Were you still up for Balls?

[Constantinople]

Yes! Well I hope that this whole 'update' thing continues to happen on a regular basis!

Harriet: (wide-eyed and aghast) But I am a progressive woman.

Ugh! God damn it, it both sounds like her and makes me cringe. I mean the women has described Castro as a hero of the left, while insisting that Gordon Brown saved the economy both before and during his time as PM.... yesschhh...

[Basileus Giorgios]

Good to see this back- I'll do a map soon enough!

[Thande]

Glad to see this back. Harman, the living strawman (sorry, strawperson) for Labour's casual embrace of totalitarianism, sounds terrifyingly accurate.

I don't understand the reference to Don Valley in 2005 by Blodges; Caroline Flint won more than 50% of the vote there in 2005.

[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.

[iainbhx]

Originally Posted by 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.

It's the bastard election from hell and I haven't quite finished being a bastard yet.

The Tories will probably pull round reasonably quickly, but the idea of going into Coalition with a 150+ LibDem party has immense toxic possibilities.

Labour, I'm afraid are going to have a bit of a bad time. They have lost too many good people and are left with too much "heavy metal" - however, they still have a number of competent political operators will eventually steer them correctly.

Even the LibDems have got problems, there's a lot of new MP's - some of which will grace Private Eye's - The New Boys pretty quickly. There's an awful lot of the "concerned local councillor tendency" been elected, but that the same time - there's quite a bit of quality been added to their ranks.

Mad Baggins is due for his declaration about 2pm on Friday.

[Thande]

The Tories have only two options really: try to engineer a minority with confidence and supply from the Lib Dems (which will be quite limp) or evoke the spirit of 1931 and argue that the financial crisis justifies a National Government that makes up most of parliament.

The Lib Dems on the other hand would probably rather try and replace Labour as the Official Opposition.

Also, I repeat my question about the Don Valley thing above.

[Bahamut-255]

Yay! An update at last!

Looks as if it's gonna be very close between Labour and the Lib Dems i terms of seats, a gap less than 5 as I see it.

Poor Dave, he couldn't ask for a worse situation to be in. And it definately looks as if there'll need to be another election within 12-18 months unless the ASBs take pity on him and make things work out.

YEAH RIGHT!!

[iainbhx]

Originally Posted by Thande

I don't understand the reference to Don Valley in 2005 by Blodges; Caroline Flint won more than 50% of the vote there in 2005.

I think you can put it down to a bloggers error

In the back of my mind there was a seat in SRSY(1) where Labour had a horrible drop in voteshare, but being SRSY it was well disguised and I thought it was Caroline Flint. Problem with being a few thousand miles from my reference library.

(1) Soviet Republic of South Yorkshire

Just so that we are clear

Declaring Friday:

Argyll and Bute
Berwick upon Tweed
Blyth Valley
Broadland
Buckingham
Cheltenham
Copeland
Hexham
Huntingdon
Kenilworth and Southam
Lancaster and Fleetwood
Morecambe and Lunesdale
North East Hampshire
Norwich North
Penrith and the Border
Saffron Walden
Skipton and Ripon
St Ives
Stratford upon Avon
The Cotswolds
Torridge and West Devon
Warwick and Leamington
Wansbeck
Westmoreland and Lonsdale

Finishing Original Count Friday

Bent, Central
Bent, North
Bethnal Green and Bow
Hackney, North and Stoke Newington
Hackney, South and Shoreditch
Poplar and Limehouse

Recounting Friday

First Recount

Chorley
Coventry, South
Dagenham and Rainham
Hammersmith
Holborn and St Pancras

Second Recount

Birmingham, Erdington
Bradford South
Hendon
Ochil and South Perthshire
Wakefield

Third Recount

Birmingham, Ladywood
Birmingham, Northfield

Fourth Recount

Fermanagh and South Tyrone
Llanelli

Saturday

Finishing Original Count

East Ham
West Ham

First Recount

Calder Valley
Eltham
Lewisham East
Liverpool Wavertree

Second Recount

Sheffield Heeley
Wythenshaw and Sale East

[Constantinople]

Jesus, how close are Fermanagh and South Tyrone and then Llanelli? It must be in the single digets for a fourth recount!

[iainbhx]

Originally Posted by Constantinople

Jesus, how close are Fermanagh and South Tyrone and then Llanelli? It must be in the single digets for a fourth recount!

Yes to both. F&ST is as per OTL 2010 which was 4, I think. Llanelli is even closer than that.

[Constantinople]

Originally Posted by iainbhx

Llanelli is even closer than that.

Wow and if Labour loses Llanelli then they will lose a seat they've held since basically the beginning of Labours existence as a major party..

[iainbhx]

Originally Posted by Constantinople

Wow and if Labour loses Llanelli then they will lose a seat they've held since basically the beginning of Labours existence as a major party..

Only at the UK level, they've lost it in the Assembly elections.

[iainbhx]

BBC News Offices

Kevin Bakhurst: OK, Breakfast was pretty awful. There’s not much going on now, so we need to review today quickly and sort out the priorities. Obviously, we will have rolling coverage, but I don’t think it needs to be wall to wall, there’s going to be long slow bits, so we may as well cover normal features and other stories. However, we need to make the election the No 1 story, probably all weekend and we need good people around to discuss it. We can’t let the Six and the Nine steal all the glamour here. I know lots of people are resting, but who have we got covering whom?

Mark Popescu: It’s probably going to be a bit thin until lunchtime, but so is the news, all the politicos are asleep. Jane is presenting with Mike doing bulletins. They have a geek in the studio and he’s going through some “interesting” facts and figures – he’ll stay until 12. Gavin Esler will be doing some punditry later. I’ve got people at Tory HQ and Labour HQ and a team on College Green, but it’s all very quiet, we haven’t even seen Bill Cash or Stephen Pound. No one with the leaders yet, but we will put some one onto Cameron and Brown by lunchtime. The One will be done by Jon Sopel.

Kevin: OK, now about the LibDems. We need to cover them, if anything, they are the story now. We can’t ignore them as much as we have done.

Mark: Well, Andy Marr is on the train with Nick Clegg and is getting an interview which we can use. Yes, we need to put a team at Cowley Street and have someone with Nick. The problem is we haven’t really got anyone close to them, some the Entertainment guys know Lembit well, but we’ve always worked more with the Tories or Labour.

Kevin: Yes, that’s really been noticed in this election and that may not be a good thing now.

Mark: Well, we’ll have to work on that very hard now, especially if they will be the opposition.

Kevin: You think that’s likely?

Mark: Well, it’s very early days, but the noises from the Tory Right are very much – my way or the highway. There are, of course, several of them who want to come on during the day. Dan Hannan has been on the phone five times since 9.

Kevin: Well, they always do, but I think it’s best to run them pass Andy Coulson first. They are an important part of the Tories, but they aren’t the only part and we need to make it look representative of the party. And Labour.

Mark: Very, very quiet. Lots of former MP’s quietly seething about Gordon, but no one really willing to go on the record. We can have Prescott for the One and that’s about it.

Kevin: Anything else.

Mark: Well, we should get some council results starting about Noon as well. I’ve got Chris Game from Birmingham University to come in for those.

Kevin: Which means they’ll be a qualified success for the Labour Party.

Mark: Ah, you remember him. Well, unless we are willing to flash the cash for the Plymouth boys, he’s about the only game in town.

Kevin: I hope that wasn’t deliberate. OK, we’ll chat again about 12:30 about the One.

[Basileus Giorgios]

Map of 10AM that I did.

[Thande]

Also, while Harman is a nutter, she does have a point about the Lib Dems being "male and pale"; I remember being really surprised when I looked up the party's MPs a couple of years ago and found that in terms of nonwhite representation they make the Conservatives look like South Africa's ANC.

[Meadow]

Originally Posted by Thande

Also, while Harman is a nutter, she does have a point about the Lib Dems being "male and pale"; I remember being really surprised when I looked up the party's MPs a couple of years ago and found that in terms of nonwhite representation they make the Conservatives look like South Africa's ANC.

They have a disgracefully low number of women (6 IIRC, certainly enough to count on your fingers) and they had one ethnic minority for a short time during the last parliament or the one before that. I think he was elected in a by election then lost at the General.

[iainbhx]

Originally Posted by Meadow

They have a disgracefully low number of women (6 IIRC, certainly enough to count on your fingers) and they had one ethnic minority for a short time during the last parliament or the one before that. I think he was elected in a by election then lost at the General.

Well, that problem is partly solved in the new House, there will be 42 Liberal Democrat women in the House and three obvious BAME minorities.