10th May 2015

Tendring Topics…….on line

The Day of Reckoning (2)

            I can’t even say, ‘I told you so!’, because I didn’t!  Like almost everyone else, I believed that the outcome of the General Election would be a hung parliament. Either David Cameron or Ed Miliband would have to form a coalition, or at least come to an understanding with one of the smaller parties in order to produce a workable government.  Most of the press feared an understanding between Ed Miliband and the SNP.  I would have welcomed it because I thought that Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader was far more impressive than any of the other party leaders. She might prevent a Miliband premiership from becoming a pale imitation of a Tory one.  Perhaps that’s just what the press lords feared!

            My own worst possible outcome was of a coalition between the Conservatives and the Ukippers which I felt could easily develop into a right-wing dictatorship.

            In this blog I did at least consider the possibility that, despite the predictions of the opinion polls, one or other of the two main parties might achieve an overall majority and  manage to form an effective government without seeking the support of any other party.  I said that if that happened I could confidently predict that the final outcome would not be as good as supporters of the majority party were hoping, but was unlikely to be as awful as their opponents feared.  I still stand by the first part of that prophecy – but am a little less confident of the second.

            I did correctly foretell the humiliating defeat of the Lib.Dems but really didn’t expect Ukip to lose one of the two seats it held prior to the election, thus making Douglas Carswell, our own MP for Clacton-on-Sea, the sole Ukipper in the House of Commons.  Ukip gained a lot of votes but they were spread fairly evenly over England.  As a result, our first-past-the-post electoral system prevented those votes being translated into parliamentary seats.  It has been quite educational to observe Mr Carswell’s sudden conversion to the idea of proportional representation. I quite expected the SNP to triumph in Scotland but was astonished by their almost complete demolition of the previously dominant Labour Party there.  

            Ed Miliband’s defeat was, I think, at least partly due to the constant drip, drip, drip of denigrating and scare headlines principally in the Sun, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express, about his weakness as a leader and the probability that he would be subjugated by the wicked witch from the north (Nicola Sturgeon).  Several people interviewed after the tv debates said they were quite surprised to discover that the Ed Miliband they had seen on tv didn’t match those headlines.

            The Sun is part of the Rupert Murdoch press empire, the Daily Mail is owned by Lord Rothermere, and the Daily Express by Richard Leonard, who also owns the ‘adult’ tv channels Television X and Red Hot TV   (No, I haven’t tried to access either of them but their names suggest their nature).  Oh yes, and Richard Leonard has recently donated over a million pounds to Ukip.

            Do you find it as extraordinary and shaming as I do that three very wealthy individuals – a foreigner with no ties of loyalty to the UK, a ‘non-dom’, and a purveyor of soft porn, should own and control the means of influencing the British electorate?

            The Conservative Government will have only a very small majority over all other parties in the House of Commons. I don’t think they’ll find their task to be an easy one, especially bearing in mind the fact that the opposition, with its Scottish, Welsh and English MPs, is much more representative of all the people of the still-united United Kingdom than the members of David Cameron’s government.

…….and the Green Party?

            I have never made any secret of the fact that I voted for the Green Party in the General Election and am now a member of that Party.  On the face of it they failed dismally.  They gained not a single extra member in the House of Commons.

            Look a little deeper though and it will be clear that they are a Party on the way up, not down.  Their candidates obtained a total of over a million votes throughout the UK.  Remember too, that for every voter who puts a cross against the name of a Green candidate there are probably at least two others who would be supporters, but because they live in a strongly Tory or Labour area, or like me, in the heart of Ukipland, imagine that a vote for the Greens is a wasted one.   I knew perfectly well that Chris Howell the Green Candidate in my area hadn’t a hope of being elected, but he did get twice as many votes as he did in the by-election only a few months ago.  Caroline Lucas, our one MP, retained her Brighton seat in Parliament with a substantially increased majority, and the Green candidate came second in four constituencies.  The Green Party now has more actual members than either the Lib.Dems. or Ukip.  

            No, I don’t consider that my vote was a wasted one.

Some sage advice

          Did you see that some has-been Labour politicians have been commenting on Ed Miliband’s lack of success in the election.  Some say that he should have made a greater effort to reach the ‘aspirational’ voter.  Lord Mendelson (he’s an architect of New Labour who has ‘no problem with billionaires!) says that Ed Miliband took the Labour Party too far to the left.  Too far to the left!  We’re talking about the chap who apologised for Labour’s original opposition to ‘right to buy’, who, if he had been elected would have carried on with austerity, and who supported the renewal of the wildly expensive and utterly useless Trident submarines!

            Hasn’t anyone noticed that Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish National Party swept away New Labour in Scotland with policies well to the left of anything that any Labour leader in England has ever dared to suggest?

            If the electorate want Conservative policies, they’ll vote Conservative – not New Labour!