It is a depressing thought that in around six months time, Britain will be under the rule of a right wing, Conservative Government.The Labour Party may try and point to a wide range of reasons why it is being so unceremoniously booted out of office after 3 terms, but it all boils down to Tony Blair and the Iraq War.
Blair dragged his party to the right, cosied up to the most reviled American President in living memory and then sold us all down the river over Iraq. Labour Party membership is in free-fall and they lag so far behind the Conservatives in the polls that it is hard to imagine anything short of David Cameron retiring and Margaret Thatcher taking over to stop us suffering 5 years of Conservatism.
While it's hard to see any silver lining to this particularly black cloud, the one thing the left can cling to is that the blue party have promised to block Tony Blair becoming EU President.
That would be the same Tony Blair who sent UK troops into 5 conflicts during his 10 years and was pushed out the door by his own Party.
You have to admire his brass neck for even considering going for the job especially as he is widely considered as a war criminal by many across the continent who should be awaiting his turn in the Hague rather than angling for the top job in Europe.
It is hard to think of anyone with a worse track record who is less trustworthy to hand the job to, at least his god bothering partner in (war) crime(s) Bush had the decency to slink off into obscurity, Yes, five years under David Cameron and his Conservative Party is going to be unbearable but at least we won't have to suffer Blair and his ghastly wife with their smug faces appearing all over the media again.
That's the thought we should keep in our minds as we slip into the nightmare of William Hague acting as our nations Foreign Secretary.
10 comments:
your reasoning doesn't seem to follow. If Blair was moving to the right, why would British voters respond by voting for Conservatives of they weren't moving to the right themselves? They wouldn't. In real life, despite all of the threats, voters at the polls don't "punish" their faction for "selling out" by voting for the side that they believe their faction has sold out to.
The British electorate is what is moving Right. Look at the growth of the BNP and other far right movements. The only way that the Labor Party could have hoped to have kept themselves in power was to swing to the center. And that's what they did. And who can say it didn't work? They were in for three terms...
Political factions love to say that all of their defeats come not from a change in the mind of the electorate but from not sticking to their principles. This is all hogwash. The Republicans lost because the American electorate swung left, not because they "sold out" and didn't cut taxes and gut Social Security. It is no different for Labor.
The Conservatives will only win if the British people vote them in.
-Nog
Nog's analysis ignores the fact that, in order to make themselves electable, the Tories have had to reposition themselves from being a fairly dogmatic centre-right party, to a very centrist, moderate position. That is David Cameron's entire raison d'etre. To appeal to the exact same voters who happily voted for Blair in previous elections. The middle. Where the bulk of British voters have always been. When someone leads their party too far to the extremes in this country (Michael Foot in the early 80s, Thatcher in the late 80s) then they tend to reap the electoral whirlwind.
Hence we get 'Vote blue, go green', guarantees that the NHS will be ringfenced (which was one of the main reasons they weren't trusted with power in 2005), not ruling out tax-rises, and Cameron presenting a generally more 'moderate' face to the public.
(Obviously I still expect the Tories to govern well to the right of how they campaign, which is what usually happens with both parties - Nog's right that the Labour party did just that too).
By the way, I think the BNP results are something of a red herring. In times of recession the far-right always gets its base out, and persuades otherwise unpoliticised Daily Mail readers to vote for them, but if it ever looked like they might attain any real power, then the anti-fascist vote would swamp them in huge numbers.
Anyway Lucy, yes, I'm also looking forward to the Tories giving the big hand-off to Bliar.
Nog - British politics is relativly simple.
Labour=left, Conservatives=right. That's how it has always been.
The Lib Dems are a poor third and are never going to appeal to enough people to get elected.
That leaves a straight fight between Labour & Tory, left and right.
18 years of right wing Tories later, Labour get in not because of a massive swing to the left, because the Tories were a busted flush. Now 12 years of Labour later, the same thing, the only real alternative is Tory so back we go again.
As Cheezy said, what Blair did was take Labour from its natural left wing berth and drag it toward the centre while Cameron is doing the same thing from the right side.
The difference is Blair kept the Labour party there (hence the fall of Labour membership and rapidly reducing by-election victories) while Cameron will swing back out to the right once he gets in power.
The along comes Blair and moves Labour away from their left wing berth
ha ha,
right side... you kidding me?
lucy, what you call the right side in the UK is so far left taht you'd end up in the middle of the pacific ocean if you tried to bring it to the usa...
q
The right and left in the UK are very different animals to the left and right there q. You have God and Guns in the mix.
the left in america have little or nothing to do with god, and they are still right of you guys...
q
"right side... you kidding me?"
The good ol' reliable right-left political spectrum has always been a relative beast, Q. Not to mention massively over-simplified.
the left in america have little or nothing to do with god My point exactly Q.
lucy,
i dont understand you... and bush didn't slink off, he ran the hell outta of looneyville (aka washington d.c.) as fast as laura's legs could carry him!
q
You say to-may-toe, i say to-mar-toe Q.
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