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Full moon over Westminster

Not a very good likeness, but this is my first attempted Farage.

Attempted Farage. Huh. Sounds like something you’d get arrested for after a stag party.

Anyway, there’s all sorts of reasons why Thursday’s election was not the beginning of the revolution in Britain. But it was a thing of beauty still, and I’m a great believer in savoring the moment. So here it is:

UKIP: 27.49%
Labour: 25.40%
Conservatives: 23.93%
Greens: 7.87%
LibDems: 6.87%

Savor, damn you!

Comments


Comment from mojo
Time: May 26, 2014, 10:16 pm

“Not the right sort of person at all, if you know what I mean…”

The toffee-nosed bastards are noticing now, I bet.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: May 26, 2014, 10:17 pm

Several notable things about this election. One is that this was a *terrible* outcome for Labour. As the party out of power and the presumptive front runner in the next general election (2015) they should have walked away with it.

Everyone is blaming “Special” Ed Miliband. You know you got a problem when much political hay is made over how weird your guy looks eating a bacon sandwich.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: May 26, 2014, 10:18 pm

Also, it was an APPALLING outcome for the LibDems. They’re part of the ruling coalition, after all, and they dropped to fifth place. Behind the Greens!

They managed to hang on to *one* seat.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: May 26, 2014, 10:21 pm

The election commission allowed a nasty dirty trick on the ballot. The very first name on the ballot (alphabetical order) was something called An Independence from Europe. Which is not UKIP and was a complete fake, spoiler party. They got tens of thousands of votes, too.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: May 26, 2014, 10:23 pm

The only European country that did NOT go anti-Europe this time was Germany. Which everyone says, with a nod and wink, tells you who is really benefiting from the EU.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: May 26, 2014, 10:25 pm

Yes, mojo, just so. Cameron has come out to day vilifying Farage as “a politician, not a normal bloke” which is a really weird insult for one politician to hand another.


Comment from Carl
Time: May 26, 2014, 11:27 pm

Swease, you’ve probably never heard of ventriloquist Peter Brough and his dummy Archie Andrews but UKIP leader Nigel Farage looks and sounds amazingly like Archie Andrews. Your older British readers may remember him from radio (!) and TV in the 1950’s and 60’s.

Incidentally, he must be embarrassed by the meaning of his surname in Malay.


Comment from Subotai Bahadur
Time: May 26, 2014, 11:43 pm

I believe it was even worse for the Lib-Dems. While I don’t have the link immediately to hand, I saw a more complete breakdown of the votes. The Lib-Dems did not come in 5th. They came in tied for 7th. The Scottish Nationalist Party beat them, and they tied with the Plaid Cymru [Welsh National] Party.

If Labour has a political future, perhaps Milliband should start by campaigning in Scotland if they don’t vote for independence. He had just better hope no one hands him a Bacon Butty with Haggis.

Subotai Bahadur


Comment from Some Vegetable
Time: May 26, 2014, 11:54 pm

Call me !CRAZY! but this is why I loves me some Green-Party Hipsters. If you look at their numbers, they are small enough to be harmless but big enough to take the win away from Labour, and push the Lib Dems back into the wilderness for 5 or 10 years.

Can we get Nader (well, not Ralph but ‘Ralph’ or somebody) to shave Hillary so to speak?


Comment from David Gillies
Time: May 27, 2014, 1:56 am

One really significant aspect of this is that access to the party political machinery of the BBC (broadcasts, debates, panels etc.) is governed by showing in the last election. So come the General Election, the LibDems are shut out. This is a good thing, since they are an appalling claque of Euro-sycophants and therefore neither liberal nor democratic. No doubt most of their rank-and-file are seized tonight with visions of gutting Cleggie and frying his liver over a charcoal brazier. But it’s hard to see how any leader could have pursued recognisably LibDem policies in the current political climate and not been given a similar drubbing. It is earnestly to be hoped that the US mid-terms yield another rebuke to the Social Democrats (which is to say, socialists with a fig-leaf of touchy-feely wibble that is discarded as soon as they get their hooks into anything substantive, like the IRS, say).


Comment from Stark Dickflüssig
Time: May 27, 2014, 3:25 am

S.V.

¡LOCO!

(or ¡CRASY!, if you must)

I mean, seriously, a drunk guy using FreeBSD can make an upside-down exclamation point. ¡You can manage!


Comment from Christopher Taylor
Time: May 27, 2014, 3:32 am

Having a third party whip the two main parties in a major democracy is definitely a significant event. A few years ago, UKIP was a no-show joke… how knows what the future holds.


Comment from JuliaM
Time: May 27, 2014, 2:20 pm

“Several notable things about this election. One is that this was a *terrible* outcome for Labour. “

Except in London.

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