Article

2006-07-24 Britain

Prescott hints at Blair quitting very shortly

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Posted by Steve White 2006-07-24 00:00|| || Front Page|| [7 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 And good riddance.

Posted by Kali 2006-07-24 00:48|| 2006-07-24 00:48|| Front Page Top

#2 I'd like to hear what our UK cousins have to say about who will replace him... and what can be expected of him or her.

I suspect that Tony, in the foreign policy area, anyway, is about as good as we poor Americans are likely to see in the PM slot.

But I defer to the experts. :-)

Posted by Champ Angeger5024 2006-07-24 01:11|| 2006-07-24 01:11|| Front Page Top

#3 No expert am I, but I'm not a big Gordon Brown fan.

Posted by Seafarious">Seafarious 2006-07-24 01:22|| 2006-07-24 01:22|| Front Page Top

#4 Champ, my hope is that once Gordon Brown replaces Blair, support for Labour will erode even further and give the Conservatives a better chance at the next election. Brown is further to the left than Blair, but I wouldn't expect to see him do a Zapotero and pull the troops out of Iraq straight away. He recently made a show of talking tough about the need to keep our nukes, which suggests he's moving towards the centre as his big moment approaches.

Posted by Kali 2006-07-24 01:35|| 2006-07-24 01:35|| Front Page Top

#5 Hmmm. Thanks for responding so quickly... Ugh! Gordon Brown is not among those I'd want to see, considering some of the total flaming idiot statements I've seen attributed to him.

Perhaps the real question is: What is wrong with the Tories? Why can't they get their act together ala Maggie, and take the initiative? This is what perplexes me most about UK politics. They seem as politically inept as California Repubs, LOL.

Dammit. :-/

Posted by Champ Angeger5024 2006-07-24 01:42|| 2006-07-24 01:42|| Front Page Top

#6 I recall that in the aftermath of 9/11 when the US Congress met, Tony Blair was there to stand with America in our darkest hour. The ONLY foreign leader there. Thank you Mr. Blair.

Posted by DMFD 2006-07-24 02:28|| 2006-07-24 02:28|| Front Page Top

#7 Yes, it's hard to tell the difference between the Tories and Labour these days. They've tried to 'modernise' and ended up looking rather silly, talking a lot of guff about The Environment™. They really get my vote only by default, because they're not Labour, and they're not the Liberal Democrats.

Posted by Kali 2006-07-24 02:31|| 2006-07-24 02:31|| Front Page Top

#8 Ah, you're in the UK, Kali? Tony (UK) needs the company, I believe, LOL, and we appreciate your view. Thank you for the intel. Does Brown "appeal" on domestic issues, i.e. capitalism vs socialism? I focus on the foreign policy stuff about UK politics, of course - and I can't provide links, but he's said some things regards the WoT that made me cringe and place him on my EUro Lefty List.

True, DMFC. Tony stood and made good on it. Thanks are due from the US Point of View. Domestically, I recall a long ago Bulldog, Shep, Howard, (where've they gone?) and our current (yeah!) Tony (UK) thread that drubbed him quite badly on the domestic side.

Posted by Champ Angeger5024 2006-07-24 02:43|| 2006-07-24 02:43|| Front Page Top

#9 Briefly, Blair's big project was to get Labour elected. To do that, he had to move to the centre, muzzle some of the more ardent leftists in the party, and drop some of the more malodorous policies, such as wholesale nationalisation. This he managed to do by calling Labour 'New Labour' and embarking on a charm offensive, eg "Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" - crap like that.

It was also important that New Labour could be trusted in the City of London (8% of our GDP), so Gordon Brown had a policy of 'prudence', where we wouldn't spend more in a business cycle than was coming in. He also promised to be business friendly. That was in 1997. His first act as Chancellor was to make the Bank of England independent from the politicians of the day (ie it's up to them to change interest rates, for the best interests of the economy, not for short term political purposes). That is seen as a good move. At roughly the same time he also reduced tax relief on pensions contribution and fiddled around a bit there. The outcome was that 5 billion a year has been whisked away from people's pensions since 1997. This was the first example (that I know of) of Gordon's 'stealth taxes' - there are now many more. They have put more money into the Health Service and Education, but the results are not there.

Fast forward to 2006. 'New Labour' is called 'Labour' again - they had some conference to say the transformation was complete, or some such twaddle. He's got rid of ancient legal traditions under the guise of expediency and cost. He's devolved power to Scotland and Wales, but the English pay for it all, he's embedded us more and more with Europe when a clear majority don't consider themselves European, our immigration service is a joke with illegals working in the Home Office etc and to cap it all, there's the honours for cash fiasco, where for about a 1 million pound donation to the Labour party, you can be a Lord, ie the cash-for-peerages scandal.

All his most recent 'reforming' legislation has been watered down by his own back-benchers (arch-lefties who would not have been elected under their Old Labour colours) that it's much worse than doing nothing. He's got no credibility with his own party, who are starting to show their true leftist roots again.

His only real success is on the world stage, where he did the right thing in Iraq (and Labour hate him for it), but then he did get us into Kyoto and a host of other crap initiatives...

He promised so much (I voted for him in 1997 - happily!) and New Labour did seem to have changed. How easily we were taken in ;)

I don't think history will be kind to Tony Blair, he had a golden opportunity to change the face of British politics and blew it.

As for Gordon, he's finally shown himself to be a typical Labour tax and spend chancellor and not a reformer.

The Tories could wipe the floor with Labour, but aren't doing it yet - they're trying to present themselves as more centrist than the master centrist, Blair. Until they recognise that not everyone wants a socialist paradise, they're not going to make the gains they should. There are four issues in this country; immigration (top in many polls), crime, terrorism, Europe. The party that offers real solutions for those areas will rule the roost (I have some ideas in that area ;)

I think the great 'New Labour' experiment, where the Labour party could work constructively with wealth-creators and industry and not just see them as capitalistic running dogs, where they would reform institutions that had passed their sell-by-date and where they would be whiter-than-white in their morals (one of the key reasons they got elected in '97 was because of the ongoing sleeze from the Conservative government) has been shown to be a sham, and the country is now poorer, our pensions system is buggered, the NHS sucks in 76 billion a year and still doesn't work, education has been hammered, our defence systems are *deliberately* being made non-compatible with US gear and we have given up even more sovereignty to Europe (don't get me started on the Human Rights Act).

I'll shut up now.

Posted by Tony (UK) 2006-07-24 02:45|| 2006-07-24 02:45|| Front Page Top

#10 Wowsers, Tony! It'll take me a bit to digest it all, but it appears that he's a disaster across the board. Now that you've mentioned it, the MoD decision to "go Euro" and abandon US compatibility was one of those moments that completely put me off - obviously self-defeating and a major step backward. The Euro mil vision is a full generation behind - we've seen where it leads in the recent Afghanistan stories.

Wow, again. Thanks, Tony! You and Kali smack the Tories for us, okay? I thought the political winds were changing, with new parties of a far more nationalistic nature emerging, and I took that to mean a Tory candidate who isn't on the dole or Kool Aid could surprise the hell out of the current conventional wisdom crowd.

Posted by Champ Angeger5024 2006-07-24 02:58|| 2006-07-24 02:58|| Front Page Top

#11 The Tories took a wrong turn by electing Cameron instead of Davies. They wanted their own Blair, young and charismatic, but instead they got someone who could conceivably fail to knock Labour out, by alienating too many traditional Tory voters. But there are still a few people sensible people in the Tory party, like Sir Nicholas Winterton.

Posted by Kali 2006-07-24 03:23|| 2006-07-24 03:23|| Front Page Top

#12 Yes - there's a man with his priorities straight! I do recall the kerfuffle these comments caused - and his stalwart stance behind them. That's a man I could contribute to and vote for.

I mentioned what was reported as the emerging popularity of "nationalistic" (MNP?) parties or party? Is there any real popular gravity there?

Winterton's chances to rise to prominence within the Tories - any hope of that? Is Davies cut from that cloth?

Sorry to be so pesky. :-)

Thank you both!

Posted by Champ Angeger5024 2006-07-24 03:35|| 2006-07-24 03:35|| Front Page Top

#13 I suspect that Cameron will be somewhat less pro-US/more anti-Israel than Blair, and Gordon Brown quite a bit so.

Actually, Cameron could be even worse than that, given the recent inanities of his Shadow Foreign Secretary. Choosing Cameron over Davis was a very bad sign for the Tories.

Posted by JSU 2006-07-24 04:06|| 2006-07-24 04:06|| Front Page Top

#14 Another UKer here.

I will not and cannot vote for Blair v2 AKA Carmerwrong.

I will never consider voting for the stealth communist Brown.

Emigration? Where's nice? Singapore..?.

Posted by Bright Pebbles 2006-07-24 06:20|| 2006-07-24 06:20|| Front Page Top

#15 Oz. Ask phil_b.

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2006-07-24 07:04|| 2006-07-24 07:04|| Front Page Top

#16 Fred's guest house. You know you want to...

;-)

Posted by Seafarious">Seafarious 2006-07-24 07:42|| 2006-07-24 07:42|| Front Page Top

#17 Lots of creeping socialism here in Oz at the state level, but the good news is Howard is easily the most popular polly in Oz. If he runs (leads the Liberals) in the next election (next year) he's highly likely to win. Howard is seen as safe hands and a solid bloke. If we beat the poms in the Ashes (Howard is a big cricket fan as are many Australians) and the election is held soon after, he's got a lock.

Besides, the weather is much nicer here.

Posted by phil_b">phil_b 2006-07-24 08:07|| http://autonomousoperation.blogspot.com/]">[http://autonomousoperation.blogspot.com/] 2006-07-24 08:07|| Front Page Top

#18 I'd like to hear what our UK cousins have to say about who will replace him...

They have nothing to say. In UK the Prime Minuister can be replaced by pure internal party play without voters having any say on it. And BTW, unless things have changed since when Churchill was an MP a guy can be stomped in elctions but the Party decide he will go to Parlimant anyway (eg guy has lots of green or knows things about party leader) so a back-bencher will resign his mandate in his favour and the guy will go to Parlimant without any vote.

England has had freedom, habeas corpus and elections since weel before any other major nation but for democracy they have near zero. What they have is partitocracy.

Posted by JFM">JFM 2006-07-24 10:27|| 2006-07-24 10:27|| Front Page Top

#19 Oh so we can expect another term for Howard then phil_b hmm?

Just bowing to the inevitable here, I'm sure there will be a spirited showing, followed by a batting collapse, an 'incident' - of an undefined nature, a falling out with the captain, the captain being replaced, good natured 'banter' from the Ozzy bowlers that leads to GBH - again, target undefined, but by some miracle England will win the ashes, only to find the Ozzies had already sold the film rights to 'The murder down-under' so we graciously relinquish them.

;)

Posted by Tony (UK) 2006-07-24 14:06|| 2006-07-24 14:06|| Front Page Top

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