Archive for May 7th, 2010

Should’a voted for Zarek

So, yeah, the results are in, apparently.

Can’t say it went quite as well as I hoped, but it went as well as I expected (this, as I explained to my sister yesterday, is pretty much the way it goes as a Lib Dem), and at least Cameron didn’t slide in on the wave of smug and hairgrease that his sense of entitlement autogenerates.

From the Beeb results I suspect the Tories would struggle to get a meaningful majority from any of the ‘Other’ block, so it’s Lib Dems or bust.

On the other hand, Cameron’s predictably empty speech didn’t strike me as offering, well, anything. The slogan ‘First Past The Post but with Equal-Sized Constituencies’ isn’t really the sort of rallying cry that anyone would want, I think, and since almost two thirds of the voters didn’t want the Conservatives in power anyway, it seems a bit weird for them to say ‘Look, we won, let’s not fix anything’…

So, y’know, what happens now?

My proposal – which I bet nobody will take up, but I’ll be chuffed if they do – is that the Lib Dems band together with Labour. Which won’t give anyone a majority, mind, but how I see it is this:

A short-lived coalition of everyone but the Tories. One emergency budget, and an amazingly short Queen’s Speech which promises to push through electoral reform and then call a General Election under the new system. They don’t actually need to do anything else (and it’d be disasterous to try) but on those two points you could safely get enough support from the rest of the Others to carry things through (PR is in their interests too, of course, the only people to ever do consistently well out of it are – shocker – the Tories.

Under a Government based on that that, presumably, the Conservatives would have a massive sulk because they feel like they won, but they didn’t win, they just got more seats than anyone else which isn’t how winning works under First Past the Post. (Incidentally, Tories, you should stop trying to have it both ways. ‘s bloody undignified).

I think they’d be able to get Plaid and the SNP on board for that (and they could certainly get the SNP if they say they’ll hold an initial referrendum on devolution once PR is in – if’n they say that publicly the SNP can’t turn it down, after all) and everyone else should get a chance to return a new Parliament in the Spring.

The Tories, under those circumstances, wouldn’t be in a position to hold things up too much because they’d be keeping themselves out of power if they did so (and, if they’re seen to be staving off the chance to re-elect a comprehensive majority, damaging their own national standing).

…I think it could work.

At least, it’ll work a damn sight better than a formal Lib-Dem / Con coalition, which is just a death sentence – Cameron, in that position, can carefully give Clegg & Cable lovely poison chalice jobs (‘Industrial harmony? You know what that means? That means strikes!’) and make sure to drag the Lib Dems down along with, er, everyone else.

God’s teeth it’s come to something when the best you can hope for is a hung parliament, innit? Best spoilt ballot I’ve heard of this year goes to the daughter of Ruth’s boss, who took a pink pen into the polling booth in order to spoil her ballot with the line ‘My great-great grandmothers didn’t throw themselves under horses so I could be disenfranchised by your broken system’. Given that it was the first time she’d ever been eligible to vote, I think that’s pretty damn epic.

Anyway. That’s my Ideal Scenario at this point, I think: Lib-Lab-Oth pact to push through PR in some form (I’d preffer STV, myself, but Hell even AV plain would be a step up on this farce), then take us back to the polls in the Spring. It’s rare to see a party trade political power for the national interest, but it’s lovely when they do (The last time I’m aware of was Lloyd George’s 3 General Elections in 1911 which helped to curb the Lords’ veto and get us pensions, so there we go).

Anyway, Mark Williams is back in for Ceredigion, having garnered a whacking great 50% of the vote (almost an actual majority, who’d’ve thought we’d see that!?) and shot up from majority 219 to 8,000-odd, which is spectacular.

So, we’ll have to wait and see. (Note to Dave Cameron: this is a killer soundbite. Use it all the time, people love that sort of stuff. Trust me.)

(O, and blinding stuff to see the BNP getting roundly thrashed in Barking. Very cheerin’!)

Apart from the fact I’m usefully relaying election results to people far removed from civilization (viz: one friend backpacking in Australia, and one in Edgbaston), I think I’m getting tired.

Because on the one hand, I’m making massive typos, and on the other, the results for Hammersmith just came in and I swear I sat here thinking ‘”Hammersmith”? Why does “Hammersmith” sound familiar?’ The answer, as I realised after they’d finished reading the results, is that I was there this morning yesterday.

On the other hand, I have been up since 06:16 on Thursday, and I’ve dodged into London then hammered back out of it to vote back in Wales, and I haven’t actually slept. I’ve not spent the whole night awake since I used to sit up in Penbryn of an evening.

(I’m almost tempted to see how long I can actually go, but I might have to admit defeat presently…)