Some brief thoughts on the election result so far, as of 1045 the morning after – Tories on 291, Labour on 248, Lib Dems on 51 and everyone else up to 27, 33 to declare. Pretty much everything I’m writing is just based on gut reaction, I’ve not done much maths or analysis beyond my reactions and feelings – only getting two hours sleep didn’t help. It’s a bit strange seeing it all from so far away, down a slightly dodgy stream of BBC World News and on the World Service.
First and foremost, I’m worried about how close the Tories are to an overall majority. I know they won’t get it alone now, not unless the next 42 seats are ridiculous, and that is some comfort, but they still don’t deserve it and their views, principles and policies still don’t even come close to matching the views of the majority in the country. I also have a strange pervasive dread of hearing the words “Prime Minister David Cameron”, and I don’t think it’ll wear any better with time.
I’m very pleased for Caroline Lucas of the Greens taking their first ever seat, despite the fact that it meant a Labour loss. On the flip side, I’m gutted for the Lib Dems, who deserved to do a great deal better – I was expecting somewhere in the region of 100-125 seats, and for far more of them to be taken from the Tories, neither of which seemed to happen.
Like almost everyone, as far as I can see, I’m pleased and relieved that Nick Griffin and his Nazi ilk didn’t win a single seat, though it’s really quite depressing that there are over half a million racist morons who voted for them nationwide… and that under PR, which I am still all in favour of (preferably via STV, including RON in the absence of a perfect system), they would probably have won more than one seat – a real worry, though obviously still no reason to continue propping up FPTP
Naturally I’ll be keeping a close eye on everything with great interest…
There are obviously different ways of doing PR, but the BNP got 1.9% of the vote overall, so they’d almost get an MP only if new constituencies had 50 MPs decided by PR. (That’s not quite correct, but I think it’s very roughly correct.) PR would probably encourage people to vote differently, but I don’t know if the extreme parties would see more votes or less.
In the local elections they’ve lost 22 seats (so far, 125 of 164 declared).
They’ve been thoroughly trounced, which is really encouraging. I’m not a big fan of the more tinkery forms of PR that create two types of MP, as we see in Scotland with one brand who are accountable to a constituency, and one who arent. I prefer full multi-member STV with no mucking about, which would (assuming each enlarged constituency returns between 3-6 MPs) probably mean that they got between 6-11 MPs, depending on how concentrated their vote was. I’ve not done the maths, that’s just an estimate.
It’s all quite academic I think; we shouldn’t arrange our electoral system to keep out small/fringe/extreme groups, we should campaign strongly against those who are dangerous, just as Hope Not Hate did so successfully this time around. We also have absolutely no idea how many people would vote for them under PR, how many protest votes would be made in another way, etc etc.
At the end of the day, I’m very pleased that they have been pushed back in these elections, and I intend to help push them back further wherever I get the opportunity in by-elections, EP elections, and local elections.