General Election 2015

So, I was wrong. As I write this with 620 seats declared the Conservatives are on the way to an overall majority or to being a minority government so close to true majority it doesn't make a difference.

I've made no secret that I really hoped the days of majority government were over. Coalition governments are actually quite common in the rest of Europe and I was hoping that the necessity of actively involving more minority parties at the policy level would soften the neoliberal tendencies that all three major parties display to one horrifying degree or other.

Well, two major parties now since the Liberal Democrats have only won eight seats when they previously held fifty-seven. I don't know how I feel about that. I understand why it happened but the numbers tell an odd story, at least to me. Labour have lost seats unless they sweep the board in the remaining forty constituencies so the logical conclusion is that LibDem voters, frustrated at their party spending five years as an extension of the Conservatives, have voted Conservative.

I just don't understand people. This is my third General Election and I've never seen people more politically engaged. I've never seen minority parties make gains in public recognition that would have been unthinkable even ten years ago thanks to social media and other resources relieving the strangehold the tabloids had on our political understanding (and, seriously, look at some of the blatant attacks on the front pages the last few days). I've never seen people looking into minority parties as a legitimate wayto exercise their franchise instead of as an impotent “protest vote”.

Yet after five years of austerity measures that haven't worked; after numerous attacks on public services; after years of rhetoric attacking the poor and unemployed during a recession; and with the chance of a new coalition giving value to voting for a minority party for the first time in my generation's lifetime...

… a massive vote of confidence in the status quo.

Seems Gordon Brown was wrong: the Scots didn't need to vote SNP to get a Tory government, its happening anyway.

I know this is just the gloom talking but the only hope in my life right now is that South Thanet hasn't been called at this time and we might yet be rid of the Testicle-Faced Hobgoblin.