I Was Wrong Last Night
I was wrong last night when I said Cameron would scrape home. He didn’t.
But we live in very interesting times.
I suspect that it could all turn out for the better, but I’m not sure how.
Scenario 1 has Brown clinging to power with all the odds and sods helping him. It would be a Parliament of all the losers. I doubt it would last long and it would result in a new election which would probably give Cameron a big majority in England. That wouldn’t be a good idea either.
Scenario 2 has Cameron trying to run a minority government in a traditional manner. We’d get another election in a few months and probably Cameron would end up with less seats.
But there is another way. There must be!
Remember, MPs don’t want another election, so could we have a sort of Grand Coalition? Probably now, but supposing Cameron tried to run a minority government and to help him he brought in secret ballots in the House of Commons.
Would there be enough in the other parties to help him govern, if their Whips didn’t know how they were voting for?
Still No Result
There’s now been 57 seats declared and it’s still not clear. Swing ignoring Northern Ireland may be enough for Cameron, if the figures from the North East hold up in the rest of England.
But I’ll stick my neck out and say that Cameron will get a majority. Or at least a majority with Northern Ireland supporting him. Remember Sinn Fein don’t turn up.
The Battle of the Web Sites
I’ve been watching the elrction results on the BBC’s web site.
Just opened the ITV’s one. And closed it immediately.
The First Tory Seat is a Gain
Kingswood with a 9.4% swing.
This coupled with average swings of about 8 to 9 in the North East might well mean that Cameron has an overall majority.
Dimbleby has just said that!
Neil Kinnock has just said it is not good for Labour.
Three Come at Once and then Nothing
We have had three declarations from Sunderland and we’re still waiting for another about an hour later.
Coupled with the poor performance of the polling stations in locking people out and not having enough ballot papers, isn’t it about time we used something like the Estonian Method of voting?
In Estonia you vote over the Internet and you can do this as many times as you like, with the last vote counting.
The Third Seat has a 4.8% Swing
Swings are all over the place.
What was it Disraeli said? There are lies, damned lies and statistics.
In fact according to Wikipedia, it wasn’t Disraeli but Charles Wentworth Dilke.
So where will it all end up? Wait until 20 seats have been declared and then use the average swing.
Emily Buchanan’s Touch Screen
It’s very big!
I want one.
It would do this idea just fine. Especially if it was a lot bigger!
The Second Seat has an 11.6% Swing
Even more interesting!
Both the first two seats in Sunderland were safe Labour seats, where it would be expected that the swing would be less than the national average, which has been predicted to be 5.5%. This is because Cameron has flagged up that there will be government job losses in the North East.
The First Seat has an 8.4% Swing
Interesting.
The swing to the Tories was higher than expected, but my old school colleague Peter Kellner, said it could be due to a new candidate. The Lib-Dems were down a bit and thankfully so were the BNP.
Does anybody know that Peter was a very good fast bowler at school?
Rubber Horse to the Rescue
This article amused me.
But you can’t knock the fact that training is good for a difficult job.
The Anonymous Widower 