Well, the election is over and all the constituencies have finally returned their verdicts on the politicians of our day.
Labour have again won a massive majority of seats, as predicted by the polls; this should make them the first
British Labour government ever to serve two full consecutive terms in office, but their jubilation is tempered by an extraordinarily low turnout, about 58% - this means that less than a quarter of the population actually turned up to support them. The last time the turnout was this low was in
1918, when our troops hadn't all made it back from the war yet; this time no such excuse is available. This non-voting clearly comes as the result of a combination of factors, in proportions which will hopefully become clearer as more research is done: People being disillusioned with the main parties, and knowing how hard
our system makes it to elect anyone else; people being (rightly) convinced that Labour would win whatever they did; and also people just
not really giving a toss. As
martin says, the somewhat reduced relevance of
Westminster outside of
England may also have had a part to play.
The Conservative Party managed to win only one more seat than they held onto in their humiliating defeat of 1997. They do now have an MP in Scotland again, but their majority of only 74 makes even this a pretty measly victory; small wonder that William Hague resigned early on Friday. The Liberal Democrats have gained six seats, giving them more MPs than they have had since the first half of the 1900s, while New Labour have lost six. In Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein went from 2 seats to 4, the DUP from 2 to 5, the UUP from 10 to 6 while the SDLP stayed on 3 and the UKUP lost their one seat. Meanwhile the SNP lost one of their six seats, and Plaid Cymru gained one and lost one; Martin Bell lost the seat he was contesting but Richard Taylor, a GP from Wyre Forest standing on a 'save Kidderminster Hospital' ticket, won with a stunningly large majority of 17,630.
Labour won 40.8% of the vote, the Tories 31.8%, and the Liberal Democrats 18.3%, while other candidates between them won 9.1%, making this a good election for smaller parties in terms of percentages if not seats. The Green Party for instance did better than ever before, managing to retain their deposit in ten constituencies. Worryingly the BNP also did rather well, coming third in Oldham West with 16% of the vote.