Acknowledgements

With special acknowledgement to all those who provided the images.

No copyright infringement intended.
Much love to my wife, Angela without whom any of this would be
possible.
Mike Davies 16th May, 2015
http://renegadepoet.wordpress.com
http://www.scribd.com/renegadepoet

Introduction

Future historians may look back on the 2015 UK general election and
interpret it as a pivotal moment in recent history. Never before had an
election been fought beneath a backdrop of such rising inequality, savage
welfare cuts, industrial strength austerity and widespread public antipathy
towards politicians of all shades and stripes. Britain, with its bespoke
traditions of tolerance, innovation, democracy and free and fair elections
had been governed since 2010 by a coalition of Conservative and Liberal
Democrats oozing with some of the most suavely debonair examples of
elite social privilege, expensive education and rabid career idealogues
not seen in government since the heyday of Margaret Thatcher.
Ever since the banking crisis of 2008 Britain had become a nation of
ubiquitous pound stores, minimum wage macjobs, and a drone army of
compliant cogwheels caught in a creaking economic machine. The
onslaught of global recession, massive banking fraud, job insecurity and
widescale redundancies had been further exacerbated by the coalition's
commitment to deep economic cuts in key public services. Blind austerity
had produced a bewildered population of downtrodden, overworked,
celebrity obsessed, smart phone worshipping wage slaves all fretting
about the cost of living, property prices, rising energy bills and a daily
news diet of manipulated wars, manufactured terrorism, and the repetitive
fear of incurable global pandemics. The world had been captured by a
faceless cabal of corporate fear mongers and number crunching politicians
all speaking in the same cold bloodless discourse of the technocrat and the
bean counter.
So it was in this atmosphere we approached the election that nobody could
call. Every opinion poll and professional commentator agreed that the two
main political parties were running neck and neck with just a few points
between them. In Scotland there were strong forecasts of a rout in favour
of the Scottish National party who were repudiating the old establishment
London-centric politics of the status quo and were gaining new ground
with their anti-austerity message. Similarly, in England the rise of UKIP
warning against an open door policy of immigration, the eroding of more

of Britain's powers to the European union and the slow inexorable loss of
its national identity and traditional values seemed to have taken both
sides of the political divide by surprise.
It was clear that Britain's political landscape had changed beyond all
recognition and each minority party was attempting to identify with a
movement or embed itself into one of the new fissures that had formed out
of the old existing fault lines. Even the old way of fighting an election was
changing with the adoption of US style televised leaders' debates, the
growing impact and immediacy of social media and the sanitisation of
stage managed appearances without the inclusion of any ordinary voters. If
it was indeed uncertain who would win this election by an outright
majority, one thing could be safely assumed: This had all the makings of
becoming one of the most intriguingly fascinating election campaigns of
the modern era.
Britain's Westminster insider political system was screaming out for new
voices, fresh ideas, greater sincerity, even some good old fashioned
laughter. Politicians were increasingly being viewed as elitist, arrogant,
self serving and hopelessly out of touch. Successive scandals had
portrayed them as dishonest and institutionally corrupt. Tony Blair had
rode into power in 1997 on a massive wave of public optimism, but by the
time he had left office he was perceived as someone who had lied not only
to parliament but to the whole nation in order to take Britain into a
senseless war. Our political caste had been reduced to a core of slick,
opportunistic salesmen working hand in glove with big business and high
finance, interested only in their own self image and talking in the repetitive
and monotonous tones of a robotic android.
And so in light of this I was beginning to dread the onset of a six week
long election campaign with its saturation coverage from a biased, mainly
right leaning press and a sychophantic, establishment supporting corporate
funded media. But this is when I had my eureka moment. As a poet I had
long admired the pithy craft of the political propagandist and sloganeer.
Maurice Saatchi had even once famously compared the political
advertisement with poetry, not because of its powerful use of metaphor or
vivid imagery but because of its solid capacity for precision, conciseness,
clarity and the immediate and penetrating impact it so often produces in
the mind of the reader. These were the exact same principles my old

creative writing tutor, John Singleton had instilled in me - and here they
were being applied by an elite class of professional spin-doctors, campaign
strategists, speech writers and advertisement executives - with the sole
objective of influencing the outcome of a general election.
Wow, I thought. What if I could employ the skills that I had honed in
recent years as a writer who specialised in combining words with
borrowed and appropriated imagery found on the internet. My mind
quickened with excitement. To create an art of reality. One reflecting the
vital moment, forged in the fire of a political election. It was an idea too
good to ignore.
My approach was simple to work on a series of posters commencing 1
April until voting day on 7 May. A typical morning would see me rise at
7am, take a run through all the mainstream newspapers on the internet,
then dip into a few of my favoured alternative news websites before
settling down to the first poster of the day. I would then continue like this
until sleep, which would often take me up to three or four in the morning. I
had set myself a target of around sixty posters, an average of twelve per
week over the election campaign period. This was virgin ground to me. I
had never before attempted anything remotely like this, so I figured sixty
to be a good enough number to aim for. The prospect felt daunting but also
exciting and compelling and so I gradually settled into a regular working
pattern which felt disciplined but not too rigid.
Throughout the election I felt energised and vital. I was on a massive
learning curve. At first I had to digest and absorb a lot of information just
to get a broad grasp of the situation. An election campaign can be very
dynamic and fluid, unpredictable even; and so I had to improvise,
sometimes prioritising or rejecting work I had previously started in order
to capture an electrifying moment or incident that may have spontaneously
emerged on the campaign trail. In between I was feverishly trawling the
web capturing official and alternative political advertisements, organising
my thoughts around specific themes and delving into a lifetime of cultural
influences such as old book and record covers, postcards, tv commercials,
modern art, magazines, comics, film posters and public information
footage.
Running throughout the whole of this were the two cardinal rules I gave

myself from the outset. The first was to have some fun because that would
provide a healthy overrall perspective and help to keep me grounded; and
the second was to remain neutral and not favour one party over another.
This was to be an effort in artistic expression not an exercise in electoral
interference or an attempt to subvert the democratic process. My role was
to be that of the impartial observer peering through a kaleidoscope and
reflecting on the swirling whirlwind of events as they naturally occurred
and were drawn into focus.
Once I had gained a firm grasp of the subject matter and working material
and acquired greater confidence in my technical ability, the ideas and
inspiration began to flow like an electric charge. My initial target of sixty
posters was increased to eighty and then further adjusted to a hundred. The
pace was relentless and frenetic. Each party leader had somewhere new to
visit each day, news channels were operating at full warp speed and
Twitter had become the activist's favourite weapon of choice. All the
candidates were busy garnering support telephoning and calling on
undecided voters, and an avalanche of election literature was dropping
through my letterbox on a daily basis. Ed Miliband almost tripped in a live
TV debate and David Cameron forgot which football team he supported.
The pressure was beginning to build as the huge campaigning leviathon
neared its final shuddering climax.
At 9.30pm on the evening of 7 May, 2015 and exactly thirty minutes
before the closing deadline I completed my last poster, number 115. It was
an exhilarating feeling.
Once or twice over the course of the long campaign it felt as if I had
tapped into the raw energetic fluid that fed and sustained the huge roaring
election vehicle itself. I was playing with reality, and in so doing was
growing a little more each day with a creative power all of my own. The
experience had stretched me to the outer limits of my creative abilities. By
responding to real events in real time, the work produced seemed to be
imprinted with the immediacy of the present moment. The whole process
had more in common with alchemy than with any conventional artistic
pursuit. I had taken something as mechanical and mundane as a
parliamentary election with its rigid timetables and schedules, scripted
soundbites, contrived photo opportunities and endless propaganda; and
distilled some of it down to just a few words, a simple phrase or single

image and produced something that was alive, vital, creative, humorous,
that perhaps even made people look and think differently. And that I
believed is what made the experience so powerful, so enticing and so
breathtakingly beautiful.
The following are the fruits of this exercise presented in the order in which
they originally occurred.
Mike Davies 16 May, 2015

For Arran.

Democracy

Salesmen

001

Reality Check

002

Puppet Master

003

The Cost Of Influence

004

Masks

005

Fracked

006

Homes For Heroes

007

Milidroid

008

Lord Snooty

009

Master Butcher

010

Spare Us The Cutter

011

Business As Usual

012

Banksters

013

The Trouble With Nigel

014

Mad Men

015

Village Idiots

016

Taking The Piss

017

Up Yours

018

Robots

019

Land Of Opportunity

020

Gagged

021

Crushed

022

The Naked Truth

023

The Cult Of Nigel

024

Autocue Fail

025

All You Need Is Love

026

Get The Westminster Look

027

Madhouse

028

Village Of The Damned

029

Wild Thing

030

Community Payback

031

Rise Of The Technocrats

032

Where's Iain?

033

The Class Of '87

034

One Cut Too Many

035

In Plain Sight

036

Tories

037

Mad Prophet

038

Socialists

039

Keep Britain Tidy

040

Westminster Insiders

041

Bleeding To Death

042

Mesmerising

043

Past Their Sell By Date

044

Look Into My Eyes

045

Space Hoppers

046

The Force Awakens

047

Nope

048

Time For An Upgrade

049

Me And My Big Mouth

050

Photo Finish

051

Brave New World

052

Ghosts

053

Hammered

054

Love Story

055

Acid Test

056

Fight Club

057

Groove Is In The Heart

058

Ghostbusters

059

Rock Star

060

Broken Britain

061

Promises

062

The Old Etonian

063

Locked Out

064

Subliminal

065

Zero Hours

066

Overkill

067

Class Warrior I

068

Class Warrior II

069

Wanted For Treason

070

Compassion

071

Ballot Box

072

Above The Law

073

Contract

074

The View From The Shard

075

Over The Hills And Far Away

076

The Crazy Gang

077

Yesterday's Men

078

Wish You Were Here

079

Megamouth

080

Thatcher's Children

081

Metropolis

082

Crazy George

083

Night Terror

084

Technocrats

085

Layabouts

086

Double Header

087

Classic Tale

088

Red Tory

089

Back To The Future

090

Nigel's Army

091

Branded

092

Mothership

093

Mummy's Boy

094

Oh, George

095

London Calling

096

Viva Austerity

097

Won't Get Fooled Again

098

No Love In Their Hearts

099

Just Like That

100

Distracted

101

Bought And Paid For

102

Two Faced

103

Bloodsucker

104

Big Nigel

105

Born To Rule

106

Fraud

107

Slackers

108

Scum

109

Sealed With A Kiss

110

Watching Over Us

111

Endgame

112

Errand Boy

113

Democracy

114

Mosaic

115