Well, it looks like people didn’t use their vote wisely after all.
The expected anti-LibLabCon backlash didn’t materialise with people voting for the LibLabCon coalition. The Leaders “Debates” shown on Sky, ITV and the BBC successfully deflected attention from the local candidates and onto the party leaders even though only a few thousand of us could vote for them and the anti-hung parliament propaganda in Tory newspapers scared a lot of people into so-called “tactical” voting.
The BBCs partiality in this election needs to be investigated and steps taken to ensure that the privileged and powerful few aren’t given an unfair advantage over the already disadvantaged smaller parties.
And when the Tory media complains about the fact that Gordon Brown is still Prime Minister despite losing by 2m votes and 50-odd seats, they have only themselves to blame for interfering in the election. If they’d left people to get on with voting for who they wanted instead of peddling propaganda about a hung parliament the result could have been very different. If they’d stuck to slagging off Liebour and the Limp Dims instead of telling lies about a hung parliament they wouldn’t have motivated the LibLab voters.
It looks like UKIP’s hopes are all pinned on Nigel Farage. The result has been pretty disappointing nationwide for UKIP but it looks like a lot of deposits have been retained and UKIP have beaten the BNP in almost every seat contested.
In Telford, David Wright managed to cling on to his seat with a reduced majority of about 1k, reduced from 5k. Denis Allen got almost 2.5k votes, keeping his deposit and effectively depriving the Tories of a victory. That was certainly the general consensus anyway – the Tories were fuming with us and the Liebour lot were shaking our hands blinking away the tears in their eyes, thanking us for seeing the Tories off!
In the Wrekin constituency, Mark Pritchard increased his 500 majority to 9k. Malcolm Hurst for UKIP got 2,050 votes and missed the 5% needed to keep his deposit by about 350 votes.
As I type, there are over 2m more votes for the Tories than there are for Liebour and a difference of 47 seats. There are 1.6m votes between the Limp Dims and Liebour but the difference in seats is 189. The electoral system is fundamentally wrong and needs changing. Under proportional representation, based on current vote share with 43 seats left to declare, the seat allocation for the main parties should be something like:
- Con: 235
- Lab: 185
- Lib: 149
- UKIP: 20
- BNP: 12
- SNP: 11
- Green: 6
Tens of millions of votes will be ignored no matter what the outcome is because we still have this medieval first past the post electoral system.
Clearly we have differing political views but at least we can agree about the electoral system being wrong and needing changing. I cannot even begin to grasp why the # of seats between Lib/Lab is so different despite the votes being close; and what a farce that we’re nagged and guilted into voting and yet several polling stations couldn’t cope with the turnout.
Bah!!!
I tht it wasnt 1st past the post system as who ever is winning needs 326, if it was just on seats then clearly Tories have won and should kick that sweaty racist arrogant sock out and make sure he does the washing up before he goes !!!!
I think that’s right. I bet the Tories wish they had treated Denis Allen a bit better now. There is no doubt that support that Tory Biggins desperately needed went to both to UKIP and the Lib Dems and that this deprived the Tories of the seat. I have no doubt about that. There are no votes in the Town Centre & Civiv Offices. There are votes in communities such Brookside who have promised many things by the Tory council only to see very little actually delivered. The Tories deserved to lose in Telford. They ignored sensible advice and guidance 18 months ago and watched two of their councillors walk out the door. The Tories were never going to win in Telford after that.
using your figures, could you produce an ‘england only’ count?
I could not agree more with the comments re ukip must stop being a item party, but do the voters know what they vote for ,most people I speak to know ukip as out of europe , does anyone tell them why? For instance ,when ukip sent me a poster re. post office closures , I showed it to my postman, who knew nothing of it and was suprised . I think ukip spokes persons should tell the people what they really need to know , do they know that euro parliament are trying to close the small garages on the street, my guess is,no!
It is the little things that make a difference to the little people , and they should be told!