ELECTION NIGHT:The people have spoken – that is, if they were actually able to get into polling stations, writes MATTHEW ENGEL
THE AMERICAN politician-cum-prankster Dick Tuck, who devoted his life to irritating the hell out of Richard Nixon, once greeted defeat with a sombre announcement. “The people have spoken,” he said. “The bastards.”
Deep into the night, the response to Britain’s strangest-ever election seemed to be: “The people have spoken. Has anyone heard what the hell they said?” The first result of real significance was Kingswood, a suburban housing-estate name for a suburban housing-estate kind of seat, on the nothingy outskirts of Bristol. It was won by one Chris Skidmore, a smooth-looking 20-something, author of a book called Death and the Virgin.
This seemed to be the equivalent of the grinning Tory David Amess at Basildon in 1992, and Gisela Stuart, the harbinger of New Labour at Edgbaston in 1997. Prof Vernon Bogdanor, a silver-haired sage from Oxford University, in the tradition of BBC election night pundits, started talking about “the largest swing since the war”. Then other, contradictory, results started coming in, with Labour holding seats they should have lost.
Even though the Clegg boom appeared to be the shortest-lived phenomenon in electoral history – three weeks is an awfully long time in politics – there was no certainty that Kingswood was the harbinger of anything.
The most thrilling place to be in the first few hours after the polls closed was not any party or television channel. It was Betfair – the betting exchange site, the place, pending the opening of the London International Financial Futures Exchange (LIFFE), where people were putting their money where their mouths were. And a wild, confused campaign turned into a wild, confused night.
Five minutes before the polls closed, at 9.55, the No Overall Majority Party, the Nooms, were slight odds-on favourites to win. With two minutes to go, the Conservatives took over, which suggested the clever clogs types knew the exit poll figures. But they got it wrong.
When we did get the exit figures, the Nooms and Tories swapped places again. The Nooms were heavy odds-on before the first result from Sunderland, where they hate late nights. Then, after the second Sunderland result, with a big swing to the Tories, they suddenly became hotter favourites than since the pre-Cleggmania era. There came the third Sunderland result, much better for Labour . . . and it all turned round again. It turned round twice more even before LIFFE opened. At that point LIFFE was betting on the pound – and Betfair punters expected a hung parliament.
Among the early prattles, the prize remark came from Michael Gove, the putative Tory education secretary: “All of us should show a little humility at this stage.” In other words, there was a brief interlude between the bombast of the campaign and the arrogance of government.
Second place goes to the anonymous Democratic Unionist, quoted by the BBC as saying: “Westminster’s difficulty is Ulster’s opportunity.” That was before Peter Robinson lost.
This was the first election of the social-networking age. News that Battersea had fallen to the Tories was pre-announced on Twitter.
Whenever the next election comes – which looked like being any time from next month onwards, voting will be done via Twitter and the rumour mill. This will save everyone the vexed business of turning up to vote.
As we’ve seen, our impoverished local authorities seem unable to cope with that. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010)
