So, the election

Well, I’m half asleep from watching the election results – but thankfully so is everyone else and it’s a Friday so it’s not like we do anything anyway.

Looking at the results they currently stand:

Conservatives: 299
Labour: 253
Liberal Democrats: 54

With 24 seats left in play. 326 are needed for a majority (well in theory) and I think we can safely say that only some of those 24 seats are going to go to the Tories.

We have a hung Parliament. Which is kind of what I was hoping (actually, I hoped that the Tories would have a little less seats than they do, but still, a hung parliament). Which means the ball is rather in the Lib Dem’s court – they can coalition with the Tories to make a government or with Labour (assuming there isn’t a large Tory swing in the remaining seats). A Labour-Lib Dem coalition would be a minority government unless it also picked up allies from smaller parties

As an aside, it’ll be interesting to see what role devolution plays in this, with a possible coalition relying on the votes of Scottish, Northern Irish and Welsh parties who may be voting on devolved issues. AND whether they’ll be able to push for greater devolution/greater concessions on the strength of it

My hope is for the Lib Dems to form a coalition with Labour, but Nick Clegg is playing his hand close to his chest. I think a Labour coalition will benefit him more since Labour and Lib Dems are closer on many issues and Labour needs them more.

On the Lib Dems… well the great surge of Lib Dem power… didn’t happen, sadly. They lost seats. However, as part of a coalition government look at the above number of seats then look at percentage of the vote:

Conservatives: 10,466,276 votes -  36.2%
Labour:     8,431,224 votes -  29.1%
Liberal Democrat: 6,636,297 votes – 22.9%

Yeah, that’s not right, really. That’s a lot of wasted and indifferent votes right there. Hopefully with the Lib Dems needed for coalition there will be some serious reform of this broken broken system.

Speaking of broken system – there are many many many reports of polling stations being swamped by high turn out. They were unable to cope and a lot of people were turned away unable to vote. That’s horrendous and a shameful indictment of how prepared we were for this election – heads need to roll on this one. It should be interesting to see if there will be by elections or the like to try and address these – and how that will affect the outcome.

On the Tories: Cameron, this was your election to win and it’s pretty unimpressive that you didn’t manage it, all things considered. It must be especially galling that several of the seats you were after went to Labour by such a thin margin. Perhaps, just maybe, if you had got the great mass of bigoted Victorian fools that make up your party to shut up (and, maybe, quit cleaning out their moats at our expense) you could have done a fair bit better.

On the good news, bigot Phillipa Stroud, she who likes to exorcise gay demons, didn’t win. And Peter Robinson in Ireland was given the boot. Openly gay Labour MPs Ben Bradshaw, Chris Bryant, Angela Eagle, Nick Brown, Stephen Twigg and Clive Betts all held their seats. The Liberal Democrats have gained an openly gay MP Stephen Gilbert to join bisexual MP Simon Hughes (the Lib Dems do not, however, keep convenient lists of GBLT MPs – but then their record on GBLT rights is very good). And finally, the Green Party has finally got their first MP. Congratulations Caroline Lucas.

UKIP and the BNP got sweet bugger all. This makes me a happy bunny.

Personally, my seat remains Tory, grrr. I voted Liberal Democrat and don’t regret it, generally liking the Lib Dems. If the Lib Dems do align themselves with the Tories, it will be the last time I vote for them, however, since I refuse to vote for Tory enablers. I await Nick Clegg‘s move with trepidation.