David's Daily Diversions

Many Happy Returns

At the moment, the current seat count (498 of 646 declared and it changes moment by moment) is 314 for Labour, 130 Conservative, 43 Liberal Democrat. Even though Labour will form the next Government (it takes 324 to win), this has been a good night for the Tories.

I am most happy about a Tory loss, however. In our local constituency, the mildy pro-choice Lib-Dem MP has kept his seat against the very pro-choice Tory candidate. The incumbent is a very good constituency MP who has helped us personally. He is a local boy done good. The Tory is a smug Londoner with a second home out in the country. Back when I was publicity officer and Mrs H was campaigns officer for Hooterville LIFE, our MP was happy to answer our questionnaire and visit our group, and appreciated our work even if he didn't entirely agree with our views. Mrs Snooty refused to have anything to do with us.

I was sorry that my friend Peter Garrett, running as the Tory candidate in Liverpool, West Derby didn't win, but it was quite a safe Labour seat. He only got 8.4% of the vote, while the Labour candidate got 62.8%. He did increase the Tory vote in the constituency by 0.4%.

Hyndburn, the constituency where I wore off a lot of shoe leather in 1992 campaigning for the Tory MP for whom I had worked as a intern, which was won by Labour at that election, has been held again by one of Tony's Deputy Whips. I have met the Tory candidate there when he campaigned for Peter Garrett in a by-election in Preston a few of years ago. He is James Mawdesley, who spent time in prison in Burma for illegally distributing from democracy literature.

And one of the big stories of the has to be Labour losing its safest seat in Wales - a principality that is overwhelming Labour. Blaenau (pronounced Bly'-nuh) Gwent had a 19,000 Labour majority. Then the national party machine presented a female-only shortlist of candidates to the local party. The good voters of Blaenau were not about to be told what to do. The Labour candidate was defeated and the former Labour member of the Welsh Assembly who ran as an independent won a majority of over 9,000.