First part of ITV's coverage of the 2005 United Kingdom general election, from about 10pm to 11pm. Highlights: 1:14 exit poll unveiled 21:17 picture from the ITV party boat fails 45:10 First declaration (Sunderland South)
At 4:28 ITN did a little bit of camera trickery. Remember that Alistair Stewart would be based in their wall to wall green screen virtual studio - "Studio 1" at ITN and not in the main Studio 2 where Jonathan and the rest of the election team where. In this shot you see, Alistair is not in fact in Studio 2, he remained in Studio 1, but with clever trickery, the production team keyed in the live shot of Studio 2 into Studio 1, so to make it look as if Alistair was in the same set as Jonathan. There simply would have been no room in Studio 2 for Alistair and his virtual set, as Studio 2 had their own news wall filling up 90% of the studio, so a nice clever trickery here.
Man just 2 years later Labour would be out of government in Scotland and 10 years after this almost to the day Labour would be wiped out in Scotland bar Ian Murray. How things change.
Ewan Cuthbertson: However two years later after Labour's wipe out in Scotland the party made a surprising comeback taking almost half the seats the SNP won.
Wait for it. Corbyn could bring Labour it’s worst ever result, going below Michael Foot’s tally of 209 seats in 1983. To think that 22 years ago Labour had 416
4:30 - You do have to give ITV News production team credit here, Alistair Stewart does look like he is in the same studio as the rest of them from this overhead shot, but he was in the studio next door. Great VR work from ITV News in 2005.
ITV News liked the look of their ITN atrium view on their virtual news set so much that from January 2006 they used it on a permanent basis as part of their news relaunch in Jan 2006.
This election was when I woke up to the fact that first past the post is an utterly useless and archaic electoral system. Labour only had a 35.2% vote share but walked away with a comfortable working majority of 66, which was a complete joke. I think that this was the lowest vote share ever held by a winning / largest party in UK electoral history, even compared to elections that produced hung parliaments such as the one in 2010. This was also the lowest number of total votes won by a winning / largest party, and the only occasion that they failed to pass the 10 million vote threshold, in a UK election since 1929. Admittedly while I have traditionally voted for Labour most of my voting life, I was strongly anti-labour at this particular election after illegal invasion of Iraq, breaking their 2001 election pledge and introducing university top-up fees, the face that they no longer cared about the working class (which I think they did do during their first term from 1997-2001) etc.
