Guildford has not been won by the Liberal Democrats. Worse actually, there was a swing towards the Conservatives away from the Liberals. That this happened in the Liberals number one target seat is especially worrying. This has been followed by a 13.2% swing which has unseated Lembit Opik. The Lib Dems are in real trouble and thus so is British democracy.

The Lib Dems will not win too many seats this election regardless of what vote share they get, the tables are stacked against them. As it is it doesn’t look like they’ll be winning as many votes as we thought in mid-April at the height of Cleggmania.

That’s the big story, the Lib Dems are going to increase their vote share a bit and it looks like they’re going to lose seats. The Lib Dems are going to, yet again, have a vote share that vastly outperforms the number of seats they will win.

A few months ago that would have translated into a mandate for reform. The unfortunate thing is if they don’t get the seats, even with the vote share they won’t be able to push through reform. They will lack the political power in the face of a surprisingly strong Conservative performance to turn their mandate into action.

A worrying development.

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Cross posted from Left Outside.