After the election, what next ?

For those of you who haven’t heard already, the Green Party’s success in getting its first MP (Caroline Lucas, who won Brighton Pavilion from Labour) was matched by a battering elsewhere. It was just not an election for smaller parties, with most people who are not Cameron supporters desperate to keep the Tories out. The huge turnout favoured either red or blue and meant Greens found it much harder to meet the 5% threshold needed to keep our deposits. In Tottenham, Lammy’s Labour majority increased substantially and I got a mere 980 votes, compared to the 2035 needed to make 5%. The previous Green candidate, Pete McAskie, got 1457 votes in 2005 when (because of lower turnout) only 1583 votes would have been needed to keep the deposit. There were similar falls in the Green vote in Hornsey and Wood Green, and almost everywhere except Brighton, so that in seven London constituencies where we kept the deposit in 2005, we lost it this time. So at £500 a time this is going to be an expensive election for the Greens!

The count was dramatic and exhausting – it went on all night at Alexandra Palace. The Parliamentary result was anounced at about 6.30am, and the local elections even later. It was the first time a Parliamentary election had been held on the same day as a local one, and the huge turnout - so high there were big queues at some polling stations - meant far more votes to count than usual. You have to hand it to the team of over well over a hundred Council workers who sat sorting and counting ballot papers from before 11pm till the next morning. They had only one snack break and in some cases they had already worked all day at the polling stations. So if you wanted some Council service today Friday and didn’t get much joy from the telephone lines, it was probably because a lot of staff had gone home to sleep. But the manual counting system is so much better than the voting machines used in the USA and elsewhere – there is no chance of invisible machine error, the counting teams are extremely thorough and careful, and the candidates can walk around and see exactly what is going on.

The unforgiveable thing is that some people in Hackney and in northern cities couldn’t vote because the queues were still waiting when the polling stations closed at 10pm. And very sad too that over 200 people lost their vote because they spoilt their ballot paper – mostly because they confused the two kinds of election and the two different ballot papers. They voted for three people on the Parliament paper, instead of one. They didn’t realise the ‘choose three candidates’ system was for the local Council paper. Having two ballot papers with different systems both on the same day might have been confusing enough for people who have always lived here – but for the many Tottenham voters who grew up in other countries with quite different electoral systems, it was especially confusing. It suggests that both officials and parties need to do a lot more to explain to people how the voting system works.

It was a big disappointment that we still have no Green councillors in Haringey, after Green supporters had put in so much work over the last few months.

However, one of the most important things about the election campaign is that it brought people together in the community and got them talking, got ‘political’ and ‘non-political’ people to talk to each other in ways which rarely happen between times. There is a lot more to say about the experiences and lessons of the last few weeks, and the discussions that now need to carry on. I’ll blog some more about that in a day or two when I’ve caught up on sleep!

Meanwhile, thanks to everyone who voted Green and helped with the campaign.