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| CRUSHING: A resounding victory for the 'No' campaign |
ALTHOUGH counting has not concluded yet, the Liberal Democrats miserable 24 hours at the polls has just been finished off resoundingly. Britain has decided to reject the ‘Yes to AV’ voting policy, which would have seen the Alternative Vote scheme, where voters would rank their politicians to vote for in order of preference. Instead, we have decided to stick to the tried and tested formula of ‘First Past the Post.’ By just putting a simple x on the ballot papers, the country has decided to keep the simple policy at this referendum, and it is a crushing victory too.
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| LOOKING OVER: Clegg will be under pressure after this battering |
With 386 results declared in the 440 councils across England and Wales already, the ‘No’ campaign has already taken over 360 regions, with the ‘Yes’ campaign still staggeringly in single figures. This is going to be a hammer blow to the Liberal Democrats leader Nick Clegg, who is already under pressure and will surely feel the full force at the next annual party conference in Liverpool in September. This adds to total rejection in the council elections across the country, which saw a number of Lib Dems MP’s lose council seats, in which the party has had strangleholds on for the last decade, particularly in the North of the country such as Liverpool, Manchester and Clegg’s own constituency of Sheffield.
Around 18.6million people voted in this referendum, but the percentage turnout of 41% (excluding Northern Ireland) is disappointing. This hints that either people couldn’t care less about the referendum, or the feelings towards the coalition government in general are really starting to hit home, just under a year after its formation in Downing Street.
The crushing rejection by the British voters is a blow to the Lib Dems, who although feared a backlash, surely can’t have predicted such a grim response to one of their key pledges in their manifesto. Danny Alexander, a Cabinet minister for the Liberal Democrats told Sky News of his thoughts;
“It is disappointing that people have chosen to vote the way they have. I think there is a whole number of reasons for that, but I think the most important thing is to accept with good grace the verdict of the people and say 'That's that'."
This follows a harrowing night for the party, following their worst council elections results since the 1980s. This morning, Clegg spoke to reporters outside his home and remained defiant, although he admitted it is ‘a kicking’ in which his party took. It seems like the brunt of the blame has gone with Clegg and the Liberal Democrats within the coalition, especially with the controversial spending cuts, and the change in heart over a rise in tuition fees. The battering of the Liberal Democrats means that Conservative support stuck relatively at the same. The results will be of some relief to David Cameron, which suggests that the public don’t seem to mind his side of the coalition. There were some encouraging results for Labour too, although they missed out narrowly on forming a majority government in the Welsh Assembly by a single vote. Ed Miliband will be modestly satisfied with the results last night, especially as it was a test for him, considering the unpopularity he seems to hold from several political experts.
Both Cameron and Clegg have insisted that the coalition will survive the referendum results, although things did turn very bitter in the ‘AV’ campaign, and definitely showed some cracks that simply weren’t there before. What is clear is that the British public have spoken and made their decisions. It is crystal clear that the Liberal Democrats are not the flavour of the month with anyone in Britain at the moment.
