Our House

Always something happening, usually quite loud.

The new parliament should be a rowdier place than the old one: more Tories, more Lib Dems, emboldened Labour rebels, George Galloway. That at least suggests a happy shift of the focus of British politics back to the arena where sovereignty is meant to dwell. It will be nice to see government exercised from the benches of the Commons rather than the Downing Street sofa.

So did the people get what they wanted? Blair's nose got tweaked rather than bloodied. (Still quite painful if the tweaker is a bruiser like Galloway.) The Conservatives got enough seats to put power in sight for 2009 and the Liberal Democrat's inroads into urban seats in London and elsewhere might be the foundation of a new electoral base. They have broken out of the south-west ghetto.

But ultimately the result looks like a solid endorsment of the Labour party, tempered by a vocal anti-Blair backlash. At least that is how it will mostly be interpreted. It is counter-intuitive to think it, but the very blunt instrument of First-Past-the-Post seems to have delivered a very nuanced and broadly representative result. (Also, a thought for electoral reform enthusiasts: the national share of the BNP vote looks alarming. It would be enough in a straight PR race to give them a foothold in parliament, from which they could become an etsablished feature of the political landscape. At least for now their message - poisonous as it is - has been heard loud and clear, without it having polluted the chamber at Westminster. Not an argument for FPTP, just an observation.)

But to judge from what Blair has said this morning, it looks as though the Tories will be the long-term winners. They are the threat on the horizon, whereas the liberal-left protest is focused on the past - on Iraq, tuition fees - which means that the Conservative agenda will continue to suffuse Blair's policy formation. That has been the pattern so far: get a scare from reactionary middle England; nick the policy. As long as Blair is in Number 10, those will be his instincts. And so, the really fun question: how long will Blair be in Number 10?

We'll get our top people onto that one and put the answer in a newspaper on Sunday.