This post has a soundtrack.
I went to sleep last night knowing it wasn’t going to be easy.
I woke up this morning – rather early – and found that my constituency – Hampstead & Kilburn – was now a race between Labour and the Conservatives.
What? How?
All the polls I’d seen suggested it was a Lib/Lab fight. The only thing I can think of is that people ran from the Lib Dems back to the traditional parties because they were scared.
What else?…
At the same time, there was an increase in voter turnout, which resulted in people being turned away from polling stations.
Indeed, in my neck of the woods, the Returning Officer (or someone in the loop) apparently neglected to add one part of the constituency to the voting map at all. Not the best showing from the Electoral Commission.
Caroline Lucas got in in Brighton, Zac Goldsmith got in in Richmond Park – they’re going to have a fight on their hands with the majority of the parliamentary Tory party being climate-sceptic.
So what happens now?
It turns out that the incumbent Prime Minister has the right to attempt to form a government in the event of a hung parliament. The Conservatives are even now saying that the people have spoken against Labour, so it would be untenable for Gordon Brown to take advantage of this rule. Labour meanwhile are busy spinning that it would be entirely appropriate for the party to retain power in the face of a big swing away from them.
Of course, if the Conservatives are going to talk about ‘what the people clearly want’, they’re on dangerous ground. If they had the same ratio of seats to percentage of the popular vote as the Liberal Democrats, they would have (as I write) about seventy five MPs. Under this system – which doesn’t acknowledge the popular vote – they have two hundred and ninety.
I’m exhausted. It’s not lack of sleep – I didn’t stay up all night. I’m just tired. I routinely vote for principle over self-interest. I’m reasonably well-off, I’m a white, married, straight, middle class male. A Conservative government will probably favour me, at least on the obvious, tangible things. I vote against the Conservatives because I believe they are wrong.
And who votes for them? A huge number of people who will almost certainly be worse off. Because while I tend to think of the Conservatives as the party of the superrich and the CEOs, it’s ridiculous to suggest that the forty-odd percent of the voting electorate who have given them the status of largest party in a hung parliament is entirely made up of billionaires.
Yeah, I know, play the world’s smallest violin. I’ve got nothing to complain about. The people who will have something to complain about are those who voted for the Conservatives believing that it would put ‘the pound in your pocket’ and then discover – if that’s what happens – that that pound doesn’t buy what they want it to, and that they’re paying more tax than they expected, and not getting the public services they wanted, and so on.
But if there is a Lib/Lab deal, those same people will be furious. They will – to some degree rightly, to some degree wrongly – feel that they have been cheated of their democratic prerogative.
So, fine. You want Shiny Dave? You can have Shiny Dave. But I don’t think it’s going to turn out the way you want it to.
How does it feel?
I am:
Disappointed. Worried. Tired. Irritated. Cynical and jaded. And like someone who said no to the last piece of cake because they were already full, and then found it on their plate after all. I don’t really want to eat it and it may make me vomit, but it’s all mine now.
Woot. Full of win.
