The morning after the day before

tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30881067.post-50031231206203527692008-05-03T07:03:00.006+01:002008-05-03T10:52:42.168+01:00The morning after the day before<a href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_nYJGPeRgO7o/SBwK2u25XvI/AAAAAAAAAik/hDXC-IGjrcc/s1600-h/sux385_331326a.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5196040005486206706" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_nYJGPeRgO7o/SBwK2u25XvI/AAAAAAAAAik/hDXC-IGjrcc/s320/sux385_331326a.jpg" border="0" /></a>What a fantastic result! After spending 14 hours at ExCel yesterday for the vote counting, it was so pleasing to see Boris win the mayoralty.<br /><br />As for me I am well and truly shattered, the last two days have long, and at some points during the count hard, but it was all worth while. The live blogging didn't happen as I had planned, as I'm not blessed with a blackberry, and the thought of text/emailing put me off in the end, so I just ended up feeding <a href="http://dizzythinks.net/">Dizzy </a>with a few tit bits of info here and there. Although he must have had a number of sources at the count, as he started feeding info back to me. Mind you, I nearly dropped myself in it right at the end of the night when I was chatting to a very nice lady from Sky News, and jokingly said "I bet that some of the Brixton base files were in the basement of City Hall when it flooded". She nearly believed me, so that will teach me not to be flippant around a nice looking journo.<br /><br />Anyway, I digress. Nationally the results were bad, but it wasn't until Sky had changed from saying that Labour had "a bad night" to having a "disastrous night" that we saw the scale of unpopularity in Gordon Brown, and the public vote <strong><em>"FOR"</em></strong> the tories, and not just <em><strong>"not voting"</strong></em> for Labour.<br /><br />The results at ExCel also spoke volumes, with some very unexpected announcements. The biggest surprise was in Bexley & Bromley, which really set the tone for the evening. Prior to first declaration of the evening I finally met fellow blogger <a href="http://www.jamescleverly.blogspot.com/">James Cleverly</a> and even though it was obvious from the count progress graph that he would win, it was the sheer scale of it that was the surprise. James won with a stonking <strong><em>75,237</em></strong> majority! (Congratulations James!) It was at that point that the realisation that Boris really was going to win starting to set in.<br /><br />This was followed with other expected holds for both Labour and the Tories, in City & East and Havering & Redbridge respectively. Although, despite being the first to finish counting there were quite a few arguments over ballot papers from the BNP members, which caused the declaration to be delayed, and then delayed again. But then again the BNP had making assumptions that there had been some deliberate spoiling of papers to prevent their votes for most of the day. I think it was a green party member (I could be wrong as I couldn't quite see the party affiliation on their security pass) that whispered that it was "<em>probably because their supporters couldn't work out how to put a cross in the box</em>". Again I drift from the point.<br /><br />So that left Greenwich and Lewisham, the constituency that I had put in 13 hours of electioneering the day before. Now to set the scene, it's a safe Labour set, there's no two ways around that. Which is why the leader of the London Labour party holds it. But the shock for us it that only delivered around a 12000 vote win for Ken! That should not have happened. The pleasing thing to see was our candidate Andy Jennings not only poll brilliantly with 37,040 (Congratulations Andy), but also destroy the UKIP vote, after the vile campaign that their candidate ran. He got what he deserved, and hopefully will never darken our doorsteps again. As Len Duvall himself said in his acceptance speech "there is no place for that in politics". I would even go further than that and say, "there is no place that - full stop".<br /><br />As for Boris, I still admit I did have initial misgivings, and I'm happy to say he proved me very very wrong. He ran a very positive campaign and clearly showed that he was more than able to take on the Mayoralty. His acceptance speech was very good, and very complimentary to Ken, and you could tell he meant what he said.<br /><br />So here's looking forward to the next four years. As for me, I'm going to rest my poor weary feet before I start planning for the next election, whenever that is.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript"> </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