And another thing…

SO, to sum up…

The SNP won 700 more votes in Glasgow South, my own seat, than Labour.

The SNP beat Labour into a poor second place in Scotland, one of Labour’s “strongholds”.

The Tories and the SNP beat Labour into third place in East Renfrewshire, the seat of Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy.

The Conservatives beat Labour in the the popular vote in Wales (and no number of exclamation marks after that sentence could do that statement justice).

Voters chose two fascists to represent them in Strasbourg.

Labour looks like coming third, behind Ukip, with less than 16 per cent of the vote.

Now, I don’t want to sound alarmist or defeatist or anything, but I’m willing to stick my neck out here and suggest that this was not the best Labour performance of recent years. Or am I being too pessimistic?

NOT MUCH news in as yet, but feel free to leave updates and comments as results come in.

8.14 pm: Sky reporting that the European Parliament estimates a record low turnout across Europe of 43 per cent. Will that be reflected in the UK?

And ConservativeHome predicting sixt place for Labour in the South West. That can’t be good. But they’re also speculating that the LibDems, not Labour, might come fourth nationally.

8.40 pm: Nigel Farage just resurrected that old myth about 75 per cent of our laws being made in Europe. Was he lying or just betraying his ignorance?

8.45 pm: A journalistic source says Number 10 are predicting fourth place for Labour.

9.08 pm: More than an hour into Sky’s coverage and there’s still a row of zeros along the bottom of the screen. Come on, give us a result!

9.10 pm: The sound on Iain Dale and Hopi Sen’s double act over on PlayRadioUK has just died. I’ll clarify that: Hopi’s mic is still working but we can’t hear Iain. Labour gain!

9.14 pm: Totally agree with Hopi that shenanigans like we’ve seen in Manchester from self-styled “anti-fascists” just play into the hands of the BNP, making them look like victims.

9.30 pm: Why is PlayRadioUK getting all these results and the TV stations still don’t have anything?

9.52 pm: Labour vote down nine per cent in North East. SNP set to beat Labour in the popular vote in Scotland, according to Brian Taylor.

9.55 pm: Dale reporting the good news that Griffin is unlikely to win a seat in the North West. Fingers crossed.

10.12: Bad news for the Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy. Labour has come third in East Renfrewshire, with the Tories and the nats coming first and second respectively. And Nick Robinson’s reporting the Tories may have won the popular vote in Wales. There’s unlovely…

10.32: Getting bored now. I’ll be back when there’s something to comment on.

10.39: There are some fascinating results beings announced at local authority level, according to PlayRadioUK, but they’re being completely ignored by the BBC and Sky. But apparently Labour and Conservatives are predicting UKIP will come second! Truly remarkable and dismal result.

11.09: Hooray! Labour just managed to beat the Greens into fifth place Eastern region. Tories, Ukip and libems came first, second and third.

And on that note, I’m off to bed. Goodnight.

AS IF things weren’t difficult enough for Labour today, I sense a slight “Florida 2000″ problem with the ballot paper.

I had been assured by a staff member that Labour were listed on today’s European ballot paper under “L” rather than “S” for “Scottish Labour” (a label which makes Scottish nationalists inexplicably seethe with rage, making the “Scottish” label worthwhile if for no other reason).

So I had expected, and hoped, that we would be listed fairly far up the ballot paper, rather than among the “Scottish” LibDems, the “Scottish” Conservatives” and the “Scottish” National Party. Alas, it turned out not to be so. We’re listed below all of these, which I couldn’t understand until a comment on this site from PeteB pointed out that we’re listed under “T” for “The Labour Party”. It rather reminds me of the index to a Far Side book of cartoons by Gary Larson which lists nothing under any letter until “T”, where every cartoon is described as “The one about…”

Will it make any difference? Probably not, but when everything else is going so horribly wrong, it would have been nice to have been better placed on the ballot paper.

Never mind. If we’re gubbed today, I’ll just tell any media that ask that we would have won if we were properly listed.

WELL, not exactly 20 years, actually. It was Thursday, June 15, 1989: polling day in the European elections. It was also the day of the Glasgow Central by-election. And it was the last time I didn’t vote Labour.

Having suffered the humiliation of losing a by-election in the neighbouring Gov-… sorry, “the Scottish constituency” (I’m the superstitious type) just seven months earlier, Labour were determined not to allow a second defeat in Central after the sad death of sitting MP Bob McTaggart. Although I didn’t have a vote in Central, I lived nearby so spent just about every waking hour helping in the campaign (intriguingly and irrelevantly, I canvassed the flat where Carolyn was living with her mum at the time, four years before actually meeting her).

Everything about the campaign was an improvement on the Scottish constituency campaign: the political message, the literature, the overall strategy and, most importantly, the weather. It was, for those of us who don’t get out much, a thoroughly enjoyable campaign.

And it was while I was sitting along with other party members in the Gorbals Unemployed Workers Centre waiting for the result to be announced that the TV news presenter made a passing reference to that day’s other elections, for the European Parliament. And in a moment of shock I realised that I had forgotten to vote! So focussed was I on the by-election that I hadn’t made time to vote for Janey Buchan MEP, who, in the event, was somehow re-elected without my help.

As I write this, I still haven’t voted. But I will, have no fear. I will vote Labour and I will do so proudly. And I encourage you all to do the same.

Oh, and we won Glasgow Central. Just in case you were interested.

THIS just in from a commenter:

Zimbabwe UK! From Guido

UKIP are complaining that ballot papers are being handed out folded over and people don’t realise their name is over the fold. Supporters are complaining to their party HQ that UKIP were not on the ballot paper…

He’s unnervingly right, you know. The thousands of political refugees who have claimed asylum in Britain in recent years rarely mention the murders, rapes, beatings, intimidation and land-grabs.

No, no, no… It was the insistence by Harare returning officers on folding ballot papers that finally persuaded them to jump in the back of that lorry for the 3000-mile journey to Blighty…

I WISH I had an inside track to share with you, I really do.

But I had no idea Hazel was going to resign today, just as I had no idea about yesterday’s departure announcements. And, like every other colleague I’ve spoken to today, I had no idea about the mysterious letter until the BBC called to tell me.

All I will say is that such shenanigans should have been indulged in after polling day in the European and local elections. I feel so sorry for al our candidates, sitting councillors and MEPs included, who have every right to feel let down by their Westminster colleagues, for more reasons than one.

Next week at Westminster should be interesting. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: who says politics is dull?

BELIEVE me, it is very difficult these days to try to motivate party activists to go out door-knocking, and I know this is not a problem confined to the Labour Party.

Party membership, and particularly party campaigning, is a voluntary activity. Those who join and want to get involved at a local level in the Labour or Conservative or LibDem parties do so for mostly altruistic reasons: they want to make a contribution to making thinghs better and they feel they can do this by promoting the policies of one particular party. They give up a lot of their spare time to sit in drafty community centres of a Thursday evening, listening to councillors give long and detailed reports while others are sitting comfortably at home with their families watching telly.

Party activists make sacrifices – of their time, their money, their shoe leather and their patience. And in the last few weeks many of them will be wondering why they bothered.

This Thursday will be a difficult day for Labour, according to all the polls. But it will also be bad, to a greater or lesser degree, for British politics.

But here’s the truth: after all the scandal and the dishonesty and the resignations and the refusals to resign, the indignation and the public fury… after all that, politics is still worth the candle. I would today still urge young people not just to become involved in “politics” – which is too often shorthand for a non-party campaign or movement – but to join a political party, to work for a candidate and yes, to become a candidate themselves one day, even to become a Member of Parliament.

Because that’s still the best way to make a political contribution, even with all the compromises and concessions that are necessarily a part of party politics and which have always been intrinsic to it.

As for Labour, I still fervently believe that we deserve the public’s support more than any other party. At both local and European level, we have shown that we have the individual talent as well as the policy and agenda to make things better for the people of this country.

Please vote on Thursday. British politics can deliver and it deserves another chance.

And vote Labour.

EVERYONE is making predictions about 2009, but I’ll leave that to Iain Dale. 

Because in 2008, I called the US election completely wrongly. More importantly, my tip for X-Factor winner was knocked out half way through the live finals. So we’ve established something: I’m no good at predictions.

But I am confident about some things this year: there will be elections – Euro and local council – in June. GB may even decide to hold a general election on the same day. Who knows?*

As for the family, this is the dreaded year that Ronnie will start school, so expect many tears and tantrums in the Harris household come August (from Carolyn, not Ronnie).

Next month I will turn 45, which means I’m only a few years away from being officially considered middle-aged…

In March, this blog will celebrate its first anniversary: a public holiday may or may not be declared.

Then, at Easter, the latest Doctor Who special, Planet of the Dead, will be shown.

At the cinema, I’m looking forward to seeing Watchmen, Frost/Nixon and Star Trek.

I always feel personally optimistic at the start of each year. But it’s impossible to avoid the harsh truth that for a lot of my fellow citizens, 2009 is going to be very difficult. With unemployment going up and house prices set to fall throughout the year, a lot of people will find very little to be optimistic about. 

I make no political point about this: I find that those faced with the threat of the dole queue or with losing their homes are less than impressed by politicians who want to debate where and how the recession started instead of coming up with solutions to current problems.

So in 2009 I will try to be a good husband, a good dad, a good friend and a good MP.

And though this blog, I will try to offer comments and insights that are as honest as possible, and as funny as advisable. I will continue to be as open as possible to critical comments, while continuing my policy of deleting or spamming rude and offensive comments, and will occasionally respond in kind to some of the less polite observations made here.

And I will try my hardest to retain as many of the new readers I’ve attracted in the past nine months.

If we’re very, very lucky, 2009 will be a dull, dull year. But I have a feeling it will be more eventful and interesting than 2008. 

May God help us all.

* No-one.