Were you still up for Balls?

[iainbhx]

The United Kingdom 2010 General Election will go down in history as one of the most volatile elections of modern times, at different points during the last five weeks, all three major parties topped the opinion polls; a minor party looked like it was going to make a significant breakthrough; the election count was one of the longest ever and was only finally concluded with six legal actions, three re-run elections and the United Kingdom remained without a new government for nearly a fortnight.

Various commentators have pointed to significant points during the campaign and before it as being the turning point of the election and academic studies have abounded on this matter.

The successful UKIP court case about the debates is often mentioned as having been pivotal in it's effect on the Conservative "nailed-on" majority. The BNP attentat and removal to no more than token position of Nick Griffin in January 2010 is mentioned by others as having had a powerful effect on White Working Class voters by replacing the shady racist image with a more respectable one of Civic Nationalism. The attempts at electoral alliances between fringe parties of the right (partially successful) and between various "socialist" candidates and the Green party (an acrimonious failure), meant that more candidates stood that at any time for years.

The debates with powerful performances in the first debate from Nick Clegg, in the second debate from Nigel Farage, the destruction of Vince Cable by Alistair Darling in the Chancellors Debate and Gordon Brown's crash and burn over Bigotgate in the third debate - certainly raised political interest and may well have led to the turnout being the highest since 1992.

The media had its influence as well, both in traditional and New Media forms, the Telegraph ran a series of rehashes of its expenses fraud campaign, culminating in the leak of additional MP's who were being investigated by the police and the outing of David Laws. The Grauniad attemped to back the Liberal Democrats but suffered from most of it's major columnist trying to issue cris du coeur for Labour. The Times solidily backed the Conservatives with just a hint of a wobble after the second debate. The Mail and Express concentrated their fire on hating everyone, before issuing a final call for a Conservative vote. The Redtops stuck to their guns, the Mirror for Labour, the Sun for the Tories and the Star for whoever hated Muslims the most this month. No one noticed what the Independent did.

Experiments by candidates in New Media varied from highly successful web sites, to very bland Facebook profiles (although some candidates claimed to have answered as many question from constituents by Facebook as by email) to some spectacular "pop-outs" usually on Twitter. Amazingly enough, the three major nominations for "Living Proof of Tuckers Law", Dorries, Hancock and Brown were all re-elected.

The final polls were in hindsight a disaster for the polling companies - with only the previous derided Opinium getting any measure of credibility out of them. The academic arguments over the whys and the wherefores of the errors went on well into 2011, but mainly concentrated on the overly low estimates for "the others" - the average had shown Labour and the Liberal Democrats on 27% and the Tories on 35%, not one of these figures turned out to be within the margin of error.

The actual night itself will go down in many political activists minds as one of complete horror. The high turnout caused immense problems at polling stations - only resolved by a late court order; many of the counts themselves were a farce, and the competitive coverage by the TV stations led to a number of mistakes partly by believing rumours from Twitter. Strangely enough, the "elephant in the room" of postal votes produced little more than a frisson of horror at the numbers rejected in some seats, although the small rash of arrests for personation on the day in three Birmingham seats caused both a problem for the BBC and two of the election petitions.

[Broader Liberty]

Hm, very interesting indeed. I shall be following.

[Wendell]

I tend to hate timelines about recent events (i.e.: within the past decade), but this one seems intriguing.

[Dunois]

Nice start, looking forward to more .

[iainbhx]

Telephone transcript, 6th of May 2010, about 12:10

Voice 1: So hows he holding up, has he emerged from the bunker yet?
Voice 2: Aye, he's nae doing bad, he's been to vote, gurned at the cameras and he's now back in house, the agent wanted him to do polling stations.
Voice 1: Polling stations, after last week! just keep him away from the fucking public, Jamie
Voice 2: Aye, it's all under control, he didnae want to meet people anyway and that big radge won't be suggesting anything again for a while from A+E
Voice 1: Good work, a wee slip of the baseball bat?
Voice 2: Nay, I ran over the idiot's foot
Voice 1: That's fucking subtle for you, has he taken his pills?
Voice 2: Aye, both of them, he's nice and calm
Voice 1: That's guid, just make sure you have the Largactil handy for when the exit polls come out
Voice 2: Aye and a handful of spare Nokias
Laughter and the line goes dead

From Eton Rifles by Steve Hilton

By the mid-morning of polling day, it was pretty clear that we would have to game out the strategy of spin control for the evening. The idea was to get positive messages out as much as possible during the day within the confines of the Broadcasting restrictions. Despite careful planning and several thought showers on polling day, candidates were generally being very old-school and projecting the wrong image with "telling" and "knocking up", rather than organising flashmobs or engaging in banter with young voters on Twitter. There again, after Nadine's antics the week before, perhaps that was just as well.

However, just as I was about to mind-map the selection of crinklies and has-beens on hand to do the early shift on the election night programmes, the monitoring unit paged me to watch the video of the One O'Clock news on the Beeb. It was a disaster, the usual bland "polls are open", a bit of coverage of the last opinion polls from the night before - which seemed someone skewed by omission and then one short clip of Brown going to the polling station to vote. Nothing for Dave, despite the careful work of making sure that he cycled there and that lots of young people turned out to vote at the same time. Luckily nothing for Clegg or Farage either, which was amazing considering the plane crash had been on the last three radio bulletins. I rang the BBC News Unit to await the usual hailstorm of bullshit disguised as explanation.

Birmingham Hall Green, LibDem HQ

JE: Give me some figures
IB: Well, it's difficult to say, nothing from Sparkbrook, but we expected that. the 12:30 backups from Springfield and Hall Green show the same thing, turnout running at about twice that of the local elections. Moseley is a bit quieter, but I've got less tellers out there.
JE: Is it good for us or bad?
IB: What we have in Moseley looks good, Hall Green is a bit meh - lots of Tories, Springfield is a bit too Labourish for my liking but it's soft Labour.
JE: Dot and Doris knock-ups out?
IB: Yes, that's the next step, but to be honest, pensioners are coming out very nicely on their own at the moment, but it will keep people busy and stop them sodding off to the pub or Solihull.
JE: So overall?
IB: Lots and Lots of older voters, that's the trend. I reckon we could see a low sixties turnout, which is probably OK for us, any higher and I'll start to worry.
JE: Any sign of Selly Oak?
IB: You must be joking, I stopped believing that shower would turn up weeks ago, but I've got five coming from Bromsgrove to Hall Green ward.
JE: Email from Tan, the Burkha Bus just been spotted at Reddings Lane
IB: Right, I'll ring Danny then.

[iainbhx]

Reddings Lane, Tyseley

SDC: Here they come, ten went in and now ten went out.
CAK: So what now?
SDC: We follow them, if they go to another polling station and vote, then we nick them
CAK: Why? I know this is against the law, but surely it's not that important?
SDC: Don't you want to know that your MP is honestly elected? That the people we work with local policing aren't criminals themselves?
CAK: I suppose so. Right, I've got the photos, lets see where they go.

Recovering our Roots - John Cruddas

The early afternoon of the 6th was an exemplar in what was wrong with politics inside the Labour Party. I was out with a team knocking up in Village Ward in my constituency - whilst I had sent quite a few activists over to Barking because of the strong challenge there by the BNP, I'd kept some people back to make sure of removing the BNP from the wards in my seat.

Things hadn't been going well, the agent and I had taken a decision to concentrate on older voters who were part of the Labour promised during the day and we had been knocking them up since about 11am. Time and time again, we were being told "not after what you did to that lady in Rochdale". I'd strongly disapproved of the line taken on Gillian Duffy, to me she represented many of my constituents who didn't like what had happened to their communities since 1997. Letting Malkiavelli unleash his attack dogs on her was a stupid, terrible mistake. I'd called a telephone conference with the ward agents at 3pm to discuss the situation, but it didn't feel good.

However, from about 1pm onwards, my knocking up was constantly interrupted by the Labour aristocracy ringing to take feelings about the obviously upcoming leadership contest. We knew we weren't going to get a majority and Gordon was fatally damaged by what had happened in Rochdale. Eventually, after calls from a minion of Ed B, David M in person and oddly Ed M in fairly quick succession, I sat down on a bench and sighed. It was possibly the most important day for the Labour party since 1997 and the leadership of this party was busy plotting each others downfall instead of getting the vote out.

Battle for Britain - Andrew Marr

Whilst I had left the BBC in 2005, I still did some work for them and Election Night is always an "all hands to the pump" affair and as such I had been assigned what I felt to be a good role in shadowing Nick Clegg on the night. I went into about 1pm to talk to Nick Robinson about how the night was supposed to go before heading up to Sheffield.

Nick was somewhat under siege, his Conservative sympathies from his university days had been constantly attacked for the first two years after his appointment by Labour spin doctors as being biased. His reaction to this had perhaps gone a little too far the other way and he was now considered to be extremely pro-Labour, despite such evidence as his question to Gordon Brown at the 2009 Labour conference. In addition, he had taken personal offence to the nickname of "Toenails" which had been created for him by Guido Fawkes and which quickly took root amongst the more neanderthal wing of the blogging fraternity.

Over the last week of the election, the BBC's political news coverage had been balanced, yet unbalanced, it had veered from pro-Tory to pro-Labour in fairly equal measures and had not given the Liberal Democrats anywhere near enough time - especially considering their rise in the polls. One of the worst episodes had been during the so-called Bigotgate, where the liberal cultural bias of the BBC had given rise to very sympathetic coverage of the Prime Minister rather than Gillian Duffy - who as far as many BBC types concerned was just a "stupid, common, northern woman".

When I got to Nick's office, he was on the phone to "The Gorbals Goebbels" who was informing Nick who the main players would be for Labour on election night in the studio and how they were to be treated. After a couple of minutes of half-hearing the shouting down the phone, the call ended and Nick started to discuss the forthcoming night with me.

His opinion was that being with Clegg was unimportant and that obviously as the Liberal vote was fading that it was a bit of a crap assignment, however, in the possible event of a hung parliament, then obviously it could become quite centre stage - hence he wanted me to do it. My tasks were to concentrated on LibDem disappointment, dismay and try and question Clegg on what his price would be to form a coalition with Labour. I started to question this, but then the phone rang again, this time it was Steve Hilton for the Tories and a wave represented the end of my audience. I headed off to St Pancras in a rather disturbed mood, making a mental note to ring Mark Pack - the Cowley Street numbers man on the train. I also wondered if I fancied the job of head of BBC News after the election as I suspected whoever win would demand a few heads rolling.

Iron Angle Birmingham Post, 14th May 2010

There has been some speculation about why Labour didn't do as badly in Birmingham last week as the rest of the core cities. Sir Albert, with characteristic modesty, has put it down a well planned campaign with messages that resonated with the electorate. This may be so, but it doesn't explain the whispers of election petitions in Ladywood and Perry Barr. The more sensible Tories have other ideas - that they overstretched themselves with four target seats when they should have only had two and that too many candidates just did their own thing rather than contributing to the greater effort. A well placed Tory source tells me a story from the afternoon of election day, when the Regional Agent spent over an hour arguing with campaign teams in no-hope Birmingham seats to move them into the three key targets, it seems they preferred vanity operations against the Liberals to try and deny them seats instead of concentrating their fire and winning more themselves.

Telephone Call, May 6th 13:40

Voice 1: I suppose you'd like the opinion poll splits for 1pm
Voice 2: No, opinion polls are about as exciting as Chlamydia
Voice 1: Oh, I was told to tell you first, I'll just leak them on twitter
Voice 2: Unintelligible - may be "Fucksocks" I'll get my geek
Voice 1: Well, don't be long, I may be using an encrypted phone, but people might look at me funny
Voice 2: Pal, they look at you fucking funny anyway
Voice 3: So what's the split then?
Voice 2: 33/28/27
Voice 3: Con/Lab/Lib?
Voice 2: Yeah
Voice 3: Shit, that's not good
Voice 2: No and I'm not sure about the sample, the turnout is a bit high and we haven't normalised it properly ...
Voice 1: Well, thanks pal, speak to you again later

[iainbhx]

Recovering our Roots - John Cruddas

The count itself was agonisingly slow, the council had assigned the same number of counters as for a local election and even by 2:30pm we had only verified about half the ballot boxes. It was obvious to me that this would be a lot closer than I though, whilst we had been fighting fascists on the Becontree, the Tories had obviously been making hay in the Rainham polling boxes. It looked like Labour first, Tories second, BNP third with very little sign of a Cleggasm.

Barking was in the same position and therefore most of the BNP were watching their Führer which made counting easier at our end, most of their activists seemed to have the primary job of upsetting Margaret Hodge - mainly about the electoral registration problems that Ted Jeory at the Express had splashed the week before. Luckily, very few people read the Express in Barking. It seemed like Margaret had won, but the BNP were a strong second - I wonder what would have happened if they had run a Barnbrook there instead of Griffin.

We weren't getting much news from outside, most emails were quite simply "are you beating the BNP", but we got the general gist of what was happening in the outside world, people were looking to give Labour a beating, the more white working class the seat, the bigger the beating. There was an obvious lesson to be learnt here, although I fear some in the party are incapable of learning it.

After hearing about Gordon's speech which was a disaster, I started thinking about doing what I had promised Anna I would never do, but then the agent showed me the results from Scargill Junior School in Elm Farm ward (Rainham) and I realised that running for the leadership was about to become irrelevant.

Battle for Britain - Andrew Marr

The press pack mainly left the Clegg residence about 11pm and went back to the Beauchief Hotel which kept its bar open late for us. A couple of Nick's spinners came with us and told us that he was going to try and get a couple of hours nap. Personally, I doubt if I could sleep through one of the most momentous elections for my party, but I hadn't been on the go as much as Nick. His spinners assured us that Nick could sleep through almost anything at the moment.

They seemed as flabbergasted as us as the night started to unfold and admitted that much of this was unexpected, they had run through their list of target seats and way beyond it. I reminded them of Lord Mandelson's line from 1997, "Do we know who these people are " They visibily blanched at this one and admitted that even in a wild and wooly party like the Libdems, this might be a source of interesting times.

They obviously had sources we didn't and when the very surprising gain of North West Durham came up, they smiled and said "you ain't seen nothing yet", they also fairly quickly suggested the exit poll was wrong and that the Libdems would be looking at around 150 seats within the first few results. Despite technological innovation by the other parties, the Libs have the best databases in the business and were able to predict quickly where they would do well and where they would fail.

I and others tried to talk about Coalition and which way it would go, but they stuck to their guns and said that Nick had said he'd start talking to the largest party in term of number of votes, but obviously that didn't preclude talking to others. I did ask what the rules were if the LibDems were the largest party in terms of votes and they said that they hadn't really thought that one out properly.

They revealed that even at the height of the Cleggasm after the first debate, the LibDems had seen very little rise in their "promise" on the doorsteps except in educated middle class areas, but they had received a lot more help and they had kept their helpers working throughout. They had also managed by careful use of Facebook to get a lot of students on board compared to previous years. Other parties had preferred Twitter for it's instant soundbite, but Facebook was more about networking.

The other effect was that their donations were up, not a lot, they have never had the donations Labour or Conservative had, but enough to spread a lot a seed money into local campaigns in the last three weeks and that in the last gasp they had been supporting just under 90 local campaigns (and there were about 15 which were entirely self supporting).

About 2:45, they took a call, Nick would give an interview at 3:45 and then head to the count, his declaration would be no earlier than 5:30, but he felt he should be there. We all went to get ready for this, mainly with cold water and black coffee.

Eton Rifles - Steve Hilton

Having replaced Portillo at the BBC with Justine Greening, who luckily wasn't being taxed too heavily by Dimbleby and had the advantage of being a woman and relatively young. I had to get someone to prepare a briefing note for Ken Clarke. Ken is always a problem, he won't stay on message, he won't try and modernise his image but somehow the public love him. He'd never succeed in California. Unfortunately, by this time I was down to an intern and a couple of sleeping SpAD's in the office, everyone else had gone home or gone to a count.

I decided that I'd have a word with Dave about who should do BBC Breakfast and who should do the dreaded Today programme and to perhaps offer some advice on psychological ploys to for initial steps to meetings with the Liberals. Unfortunately, Dave was busy at the time as he seemed to be for much of that night. I still think that he should have taken the call as planning for the early discussions was obviously far more important than consoling losers and speaking to winners.

With no useful staff, no calls to make and the focus group long having gone, I ended up doing what many insomniacs and political junkies did that night and sat on the sofa and watched the coverage on BBC1. The intern even found some organic popcorn.

[Constantinople]

All this makes me think of poor, poor Lembit Öpik. The one man who, in a historically gigantic night for the Liberals, is the only one to lose his seat. You should have him in an interview!

[iainbhx]

Originally Posted by Constantinople

All this makes me think of poor, poor Lembit Öpik. The one man who, in a historically gigantic night for the Liberals, is the only one to lose his seat. You should have him in an interview!

Retro me, Satanas

I've got some more pieces to put out over the next few days, trying to work out how to handle News 24 - especially as there aren't going to be any results for a couple of hours.

[iainbhx]

AC: So, what’s happening with today’s counts then?

HM: Well there’s 24 seats counting today, about 15 of those are solidly ours, we should be good for picking up Warwick and Leamington given the swings in the West Midlands and we should have a decent chance in Morecambe and Lunesdale and Lancaster and Fleetwood. On the other hand, I don’t fancy our chances in Torridge and West Devon.

AC: Hmm, so that’s about 272, how about the recounts.

HM: Well, some of them are very, very tight. We know we are ahead in Coventry South and Wakefield, but both are only around 100 ahead. We haven’t got Hammersmith unless we are very lucky. I’m told we are ahead by a handful in Eltham. We are behind in several others, some of which are very, very close. We might pick up one or two more there.

AC: So you are saying 275ish.

HM: Essentially, yes.

AC: That’s fucking awful. It’s like a nightmarish bidding war for Clegg’s favour and I don’t think that the price the Libs will be asking can be paid. Can it?

HM: We’ve taken a bit of a shoeing from the Yellow Peril and we’ve lost quite a few big names as well, some of the Right are up in arms – probably being encouraged by the Vulcan. Any deal that doesn’t have the the Libs being our sockpuppets will be tricky.

AC: And any deal with 150+ Libs can’t involve them having sockpuppet status. Is Deadwood at it again?

HM: When hasn’t he been? He’s been phoning around new candidates for Ward 8 at Broadmoor trying to recruit them for something. We only know because Priti Patel blew the gaffe on him. But the upshot is that getting a deal might split the party.

AC: So what do I tell Dave. Sorry, mate, the games is up and you are fucked.

HM: Well, here’s an interesting thing. Flanagan’s boys reckon there’s about a 70% chance that the Yellow Peril have more seats than Labour.

AC: And given the horrible wounded noises coming from Labour, especially from their contingent of Liberal-haters, never mind the disarray that the Great Cyclopean One is causing at the moment.

HM: Then a carefully conducted minority might just be possible for a few months.

AC: Hope for a decent summer, give some goodies away and into a October round 2.

HM: There’s just one problem with that

AC: What’s that then.

HM: Dave won’t be facing Captain McSpazmo and the forces of endogenous growth at Question Time. He’ll be facing someone a bit younger than him, a bit better looking than him, a bit smarter than him backed up by a group of LibDems with the bit between their teeth. They might want another election as well

AC: Yeah, one more heave might just work for Clegg as well as for us. But they will have no money, that still counts.

HM: Probably, but they are used to having no money.

AC: OK, I’ll go to Steve and we’ll chat to Dave. You get on with finding out just how wounded Labour are and how many of our lot are willing to be complete prats over this. Oh and get Flanagan's geeks onto what the electoral map looks like for next time.

[Constantinople]

Oof, now the real tough part happens. The end result of this is completely open ended. The Tories can't very well expect to be taken too seriously on things like national stability and cuts if they are willing to go for a small minority government for a few months for political reasons.... while Labour is more or less a poisonous non-entity which no one seems to want to touch.


BTW, did you ever show the results for the Speaker's seat? Or that's done the next day anyway isn't it? I'd be interested to see if Nigel did better than in OTL.

[Emperor Norton I]

I just have to finally say, this title messes with the pervy part of my brain every single time I see it pop up.

[iainbhx]

Clive: So, very little has happened in the last hour except for the gain of Broadland by the Liberal Democrats from the Conservatives. John, what's happening with the remaining results?

JC: Well, Broadland was the last of the Friday seats and at this point normally the election would be over. However, due to the turnout and poor planning we are hoping for another 20 or so results tonight, mainly recounts, but some in London seats which did not managed to finish counting. I understand the Electoral Commission are now supervising the remaining count those seats in Brent, Hackney, Newham and Tower Hamlets. We are expecting some of the recounts from about 9pm, but I understand that some of them are so close that they may go to a further recount tomorrow.

Clive: So whose seats are being recounted and who benefits from them?

JC: Well, most of the seats being recounted are Labour seats, but it's always worth remembering that most recounts end with the seat being held by the original party. There are a couple of cases where we are being told that Labour have called the recount and obviously those may well be lost. There are also some very, very close seats where it can go either way. Probably the most important seat left is Dagenham and Rainham, where Labour's popular left wing thinker John Cruddas is in serious trouble against the Tories. He'd be a real loss to a party already shorn of a lot of talent in the last 24 hours.

Clive: Thanks, John, we'll just go to Kirsty in Scotland. Kirsty, what's happening with the Prime Minister

KW: Well, the Prime Minister hasn't been seen today, but he has been conferring with his advisors and with minsters over the phone. He's issued three press releases, one stating that he is staying at his home until Monday and will look at the situation then, one confirming new Cabinet Ministers and one about the Euro financial crisis. We understand that he's taking time to unwind and waiting to see the final results before making a decision.

Clive: Thanks Kirsty. We'll just ask Matthew what's happening back in London with Labour.

MA: Well, it's all very quiet. Apart from a press release by the Campaign Group calling for a second election and Labour to fight it on a socialist platform and a few articles on blogs not much has occurred. Various ministers have returned to London, but there's been no news of gatherings of MP's or even of any calls from anyone serious for a new leader. David Miliband issued a statement that like Gordon Brown, he would be resting this weekend and was looking forward to discussing the issues in Cabinet on Monday. However, I am sure that there is a lot of activity behind the scenes, although it is unusual not to hear about it.

Clive: So all quiet for Labour, Riz, what's happening with the Tories

RL: Well, it's certainly not so quiet with the Tories. There are three gatherings this evening. David Cameron is at his house with key advisers such as Steve Hilton and key political allies such as George Osbourne and Theresa May discussing the next steps, we understand that they are talking about an informal meeting with the LibDems tomorrow. However, there are an awful lot of Tories over at London Mayor Boris Johnson's house, originally planned as a celebration, it seems that this victory party is more of a talking shop, both Liam Fox and Andrew Lansley are there and a number of new MPs and defeated candidates. However, the biggest activity is coming from the Right, where the Cornerstone Group and a number of strongly Eurosceptic MP's have been making some fairly bloodcurdling statements about any possible coaliton with the Liberal Democrats. We had a joint statement at 6pm from John Redwood, Bill Cash, Mark Reckless, Philip Davies and they were joined by a number of people from outside parliament such as the Euro MP's Dan Hannan and Roger Helmer and the blogger Tim Montgomerie.

Clive: Is this a Tory civil war starting?

RL: I don't think so, I think it's the right wing marking out their positions. I think they are greatly concerned about any Coalition with the LibDems and they want to draw a number of lines in the sand that Cameron cannot cross. I sense a feeling that many of the Tories I've spoken to prefer a second election in the autumn to a coalition, but are unsure if they even have the votes to govern long enough for a properly planned second election.

Clive: So Labour is in retreat, the Tories are in some turmoil, Andrew, what's happening with the LibDems?

AM: Well, Nick Clegg is resting, he stayed up and I understand he has spoken personally to every new Liberal Democrat MP. However, there is a gathering of fairly senior LibDems and their advisors at Lord Ashdown's and it's being described as quite the party. Vince Cable is there as is David Laws who is a close political ally of Nick's, there appear to be members of the LibDem great and good arriving every few minutes. I understand it's more a evening of celebration than of politics, but I'm sure that there are discussions going on about the merits of Opposition vs Coalition. My understanding is that Nick Clegg remains fully behind his pledge to talk to the party with the most votes, but that the price of co-operation has gone up for the Tories.

[Bahamut-255]

Only the LibDems have cause to celebrate then. Don't expect it to last though, given everything that's gonna happen. Not only with the parliament, but the UK, Eurozone and International issues.

Oh the joys of what could've been.........

[iainbhx]

Clive: Well, thanks for that, to summarize for viewers, Brent remains in no overall control, but the LibDems are now the largest party, Harrow remains Conservative but with a number of very close seats and Lambeth has gone from Labour control to no overall control with the LibDems missing out on control by 1 seat. So only three councils remain to fully declare in London and they are all reckons to be safely Labour.

JC: Yes, we believe that at the end of tonight the Conservatives will control 12 councils in London and be the largest party in two others. The Liberal Democrats will control 8 councils and be the largest party in three others and the Labour Party will control a mere five councils and be the largest party in two others.

Clive: Well, that's quite major. What news from the recounts?

JC: Well, as we heard earlier, Birmingham Northfield has had its count suspended again after a third recount - it's extremely close there and we know that Labour called for the 4th recount there.

Clive: The majority must be very small.

JC: Yes, or the counting producing a different result every time. In addition, Labour have held Chorley in Lancashire - Lindsay Hoyle has held on by 186 votes over the Conservatives. Labour have also held Hammersmith, with Andrew Slaughter hanging on by 198 votes, that was a seat with a strong A-list candidate Shaun Bailey and both parties have thrown the kitchen sink at it in the last week.

Clive: So as you said earlier, most recounts are in Labour seats and most are being held onto.

JC: Well, it's a bit early to say that, but they will certainly be relieved to have held onto those two.

Clive: So about 17 more seats tonight.

JC: Yes, although, of course, some of those may go into another recount, which I would guess will be held tomorrow.

Clive: How long can this go on for.

JC: Usually, the returning officer will declare a result after a 4th recount unless it's desperately close.

Dagenham and Rainham - Count suspended after Recount

Clive: There's another one slipping over the horizon until tomorrow.

JC: Indeed and that's John Cruddas' seat, Labour wouldn't want to lose him.

[iainbhx]

It had been a throughly depressing 24 hours, up and down the country, decent Labour MPs and decent Labour councillors were being turfed out by the electorate who were looking to punish a Government who they considered had become out of touch and out of control. Nearly one and half million people had voted for the BNP and over one and half million for UKIP because of their anger and frustration at the mainstream parties. There were plenty in my party who would write many of these people off as "evil racists" and would rather deny them a vote or a voice than make one iotas movement towards listening to them. Luckily, a large number of those had lost their seats as well and what was left of the Parliamentary Party was likely to be rather more rooted in the older ways of Labour than we had seen since 1997.

My count was one of the most horrid experiences I'd ever had, I went to bed in the early hours of the Friday morning with my agent having called a cheeky recount as we were nearly 200 votes down to the Tories. Sleep was not something that came to me easily, but I did managed to doze for a couple of hours.

On awakening, my agent said that she was having trouble getting people along to the recount, a lot of people were tired or had lost heart, but she managed to get a few to stay from the council counts. They hadn't gone too badly, the BNP had lost a couple of seats and lost every ward in Dagenham, they were still on the council, but in reduced numbers.

One interesting thing was the low number of phone messages from politicians whilst I'd had tried to sleep, plenty from constituents who were gutted by the results, but very few from the plotters. I wasn't sure if I had been written off or whether the magnitude of the defeat had demoralised people. Either way, it wasn't a bad thing.

We were a few counters short by the time we reassembled, but so were the Tories and the other parties didn't even bother to show - to be honest I can't say I blame them. About 7:30pm, the miracle happened, a bad bundle was found and not a 25 bundle, but a 250 bundle. There were a couple of BNP votes on top, but all the rest were for me. Just before 9pm, the RO had some figures which suggested I had won by 62. Understandably, the Tories called for a second recount and the RO suggested reconvening at 10am on Saturday. There was a bit of a discussion and it was decided to make it noon.

I went away from the count feeling a fair bit better, I had a decent chance of surviving. If I did, I would have to spend the next few years nursing the constituency very closely - this would limit any role I would be able to take in rebuilding the party from the rubble. However, it wouldn't stop me being involved, you can be an excellent constituency MP, but plenty of those had lost tonight because of the party's detachment from reality.