According to the counter on BBC, Labour has just won the 324 seats necessary to form a government. The Tories are out for another three years. Unfortunately, Blair is back in.
Overall, pretty much the result I expected. Labour was "given a bloody nose" which should remind it not to cross the people again, but not at the cost of a Conservative victory. The rest is up to Labour's MPs. Next stop: the Brown leadership coup...
Update: And as a final mark of that bloody nose, anti-war MP George Galloway has won Bethnal Green & Bow in a very close race. I'm not sure whether to cheer or not (his Respect Coalition is an unholy alliance of anti-war progressives and extremely regressive conservative Muslims), but it is very definitely giving the finger to Blair.
5 comments:
I'm not 100% on this, but I do get the feeling Blair changed the rules so that a Labour Prime Minister cannot be challenged by the party while in office.
Posted by Rich : 5/06/2005 03:47:00 PM
I dont know about the bloody nose stuff.
Blair won them the election the first time and he won them the election again. if the party was lead by a miscelanious other leader they could well have lost all of the "blair elections".
The fact that he only generally kicked everyone elses ass as opposed to absolutely burrying them like last time is hardly "getting a bloody nose".
Anyway what third term primeminister anywhere has ever increased his margin? (ok except howard)
Posted by Anonymous : 5/06/2005 07:16:00 PM
Anon, Idiot/Savant is exactly right about the bloody nose. To have your majority cut by 101 seats *is* a bloody nose in any govt's language. Furthermore, Labour knows that they now have the dubious honour of being the govt with the lowest ever percentage of the popular vote. The message is loud and clear, the public definitely don't want the conservatives in power, but they *also* don't want Labour to have the huge majority and therefore "untouchability" that it has enjoyed for the last two terms.
Also, the feeling I'm getting over here from the papers and the British tv news is that in this election Labour has won *despite* Tony Blair and certainly not because of him. Your assertion about Blair winning the elections for Labour was true the last two times, but certainly not true this time around.
Posted by Anonymous : 5/06/2005 09:04:00 PM
Hmm well if winning is a bloody nose I wonder what the conservatives and the liberal democrats got...
a strike to the groin with a sword maybe?
As for Tony blair winning it for them
A) they probably wouldnt be in the position of even expecting to win without him
B) who would they have replaced him with? its a bit like national replacing jenny shiply with Bill "who?" english and the tories in the UK choosing whoever they chose (Im told that many people in the UK are similarly confused as to who he is). replacing blair with some "real deal" labour person is just about the only way you could concevably destroy the labour dynasty in the UK.
Posted by Anonymous : 5/06/2005 10:19:00 PM
Under FPP maybe you may be right that Labour needs a fairly right-wing leader (one acceptable to Rupert Murdoch and the CIA) to get elected.
Over 60% of the UK vote went to left-of-centre parties (I include Labour in this). With MMP, the left would have an unassilable position, even with a left-winger leading Labour. (Neil Kinnock could have formed a coalition with the Lib Dems in '87 and '92 under MMP).
Posted by Rich : 5/08/2005 08:02:00 PM
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