After a very long day’s telling (left) the agents,  polling agents and candidates for the Suffolk Coastal constituency went straight to the count – held in Martlesham  police headquarters – as usual.

Suffolk Coastal is considered a ‘safe’ Tory seat, but events on  the national stage clearly took away some of the sparkle from the occasion for the Conservatives who were present.  Indeed it is hard to imagine a more gloom-ridden victory. After half the night was through, the television room was left to  Labour LibDems and Greens, as if the prevailing feeling was that no news might be good news. One Conservative – whose name I will not mention -was reduced to getting his kicks by sniping at the Greens about lost deposits. Seems to me there were worse things that were lost that night – and not by the Greens.

The count assistants did their usual deft imperturbable job, watched hawklike  by  agents of each political party  who wanted to check that not a single vote went to the wrong destination. Though the way the voting figures went, one vote more or less wasn’t going to make a difference.

The results were as follows: Therese Coffey (Con) 33,713; Cameron Matthews (Lab) 17,701, James Sandbach (LD) 4,048, Eamonn O’Nolan (Gn) 1,802, Philip Young (Ind) 810. There  were 210 spoiled papers.

The turnout, at 73% was 5%  higher than  the overall Suffolk turnout.

I think it is fair to say therefore, that this result fairly repesented the  current views of Suffolk Coastal.

However if you look at the national picture things are not so clearcut.

If we examine each party’s electoral share of the nationall vote: Theresa May is relying on the support of 10 uber-right DUP MPs who – laughably only needed 29,000 votes per seat won to get elected. In contrast the one Green MP in parliament is the sole representative of over 500,000 votes; and each of the 12 LibDem MPs elected represent nearly 200,000 votes. Call this democracy?  The two big beneficiaries – the Conservative and Labour parties – who both voted to retain fptp for ‘the people’ make damn sure that their own internal leaderships are decided by a different system. (Surprise surprise).

If they don’t trust FPTP  for themselves, why do they inflict it on us? End our inequitable First Past The Post system now!

Number of votes required to win a seat by party in GE 2017
1. SNP      28,000
2. DUP      29,000
3. Sinn Fein      34,200
4. Plaid Cymru      40,000
5. Conservative      42,920
6. Labour      58,945
7. LibDem      196,666
8. Green      520,000