Saturday 8 May 2010

Election News

Perhaps the saddest news of the election from my point of view was that the voters of Hampstead failed to oust Glenda Jackson as their local MP - she hung on by less than 50 votes, partly due to the Lib Dems running a very strong local campaign. They had high hopes of winning this seat, but ended up coming in a (close) third.

Something the significance of which seems to have escaped many is that if those people who voted UKIP (just about all of whom are presumably natural Conservative voters making a protest about one single huge issue) had voted Conservative instead, then the result would have been different, and this must be true of other very marginal constituencies up and down the country.

So, there's a message there for David Cameron should he wish to learn it. I think breaking his promise about holding a referndum on the Lisbon Treaty hurt him a lot more than he realises.

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