UK General Election ’15¶
Briggs captures the essentials:
You have to love — I do — how the cessation of accelerating profligate spending is called in Europe “austerity”. Here [in the UK] the slow-down-in-speeding-up-yet-still-increases-in-spending are called “budget cuts”.
The “let’s carry on decaying at a genteel pace chaps” party won (unexpectedly). Insurgent parties did badly (except at the geographical — rather than ideological — fringe). A status quo outcome, then. A shallower, longer decline path it is …
The more positive implications concern territorial disintegration. Deepening political alienation in Scotland, and a commitment to a referendum on Europe, promise opportunities for multi-level secessionary tides to strengthen.
Also, the left will go even more nuts. When the teeth-gnashing commentary begins to roll in, I’ll try to link some as Schadenfreude tonic.
ADDED: Conservatives know that they’re losers, even when they ‘win’.
ADDED: HBD Chick applies some biorealism to the election results.