This Is Not A
BLOG!
Date: 03/05/08
Who's In? Who's Out?
Politics must, I supposed, be discussed here.
First off, can the media and the mediocracy please get their heads out of their arses and realise one important fact: hardly anyone outside of London gives a toss about who gets to be mayor. It's scarcely even that significant inside London, seeing as the Westminster hacks who set the system up were at pains to ensure that the office carried little ability to do any real damage to anything except the reputation of the individual holding it and, by extension, his party. In that sense, NuLab's capos may be quite relieved that when the preparations for the Olympics go tits up and public transport in the city grinds to a halt they can blame Boris.
It's been fun watching the metropolitan hacks squirm at the thought of Boris Johnson as mayor. How simply dreadful that someone they don't like should be elected by people without their deep insight and analytical skills!
Live with it, darlings. Only four years to go.
Johnson as mayor may well turn out to be very interesting. Despite my previous account of how I believe he came to have that 'bewildered baby' expression, I don't for one moment think that he is as stupid and incapable as the luvvy-press have portrayed him. He will also, at least, be entertaining, which is an accusation which could never have been thrown at the adenoidal trull he has replaced. Entertaining, that is, for that vast majority of the population of this island who don't live in London and who seldom if ever go there.
So a Tory won an election? Well, whoop-de-bloody-do!! Even by the law of averages alone, it was bound to happen sometime. And when the incumbent is a member of a party which has shafted its core supporters every which way in the last two years alone, it was always likely to happen.
(It's difficult to have any sympathy for Livingstone at all: it wasn't the meetings with Al-Qaradawi or his hosting of Chavez which was his downfall, but his crawling back into the fold of Blairism-Brownism at the very point when when that ideology-which-pretended-so-hard-that-it-wasn't-an-ideology was reaching its Tumbril Moment).
Looking at everywhere else, it was an horrendous election for Labour. Their hacks had been talking their chances down in any case, in order to take advantage of that ploy by which you predict a tsunami but - when it turns out merely to be a severe high tide with an onshore wind which wipes out a couple of small fishing villages - then claim that that proves things aren't that bad after all. It didn't work this time, because this time it was a tsunami. They haven't just lost seats to the Tories - part of the natural, swings-and-roundabouts rhythm of politics under our wretched electoral system - but have lost them to just about everyone else as well. Losing control of councils such as Nuneaton - where Labour had been in power for 35 years - and Reading indicate that the strategy of buttering up the middle-classes because you think your traditional support will vote for you anyway is finally turning around and biting its instigators in the arse.
If further proof is needed, look at Wales. Here, where traditionally Labour has been so strong in the former industrial areas that elections were seldom deemed either necessary or even desirable, the greater fluidity of voting behaviour which has followed devolution has produced interesting results: of the 22 unitary authorities, Labour now controls only two - Neath Port Talbot and Rhondda Cynon Tāf - and in the latter they lost nearly a quarter of their seats. They lost over half of their councillors in Merthyr, nearly as great a proportion in Torfaen, and lost control of Caerffili, Blaenau Gwent and Torfaen as well. Add to that losing their last council in the north (Flintshire - over a third of their seats lost), and this was the long-awaited and thoroughly deserved catastrophe merited by a party which has been a by-word for municipal corruption, bungling incompetence and outright indolent spinelessness for three generations. That many of those losses were to independent candidates - although in Blaenau Gwent, for example, the 'women-only shortlist' row which cost Labour the Westminster and Assembly seats rumbles on - shows that something rather more than Buggins' Turn is happening here. This can only be a good thing.
The other parties don't have as much to crow about as they would like us to think, however. Despite the political situation, the Conservative 'fightback' is still spluttering, although it must be remembered that there were quite few councils in central and southern England being contested this year.
The Lib Dems flatlined as usual, and gained just one council (Sheffield). In Wales, Plaid Cymru (if that's what they're called at the moment) increased its count of councillors by over 25% but lost its only council (hint: don't try to outflank the other parties by doing what they would do, like closing schools). Oh, and ten neo-Nazis were elected as well, meaning no overall increase in the vermin population and that a grand score of 0.12% of councillors in Englandandwales are fascist scum. No need to panic just yet, I think, especially as the BNP's contingent have tended to prove themselves totally and transparently ludicrous when given the chance.
And me? Well, I've somehow managed to acquire a Tory councillor. It's been a long time since we had one of those up here, and I once again enhanced my proud record of backing losers when voting for the independent candidate (although it was, I must admit, one of those Polly Toynbee 'nosepeg' moments). He finished third in a field of three, being beaten even by the candidate for Labour (which party, last time it was in control of our council, deselected our much-admired councillor because she wouldn't toe the line when her constituents' interests were at stake, and tried to bribe, mislead, bully and threaten council tenants into voting to privatise their own homes - more on that here).
Our new councillor is the only Conservative representing the old industrial part of the county - the other four sit for rural areas to the east and north of the town - so it'll be interesting to see what happens with him.
