He’s going…. but not yet. Far too late in the day, but welcome. Still no news on the talks between the Conservatives and the Lib Dems.

The result of the UK general election is… a hung parliament. It was a disastrous night for the Labour party, but the Conservatives failed to get an overall majority of seats in Parliament despite making over ninety gains. The Lib Dems, despite the positive performance of leader Nick Clegg, were understandably disappointed at their poor showing.

There were some of the usual electoral upsets. A handful of Labour ministers lost their seats, notably Charles Clarke in Norwich South, and Jacqui Smith in Redditch. Caroline Lucas won the Green party‘s first parlimentary seat in Brighton. In Northern Ireland, Peter Robinson, the leader of the Democratic Unionist party, also lost his seat. Despite this, there were relatively very few surprises.

Turnout was up at around 65 percent nationally, but there were problems at polling stations in many parts of the country, where there were allegations of electoral fraud, and that there were long queues of people trying to get in to vote, something virtually unheard of in recent elections, many more were shut out after the 10pm deadline.  Voters, mostly dissatisfied at the whole spectacle, were saying to the candidates: “Put your bloody house in order!”

Labour have clearly paid the price for thirteen years of failure, and it is time for Gordon Brown to both admit his party’s mistakes and step down immediately. He doesn’t have a legal mandate to carry on as Prime Minister.

All the parties’ leaders also need to put their petty politics aside and try to deal with the bigger picture. There is a major economic crisis which is about to engulf Europe, as events in Greece have shown. A new workable government must be put in place within weeks in order to get the country moving again. The last thing we need is weeks of more uncertainty.

The people of the United Kingdom, tomorrow, May 6th, is general election day. The day when you will be able to cast a vote to both the party and the candidate you wish to represent you.

This election is important in many ways. The nation is at a crossroads. At a time where our elected parliamentarians have been caught raiding the till,  a financial crisis which threatens to spiral out of control, fears of massive cuts to public sector spending, worries over the environment, crime and the safety of our children, and of course the war in Afghanistan, we need to send a clear message to those candidates who seek to represent us, the people. We have a right to demand that they serve us with the utmost highest standards.

You must vote tomorrow because it’s your cross on the ballot paper that will decide the direction our nation will be heading for the next four years. Opt out of voting and you end up moaning about what you could have done.

We, the people, are not powerless, and yet many of us choose to be. We must fight for real change in our nation, not for the tinkering manifestos offered by the political parties.

We must change our faltering parliament by reducing the number of MPs, and demand an introduction of a written constitution, where there are areas of public and private life the state can and cannot interfere in. There need to be greater regulation of our banking sector to prevent further abuses of their profits. We need to tackle  gross inequality, which is growing again after falling back. We need to improve education and raise the horizons of our young people in order to prevent the next generation falling to gang culture. We need to change our foreign policy entirely, from one which seeks to be at the top table on the world stage to one in which the nation reduces itself to the level we really ought to be.

Sorry to go on like a party political broadcast, but in order to influence what we, the people want in society, you have to vote tomorrow. Waste your vote, spoil your ballot paper, but please vote. The hours are from 7am until 10pm. If you don’t then you’re opting out of democracy… and that’s bad for the nation.

The Labour Party‘s general election campaign, which had been criticised by both party members and commentators as being both dull and uninspiring, got a turn for the worse when Gordon Brown had been heard making an insulting remark about a voter after he met her.

After he was attacked by pensioner Gillian Duffy for not tackling the issue of immigration, Brown had allegedly said in a private moment that she was ‘a bigot’- clearly forgetting that his microphone was still switched on.

Cue the headlines in the media, with almost one recurring theme: Gordon Brown insults voter over the numbers of immigrants entering Britain. He also went all the way to Duffy’s house,  and according to The Independent,  spent at least forty minutes trying to make a ‘groveling apology’ to her.

My initial reaction to this was…. WTF???

Look, politicians have always bad-mouthed the public in private. Brown will certainly not be the last to do this. The difference this time is that he got caught doing it. He also has to contend with being a very unpopular Prime Minister, most of the media hate him, and every mistake that he will make between now and polling day will be blown all out of proportion.

This incident reveals the recurring feature of the Labour government. On the thorny issue of immigration, and just about every one of the last thirteen years, cabinet ministers from Brown downwards have never defended any of their policies in the public domain. Requests for interviews are repeatedly turned down, and every time the media attacks a policy, they either water down any plans they had, or abandon them completely. Brown could have told Ms Duffy that many of the Eastern Europeans have come to Britain as a result of the expansion of the European Union in 2004. He could also have defended the very idea that some immigration is beneficial to this country.

It would be ironic that Brown, in this dark hour, loses Labour the election just because of this incident, and not because of the major policy failings that he enacted while he was Chancellor which has left the country more unequal, less secure and poorly prepared for the challenges ahead.