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

[bekkypk.livejournal.com]

I'm not saying anything on the Lib Dems but I wholeheartedly support you on the Tory-hate. There is one issue that I care about more then all the others combined, and it's probably silly considering all the issues at stake, so I'm not going to say it here... but it's one I know the Tories are all for, when it's the most disgusting thing in my world. For that reason alone I could never vote for the Cons.

I've actually been really frightened by these elections on a local level. I'm scared by the BNP, who managed to bring in 2200+ votes in my region. That just... makes me want to lose my faith in humanity and go and live in a cave. At least we kept Labour here, though 2 of our neighbours fell to the Cons.

I don't really know what I wanted to say, sorry hon. Just throwing my support behind the "WHY TORY WHY?!" I think. My heads a tad mangled after this week. More then anything else I'm glad it's over so we can get on with living with it, hopefully without my dad cussing the television.
xx

[burnmybridges.livejournal.com]

"I'm scared by the BNP, who managed to bring in 2200+ votes in my region. That just... makes me want to lose my faith in humanity and go and live in a cave."

Christ. :( I thought it was bad enough that they got over 1000 votes here.

Every time I don't think society could make me any more desperately sad for it, it does. :(

[bekkypk.livejournal.com]

Its horrible. Whats worse is I know one of the people who voted for them and up until that point I thought she was lovely! I don't think I'll be able to look her in the eye for a while, knowing how I feel about that :/
xx

[burnmybridges.livejournal.com]

Where I live people are openly racist and you either shut up about your political views if they don't fit in with the "norm" or get a lot of grief. It's not a nice place.

[bekkypk.livejournal.com]

Urg. Horrible, horrible people. There again, my lot aren't so bad, but I don't feel I can air my views when they're having a go.
people fail to grasp the fact that we're all immegrants in this country anyway. And yes we shouldn't have people coming over here just to leech the system, but there are a lot of people out there who do require help.
And the amount of times I've had to shoot people down over the Poles... They do jobs a lot of people here wouldn't flaming *dream* of doing 'cos they think it's beneath them. When they go home they can buy a house for their families. It's as simple as them just doing what they can to get by, and I don't mind (even though my dad works in construction with many of them, I don't fear them 'taking his job' or anything)
xx

[burnmybridges.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

I think where I live just happens to be especially backward. Hopefully, as the younger generations who have grown up with multicultralism mature, things might get better. It's a very old town, with a real medieval mindset. Awful place to live if you don't go along with the general group think.