Great was the fall thereof

Many Canadians may have been looking for ways to tune out the jingoism of American Independence Day.  There were options, but, at our house, we looked overseas.

The British election, it turns out, was perfectly timed for an evening's viewing on the west coast of Canada.  The polls closed at 10 PM British Summer Time, so the returns started trickling in about 4 pm our time.

When I discovered that the BBC News was streaming their live coverage at their web site, I alerted the Resident Fan Boy, a longtime election junkie.

"We can set up your laptop to see it on the big screen TV," he said, enthusiastically.

"You mean, we can set up your laptop." Apparently, it hadn't occurred to him that this was possible. (I wanted to use my own laptop to follow bulletins and charts.  The RFB probably had the same idea, blast him.)

And we watched things develop over the evening:  the strange, studio-filling graphics that failed to make things clearer, the exit-poll that was the chief structure for hours, until enough ridings had been declared to indicate that, yes, it had been a reasonable prediction -- except that no one knew that the Conservatives would lose quite that badly.

I was astonished to see Colchester, where most of my father's descendants live, turn Labour scarlet in a sea of Tory blue on the ridings results map.  A few years ago, elder daughter reported that, as delighted as she was to visit her paternal grandfather's family, she was horrified at how pro-Brexit and anti-immigration many of them were.  Golly,  I thought.  They really must be furious at the Conservatives.

And many famous faces fell, these strange, entitled people, who seemed to treat their country like some sort of college prank, but Sunak won his seat (and will resign as party leader).  And Farage, by gawd, got a seat by creating a whole new party, which only won five seats, but got an alarming percentage of the popular vote.  So the faces on British political satire shows will be largely the same for a while.

This afternoon, I sorted laundry in the bedroom and turned on the television for company.  It was the CBC news channel, and they were interviewing some analyst from the BBC.  

They're still at it, I thought. 

But no.  He was talking about the imminent election in France, which seems poised to be taken over by le Rassemblement National.

Nope.  If the Resident Fan Boy wants to follow that, he can take his lap top into another room.