UK election live: reaching those goalposts

The Conservatives need to win a net 166 seats to govern.

So far of the top targets:

- 45 have been won;

- 16 have been lost;

- rest are still to be declared.

The Liberal Democrats were hoping for at least a 5% gain.

So far of the 30 targets:

- 1 has been won;

- 16 have been lost;

- rest are still to be declared.

Oh and leftwing Education Minister Ed Balls has been re-elected, just...

UK election live: Ministers start to fall

Jacqui Smith, former home secretary and star culprit on parliamentary expenses

Shahid Malik, Local Government Secretary

Particularly satisfying to see them gone.... hopefully more to come

UK election live: "Seats to watch" update 2

Rochdale - "Bigotgate" did not cost Labour this seat, because the Liberal Democrats (which were second) lost votes along with Labour.

Ochil and South Perthshire - SNP's number one target to win from Labour. SNP lost 2.3% of the vote, Labour gained 6.5%. A bloody nose for the Scottish nationalists.

Carmarthan West and Pembrokeshire South - Key Plaid Cymru target for Labour. Went Conservative with 9.8% gain. Losses from Labour, LibDem and Plaid Cymru.

Also notable that TV personality Esther Rantzen got a derisory result in Luton South on an independent ticket.

UK election live: 4am roundup

Half of seats declared:

Conservative 159 seats - 35.8% of vote

Labour 124 - 27.2% of vote

Liberal Democrats 24 - 22.2% of vote

Other 25

overall 5.1% swing Labour to Conservative.

Liberal Democrats only up by 1%

UK election live: Rochdale stays Labour

Gordon Brown's gaffe in Rochdale with Mrs "what about the Eastern Europeans" Duffy hasn't cost him. It remains, barely, a Labour seat. Although disturbingly it would appear the Labour vote lost went to the fascist National Front, with the Liberal Democrat vote collapsing into the Conservatives.

Rochdale held because the Liberal Democrats misfired, I suspect because of the policy of granting illegal migrants amnesty doesn't play well in seats where the National Front can attract 1 in 20 votes.

UK election live: "Seats to watch" update

Guildford - LibDem's number one target, Conservative in 2005, has seen 9.9% swing TO Conservatives. The Liberal Democrat bubble has burst.

Dundee East - Labour number one target against SNP. Saw Labour lose 2.9%, small increase to SNP, but Conservatives picked up rest. Stays SNP.

Hastings and Rye - Threshold between Labour majority and plurality. Won by Conservatives with 3.3% swing.

more to come as results appear.

UK election live: How to watch seats

The best way to see how the parties are going with targets appears to be on the BBC:

Here shows the seats the Conservatives have targeted to get a majority AND how they are doing.

This shows the same for the Liberal Democrats

LibDems have won ONE target seat.

Labour so far swung 6.1% to Conservative, but also Lib Dems have swung 0.6% to Conservatives.

BUT, at 34% at this stage, it is a GOOD result for the Conservatives. 28% for Labour is not.

UK election live: Nationalists not done well

Both Plaid Cymru (Welsh nationalists) and the SNP (Scottish nationalists) hoped to do well from discontent with Labour in their traditionally Labour nations.

They haven't. Plaid Cymru's single seat won from Labour hides how the Conservatives have picked up several seats from Labour. The SNP has won none of its target seats.

They both campaigned on protecting their nations from austerity if they were needed to keep either major party in power. Perhaps Welsh and Scottish voters, both experiencing coalitions with the nationalist parties, aren't that enamoured about the prospect of that writ large!

UK election live: Too early for anyone to claim anything

Tory landslide? Not yet.

Liberal Democrat gains? None so far. LibDems have lost a seat to the Conservatives

Labour can hold on? hard to say

A string of Tory gains, but Labour still ahead on total vote share and seats.... but long night ahead

UK election live: Labour thinks it can govern with LibDems

Far too early to say, but Labour Ministers are all saying that they can govern with the LibDems in a coalition.

Funny how the LibDems have not been asked what they think of this. However, it does look like Labour has scared the children into turning out for them.

UK election live: LibDems must be disappointed

Lib Dems hold onto their seats, but not picking up targets so far. The bubble seems to have clearly burst. A key target, Guildford saw a swing from LibDems to Tories.

Conservatives starting to pick up seats, but fail to pick up Tooting which was critical.

So far, modest gains by Conservatives, although Labour safe seats see big loss of votes to Conservatives

UK election live: Conservative confidence growing

Kingswood - first Tory win from Labour.

Torbay - Tory target, LibDems hold. Looks like Labour voters are going LibDem where Labour cannot win.

Report that Gordon Brown will seek to form a coalition if there is a hung parliament

That stubbornness will mean it is a long long night.

Labour has lost three seats so far, it is still far too soon to call it.

UK election: Northern Ireland trickles in

Alliance wins Belfast East, first time a non-sectarian party has won a seat. NI First Minister loses his seat (DUP). Is Northern Ireland moving away from the sectarian bullshit?

Just safe Labour and LibDem seats otherwise, but clear swing to Conservatives from both Labour and LibDems. Lib Dems can't be too pleased yet. Labour cautiously optimistic, as will be the Conservatives.

UK election live:Less swing in marginals

12:15am - Three safe Labour seats still.

Average 10% swing against Labour, only 6% to Conservatives, 4% to minor parties (UKIP and BNP).

Not enough to make Conservatives confident at all.

UK election: live blogging

So it is 11.28pm BST and there are only two results (safe Labour seats) and a silly exit poll which has little validity because, quite simply, so many have engaged in postal voters.

However, there has been a swing to the Conservatives in both seats. Over 8% in one and 11% in the other.

Could this mean a Tory majority?

Libertarian Party UK publishes manifesto - work in progress

Indeed, but the Libertarian Party UK is young, and needs to grow and mature.

The manifesto was published a couple of days ago, but at least it has been done.

It's not perfect, I for one cannot argue for armed neutrality whilst being a member of NATO. It is quite contradictory. Membership of NATO means an attack on a NATO member is an attack on you. Planning shouldn't be a policy, and it should be about private property rights, and the transport policy is too complicated.

but it IS better than the one I read a few months ago. Albeit a bit too long. Still, light years ahead of the others, and something to build upon further.

Given the appalling state of the competition, it is hard to criticise at this stage, but the UK electoral cycle is up to five years. Enough time to really provide a platform for disenchanted small government liberal Conservatives (who aren't obsessed with the EU) to escape to perhaps?

Bureaucrats prepare austerity plans for the UK

Whatever party wins the UK elections, the Treasury has prepared plans to cut spending drastically according to The Times.

In order to preserve the UK's credit rating, drastic measures are needed:

"Options drawn up by the Treasury and the Department for Work and Pensions in the past few weeks include means-testing child benefit, cutting disability and housing benefits and freezing all payments in cash terms. Freezing benefits for one year would save £4 billion while freezing them for a whole parliament would save £24 billion in the fifth year alone. "

Welfare is the priority, why? Because it is the single largest item of spending at £200 billion per annum. Yes you read right. The state spends £3300 in welfare per man, woman and child every year, which means it taxes about £5000 per adult to pay for the income of others.

The opportunities are enormous:

"Spending on social security benefits has shot up from £93 billion in 1997-98 to nearly £170 billion this year because of a growing number of elderly people, increased payments to lone parents and working families, and rising unemployment....Billions could be saved by means-testing child benefit, which goes to 7.5 million families at a cost of more than £11.7 billion. Officials are also looking at cuts to disability living allowance, which costs £11.3 billion, as well as setting housing benefit, which costs more than £20 billion, at a much lower level."

Do any of the main parties have half the courage to do any of this?

UK political tribalism from one side

People on the right, whoever they are, don't hate the Labour Party or those who stand for the Labour Party quite as much as those on the left hate the Conservatives. I loathe socialism and loathe socialists, but I don't think that they are, by and large, people with bad intentions. With a few exceptions, like Sue Kedgley and Helen Clark, both of whom absolutely drip with desire for power over others, most of those in leftwing parties are "do-gooders" who genuinely care about other people, and genuinely have good intentions. Yes, they pave the road to hell with them, but rational arguments about the means, and the ends arising from the means they support can tend to sway them to an alternative.

The classic example of this happening on the left was in both Australia and NZ in the 1980s. Both Labour (Labor in Australia) Parties governed with reformist agendas that substantially liberalised markets, opened up sectors to competition, privatised major government businesses and transformed their economies. Let's be clear, David Lange and Roger Douglas both believed at the time that they were acting in the best interests of the country, that the reforms would increase prosperity and the ability to afford the social services beloved of most. The difference was that Douglas saw the means being more and more oriented towards the private sector, whereas Lange was cornered by a certain person who convinced him the means were as important as the ends.

Quite simply, significant number of the National Party from 1984-1990 wished THEY had done what Labour was able to do. Rarely does the left say the same about the right.

This is, in part, because the right rarely does what the left wishes it could do. However, even when the left does NOT turn around what was done by the right (e.g. Tony Blair), there is still a visceral hatred for the right. Gary Younge in the Guardian outlines his own, emotive, irrational hatred of the Conservatives.

He says:

"I hate them for a reason. For lots of reasons, actually. For the miners, apartheid, Bobby Sands, Greenham Common, selling council houses, Section 28, lining the pockets of the rich and hammering the poor – to name but a few. I hate them because they hate people I care about."

Well hold on.

The miners were an issue because Labour nationalised the mines and protected them for so long, prolonging men in jobs that were not affordable or sustainable (and had it not happened then, environmentalism would have closed such jobs down eventually). Communist unionists using violence, who opposed secret ballots for strikes, refused to allow reality to be confronted. Why does he not hate those who essentially saw the other side of the Iron Curtain as an economic model to emulate?

Apartheid was an issue that the Conservatives were slow to confront. There was a real need for a genuine liberal confrontation of the fascist racism that ran South Africa, but no one should pretend that those who embraced Mugabe and the pro-communist ANC were angels either. Apartheid ended when the Cold War saw an end to white South African fears of invasion from neighbouring states. The Labour Party meanwhile campaigned to effectively be neutral in the Cold War.

Bobby Sands was a terrorist, as were many of the unionists and the British forces were hardly innocents. However, if Irish republican terrorists murdered one of your closest friends a couple of years earlier, you might not want to be generous to them either.

Greenham Common? Well if you want to unilaterally disarm against the Soviet Empire then fine, but I have noticed Gordon Brown prepared to replace Trident. The Cold War was won because Marxism-Leninism collapsed in the face of its own failings, and a strong determined Western alliance unwilling to capitulate.

Council houses? Yes, nothing so bad as letting people buy their own council house. However, if you think the big brutalist council estates of the 1950s and 1960s have been a social success, then good luck to you.

Section 28? Yes, that was ridiculous. The Conservatives have shed this fortunately, but then it's a crime to speak openly against homosexuality now.

Finally "lining the pockets of the rich and hammering the poor" is that myth that somehow governments give money to the rich and take from the poor. No, it is quite the opposite. Look at where taxes come from.

So sorry Gary, I doubt very much that when you say "I hate them because they hate people I care about." that they actually DO hate the people you care about.

However, it is clear you fall into the "co-parent" model I wrote about before. You support Labour so it can look after those you "care about" instead of you doing it for them, and you hate the Conservatives for reasons that mostly don't stand close scrutiny.

The truth is your big nanny state is and will continue, and you can keep evading reason, so will keep supporting it. If you want to look at one of the consequences of doing so, take a trip to Athens.

How to vote in the UK general election - if you believe in freedom

Even last night it would appear as many as 20-30% of voters are STILL undecided. So here is a guide to vote, for those who don’t believe the government should do more for them, for those who don’t believe in higher taxes and think, by and large, government should focus on protecting the country and protecting citizens from the initiation of force and fraud from each other.

Step One: Decide what voting means for you. If it is about granting moral authority to someone to be in government, then you might find yourself with limited choices. If it is about choosing the least worst option, then it is easier. If it is about making a statement of values closest to your own, then again the choices are limited. If it is about choosing an individual, then it will be luck as to whether you have a good choice or not.

You see if you want to grant moral authority, then you are saying “I agree with enough of your manifesto, to accept you have my endorsement to implement the lot, and make decisions outside that based on your principles”. If you do that, then you have less reason to complain if the winner is the party you endorsed, and it acts as it said it would. You always can have your opinion and express it, but I will simply be able to say “well you said it was ok for xxx to govern”. Bear in mind that it is mainly party members and enthusiasts who should fit that camp.

If you want to choose the least worst option, then you wont find it difficult. It is how most people vote in my view. You hold your nose, and you decide X because at least it keeps Y out (which is worse). If you believe that way, then prepare to be disappointed. Is X REALLY that much better? Or is it that Y is SO bad, that you can’t imagine X being worse? Bear in mind also that by doing this you are saying it is ok for X to govern you. The least worst option also means choosing a government, which means picking a party likely to win in your seat.

If you just want to make a statement of values, then it is a middle ground. You are not granting moral authority, you are not succumbing to the least worst option, but selecting a party that reflects part of your values at least. That is what I did.

Finally, if there is a candidate who personally represents your values and is in a party where he or she might have a chance to spread that influence, then go ahead, positively endorse that candidate. Good luck finding one though.

Step Two: Check out your constituency. If it is a safe seat then you can at least know you’re either endorsing an encumbent who is likely to win, or you can vote for any other candidate knowing there is next to no chance of that person actually wielding power.

If it is a marginal seat then some will suggest “tactical voting”, but frankly unless you are on the left of the political spectrum it is fairly meaningless. Only in Buckingham, where the Tory Speaker faces no challenge from the main parties, have you got any real alternative (UKIP candidate Nigel Farage, hospitalised overnight from a plane crash) if you don’t believe in socialism. A Labour-LibDem marginal may as well be a safe seat for either of them. A marginal with the Conservatives may make your decision a little more difficult, unless the candidate is a Green in disguise (Zac Goldsmith) or a thief (see the full guide to the expenses claimed by them all).

Step Three: Hold your nose and choose. If you believe in less government, more individual freedom and personal responsibility, then you might consider this list:

1. Where there is a Libertarian Party candidate or one endorsed by the LPUK, or an independent libertarian, give him or her a tick. None are likely to win, but you will be voting against the status quo of big government. If you have no such option then…

2. Where there is a Conservative Party candidate who speaks, writes and talks fluently about free markets, who has not bought into the anti-human agenda of the radical environmentalists and who talks more about less government than about how government can help, then consider voting for that candidate. For the foreseeable future, the Conservative Party is the only major party with a wing of members who DO believe in freedom and less government. Endorsing those who can move it away from the pablum of populism that is currently dished out is a positive step.

3. If there is no inspiring Conservative Party candidate, then if you think you must vote for someone, then consider the UKIP candidate. UKIP believe in flat tax, leaving the EU (but retaining free trade with it) and in cutting state spending to the level it was in 1997. That is enough of a platform to give the Conservatives a message if they do not win a majority, that compromise to the left means losing votes from the core.

4. Finally, if your Conservative candidate is odious, and your UKIP candidate is really a complete wingnut who would be better placed in the BNP (and so should lose his deposit), then write in “John Galt”. It wont count, but one person will look at it and probably ask “Who is John Galt”? and will remember it, briefly. You will then have said, to hell with you all, but you might consider standing for Parliament next time.

5. Oh and if you are in Ulster, then you have a very different choice. You might simply choose to opt out of picking between parties of sectarianism. The Alliance Party is the main party that rejects unionism and nationalism, but it is aligned with the Liberal Democrats. Bear in mind that what happens in Ulster may end up influencing the government, but your choices are not ones to envy.

Whatever happens tonight, it will be a long night. It may well match the 1996 New Zealand election, with Nick Clegg playing Winston Peters, and David Cameron and Gordon Brown playing Jim Bolger and Helen Clark.

I intend to party with some like mindeds from down under, to celebrate every time someone odious loses. What am I hoping for? For Labour to come third in proportion of the vote (or to do worse than in 1983), for the Liberal Democrats to not hold the balance of power, for Nigel Farage to win in Buckingham, for Nick Griffin to come third or worse in Barking, for Plaid Cymru and the Scottish Nationalists to lose heavily, for the Green Party to win nothing, for Ed Balls to lose the seat he is contesting, Old Holborn to win Cambridge, and for the Conservatives to ever so barely miss out on a majority.

Sod them all, none of them deserve to govern.

What the UK election will tell you about Britain

With at least 60% of the electorate likely to support the two major leftwing parties, Liberal Democrats and Labour, it becomes clear that Margaret Thatcher didn’t fundamentally reform attitudes towards the state during her administration, what she did was reform the economy and wind the clock back, somewhat.

However, the hearts and minds of the vast majority of the British public carry a view of the state that I characterise as being supportive of the nanny state. The relationship those people have with the state is either being a co-parent, or as a dependent child.

Those who see the state from the view of a child are scared they’ll lose “their benefit” “their NHS” “their school”. They can’t envisage looking after their own health care, selecting schools, selecting retirement plans or actually paying for what they use. They are the dependent underclass, and comprise perhaps as much as 15-20% of the population. People who don’t think there is any other way. They are brought up loving the Labour Party, almost in the mould of North Korean propaganda, that they owe their house, their education, their health and their employment to the Labour Party. Without the Labour Party paternalistically supplying all of this (who cares where the money comes from) it is a terrifying brutal world indeed.

The myth built around it is the classic Marxist binary view. Them or Us. Because the Labour Party pays for Us, and supports Us, then the Conservative Party must pay for Them and support Them. Labour gives the underclass money, so surely the Conservatives must make things so the rich get richer. This is the repulsive lie manipulated and used by politicians on the left.

Not for one moment is it argued that the tax paid by the wealthier is what pays for Us, or that businesses create the majority of jobs and the money that pays for Us. More insidiously, it is not argued that the “rich” (a catchall for anyone middle class and above) earned their money, but rather there is a focus on inheritance, and on privilege. That those who are financially successful somehow got there through luck, rather than through effort or intelligence. You see the overwhelming myth is that without Labour, you are nothing, cannot be anything and the rich will get what you are getting now – forgetting that the vast bulk of what the government spends comes from the “rich”. The dominant theme of the campaign in the past few weeks has been to concentrate on getting that base of supporters out to vote, purely out of fear of the alternative. The BNP caters for these same children, who blame the "new kids" for getting more with a sneering disdain for big business and immigration generally. The BNP comprises the local bullies, whereas Labour makes friends with the immigrant underclass and says "you can have some too".

While that is all understandable, what about the rest? What about the 40-50% of voters who also vote to the left. Well they are not children in the state-citizen relationship, but supportive parents. These are people who, on the face of it, would admit they can choose the school for their kids, they could buy health insurance and retirement incomes, and could pretty much make their own decisions for themselves and their families. However, they all would say "what about everyone else?"

That is the point, when the bulk of middle class voters think, the state needs to look after the "children" I mentioned before - the underclass. "You can’t leave them to their own devices." In other words, it nurtures the “what about the people who couldn’t” view, pointing at how so many of the underclass are living grossly unhealthy lifestyles, bearing in mind that they are demonstrably unable to look after themselves.

They treat their fellow adults as children, they buy homes to avoid the underclass, and want to give them opportunities at best, and to lock them away at worst. Meanwhile, they too also want “their share” of nanny state, in tax credits, middle class welfare and the like. They support universalism so they can get some of their taxes back, because you see, they DO pay for themselves indirectly. They advocate the nanny state, but want their cut, increasing the overall cost.

So you see, it is about the dependency of the infantile, and the belief by the self-appointed nannies in the wisdom of the state “sorting out” the poor and the feckless. That essentially comprises the majority of British voters, who are one or the other.

It is both these attitudes that believers in small government and individual freedom need to address. For the “children”, it is about a transition to encourage them to “grow up”, give them opportunities to make more choices, not tax them, and increase the incentives to abandon what should be a shift from the welfare state to self sufficiency and private benevolent initiatives. For the “grownups” who want to help them, it is about taking away their own middle class welfare privileges in exchange for tax cuts, and encouraging those who wish to help others to do so, more directly, and in this perhaps some of the elements of the poorly named “Big Society” of David Cameron may have some merit. If you are concerned about the homeless, then don’t let the government fix the problem, do something yourself.

How are both these attitudes confronted? I don’t know. I don’t think it is about surrendering, as the Conservatives have largely done. However, until both are confronted and the concerns and views answered clearly, there will be next to no chance of ever electing a government that will consciously have a mandate to shrink the size of the state.