morning after

[raven]

Evan 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, proskynesis.)

Argh. Why did I even get up.

Comments

[biascut.livejournal.com]

I am so not surprised. I clocked Clegg for an economic liberal at about his first party conference, and that was pretty much when I decided I was resolutely Labour after all.

I thought the only thing that might stop a Lib-Tory coalition would be that the Tories would never agree to electoral reform. If they do agree to electoral reform, then I will grudgingly accept it. If the Lib Dems go into coalition or pact with the Tories without getting electoral reform, I will spend the next five years looking at Lib Dem voters incredulously.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

*nods* You're right. I mean, I don't disagree that if we must have tax cuts, they're better the first £10,000 than £200,000 for the richest people, but - well, must we have tax cuts? (I am still not an economist, but.) I tried for ages to make myself vote Lib Dem in Oxford East. I couldn't do it.

The electoral reform thing confuses me. I keep seeing people talking about the disparity between numbers of seats and the popular vote as though it were something that's just been discovered! I don't know if the Tories will go for it now, but my gut instinct says no.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

I think it's sometimes starker than other times? Like the US electoral college: sometimes it matches up fairly well, but at other times everyone goes, "Oh ... yeah."

Commenters on the Guardian are saying that Clegg is being very canny by inviting the Tories to try and form a government first but making electoral reform a pre-condition of any agreement, meaning that if they refuse he can say, "Well, that's my pre-condition, you turned it down" and turn to Labour. Fingers crossed that I am being unduly cynical...