Meanwhile in Manchester...
Naturally I share the general distress at the outcome of the General Election, and I'm particularly sorry for Ed Miliband, whom I really like, and I've no idea whether I'll ever have another chance to get a geek from my college into Downing Street.
However, as so often, the national news sources choose not to mention the rather different outcome in Manchester, where we regained my own constituency of Manchester Withington after ten years, and also made a clean sweep of the council elections for the fourth time running. This means that all five MPs with constituencies either wholly or partly inside the City of Manchester are now Labour, and all 96 councillors. It doesn't make us a one-party state, any more than Scotland is (almost); the voters keep being given a free choice (six candidates in my ward, as well as the constituency) and keep voting for Labour. Nor is it inevitable, a monkey-in-a-rosette scenario; about ten years ago, when we lost Withington to the Liberal Democrats, there was a serious possibility that they might win control of the council as well (that year the BBC did bother to send TV cameras in the hope of witnessing the crash). But we fought back, through very hard work, to reach our current position. Of course it can't last indefinitely, and every year we think we'll lose at least one ward (probably ours, which was assumed unwinnable until we won it in 2011). Not this year, however.
There was a point to all this, but at this moment I can't remember what it was... I've had about two and a half hours' sleep since yesterday morning, and have spent most of the past two days on my feet, either in my kitchen providing food and drink to Labour activists, or in the Velodrome, where the parliamentary and council counts took place because there was a dentists' conference in the usual venue at Manchester Central. Perhaps I will remember after a night's sleep.
But meanwhile I see my country deeply divided, not least between those who vote Tory and those for whom the Tories are so toxic that any form of contact or co-operation with them demands punishment, as we found in Scotland and the Liberal Democrats found everywhere. (Oh, and a third category of people who can't tell the difference between the first two.) I'm honestly relieved that my Liberal mother has not been alive to witness the past five years. Maybe that was what I was going to say.
Also posted on Dreamwidth, with
comments.
However, as so often, the national news sources choose not to mention the rather different outcome in Manchester, where we regained my own constituency of Manchester Withington after ten years, and also made a clean sweep of the council elections for the fourth time running. This means that all five MPs with constituencies either wholly or partly inside the City of Manchester are now Labour, and all 96 councillors. It doesn't make us a one-party state, any more than Scotland is (almost); the voters keep being given a free choice (six candidates in my ward, as well as the constituency) and keep voting for Labour. Nor is it inevitable, a monkey-in-a-rosette scenario; about ten years ago, when we lost Withington to the Liberal Democrats, there was a serious possibility that they might win control of the council as well (that year the BBC did bother to send TV cameras in the hope of witnessing the crash). But we fought back, through very hard work, to reach our current position. Of course it can't last indefinitely, and every year we think we'll lose at least one ward (probably ours, which was assumed unwinnable until we won it in 2011). Not this year, however.
There was a point to all this, but at this moment I can't remember what it was... I've had about two and a half hours' sleep since yesterday morning, and have spent most of the past two days on my feet, either in my kitchen providing food and drink to Labour activists, or in the Velodrome, where the parliamentary and council counts took place because there was a dentists' conference in the usual venue at Manchester Central. Perhaps I will remember after a night's sleep.
But meanwhile I see my country deeply divided, not least between those who vote Tory and those for whom the Tories are so toxic that any form of contact or co-operation with them demands punishment, as we found in Scotland and the Liberal Democrats found everywhere. (Oh, and a third category of people who can't tell the difference between the first two.) I'm honestly relieved that my Liberal mother has not been alive to witness the past five years. Maybe that was what I was going to say.
Also posted on Dreamwidth, with
comments.