So here’s where I’ll be posting my thoughts on the election results as they come through (assuming, of course, that I have the time).
It’s now coming up to ten o’clock when the polls close and the BBC will be announcing the results of their exit poll. I’m not really expecting any surprises. The only interesting thing will be the size of the predicted Labour majority and how well that compares with the final result.
Here, it’s all gone very “quiet before the storm”. Hope it stays that way.
10:00pm BBC are predicting a Labour majority of 66 on the basis of their exit poll. Personally I strongly suspect it’ll be more than that. I expect it to be more like 100. We’ll see.
10:10pm You have to wonder why the BBC try to get politicians to comment on the exit poll results. David Dimblebey has just asked John Prescott, Menzies Campbell and Liam Fox for comments and they’ve all just said “let’s wait and see what the real results say”.
10:45pm Sunderland South are the first to declare again. 4% swing from Labour to Conservative.
11:45pm Been a bit busy here as the first few results come in. The talk on the BBC seems to be about Tory frontbenchers who are in danger of losing their seats to the LibDems. Which would be fun.
00:35am First Tory gain of the night. In Putney.
01:05am Oops! Recount in Battersea.
03:35am Just catching my breath for a second and I see that Martin Linton held on to Battersea by only 163 votes.
05:10am Ok, so things were a bit busier here than I thought they would be and I haven’t been able to write as much as I had hoped. But, on reflection, it looks like the protest voters have got exactly whatthey wanted. We haven’t woken up with Michael Howard (of course, some of us haven’t gone to sleep yet!) and Tony Blair’s majority has been reduced enough to take away a lot of his power in government. It might even cut short his time as PM.
One downside though. I’d forgotten that having the Labour party losing so many seats would mean we’d have to put up with so many slimey Tories on the TV telling us how wonderful they all are. That bit has been pretty sickening.
The vast majority of the results are in and the day-shift has just arrived so I’m off to bed.
Night all.