Tony Blair/Tory or Labour?
POSTED BY: DallasFirefly
UPDATED: Thursday, June 8, 2006 19:12
VIEWED: 7573
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I would have a difficult time choosing between the Liberal Democrats and Labour if I voted in the UK, but I would likely go with Labour, especially Labour without Tony Blair as PM. Aren't the Lib Dems partly made up of former SDP members? I remember reading about a splintering of Labour in the early 80's with the hawks forming the SDP. At any rate I'm hoping that Labour under Brown will be more respectful of civil liberties. I think there is a reasonably good chance that Labour and the Liberal Democrats will have to form a coalition after the next general election, which might be a good thing for the UK.
I wanna be Mr. Baccarin!
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Kinda. The Lib-Dems are party formed by the merging of the SDP and what was left of the Liberal party. The Liberals where the original big tent party and at one time they were the natural opposition to the Tories. Unfortunately they had a nasty tendency to fragment, and they split and split to a point they nearly became extinct.
The SDP where former members of Labour that broke away after the 1979 election defeat. For a brief time there was talk about them being a third force in politics they entered into an electoral pact with the Liberals and later merged with them. Paddy Ashdown, the leader of the combined party liked to see them as being equivalent to the US Democrats.
The Lib-Dems have some interesting policy initiatives and seem to be well organised on a local level, they just dont seem to be able to translate that into major gains in Westminster mainly because of the UK electoral system.
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I guess the argument goes that a vote for the Liberals is a vote for the Tories since Labour is the only center-left party strong enough to form a government. I remember the Liberal party from British history. Didn't Labour absorb their left wing and then go on to be the main leftist party? I seem to remember this happening after WW I. I think Lloyd George was the last Liberal PM. At this point Blair's Labour is to the right of the US Democrats, which is a complete reversal of the positions of the two parties from ten years ago. It's a pity when a Tory leader can go to the left of a Labour PM. One other thing that Blair did that really pissed me off was forbidding Labour representatives from attending the 2004 Democratic National Convention. It's been tradition for US Democrats and Labour to attend each others campaign kick offs as a sign of support. Blair didn't want to offend Bush so he put his foot down with Labour MPs who wanted to go to Boston.
I wanna be Mr. Baccarin!
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I have to say that unfortunately I don't think it's likely that the Lib Dems will gain enough MPs at the next election to even become the opposition let alone a coalition. But my hope is that it will happen sometime in the forseeable future.
I hate the mentality about voting for which ever one of Labour or the Conservatives you least dislike, especially now that they're so indistuingishable in the centre. Building up three/multi party politics in this country by voting for the Lib dems or any other country doesn't strike me as a wasted vote if you agree with their politics.
A Douglas Adam's quote:
'On [the robot's] world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.'
'Odd,' said Arthur, 'I thought you said it was a democracy?'
'I did,' said Ford, 'It is.'
'So,' said Arthur, hoping he wasn�t sounding ridiculously obtuse, 'why don't the people get rid of the lizards?'
'It honestly doesn't occur to them,' said Ford. 'They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.'
'You mean they actually vote for the lizards?'
'Oh yes,' said Ford with a shrug, 'of course.'
'But,' said Arthur, going for the big one again, 'why?'
'Because if they didn't vote for a lizard,' said Ford, 'the wrong lizard might get in.'
...................
Well, my sister's a ship... we had a
complicated childhood
.................
I wear the cheese. It does not wear me.
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That's a good one HEB. Freakin lizards!
I wanna be Mr. Baccarin!
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Quote:
Originally posted by DallasFirefly:
At this point Blair's Labour is to the right of the US Democrats, which is a complete reversal of the positions of the two parties from ten years ago. It's a pity when a Tory leader can go to the left of a Labour PM.
I'm not so sure that Labour are on the right of the Democrats, I think the frames of reference between the two countries are so different as to make direct comparison almost impossible. I don't think there is the equivalent of the states rights, small central government conservative in the UK. I'm not sure that there is a direct match for libertarians either.
Labour moved to the center because that's were the votes are. The Tories moved to the center for the same reason, the problem is that there is a very narrow policy range that appeals to middle ground voters so by definition both parties end up having those policies in their platform. Within that narrow band each is grabbing whatever policy initiatives neglected by the other. So you have the Conservatives -- traditionally the party of business -- now talking about the environment and Labour --- once the more radical party -- now talking about a secure business environment.
Quote:
One other thing that Blair did that really pissed me off was forbidding Labour representatives from attending the 2004 Democratic National Convention. It's been tradition for US Democrats and Labour to attend each others campaign kick offs as a sign of support. Blair didn't want to offend Bush so he put his foot down with Labour MPs who wanted to go to Boston.
I wanna be Mr. Baccarin!
Actually I think they did go, just not "officially"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/25/wbush2
5.xml
What's even weirder is that a party of UK Conservatives went to the Democratic convention.
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That is bizarre, the UK Tories going to our convention I mean. Is the annual Labour Party Conference held in August? I remember that Margaret Thatcher was replaced by Major at a Tory party conference in 1990. It would be good to see Blair go this year.
I wanna be Mr. Baccarin!
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Geezer2 ('Fletch2' that's your new name since 'Geezer' is now Slick)
Quote:There were two parts to your statement 1) HMG really did believe Hussein had WMD; and 2) because of that it was compelled to take action. But the Downing Street Minutes (quotes below) reveal no WMD urgency.
YOU SAID HMG really did believe that Saddam had WMD in which case doing nothing isn't (wasn't ?) an option either.
I SAID The Downing Street Minutes tell otherwise.
Quote:And once the UN weapons inspectors were on the ground in Iraq and SHOWING NO WMD there was no shred left to justify the war.
The only way to overthrow (Saddam's regime) was likely to be by massive military action. (REGIME CHANGE as the basis for war, not WMD)
Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. (WMD INTELLIGENCE faulty)
It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. (WMD CAPABILITY poor, at best)
The Attorney-General said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action. There were three possible legal bases: self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case. Relying on UNSCR 1205 of three years ago would be difficult. (War was based on regime change, for which there was NO LEGAL BASIS)
Nearly everything I know I learned by the grace of others.
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Barbie, Barbie Barbie,
HMG believed Saddam had WMD. You won't find anything in the memos that says otherwise.
And doing nothing was not an option. In the memoes do you see any option that says they should do nothing?
You can argue all you like about UN resolutions and about if it's America's job to be the World's policeman and those would be damned good arguments but the fact is that the British government, US government, Russian government, hell even Hans Blix all thought Saddam had WMD. Application of 20/20 hindsight is revisionist history.
Did the US administration play up the WMD threat as a justification for war? You bet. No nation goes to war for any reason but it's own narrow self interest. The US wasn't going to war over gassed Kurds, gang raped women, mass graves. Those were just dead A-rabs and US commitment to someone elses human rights very rarely extends to spending blood and gold in their defence. So yeah they played on your fear so you'd have the commitment to take down a lunatic. A lunatic who would probably have been out from under UN sanctions within a year or so, one who had a brutal liking for slaughtering his own internal opposition. God knows what we would have had to deal with 10 or 15 years down the line.
I said this before and I'll restate it. We have lived out a timeline which has been far from great. There is a temptation to take what we know today look back and try to remake the "bad" decision. That works in Scifi movies. But the truth is you have no way of knowing if doing nothing would be better or worse.
Sometimes in real life there are no good decisions.
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Quote:
Originally posted by DallasFirefly:
That is bizarre, the UK Tories going to our convention I mean. Is the annual Labour Party Conference held in August? I remember that Margaret Thatcher was replaced by Major at a Tory party conference in 1990. It would be good to see Blair go this year.
I wanna be Mr. Baccarin!
My bet is that he wants to hold out until 2008 so that he can stay in office as long as Mrs Thatcher did.
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