Posted on 05/05/2005 5:28:02 PM PDT by quidnunc
7.30pm BST For some reason, I didn't get around to making a formal UK election prediction. Too depressing, really. But with polls about to close let's just say I expect turnout to be down, and the question then is: who's most motivated to show up? The Tories ran one of the most stupid campaigns in British history — making Blair's "lies" a big issue when, even if one accepts that he did lie, he lied on a subject on which they broadly agree with him: Iraq. The net effect of playing up the Blair "lies" about WMD is to gin up all those anti-war voters to go to the polls and vote for the anti-war Liberal Democrats, various anti-war Labour candidates, the anti-war SNP and Plaid Cymru — everybody but the Conservatives.
How any of this will play out in the bewildering permutations of marginal constituencies is anybody's guess: conceivably, if the "progressive" vote gets split between Labour and LibDems in particular ways, the Tories could pick a seat here or there. But my sense is that Labour will win a reduced but workable majority that weakens Blair but strengthens Gordon Brown; the LibDems will get their best result in a generation; and the Tories will end up with an inconclusive result that will keep the party alive but without any clear sense of purpose. Toss in the various Celtic parties, including a record number of Sinn Fein voters, and this snapshot of the UK electorate will be far from encouraging for anybody who believes in the cause of British conservatism.
8pm BST One thing that won't become clear till tomorrow is the latest advance by Sinn Fein, already the dominant nationalist party in Northern Ireland and a growing force south of the border, too. They'd like to take all three of the Social Democratic and Labour Party's seats and may well pick off the SDLP leader, Mark Durkan, in Foyle: merely the latest stage in a "peace process" that's enabled the IRA to ease up on time-consuming terrorism and concentrate on funding its political gains through organised crime, all under the benign patronage of Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern. The SDLP is on its way out, and, over on the loyalist side, the future for Northern Ireland's oldest political party, the Ulster Unionists, doesn't look much better.
-snip-
I've been watching the results come in.
Labour--78
Conservative-5
Liberal Democrats-5
Scottish National-2
I have a second-cousin in Ballymena.
ML/NJ
IMO, Steyn's giving an accurate accounting of what is really going on here.
GET RID OF HOWARD! This is the biggest wasted opportunity I've ever seen in British politics. Labour's drop is huge... if the Conservatives had an exciting campaign it could be a major landslide for the Tories.
IMO, it appears Labor voters are shifting to LibDems because of Blair's support for the war. The Tories are picking up some seats by default.
I agree that had they run a better campaign and had someone more like Thatcher they could have possibly won the Majority by convincing people to vote FOR them rather than against Blair.
Exactly my point. With Labour dropping 10 points in most districts, Conservatives should be taking over just by default. Instead the Conservatives have dropped slightly also in many districts. The only real winner this year are the third parties, especially Libdems. This is a huge loss for the Tories, the third in a row.
That's because the left already owns Britain. They don't have to cheat or engage in frivolous challenges to the legitimate results. In America, it's a different story.
But what are the Tories going to run ON? Anti-Iraq war?
That's it. It has some golf and tourism.
Seeing a vile lowlife gutter-rat like George Galloway actually get elected is almost depressing beyond words. I think that the U.K. is frighteningly close to being finished as a great nation.
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