Yes we Khan
So Labour lost Battersea. Outgoing Labour MP Martin Linton planned to blame the Liberal Democrats but then thought it better not to. Had more Liberal Democrats cast a tactical ‘progressive vote’, then Labour just might have squeezed in, again. As it turned out the Lib Dem candidate Layla Moran- hugely underperformed in south London despite claims that this candidate had been identified by camp Clegg as one of his rising stars.
Linton was magnanimous in defeat, extending a hand of welcome to the Tory Jane Ellison while at the same time paying tribute to his own campaign volunteers who avoided a crushing defeat by knocking on thousands of doors and getting the core Labour supporter out to vote.
Linton’s civility contrasted with the rather graceless mood at Wandsworth Town Hall of some Tory activists, particularly when they realised that Labour’s Sadiq Khan had held on to his Tooting seat.
“That disgusting little man,” commented a pin-striped thirty something year old Tory, in his freshly pressed suit and greased back hair.
I couldn’t resist telling him that nothing was quiet as disgusting as he was.
To wake up this morning is to wake up to the possibility that these privileged. bold and brash Cameronites will now attempt to run not only Battersea but the country , in defence of their privileges and prejudices, while the defiant chant of the Tooting Labour activists still echoes in my ear, ‘Yes, We Khan’.
This was no great victory for Cameron. Just compare the Tory vote with how a majority of British subjects of all race, creed, and class voted for Tony Blair back in 1997. He has not swept the country as Blair did. It was no great victory for the media either. The combined magnum force and crude bigotry and bias of the pro-Tory newspapers failed to avert a hung parliament-a terrible term by the way which shoud be scrapped from the politics phrase book.
Hung suggests terminal indecision. But the national vote suggests a majority of voters have made up their minds that the national interest lies in constructive give-and-take around a genuinely progressive agenda of reform, regeneration, and redistribution. The government that fails to recognise that will be thrown out at the next election.
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