What Kind of Week Has It Been? 17 May 2013

This week has been dominated by various exits, whether desired, dreaded or downright dozy. Once more, the seemingly ugly head that is the monster issue of Britain's EU membership has been raised. With Cameron away in the US, the little, trouble-making kids came out to play.
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Elizabeth Mitchell is filling in for Paddy Duffy this week

This week has been dominated by various exits, whether desired, dreaded or downright dozy.

Once more, the seemingly ugly head that is the monster issue of Britain's EU membership has been raised. With Cameron away in the US, the little, trouble-making kids came out to play. Like an over-excited teenage boy in charge of the gang, Michael Gove jumped into the lime light first, clearly very eager to have his tuppence worth. How anyone can understand the spluttering of a flabby goldfish shall never quite be understood, although maybe it is similar to children who don't speak a common language being able to communicate with one another. Yet understand they did, with the bandwagon being leapt on at the speed of a disgruntled child spying a sandcastle to stomp on.

You'd have thought that the current Defence Secretary Philip Hammond would have refrained from joining in the goading, given his Department of Transport past. For the exit will doubtlessly resurface the century-long feud between Britain and France, whose final act of retaliation will involve blocking the Channel Tunnel with mouldy camembert. This fact is known by approximately 52% of British teenagers, just as is the fictional nature of Sherlock Homes.

The Lib Dems have been noticeably absent from the fray. This is not surprising: being the equivalent of the squat, ginger kid in the playground of politics, survival instincts must have finally started to kick in. On the other hand, it could simple be that Doddery Vince has attempted to steal Nasty Nick's paper crown again. Will we ever know? Unfortunately the kiddie chant replies: "Will we ever care?"

This all has, of course, given Labour a brilliant angle of attack. The gang-leader from the local comp next door, Ed Miliband, can claim for the first time ever that the Tories are a bunch of monarch-hating cowards. Slightly less excitingly, he's also been using this as the typical party-splitting jibe. This could be construed as the pot calling the kettle black with my personal favourite, the Prince of Darkness, having gone against the grain by re-emerging from his black hole to give Miliband a cheeky slap on the bottom.

Alas, these children have yet to learn their lesson: all this messing about has led to the first ever simultaneous drop in the opinion polls for the three major parties, whilst Mr Farage is somehow managing to look evermore like the cat who got at the cream. Let us just hope that these statistics come from a more reliable source than our dear Secretary for Education's.

The bickering between them all has been so loud that even the Most Important Man In The World has felt the need to get involved. Wise words (or should that be telling off?) from the Principal Obama seemed to have a slightly cooling effect on the situation. Once he'd been allowed off the naughty step of neglect, Cameron finally got his act together; offering the rebels a big bag of sweets if they held their tongues, whilst promising the others an ice cream when summer finally hits Britain...

Elsewhere, the Most Important Living Brit has finally stepped down from his throne after a 26 year reign, taking the Trophy with him. On the other side of the fence, Mancini has been sacked after Man City lost to Wigan (although the official line appears to be "poor communication"). This writer greets both of these exits with as much enthusiasm as she did the opening of the ABBA museum in Stockholm.

To top it all off, Chris Huhne and Vicky Price have been let out of prison, having spent 62 days of their 8 months sentence behind bars. Huhne described the experience as humbling, whilst simultaneously yelling at reporters to step off his front drive. The question remains of whether Huhne will quietly limp into the graveyard of disgraced MPs. Or will he manage to make it on to the ultimate adventure playground for spent politicians in as little time as his jail experience?

Elizabeth Mitchell is a Politics, Philosophy and Economics student at the University of Manchester. She writes for their student newspaper, The Mancunion.