Victory – but where now

Well, I got two out of the three right. The Conservatives did win and the Lib Dems did very poorly. They are supposed to win these seats according to recent by-election history, not go backwards.

What I got wrong, as many others did, was the sheer scale of the victory, something we could never have predicted.

For Labour it is now difficult top know what they can do. They can string it out or change their leader. I somehow do not think they have the courage for the latter so the former will prevail. Gordon Brown was trotting out the same mantras we have heard from the past few weeks so he has learnt nothing. The Yeovil Labour party candidate seems to have gone into complete meltdown proposing policies that will ensure, like Foot in 1983, that Labour is unelectable for a generation (still I suppose their feel better about things):

Minimum wage of at least £7.50, funding councils from central government, and no more imperialist wars, we should be using our armed forces to defend the people of Venezuela and other countries and not guaranteeing lucrative contracts for US corporations.

The Lib Dems also have a problem. They have been squeezed as only an irrelevant third party can be. They claimed there were three party politics now and there clearly is not when it comes to wanting to rid the country of this Government. Equally, a swing of this scale would wipe out their current seats but may allow them to pick up some in the North.

Politics in the UK just got interesting!