General Election Results

So, Blair's got back in - on a reduced majority, but he's got back in. I suppose this about the ideal feasible result for me: New Labour's legislative power is now a hostage to the left wing of the Parliamentary party, which hopefully drag it to the left. Martin Linton, the sitting Labour MP in Battersea, had what must have been an awful night. There were apparently two recounts, and a seat he had held on a majority of almost fourteen percent returned him with a majority of 163 or 0.4%. His vote fell by 9.9%, whilst every other party made gains, to the extent that the Tories very nearly won the seat 120th on their list of seats they needed to take, which would have, I think, given them a parliamentary majority . To my mind this is, from what I can tell of the results this morning and sitting up till around four yesterday, archetypal of the election as a whole, in that, particularly where they are not protected by a name, Labour MPs have been judged by Labour supporters in part on their adherence to a social democratic and anti-imperialist agenda and that has meant, where that standard has not wholly been lived up to, seats being lost and MPs getting a fright. I'm not long up, so I've not had a chance to collect either much more information than provided by the BBC News website's front-page or my thoughts, so there's likely to be a bit more here later.