His own party tries to dump Tony Blair

[gcol]

Broadly speaking, the Labour parties traditional attitude to immigration is that any attempts to restrict it are automatically racist. Anyone with concerns about immigration is therefore racist or 'pandering' to racism.

 

Agree.

 

The labour party was originally the voice of the "downtrodden working man" against the child-eating bloated capitalist Tories.

 

After their years in the wilderness, Blairism was invented to seize the middle ground, which meant pinching lots of conservative ideas and rebranding them as New Labour. It fooled some of the people for quite a while and left the Tories with nowhere to go.

 

I remember the "rivers of blood" speech by Enoch Powell (RIP) in relation to uncontrolled imigration so long ago. Not exactly a river now, or should that be yet ?

 

The official spin on (in practice uncontrolled) imigration is that it is a good thing because:

 

1. It fills the lowly unpaid jobs that others dont want. A good thing.

2. There is therefore some constraint on wage inflation, a government good thing.3. They consume, therefore grow the economy and produce more tax revenue, another government good thing. The fact that this fuels inflation is played down because it is a bad thing.

 

In practice, the imigrant vote is important, and becoming even more important, because there are so many of them. They are a big political thing. If they all banded together and formed a united party, well, I shudder to think......

 

I could go on, but essays are tedious.

 

One last thought though. Do I not hear exactly the same arguments from accross the pond regarding, especially, Hispanic immigrants? Same problems, different continents. Did you not send out a general invitation along the lines "send me your huddled masses.........." Unfortunately they all accepted. Not being on appro, unfortunately you cant send them back again. Probably seemed a good vote winning idea at the time.

[Dave]

As for achievements' date=' dramatically increasing government spending and achieving some, limited improvements in government services. A general increase in regulations, i feel safer and better cared for everyday:rolleyes: . Some major constitutional reforms forced through in a hurried fashion, still to early to say how they will pan out, except that they have brought about lots and lots of new politicians and bureaucrats.

 

Other than that, not sure.[/quote']

 

I generally agree with this perspective. The Government seems to have the attitude of "if it doesn't work, throw more money at it" which is (in the long run) going to ruin our economy. Any half-baked idiot would know that the reason we have so many problems with the NHS is because of the ridiculous amount of management and middle-management.

 

From my (admittedly biased) viewpoint, these key things will stick in my mind from the Labour reign of terror:

 

• Taking us into two wars that we shouldn't be in and putting our soldiers at risk.
  
• Stealing money from the private pensions scheme to make up deficits elsewhere in the budget.
  
• Increasing the state pension age to 68, whilst keeping the civil servants age at 60.
  
• Completely cocking up the entire immigration service, and letting everybody and anybody over the border. Also, allowing foreign prisoners to reign free because of administration errors.
  
• Trying (and, thank God, failing) to pass legislation allowing the police to hold suspects for up to 90 (!) days without trial.
  
• A transport system that is barely functional and hideously overpriced.
  
• Increasing the cost of owning a car by increases in fuel duty, road tax and income from speed cameras, (hence forcing people off the roads), but failing to invest this money in a better transport network.
  
• An ID card scheme which will cost a ridiculously large amount of money to run for seemingly no benefits; also making this mandatory for passport holders when originally the scheme was supposed to be voluntary.
  
• A tendancy to invest a lot of time, effort and money in ludicrously ambitious IT projects that inevitably fall through because they were flawed from the outset.
  
• Last, but not least, a party brought to its knees through hypocrasy, sleaze, incompetance and in-fighting
  

 

That should just about do it.

[Martin]

thanks all, it's instructive to hear the various POV

 

Financial Times says the main reason is Iraq

 

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/ae12309a-3f5d-11db-a37c-0000779e2340.html

 

this is what they had today 8 Sept

 

===============

for an American perspective, here is part of the Voice of America article today

http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-09-08-voa29.cfm

 

===quote from VoA, for what's its worth===

 

...Tony Blair is credited with revamping the party. In what he termed New Labor, he moved it away from its socialist roots to the political center, and led it to victory in 1997, when he became prime minister. But his once bright political star has faded, and recent polls show Labor lagging behind the Conservatives.

 

Mark Fuller, an analyst and communications director of the London research institute, Demos, says many Labor members feel that, after nine years, it is time for a change of leadership.

 

"People have just come to realize that the prime minister's time has come, and, for various reasons, he's lost a lot of authority and a lot of political capital, and has to step down, but it has to happen in - [and] it's a phrase that's been used so much in the last year or so - an orderly way, so there is an orderly transition to the next leader," he said.

 

Dana Allin, a research fellow in transAtlantic affairs at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, says Blair's close relationship with President Bush and unwavering support for the Iraq war cost the prime minister a great deal of that political capital.

 

"George W. Bush is toxically unpopular in Britain, as in much of the rest of Europe. There's just no question about that. And, so, Tony Blair's rather close relationship with him is not a political plus for him in Britain," he said.

 

British bookmakers, who will give odds on almost anything, are already taking bets on when Blair will actually leave, with favored odds now saying he will depart before the end of this year. Gordon Brown remains the frontrunner to succeed Blair, but bookmakers' odds are not as favorable to him as those given prior to the current infighting.

===end quote===

[Pangloss]

Interesting posts.

 

One thing that strikes me about the British system, as compared with the American system, is that it seems more malleable or flexible or steerable, however you want to put it. You're better able to change political direction once a consensus is reached. And in some ways it is more of a consensus, since consensus is required by the parliamentary system, whereas more and more of the American system is focused on the unitary executive branch, and meanwhile our legislative branch is backlogged, bogged-down, and overly politicized. (But of course I assume there's a tradeoff that goes with this in terms of potential callamity from going too far in what turns out to be a bad direction?)

 

Of course I may be oversimplifying.

 

Here's another question for our British members: How often do you guys typically vote? I'm asking both about national elections (I know you don't actually vote for the PM directly, but in terms of scope) and local elections. How much time do you actually spend in an election booth in a typical year?

[gcol]

Not an easy question, what with Scotland Wales And Northern Ireland (sometimes) having extra mini-parliaments. Then there have been changes in local elections, where we only get a chance to kick out half of them at a time now, Mayoral elections for some, and parochial elections. Depends on where you live, then. Personally if I have to vote more than three times in two years, as a guess, I find it tedious. Dont forget that we dont vote for the PM, thats in the gift of the party great and good.

[Dak]

An ID card scheme which will cost a ridiculously large amount of money to run for seemingly no benefits; also making this mandatory for passport holders when originally the scheme was supposed to be voluntary.

 

[paraphrase=blair]but what are you talking about? of course it's voluntary! you dont have to go on holiday![/paraphrase]

 

bloody labour.

 

And in some ways it is more of a consensus, since consensus is required by the parliamentary system,

 

ah, but consensus can be forsed by the PM, due to the strength of the whip system in uk politics. similarly, he can choose who is in his cabinate and who isnt, so he can boss the cabinate around.

 

british PMs have been described as 'elected dictators' for a reason

[Sisyphus]

One last thought though. Do I not hear exactly the same arguments from accross the pond regarding' date=' especially, Hispanic immigrants? Same problems, different continents. Did you not send out a general invitation along the lines "send me your huddled masses.........." Unfortunately they all accepted. Not being on appro, unfortunately you cant send them back again. Probably seemed a good vote winning idea at the time.[/quote']

 

Of course it was a good idea. The United States has always been built on immigration, and we have immigration to thank for our greatness. I myself am 4th/5th generation immigrant from five different countries. Our problems with immigration, such as they are, stem not from the fact that there are lots of immigrants (which is a good thing), but that there are lots of illegal immigrants.

[ParanoiA]

Of course it was a good idea. The United States has always been built on immigration, and we have immigration to thank for our greatness. I myself am 4th/5th generation immigrant from five different countries. Our problems with immigration, such as they are, stem not from the fact that there are lots of immigrants (which is a good thing), but that there are lots of illegal[/i'] immigrants.

 

High Five Sisyphus! That's the problem with Americans, they're easily fooled and manipulated since they only lift their heads from their X-box's and chat screens long enough to see what the media tells them to believe. And right now, the democrats have told the media that anyone against illegal immigration is against immigration.

 

And it's weird too. They don't even really come out and say it. They just argue that immigrants are responsible for the labor the rest of americans don't want to do. And we're all standing around dumbfounded, since we never advocated otherwise - it's a strawman on the national scale!

 

I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but it's so disappointing when you see it so plainly, yet your fellow americans make fools of themselves standing up for a false agenda.

 

Is it this easy to fool the masses in the UK?

[Aardvark]

Is it this easy to fool the masses in the UK?

 

He who builds on the people, builds on sand.