Thursday, May 13, 2010

UK Election




Sorry but this in two parts as it's tricky to condense... !

Part 1 – The Election & the Near Coup

This time last week I trundled along to the polling station and briefly toyed with the idea of shoveling an extra vote the Tories way by virtue of a spare polling card I had from my ex flat mate refusing to vote. In the end I couldn’t be bothered to don a wig or dark glasses and risk going to prison. But suffice to say that is generally how desperate I felt about this last chance election.

We were living under what felt increasingly like a rabid Left Wing Dictatorship with the Tories in the wilderness flailing - labels like “Tory Cuts!” and the “Nasty Party” had stuck. Yup those labels stuck so hard that 14 year old morons with no idea what Conservatism even means having never lived under such an administration (and who hardly looks poverty line to me), planned to illegally vote – just to “stick it to the evil Tories” (his words). The Nu Labour project run by Tony Blair, who redressed the Labour Party to make them less obviously Red Flag wavers, more Market friendly and smooth the way for the metropolitan elite to take over, had won the day. They spent the next 13 years entrenching views that were false - as they increased taxes, enacted hundreds of civil liberty eroding laws and squandered a Rolls Royce of an economy handed them by the last Tory administration. They leave us with the worse economic mess this country has ever faced and nothing to show for it - apart from a radically altered electorate.

Make no mistake. This country has spent the last 13 years with a significant minority of people who are anti-Tory because of the success of Nu Labour lies, immigration and hand outs. Labour hate the working classes they had been brought to power by 70 odd years ago and bought their votes instead.

Cameron recognised some time ago that the Tories needed to change that attitude before it became so utterly entrenched it was impossible to remove. To achieve this requires power. And it required power to be wielded in a way that proved the Tories had “changed”. That meant that full-blooded Conservatism had to be ‘reined back’ on the surface. Yes it is pandering to the propaganda and lies of the Left over the last twenty or thirty years, but only power changes the status quo and only a Tory government demonstrating it is a good thing could counteract that poison and slowly wean people off the welfare state, off the metropolitan elite's placard politics of idiocy and bring this country back to it's natural state – that of liberal Conservatism.


So I cast my vote, went home and watched TV all night hoping for a Tory majority. Knowing that when they did take over it would be ghastly and bitter and possibly give them a stint at power to last 5 years only for another Labour routing. I felt that Cameron had achieved a level of credible pseudo leftiness to appeal to that significant minority suckled by Labour but I worried looking at the polls and knowing the general feeling that he hadn’t slam dunked it with regards to Labour’s appauling record, immigration, the EU or the economy. I hoped for a slim majority knowing he had a mountain to climb. And sure enough the votes came in and I woke up on the sofa the following morning, wine glass still in hand to see Labour historically slumping, showing a significant Tory swing – but a hung Parliament. A first in my lifetime.

Shit.

And I cursed UKIP, the single issue anti Europe party. They didn’t gain a single effing seat, pulled a million votes but clearly cost the Tories their majority outright.

I can honestly say the last 5 days have been horrifying.

A FPTP system delivers less hung parliaments than other voting systems in our system of government and I’m bloody grateful for that system (while we have it!) because it truly was a HEINOUS outcome. I examined the prospects of a Liberal coalition and just as I started realising it's possible advantages – Brown - the hulking impediment to Clegg forming an alliance with the Labour Party, ‘resigned’. Having spent the weekend telling the country it was his “constitutional duty” to stay (which it was). I realised a vile game was being played and we stood a major chance of ‘losing’ to a sneering slimy Mandelson and co. A “left wing progressive coalition” was on the cards attaching itself to a Party billed to make significant gains at the election - but which flunked badly. The loony elements of their manifesto - Trident, illegal immigrant amnesty and the Eu were roundly rejected.

Polly Toynbee at the Guardian was busy having orgasms on every major news outlet at the prospect of a coalition of hard lefties and heralding the end of conservatism - whilst Adam Boulton at Sky News came close to punching Alistair Campbell, Labour’s spinmeister, live on air - for spinning the election into a complete left wing ‘win’ - utterly ignoring the millions who had clearly voted for one Party outright.

And there I was in a giant Twitter fight with Lib-Lab coalition lunatics. Simultaneously yelling at Adam Boulton to “deck the fucker!” and crying down the phone to my mum about leaving the country. Yes it really did get that bad. We don’t get overexcited on our news channels. Watching Boulton implode like that was telling enough and I shared his pain. As did almost every Conservative voter out there. Thousands swamped to join the Conservative party in an effort to insist their winning votes counted for something – including me. The hard left elements of the Liberal Party couldn’t believe their luck.

We were watching a hard left coup. I was actually feeling sick to my stomach.

Part 2 - 'a bit of a revolution' - to follow asap - for those interested :)


10 comments:

  1. A rollicking read, Alison, as always from you. And of course we're interested in Part 2. I'm hanging on the edge of my seat, really, to see how you cipher out a bit of revolution from the jumble you have there now.

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  2. So glad you took up our invitation Alison. I edited the size of your video (480 is the maximum width we can handle on our front page).

    Great post and I can't wait to read the second installment!

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  3. Also, your first link wasn't working because the http was in there twice so I fixed that (if you are using the blogspot tool to link then you need to delete the http that appears in the box before you paste your link).

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  4. Wow, what drama! I can't wait for part deux!

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  5. "for those interested :)"

    We're interested. We're interested.

    Folks, me thinks Allison has raised the bar here.

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  6. Thanks all :)

    And thanks Fay - i though i'd selected the baby YT video format but maybe I screwed that up. Ill try and get the formatting together :)

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  7. No problem Alison, I find that YT is not consistent in their video sizes. All you need to remember is to change the width to 480 in the body of your post.

    Check out the Seekrit Codez link under Pages on the right side bar for more tips.

    And welcome again!

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  8. Very interesting Alison - and certainly far more in depth than all the news stories no the Brit elections combined, that have played in the US.

    As one who is pretty much unfamiliar with the Parliamentary system, however, may I ask what an 'FPTP' system is?

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  9. FPTP stands for First Past the Post..ive included a link in part 2. I always think its a bit disappointing how Britain is treated as a minor league nothing nation by US press :(

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  10. Pfft. The US press treats AMERICA as a minor league nothing nation, too. They're idiots! :)

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