Yesterday’s UK elections really are an analogue of the US midterms of 2006, aren’t they? The ruling party’s hammered, but somehow not as badly as you’d expect;and purely co-incidentally, there are massive irregularities in the voting process and a potential election challenge.
I said yesterday that the news reports showed that of all the electoral reforms put in by New Labour those in Scotland were the most likely to be totally fucked up, produce a knife-edge result and lead to an election dispute. Well, well, well:
There were calls today for an investigation into the Scottish election after polling descended into chaos with tens of thousands spoilt ballot papers, faulty counting machines and bad weather delaying the return of ballot boxes.
With two simultaneous elections being held under three different voting systems, some seats saw more than a 1,000 spoilt papers being discarded.
Although the SNP leader, Alex Salmond, won his own seat and appeared set for a narrow national victory, a result is not now expected until the early afternoon.
Mr Salmond said the confusion between the two voting systems was “totally unacceptable in a democratic society”.
In one seat more than 1,500 votes were discounted – more than the majority by which Labour beat the SNP.
[…]
Ken Ritchie, the chief executive of the Electoral Reform Society, which is monitoring the election, said the situation was “shocking and intolerable”.
Turnout, though it won’t be completely clear till the count has finished, was reportedly only around 50%, so the electorate apparently had little faith enough in the democratic process to change anything before this fiasco. I doubt this will help.
In other election news: my home town,a Labour stronghold, has gone Tory; the voters have turfied out a New Labour administration of career politicians in it for the power and the allowances, some of whom I once knew personally and whom I now take great delight in seeing brought down. That it took going Tory to get rid of the fuckers is not a good thing but there are a lot of naval voters, white-flighters and ‘Keep Them In Birmingham”ers there so, not that surprising. This Tory gain has been repeated in 15 other local authorities too.
But Labour Party chair and sweatshop-supporting, deputy-leader candidate Hazel Blears is as usual on the news insisting with that eternally sunny, upbeat monotone of hers that it’s all gone beautifully and it’s really a plus for Labour, a learning curve, blah blah blah.Yes, I know ‘upbeat monotone’ is contradictory, but you really have to hear her: she is the personification of NuLab. And she’s botoxed up the wazoo too. Here she is in full Stepford mode:
You see what we’ve been and are still up against. I always say Hazel Blears is what I’d’ve become had I stayed in the Labour Party post-Blair and played the game: a pale shadow of a simulacrum of a talking-point loaded GOP clone. Phew, lucky escape. Unmotivated, unambitious and unreliable I may be but I’m happier being a human being, thanks.
But that’s my own personal nightmare.
Who came off worst in England? So far Labour lost 150 and the Lib Dems lost 100 seats. Conservatives won 300. It’s way too early to say exactly what the new political landscape will be, but whatever it is it’s going to be very interesting indeed. A possible election challenge, or a coalition government in Scotland, a revitaised (socialist) Plaid Cymru, local authorites in opposition to central government. But Labour is still in power in Westminster, and they’re about to undemocratically impose their choice of Prime Minister on the rest of us in the shape of Gordon Brown. He needs the support of the Scottish Labour Party to become leader, which is why the Scots result is so important.
So what we need now is a general election too, to cut that Gordian knot and let the country decide. There’s still a massive boil to be lanced and this messy disaster hasn’t helped. But after the drubbing New Labour has taken this time, that’s looking less and less likely – they wouldn’t dare risk it. So it’s up to one of the other parties to force the issue, or possibly, but only very possibly, for Tony Blair to pull one last cat out of the bag and ask the queen to dissolve parliament next week, just to get one last hit in at Gordon. Like I said, it’s going to be interesting.
