The results are in, and the good news is we have a Hung Parliament, bad news is the change didn't go as hoped. Tabloid fear mongering and the usual last ditch of the traditional parties in "Vote for anyone other than us, get them" worked once again to deliver the usual, bland old election result. We also lost a good MP in the form of Dr Evan Harris (LD) and kept some particularly poor ones in Nadine Dorres (Con) and David Tredinic. Overall very disappointing. Only good news was the Greens won a seat.
I was looking forward to a wide open election, no seat is safe, who knows who would win. A combination of the expenses and the lib dem surge should have given this, but instead voters decided that they fear the unknown, and got it anyway.
Worse, as we speak Nick Clegg may well be selling his granny for a taste of power.
That's unfair, but from experience in the Scottish parliament, the lib dems will drop any flagship policy for a go at being in charge. Basically, as I stand, if he gives up PR for forming a government, well, the Lib Dems won't be getting my vote for a very long time.
Nick has other options. My prefered one is to form the "Rainbow Coalition" Lib dem, Labour and lots of smaller parties, with a goal of electoral reform and fiscal stability. Problem is that this is about 100 times more likely to collapse than a simple 2 party coalition, and this would certainly mean that a future election campaign would be run with a "Don't want a hung parliament again do you" a shame because it is the more grown up, evolved form of democracy.
The other way I would be interested to see would be a minority Tory government, heinous as the concept of 5 years of conservatism is, the current party is already tearing itself apart over not winning, and the offer they tabled for the Lib Dems in public showed very little in the way of compromise, it could be a good excercise in growing up and not always getting your way to have to get each policy through on its merits and on bill by bill agreements, much as the SNP do in Scotland.
A mean part of me also sees how much the torys are tearing themselves apart over not winning, and so I can only see further division when they don't get their own way and can't do favours for their big donors. In that vein I also hope that should Cameron end up in Downing street and Mr Murdoch comes asking for his pound of flesh, Cameron response is "Where's my majority you feeble tuppence" closely followed by "And by the way, I'm going to legislate against you ruling so much of the news medial you useless bastard" Indeed I hope the "Sun wot won it" myth is finally gone, since tory support fell away once the sun got on board.
For a last bit of Tory bashing, I do find it funny that the torys are now doing the "Back room deals" that they said were a terrible undemocratic thing, guess that only applies in a Lib-Lab pact. Second, some top tories are calling for Cameron to be removed and replaced as leader, so, they'd have a PM who was not elected, much the same criticism that they used on Gordon Brown the past few years eh?
Bloody hypocrites.
Such cynicism in one so young! My view is the voting system delivered exactly what we, the electorate, wanted. A big "Screw the lot of you" to the parties.
ReplyDeleteAch, I'm always cynical post elections. I'm warming to teh idea of a minority tory government, shoudl limit teh damage they can do while getting the important stuff done (Provided everyone plays fair) however I get a feeling teh tories would prefer to jsut call the whole thing a failiure.
ReplyDeleteI'd also be very surprised if we don's see some sort of leadership scuffle in both labour and tories very soon (Labour is virtually a guarantee) and for teh tories, well Billy Hague has been awfully front and centre of late.