45 years after the Rolling Stones topped the charts with "[I can't get no] satisfaction" it seems like an appropriate theme for the main parties in the UK parliamentary election just held.
The exit poll held on the day proved very accurate, but not the daily polls held in the previous month which showed the Lib Dems level pegging with Labour most of the way and at times even ahead. In the end the Lib Dems only polled 23% of the total vote - 5% behind Labour - and despite this being slightly up on 2005 their number of seats was reduced by 5, due to the crazy electoral system. The Conservatives share of the vote is below what they got when they were the Government in past years.
The Labour Party is now a minor party in most of the countryside - almost all its seats are urban.
No doubt the Lib Dems proposal for an amnesty for illegal immigrants after 10 years cost it support, given how many illegal immigrants there are in country and the trouble they cause, and it wasn't a good time to be pro-Euro either.
And for all parties there is the wheeling and dealing from no-one having a clear majority (which the Shirtcliffe Gang in this country claims doesn't happen under the FPP electoral system) and the fact that the turnout was still a low 65%, compared with 84% in the French Presidential election of 2007, the sort of figure which NZ is also accustomed to in general elections.
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