In The Public Interest

As the fallout over the UK election continues we've seen various trends start to appear from the parties. All three leaders are claiming to be acting in the national interest, instead of their own partisan interests but are they? The phrase "the people have spoken" has been mentioned a lot, they just don't agree for partisan reasons what the public actually said. I noticed two things appear pretty clear:

• We've rejected Gordon Brown, not Labour.
• The electoral system is unfair and broken, it needs to be more representative so that every vote counts.

Both Nick Clegg and David Cameron have come across as very mature and statesman like in trying to seek some agreement, while Gordon Brown seems to be deluding himself that any potential future with him as PM is still a possibility. The honourable thing for him to do is to stand down but he seems hell bent on chaining himself to the seats with earplugs to block out the sounds of the mob outside trying to break the door down.

The Brown strategy seems to be to send out any Labour MP who is still willing to defend him, in an effort to try and protect his position from reality. You can't help but wonder if he also has an army of supporters swamping archives, libraries etc to try and find any obscure loophole that he'll be able to claim as "this gives me the right to stay on", while waving an old, tattered, moth ridden parchment from the 1500's.

Either way, the longer he clings on, the more he'll hurt both his own place in history, and Labours chances if there's another election shortly. His actions are in his own interest, not the national interest, and not even in the Labour Party interests.

David Cameron is very magnanimous in recognising that he needs to reach out to form some agreement, which involves some give and take. Where's he's kinda disingenuous is in looking through the parts of the Tory manifesto to find where there's general consensus and presenting that as "giving" when it's not. The one major sticking point is electoral reform. The Conservatives have always been against a fair election system, as their support is in pickets, rather than spread around the country. This means that any fair system like Proportional Representation will consign the Conservatives to never winning a General Election again.

By resisting that they are acting in the Conservative Party interest, not the national interest as they'd like us to believe.

Nick Clegg seems to be doing exactly as he said he would in the election campaign, by recognising that the Conservatives have won a larger share of votes and seats, so they have the first chance to try and put together a government. It's a rare day that a politician actually does what they say they'd do after the votes have been counted. Credit Nick Clegg.

If Nick Clegg does form a coalition or agreement with Labour which allows Brown to remain as PM against the wishes of the voting public they will be punished by the electorate further down the line, if not by his own party before that.The Liberal Democrats do have more in common with Labour so they'd be a natural choice if Brown was not a hurdle. If Nick Clegg does a deal with the Conservatives which does not include real electoral reform will have similar consequences for him and the party.

For all of this, I see no agreements appearing, and another election being called soon. This time it will not include Gordon Brown as the Labour leader, although they'll have to oust him, as he has shown no sense of honour in walking on his own. The Labour Party will not get away with anointing a new leader and avoiding the public vote like last time either.

The problem with this is that it's like a car race; where the parties prepare their car, tune it up, choose their driver and race. When one car does not win they say "well, let's change drivers, get back to the starting line and race again; that one didn't count".

Labour knew Gordon Brown was unpopular with the electorate well before the election campaign started. They knew it when Brown bottled calling a General Election months into him taking the PM's position. Even then, he wanted a quick election to give him legitimacy and suddenly decided he didn't need it when the polls looked like he'd be kicked out.

There's been a few Labour MPs claiming quite rightly that it's for the party members to choose their own leader, not anyone esle. I agree, they should live by their choice and accept the consequences gracefully, like mature adults.

Gordon Brown and his supporters have made their own bed.

I think that the reactions to this election will affect voters if there is another election soon. Labour doing everything they can to cling on to power at any cost, short of taking control of the military and calling tanks into Downing Street. The Conservatives appearing very human. The Liberal Democrats in "actually doing what they claimed they would do" shocker.

Will another election provide an even more emphatic reward for Labour since they intentionally didn't hear it first time? Will some of the MP's who lost their seats win this time around or vice versa? Will that rob them of any authority if they only got (back) in through a re-run? Will there be legal challenges from those who thought they'd booked their seat on the gravy train and didn't get a chance to fill in their expenses forms before being told "we don't need you after all"? Will the Liberal Democrats get a result closer to what many were expecting during the leaders debates?

It's also funny to see the news media in typical vulture fashion yelling questions at any of the leading players in these talks in the hope  that they'll get some titbit of information. It's almost as if the media have such a great understanding of the situation that they know the politicians will somehow forget to organise a press conference when they have something to announce; that they'll somehow forget to tell the public.

It's also funny to see how the newspapers are trying to influence the outcome too, by behaving like lobbyists rather than doing anything like....uhm....I dunno......reporting the news fairly? It's just more proof that the newspapers are not newspapers.

Speaking of a partisan news media, I noticed Alistair Campbell (Tony Blair's Propaganda Minister and the spin doctor behind the hoodwinking of the UK people and UN over the Iraq war) complaining of a sustained brutal assault on Gordon Brown by the media which makes me wonder; what's the difference between the sustained and brutal attacks he instigated in the media against Labour's opponents? Other than being on the receiving end of the attacks that is.