The result of the election defied the pollsters the newspapers tv radio and other experts.
I surmise that the result also surprised the leaders of all the political parties. Many expected the Conservatives to be the largest party overall but with the Lib/Dems refusal in the coalition government to allow the usual updating of constituency boundaries to proceed, my assumption was that the consequential struggle to have an absolute majority would be too much for the Tories. In the event the failure to update the constituency boundaries probably exacerbated the very poor result for the Labour Party and added support to the Scottish Nationalists who had a brilliant result.
The Lib Dems when part of the coalition government in many ways kept their Conservative partners in check during the past 5 years which overall and with the benefit of hindsight was good for the nation. Their sterling work during the coalition did not however find them much supported in the general election but history will surely give Nick Clegg huge credit for keeping the nation from becoming too extreme over the past 5 years and probably that impact will also albeit subtly, be positive during the next 5 years.
The Labour party in Scotland failed to develop sufficiently during the latter part of C20 to become a really C21 dynamic political party. The Labour party obviously needs to regroup but one development might be a Labour Party of Scotland obviously affiliated to the Labour Party generally but not so much dominated by it as Scottish Labour has been to date.
As for the Tories one has to congratulate David Cameron on a result which no one expected and probably even exceeded his own expectations.
Looking at the machinations and concerns more and more afflicting Greece it is apparent that maintaining generous welfare and other benefits though laudable in theory in practice has to be done less with borrowed money and more with earned money.
Reverting to the UK, all governments left right and coalition, have been borrowing to pay for the needy and poor. The origins of the money which is lent to the nation for this to be done, though surely needs to be looked into? If in reality we are being financially supported by money ultimately derived from nations run by extreme regimes then making ourselves more and more beholden to such regimes seems hugely negative. Even if say the USA is lending us these huge sums we cannot and should not rely on others to pay the UK's huge bills,
Ultimately we in the UK need to provide fairly for our poor from money which is not derived in practice from undemocratic regimes but as importantly we in the UK should be assisting our underprivileged more from our own resources and less from those of third parties. To achieve that the new government should work towards putting our own resources into balance rather than keep deferring that task to the next generation. The Greek crisis sadly illustrates that the music does stop sometime.
Interestingly other nations in the EU appear to be waking up to the fact that they too have general elections. The indications are that they may perhap as a result, provide more assistance to David Cameron in modernising some EU arrangements than previously had been believed, in which case the referendum result may prove be positive for the EU as a whole as well as for the UK itself.
Meanwhile one has to congratulate David Cameron and commiserate with most of the other political leaders.
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