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Date: 04-05/07/24
Election NIght Live Blog
I wasn't sure right up to the last minute whether I was going to do this or not, but in the end - and having missed 2019 because I had more interesting things to do the next day - I thought that I might as well. Besides which, this election isn't taking place in the depths of winter.
Not that the outcome is likely to be any less chilling than sitting freezing whilst watching another bunch of deeply unprincipled chancers get to shape our lives for the foreseeable future. At the end of a campaign which has been uninspiring to the point of soporofic, where the real issues of our time - you know, minor things like poverty, injustice and genocide - have been swept aside to be replaced by major crimes against the human spirit like politicians betting on the outcome, then a sort of bemused despair may be the only suitable reaction to the events of the next few hours.
It has now passed 22:00, which means that the fix is in. Before I check out the exit polls, let me tell you what I think will happen, in the hope that I might be nearer the mark this time than on all previous occasions:
- It will, of course, be a landslide for what still cheekily calls itself the Labour Party. But I think the scale of it will be less than the wilder shores of prognostication with which we have been fed for the last month or so. I expect a majority of about 120-140 (which, in all honesty, is bad enough). Some headway will be made in Scotland, although perhaps not as much as has been claimed
- I don't believe that the Tories will be reduced to fewer than 160 seats, although the effects of the Faragegrift's greater involvement will be felt in some areas more than in others
- I would be surprised if said bunch of saloon-bar noors gain more than two or three seats. Being on 16-18 per cent of the vote seldom parlays itself into more than that when the geographic distribution is so wide
- The LibDems will gain a couple of dozen seats, mostly in the south and west of England, and may get back to their levels of twenty years ago
- The Greens will finish a close second in a number of seats, but no better than that, and I'm not sure if they can hold Brighton Pavilion now that Caroline Lucas is no longer the candidate
- Independent candidates will fare quite well in certain areas but, Corbyn apart, I don't see any winners
- The SNP will lose about a third or so of their seats, partly due to a Labour resurgence of some degree, but mostly because they are viewed as a busted flush, having not only failed to move the dial on independence, but having also become obsessed with identity politics to the detriment of their ability to govern competently
- Plaid may pick up a seat, possibly two, but that Big Breakthrough in the Fabled Valleys will once again elude them
- Ulster will be what Ulster always has been, a matter of bafflement to outsiders. I see little or no change in the allocations of seats here.
22:30: Now, let's look at the exit polls....
Holy SHIT!!! This is going to be worse than I thought. 170 majority? I think I'll go to bed now! Even the most swirling cheese nightmare would be preferable to this!
I think I'll go and do the washing-up...
22:48: I have managed to resist the urge to retrieve from the fridge that flask of hemlock which I have been keeping for That Special Occasion. I can't guarantee that my resolve will hold for very long if that poll is anywhere near correct.
As it's going to be another forty minutes or so before we get the first results, I may as well describe my setup here at JudgeCo™ headquarters. I have four Firefox instances open, showing: this page on my hard drive; the 'live' page (wot you is seein' now); the HTML validator at W3C; and the BBC's results page. I also have the ftp client open for me to upload updated versions of this page, and my spreadsheet listing the constituencies and their notional results in 2019 ('notional', because the constituency boundaries have changed markedly in most cases due to gerrymandering).
23:17: First result: Labour hold Houghton and Sunderland South. Faragist second, Tory nowhere. What advantage does any constituency actually gain from being the first to declare on election night? I mean, it's not as if it wins a prize of any sort, is it? Municipal vanity, I suppose.
23:25: I've opened up the Guardian's results page as well now, as they seem quicker with the details.
23:36: Second result: Labour hold Blyth and Ashington. As further south, Reform plc second, Tories nowhere. This could be a pattern...
23:49: That early lull now. Let me tell you that I kept to my promise of not bothering to vote. Leaving aside the fact that I have never voted for a winning candidate in an imperial election, in this constituency anyone I could bring myself to vote for wouldn't have a cat in hell's chance anyway.
Instead, I spent the day doing something genuinely useful, viz. mowing the grass.
00:19: First change: Lab gains Swindon South. Buckland out.
00:32: Oh, come on chaps! Do get on with it!
01:01: "Why are we waiting/Waiting fucking waiting/Why oh why are we wai-hai-ting?/Why are we waiting, waiting fucking waiting?/Oh God, let's have some scores in/Oh god, let's have some scores in/Oh god, let's have some scores in/Chri-ist, I'm bored!"
01:12: Labour hold Newcastle Upon Tyne Central and West, but a big fall in the vote share, which some are suggesting relates to Labour's cowardice over Gaza. There are some seats where this could come massively into play.
01:18 Seven results declared, and the Tories have come second only in the one seat thev've lost, with the Faragists finishing (albeit a distant) second everywhere else.
01:41: Another change: LibDems take Harrogate and Knaresborough by a country mile. Con second here, with Reform plc scarcely over ten percent of the vote.
01:45: Labour take Stroud. This has been a funny seat down the years, with the same Lab and Con candidates switching about at every election.
01:50: Oh dear! Monsieur François is back again, but with his majority nearly halved and Reform second.
02:10: Oof! Labour take Telford with the Tories shoved down into third!
02:12: Blast! Austerity Reeves got in!
02:20: The Telford result repeated in Blackpool South. Strange happenings...
02:23: First result from Cymru: Lab regain Bridgend, and again the Tories pushed into third.
02:27: Oh, for fucksake, Ashfield! Have you no shame in re-electing that arse Lee Anderson (this time for the Faragists)?
02:30: Aww, how sad, never mind! Former government miniature (and bridge-namer) Alun Cairns is out!
02:43: Oh, very well done, Swansea West! You've just elected one of Starmer's Parachute Regiment! Much fucking good may it do you!
02:48: Galloway no sooner in than he's out again, beaten by one of the very worst Starmerite hacks in what used to be called 'Fleet Street'.
02:51: Crap! I've now got a Starmerite MP. Sheesh!
02:57: First Scottish results, both Labour gains from SNP. Big falls in the SNP vote. This augurs badly for the evening.
03:28: The results are now coming in so fast that I can't keep up with them, at least not without my neck and shoulders demanding time-and-a-half and a pension plan.
Some things are becoming clearer, though. For one, the Tories really are taking a shoeing in all areas. They are not only losing seats by the busload, they are often being pushed down into third place by the Faragists. The LibDems are reclaiming some of their old seats (and the south-west of England and Cornwall are yet to declare. Reform plc are getting second-place finishes right across northern England, and even in Cymru. The SNP look like they're going to be crushed as a just reward for being more concerned with creepy men in dresses than with the very reason the party was established in the first place. And there are now at least three new MPs called Josh.
It's a grim picture...
03:42: The odious Zionist Akehurst has been elected in Durham North, so that's another genocidist in a position of influence.
04:13: Another triumphant parachutist in Cardiff West! Fucksake! A good showing by Plaid's Kiera Marshall, though, knocking the Tories into a distant third.
04:18: The end times are surely upon us: Labour has won both seats in Southend.
04:34: Incredible results from Bristol, where the Greens have taken a seat off Labour and finished second in at least three more!
04:54: OK, we're in serious Loopy-Lou territory now. The soldier boys Mercer and Ellwood, and the slave-owner's boy Drax are all out. Nearly all the south-west so far has turned orange or red. The old Liberals couldn't manage this back in the days of Thorpe and Penhaligon.
05:01: Shit! Suella DeVil is back.
05:04: Ye gods! Sword-carrier Mordaunt is out!
05:07: And old Bumley follows her!
05:27: Sad to see Joanna Cherry lose Edinburgh South West. She was stabbed in the back so many times by her party's apparatchiks for standing up for women's rights.
05:50: The first bus of the day has just rattled past, and the last bus has departed for the SNP as an electoral force. These results are nothing less than catastrophic, to the point where the polls which showed them as dropping down to only ten seats now look ludicrously optimistic. Not only have they lost 37 and counting, but they have lost them by substantial margins, not only to Labour but to the LibDems as well.There is nothing left for them to regroup, and the independence movement must now surely realise that it is folly on stilts to hitch your campaign to a specific political party. Independence is now a dead letter, and will be for a decade, and the blame lies squarely at the door of the clique which has controlled the party since late 2014. Rip it up and start again.
06:05: Ave atque vale, Jakey!
06:13: Fuck! Frog-face has got in in Clacton. How dispiriting, and one wonders what might have happened if the Labour candidate hadn't had the rug pulled out from under him by his own side.
06:51: Four seats for the Green Party! And some of them in what would seem to me to be unlikely places: I mean, Suffolk? Herefordshire?. A fair number of second places, too, if distantly so. It makes up for the four picked up by the Farangists.
06:55: Get in there, Jeremy! And fuck you, Keith!
07:01: Damn! So nearly saved the NHS by getting that snake Streeting dumped. Five hundred-dd votes the difference.
07:10: More disappointments: if the Stamerclique hadn't ditched their original candidate in Chingford, she would have won at a canter and spared us another five years of Iain Duncan Smith. Labour lost Blackburn, but not to Craig Murray, but to an 'independent' who was promoted by a man who was Jack Straw's fixer the last time Murray stood there. No truth about Zionism to be heard in parliament after all.
07:15: Were you up for Truss? Yes, but I missed it. She can always get a job selling lettuces, I suppose, but check the sell-by date if you buy one.
07:30: Well, chums, it's way past my bedtime, and there are scarcely a dozen seats left to declare. There's little sense to be made of it all, although I'll give it a go later today, or probably at the weekend after I've had time to sift the numbers a bit more.
Good night, and good morning.
