And so it begins

Yes. I'm a little bit annoyed.

For those who haven't heard, Gordon Brown handed his resignation in to the Queen today and David Cameron is officially now our Prime Minister, thanks to a deal with the Liberal Democrats that has enabled the Conservatives to form a parliamentary majority.

We now have a Conservative government for the first time in 13 years, albeit with a slightly yellow tinge. Those of us who remember the 1980s and 1990s will know that we spent what seemed like forever trying to get rid of the last one.

I was once a member of the Liberal Democrats. As a fan of Old Labour policies, they seemed for a long time like the only party of the main three who even remotely represented my beliefs. As it happened, my naivety about Lib Dem policies was shattered when they got rid of Charles Kennedy as leader because of his alcoholism. I had believed until then that, somehow, the Liberal Democrats represented a better way of doing politics, as signified by their belief in voting reform and open and accountable politics.

I suspect a lot of people have had their naivety about the Liberal Democrats shattered today. The fact that they have never been in government before gave them a slither of credibility when they said "we're different." Today they've proved that they're not. Nick Clegg has made the proverbial deal with the devil in order to get his party into power. If he believed even half of the Liberal Democrats' policies when he joined the party, then his beliefs should be so fundamentally different from the Conservatives that he could not even contemplate helping them get into power.

Let's not forget the origins of the Liberal Democrats. They were formed by a combination of the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party. The Liberal Party survived tough times in the 1970s thanks to their pact with Jim Callaghan's Labour Party and the SDP was formed in the 1980s when a breakaway group of Labour MPs thought that the party had gone too far to the left (ironically, it was Labour's opposition to nuclear weapons which was seen as a sign they had gone loony left at the time). So deep down, the Liberal Democrats is a party of people who have far more in common than Labour than with Conservatives.

When New Labour appeared in the mid 1990s, the Liberal Democrats seemed left-wing by comparison. Under Clegg, the party has drifted more to the right, whilst Labour are now the strongest party standing for social justice. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of New Labour. They made a great many mistakes: tuition fees, Iraq, Afghanistan, stealth privatisation, failure to reform politics, etc. But they also did a great number of positive things, whilst the last Tory government left nothing but a huge shadow over Britain. The Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats should be entirely unreconcilable. But power corrupts.

Some people have said they've felt sorry for Clegg in the position he's been in since Friday. I don't. He's clearly fucking loved it. Despite coming third in the polls, he was for a few days the most powerful man in Britain, and he milked it for every last drop. I'm not saying it was an easy decision to make - indeed, there was no "fair outcome" here except possibly another general election. But this is exactly the worst decision he could have made. I will never vote Liberal Democrat again, unless the party rebels against this coalition and pushes Clegg out over it.

So what do we have to look forward to now? The Conservatives have apparently agreed to a referendum over the Alternative Vote system, but that is not the same as promising to implent it. There's nothing to stop them campaigning against it in the run up to the referendum. Details will probably come out in the next few days about what the Lib Dems have obtained in return for their support - but it's unlikely to be anything that fundamentally goes against the Conservative ethos of laissez faire government, help for big business and complete disregard for social justice.

The next time you lose your job you may be forced to take one in McDonalds. The next time you need an operation you may have to wait months rather than weeks because of NHS cutbacks. The next time you look for a new job you may find there are twice as many people applying than there were a year ago. The next time you go into town you may find three more shops have closed.

This is a shitty day for Britain and an even worse day for democracy.

Election Fever: Final Scores

Except, well... it's not the final scores really, is it? There's still so much to play for, although we've reached the point where the electorate no longer have any say in it. There's also doubt over whether these results are the final results, given that some people were turned away from polling stations even though they'd arrived before 10pm. It's pretty disgraceful when people are denied their right to vote just because there aren't enough administrators to process the queues. Why didn't the polling stations simply stay open until everyone had voted? This isn't America, y'know, we don't expect that kind of scandal over here.

Anyway... the final results, in terms of seats, vote share and geography. The graph below is shamelessly nicked from the Guardian's website.

Look at that results map. As you can see, the North of England is broadly Labour territory. We really should have our own parliament - in fact there were plans for a regional parliament in the North West years ago, championed by John Prescott, but it was unpopular with the public because it was deemed too expensive and not powerful enough. But at least it would have paved the way for more regional autonomy, and given the results above, that's certainly something we need.

As you can see from the pie chart, the Conservatives only secured about a third of all votes. Labour's vote share is probably higher than most people expected. The Liberal Democrats actually did very poorly in terms of vote share and ended up losing seats. They would probably make the point that almost 25% of people voted for them, yet they get less than 10% of the seats in parliament because of our screwed up voting system. This is a valid point to make - at times, the current system has screwed us all, regardless of our political preferences. Reform is long overdue. But you still can't escape the fact that the Liberal Democrats have really underperformed here. What happened to Cleggmania? How have they not managed to significantly increase their vote share after the breakthrough made in the election debates?

There's always been an assumption on the part of the Lib Dems that, if they could make such a breakthrough and if the voting system was reformed, that they would be catapulted into the big leagues. But even if we had proportional representation, they would still only have come third. Yet at this moment Nick Clegg is potentially the most powerful man in Britain. It is up to Clegg and his party now to decide whether our next government will be predominatly Conservative or predominantly Labour. Doesn't that strike you as just a little bit unfair?

When I started this series of blogs, I stated that I wanted to vote Liberal Democrat but thought it would be more practical to vote Labour. My position has shifted significantly during the election campaign and I doubt now that I'll ever vote again for any party other than Labour. To be fair, I've been drifting away from the Liberal Democrats ever since they dropped their best policy - the one penny in the pound tax for education. They've been moving further to the right since Clegg became leader and during this campaign I've seen a lot of things I don't like. His reaction to Bigotgate was one of them. Clegg has always claimed that his party would usher in a new way of conducting politics, yet he was as quick as anyone else to jump on the bandwagon and castigate Brown. Clegg's incredulous claim that he has never said anything about anyone behind their back is ridiculous. Everybody moans about their customers, colleagues and bosses. It's human nature. In the debates, Clegg came off as pious and smug, whilst Brown has seemed more and more human throughout the campaign.

Now Clegg is showing his true colours by announcing that he will listen to the Tories offer for a coalition before talking to Labour. He says the party with the biggest vote share has the right to make an offer first. In a sense, I can see where he's coming from - if Labour and the Lib Dems formed a coalition government and left the Tories out in the cold after obtaining the biggest vote share, many people would be outraged. But in terms of policies, beliefs and practices, the Lib Dems have almost nothing in common with the Tories. To make a pact with them would be to betray the people who voted Lib Dem. What you have to remember here is that most Lib Dem voters, if given a choice between Labour and Tory, would choose Labour. Most of them would be appalled to see Clegg helping the Tories into power.

Cameron says that Brown has lost his mandate to govern. But none of the main parties have a mandate to govern now. Despite the fact that they were up against a party that has been in power for 13 years with a hugely unpopular prime minister, the Conservatives still couldn't manage an overall majority. In fact, 64% of voters chose not to vote for them. That's hardly an endorsement from the masses.

The best way to sort this out would be to have another general election, this time with an alternative vote system. This is a system whereby each voter can assign a number to each candidate on the voting ballot in order of preference. So on my ballot, Labour would be first preference, Lib Dem would be second, etc. Of course, this is impractical given how long it would take to introduce such a system and work out the bugs. The Tories would never go for it anyway - they are wholly against proportional representation because it threatens their concentrated power bases. So with 62% of voters choosing parties that advocate proportional representation, the single largest party is one that will not even contemplate it.

What will happen now? Who knows? The Liberal Democrats, despite coming third, are now in position to decide who governs Britain. They will either choose a party which has only secured 34% of votes or a party that has only secured 29% of votes. Alternatively, they may refuse to form a coalition with anyone, which will mean a minority government that can't get any legislation passed through parliament.

In any case, it's a shitty shitty day for democracy.

Election Fever #7

With less than 10 hours before the polling booths open, the latest Guardian/ICM poll is showing the Conservatives ahead on 33% with 28% of voters intending to vote Labour and the same amount intending to vote Liberal Democrat. Of course, our skewed voting system means that the final make-up of parliament could look completely different - even with a smaller vote share, Labour could still end up with more seats than the Tories. All in all, it's too close to call.

I'm predicting one of two outcomes tomorrow:
1) A win for the Tories, although I don't expect it to be a landslide.
2) A result where no party wins outright, leading to an awkward coalition between the Tories/Lib Dems or Labour/Lib Dems.

I'm hoping against hope that I'm wrong. After all, there have been bigger electoral surprises in the past. In 1992, Labour were very confident that Neil Kinnock would be in Downing Street before Friday dinnertime. In the end, it turned out that the Tories efforts to paint them as the party of "tax and spend" had been more successful than anyone thought. Then again, there is the alternative theory: that people just didn't want a ginger Welshman as Prime Minister.

Politics, sadly, has become more personality-driven than policy-driven over the past quarter century. Many people blame this on Tony Blair, but whilst Pinning The Blame On Blair is one of my favourite past-times, it goes back way before that. The cult of personality started with Thatcher, who was herself influenced by politics in America. So now we have a society which is not asking itself "what will a Tory win mean for me?" but instead "I don't fancy that Gordon Brown." Which is, of course, ridiculous.

For someone who has studied politics, it's enormously frustrating. I've chosen to tactically vote Labour after many hours of consideration. Some people will turn up at the voting booths and plump for the Tories or the Lib Dems because they were impressed with what they saw of Cameronbot and Cleggbot during the TV debates. They will be completely unaware of the history of those parties, the philosophical reasoning behind their policies or the implications of their vote. But their vote carries just as much weight as mine. That's democracy for you.

It's a truism that politics often involves making difficult decisions, but come tomorrow the whole nation will be faced with a difficult choice. Politics in the 21st century is often about choosing the least of all evils. We can fool ourselves that this isn't the case, telling ourselves that Clegg is the British Obama or that any change right now would be a positive one. But what it ultimately comes down to is this: do we want the shitty government we already have? Or one which will make Gordon Brown look like Mother Theresa?