tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30881067.post-25966707438010184112008-05-02T06:25:00.003+01:002008-05-03T11:53:09.972+01:00After yesterday's 13 hour long stretch at electioneering I finally got home around 9pm last night. But what an interesting day it was. The response has been amazing, while I was doing a four hour stint telling at a polling station, the volumn of poeple that came through was a lot higher than expected. I spent the rest of the day helping out in a committee room which, as it was my first experience of this, was very interesting to watch an election happen.<br /><br />So what happen in Greenwich and Lewisham? Well, the turnout was a lot higher than we predicted, but the most notable thing was that it wasn't just Labour supporters not coming out to vote, but that they had actually voted against them. In fact it was so bad that London Labour Leader Len Duvall, and Eltham MP Clive Efford were spotted out in Shooters Hill ward knocking on doors as 9pm last night, trying to get Len's vote out. Now that is desperate.<br /><br />Now, last night I decided not to do a live blog of the results for the simple reason that I will be spending all day today at the ExCel regional count for the London elections. So that made waking up this morning and switching on Sky News very enjoyable. Sky's breaking news this morning was that Gordon Brown has delivered the worst election performance for forty years, in his first outing. I suspect a major "relaunch" is in the offing.<br /><br />These results also show another very interesting swing. Normally a protest vote for Labour goes to the Lib Dems. It's tradition, plus Nick Clegg has seemed to have potioned himself as LabourLite recently. But this time the swing has been away from Labour, and to the Tories. If that was replicated in a General Election some big name ministers will lose their seats, much in the same way as the Tories did back in 1997.<br /><br />So for me, like I said, my second long day in row will be at the London regional count as a counting agent for our GLA candidate Andy Jennings. Now for understandable reasons I can't blog from inside the count, but if I get any gossip I'll blog it from the Cafe.<br /><br />The sea is changing, and I'm going to see it happen live. Go Boris!<br /><br /><strong>Update:</strong> I've just had an email questioning why I thought that it was "desperate" for Len Duvall and Clive Efford to still be knocking on doors with only an hour of polling left. Basically, in Greenwich, Labour traditionally does not have its vote counted they have it weighed, as it is a very safe area for them. So for the candidate and the local MP to be personally out knocking up at such a late hour is unheard of in the constituency. That's why.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript"><!-- google_ad_client = "pub-3353254159313303"; google_ad_width = 728; google_ad_height = 90; google_ad_format = "728x90_as"; google_ad_type = "text_image"; google_ad_channel = ""; //--> </script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js"> </script></div>The Last Boy Scouthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16404137282451389896noreply@blogger.com