Post-election aftermath
For those who haven't seen, I did a bit of a general election prediction before the count. How did I do? Well, not great - I predicted a hung result, but with a much weaker Labour and a stronger Liberal Democrat seating. I got the Tory numbers closer, though they are slightly weaker than I predicted.
The big news, of course, is that the Liberal Democrat vote didn't grow as predicted - in fact, in terms of seats, it shrank. I said less than 70 seats would be defeat for the LibDems, and they got 57. It has been seen as a defeat, with what was a particularly good campaign.
The news that hasn't made the headlines is how deeply unhappy the Tories are. It's quite clear that they could have achieved a majority if they had managed to take votes away from right-wing minority parties, but given the massive amounts of money they spent the grass roots is dismayed, to put it mildly, that they haven't achieved a "result".
In terms of my post-election predictions, it does look likely now that Cameron will attempt to lead a minority Government without a full coalition: they are attempting to hammer out a coalition agreement, but I don't think either the Tory party or the Lib Dems will be able to stomach it. However, it does look likely that Brown won't go immediately - the result for Labour was not as bad as it could have been, and that has bolstered him somewhat. It does also look like voting reform isn't realistically going to happen.
Interestingly, there is already talk of an October election - for which both the Tories and Labour have financial reserves to do. By that point, though, the Tories will have passed their emergency budget and the cuts will have started - it's somewhat difficult to see how they would be able to gain ground in those circumstances, especially if Labour have a shiny new leader.