A bitter sweet few days

Fighting elections produces a mixture of feelings as well as various situations.  Exhilaration, despair, belief of an election being in the bag, belief that an election is lost, abusive people, supportive people and everything in between.

Unfortunately I wasn't elected to represent Lesnes Abbey ward in Bexley.  However, I would like to thank the 2083 people who did vote for me.  It was a good campaign, and all candidates in the ward fought it with fairness and honour.  I want to thank my two team mates, John Browning and John Husband who were fantastic to be with, and special condolences to JB who lost out by only six votes.

Labour gained three more seats in Bexley, bringing the group up to 11.  However, the Tories still have 52 seats, a huge majority.  Although they did well in Bexley, across London as a whole Labour had gains in 29 councils, and took back councils such as Lewisham, Ealing and Southwark amongst others.

The interesting thing to watch is, of course, nationally.  As I write, the Tories and Lib Dems are meeting to see if they can form a ConDem alliance and govern together.  Many on the Progressive Left are fearful of a deal and want a LibLab pact.  Personally, I'm fine with the thought of the Tories and the Lib Dems going into some sort of partnership.  The reason?  They are polls apart on many policy areas such as PR, foreign policy and economics which will produce turmoil and infighting, with another General Election called between six to 18 months time.  We've already heard that the Tories are having a huge scrap between themselves, and this will only get worse.

Once a deal is done, Gordon Brown will have no choice but to then resign as Prime Minister and then Leader of the Labour Party, leaving the way for a leadership battle without Government being a distraction as it was previously.  Labour will then be able to enter the election with a new leader and policies that will, hopefully, win over the people.

Let's see how things develop.