Thursday night leading into Friday morning were possibly the most unpredictable 12 hours of a political generation. For months, the polls predicted a dead heat. For months, Cameron & Miliband could not be separated. For months, we were all thinking of coalitions and hung parliaments.
We were wrong.
Either the electorate decided very, very, very late or the polls were just plain wrong, but the Conservatives won the election with a slim majority, 99 seats ahead of Labour. David Cameron has five more years as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Ed Miliband is toast. As are Clegg and Farage. More on them later...
This election was fought on jobs, the NHS and the economy (stupid). Cameron pointed to a strong economic recovery as the basis of his campaign, while Miliband chose to focus on the NHS. While the Tories can claim their austerity has helped a recovery, Labour could not politicise our National Health Service enough to convince the voters.
Politics is not the main reason for the NHS running on empty. It is the population, who use A&E for the sniffles and ward beds as hotel rooms. Human beings overreact based on Google searches and it is this lack of patience and education that is leading to "missed targets". Sure, Jeremy Hunt may be looking to privatise some parts, and that isn't cool, but unless the people start taking care of our greatest asset, it won't matter if we pump the promised £8bn in.
It still won't be enough.
I don't begrudge the Conservatives a victory. I don't agree with their reported £12bn worth of welfare cuts and their 'bedroom tax' is the stuff of nightmares. However, protesting on the streets against the result of a democratic election is plain nonsense, and that is what is happening right now in London.
So, what about the sub plots? The Liberal Democrats are almost no more when their expected wipeout became a reality. Vince Cable, Danny Alexander, Simon Hughes et al are all queuing at the job centre. (Ex) Leader Nick Clegg remains but his resignation as head of the party leaves him consigned to the back benches. The UKIP "political earthquake" resulted in a single seat, with Douglas Carswell retaining Clacton, whilst (ex) leader, Nigel Farage lost in South Thanet.
Other high profile casualties included Ed Balls and Douglas Alexander, who was beaten by a 20-year old SNP candidate by the name of Mhairi Black. Miss Black tweeted five years ago that, "Maths was shite", ruling her out of any potential job at the Treasury. The SNP steamrolled Scotland, claiming a huge 56 seats and the Greens held on to their 1 seat in Brighton Pavilion, where Caroline Lucas will attempt not to be dragged away by police.
Boris Johnson is now an MP although any potential cabinet position must surely wait until his time as Mayor of London is over. George Galloway was resplendent in defeat as ever as he lost his seat in Bradford and what's that? Oh, the Lib Dems have lost another marginal...
But the main shock of this election was the Tory majority. While the voting system is horrendously outdated*, the main reason behind using it is to create solid governments. We do now have that, but at what cost? Only time will tell...
* The First Past the Post voting system meant that the SNP got 1.5m votes resulting in 56 seats in Parliament. UKIP got 3.5m votes resulting in 1 seat.
I'm no UKIP fan but... That's not democracy.
1 comment:
Good points. Particularly on the NHS and how we need to take more responsibility for how we use it instead of blaming politicians for running it wrong. After all if we didn't want them running it we would have a private system like everywhere else instead wouldn't we?
UKIP probably did get a bit hard done by in terms of seats but considering many of their ex-conservative members used to love FPTP it's a bit hypocritical of them to complain now. They loved the system when it helped them and hated it when it didn't.
Personally I'm glad Cameron managed to scrap a majority. No excuses now to not deliver on his promises!
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