Hello!

So we've just had a general election in the UK and it's fair to say that the Liberal Democrats didn't do as well as they might have hoped. Now, there's an awful lot of analysis that can go into working out why the election went so badly for them; Nick Clegg's tailing off in the final debates could be a factor, maybe low turnout from key voters like students, maybe it could be that tory line of claiming that the voters suddenly looked at their policies on the day of the election and changed their minds (though I don't think that's particularly likely - why would it only happen on the day of the election?).

But that's not what I want to write about. I want to lay out why I voted liberal democrat, and why this election is as deeply disappointing to me as it is.

Firstly I want to put things in context. There was a lot of talk on the election program on the bbc, and on blogs like fivethirtyeight about how badly the liberal democrats were doing; yes, this is true to an extent. But that's partly because of how much expectations were built up during the campaign for how well the liberal democrats were going to do. Overall, they're going to lose a few mps - at the time of writing, not all results are in, and they're currently 7 down net - but it's hardly a disaster. It's not like the party has been wiped out or anything. And in terms of popular vote, the lib dems have actually increased their share by 1%; again, disappointing by the standards of the hype that had been built up, but which can't be seen as a defeat; certainly not a "pounding" like Jeremy Paxman was saying. The big loss is a missed opportunity, though, that's for sure. But elections, like politicians, come and go and the next election could be very different. That's what we have to fight for, now, the people on the street.

That's us, by the way, you and me, dear reader. The disenfranchised masses. I'm assuming if you've managed to read this far without walking away in disgust that you share many of my political views, and like me voted for and was rooting for the liberal democrats. If that is the case, then you will nod your head in appreciation of what I say next: politics is fucked. It's fucked in so many ways, that I don't think we can accurately call ourselves a democracy, given the many, many travesties against true democracy inherent in our political system. There's the house of lords and its hereditary peers - people with the right to vote on laws that affect our lives simply by virtue of being born a certain person. There's the fact that for the last two years we've had an unelected head of state and an unelected head of government as the two most ruling over parliament. And then there's the worst travesty of all; that 6 million odd votes is worth around 50 mps, but 7 million votes is worth 4 times that many. How can that even begin to be fair? That's why this blog is addressed to you, the disenfranchised masses; all of you who voted for one of the minor parties whose votes are not distributed efficiently enough to gain a seat or for the liberal democrat supporters like me who need significantly more votes to secure a seat than either labour or the tories. Why am I less of a person, democratically, than a labour voter? How is that "fair" (to borrow a buzzword from labour)? How can we sanctimoniously tell others, like in iraq, and like in afghanistan to embrace democracy when we don't embrace it ourselves?

I don't expect the lib dems to fix all these problems, but I had hoped that maybe voting reform would have happened. But it's looking less likely now, and I'm deeply worried and upset by that.

There are reasons I do not vote Labour despite their promises of electoral reform - mostly to do with their record over the last 13 years on civil liberties and their lies on things like the iraq war, and there are reasons I do not feel entirely comfortable with a Tory government either. But if you ask me why I am a lib dem, the answer is simple - to make sure my vote always has value. In the aftermath of this election, where huge outrages against democracy have occurred like in every election we have had since the liberal democrats became viable contenders again, this is what keeps me believing in the liberal democrat message. We must, if we are to continue as a nation with any kind of moral authority; hell, if we're even going to present a coherent message to potential terrorists about our values and beliefs, start to affirm those values ourselves.