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First impressions

First impressions that this is going to be a much worse night for Labour than some polls have suggested. Exit polls are pointing to a big cut in the size of Labour’s majority. Early days yet.

30 comments to First impressions

  • Daveon

    I am beginning to suspect 66 is an optimistic number. This could actually be a good night for British democracy.

  • Gary Gunnels

    Could Brown be Prime Minister tomorrow?

  • John K

    I would love a NuLabor majority in the region of 30-50. They deserve to win this election so that they can reap the economic shitstorm of Prudent Gordon’s tax and spend fest, which will come in the next couple of years; but with a small majority Fungus the Home Secretary will have a hard job pushing through his programme of social authoritarianism. I really hope tonight is the night the ID card and universal database dies. Fingers crossed.

  • mike

    “Could Brown be Prime Minister tomorrow?”

    No.

    I have just watched a little of the BBC’s election coverage which included interviews with young people in a pub in Islington – which way had they voted? One was labour and the other hadn’t registered in time but would have voted green if she had.

    Muppets.

    I however, shall be ‘voting with feet’ as it were by leaving these shores at the end of the month. I hear there is great promise in the land of the rising sun…

  • John K

    Be fair, they were drinking in a theatre pub in Islington, if you can’t be Green there where can you be? I did think the girl who hadn’t voted had the look of Abi Titmuss, but I don’t think it was her, sadly.

  • David Crawford

    To any Americans that are interested, C-SPAN2 is carrying the BBC feed.

  • Verity

    The Telegraph is running a picture on its front page of the Bliar towing what looks like a beached whale wearing a white cardigan all too obviously designed to hide vast hips, and turns out to be none other than Cher.

    Has anyone else ever noticed – ladies on the site will have done so – but when holding hands with Cher, Blair always keeps his arm stiff and pointed away from himself. She is always held away, at a distance. Just a little observation.

    Finally, they were photographed walking – although Cher looks like she’s being held off with a bull pole – with two young men who are apparently their sons. That one who was found by police face down in Leicester Sq in his own vomit and another one I hadn’t noticed before.

  • GCooper

    Verity writes:

    “Has anyone else ever noticed – ladies on the site will have done so – but when holding hands with Cher, Blair always keeps his arm stiff and pointed away from himself. She is always held away, at a distance. Just a little observation.”

    You don’t have to be a girl (though it helps) – it’s classic sub-NLP (cue spooky music and “I’m waving five fingers at you – what time is it?” Darren Brown).

    Just yesterday, someone with informed insight suggested to me that Bliar’s decision to scuttle away from the searchlight was at least as much due to Cherie’s judicial aspirations as anything else.

    I countered that he was running scared at an imminent economic collapse, but my informed informant was adamant that the little creep was under the marital cosh to clear the way for Her Ladyship.

    That it should have come to this….

  • Pete_London

    Verity

    A year ago or so I saw a tv programe on the subject of Blair’s body language. One of the eye openers for me was how often he is (subconsciously or not) dismissive of the Wicked Witch. On many occasions she came close to his side and he would turn his head and body away. It would be so dreadful if he were bored with her.

  • Verity

    Pete _London It would be so dreadful if he were bored with her. And so much more interesting if he never fancied her in the first place, hein?

  • Verity

    G Cooper – Obviously, you could be correct, but what difference would it make? Regardless of what Michael Howard thinks of the phoney one, he would be obliged to make him into Lord Bliar in some bizarre pact with the devil. So what difference would Cher’s ennoblement be? (Other than a crime against good taste?)

    What all the folks have to bear in mind is, the Bliars are looking forward to major speakings bookings from naive Americans (no slur against Americans; but there are large numbers of naive ones when it comes to English accents and titles, that’s all) after they’re ejected from Downing St.

    It would not surprise me to hear that Lord Bliar was going to head up a consultancy with his name on it, in DC a propos the EU. His “loyalty” to the Bush family would pay off big time (as loyalty to this patrician family always does and how smart of Tone ‘n’ Cher to have caught on) with a stream of clients. So after-dinner talks for both, certainly, but also talks for their expertise in the snakepit of the EU. More bucks than Cher ever dreamt of. No need any longer to hop around in her underwear and bare feet on a designer’s warehouse floor because he promised her something free!

    [I would like to say here, that I believe that going to war in Iraq was the absolutely correct move. Members of our militaries who have died there died in the cause of protecting the west from militant Islam. They didn’t die for Iraqis; they died for us. I think Bliar went to war for the wrong reasons, but the cause was, and still is, just.]

  • Reasonable cut in Lab majority. However, the swings are difficult to read: Lib Dems in some areas, Cons in others.

    I suspect that the next Parliament will be more noisy, especially as Labour’s economic record starts to sag.

    Early doors, still

  • I'm suffering for my art

    HAHAHAHAHA Verity, you are so harsh!

    Incidentally, did you know that Cher recently did a round of tacky motivational speeches in Oz? You know the type, usually the main speaker is a shady American “former CEO”. No doubt the tickets cost a fortune. Who knows how many attended. Must be a bitch to service that mortgage of theirs…

  • HJHJ

    The main positive point of this election campaign is that at last the economically illiterate electorate (which currently thinks that Labour has run the economy well) will realise that the coming economic train crash is the result of Labour’s incompetent policies and it will trash the reputation of Gordon Brown. It is highly unfortunate that such a painful lesson will have to be endured, simply because the electorate doesn’t understand the lags between cause and effect in economic policy. If the Tories had won, the electorate would have blamed them (nd not Labour) for the problems that will become all too apparent shortly.

    I dislike the personal attacks on the relationship between Balir and his wife on this blog. I abhor both of them – he for his incompetence and deceit and her for the fact that she earns her very comfortable living at taxpayers expense in a closed shop ‘profession’. Put her in industry and she wouldn’t last five minutes in a competitive environment where income is related to results against international competition. However we should refrain from personal abuse.

  • I'm suffering for my art

    he for his incompetence and deceit and her for the fact that she earns her very comfortable living at taxpayers expense in a closed shop ‘profession’. Put her in industry and she wouldn’t last five minutes in a competitive environment where income is related to results against international competition.

    Wasn’t all that just polite personal abuse? No offence, just asking….

  • Pete_London

    suffering

    She did indeed go on a speaking tour of Oz a couple of months ago, where she conned the Children’s Cancer Institute out of £100,000.

  • I'm suffering for my art

    Screw the Children’s Cancer Institute – it’s not like they need the money.

  • dearieme

    Well, if it’s permitted to comment on Mr Blair’s appearance, may I say that he looks more and more like a pantomime dame? And the sweating: could that be hot flushes? Just what is going on here?

  • Pete_London

    Whether it needs the money is beside the point. The Blair’s have money worries, she went on a speaking tour using the Blair name and screwed a charity out of 100K. It sums up their grubby character.

  • Verity

    Oh, Dearieme – that was hysterical! A pantomime dame! Well, he certainly wears enough make-up. All he needs is the big dress and the tall wig.

    As for person attacks on the Blairs, I for one shall continue to make them. They have presented themselves as being wholly admirable when they are, as Pete_London notes, wholly grubby.

    It was this dysfunctional Addams family itself who tried to make itself look interesting and admirable. It wasn’t the voters who praised Blair as “a pretty straight kind of a guy” – partly because the voters aren’t as addicted to faux, outdated Americanisms as Tone is. It wasn’t me who claimed Cher was a hotshot barrister with a mind like a steel trap – who happens to live on “human rights” cases paid for by the taxes of people who go out and work for a living. As far as I can see, she’s never said anything clever or noteworth – except perhaps “I resign” when she ‘n’ Tone quite the CND when they realised their membership was rendering them unelectable.

    It wasn’t me who announced that Carole Caplin chooses Blair’s underwear (barf). Who chose a conman (who had been incarcerated on three continents) to help her get a better price on some property she was aspiring to? I didn’t advise her to go on TV and issue a tearful apology written by Peter Mandelson. A “high powered” barrister who can’t write her own speeches! Remind me never to call Matrix! I never suggested letting photographers into their bedroom so Cher could have her photo taken, mouth agape, with Carole applying lipstick to it.

    Most British people don’t think that placing crystals in particular patterns will heal them, but Cher does. I never suggested they elevate themselves to travelling on The Queen’s Flight. It wasn’t the voters who suggested Blair get a photo of his kid put on his coffee mug and inadvertently carry it outside the front door of No 10 into the blazing lights of the cameras. Does he really walk around Downing St carrying a mug of coffee? I would have thought he’d put it down on the coffee table when he gets off the couch from his “rolling meetings” in his “den”. Am I the only one who pictures these “rolling meetings” on the sofa as Tony being rolled down the corridors of Downing St on a couch? I cannot get that image out of my head.

    These people are sitcom material and I for one will continue to regard them as a source of innocent merriment.

  • dearieme

    Well, if I’m hitting your ticklespot, Verity, might I suggest that we all refer to “Cher” as “Ms Greedie Boot”?

  • Verity

    Oh, and I forgot the ancient Mayan “re-birthing ceremony” invented by some New Age opportunist, where they wriggled down plastic tubes or something to get rid of their bad karma (karma being a concept from a totally different continent, but what the hey!).

  • John K

    except perhaps “I resign” when she ‘n’ Tone quite the CND when they realised their membership was rendering them unelectable.

    I think you’ll find that Big Brother was never in CND. It must be true, because he says so. Anyone who disagrees is guilty of doublethink.

  • I'm suffering for my art

    Pete_london : just in case there’s any confusion…

    I was joking about the Children’s fund. Obviously they need the money and Cherie Blair doesn’t. Well she does to finance that great white elephant of hers but sick kids deserve it more…

  • Verity

    He has been airbrushed out of CND, but before he became powerful enough to airbrush himself out of inconvenient venues, I read in several different places that he and Cher had both been members – and not as young ‘n’ crazy kids, but as a married couple. In fact, I seem to remember that it was on his cv in the very early days.

  • John K

    The Dear Leader was never in CND. He never wanted Britain to leave the EU. Gordon Brown is his best friend. This has been confirmed by MiniTru. He is a pretty straight kind of guy. And Cherie is a very sexy woman. Lies are truth, war is peace, ignorance is strength, things can only get better. Thank you and good night.

  • Verity

    G Brown is his best friend and there never was any agreement that Blair would, in the best traditions of democracy, hand on his crown to Grim Gordy.

    The Bliars protect their children at all costs (having naively failed to realise that if their ambitions to be world famous figures were realised, their children would be of interest to the nether regions of the media), which is why Bliar was shown voting with his two boys in all the papers. And why Blair and Big Mama were photoed in a set pose outside No 10 holding a kid – I assume to be one of theirs – on Friday morning. They believe in absolute privacy for their children.

    And no; they never belonged to CND.

  • John K

    The Bliars protect their children at all costs

    The Dear Leader does not exploit his children. He did not pose in Downing Street with a coffee mug with their picture on. Your memory of this happening is false. Who do you want to believe, the Leader or your lying eyes?

    And for the record, Cherie’s bum is not that big, the photographers were using the wrong sort of lenses. They will be re-educated in due course. Cherie is in fact thinner than that fat bitch Kate Moss. I hope this clears up any confusion.

    Furthermore, David Blunkett has not been re-appointed to the Cabinet. David Blunkett never left the Cabinet. David Blunkett has always been in the Cabinet. He did not resign. He did nothing wrong. And if he did it was the posh bird’s fault.

    Anyone who does not believe me may have to go for a walk in the woods with a bottle of painkillers and a blunt penknife. You have been warned.

  • Verity

    John K – In fact, the Blairs don’t even have any children. Those “children” in various photocalls are different sets of kids from Central Casting, which is why they always look slightly disoriented. And they always seem to be unlikely ages.

    Tony Bliar’s hair is not thinning, he doesn’t have a weak heart and he does not wear makeup. Cherieeee is a high-powered barrister who only makes around £200,000 a year, while other high powered barristers make several millions a year. This is why high powered barristers don’t have to trawl designer showrooms with Carole Caplin, begging for free dresses, shoes and handbags. (I read that one designer banned Cherie from her atelier if she showed up with Carole Caplin.)

  • John K

    There is nothing wrong with the Leader’s heart. How do you think he won the London Marathon this year?