On the 7th of February 2015 I uploaded an article to this blog  in which I predicted exactly three months before the General Election that the Conservative Party would win, gaining a slender majority.

Here is the link should you wish to read it –

Predicting the 2015 UK General Election three months in advance.

I went as far as predicting how many seats each party would win and briefly stated why they would do so.

Whilst I managed to predict to within three seats how many the Conservatives would win I came slightly unstuck when I failed to appreciate just how big a swing there would be towards the SNP.

For me the Scottish referendum made the average Scot  realise that they could be ably represented by their own party and not have to put their fate into the hands of Labour or the Liberal Democrats. I predicted the SNP to gain a couple of dozen seats when in fact they gained about four dozen. This I put down to the excellent display the SNP put up during the televised debates in the few weeks preceding the election and it was something I did not foresee.

I realised that if the Conservatives only held one seat in Scotland it would be the Liberal Democrats and Labour who would suffer most at the hands of the SNP. Hence my predictions for both of these parties were a little skewed and I miscalculated by twenty seats between them.

The Liberal Democrats were slaughtered in this election and not just because of losses to the SNP. I picked up that many of their supporters outside of Scotland had abandoned them because they  were perceived to have failed pretty much completely as part of the coalition government and lost their identity in the process.

As for Labour let’s just say nice guys finish last. OK Ed came second but he was seen as being simply too nice and too many people perceived that The Labour Party just did not have the policies that would draw voters to them and away from any other party.

The fates of UKIP and the Green Party were so much harder to determine. I thought both parties would win millions of votes but as to how many seats I thought it very difficult to judge. I made the decision that the problem with the Green Party was that they were still perceived as being rather amateur and unprepared for an election letting alone being part of a coalition. (That radio interview was an absolute body blow).  I said they would win no seats and they won but one.

So what about the actual winners – why the Conservative party? Choosing the lesser of two evils and better the devil you know than the devil you don’t sum up a few million voters’ perceptions in my opinion. Millions more thought the Conservatives were the only party that could be trusted with the economy. And which other party was seen to have the potential to acquit itself at international level?

Most depressingly of all though, quality of life did not seem to be as important as quantities of money for even more millions. I suspect they voted Conservative in this election because they were the only party likely to put pounds back into pockets.

Whether there will ever come a day when politics is about policies that reduce stress in individuals’ lives, or encourage happiness and contentedness and focus on quality of life I don’t know but I am not holding my breath.

There are two very interesting statistics concerning this election which I think are worth commenting on briefly.

Firstly the Liberal Democrats and the SNP combined won 64 seats with 12.6% of the vote. UKIP on the other hand won but one seat with 12.6% on the vote. I thought that UKIP would win ten seats so whilst I was quite a long way off as far as the number of seats won I did pick up on they fact they would win millions of votes. That’s one in eight of the votes cast should any of you think they will be going away any time soon.

The second interesting statistic is that two-thirds of the electorate turned out to vote. Which is more than at the previous election.

I did wonder what effect Russell Brand would have on turnout after his earlier pronouncements but it would seem he was largely ignored and rightly so. I think David Cameron did his chance of being re-elected no harm at all when he called Brand a joke and said he was not going to meet him. I suspect we have not heard the last of Russell Brand as a political commentator for all his back-peddling after the election.

In my next blog are my predictions about what may happen in British politics between now and the next election which might be much sooner than 2020. Just need to find someone to draw me a Venn diagram………..