Great Kid, Don’t Get Cocky

As we now know, Labour brought home a pretty impressive victory: + 800 councillors and +26 councils.

My local councillors have been particularly smug about it.

Especially given that Labour failed.

Yes, you heard me; Labour failed. It hoovered up votes merely not not being Tory or Lib Dem – not in government. And yes, I know; Labour gained a ton of councillors and councils, translating into effective power – how can I say they failed?

Because they didn’t win in Scotland. In fact, they got a fair kicking. The Scottish voters took some 20 seats away from Labour, 9 from the Lib Dems and 3 from the Conservatives – and handed them all to the Scottish National Party.

And what makes Scotland special? The Scottish National Party.

English voters have three viable parties to vote for: one is Labour, whose Blairite wing worked hard to alienate its base in government and still hasn’t had time to sort itself out (assuming it will). The other is the Conservatives, who have consistently trailed with negative approval, due to their counteractive cuts and badly-thought-out reforms to public services. The third is the Lib Dems, a party doomed for a kicking for giving up on so many election pledges and siding with the Tories’ worst economic instincts.

Scottish voters had a left-of-centre party they could vote for that wasn’t any of these groups.

But that leaves those of us south of the border with…what? What other parties have managed to distort the normal two-horse race enforced by the First Past The Post system to become viable politically repositories for our votes?

None, that’s how many. It’s great to see the Greens get a toehold in Westminster, but that’s only one MP out of some 650 of them That said, any small lefty wanting to try break out, should probably be doing it now. I’d like a serious, left-wing, party to vote for.

The desire for something different to the pre-market parties is clearly there – that’s what made punters give a resounding ‘meh’ to the Big Three last time around. Labour were obviously on their way out, but there wasn’t enough trust in the Tories to actually let them win and even the Lib Dems actually lost seats in that election.

But, until we get some choice in our politics, votes will simply rattle round from party to party like flies trapped in a jar.