So the British general election is over, and despite the predictions by pollsters, Britain at the time of going to pixel it looks like we will have a majority government (just) and talk of coalitions is vanishing fast. My own first impressions are that Labour was hit from three sides. Firstly by way of their decimation by the SNP in Scotland, then by people whose vote may have gone elsewhere, voting Conservative in order to exorcise the spectre of the prospect of Ed Miliband as Prime Minister. It is also plain to see that Labour were also hit from a third direction by defections of voters from Labour to UKIP. Respectable second and third places where Labour have traditionally been strong, shows that there is a growing political appetite for something better than what Labour have been offering working class voters. It will be interesting to see if UKIP’s 2020 strategy works, but it seems, at least going by number of votes, that UKIP are occupying the position in some areas once held by the Lib Dems.
Some of the most notable things about this election have been some of the swings in support with movements of up to 35% towards SNP in at least one Scottish seat. The constitutional and political and policy management implications of Scottish politics being so different from that of the rest of the UK will be interesting to say the least. I believe that many moderately Left or undecided English and Welsh voters, who may have been inclined to vote Labour, may have looked at the prospect of an unholy alliance between a weak Ed Miliband and a far-Left SNP, held their nose and voted Conservative.
The Lib Dems have been absolutely decimated and the party’s big names fell like ninepins. Cable, Kennedy and Hughes all went. It’s my firm belief that the spotlight shone on the Lib Dems during their period in Coalition has not been kind to them. The sex scandals and overt Europhilia has not endeared them to some voters and neither has the miasma of general sleaziness that seems to surround the Lib Dems. My Herefordshire contact in particular will be very pleased to see that the seat was held by Jesse Norman with UKIP in a healthy second place and that the Lib Dems ‘Windscale Woman’, Lucy Hurds has been knocked back into fourth place.
Labour’s vote seemed to hold up in the more ‘enriched’ areas, especially areas that are rapidly becoming Islamically ‘enriched’ such as Ilford North, which they took from the Conservatives. The whipped mosque vote also delivered East Ham South where Stephen Timms, the ‘member for Islamabad west‘ got in with 77% of the vote, although how much of that vote was free, fair and honest, remains to be seen. Andy Slaughter in Hammersmith and Fulham found that having a bizarre afinity with the Jihadist terrorists of Hamas also delivered him the Muslim vote in his constituency.
The most noticeable thing about UKIP is that they have suffered, as other ‘insurgent’ parties do from the inherent structural problems that affect our electoral system such as the biases of the FPTP system and by constituency boundary issues. Insurgent parties can find, as UKIP are finding that are that 12% of the vote which under other electoral system would deliver parliamentary members under FPTP it delivers nothing. It is a great shame that Nigel Farage did not win his seat in Thanet South, but the Tories threw every single thing they could at that seat and Mr Farage should not be ashamed of his performance that brought him within a couple of thousand votes of taking the seat off of the Tories. UKIP should be proud of this campaign and especially how they are hurting Labour. I predict that if Labour goes mad and continues on the path of extreme Islamopandering and becomes more and more perceived in the public’s mind as ‘the Islam Party’, then more traditional Labour voters will transfer from Labour to UKIP.
This has been an interesting election and has not been, as some commentators have said, ‘boring’ and the results have been spectacular to say the least. We’ve seen the decimation of the Labour party in Scotland, the strengthening of the UKIP vote in England and Wales, Labour wriggling deeper and deeper up the backsides of Muslims, the Lib Dems paying the price for sleaze and distrust and a Conservative party that some may have thought as moribund, but has become resurgent.
I’m just breathing a heavy sigh of relief that I’m not waking up to Ed Miliband in number ten, at least we can take comfort that David Cameron is the one that the Queen is asking to form a government and not Ed Miliband. I don’t trust Cameron one little bit, and neither do many others, but he has one great ‘pull’ factor and that is that he is not Ed Miliband.
The morning hangover after the election night before could have so much worse if we had been looking at the prospect of being led by Ed Miliband and a rainbow coalition of the far Left and the lunatic Greens at least we’ve been spared that.
