43, editors of The Grundian Chronicle discussing whether to run the article received a telephone call to the effect that Liberals in the Senate had suddenly staged a coup en masse. The Liberal Leader, Emmanuelle Béart, dashed to the Senate where her Senatorial party members conducted a nail-biting forty-minute vote; of the twenty-seven Liberal senators (there are seventy-four in the senate, representing the thirty-seven Luschian states) twenty-two voted for Lord Frasier. Mr Rush accepted the votes by proxy, before taking the vote to the House of Representatives. Here, the five hundred and two seat house was filtered down to the one hundred and seventy-three Liberals - their voting was more spread, but Lord Frasier still claimed the majority with one hundred and eight votes. The House of Lords, with its ninety-four Liberals of a total three hundred and eighteen peers, was last (and least crucial) to vote. Fifty voted Lord Frasier, and forty-three Béart (Frasier was, of course, absent).

"These votes were so overwhelmingly decisive that a second ballot was unnecessary," said Marion Cotillard, putatively the new Party Chairwoman at 9:10. Mlle Béart has since departed Grundia D.C. for her home state, Manon, where she is consoling herself with champagne and French arthouse films.

The Conservatives, meanwhile, have now split into three factions - the Bonhamites, Adamsians and the Centre-Rights, the last under the leadership of Minister for International Development Jennifer Jason Leigh. As such, the General Election has been moved forwards to 15 July, while the three leadership hopefuls begin their primary campaigns tomorrow.

"Dame Bonham Carter, Miss Adams and Miss Leigh will campaign across Luschia for two weeks," explained Tory Party Chairman Hugh Jackman this morning, "then, the state delegates will elect them at the Conservative Monarchist National Convention on 20 June. The convention is expected to be chaired this year by Homeland Security Minister Andy Garcia."


Sir Kelsey Grammer, Viscount Frasier, the presumptive Leader of the Liberal Democratic Socialist Labour Party, whose election must be ratified at the Liberal National Convention, 19 June


International Development Minister Jennifer Jason Leigh, the newest candidate for Tory leadership

Although my support is currently still behind Miss Adams there are rumblings of Liberalism now a more favorable leader has been elected of their party.

Recent polls in Luschia have placed the Conservative Monarchist Party four percent ahead of the Liberal Democratic Socialist Labour Party in polls, with the Federalist-Republican Party lagging eleven percent behind the Tories. The Tory leadership race, however, is shaping up to be the most heated and interesting of recent years, as the three candidates engage in ever-increasingly vitriolic finger-pointing. A rally for International Development Minister Jennifer Jason Leigh saw Lady President Bonham Carter, incumbent party leader, accused of being a "neo-patricianist chameleon in Chanel".

Intriguingly, however, Chancellor of the Exchequer Amy Adams has begun to pull ahead of her rivals at last. The youthful redhead, often lambasted for harsh taxation policy and (paradoxically) upper class elitism, today received the vociferous surprise backing of Treasury Minister Gwyneth Paltrow and Deputy Prime Minister Annette Bening. Seen as a great coup for Adams, given that she and Paltrow have been at loggerheads frequently in May and June, this could well tip the balance against Lady President Bonham Carter, beneath whose feet the uneasy coalition of One-Nation patriarchs and "new" Liberal Conservatives is beginning to fracture. Should Adams's campaign maintain its current impetus to the detriment of Bonham Carter, then it seems highly likely that the National Convention will be a battle between the chancellor of the exchequer and Jennifer Jason Leigh.


Treasury Minister Paltrow at a production of Don Giovanni in Grundia D.C. shortly after affirming her support of Chancellor Adams, with Tory Deputy Defence Minister Jack Davenport (left) and House of Representatives Chief Whip Sir Matt Damon (right)


Chancellor Adams attends the fifth night of the Launnes Film Festival yesterday evening - rumours suggest that Liberals Audrey Tautou and Stephen Rea are planning to defect should Lord Frasier remain Liberal Leader

While Lady President Bonham Carter campaigned strenuously for the Compassionate Society today, while Jennifer Jason Leigh held portentous meetings with representatives from the National Union of Manufacturing Workers, and while Sir Kelsey Grammer Viscount Frasier conducted an visceral televised debate with Federalist-Republican Leader Lord Somerville, Chancellor of the Exchequer Amy Adams was enjoying a huge open air reception in her home city, Calico (Sacramentia, western Luschia).

The increasingly populist campaigner has now, it seems, alienated her party's Centre-Right members, and is becoming more and more a champion of the Liberal Wing of the Conservative Party. Many reports indicate that Adams is set to lose the support of Centrist minister Michael Gambon, with Treasury Minister Gwyneth Paltrow also tempted back to the Bonhamite flock by incentives of high rank and hefty portfolio. It remains to be seen whether the demagogic tactics of Adams, highly popular with states such as Tenax and New Patagonia, can compete in the long run with the quiet lucidity of Jason Leigh and the effervescent electioneering of Bonham Carter. Certainly, other campaigns akin to Adams's (such as that of Sir Humphrey Bogart in 1951, or of Ava Gardner in 1957) have lost their impetus as time wears on, and as the great, well-oiled One-Nation machine grinds inexorably to the National Convention.


Chancellor Adams campaigns vibrantly in Calico


Agriculture Minister Bill Nighy, who recently led a House of Representatives-based plea for Adams to halt her "populist war cries"

The vitriolic and vehement race for leadership of the Monarchist Conservative Party (colloquially the Tories), and thus for the Lord Presidency until the Luschian General Election, has ended. Yesterday, at the Conservative Convention, the state delegates engaged in what Defence Minister Page has called "the most brutal and, quite frankly, most hard-nosed primary campaign since 1954". Ultimately, however, the Tory establishment won out, and Dame Helena Bonham Carter cruised to a victory twenty-three House electors; four Senate electors; and sixteen Lords electors clear of the runner-up, International Development Minister Jennifer Jason Leigh.

Rumours, emanating allegedly from the "cronyist and corrupt" office of the "venal" Prime Minister Lady Ditzyton, indicate that, in the hour running up to the Convention voting, Homeland Security Minister Andy Garcia (the Convention chair this year) was persuaded by prominent Bonhamites to switch his support from Miss Jason Leigh to the incumbent lady president. Equally significantly, meanwhile, and despite her strong Southern and Mid-West powerbase, Chancellor of the Exchequer Amy Adams suffered in her bid from the eleventh hour defection to Jason Leigh of David Hyde Pierce, Earl of Niles. It remains to be seen how Dame Bonham Carter will stand up to Liberal leader Lord Frasier in the General Election on 12 July 2008.


Regal Resurgent: Dame Bonham Carter clinched the Tory leadership decisively last night


Pecuniary Princess: Amy Adams left the Convention last night with high hopes for her upcoming Budget Speech in the Senate despite having her leadership ambitions battered by the establishment bigwigs

We fully congratulate the honoured lady president on her deserved victory, and retain high hopes for her party's future!


MESSAGE FROM THE BOARD OF CONTROL: THIS THREAD HAS NOW BEEN LOCKED AND ANOTHER WILL BE OPENED WHEN THE ACTUAL GENERAL ELECTION TAKES PLACE.