Yawn....

[davidgillon]

 I stayed up until 4AM, then the programme I was doing some work in while listening to the BBC election show crashed, and given it would take a while to restart, plus the Beeb were running Suella Braverman's victory speech (bah!), I said 'bugger it' and went to bed. I'd probably have stayed up longer if I hadn't ended up with less sleep than planned on Wednesday night.

It says something that the exit poll for a massive Labour majority actually seemed disappointing, I was hoping for less than a hundred Tories surviving. OTOH it did predict all three Medway constitituencies (Chatham, where I live, Rochester and Strood, and Gillingham) going Labour, which turned out to be the case. It's just a pity I think my new MP, Tris Osbourne, is completely wet. Vince Maple, the former Labour candidate would have been far better, but he's now running Medway Council instead.

I did get to see Grant Shapps (Defence Minister) lose his seat, his reference to the armed forces in his concession speech was the first time I've ever thought he sounded sincere in his entire 20 year parliamentary career. Unfortunately IDS retained his, even with an exit poll forecast of a less than 1% chance of him surviving, as the vote to unseat him, while easily large enough, split between the current Labour candidate and the former Labour candidate running as an independent - not the only time Keir's party discipline ended up shooting Labour in the foot.

I'm worried about where the Tories will turn for a new leader, hard right is probably the answer given Penny Mordaunt, the leading moderate, lost her seat. On the plus side so did arch-brexiteer and ultra-libertarian Steve Baker. Unfortunately that probably reduces the choices to Suella Braverman (dangerous) and Kemi Badenoch (even more dangerous).

And even more worried about the Reform vote (a substantial part of which is undoubtedly the racism/far right vote), Farage in parliament is going to be thoroughly unpleasant.

I just hope we can have a solid Labour government for the next five years that convinces the floating voters that Labour can do the job. Ideally while the Tories and Reform tear each over to shreds.

Comments

[jadelennox]

It was fun to watch from the US, where I was awake through every call but Truss. I think I went to bed when they finally called all of Birmingham (where my family is), which took much longer than I expected. I'm still furious about Braverman winning, but I like to think Sunak's backed himself into a corner and can't move back to California. And Farage has to actually work a job for once; I hope he hates it.

It was annoying how much Reform's 4 seats were "a sea change in british politics!" but the Greens were presented as no such thing.

Starmer's going to be interesting to watch. He's been so slippery on positions, and now we have to find out what he'll actually do with power. How much was the doublespeak on trans rights, the environment, benefits, for electoral purposes.

Anyway after a grim month in the US I'm grateful to the UK for something to look forward to in the world.

[cosmolinguist]

When Farage was an MEP he was notorious for not doing any work: wouldn't turn up to meetings, did nothing for committees he was on... I imagine he'll be similar here. He's a lot like Trump and I think that includes enjoying/being better at campaigning than working.

[el_staplador]

Yeah - as an MEP he had the argument that it was a point of principle as he didn't believe that we should have MEPs, but there's no excuse now!

[el_staplador]

I'm hoping that five is the magic number of MPs for Reform to implode spectacularly.

[davidgillon]

I don't see Lee Anderson and Farage tolerating each other for long :)

[hilarita]

The problem with the polls was that they didn't really indicate the margin of error. The FT had a graphic that showed (given the pre-election predictions) what the seat numbers for the Tories would look like with the polling errors from previous elections, and they came up with a range from 50-147 seats. While I'd hoped for a bit more of a wipe-out, I was very prepared for the polls not to have captured the behaviour of potential Reform voters very well, and also prepared for some weirdnesses based on turnout.
And yes, really hope that Labour can produce enough of an improvement that Reform lose a lot of their vote to Labour, or that Reform stay home, so that Labour can hang on for a second term. Or of course introduce proportional representation, but I suspect that won't happen.

[davidgillon]

It occurred to me yesterday that the usual reason for not going PR is to suppress the small extremist parties (if slightly more politely put), and if they've now had people elected, on both left and right, then does that still apply?