I was freakishly excited about the election results last Thursday - I fully intended to stay up until about 5am when a result became clear, drink a lot of wine and then sleep in on Friday. After all there's always a result in UK elections, all those opinion polls couldn't possibly be right about a hung parliament...
The first sign that this was different was the exit poll at 10pm which predicted a hung parliament and, despite the BBC harking back to 1992, I knew the polling was likely to be much more accurate. The night went on and there was still no sign of anything resembling a clear result by about 3am - lots of talk of recounts, "odd" results and the BBC presenters getting increasingly het up about queues of people outside polling stations (what happened with that by the way?!). 5am came and went without a result, David Dimbleby and Professor Vernon Bogdanor were harking back to 1974 and none of the party leaders looked particularly happy. The dog thought I'd gone mad when I fell asleep on the sofa and I then woke up to my mother coming into the room at 6.30am to see what had happened.
The answer appeared to be nothing! The Conservatives had done very well but no outright majority seemed likely - 326 seemed an impossible target - and by about 7.30am on Friday morning it literally was. We had the first hung parliament since 1974 and I'd finally found a vocation for historians as pundits on election shows (the BBC had had at least 5 on by this point). I was still on the sofa in last nights clothes but instead of removal vans in Downing Street there was just a procession of sleep-deprived politicians and reporters trying to work out exactly what was supposed to happen next. Gordon Brown couldn't resign, David Cameron couldn't form a government and Nick Clegg just appeared close to tears that Lib Dem popularity hadn't translated into more votes or seats.
Thus began my six day addiction to the BBC News channel, Radio 4 and any other source of news... Friday was first Nick Clegg's announcement that the Lib Dems would first talk to the Conservatives - which I welcomed but never thought anything would seriously come of, particularly as Labour were wildly talking up a progressive alliance of the left. Then came David Cameron's address on Friday afternoon which was impressively wide-ranging in its offer to the Lib Dems as partners in a coalition.
The two parties seemed massively unlikely bedfellows - I had a long debate via twitter with the lovely @DaughterOfLir about the ins and outs of a deal - finally concluding that one would be nice but that the Conservative right were just too barmy for it to be a realistic proposition! Particularly given the rumblings of discontent emanating from the direction of Lord Tebbit and Lord Ashdown... Then came the news that discussions between the two official negotiating teams were "going well" throughout Sunday and Monday - I had a bit more hope but the Twitterverse was aghast at the idea!
We all got a little more familiar with the internal workings of the Liberal Democrats and their now infamous "triple lock". Conservative backbenchers grumbled covertly to journalists. Flashmobs invaded Westminster demanding PR. The SNP started shouting very loudly about the Conservatives having no writ in Scotland (it was at about this juncture I began to support Scottish independence). Journalists looked increasingly desparate for a story, reporting on the delivery of pizza to the Lib Dem HQ. In short the world appeared to have gone mad...
Then on Monday night Gordon Brown resigned and announced that negotiations for a Lib-Lab coalition were officially opening. Given that I'd waited for Brown to go for three long years and fully expected him to be dragged out of Downing Street kicking and screaming - which in the end was very uncharitable of me - it was a surprisingly depressing moment. On Tuesday I woke up to the dulcet tones of Alan Johnson talking up Labour's ambition for a "progressive alliance", apparently being fully supported by Paddy Ashdown and the SNP. Doom appeared imminent...
Tuesday then appeared to have taken some kind of drugs - Malcolm Rifkind appeared on the BBC accusing the Lib Dems of cheating on the Tory party, everyone agreed that a decision needed to be made today or the world would end and the Lib-Lab talks foundered. Dave and Nick had a secret second date in the House of Commons and the rumour mill picked up frenetic pace despite the fact that the people making the decisions were locked up in the Cabinet Office. When I left work at 5pm breathless reports of bags being loaded into vans at the back of Downing Street and Lord Mandelson leaving in a black mood were circulating. By 7.30pm Gordon Brown was resigning for the second time in two days and the Queen was on the verge of inviting David Cameron to form a government, apparently in coalition with the Liberal Democrats. I then stayed up until after midnight to wait for the Lib Dems to push the deal through their triple lock system.
Today, Wednesday 12th May 2010, I woke up to the first non-Labour government in 13 years and to the first peacetime coalition government in 81 years. I'm still slightly stunned but somehow incredibly hopeful for this brave new dawn. Lots of people have told me that you can't be a liberal conservative, it's a contradiction in terms - but that's probably the way I'd best define my own politics. Now it appears the government is this very impossible thing and I am so hopeful, for the first time in a decade, for the future of the UK...
Onwards and upwards!
Showing posts with label 2010 General Election. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2010 General Election. Show all posts
Wednesday, 12 May 2010
Election Reflection - Part One
I've been following both the General Election campaign and the negotiations for a coalition government pretty breathlessly - which has earned me the title of political correspondent at work as well as some less desirable nicknames!
It's not my first general election as a voter - I voted in vain against the Blair government in 2005 - but it is the first election I could participate in where there was a real and growing sense that change could happen. However, I dreaded until about an hour ago that real change wouldn't actually happen - a change I didn't even think possible until last Friday. To a certain extent we won't know that anything has changed for months, even years but to me the events of the 7th - 11th May 2010 already seem momentous.
I should probably clarify my own politics a bit more here - I don't claim to have foreseen a Conservative-Liberal coalition or that I would have voted for one had it been on offer last Thursday. I think the coalition has the potential to do tremendous good for the country but that's a position I've arrived at very recently indeed!
I come from a traditionally Labour-voting community in North Wales - my grandfather once claimed that Wrexham would elect a cow if you stuck a red rosette on it - but not from a particularly Labour household. I remember my parents admiring Margaret Thatcher and whilst Tony Blair taking office in 1997 is a moment embedded in my memory I don't recall it bringing any scenes of wild joy at home (I was only 11). Personally, I've always been interested in politics but quite often from a historical perspective - I studied history at uni - and have struggled sometimes to find a political "tribe". After all Welsh girls don't vote Tory do they?!
Except this Welsh girl did and does, at least for the time being... I've watched David Cameron change the Conservative Party over the past 4 years and I hoped, prayed and voted for a Conservative Government with a mandate that would allow him to change this country. It was always an outside hope - opinion polls consistently pointed to the result we eventually got, a hung parliament with the Conservatives as the largest party - but I truly believed it was the only way the UK could move forward. Maybe that's the trouble with being a historian, you get a bit too wedded to the status quo because it is "historical" and not always because it's the best way of doing things!
Also, given Labour and Liberal noises throughout the election campaign, I can probably be forgiven for attaching virtually no value to Nick Clegg saying that he'd support whichever party gained a majority of votes and seats. The "Anti-Tory" voices were everywhere - much as I love Twitter there's been some very nasty abuse doing the rounds for anyone who even thought of voting Conservative - and a so-called "progressive coalition of the left" seemed by far the most likely outcome of any split vote. Plus "my" party have their own faults - Cameron's done well but there are still some hard-line right wingers hanging about (Lord Tebbit I'm looking at you) - so Lib Dem support for the Conservatives seemed about as likely as hell freezing over. I kind of felt that was a shame - I've always had a soft spot for the Liberals - but at the end of the day I felt I had to pick a party and I chose the Conservatives.
I did that for a number of well-thought out policy reasons not just because I like David Cameron and think his wife's pretty... Firstly and fundamentally, I'm not a socialist in even the most moderate sense - socially liberal yes, but I'm a strong believer in capitalism, enterprise and a small state. Secondly, I'm mildly eurosceptic - I believe we get a lot of benefits from membership of the EU but the single currency and other aspects of European federalism just don't stack up in my head. Finally, I believe in a welfare state that supports its citizens when times are hard but encourages them to be pro-active as often as possible. So I read policies, watched debates and reaffirmed my pro-Conservative leanings. Then I put my X in the box last Thursday and sat back to watch the results - half in hope and half in fear.
It's not my first general election as a voter - I voted in vain against the Blair government in 2005 - but it is the first election I could participate in where there was a real and growing sense that change could happen. However, I dreaded until about an hour ago that real change wouldn't actually happen - a change I didn't even think possible until last Friday. To a certain extent we won't know that anything has changed for months, even years but to me the events of the 7th - 11th May 2010 already seem momentous.
I should probably clarify my own politics a bit more here - I don't claim to have foreseen a Conservative-Liberal coalition or that I would have voted for one had it been on offer last Thursday. I think the coalition has the potential to do tremendous good for the country but that's a position I've arrived at very recently indeed!
I come from a traditionally Labour-voting community in North Wales - my grandfather once claimed that Wrexham would elect a cow if you stuck a red rosette on it - but not from a particularly Labour household. I remember my parents admiring Margaret Thatcher and whilst Tony Blair taking office in 1997 is a moment embedded in my memory I don't recall it bringing any scenes of wild joy at home (I was only 11). Personally, I've always been interested in politics but quite often from a historical perspective - I studied history at uni - and have struggled sometimes to find a political "tribe". After all Welsh girls don't vote Tory do they?!
Except this Welsh girl did and does, at least for the time being... I've watched David Cameron change the Conservative Party over the past 4 years and I hoped, prayed and voted for a Conservative Government with a mandate that would allow him to change this country. It was always an outside hope - opinion polls consistently pointed to the result we eventually got, a hung parliament with the Conservatives as the largest party - but I truly believed it was the only way the UK could move forward. Maybe that's the trouble with being a historian, you get a bit too wedded to the status quo because it is "historical" and not always because it's the best way of doing things!
Also, given Labour and Liberal noises throughout the election campaign, I can probably be forgiven for attaching virtually no value to Nick Clegg saying that he'd support whichever party gained a majority of votes and seats. The "Anti-Tory" voices were everywhere - much as I love Twitter there's been some very nasty abuse doing the rounds for anyone who even thought of voting Conservative - and a so-called "progressive coalition of the left" seemed by far the most likely outcome of any split vote. Plus "my" party have their own faults - Cameron's done well but there are still some hard-line right wingers hanging about (Lord Tebbit I'm looking at you) - so Lib Dem support for the Conservatives seemed about as likely as hell freezing over. I kind of felt that was a shame - I've always had a soft spot for the Liberals - but at the end of the day I felt I had to pick a party and I chose the Conservatives.
I did that for a number of well-thought out policy reasons not just because I like David Cameron and think his wife's pretty... Firstly and fundamentally, I'm not a socialist in even the most moderate sense - socially liberal yes, but I'm a strong believer in capitalism, enterprise and a small state. Secondly, I'm mildly eurosceptic - I believe we get a lot of benefits from membership of the EU but the single currency and other aspects of European federalism just don't stack up in my head. Finally, I believe in a welfare state that supports its citizens when times are hard but encourages them to be pro-active as often as possible. So I read policies, watched debates and reaffirmed my pro-Conservative leanings. Then I put my X in the box last Thursday and sat back to watch the results - half in hope and half in fear.
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