Spent tonight at the British Society of Magazine Editors awards. Gongs were handed out, Grazia won the top award, and Felix Dennis recited a poem – so far, so normal – but most people had something else on their minds. Top marks, in fact, to the editor of Vogue, who collected an award at the oh-so-formal event wearing an Obama 08 t-shirt.

Back at the flat, and with polls on the east coast closed for three hours CNN is projecting 174 to 49 in the electoral college and a 52 to 33 senate split with Florida and North Carolina currently impossible to call. Oh, and Arizona, oddly, is also still listed orange. Everything looks fairly good, in fact. But then hardly any of the votes have actually been counted, and for all CNN's fancy graphics (and my, are they fancy – Wolf Blitzer has what appears to be a giant iPod Touch that interfaces directly with the collective mind of America, or something) these are only projections based on exit polls. And polls, as we all know, often suck. Bah. I would check Fox for the view-from-mars polls (they've probably called California for McCain) but Virgin Media doesn't carry it. Damn you liberal media, etc.

And now it's 2am and the exit polls in my brain are reporting 15% drunk, 70% exhausted and 30% no longer able to work out percentage splits, so I'm going to bed. And if things take a turn for the worse overnight, expect me to be grumpy for a while. Like, say, four years.

PS – now they've cut to some country music berk in Arizona with the promise of a "major projection". I'm a sucker, but I'm going to wait for this one.

PPS – this is quite clearly a ploy to make me sit through shitty commercials, and it's working.

PPPS – 2.40am and Ohio projected to Obama after 15% count (<2m), 55% to 44%. CNN describing Republican position as "very bleak". CNBC talking about lines being crossed and the size of margins in the senate rather than the overall result. If this is correct, excellent. Now, bed.

We found out that Boris had won – or was pretty much guaranteed to win – at about 3pm yesterday when Paddy Power paid out winnings to those who had bet on him winning. How depressing. In the immortal words of Kent Brockman: I've said it before, and I'll say it again: democracy doesn't work.

And so we enter four years of floppy-fringed fascism*. I think London should sit on the naughty step until it learns a little about democratic responsibilities such as actually examining manifestos and not believing everything printed in the Baby Mail, which showed its true colours over the past few weeks.

On a local level, though, there were reasons to be both cheerful and horrified:

Good news: the vast majority of the turnout goes to serious parties that had considered policies for the key issues in the city (although these policies obviously varied in merit): Labour, Tories and the Lib-Dems. Also, good news from my perspective: Labour hold the area.

Bad news: eight and a half thousand people – or 5% of voters – in my area saw fit to vote for the National Front. In nearby Bexley and Bromley (easily won by James Cleverly, a Conservative) the NF candidate took over 11,000 votes. Almost 20,000 people in South East London, then, chose to vote NF.

The NF isn't, like UKIP, simply a party of anti-federalists and simpler "save the pound, God save the Queen" types united in a dislike of Europe – it's a party that wants, according to its website, "Britain to remain a white country". Some of the votes it has gathered might be a mere protest against the three main parties – but wouldn't those who simply want to protest against perceived Westminster cronyism vote UKIP, who also ran in the area?

Although this election shows an obvious swing to the right across the board, almost certainly courtesy of petrol pump paranoia (again, no thanks to Dacre and co) and Northern Rock, I'd be surprised if former Labour voters would swing much further than Cameron's Conservatives out of some generalised fear of an economic malaise or simpler dislike of Gordon Brown. Similarly, although some right-wing Tories might want to move away from Cameron and his hoodie-hugging (he hasn't caught me yet, fortunately) I can't see them moving further than UKIP.

And so we're left with the prospect that thousands of people in this city genuinely want a political party that actually wants to deport non-white people from the UK (or "repatriation of all coloured people currently resident here" as it puts it). And that – however it might be caused – is both a terrifying and depressing prospect and something that needs to be addressed. Given Mr Johnson's past I'm not entirely convinced that he's the right man for the job, but this is something that should concern him and his supporters just as much as it does those of us to his left.

* Yes, I'm aware that Boris isn't a fascist, but I adore asinine alliteration.

January 2007:

January 2008:

Hopefully there isn't a trend here.