Conservatives- A disappointing night, even though it was one of the biggest swings to the party on record. The fact is a majority government looked assured for the last two years but it has not materialised. Given the cuts that will be needed this is tricky.
They have made good inroads in Wales but Scotland remains a disaster zone and the link up with the Ulster Unionists seems to have flopped. They have a majority in England though.
Labour- Surprisingly good. Despite being the most incompetent government for generations they remain in with a small possibility of forming a coalition government. They are unquestionably the main party of the left both in terms of votes and seats. If they are in opposition then they have a good platform from which to launch their recovery once they ditch Gordon Brown.
Liberal Democrats- A disaster, after looking to be on the verge of a major breakthrough they actually lost seats. Worse still they now have the dilemma of propping up a despised Labour Party and suffering the inevitable backlash at the polls or supporting the Tories and enraging their left wing activists, which would kill their chance of becoming the main party of the left.
On the plus side they did lose Lembit Opik.
Greens- Great night, they won a seat.
SNP- In once sense a perfectly respectable result, but given how much they hyped up their chances, going for 20 seats, it was poor. Salmond looks like a fool. I suspect that a Tory government will benefit the Scottish Labour Party more than the SNP.
Plaid Cymru- Nothing much changed.
BNP- Their chances of winning were always overhyped.
UKIP- We need to wait until the Buckingham count until we can judge. Nigel Farage's election stunt was awesome.
DUP- Mixed night, the loss of their leader will hurt, but they are the main party of Unionism once more.
UUP- A poor night.
SDLP- As they were.
Sinn Fein- Ditto
Alliance- Another party that has made its Westminster breakthrough. They should try to recruit the independent MP Sylvia Hernon.
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9 comments:
Good summary. Labour are the only ones for whom things were not a disaster.
And Dr Lucas must be chuffed - she's got her snout in two troughs now, total take home pay about £400,000 a year.
I think we can say that it was a bit of a disaster for everyone. Including us voters...
Yes, good summary Ross. The Tories did well but the media hype and the poll leads made us all, I think, expect so much more.
I wonder if David Davis would have done a little better?
Biggest winner - the exit poll?
Mark- Lucas could resign her Euro seat..... You're right about Labour
Julia- True.
Matthew- Yes that is a very good point. We political anoraks smugly assumed that exit polls invariably underestimated Tory rule and didn't account for a non uniform swing.
Another loser has been Michael Ashcroft whose marginals operation seems not to have worked.
It did work in Pendle.
Good news:
Smith out
BNP out
Respect out
I do not welcome Evan Harris losing. I also do not particularly welcome Caroline Lucas.
I did celebrate various Stoke city council candidates that I hate losing. It probably makes me one hell of a sad fucker but seeing them talk bollocks on local blogs several too many times has made me really want to stick the boot in.
UKIP- [...] Nigel Farage's election stunt was awesome.
Well played sir.
+1
Just a shame that the speaker didn't get demoted...
Could we attempt a recreation of the flight starring Bercow?
... Ah, thought not.
I'll chip in to but Bercow a ticket.
"didn't account for a non uniform swing."
Everyone kept saying 'it's a uniform swing, it's wrong' but surely the point of an Exit poll is they actually have enough constituency data to work out proper swings (although I think the Lib Dem vote down at 23% was the main shocker, and oddly that only came out from reverse calculating it).
I wondered about Ashcroft's marginal operation.
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