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11 June

It's 11.30am on the morning after election day, so it's too early to either gloat or mourn convincingly. Signs so far, though, are that the first reaction looks like being the more appropriate one. Here, at this moment in time anyway, are some reasons to be cheerful this morning:

1. Bad results for Labour. I don't need to say much about this, it'll be all over the news for days. Expected, but no less welcome for it.

2. Good results for the Greens. This is great news. I've been worried about whether the Green vote would hold up, threatened by the rise of UKIP (who may take some potential Green votes in the Euro elections if we're unlucky. Keep your fingers crossed) and the George Galloway ego trip known as the Respect Coalition (more on these dunces below). But so far it's looking good. The Greens set a target of ten new council seats nationwide, and it looks like they might meet, or even exceed it. Meanwhile, in my home town of Oxford the Greens have taken an extra four council seats, giving them a total of seven, and the council has shifted from Labour to No Overall Control. This may mean that the Greens, if they can team up with the Lib Dems here, as they have in the past, could control the council. Hurrah for that. Looks like all my door-to-door leafleting was not entirely in vain…

3. Bad results for the BNP. After all their incoherent boasting about how they would increase their seats, it looks like a damp squib. In Burnley, one of its supposed strongholds, the party contested eight seats and expected to win at least four. They got one, and only by 28 votes. Let's hope this trend continues.

4. No breakthrough for the Galloway Party. The Respect Coalition, an unholy alliance of aging Trots and radical Islamists, began life only a few months ago. It was supposed to be a 'progressive alliance' set up in protest at the war but - oh, that dreadfully familiar story - it was hijacked by the SWP, George Galloway and the more dodgy fringes of the British Islamic movement. One of its co-founders, and a good friend of mine (we'd been arguing about this for months), George Monbiot, resigned when Respect decided to stand candidates against the Greens (who were invited to join the coalition but decided they'd rather remain democratic: not a word that Respect can even spell). There were worries that Respect might take Green or other useful progressive votes, but so far they seem to have made little impact. The real test, though, may come in the Euro elections, where Galloway himself stood as an MEP against Green MEP Jean Lambert, and Respect are also fielding a candidate against the excellent Caroline Lucas. If either of these two lose their seats thanks to the antics of these pointless Trots, I will be getting a petition together to call for the parachuting of Galloway into Kurdistan, armed only with one of his largest cigars and his lifelong love of Saddam Hussein. We could even televise the resulting pursuit: I'm A Vain, Egomaniacal Lover of Genocidal Dictators: Get Me Out of Here! I'd pay for cable to watch that.

More anon….

Posted by paul at June 11, 2004 10:44 AM

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