Initial Election Thoughts

It's the day after the night before, and some of the results have not yet came in. It's looking like the people of the UK have rejected a Labour party under Gordon Brown, but have not been swayed sufficiently by the Conservatives Under David Cameron. They also seem to have had cold feet for the Liberal Democrats under Nick Clegg at the moment of truth; ie the marking of the X on the ballot paper.

Both Labour and the Conservatives have shown us overnight that they still play old fashioned politics in how they've been blitzing the media trying to tell us the conclusion they'd like us to believe. From the Labour camp they'd have us believe that Labour still have a moral right for Gordon Brown to continue as PM, despite not having the majority of seats or votes, while the Conservatives would have us believe that 1+1=3 in that Labour didn't win a majority, therefore the Conservatives have the moral right to lead. Sorry Dave, they didn't endorse you enough for that claim either.

The SNP didn't do as well as they'd hoped, they're already trying to get the "it's because we were excluded from the Leadership debates" accepted as the reason why. I believe both the SNP and Plaid Cymru should have been included in the leadership debates in Scotland and Wales respectively, both are major parties and should have had their voices. The fact that they were excluded does not account for why they lost votes although it probably had some part to play in it.

The reactions of some of the MPs who either retained their seats, or lost them was telling too.

Charles Clarke (Labour) put a £10 bet on "you" to win and was proudly displaying it throughout the day, only to lose by a small number. Never mind, I'm sure there'll be a £10 "expenses" claim for something like "office supplies" on Monday morning. He apparently became more and more moody as the count went on, culminating in not giving press interviews at the end, then leaving the polling station in a huff. So, a sore loser then.

Ed Balls (Labour) retained his seat despite a strong charge by the Conservatives, and was as magnanimous as you'd expect. It was a gloating, arrogant, in-your-face speech talking of how the Conservatives can't buy his constituency etc. The funny thing was, it started off sane, with kind words to his fellow candidates, before he lost it. You could put that down to a long night and a sense of relief that he still had an expense account to claim on.

Nick Clegg (Liberal Democrats) retained his seat by a decent majority, although none of the parties would risk their leader in a close seat so this wasn't really a surprise. He seemed very humble in pointing out that the Liberal Democrats had not performed nearly as well as they'd hoped, as much as this was self evident, it's refreshing to hear any politician from that party state it flat out, specially before the counting has finished. He also drew attention to the fact that some people had not been able to vote. He did this without making any cheap shot reference to "those were all Liberal Democrats" as I suspect most others would have done to try and get some damage limitation in. I've grown to respect Nick Clegg a lot more as this campaign has evolved for little things like that.

There have been issues this election about people not being allowed to vote, because their polling station had run out of ballot papers or the 10pm cut off point had kicked in. I suspect there will be legal challenges in the following weeks and months over this, and the Leadership debates excluding major party leaders in their countries. I doubt either will amount to much in the courts, but they will have ripple effects.

The people who couldn't vote this time round will be even more determined to vote next time. The SNP and Plaid Cymru would have picked up a sympathy vote from people who agree that "how dare the National / London based media only allow the National / London party leaders the podium, we have our own parliament / assembly too."

This election has shown one thing however, the system is flawed. At last it's not just the fringe parties who have been banging on for decades about this and getting nowhere. Gordon Brown had a deathbed conversion to some sort of fairer system, albeit it came at a desperate time where he needed every vote he could get and saying he wanted something fairer was all about shmoozing Nick Clegg with the ultimate goal of staying PM, despite the public vote. The one party who still don't see the need for electoral change is the Conservatives; so much for "Vote For Change" huh?

The fact that the running of each polling station is down to Returning Officers on the ground is something that will need to be addressed too. The result may be that some body will take charge of that for the future. In classic fashion "lessons that need to be learned, will be learned, oh and by the way, we're not to blame for anything, now go away and leave us alone".

As for me? My outlook in life is kinda in-between Labour and the Liberal Democrats in general although I don't ever vote in a tribal way. The fact that Tony Blair is still a member of the Labour party, and not in the Hague facing a war crimes trial is enough to prevent me from even considering voting Labour. The Liberal Democrats in the last election answered every question about every subject with "we don't believe in independence for Scotland and we wouldn't vote for a referendum". Note that despite having a head start in the polls, and having the other major parties all fighting the same way, they refuse to even allow the people of Scotland to choose for themselves, just in case they can't win the fight. This time round they've seemed more electable and varied.

An obvious sign, one of many, that the system is flawed, is that a few 100,000 people in marginals can decide a country wide election. The people living in those constituencies get hounded left right and centre by all the parties, while everyone else is all but ignored. I live in an area that's largely ignored. Since 1997 I've had 1 politician knock my door to ask my opinion, that's right ONE. It was the 2004 election, the party was SNP. I've not seen anyone from any party in the street asking people opinions.

This election I wasn't totally convinced by the Liberal Democrats, and will never vote Labour while a (in my eyes) war criminal is a party member. I am open to giving the SNP a chance to see what they can do for the people. They won a narrow victory in the last election and got my vote in the process mainly down to being the only party running a positive campaign. They also ran a negative campaign side by side, but the others had no positive campaign.

I decided to ask the representatives from both the SNP and the Liberal Democrats a few questions at the polling station and make my mind up depending on what those answers were, and how honest I felt they were. Well, once again this one went to the SNP, as they were the ONLY party to have a representative at the polling station when I voted. The Liberal Democrat person must have been having lunch, or was sleeping late in preparation for a late night. As a result, the SNP got my vote two elections running.

From a natural Labour / Liberal Democrat to vote twice in a row for the SNP, well....it's not something I thought I'd have done but there you go. For the record I didn't vote for Labour in 1992 as I felt the entire country were about to turn on the Conservative government, only to wake up with a re-elected Conservative government. That day I decided not to assume anything, which meant Tony Blair got my vote in 1997. Like many of the Labour votes, it wasn't a pro-Labour vote, but an anti-Conservative one. Little did I know he'd go on to become a war criminal.

No matter what the claims from any of the parties, there is nowhere on the ballot form which lets people state WHY they voted how they did. Only the individual knows why they voted the way they did. Sadly, in many cases it's a "least worst".