"It is a pity that only one of them can lose," said Henry Kissinger of the Iran-Iraq War. But we have gone one better in Britain. Last night, they all did lose. I for one could not be more delighted.
New Labour lost, obviously. The Tories, who had a 28-point lead in September 2008, could not manage an overall majority of one, demonstrating seat-by-seat that they are now toxic in great swathes of the country, and such a coalition of the incompatible that they can only gain anywhere by losing somewhere else, exactly as Peter Hitchens has been saying for a decade. The Lib Dems lost by every measure except that other considerations happen to have delivered a hung Parliament. The SNP and Plaid Cymru made no progress. Nor did Sinn Fein. Peter Robinson lost his own seat. One could go on.
Jacqui Smith, out. That Blairite old Soviet fellow-traveller from the NUS, Charles Clarke, out. Dr Death, out. Assorted Cameron Cuties of both sexes - Shaun Bailey, Joanne Cash, Annunziata Rees-Mogg (who could not get the name of her constituency right on her website) - not in. Luciana Berger, only in by rigging the ballot; am I really the only person to have noticed that it is impossible legitimately to "run out of ballot papers", since each of them bears a serial number the same as that on the intended voter's polling card and next to his or her name on the register? Again, one could go on. What a pity that Sir Jeremy Bagge neither put up at South West Norfolk nor funded anyone else to do so. Apparently, he was afraid of a hung Parliament. But that has come to pass in any event. And a good thing, too. Here's to proper parties, arising out of electoral reform.
Meanwhile, what of North West Durham? There are three notable features of the result here. First, New Labour lost twelve points and dropped below fifty per cent of the vote. Secondly, the Tories leapfrogged the Lib Dems back into second place, which no one at all had foreseen. And thirdly, Watts Stelling not only kept his deposit again, but beat both UKIP and the BNP hands down. That UKIP's candidate was a Labour Councillor when I first knew him is one of numerous illustrations of the fact that the assumption that UKIP is just a collection of dissident Tories is a ridiculous misreading of reality. And in how many more seats for which the term "white working class" could have been invented does the BNP have to be hammered into the ground at the polls before lazy metropolitan commentators get that message, too?
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Not just Dr Death, Paul Holmes has also lost his seat. Joan Ruddock's victory could be overturned in court. A disastrous night for the anti-God loonies.
ReplyDeleteTrot and IRA fundraiser Tony McNulty has bitten the dust.
ReplyDeleteThe Tories didn't get a majority because, for large numbers of Scots, to catch oneself thinking about voting anything that anyone anywhere might think of as right-wing would be as disturbing and inadmissable as thinking about voting Nazi-Stalinist Paedophile Party.
ReplyDeleteOh, there's far more to it than that. Purely electorally, Scotland is now so predictable as to be irrelevant.
ReplyDeletePresumably, given his undoubted achievement in retaining his deposit (again), Watts Stelling will be standing again at the next election?
ReplyDeleteSo how does this square with your plans? Won't this just split the Independent vote and make it that much more likely that you'll both lose your deposits?
You'd have to ask him.
ReplyDelete