Gordon Brown: ‘Life on Mars moment’
A quote from the local elections in the UK today: ‘Gordon Brown has had his Life on Mars moment. He went to sleep in 2008 and today he’s waking up with support back to the worst his party has seen since records began in 1973.’
How that series has changed the way Britons refer to things.
Labour, under Gordon Brown, may even fall below the Liberal Democrats when it comes to the popular vote, says the right-leaning Daily Telegraph.
Britons might just simply want a new bunch of people to make fun of and criticize, and David Cameron’s lot seems ready, they have decided. The next General Election will be telling.
Comments
I'm not a big Cameron fan either, he's a little too slick, but I do like some of the shadow cabinet, so I'll definitely be voting Tory next election. I think William Hague is a fantastic politician and would be a better PM than Dave, but unfortunately for Hague they threw him in too young and ruined his chances.
This said - I'm old school, everyone else seems to throw around their education as an insult. I think it's great - Eton then Oxford? That's good, I hope they had a very good quality education, I want my leaders to be clever and if they have breeding then that's good too.
Sorry, I'm rambling again :)
I also agree with you about David Cameron. Hague is a better politician—I remember him as Welsh Secretary—but he was ill-equipped to lead the Tories with ‘One free gallon of petrol to anyone who votes Conservative’!
I am proud of my schools, too—in my college, the headmaster who came on board after I left was a Low Master at Eton. Why not have educated leaders? Total agreement there, as well!
It's really cool that the headmaster had taught at Eton! Marvellous. I went to a comprehensive, but I have respect for any parents who decide to educate their children at better schools, it's their future, after all. One of my biggest bug bears about this country is how much anything associated with the former upper and upper-middle classes is ridiculed, it seems to me based out of jealousy and spite mainly and it means many valuable traditions and facets of our nation are put down because we're all meant to attain not to a high standard but to the lowest common denominator.
The head is now a city councillor, so he has done well. My parents sacrificed a lot: we weren’t rich and somehow they coughed up nearly one person’s weekly wages to buy a blazer at the private (public in British terms) school I went to.
That ridiculing probably comes from good motives about fairness but it has come to be a bane—because it has descended into being founded on envy. You are very correct, and for better or worse it is even stronger in the antipodes.
Karlos, you are probably right on where Blair’s poll numbers began sliding. War is never a popular decision but like Pete I respect that Mr Blair took a stand and stuck with it, which took guts. That earned a lot of respect from me because till then I thought Blair was a poll-watching popularist.
The Commons, and indeed the Westminster system, does have a lot to answer for in the lack of civility that regularly emanates from them. I often think the American system of the speaker going up and addressing a House whose members are not sitting at opposite sides facing down each other is superior, even if ultimately that system descends into petty partisanship, too. But as a “body language” plan I like it.
Modern politicians could indeed learn lessons reading Hansard and earlier transcripts of a time when decisions were made in the public good rather than oppositions made for newsworthiness (which is what one MP friend of mine found on entering the House) or, even worse, corporate interests that only benefit the few.
There is that concern with intellectuals but worse are the ill-educated who use intellectual-sounding pomposity to make themselves appear smarter—yet make poor decisions for the nation.
Simplicity could indeed work and I imagine if I entered a leading position in politics, e.g. as a mayor, I could drive to simplify meetings and decision-making.
As for London, I am not surprised. The tide has turned!
I am for individual responsibility but I do believe in a balance in helping those who suffer; while John Major said he was a conservative with a socialist conscience, I think I am a socialist with a conservative conscience. And I certainly believe in limiting the power of the technocracy for the sake of ensuring that public services can function and that social welfare exists for those who need it.
Conservative might not solve these ills, at least not under Cameron as I (and it appears Pete) perceive him, but Labour has done little.