Shagged Out

I've managed about 2 hours sleep in the last 30, which means that as I listen to the remainder of the results as they trickle over the airwaves, I am now doing so somewhat narcoleptically. It's been a great night for the SNP, although the result is looking as tight as the proverbial duck's arse right now, since every FPTP gain for the SNP increases Labour's likelihood of compensation on the lists.

This election has seen two firsts for me - not only did I see my first SNP parliamentary gain in the flesh last night, but I also might now have an SNP MSP in my home seat of Edinburgh East. That means, unless I'm very much mistaken in my sleep-deprived state, that the SNP represents either all or some of every Scottish city - a bit of Glasgow, a bit of Edinburgh, a bit of Aberdeen, most of Inverness, all of Dundee, all of Stirling (and all of Elgin, Brechin & Dunblane as well!).

Another interesting bit of trivia is that each seat that our intern campaigned in (both Dundee seats, Stirling, Western Isles and now Livingston) has now fallen to the SNP. She flies back to Washington DC tomorrow - if that's the effect she has, we should be moving heaven and earth to get her back for the next election :-)

Moving seamlessly from the sublime to the ridiculous, it appears that my old friend Dr Richard Simpson, he who once memorably described striking firefighters as 'fascist bastards', is back in for Labour on the Mid-Scotland and Fife list as well. This means that there might be hope for George Foulkes yet... I bet Labour are now regretting preventing their constituency candidates from standing on the lists.