Ken vs. Boris: It's So On

The thing that annoys me, endlessly, about New Labour, is how they endlessly bang on about Middle England and how they must win it but rarely any specifics about what it is they are improving when they're in power.

Tessa Jowell encapsulates that awful vacuousness perfectly, like they became experts at winning elections but awful at communication after that, beyond "blah blah stable economy etc". Possibly out of sheer blind fear that anything they said would see the population of Britain throwing them out for these evil sinful things.

Sorry, I know this is nothing new.

This Ascension of Man graphic describing the Tories' election progress is astonishing.

OK WTF is this ascent of conservative man graphics, has Viz had so many of our license fees for this?

what is on dimblebey's rolodex. it looks like it probably controls time.

is everyone ten minutes behind me or something?

Four councils in Yorkshire reporting, and Leeds isn't one of them.

Barnsley is an interesting one - Labour losing seats to the Barnsley Independent Group, a bunch of disaffected old Labour types. But now Labour have won one back off the Lib Dems...

i thought i hallucinated that thing with the transparent monoliths

barnsley result is cute, but not particularly significant. labour won't lose those votes at a general election.

sheffield will be interesting.

LOL Polly Toynbee as official voice of the Labour Party, up against Portillo and some LibDem dude.

gah this "twitter" woman is just brutal

Portillo sticks it into Boris - "Tories desperate to win with a candidate that embarrasses them". Ouch.

Those Yorks councils tonite. - Barnsleh, Rotherham, Doncaster, and West Lindsey. It is apparently impossible for Labour to lose Rotherham because they have too many councillors.

west lindsey gone to the tories already

Labour will never lose anything in south yorkshire outside south west Sheffield as long as I am alive.

dimbleby abandoned in the studio!!

portillo's chicken neck a bit alarming

xp, crypto-labour thing in barnsley notwithstanding

West Lindsey is the first Tory gain of the night, LibDems gain Hull from NOC. Look North managed to not mention this at all.

Tories gain five seats in Sunderland? Ruddy hell...

I think Vine's BS dumb graphics are a stupid terrible trivialization.

Hello, Tracer Hand.

That Sunderland result is a nasty weathervane. RIP Gordon Brown.

Is Vine ad-libbing? Cos his style's just reminding me of bid-up.tv a lot (our Freeview box starts on that for some reason).

think I've missed some Maitlis moments. I think she's an attractive woman, really, but her talking about Bloggers earlier was not good. what are they gonna do? press buttons and ... write things ... off camera? ... pointless.

Vine is announcing results of a vague poll - doesn't mean much

sunderland representative of the national swing? not so sure.

Election nigh has always been about BS graphics, last time we had Labour digging holes.

Polly T is not official voice of the party: she is a decent progressive woman; bless her.

Ed, these graphics feel different to me -- a different level of BS. hard to explain.

This NHS poll is basically just based on people guessing, isn't it?

Nick Robinson has a blog too! Blogarama!

Nuneaton has swung to the Tories after 30-something years, with two seats gained by BNP. Fudge.

They have just upgraded their news studios, they have shiny new VizRT systems replacing Quantels which they have had for 3 or 4 years.

Labour lose Nuneaton council

I don't know where that is

Labour lose Nuneaton & Bedworth to the Tories, a council they've held for 34 years. Ouch.

Trent Valley.

xpost

Harlow goes Conservative.

I think the novelty value of "I am watching an election!" is starting to wear off again, and I'm about to become progressively more depressed while posting semi-frivolously, and maybe I would be better off sleeping.

They're not really updating that ticker graphic at the bottom, are they?

Don't worry PF, Jowell doesn't seem to know where Nuneaton is either. Tony King projects Labour gloom.

Hey guys, I don't think the rest of Britain is going to care much about Ken and Boris.

Unless Boris wins, of course.

Here's Culshaw. Apprently Boris Johnson = Henry Blofeld. And Gordon Brown is constantly teetering on the verge of Chris Eubank.

ASK HIM WHAT TOM BAKER WOULD THINK.

He still hasn't worked out how to do an impression of David Cameron, has he?

Shit, that Nuneaton & Bedworth result - that used to be a two-party council. BNP have picked up two seats there from scratch.

Maitlis / Culshaw - terrible.

Christ, Culshaw is not very good at impressions

and doesn't seem to know anything about politics.

He didn't even try to do Cameron. I think Maitlis probably thought he would ... and he didn't. He was awful throughout.

I think Maitlis' "Wolverhampton... primaries and Sheffield caucuses" line was quite possibly the low point, tho.

tessa jowell appaears to be slowly melting

oh WTF is this

"Perhaps I can go via Jeremy Vine. You'll enjoy this Charles."

"Or I might not."

No. He's not going to.

Kennedy's face before realising he was on camera there...

fuck me