New Kid On The Block
The BBC reports on the newest national leader: David Cameron is UK’s new prime minister.
I wish him luck, and hope he doesn’t mind the early election. There is pain in store for everyone’s economy, and “conservatives principles” are not up to the problems that have to be dealt with to get things moving again. The one bright note is that the UK did not convert to the Euro, so they have more room to maneuver that the rest of Europe.
Gordon Brown was an effective Chancellor of the Exchequer, but he just wasn’t comfortable with being Prime Minister. He was good at the technical side, but he was never able to master the public relations side.
Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats has the deputy’s spot, but the LibDems may regret their decision, given the probable course of things in the near future.
Labour needs to recharge after being in office too long and bring in some new people.
The good news for Britain is that even the Conservative Party is to the left of the US Democratic Party.
6 comments
The funny thing is that I bet a lot of wing nuts in the U.S. are congratulating themselves on a ‘conservative’ win in the UK. They probably are sure this portends great things for them in November.
.-= last blog ..What About the Other Gulf Oil Platforms? =-.
The only thing I can draw from it is that when the economy is in the crapper, voters will look for a change and vote against incumbents. That was what was driving the apparent surge in the Liberal Democratic Party. Labour drifted right under Blair, and the voters punished them.
The last general election was in May of 2005. While elections can be called earlier, they have to be held at least every 5 years.
The Conservatives had to give *major* concessions to the Liberal Democrats to get them into the coalition. As in, basically say they weren’t going to implement the Conservative agenda other than the few things both they and the LibDems agree upon, and support some of the LibDems’ electoral reforms. And the LibDems can bolt at any moment if the Conservatives back out of those concessions, thereby either forcing new elections or a new government. So while it’s certainly not a victory for liberals in Britain, it’s no victory for conservatives either. I suspect elections within three years.
As you point out, the Conservatives in Britain are far to the left of even the Democratic Party here in the United States. For example, they have no (zero) intention of touching Britain’s cradle-to-grave socialist Public Health Service, which is actual socialist healthcare, as vs. Obama’s Swiss-style giveaway to insurance companies. We can’t even get single-payer here in the U.S. (except for prunes and military retirees), much less socialist healthcare (well, unless you’re a veteran who qualifies for VA healthcare), because that would be too liberal for our Democrats, yet the Conservatives in Britain have no problem at all with socialist health care. Right-wingnuts who are right now pounding themselves on the back about how this proves a global “conservative moment” need to consider just how nutty they look opposing “socialist healthcare” when every other conservative party on the planet supports it as the proven conservative way of providing decent-quality healthcare for less. Hint: Today’s American “conservatives” aren’t really conservatives. They’re actually radicals, proposing radical re-structurings of society in service to a radical foreign ideology (that of Russian-born Ayn Rand, whose radical anti-Christian “greed is good and charity is for losers” ideology is yet another in a series of disastrous ideologies like Marxist-Leninism to come out of Russia). But don’t tell them that, because they won’t listen. Sigh!
– Badtux the Conservative Centrist Penguin
.-= last blog ..Next talking point: "Gulf oil spill caused by government!" =-.
I can’t see the Tories supporting proportional representation as it would have cost the two major parties 140 seats divided almost evenly.[Mea culpa – it is an instant runoff system, not proportional representation.]They want a 5-year fixed term, raising the “no confidence” threshold to 55% from 50%+1 [the Tories have 47% of the seats]. I assume that will be their first priority to eliminate any need to honor their compromises.
Russia really produced so very odd concepts that took hold in the minds of its students. It structure hasn’t changed with 5% making all the decisions for the other 95%. The turmoil was always within the 5%.
“Hint: Today’s American “conservatives” aren’t really conservatives. They’re actually radicals, proposing radical re-structurings of society in service to a radical foreign ideology … But don’t tell them that, because they won’t listen. Sigh!”- BadTux
How many times I have said that! And because I so frequently worked among very conservative people, how often they have not listened. There are none so deaf as those who will not hear.
It is rather difficult to “conserve” what never existed.