FLUSHED DOWN THE TUBES!

With the Election over there’s no better expression I can think of to describe the experience of Scottish Labour Party Members of Parliament at the hands of the Scottish electorate or that of the Liberal Democrats at the hands of English voters in particular. Both Labour in Scotland the LibDems in England took a serious kicking. Just as bad for Labour though was that they also took a drubbing from the Tories in the south of the country. In this election there was no making anything up. Liberal Democrat candidates lost their deposits in half the seats they contested and literally got blown away top to bottom. All their Coalition Cabinet members with the exception of Nick Clegg had the plug pulled while the leader himself only just managed to hold on in Sheffield by the skin of his teeth. First it was Danny Boy Alexander up in Scotland with George Osborne’s Chief Secretary to the Treasury getting a stiffy from the Nationalists. Then it was the turn of the Scarecrow himself. Poor old Vince! Looked like he was deep in his dotage when he was woken with the news after which it was Ed Mister Energy Davey, so beloved of the Big Six Energy suppliers whose price fixing capers he’d happily overseen during his time in Coalition. Alas, they weren’t the only ones! So sad about the dear boys from Bermondsey and Yeovil, Simon Hughes and David Laws. So sad for them and gobby Jo Swinson, one of those very loud Liberal Democrat ladies who finally had a sock stuffed in hers.

To a degree the contempt held for the Liberal Democrats by the electorate for being political opportunists who broke their election promises last time round was mirrored by the damage done to Ed Miliband’s cronies. Ed Balls, his Shadow Chancellor and long time political pal from the time they’d served in Dark Gordon’s Government… knifed in the back up at Hallam and looking like a beetroot on a stick. Earlier Ed’s Shadow Foreign Secretary was bludgeoned by the Nationalists not long after midnight after which came the turn of Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy, put to the sword like a sack of meat by Nicola Sturgeon’s Highlanders with the Girl in the Red Dress, winsome as ever giving the proceedings a hearty chuckle and urging it on! Labour butchered throughout Scotland! That’s what you get Ed for telling us you’d rather sup with the devil than do a deal with the Scots! Yes, there was something undeniably winsome about Nicola, grinning happily all over her face while Ed and his Party were drowning in blood down in England.

Political analysts who’d been investigating electors’ intentions in recent months through surveys and polls must have had their eyes firmly closed to have come up with predictions that were so badly wrong on these two crucial elements. Firstly, the powerful political hostility of the nationalists in Scotland towards the Scottish Labour Party and its steadily growing vulnerability there. Secondly the unforgiving contempt of the British people in general for a Party perceived to have broken faith and reneged on its promises to them. On the night these two factors doomed the two Parties but then they’d been a long time coming and how they’d been so badly underestimated was quite frankly a serious oversight.

There was no oversight however of the impact of UKIP. Nigel Farage’s Party received over four million votes nationally, coming second in dozens of seats to the eventual victors and third in others. Nationally it replaced the Liberal Democrats as the third largest party for share of the vote, its performance demonstrating one of the great inequities of our electoral system where despite its performance nationally it gained only one Member of Parliament. Nowhere was this national challenge more evident than in the northern working class heartland of Labour. Forget Essex and Kent! UKIP made powerful inroads into traditional Labour territory with its twin messages of immigration control and hostility to the EU, striking a powerful chord but alas to no avail. It was unable to break the traditional two-Party lock on hundreds of constituencies despite receiving substantial support throughout the Midlands and North of England.

For the Conservatives the night was a triumphant procession, especially in West of England at the expense of the Liberal Democrats, put to the sword from Cornwall to Gloucester! One of their greatest victories was in Bath where they comfortably overturned a Lib-Dem majority of 12,000 without much of a problem. So much for the sparkling legacy of Don Foster otherwise known locally as do-nothing-Don! The result in Bath was strange. Even the very young Labour candidate doubled his vote in a City of many students, now sick of all those of broken Liberal Democrat promises along with large numbers of motorists who’d had it up to the eyeballs with years of mind-bending Liberal Democrat Council road-works for which they made themselves quite detestable. Perhaps it was the same story wherever they controlled the Council along with occupying the Parliamentary seat!

This recent time of cataclysm, of putting old certainties and well known political personalities to the sword, these twenty four hours of political storm and stress reached a great climax in the suicide of three Party Leaders. First Nick Clegg, then Nigel Farage and finally Ed Miliband, all doing away with themselves in public, each with a love note for all their admirers. There was no… it’s a far better thing I’m doing… or  there’s no greater act of love, speech from any of them. Just Clegg’s face, all white and sick, giving the performance of the dying swan or Miliband putting on a demented version of cheer! Only Farage had it right and why shouldn’t he? He and his Party had done exceptionally well, however he’d earlier promised to go if he failed to win his own contest and now he said he might come back after he’d taken a holiday. Nothing could have sounded more sensible!

Three political leaders gone in an hour! It must have been a world record. Just an afternoon left laying a wreath at the Cenotaph to mark 70 years since the end of the Second World War then off into the sunset looking for jobs but not at the local employment exchange. Two gone for good and Farage promising the possibility of more fun to come. It begs the question, for Clegg and Miliband why did it have to be so desperately final?

David Cameron won a great political victory for the Conservatives. However it wasn’t as sensational, only the manner and demeanor of his two main political rivals helped present it as such. More like a catastrophe than anything. Ed Miliband in particular should have been made of sterner stuff. Promising to rebuild and return to fight another day. The truth of the failure of both men lies in the contempt of the public and the character of their vote. It was a vote of dismissal, and indeed one of contempt. Overwhelming rejection heaped onto the Liberal Democrats in England. In one simple word, disdain! In Scotland on the other hand plain fury at past Labour Government neglect. What the Scots saw as contempt by Blair and Brown, both of them Scots themselves! And this was their big chance to give it back in spades! Put crudely, knee them in the bollocks!

All of it unfolding under our eyes in a most splendid night of political entertainment. The British electorate giving it to the politicians they didn’t like for whatever reason. Politicians at Westminster stuffing the people for years while lining their pockets... well here was the people’s chance to do likewise! This was a night of retribution. A night of the long knives! Pay-back time for over the board grievance. Clegg and the Milipede walking into the gates of hell with their eyes wide shut. It begs a very fair question. Were they both stupid? Did the Leader of the Liberal Democrats really have no idea whatsoever what the consequences would be of getting his whole Party into bed with the Tories to support their attacks on public welfare and a public sector wage freeze? This was a massive betrayal of what his Party had stood for over the years. Had the leadership of the Labour Party entirely forgotten what Blair and Brown had done to Scotland over all those years when they’d governed the country?

Had they both been totally blind or were they taking their Parties into an election just whistling along in the dark, hoping that people anywhere and everywhere would forgive and forget? Well they didn’t. In a democracy that’s what you get for lies and betrayal… and if the Liberal Democrats keep on with their bullshit that they did it all for the country, soon there won’t be enough of them left to get on the back of a bike!