And The Winner Is…

So, after five days, it’s all over. David Cameron is Prime Minister and we have a LibDem-Conservative government. I’m no fan of the Tories and bore no ill will to Gordon Brown personally, but I reckon this was probably the best result from a list of bad options.

We don’t yet know all the details of the deal between the two parties but we can make some initial assessments as to the winners and losers.

The big losers are the LibDems. Following the LibDem vote collapse Clegg was left in a very difficult position without the bargaining influence he probably expected. He couldn’t force through a settlement to satisfy both his supporters and the electorate. Had Clegg done a deal with Labour, the public would have been furious at them keeping the losers in power; by doing a deal with the Tories he has seriously annoyed a large chunk of the party faithful as well as all those who voted LibDem to keep the Tories out. And anyone in government over the next few years will suffer the backlash from dealing with the deficit. Even with a different voting system I expect the LibDems to be wiped out in the next election.

Talking of voting systems, other losers are all those who want proportional representation. The country will apparently get a referendum on AV – a referendum that the LibDems might not win. AV is a lot better than the system we have now, but it’s not proportional.

Lower paid people and public sector workers are also likely to be losers. They are likely to suffer as the Tories aim to cut spending there rather than increasing the tax paid by higher earners. The LibDems might be able to blunt the Tory axe but it will still fall.

But there will be winners. The New Labour assault on civil liberties has been brought to an end and hopefully there will be some rolling back of the damage they’ve done. Both LibDems and Tories are committed to scrapping ID Cards and the National Identity Register (NIR), hopefully that means repealing the ID Cards Act 2006. There are also opportunities for scrapping Section 44 of the anti-terrorism Act, forcing the police to destroy the DNA samples of innocent people, reducing spending on CCTV surveillance cameras and ANPR vehicle tracking, etc.

So there will be plenty of losers but one big winner: freedom.

I’ll settle for that.