A Panglossian take on the election results

Tony Blair has managed to drive analysis of the UK's local election results off the front pages and out of TV or Radio bulletins. His reshuffle was impeccably timed to divert the Westminster Village after another scent. Love them or loath them, no-one can honestly say that he and his team of advisors are not immensely skilful politicians. They've kept Mr Cameron's moment of tiny glory quite well buried.

Thousands of words will be written and spoken about the ministerial changes. Most will be rubbish. Every commentator will be desperate to get an angle on the story and will seek out evidence to support their (usually crackpot) theories about what's going on.

Some bored backbenchers will try to get themselves on telly or, more importantly, into their local papers by muttering about over-throwing Mr Blair. But it will be sound and fury signifying nothing as Bill Shakespeare might have written.

Meanwhile the election results are wonderful. The Tories made enough progress to dampen down the Tebbit tendency in their party but not enough to suppress it completely. Outside London they did woefully badly for the main opposition party nine years into the other party's term of office. The LibDems did badly, perhaps their negative campaigning is no longer fooling the voters.

So Labour has a sturdy platform on which to build for the general election on 11th June 2009.

Dr Pangloss is an absurdly optimistic character from Voltaire’s satire Candide written in 1759 hence Panglossian. He was lampooned for saying that everything's for the best in this the best of all possible worlds. It's not a bad philosophy imho. I expect the reader of this blog who can read tricky books in French will tell me that I, or the translators I've read, have got Monsieur V's intentions all wrong. Watch the comments box.....