No Mandate for New Labour in England
Charles Moore in the Torygraph points out that Blair won office on the lowest number of votes since 1922, and it is the smallest share (since women got the vote) that has enabled the formation of a government with an overall majority. Its been three-quarters of a century since the governing party got less than 10 million votes. Its an even worse result when one considers that the population in 1922 was so much smaller. See also this FT article.
The Tories Gored Labour in England, winning the popular vote by 60,000 more votes than Labour. (The Tories picked up 8,086,306 votes, Labour trailed with just 8,028,512.) So its fair to say that England is under foreign occupation by a Scottish socialist party unsupported by the population, with only 1 in 5 of the English backing the regime. Expect the Campaign for an English Parliament to gain traction if not actually start an insurgency.
For detailed analysis of how the pollsters did see Anthony Wells’ excellent UK Polling Report blog, apparently this time the pollsters got it right. Guido commissioned his own research which shows a slightly different result, taking into account all eligible voters the final results were really:-
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Nullist 39%
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Labour 21.4%
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Conservative 19.7%
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Lib. Dem. 13.4%
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Others 6.3%
©NotmeGuv, 2005
It was the None-of-the-Aboves wot won it…
