Friday 25 July 2008

Live from the by-election count


It’s five past midnight on 25th July. I am sitting, as you can see, at the count for the Glasgow East by-election in Tollcross Leisure Centre (got up at half 5 this morning after 4 hours sleep and not had a moment to put a drop of makeup on so no comments about the state of me thank you very much!). What a whirlwind of a day – I can’t tell you the result because they’ve not counted the votes yet. At the verification of the votes we do sampling to try and get an indication of the outcome. I am a very cautious person when it comes to things like this – I was there (and distraught) when Jim Sillars lost Govan in 1992. It had all been going so well but it changed on the day. The Labour Party had phoned thousands of Govan voters the night before telling them that if they elected Jim Sillars it would be the one vote that would bring us a Tory government yet again. They fell for it and the rest is history. But the experience taught me that it ain’t over till it’s over. And that’s when all the votes have been counted.

What I will say is that we have done exceptionally well. I don’t know if we’ve won. I genuinely can’t say. All I will tell you is that we’re all smiling and the other main party isn’t. If we’ve not won we’ve taken them close. The atmosphere here is incredible. In some ways it’s making things worse for us that the other parties keep coming up and asking when the party’s organised for!!! I am keeping my fingers crossed and I am very very excited …

4 comments:

Ron said...

It's looking sooooo good.

Fingers crossed, Labour have this coming to them.

Curran & cronies looking suitably chastised.

Jeff said...

Amazing effort Anne!!

I suspect you'll never have to buy a drink in your life again....

Anonymous said...

What a lovely day to celebrate being one step closer to independence.

Indygal said...

Finally getting time to catch up on all this. Thanks for comments, was a brilliant day / night / month / life - can you tell I'm happy??! Thanks Jeff and I would like to think the free drinks for life thing was a possibility but I have to keep telling folk, there were loads of people involved in the campaign, it wasn't just me. Still, seeing as you've joined now, SNP conference, feel free to keep the drinks flowing lol.