I have to say, if I were a British voter, I’d be very depressed at the choices on offer. Iain Murray has further thoughts.
13 thoughts on “What Has Happened To Albion?”
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I have to say, if I were a British voter, I’d be very depressed at the choices on offer. Iain Murray has further thoughts.
Comments are closed.
I wouldn’t worry too much. The result is likely to be either a Conservative government, a Conservative-Liberal coalition or a (New) Labour – Liberal coalition. That would mean more economic liberalism in any of these cases. I’m happy with none of the main parties and none of them are liberal in the classical liberal sense of that term, though all three have wings that are. If the voting system were to be reformed, we might see a real liberal party emerge.
The Kenneth Clarke wing of the Conservatives, the Blair/Mandelson wing of the Labour party and the Clegg wing of the Liberal Democrats are all more or less as classically liberal as they can get away with in their respective parties. And on a personal level: Nick Clegg speaks Dutch to boot. 🙂
Kind of like the choices I faced in the 2008 US Presidential election. I cast my vote, and then went outside and threw up.
Clegg speaks five languages, although I’m sure Dutch is the very best one other than English.
And he did a road-trip across the USA after studying in Minnesota for a year. He’s probably eaten more American junk food than the other two candidates.
As an expat Brit I find it really rather depressing. I guess it’s the kind of “nanny state” government you get from politicians with very small ideas. Kinda like here in Florida in many respects. Politics is the same the world over – can’t trust them, just elect them to positions where you have some visibility of their misdeeds!
Mr Simberg. There’s a pot calling on line 3 for you. Apparently there’s some question about colour.
For what it’s worth I suspect there will be a rinse repeat in short order after a short lived Cameron minority government. At least that’s what it currently looks like. I don’t see a grand anti-Tory alliance but I guess it could happen with Labour-LibDem and some of the nationalist parties… It seems unlikely though.
Clegg speaks five languages, although I’m sure Dutch is the very best one other than English.
It might very well be given that his mother is Dutch. I heard him speak Dutch and he speaks it very well, with no hint of an English accent. If anything he has a slightly posh Dutch accent. He does speak it slightly hesitantly, which is hardly surprising. The LibDem’s are a sister party to D66, the more left-leaning of the two Dutch liberal parties and the one I am a member of (despite the left-leaning bit which has diminished in recent years) and I’m looking forward to hearing him speak at a D66 party congress!
More relevantly: As I understand it Nick Clegg is actually rather strongly libertarian as real-world politicans go, as was Chris Huhne before he started pandering to the left wing of the party in a failed attempt to win the party leadership. A realignment of the British political landscape would be a good thing. The classically liberal wings of the three main parties are not very far apart.
Well, with very great reluctance I voted Conservative. There was a UKIP candidate in my constituency, but with the race as close as it was I judged that trying to get Labour out was more important than a gesture.
With very great reluctance, because there is IMHO no classically conservative party in Parliament at the moment. Today’s Tories are virtually the same as New Labour was.
My take on this: Apparently, in the case of a hung parliament the incumbent PM gets first crack at forming a government. Brown is likely to do his damnedest to get the LibDems on side, along with Plaid Cymru and the leftist parties in Northern Ireland and the single Green, and form a government. He may well succeed, but is likely to have to agree to increased subsidies for Wales and various extreme environmentalist measures, along with proportional representation, to get it. And England will scream bloody murder; as in the last two parliaments, Scottish and Welsh Labour support will foist Labour government on England – which rejected Labour.
Brown has a history of being anti-democratic, starting with the fact of his not calling an election when he took over as leader of Labour. He will be again. The new government is not going to last long, no matter who gets in. I predict another election this year. And while the chaos goes on, no effective action will be taken on the economy.
Another point: Very serious questions are going to be asked about the shambolic lack of organisation of the polling stations. Running out of ballot papers for Chrissake! A lot of people ought to be fired over that; they won’t be, of course.
Note that the supposed Maoist Anita Dunn, formerly from the Obama admin, assisted Cameron with his less-than-complete victory. While Clegg has libertarian tendencies, I think Cameron is probably a closet Maoist, just like Obama. 🙂
Thanks Martijn, very interesting. Continuing my irrelevant observations, I’ll just note that I find it pleasant but disconcerting to listen to Dutch-language media — it sounds so similar to English to me that I keep feeling as though I ought to be able to understand it!
I hope the Lib-Dems and the Tories unite and succeed, just to create an object lesson in the benefits of political compromise, as well as to make to the electoral system more fair.
The sooner that the UK leaves the EU the sooner it will again generate good, world class politicians with gonads instead of the namby-pamby neutered nannies who always defer to the Brussels bureaucrats. The UK on its own has the potential to be so much better than it is as a member of Europe.
Sorry Martijn but I don’t agree with you on the Blairites being classical liberals, Labour is a mix of Social democrats and old school trade unionites/socilaists.
While the Tories and Lib dems have individuals who are libertarian they are very much the minority and don’t have much influence on policy. I do agree though that a radical shake up is long overdue, and hope a classical liberal party re-emerges as a viable force (I’m a member of the UK’s Libertarian party btw).
Sorry Martijn but I don’t agree with you on the Blairites being classical liberals, Labour is a mix of Social democrats and old school trade unionites/socilaists.
It’s just the Blarite wing of the Labour party that is more or less classically liberal with a “healthy” dose of Machiavelli added to it, not Gordon Brown and certainly not the trade union wing. People like Blair, Mandelson, Campbell, Milburn, Byers. Among the LibDems it’s Clegg, Huhne and other Orange Book people, not people like Simon Hughes. In the Conservative party it’s people like Kenneth Clarke, Michael Heseltine and of course Margaret Thatcher.