UK Election

[FormerLurker]

Just got back from voting.

What an ugly and uninteresting campaign this has been. Despite the fact that the three major parties are ideologically identical, they bicker incessantly.

Michael Howard: "I mean, how hard is it to keep a hospital clean?" [prominent national billboard campaign]

Blair: "Tory policy is unworkable and unsustainable.." [Labour and Tory policies are carbon copies]

Charles Kennedy: "Yoo hoo! I'm here too, don't ignore me!" [Doesn't even understand his own party's policy]

Tories: We'd curb immigration!
Labour: We've curbed immigration!
LibDem: We.. [interrupted]
Tories: We'll put more bobbies on the beat!
Labour: More cops on the street!
LibDem: We.. [interrupted]
Tory: We'll help first time home buyers!
Labour: Tax cuts for first time home buyers!
LibDem: We.. [interrupted]
Tory: We'll cut taxes and increase spending!
Labour: Yeah, right.
Tory: We'll scrap university top-up fees!
Labour: Yeah, right. Canadian liberals said they'd scrap GST; never happened.

Wow. The public has been bored into apathy by this campaign. Nobody, and I mean nobody, likes Blair. Yet everybody has known for 12 months or more that he'd win the next election. So nobody even talks about it. The media doesn't even care.

How can that be ?? Easy. His opponents are duds, as John Kerry was.

Sunderland South has just declared. Tory wins this seat. Refreshingly, the Official Monster Raving Loony Party gets 149 votes!

[M. Beaux-Eaux]

Glad you posted. I read this article yesterday:

Embassy, May 4th, 2005

By Gwynne Dyer

Don't Mention the War

As sharks respond to blood in the water, so do journalists to panic among politicians -- and there is the scent of panic in the air as the British election campaign enters the home stretch. It's still hard to see how the Conservative opposition could win on May 5, but there is suddenly a chance that the governing Labour Party could lose its majority in parliament over voter resentment at how Prime Minister Tony Blair dragged the country into war.

Mr. Blair almost got away with it. For most of the campaign, he avoided any serious debate on his decision to commit Britain to the invasion of Iraq alongside his friend George W. Bush, and on every other issue he was fireproof. The British economy is among Europe's healthiest, unemployment is less than half that of France or Germany, and Mr. Blair's government has been pouring money into health and education. Huge numbers of Labour voters felt deceived and betrayed by his Iraq policy, but so long as the war didn't become a central issue, Labour would cruise safely back into a third term in office.

Then, on April 24, came the first in a series of well-timed leaks about how Mr. Blair tricked his cabinet, his party and the country into believing that the war was legal. All week the media were full of the text of legal opinions previously suppressed by Mr. Blair in which his own officials had warned him about the doubtful legality of the war, and retired senior military officers revealed that they had been deeply worried about it, too. The anger that many Labour voters felt about Mr. Blair's deceptions flared up again, and suddenly the election was a horse-race.

- tinyurl.com/89hew

Curious to see how the worm turns.

[blaise]

Bush's poodle is top dog again, but not before his rivals put tooth marks in his leash.

[blaise]

The election could have been even closer, except that some people who were angry with Blair chickened out at the last moment because they were afraid Michael Howard might get in.