Hung Parliament

So it's all excitement here. After 13 years of Labour government, the General Election yesterday sees an official hung parliament. Leigh managed to stay up til about half 2 last night watching results as they came in, and I picked it up for a couple of hours at half 5 when Leo got up (after Zachary was up, Lazy Town and CBeebies dominated any TV watching!).

The figures in 2005 were Labour 356, Conservatives 198, Lib Dem 62, and then the rest of the seats were taken with the smaller parties. Today the results are Labour 258, Conservative 306 and Lib Dem 57, smaller parties (including the first one ever for the Green Party) 27, with 1 constituency still to declare. However that constituency won't be decided for a while yet as one of the candidates died shortly before the election. So a massive swing in favour of the Conservatives although they didn't get the 326 needed for an overall majority. Lib Dems lost seats overall, despite the apparent public swing in their favour after the televised election debates. Just goes to show you can never really tell what the British public is thinking!

The result of all this (as everyone no doubt knows) is that Gordon Brown does not have to resign even though his party did not receive the most votes. He can stay as Prime Minister and will be trying to form a coalition government to enable him to influence the majority. David Cameron has also opened the negotiating table to the Lib Dems and it'll be exciting to see how things develop from here as this is a situation I haven't witnessed before. But it does show up the flaws in our electoral system, so surely something's got to be changed there???