Politics

Published by Peter | Filed under General

Camberwell remains in Labour hands; Harriet Harman won yet another huge majority, earning 65.3% of the vote (although only 52% of the eligible population could be bothered to cast theirs). That was down slightly from the 2001 election, with the Liberal Democrats taking the lost votes - although their 5.5% increase still saw them earn only an 18.8% share.

UKIP stood for the first time and earned 350 votes; the old hard-left parties (Socialist Labour and Workers Revolutionary, or the People’s Front of Judea and the Judean People’s Front) earned 245 between them. All three lose their deposit, ha ha.

I was disappointed to see the Greens picking up only 4% of the vote; Southwark seem to have a pretty healthy environmental policy (they’ve just included plastic bottles in the list of recyclables) and I thought this might have encouraged more people to think about green living. Alas, no. Still, only 2.5 times the number of people who voted Green voted Conservative, so we’re not all bad.

Anyway, the people of Camberwell and Peckham chose Harriet Harman, one of New Labour’s most avid yes-men (or -women). She voted strongly in favour of Foundation Hospitals, Student Top-Up Fees, the Anti-Terrorism laws, the Iraq war, Compulsory ID Cards… in fact, she has only rebelled against New Labour on 3 out of 628 occasions - all on House of Lords reform.

That’s when she decides to vote at all; Ms Harman has attended just 50.4% of Parliamentary votes in the last Labour term, putting her at number 537 (out of 658) in the list of MPs who most attend. Not very impressive, but marginally better than the term before when she attended only 47.1%.

To her credit, I’ve written to Ms Harman on a few occasions and have always received replies, often with accompanying material.

Her website, however, is crap.