I'm Sorry

Dear English left-of-centre friends.

This is a hard day, and I feel your pain.

And I'm sorry.

Not that Scotland voted overwhelmingly against both the Conservatives & the Labour Party.

Not that we had a 5% higher electoral turnout as a nation - which, if you'd managed to similarly galvanise your support in England & Wales, could have seen the Labour party looking at government right now.

Not that the bigots of UKIP gained a derisory 1.6% of the vote north of the border.

I'm sorry that we don't have a fair & representative electoral system, and that far too many people (in the whole of the UK) have failed to understand that, or care enough to want to do anything about it, for too long.

So please, those who are desperately seeking someone to blame, stop pointing your fingers at us.

If too many of the English electorate swallowed Tory propaganda about "the most dangerous woman in Britain", that's not our fault.

If the opinion pollsters chose not to stress the margins of error in their statistics, allowing people to conveniently forget about "+/- 3%" and think things were a lot closer than they really were, that's not our fault.

If nearly 50% of English & Welsh voters chose right-wing parties, that's not our fault.

And if David Cameron has a majority in parliament, despite only having 37% of the votes cast...

That's everybody's fault.

Now let's do something about it, ok?