A Sad Day

Well the election sought to deceive us. All the polls pointed to a hung parliament with both major parties neck and neck. Both Marion and myself thought that we were in for an interesting evening; imagine our reaction when the exit poll was announced. It was straight to bed.

Interestingly this was a déjà vu moment for us, exactly the same thing happened in 1979. Then we turned to each other and said no babies until this dreadful woman goes. It is a good job that we did not keep to that!!!

A good family friend Adrian Sanders lost his Torbay seat after 18 years, despite the fervent support of our daughter. It grieves one to see a decent, good, productive local MP get caught up in the ground swell on national public opinion. I feel that the country will reap what is has sowed, the danger is that we will become a little England, out of Europe and devoid of all decency, and sense of community.

There were some small rays of hope, the useless MP Scarborough got a reduced majority, and in our local council ward for the first time that I remember one of the seats has being taken by a Labour member.

I tweeted earlier today that the alternatives are to move to Scotland or to get active, well I think Scotland is too cold for a permanent residence, so it is activism for us.

To do an instant post mortem, I think that two things framed the result. Firstly the Labour Party ducked out of the debate regarding the economy in 2010, it was not spending on the health Service that caused the UK deficit but as in common with every other country it was the near collapse of the banking system. Had the government not stepped in a lot of us would have lost a substantial portion of our assets. Secondly it was the demonization of the Scots by the Tories and Labour’s failure to effectively respond to the referendum debate.

Well at this point we have to have hope. Note this is the knee jerk reaction; more reasoned analysis and comment will follow.