The morning after

[Last update 9:49]

Tired, depressed, hungover. I stayed up until: couldn't take the idiotic commentary on the TV any longer. (Poor Armando Ianucci, having to stand next to Joan Collins all that time.) Nothing had improved when I got up early this morning.

Starting to look at the results in more detail. Pleased to see that the BNP failed to win any seats and that Nick Griffin himself was decisely rejected in Barking. Depressing though that over half a million people voted for them nationally, twice as many as voted for the Greens in the general elections.

The Trade Union and Socialist Coalition, after a poor campaign, achieved 12,007 votes, not very impressive.

The Lewisham Deptford results are still not in, but I was pleased to see Heidi Alexander, one of the best examples of Labour in Lewisham, comfortably take Lewisham East. Labour's Jim Dowd has kept Lewisham West.

update 1: Top commentary from: Sir Alex Ferguson.

update 2: Apparently, the count hasn't even begun in Poplar and Limehouse or Bethnal Green and Bow, so we will have to wait to see if the odious George Galloway has won the latter or the excellent Rushanara Ali the former.

I am also pleased to see Jon Cruddas, one of my favourite MPs, retain his seat. Other MPs I like did who retained their seats include Denis MacShane, with a somewhat reduced majority, John Mann and Jim Murphy, with increased majorities. Cruddas, according to the commentariat, is now poised to play a key role in the Labour leadership issue...

update 3: Got to go and do some job work. Keep your eye on Brockley Central for local results.

Comments

Imposs1904 said…
You like Jim Murphy? I'm surprised.
Crudas for leader I say. Why should we put up with any of those other mediocrities that cluster around Brown; they're as despised as Brown himself, apart from perhaps Alan Johnson who, without being rude, I do not feel has the intelligence to be leader.

Worst choice would be Harriet Harmen. She is despised and made fun of by the media to a huge extent already. She would be the unelectable choice in my opinion.
bob said…
Jim Murphy: Yeah, I know he's a reformist etc etc but he's smart and nice and has more integrity than most politicians and he's a geniune anti-racist/anti-fascist.

Alan Johnson: I see absolutely nothing impressive about him. I probably prefer Harman, although that says very little!
Imposs1904 said…
Bob,

reformist/ smormist. That may be your black and white world. It's not mine. I can recognise decency in people without having to agree with their politics (or their taste in music/film/ or football team . . . .delete as appropriate.)

More to do with him being a hack, tbh. Integrity is not something that springs to mind when thinking of Murphy.
bob said…
To be honest, I don't know enough about him to have made that statement! I recall him from my NOLS youth, as among the more decent of the NOLS hacks, and came across him a few times in the context of various anti-fascist initiatives, and found him unusually intelligent and thoughtful for a politician.

Waterloo Sunset, a commenter here, once said: "Heh. I used to know Jim Murphy. One of the very few new Labour types with a genuine committment to anti-fascism. Sadly, I suspect all of my personal anecdotes about him are ones that Gordon Brown would frown on... [here] I welcome any juicy anecdotes from either of you and am eager to revise my opinion!
Waterloo Sunset said…
I had genuinely better be a bit careful for what I say here. Blairite scum though Jim obviously is, on a personal level I always got with him, so I don't want to throw out anything that could be tabloid fodder.

Suffice it to say he was one of the very few NUS hacks that actually knew how to party hard.

On antifascism, when I knew him, he was a dedicated CARF activist. And I had good reports of him from people in Scotland where he was. I'm sure this isn't his position now, but he was also in favour of physical confrontation as a tactic back then and was reasonably sympathetic to AFA, although he wasn't ever a member. He was public about all of this as well and open about it in NOLS.

There were a couple of prominent NOLS hacks who took a similar position. That, combined with the influence of some of more militant members of the UJS (who seem to have shifted massively to the right since I used to kick around with a couple of their activists), meant that NUS in the early 90's was actually pretty hospitable to militant antifascism. Despite being controlled by the right for most of that time.

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