Electile dysfunction

Well. The fat lady is still doing her warm-up arpeggios - this fight is by no means finished - but it's nonetheless possible to draw some conclusions. What is certain is that, of the three losers last night, the LibDems are the biggest. They really didn't do very well at all under the circumstances, and my mood has moved from shock to disappointment. After a ridiculously positive campaign and a set of expectations that were hovering somewhere around the ozone layer, the party led by Nick Clegg actually lost seats on the night.

There are many possible explanations for what happened - one, of course, is that voters simply don't agree with LibDem policies - but with the election figures as they were, I find it extremely hard to get too worked up about any individual party's successes and failures. Now, more than ever, our electoral system is surely shown to suck in an extraordinary way.

One third of the electorate didn't vote at all. Out of the 65%-ish percent of people who did vote, only one in four voted for the Tories. Yes - they have the most seats and they got more votes than any other single party, but, as one poster on The Guardian liveblog wrote, Cameron has "about as much of a mandate as Osama Bin Laden."

The constituency boundaries being as they are, with a bullying media and only the marginal seats getting any attention, it is understandable that the majority of voters feel that only one of two parties had any chance of winning. Our system does not support more than two parties.

The Liberal Democrats came third, winning 23% of the popular vote. If that percentage was transferred proportionally to the number of seats, they would have won 149.5 seats out of the available 650. How many did they win under our present system? 57. Fifty freaking seven.

Labour won 29% of the popular vote, which should have earned them 188.5 seats - not the 258 they've got. And the Tories won 36.1%, which should have earned them 234.65 seats - not 306.

Electoral reform simply must happen for our national politics to have any hope of being taken seriously by the electorate in the future. I fear, however, that Clegg will do a deal with Cameron, who will promise some sort of vote on proportional representation - and then spend the next few months campaigning against it, with the Murdoch juggernaut behind him every step of the way. I believed that last night was a real chance for us to signal that we wanted things to be different in the future. Frustratingly, the majority of the electorate don't seem to agree with me - or, at least, they don't share my optimism that systemic change is even possible. In this dense swamp of bubbling shit, however, one thing is clear: for now, we've done all we can. This afternoon, I emailed all senior LibDem MPs to encourage them not to wimp out. You can do the same if you have a minute. But from this point on, I can only sit and wait. It'll be an interesting few days while our country's political future is thrashed out by men in suits behind closed doors, and, when they present us with their conclusion, we can accept it, or we can fight. But until then, we can lie around feeling tired and hungover. I am very good at that indeed.

Fallout from my election night party:

• Forty people can, it turns out, fit in my flat
• They don't eat as much as you'd think but it is definitely better to have too much food than not enough
  
• They open bottles of wine when others are already open, leaving you the morning after with around six or seven half-full bottles to drink and a degree of time pressure. I accept this challenge
  
• In the battle of the cups, all 15 of the LibDems were used, 14 Tory, 13 Green and - in a surprise and humiliating defeat, 8 red Labour cups remain untouched
  
• The taller you are, the more likely you are to be interested in the election and thus stand closest to the TV, preventing those who are shorter from getting involved. This is some sort of Darwinian process that continues to ensure that the weakest are not able to govern
  
• Do not serve crumbly brownies on cream carpet - unless, of course, you particularly want a cream carpet covered in sticky crumbs of brownie. If that is your goal, carry on with the certainty that you are doing precisely the right thing
  
• In a night of loss, there was one clear winner: the Black and Decker Dustbuster
• People who bring flowers are excellent
• Whatever happens with the election fallout, my friends rock and my seat appears to be safe
  

Until next time, this is LLFF saying: ooh, I think it's time to heat up one of those leftover pepperoni pizzas.