Urg.
So to try to do some analysis on this so far;
Never question the BBC exit poll. Suffered through 2010 in much the same way. General UK polling however... Swing is dead.
A Conservative narrow majority (I'm seeing 2-5 seats in the projections now) sounds horrible to me. The number of policies that were moderated or blocked by the Lib Dems are significant. A government that relies on the Tory backbenches (and maybe DUP) are
likely to skew far the other way.
I woke up after four hours sleep to hear Theresa May (last seen defying EU law to reject Syrian refugees who manage to survive the Med crossing) promising more security and surveillance powers. Given New Labour's general hawkish position on such matters there has always been an easy majority in Parliament even on an unwhipped vote; it's only been the constraints on the government that stopped the old Snooper's Charter going through. I have a feeling that the same is going to be true for many civil liberty issues. The only hope there is Labour doing a serious U-turn under new leadership (no idea who though...) along with a resurgence of Lib Dem flavoured civil liberty friendly Tories.
The less I think about the likely privatisation and welfare changes at the moment the better.
The Labour failings are weird. They flat out failed to make gains against the Conservatives in many of their best target seats. In Warwickshire North the Conservatives turned a 54 vote majority into a 2,973 one. Similar gains in
Nuneaton That speaks to something seriously wrong with the ground level campaign.
UKIP's failure to take any seats was kinda expected beforehand. The one thing the polls and ground chatter actually predicted (IMO).
Lots of big scalps taken. A few worth mourning there, a fair few worth celebrating.
Cambridge lost
Julian Huppert by just under 600 votes. Sometimes considered the only scientist in Parliament, he was definitely science's inside man, being the primary point of contact for many scientific bodies and policy groups as well as securing vast public funding for Cambridge itself. He also has a good record on civil liberties and international issues. His Labour replacement has been painted as a party man (trade union negotiator) who is unlikely to be as effective either for local interests or the other interest groups that Huppert represented. A real loss for science interests and civil liberties, hopefully not too bad for Cambridge itself.
George Galloway gone. Happy day.
Just now;
Mark Reckless (UKIP MP) officially lost, although that's been coming for a while. General mood seems to be "fuck off".
Ed Balls lost his seat to the Tories, which is easily the biggest loss to Labour in this election (short of counting all of Scotland...). Until yesterday he was tipped to be the Chancellor today.
Now to suffer through work.
EDIT: Re. Balls, his wife (Yvette Cooper) is now tipped for leader of the Labour Party pretty heavily. That would be a very strange scenario, although maybe less so than if she became leader and he was still Shadow Chancellor/Chancellor (generally the successor-in-waiting position to the PM).
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