6th May Election : or, something that's not about the United States

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Interesting you make comparisons to Canada, Melon, because this scenario reminds me, in some respect, of the one we had with Paul Martin a few years ago - a finance minister works behind the scenes to take over as PM and when he finally does, and all the hoopla settles down, his approval rating plummets and he eventually loses power.

At the end of the day, no matter the performance, it's hard to get people excited enough to keep any political party in power for more than 12 years. It hurt Thatcher/Major, it hurt Chrétien/Martin, and it even hurt Reagan/Bush. And now it's Labour's turn.

Really, I kind of liked Martin, and I'd like to have seen what he could have accomplished. I can't say the same for Martin's Liberal successors, though, whom I think are worthless.
 
As a spectator, I'm quite interested in seeing how this will go. I have no affinity for socialism (i.e., Labour, in theory), and quite a lot of affinity for liberalism (Lib-Dems, in theory; Alan Wolfe's "The Future of Liberalism" does a good job of outlining why liberalism and socialism are not the same), with me having some increasing centre-right leanings (Cameron's Tories, in theory).

Basically, I'd like to see if they can actually succeed at "Progressive Conservatism" in a way that Canada failed to sustain. There's rumour that one of the conditions of the coalition is that Clegg insisted on a fixed four-year term for this parliament, so there would be ample time to see if this will work.

Yes. But the Tory right are not going to like this. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for them to start complaining in public and at some length. Mind you the Labour left stayed largely on the sidelines for a decade plus of Blairism, so one never knows.

It's all gone very middle of the road. How boring. At least with Thatcher versus Kinnock, there was a real clash of ideology.

I still have no clear idea of what Cameron actually believes, or what 'liberal conservatism' actually means.

Edit: and I see that Simon Heffer already has the knives out:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ele...t-be-over-until-we-have-another-election.html
 
It's all gone very middle of the road. How boring. At least with Thatcher versus Kinnock, there was a real clash of ideology.

I still have no clear idea of what Cameron actually believes, or what 'liberal conservatism' actually means.[/url]

But "ideology," as I see it, is a very 18-20th century-kind of beast. It's becoming increasingly less relevant for the 21st century. I would say that the real metric is being focused on identifying problems and solving them efficiently. Perhaps this will happen. Or perhaps it will collapse under the weight of ideological bickering. At least in rhetoric, Cameron and Clegg seem like they're genuinely interested in trying.
 
David Cameron: 'His politics stem directly from his upbringing' - Telegraph

Giles Andreae - Writer and artist, creator of 'Purple Ronnie’, and a friend since childhood

We spent the summer before last with him and his family for a week in Cornwall. I’d forgotten how much energy he had, to the extent that he decided that he and I should do three fairly hardcore activities every single day and he wasn’t satisfied until we did. When I’m on holiday, I quite like to relax and soak up the sunshine, read a book, play with my children. David would get up, decide that we needed to go for a run on the beach for an hour, come back and have breakfast and then decide that we’d go surfing before lunch and then come back and put a kayak on the roof and kayak for miles in the afternoon, every day.

He’s always been confident – in a good way – of his own ability, which is great. It really aggravates me when you read in the press that he is too cocky, I personally want a prime minister who is confident with his decisions.

If you look at his family, you can see how his politics stem directly, in my view, from his upbringing. At the centre of his family is a great deal of trust. I think if you look at his politics at the moment, it is all about trusting people to know that they will do what’s right for themselves and their society. He talks about devolving power back to the people and that is directly, I think, because he has been given a great deal of trust and authority from a young age.

As a friend, he has been amazing for me. Again it’s an example of his kindness and his concern for people which has been very publicly analysed over the whole issue of Ivan and how they dealt with his condition and treatment. I lived with him in Oxford when we were undergraduates and I had cancer at the time and had to have very extensive chemotherapy and radiotherapy in the local hospital. My parents lived in Dorset and his lived near Newbury and he would frequently come with me to the hospital and pick me up and drive me back to his parents’ house, make sure I was comfortable in bed, made sure I had loads of videos and food, told his mum what I liked and would leave his parents’ house, drive back to Oxford and revise for his exams, all in his last term of finals.
 
I don't buy that 'end of ideology' stuff for a moment. Oh sure, for various reasons some candidates for high office nowadays find it useful to frame themselves as merely managerial problem-solvers or what have you, and for sure the rigidly defined 20th century style left-and-right routine is looking pretty tired (and lest we forget in the 18th century the left were classical liberals, the ancestors of today's centre-right).

But. You can't wish the politics out of politics. It will inevitably bubble up in some form, because politics is about allocating scarce resources among competing interests. Worldviews will be brought to the table, whether acknowledged explicitly or not.
 
Some cause for optimism!

New UK govt to curb CCTV, scrap ID cards, help open source

"New UK govt to curb CCTV, scrap ID cards, help open source"

The Britain of today is watched constantly by CCTV cameras, is preparing for a national ID card, slaps a "crown copyright" on most government data, and can now censor websites and eventually boot people off the Internet.

According to the new Liberal Democrat/Tory coalition government, that's all about to change. The coalition today released its unified policy statement (PDF), and for techies and privacy advocates, there's lots to like.

* We will scrap the ID card scheme, the National Identity register and the ContactPoint database, and halt the next generation of biometric passports.
* We will outlaw the fingerprinting of children at school without parental permission.
* We will adopt the protections of the Scottish model for the DNA database.
* We will review libel laws to protect freedom of speech.
* We will further regulate CCTV.
* We will end the storage of internet and e-mail records without good reason.
* We will create a level playing field for open-source software and will enable large ICT projects to be split into smaller components.
* We will create a new "right to data" so that government-held datasets can be requested and used by the public, and then published on a regular basis.
* We will introduce measures to ensure the rapid roll-out of superfast broadband across the country. We will ensure that BT and other infrastructure providers allow the use of their assets to deliver such broadband, and we will seek to introduce superfast broadband in remote areas at the same time as in more populated areas. If necessary, we will consider using the part of the TV license fee that is supporting the digital switchover to fund broadband in areas that the market alone will not reach.
 
Yes, it's certainly welcome. The Nu Labour control tendencies and moves to a surveillance society were one of the most worrying things about their governance.
 
I can't say I disagree with any of those. I second that, new labour did have very worrying tendencies. Just think of the database they wanted to create of people, even underaged, who might have some tendencies to maybe become a dangerous person later in their life. That's some crazy bullshit even existing or deceased repressive regimes have not come up with yet, to my knowledge.
 
THANK GOD NEW LABOUR ARE GONE

i love how the tories are slashing everything already

i love it

you can tell George Osbourne clearly doesnt give a shit when he delivers a speech - exactly my style

I'd vote labour if ed milliband is leader
 
THANK GOD NEW LABOUR ARE GONE

i love how the tories are slashing everything already

i love it

Yep. I'm glad to see the adults are back in charge of the asylum again.

you can tell George Osbourne clearly doesnt give a shit when he delivers a speech - exactly my style

That whole circle - Cameron, Osbourne and Boris Johnson have that upper middle class confidence thing. Boris even more so than the other two. Really doesn't seem to give a damn what anyone thinks of him.
 
Is there any Thatcherites on here?


I'd say I would have voted for her. When the alternative was Michael Foot, definitely.

I must say compaired to some of Reagan's policies she was quite mild.

Well, you could have a point here. One statistic I remember is that in spite of all the privatisations and talk of cutting government expenditure to the bone during her premiership, the government spending as a % of GNP only went down by 2% or so in the course of her reign. Government spending in inflation-adjusted terms was almost as large when she left office as it had been when she was appointed PM.
 
^ She was forced to leave office over the Poll Tax fracas. I liked the fact that she was strong, stood her ground and was determined. I've been watching Michael Moore's film on capitalism, in which he said that during his reign, Reagan froze the minimum wage, and outsourced a lot of America's manufacturing to developing countries.

But I do dislike communism. The USSR is proof and point that socialism does not work. However I do think that we need to have a balance in which we prevent the banks from acting recklessly like they have been doing over the past 20 years.
 
The USSR is proof that soviet communism doesn't work. Not much danger of going back to that. I'd say the real danger this century is nationally-based fascisms of one or another flavour, depending on how difficult things get for people.

Two words: structural unemployment. Two more: jobless recoveries.
 
may i interest anyone in buying some greek or spanish bonds?

melon i agree with you fully on paul martin. he was fantastic for canada and it's a shame that he got dragged through the sponsorship mess.

not sold on george osborne yet. we'll see how this turns out i guess. early days.
 
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