Well, another election, another all nighter. I realise most people have normal jobs and lives and can’t stay up all the way through, but there’s something about that stage around 5.00am when the result is in, everyone’s knackered and guards come down. The odd thing was this year you could see politicians struggling to keep going, as if the next election campaign had just started and this was just a staging post. Which in a way it is. Nothing much has changed and yet everything has. Labour still have a significant majority, again with a relatively small share of the vote, while the Tories have less seats than Michael Foot managed in Thatcher’s heyday. But the landscape has shifted tremendously. For a start we pretty much have a three party political system but more significantly there is no national pattern. So many battles came down to local issues and quirks in a stark contrast to the strict whip system and single party domination we’ve become used to of late.
It could be said that the British people are fed up with being patronised by monolithic political parties and are striking out randomly, but the British people are always fed up about something. I think this fracturing has more to do with the convergence of the main parties which previously I would have considered a problem but the effects of this are looking interesting. If you cannot choose between Labour and the Lib Dems, or the Conservatives and Labour or the Lib Dems and the Conservatives and you don’t want to vote for a single issue minority candidate then you’re forced to actually look at the candidates as people, judge them for what they actually believe in and, if they’re incumbent, what they’ve actually done. And thanks to services like They Work For You (remember when they only place you could read Hansard was in the reference library?) you can get at least a sketch of what they’re like. I could be wrong but I sensed this was having a small effect last night. Politicians seemed genuinely aware of what their constituents were saying and that they were being watched, and not just Labour politicians either. After the first port of call – finding out where your MP stood on Iraq – people seem to have dug deeper.
I’m probably being overly optimistic and forgetting that this is an election so politicians naturally give excessive lip-service to the electorate, but if I’m even a fraction right this is a good thing. Our electoral system might be terribly flawed, our system of representation not very representational and the quality of our leaders somewhat on the megalomaniacal side, but like some rapidly evolving beast with 30 million heads we’re figuring out ways to make the best of a bad situation. Which is terribly British of us, I must say.
So, given my usual unremitting cynicism about the British political system, I’m feeling oddly positive this morning. For the first time in my life we have a political landscape where, within reason, level headed democracy can actually happen. The balance of power seems to be that Labour can get on with running the country but can’t necessarily implement their wacky jazz-hands ideas while the other two can finally start being a proper opposition, since they all seem to want the same things anyway.
And while the victory of Galloway in Tower Hamlets was rather annoying (as an ex-resident I’m with Diamond Geezer on this), allowing for the hospital guy and the no-all-women-shortlists guy, most of the single issue candidates were wiped out. (Yes, the BNP got 3% of the vote which is 3% too much but it’s still only 3%.) And I think this is a good thing. Why I think it’s a good thing will have to wait for another time.
And as for how I voted… well, since it was the first time in thirteen years that I actually voted for someone rather than spoil my paper (or go to spoil my paper and discover I wasn’t on the electoral roll anyway), I think I’ll keep it to myself.
Having spent thursday night into friday morning counting votes and rubbing shoulders with the party workers locally I am now more hopeful and yet much much more cynical than I was before.
The process works like this…the counters sit one side of a table and sort the ballot papers and then count them. The party workers sit the other side of the table and watch you doing this, to ensure the process is open and honest and fair.
The independant candidate appeared to have been having a rather good time in the bar, and his workers were totally clueless and had no idea what they were watching us doing.
I saw I Labour guy all night. He is a local councillor and a nice chap and as he knew his candidate didn’t have a chance he was very relaxed all night.
UKIP strutted around being arrogant, full of a self importance totally out of proportion to the paltry number of votes they got.
The Tory people seemed to be typical tories. Either old people or ‘young conservatives’. Whilst I do not support the policies of the tory party the ones I met were all local people and party members and seemed like decent people. The chap sat opposite me watching me count was another local councillor and a very nice old chap and conducted himself very well.
The Lib Dems were a BIG shock to me. The majority were young public school types who had been bused in from London to spin the candidate. Arrogant, self important pricks, who wore designer shirts and spent the evening talking on mobile phones. Basically a bunch of total wankers. The Lib Dems give the appearance as a local grass roots party but in fact seem to be the spinniest spinners of the whole lot.
So after this experience I will NOT be voting Lib Dem again. This may mean that I no longer bother to vote as I doubt there will be a local Green or Respect candidate in my area next time around. But I have seen the lie of the Lib Dems up close and personal, they have carved a nich as the honest centre left party but are in fact a bunch of professional PR types using the middle classes in a cynical fashion.
I am amazed to say that from last nights experience the party that really is a grass roots party is the tories, just not the kind of people I would want to hang out with or vote for.
Paxman showed himself up in his attempted interview with Galloway. He couldn’t hide is disgust for Galloway, so much for impartiality of the BBC. It is time Paxman was either sacked or quit, I am sick of him and his ilk on the Today and PM programs on R4. Whilst robust interviewing is necessary they have taken upon themselves to be more important than the people they pretend to interview.
As a Respect member i’m glad to see the party get a seat. It is a shame that Galloway is such an odious prick :( I hope the party will grow beyond him to become a serious left wing coalition.
Vote Counter: The LibDem thing doesn’t really surprise me. Symptomatic of the party system, in that in order to fully support a party you really can’t be having and rational and critical though processes, is that you’re going to be a self important prick, especially if you’re fighting for some abstract noble cause. Fanaticism does make for ugly humans and I don’t think the LibDems are unique in this case. You’ll no doubt find Labour and Tory supporters acting the same in marginals where they can sniff power.
I prefer to think of them as foot soldiers – they do the necessary work, albeit annoyingly, but they’re not actually in charge. If they were the whole thing would fall apart.
Thinking about it a bit more, it’s interesting that the Tories are the only party with a real grassroots foundation. You can have a Tory lifestyle with the village and the dog and the Barour jacket but can you have a LibDem lifestyle? Is anyone out there living the LibDem dream?
Labour types are easy to identify but they don’t really like their party any more. Given there isn’t a LibDem type it’s understandable they lurch into the false sense of confidence that fanatical ideology provides.
Grudnadian or Independent reader, middle class, recycles wine bottles (though probably drives to the bottle bank in a 4WD gas guzzler), likes to think the Lib Dems are above the usual muck slinging of party politics. Sounds like a Lib Dem lifestyle to me.
The reality is that they employ people who, in the 80’s, would have been working for Sachi and Sachi to get Thatcher elected. In a way the hypocracy of the Lib Dems is even worse than that of New Labour. As a person that voted Lib Dem to keep the tories out I am rather pissed off and feel used. Next time around I won’t bother to support them with my vote.
So, after all these years away from the UK I finally get to vote for the grass roots party! Actually, when you think about it the electoral map is basically blue where grass does indeed grow!
Seen from a different generation, I could not vote for the Lib Dems as their policies don’t add up, perhaps because they don’t have to. If I hadn’t voted Tory I would have probably voted for Old Labour, if they still existed. There’s something to be said for the bi-partisan system and the down-to-earth rhetoric that both ultimately represent (even if from different perspectives).