Saturday, 3 May 2008

Boris gets in

Everyone has woken up this morning to the news that Boris "the buffoon" Johnson has ousted Red Ken Livingstone from the seat of London Mayor.
Not only that, but the Conservative candidate win has come about in the context of Labour's worst ever performance in local council elections for 40 years.
The other controversial issue to fall out is the London Assembly elections. The BNP party has managed to field a candidate that's won a seat.
Many other sites and venues of reputable news have summarised the elections over many thousands of words so what i shall do is supply a few links to the most interesting sources of info that I've come across; mention the headline outcomes and also do something that nobody else will dare to do. I shall predict the future based on the election results.

First, the sources and headlines:
  1. A very nice PDF from the Guardian describing the Mayoral election results breakdown.

    What's good - Voter turnout reached 45.33% which is up 8.33% from 37% in the 2004 Mayoral elections. I can't place what's inspired the public but I hope this continues into the next general election
    What's bad - Almost 70,000 people voted for the BNP candidate. Why s this bad? Well the "People Like You Voting BNP" part of his manifesto page on londonelects.org.uk is pretty illuminating.
  2. The BBC excels again in election map technology with a picture of the county's allegiances.
    What's interesting - Almost all other parties gain at the expense of Labour. They managed to lose 331 councilors while the Conservatives picked up 256. Particularly bad for Labour was the Welsh results, an area that is typically referred to as the Labour heartland.
    The other fun fact in the local election results is that the BBC has projected the following share of the party votes across Britain: CON 44%, LD 25%, LAB 24%. That means the Lib Dems could potentially be in opposition.
  3. The Telegraph has a simple table showing the London assembly results. No flashy graphics here.
    What's interesting - The implosion of the Lib Dems and UKIP in London. That ranks up there on the scale of strangeness with the Conservatives taking the Bury council.
I hope that helps making some sense of all the information blasting us over the past couple of days.
Now for the part you've all been waiting for, I have taken all the election information into my brain, muddled it around and I have come up with a picture of the future. Behold!
Boris Johnson will trip over his tie and injure his head on an immigrant. This incident will be spun in the media by Richard Barnbrook as proof of the underhandedness of all non-Brits.
This will spark a race-riot that will engulf the entire south of the UK. The north will bask in it's new found economic conservativeness and become the financial powerhouse of Europe.
Wales will still have NOC and will be destroyed in a mini civil war.

2 comments:

Phil Evans said...

Unfortunately (being a bloody hippy) I don't see the Lib Dems getting into opposition, in the popular vote possibly but not in terms of seats. If you look at the 2005 election results (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/vote_2005/constituencies/default.stm cheers BBC) the results were

(Party %vote %seats)
Labour 37% 55%
Tories 33% 30%
Lib Dems 22% 10%

Lib dem support is more diffuse than the other two parties - there are very few seats you could call strongly Lib Dem, even when they're polling high. Being in proportional representation ASAP I say.

Big Man said...

To state the obvious, 2005 was 3 years ago. I get the impression from people I chat to that the Lib Dems are looking stronger rather than the "Comedy Third Choice".

I think opposition or even power sharing are in order for the Lib Dems in the next election. I offer no evidence for these thoughts other than feelings and my incredible power of precognition.