Blue Sky

Early morning up at the Royal Infirmary. We got a taxi at 6:30am as L was booked in for day surgery to remove her gall bladder - source of the gallstones that caused so much bother this week. I left her when they took her off to prepare for surgery and then got myself some breakfast before returning to wait in the Day Surgery waiting room. The staff were very nice, making me cups of tea as I waited and around lunchtime they said L was back and I could see her. It had all gone very well. We stayed on into the early evening, hoping to see her surgeon after he'd finished his operations for the day but after 6pm L's nurse C (who was also lovely) said it didn't look like he was coming and we should probably just leave. Turned out he had been held up in meetings and he phoned just after we got home (after the taxi driver took us on an excellent no-speed-bumps route back after I'd asked him if he could drive carefully for the benefit of the patient). L got her questions answered and can now focus on recovery. The surgeon saw no reason to think it would take a particularly long time.
Of course for most people the big news of the day was the UK General Election, with Labour sweeping to power in a landslide. We had watched bit of the coverage overnight but caught up with more of the highlights through the day. The Tories lost 250+ seats and Labour won over 200 to finish just shy of Blair's total number of seats in 1997 with 412 and a majority of 174. The SNP lost seats, and probably more than the most optimistic Labour/pessimistic SNP analysts thought. But turnout was low and the results were skewed more than ever before by FPTP. Labour actual got fewer votes than they got in Corbyn's 2019 defeat and fewer votes and a lower vote share than Corbyn-led Labour did in 2017. It was largely down to the media-backed 'underdogs' of Reform who took lots of votes in formerly Tory seats as the Conservatve vote collapsed and the Labour one didn't really rise in proportion. Farage would have you believe that this means Reform are primed to be the opposition next time but the Lib Dems have been there before - a handful of seats in their heartlands and millions of votes across the country not translating into great gains. Even this time, when they were delivered 70+ seats that more closely matched their national vote share they couldn't overtake the Tories to become the official opposition. The pundits make their assumptions but who knows what happened on Thursday. Did people who'd told pollsters in the campaign they were going to vote Labour not bother to vote because victory seemed  assured? Did Tories accept defeat and decided to push for change by voting for Reform? Or did previous voters stay at home and new ones take their place? I couldn't believe the pundit who said that so many previously 'safe' Tory seats had become 'safe' Labour ones. If a party can lose a 20000+ majority in one election, why can't it flip in a different direction next time?
In Scotland it appeared that the SNP's failings finally caught up with them but again was the swing to Labour people changing sides or stay-at-homes plus new voters? Our local MP couldn't buck the trend although interesting to note that the Green vote was larger than the Labour majority. Labour want to claim it's a verdict on the SNP's record in government at Holyrood as well as kicking out the Tories at Westminster but is that true? In a UK election campaign the media and many politicians frequently fail to point out the things that are devolved and therefore out of their control even if elected. Issues that the UK government decides in England (because England-default means there is still no devolved English Parliament to match the other devolved assemblies) become campaign strands even in Scotland. Are voters with only a passing interest in politics aware of that nuance or were they voting Labour to fix health and education in Scotland? Or if they do appreciate the difference did they decide that given the political arithmetic that any number of SNP MP's at Westminster don't appear able to do anything and they might as well see what Labour can do?