The excitement is over!!!

Well, the excitement is over, we have a new Parliament, a new Government, a new Prime Minister. We voted yesterday, of course, and then, once the polls closed at 10pm,  the ballot boxes were sealed and transported to the counting stations. The votes are counted by hand,  and we were glued to the TV watching as the counts started, and waiting for the results to be declared. They come in slowly, of course, but gradually results began to come in. There is somewhat of a competition between the different counts to try and get the first result, and the TV coverage becomes really exciting as the number of new MPs the different  parties have are announced.

Husband gave up at about midnight, but I stayed up until 4 a.m. I find it really exciting, to see if the party I favour, and candidates I support are successful, there are shocks and surprises, great joy and great disappointment. This time, it felt particularly important, and as well as excited there’s also a tingle of nerves. It soon became pretty clear which way things were going, there were interviews with different interested and experienced people, interrupted as results came in. When I felt it was pretty much over bar the shouting, as we say, and since my eyelids were really drooping, I went to bed, absolutely thrilled with the prospect of a new administration.

Looking back over my blog, I found I had written about general elections way back in 2015 on May 7th. There were two other elections after that one, (8th June, 2017 and 12th December 2019) but this is what I wrote about in 2015 on the night of the election:

You cannot fail to know that it is the general election here in the UK, where we vote for our members of parliament. I am not going to go into the politics of it, but I’m thinking back over general elections in the past.
When I first went to Manchester a dear friend was very involved in a political party, and he would go out canvassing,and we would be very interested because of course we wanted his candidate to win. Come the actual night when the votes were counted, he would be there at the count supporting his candidate. We would watch the results come in on TV, watching what seem like very primitive visual displays of swings and percentages and possible outcomes… everyone’s favourite has to be the famous swingometer with its giant hand/pointer which would be moved to represent how the votes were coming in for each party and what predictions could be made.
Much later, in the 80’s I remember one election where two friends were staying over with me; one had absolutely no interest in politics and couldn’t understand why we were glued to the TV with excitement. She went to bed and we stayed up virtually all night – goodness knows how I was able to teach the next day!
The last election we actually did go to bed, but we kept the radio on, and I drifted through the night half-asleep and half awake as the results came in and prognostications were made.
It’s at a really early stage now, with only one result in, but it looks like its going to be an exciting night!