Thinking About: The Election

It’s become a bit of a traditional for me – staying up all night watching the election results come in. So much so that my expected day off to recover was expected by my boss and accepted as a given. That did make me smile.

So expecting it to be a long night I had plenty of Coke handy (or in this case Pepsi Max), some sugary snacks to keep me going and even a can of energy drink that teenagers seem to be fixated on. Oddly, or maybe not considering the hype about this being a once in a generation event, I hardly needed any of them – with the exception of the Pepsi I’m guessing – to keep me awake. I was honestly riveted by the whole thing only tearing myself away during the short news breaks to rush to the bathroom and rush back again.

Voted ended at 10pm (I’d voted on my way to work for The Green Party) and the first result was due in before 11pm. The cities of Sunderland and Newcastle race each other to be first. For the 6th time in a row Sunderland won even if they were 20 minutes later than planned. After that there was a pause which allowed the excellent commentators on the BBC to speculate about an exit-poll which seemed to put in doubt every previous poll including 11 that had been completed the day before. Paddy Ashdown famously said that he’s eat his hat if the exit-poll was correct. He regretted that statement as the night rolled on! Although not 100% accurate the much criticised exit-poll was far more accurate than anything previously released and correctly predicted a Conservative win although in reality the Tories managed (just) to gain an overall majority. The thing it did predict, and what upset Mr Ashdown so much, was the effective annihilation of the Liberal Democrats. From a fairly strong 57 seats in the Commons they ended the night with just 8. I had hoped, though hardly expected, that this would happen and had wished (hard) for them to end up with single figures. From the very first result at about 10:50 the writing was definitely on the wall with about a 15% drop in their vote. This, it turned out, was not unusual and was repeated in just about every constituency. It cheered me greatly. My friend and I, both recent Lib Dem voters, had been disgusted by the cynical about-face they performed on joining with the Tories to run the country 5 years ago and determined to punish them if we could. It seemed that we were not alone in this feeling and it warmed my heart to see that we were not alone in despising them so much for their actions. Of course, at least in public, the Lib Dems are completely befuddled by what happened on the 7th/8th May thinking that they had paid the price for being part of a government forced to make unpopular decisions. If that was the case why didn’t people hurt the Conservatives too? After all it was their policies that the Liberals were implementing.

The second thing that cheered me was that my expected ‘nightmare scenario’ didn’t happen. Although UKIP did impressively well in the number of votes cast they took no new seats and only managed to hold one of them held by an ex-Tory who had previously defected to them. Whilst nowhere near a spent force I think that their power has been blunted somewhat especially as they’ll now be having a leadership contest (AKA internal fighting) after Farage stepped down after failing to win the seat he was standing for. Likewise the Labour Party will be going into a blood frenzy when their leader – the largely waste of space Ed Miliband – stepped down after their defeat in the polls.

Of course the big, big story of the night was the amazing landslide advance, to understate it quite a lot, of the Scottish National Party (SNP). I watched increasingly open mouthed as seat after seat in Scotland fell to their advance leaving only 3 non-SNP MP’s still standing. I was delighted to see some big names in both the Liberal and Labour camp fall to the SNP candidates and was particularly pleased when the SNP’s Mhairi Black – a 20 year old Politics student – beat Labour’s shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander to become the Britain’s youngest MP since 1667. It showed the sheer power of the SNP idea which I think has changed things, both north and south of the border, for years to come. I think that Scotland is inevitably moving towards independence and the choice is either to cheer them on or get out of its way. Ironically I think that the recent NO vote in their Independence referendum actually moved them further along that road than a YES vote. No matter what happens now the SNP are a voice that cannot, or cannot safely, be ignored. They must be accommodated with even despite the fact that they can’t prevent the Conservatives gaining or executing power. What happens now in Scotland is going to be frankly fascinating. It almost makes me regret not being amongst their number. I guess being of Irish ancestry will have to do!

Despite the fact that I didn’t get the result I wanted at least I didn’t get the result I expected. I saw the hated Liberals get destroyed and humiliated and my only regret was that Nick Clegg kept his seat – although he too resigned as party leader, not that there’s much of a party to lead any more. Surprisingly, considering I was yawning on the bus on the way home that night at around 6pm, I managed to stay awake and (mostly) fully functional until it was practically all over at 6.30am the following morning when I crawled into bed for 5 hours sleep. I woke with a smile on my face at the looks of desolation and defeat of Liberal stalwarts as one by one they fell into history. Maybe they’ll learn their lesson? Maybe so, but I still won’t be voting them for some time yet if ever again.