Elections

It's a slightly odd situation where the results of local elections and European's were so spread apart. Locally in my ward the Lib Dems held on while a resurgent Tory party chipped away at the incumbents lead. Overall the council was no change from the fairly safe Conservative council you would expect to see down in the rural(ish) south east. The council elections are basically a 3 way fight with a few independents thrown in and luckily no BNP candidates attempting to chance their arm.

Unfortunately the same can't be said of the European elections whose foot and a half long ballot paper bought out all the fringe parties. While the BNP were still beaten by the Greens (and still very short of winning a seat) it's depressing to see nearly 100,000 people have voted for them, even given the analysis is their share is only up because of collapse in support for the other parties.

The real question now is where this leave the current government? I'm all for reviewing the constitutional basis for when elections can be held but the rules as they stand say Mr Brown gets to decide when that is. While I'm fairly partisan in my desire to have this current government thrown out I'd happily live with them hanging on until next year if they could at least given a semblance of an impression of the ability to govern. All I'm seeing at the moment is in-fighting and the occasional gimmick.