No-one could have predicted last nights results and fewer people will be able to predict the future after it. I was hearing a lot of people undecided and unsure how they were going to vote; there was a promise of much tactical voting; the number of parties involved meant that the normal pendulum and predictions based on swing were basically redundant; and this election attracted a large number of people voting who had never voted before even though the turnout was down on previous years. So, with the benefit of hindsight, nobody could have predicted the result, at least statistically speaking.
A post hoc analysis is needed now the fog of war that clouded the respective campaigns has cleared. Simply put, it seems to me: the SNP wiped out Labour in Scotland; the Tories wiped out the Lib Dems in the South; and the two main parties made very little ground on each other, apart from the odd marginal. I doubt any previous UK election could have provided a template for that outcome. And of course there has been one unknown now becoming known, that UKIP have managed to steal the working class nationalist vote from all their rivals, including the BNP. Although it looks like they may have also soaked up the LibDem vote in some places, espcecially Essex.
The government will have to listen to the voice of the electorate and answer some major constitutional questions. This is probably not before time. Cameron will have to balance the demand for an independent Scotland with the demands to have the entire UK withdraw from the European Union. The monopoly of the NHS in the UK healthcare market depends on that referendum. The UK will have to look again at the fairness of its polarising first-past-the-post system against the more multi-party EU style of proportional representation. And the English Parliament issue is unlikely to go away.
As for Labour, I think the less tears spilt over Scotland the better. We need to shine a light on the unholy alliance between the energy industry, military equipment, and financial services that has propped up the Tories for the last two hundred years; appeal to the working and business classes in the northern metropolitan areas with a nessage of hope and multicultural values; develop a narrative linking overseas aid with sponsorship in the scientific and techinical industries; and attract the disenfranchised Lib Dem voters in the South during the next local government elections.
We have not been defeated but we have been contained. We must use this result as a mandate for change and progress.
A post hoc analysis is needed now the fog of war that clouded the respective campaigns has cleared. Simply put, it seems to me: the SNP wiped out Labour in Scotland; the Tories wiped out the Lib Dems in the South; and the two main parties made very little ground on each other, apart from the odd marginal. I doubt any previous UK election could have provided a template for that outcome. And of course there has been one unknown now becoming known, that UKIP have managed to steal the working class nationalist vote from all their rivals, including the BNP. Although it looks like they may have also soaked up the LibDem vote in some places, espcecially Essex.
The government will have to listen to the voice of the electorate and answer some major constitutional questions. This is probably not before time. Cameron will have to balance the demand for an independent Scotland with the demands to have the entire UK withdraw from the European Union. The monopoly of the NHS in the UK healthcare market depends on that referendum. The UK will have to look again at the fairness of its polarising first-past-the-post system against the more multi-party EU style of proportional representation. And the English Parliament issue is unlikely to go away.
As for Labour, I think the less tears spilt over Scotland the better. We need to shine a light on the unholy alliance between the energy industry, military equipment, and financial services that has propped up the Tories for the last two hundred years; appeal to the working and business classes in the northern metropolitan areas with a nessage of hope and multicultural values; develop a narrative linking overseas aid with sponsorship in the scientific and techinical industries; and attract the disenfranchised Lib Dem voters in the South during the next local government elections.
We have not been defeated but we have been contained. We must use this result as a mandate for change and progress.
