morning after
May. 7th, 2010 12:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ravenEvan Harris lost his seat. Oh, God, why, why could this happen. He was my MP from 2005 to 2008 in Oxford West and Abingdon, and more than that, he's a good man and a good constituency MP: he's a thoughtful, smart, pro-science, pro-choice doctor who was a quietly understated force for good in Parliament. I note my flist as are upset about this as they are about the election as the whole, and they ought to be. He lost by 0.3% to the Tories. A Lib Dem MP, lost by 200 votes! This wasn't what was supposed to happen.
Oxford East was a Labour hold, thank goodness. It was declared at 3.30am, just before I went to bed. Sefton Central, the notional seat I voted in in 2005 - there's been a boundary change; in 2005 it was Crosby - has stayed resolutely Labour, despite the dire predictions of, well, just about everyone. The elected MP, Bill Esterson, is not the incumbent, so with a brand new Labour MP and no more Claire Curtis-Thomas, there's good there.
(Other local things: Caroline Lucas won in Brighton to be the first parliamentary Green MP; John Pugh, lovely lovely leatherfaced man, kept his seat in Southport; Nick Griffin was thankfully trounced in Barking.)
I keep thinking I ought to be more apologetic about being happy that Labour held the seats I vote in. Well... I'm not. I don't want a Conservative government, I hate the fucking Tories. They don't believe in distributive justice, they don't believe in queer rights, they were the party of Margaret Thatcher and Enoch Powell. I get told I shouldn't revisit the sins of the fathers on them - but no one tells me why I have to forgive.
And as for the Lib Dems... I'm sorry. I don't get the thing. They're a perfectly nice centrist party, I guess. But I don't understand how they can be contemplating coalition with the Tories for any reason other than power. I know, I know, "mandate", yes Nick Clegg we get it, blah blah blah. But mandate isn't, you know, cake. It isn't out there in the world. It's in your head. If they didn't get a majority of the seats in Parliament, I don't really see the argument for a Tory minority government being any stronger than a Lib-Lab coalition. A Lib-Tory coalition makes no ideological sense to me, but I have real fear that that's going to be where we end up.
edit: no, that is where we're going to end up. (thanks,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
proskynesis.)
Argh. Why did I even get up.
Oxford East was a Labour hold, thank goodness. It was declared at 3.30am, just before I went to bed. Sefton Central, the notional seat I voted in in 2005 - there's been a boundary change; in 2005 it was Crosby - has stayed resolutely Labour, despite the dire predictions of, well, just about everyone. The elected MP, Bill Esterson, is not the incumbent, so with a brand new Labour MP and no more Claire Curtis-Thomas, there's good there.
(Other local things: Caroline Lucas won in Brighton to be the first parliamentary Green MP; John Pugh, lovely lovely leatherfaced man, kept his seat in Southport; Nick Griffin was thankfully trounced in Barking.)
I keep thinking I ought to be more apologetic about being happy that Labour held the seats I vote in. Well... I'm not. I don't want a Conservative government, I hate the fucking Tories. They don't believe in distributive justice, they don't believe in queer rights, they were the party of Margaret Thatcher and Enoch Powell. I get told I shouldn't revisit the sins of the fathers on them - but no one tells me why I have to forgive.
And as for the Lib Dems... I'm sorry. I don't get the thing. They're a perfectly nice centrist party, I guess. But I don't understand how they can be contemplating coalition with the Tories for any reason other than power. I know, I know, "mandate", yes Nick Clegg we get it, blah blah blah. But mandate isn't, you know, cake. It isn't out there in the world. It's in your head. If they didn't get a majority of the seats in Parliament, I don't really see the argument for a Tory minority government being any stronger than a Lib-Lab coalition. A Lib-Tory coalition makes no ideological sense to me, but I have real fear that that's going to be where we end up.
edit: no, that is where we're going to end up. (thanks,
proskynesis.)Argh. Why did I even get up.
