I have never had to queue at a polling station before last Thursday, or seen queues like it, even when I was a kid watching Old Labour roll the vote out. Turnout was actually what, though, 65%? Good, but in no way ‘unmanageable’ and no excuse for the incompetence and mismanagement which prevented thousands of votes being cast.

According to the BBC, ‘people are calling this a Mick Jagger election’ (no they aren’t – what, superannuated, clapped-out and needing to be pensioned off?). This is of course merely a ruse for commentators to reference the lack of SATISFACTION it brought all parties and the nation.

Satisfactory stuff as far as I’m concerned:
- BNP comprehensively dished in Barking & Dagenham, Epping Forest and Stoke. Wiped out at the local level, as will tend to happpen because, historically, even if you vote for these people on the basis of “”"giving them a chance”"”, they get Found Out relatively quickly because they always fuck it up through absenteeism, incompetence and being generally unable and unwilling to conduct themselves within democratic boundaries. Fuck ‘em.
- My home seat in Wales has been retaken by Labour from that ‘independent’ clown.
- Labour have retaken Bethnal Green from the idiot George Galloway, who also failed to get elected in Poplar.
- Only one Tory in Scotland. Shame the same couldn’t be said for Wales.
- Naomi Long becoming the (highly progressive) Alliance Party’s first MP, unseating Peter Robinson in the process.
- Caroline Lucas becoming the first Green MP – this’ll be interesting, I’ve already had one Brighton correspondent rubbishing her on the basis that she didn’t campaign in and generally isn’t bothered about the more deprived and less picturesque bits of Brighton. We’ll see.
- In general: many of the nastier and richest blondest most hotly-tipped-for-Cabinet-places Cameronites failed to get in. Aww.
- Gordon Brown’s constituency vote actually went up: GOOD. (Some other time I’ll write about the rage induced in me by seeing tabloids and image consultants telling a grown man the sort of thing that fucks up socially anxious children, viz. ‘No one will like you unless you smile, you know – no, no, smile properly, come on, god, you’re so weird, no wonder no one wants to play with you’ etc. Oh look, I have.)

Otherwise:
- Gutted re. Evan Harris losing his seat – done for by boundary changes and a baffling number of votes wasted on the Green candidate, it appears?
- And astonished re. Lembit Opik losing his, although I’d imagine a highly lucrative career doing reality tv awaits.

Liberal Democrats: an infantile disorder?
And now what? The Liberal Democrats will seriously disappoint me if they pile in with the Tories, although it won’t exactly be a suprise. I hadn’t said this amid the Liberal Moment premature rejoicing, because of course I’d prefer a vote to be cast for them against the Tories, but the Liberal Democrats did very well to spin themselves as a ‘new’ alternative when what they are is the offspring of the Whigs, for fuck’s sake and the Social Democrats, the latter being a horrible little rump of a party which jumped ship from 80s Labour (thanks, guys!) in order to attempt to cosy up to the Thatcher government. A sizeable amount of that party won’t have a problem with governing alongside the Tories – although I’m assuming that many will.

If they join a coalition without getting a time and place for electoral reform, the Liberal Democrats are fucked, though, aren’t they? At any forthcoming election they’ll be associated with whatever draconian economic measures the Tories go for, and in Wales at least their vote will be squeezed in favour of Labour or Plaid. Trading away a commitment to reform – as opposed to Cameron’s current ‘Yes, yes, we’ll set up a committee and review the situation – oh alright, if you insist, we’ll set up a committee and thoroughly review the situation, now, about knifing the BBC and carving up the remains of the welfare state…’ – in exchange for seats in the Cabinet is truly old-style political venality and short-termism. I wish I could say I’d expected better.

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