Skipper

LeastBad —This is my first posting on the real meat of my blog and my main impression of the recent election is of the rule of the 'least bad'. This seems to have informed a huge swathe of voters whether voting Labour to avoid the even worse Conservatives-witness Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee's wheeze of issuing clothes pegs to those once loyal Labourites who could only vote for Blair with difficulty as the lesser evil. Another more familiar manifestation is tactical voting which many said would act in reverse this time; the evidence is that quite a bit of this 'least bad' option taking did occur.

Too unpopular to be seen alone — There was an odd symetry observable during the campaign whereby Blair was deemed too unpopular to be campaigning on his own-so acquired the obligatory campaign companion of Gordon Brown; and Michael Howard was thought to have so much of that dark night about him that his lovely wife Sandra was attached permanently to him for every visit and every speech. At least Charles Kennedy was deemed sufficiently acceptable to be allowed out without a minder.