Well, I’m still not quite sure whether the British General Election was as dull as it seemed – a national swing from Labour to Conservative of 3% was obviously not enough to change the government, but underneath that there were more interesting things going on.
Mainly, as far as I could see, the unwinding of the unspoken deal whereby Labour and Liberal Democrat voters tried to keep out the Tories. More than anything else, this was what gave the Labour Party such a landslide in 1997 and 2001, but the electoral system still seems to working in their favour (only 36% of the votes, but 55% of the seats). The Conservatives still have a mountain to climb – if they gained three times as many seats next time even that wouldn’t give them an overall majority. And, if you assume that Iraq will be forgotten in 4-5 years and Gordon Brown might be more acceptable to many who voted Lib Dem yesterday, the Conservatives could be in for a long wait.
I watched some of BBC World’s coverage this morning. Rather than simply giving us the same coverage as you would get in the UK, they stick a few people in a small studio and do their best, with odd snippets from the main BBC coverage (mainly the excitable Peter Snow). The logic seems to be that we need someone to tell us that Manchester in a large city up north and to explain terminology such as "hung parliament".
Yes, a hung parliament. Although the BBC/ITV Exit Poll was actually very accurate, Ivor Crewe kept insisting that the early results indicated that Labour would lose its overall majority. This sounded mad at the time, and now I think we can put it up there with that marvellous Zogby prediction of the Presidential Election, filed under "delusional".
As now seems to be traditional, the Conservative leader announced his resignation the day after the election. Their problem, however, is that the membership of the party will elect someone else who is far too right-wing in his place. I can’t help feeling that they’d have been better served by an even heavier defeat to bring them to their senses. Bring back William Hague, that’s what I say.
Only joking.
Ordinary Gweilo 
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