UK general election June 2017*

It feels… strange to be pleased after an election result. I was deeply disappointed in 2015, particularly when there seemed to be such a good buzz in the air. I was ready to cry after the Brexit vote in 2016. I felt sick after the US election in November that year.

But now… I feel so much better. And it's not as though we got the Tories out, or the LibDems enjoyed an unprecedented sweep into power, or anything radical. But there's hope now, and there hasn't been a lot of that about. The PM was badly damaged by this, which, yay! The government is going to be relying on the repellent DUP, which cannot be good news—although the Scottish Conservatives might be doing their own thing, somewhat, which seems like a sound plan. And the election result shows that yes, actually, left wing views can win. Young people can vote, and will vote left.

And we have 192 women elected to Parliament - the most ever. Still not quite a third of MPs, but it's a good development.

Plus, 51 non-white MPs now. That's close to 8% overall. Non-white population is about 20% of the total, so it, like representation of women, has a way to go, but we're improving.

Norfolk is of course a broad swath of blue, except the cheerful orange coastal flag of North Norfolk's LibDems and the tiny red dot that is Norwich South. But. In the constituency where I live, Norwich North, the Tory incumbent kept her seat by fewer than 500 votes. In the last election there were four to five thousand votes between the Tory and Labour candidates. Bloody hell. It's really doable. (It really helps that useful information is so readily and easily available. I'd have liked to vote LibDem, really, but the Labour candidate—who does look like a good egg—was the only one with any chance of beating the Tory.)

Also, Kensington. Went. Labour. Kensington. Kensington. By twenty votes, ahaha!

I don't know what this means. I *hope* it means a kinder, gentler Brexit, since we can't have what I want which is no Brexit at all. I hope it brings TM down: I don't want a Prime Minister who wants to take us out of the European Court of Human Rights because those pesky human rights do get in the way of fascism, and who tells us there's too much tolerance of extremism while working with the DUP. I want British decency back.

It kinda feels like we might be on the way to that.



* I put the month in because, who knows, maybe we'll be doing this again in October.