UK election blogging

The Editor: What they said in ... the election blogs
From Guardian - 07/05/2005
William Cederwell

Labour may have enjoyed a historic third consecutive election win on Friday, but there was only muted cheer from the election blogs. A common complaint - as aired by "Enigmatic" at the election2005.bravereflections blog - was the "wild" distortion caused by the first-past-the-post electoral system. "So, it's four/five more years of New Labour. Well, tarnished Labour, to be precise. The really bad news is that we have, again, a government which only about 36% of the nation supports. Read that again. For every Labour voter there are two who didn't vote Labour."

Labour "are still going to end up with a 10% majority of the seats", wrote "Sliver" at sliver.objective2k.com . And "the Tories with 33% get around 50 more seats but that percentage of the vote is exactly the same as it was last time. The Liberal Democrats get a consistent 6-7% (going as high as 17%) swing against Labour . . . yet only come out with 10 or so more seats."

So which party had most cause to be triumphant? None of them, reckoned the self-confessed "utopian, dreamy anarcho-capitalist", Guido Fawkes, at 5thnovember.blogspot.com . "Labour's victory came on the back of the smallest winning share of the vote ever recorded." The "poor showing" of the Lib Dems meant they were "not a real alternative", and "the Tories failed to break 200 seats, which was the target. So no victory parade for them."

Perhaps the real winners were "the 'others' - smaller parties and independent candidates" who scooped a "remarkable 8%", reckoned redpepper.blogs.com . "A similar pattern has been seen elsewhere in western Europe," where "major parties have been haemorrhaging support".

For a sense of triumph, one had to visit toryscum.com , which crowed: "Michael Howard conceded defeat at 4.20am this morning. Our work here is done."

A posting at the notapathetic.com message board, meanwhile, had a sharp word for the abstainers. "If you don't like any of the political parties, either join one to change it, set up your own, or stand yourself as an independent. Or return to this website and change your posting to I'm too lazy and stupid to do anything about my own dissatisfaction." William Cederwell

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Copyright 2005 Guardian Newspapers Limited
Date: 07/05/2005
Publication: Guardian

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