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

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

*cliiing*

[jacinthsong.livejournal.com]

ps. to repeat myself somewhat from phone, am the same on refusing to be apologetic for being happy about Labour's victories. I know the Labour dude in Oxford East is something of a partybot, but if he actually bothered engaging with and doing outreach to the local community rather than relying on student vote, then good for him. (Even Seb who was v pro LD was admitting on Thursday night that the campaign there was pretty ill thought out)

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

It occurs to me that the LDs missed an easy trick in Oxford East: the Nick Clegg Q&A I went to. If they'd made that a public event, which Brookes would've been silly to object to, rather than students only, it would have been a low-marginal-effort nice touch. So, I don't know, but I'm tired of being told I shouldn't have voted for Smith. He wrote to me. He was interested in courting my vote. *shrugs* I would've voted for him anyway, but I do resent Lib Dem and Tory implications that I'm self-deluding in continuing to support Labour.

[jacinthsong.livejournal.com]

Oh, that wasn't a public event? Wow. I'm surprised they missed out on that one, a party leader so close to the election...I mean, I know both Oxford and Brookes have students-only events, but at that time of year?!