Election post-mortem
After an interminable month of listening to our political parties bitching about one another, the election is finally over and done with. Labour is back in, albeit very bruised and battered; the Conservatives have slunk off into a corner to lick their wounds; and the Liberal Democrats are celebrating a small but significant increase in their number of seats.
I am pleased with the result. Although I voted Liberal Democrat (along with what I suspect was a sizeable proportion of the student population), I never expected them to get in. I picked them partly because my conscience would not allow me to vote for either Labour or Conservative, and partly because I feel very strongly that we need to encourage anyone willing to stand up as an alternative to the two main parties. For the sake of real democracy, we have to maintain that third option.
I may be showing my naïvité, but I am optimistic that Labour will learn from their narrow scrape to victory and will do something worthwhile in their third term. I think they have it in them to make a decent hash of it (something I seriously doubt of the Tories), and to go some way towards making up for the harm they have done in the last 4 years.
On a local level, this was a far more exciting election than I or many of my fellow students had expected. My new constituency had a Liberal Democrat MP, and still does – just. The Lib Dem candidate came in ahead of the Conservatives by a whopping 0.2%, which in real terms is only 125 votes. I can safely say that this is the first time I’ve genuinely felt that my vote made a difference – especially as Labour got a measley 8.8% here, so a tactical vote for them would effectively have been one for the Tories.
For some reason, I was under the impression that our General Election would attract very little international interest. Whilst the US presidential election always creates a stir right across the globe, somehow I assumed that we would go virtually unnoticed. I realised I was wrong yesterday when I passed a foreign language newspaper stand, and nearly every single one that I could read (about 8 different languages) had the news of Blair’s victory splashed across the front page. I find it slightly disturbing that I see my country as having so little international importance.
On the up-side, UKIP only got 2.1% here, which is both encouraging and a relief.
I am pleased with the result. Although I voted Liberal Democrat (along with what I suspect was a sizeable proportion of the student population), I never expected them to get in. I picked them partly because my conscience would not allow me to vote for either Labour or Conservative, and partly because I feel very strongly that we need to encourage anyone willing to stand up as an alternative to the two main parties. For the sake of real democracy, we have to maintain that third option.
I may be showing my naïvité, but I am optimistic that Labour will learn from their narrow scrape to victory and will do something worthwhile in their third term. I think they have it in them to make a decent hash of it (something I seriously doubt of the Tories), and to go some way towards making up for the harm they have done in the last 4 years.
On a local level, this was a far more exciting election than I or many of my fellow students had expected. My new constituency had a Liberal Democrat MP, and still does – just. The Lib Dem candidate came in ahead of the Conservatives by a whopping 0.2%, which in real terms is only 125 votes. I can safely say that this is the first time I’ve genuinely felt that my vote made a difference – especially as Labour got a measley 8.8% here, so a tactical vote for them would effectively have been one for the Tories.
For some reason, I was under the impression that our General Election would attract very little international interest. Whilst the US presidential election always creates a stir right across the globe, somehow I assumed that we would go virtually unnoticed. I realised I was wrong yesterday when I passed a foreign language newspaper stand, and nearly every single one that I could read (about 8 different languages) had the news of Blair’s victory splashed across the front page. I find it slightly disturbing that I see my country as having so little international importance.
On the up-side, UKIP only got 2.1% here, which is both encouraging and a relief.
posted by Gonetomars at 11:14 am
1 Comments:
The UK election was all over the US press as well.
What's interesting is that both liberals and Conservatives here in the US admire Tony Blair. The liberals because he is articulate, smart, and has done some good social progressive things (at least relatively). The conservatives because he stood by the US in Iraq.
In the UK, no one likes him, but labor wins anyway. Go figure!
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