The Daily Kos has some interesting stuff on the British elections, coming up on Thursday. I am so into the Brits and their electoral process that I stayed up until 2:00 this morning watching C-Span's showing of last Thursday's special edition of the BBC program, Question Time. Prime Minister Tony Blair, Charles Kennedy, and Michael Howard, heads of the Labour, Liberal Democrat, and Conservative parties, respectively, made individual appearances in which they took questions from a rather rude and petulant crowd.
My read from across the pond: The British electorate loathe the War in Iraq, although opinion polls have shown it to be in about the fourteenth position of voters' concerns. It may have shot up higher this week with the revelation that Mr. Blair's attorney general, while ultimately judging that British participation in the war was legal, had stewed in the run-up to the war about getting more United Nations legitimization of military action.
If the British loathe the war, they only like Mr. Blair marginally more.
Because Howard and the conservatives supported the war and their positions on other issues appear so out of synch with the electorate, the Tories have been unable to mount a credible campaign to take control of the government.
Truth be told, most Britons seem to be sympathetic with Mr. Kennedy and the Liberal Dems, but appear to have concluded that because that party can't win, they won't "waste" their votes on them.
Mr. Blair's ace-in-the-hole is the strength of the British economy, deemed the handiwork of Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown.
The British elections are interesting to observe. The premises and assumptions from which British voters operate are in many ways, diametrically opposed to those operative among Americans.
A case may be made, for example, that US voters are fundamentally conservative. When Woodrow Wilson was elected president in 1912, he squeaked through because the Republicans were split between the party's standard bearer, President William Howard Taft and the former Republican president, Theodore Roosevelt, that year the nominee of the Progressive Party. Prior to that year, Republicans had held the White House for forty-four of the previous fifty-two years. Wilson held the office for eight years and was followed by twelve years of Republican government.
With the Great Depression, one of the great political operators of all time, the wily and often-underestimated Franklin Roosevelt took over, guiding the country through both the Depression and World War Two. FDR and his successor Harry Truman held the presidency for the Democrats a total of twenty years.
After that, a little partisan ping pong was played. Republican Dwight Eisenhower was president for eight years and John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson occupied the presidency for the Democrats for the next eight years.
Since then however, the Republicans have been basically ascendant Eight years of Nixon and Ford, twelve years of Reagan and Bush, interspersed with a total twelve years for Democrats Carter and Clinton, and capped by four-plus years for Mr. Bush.
Barring scandal or economic catastrophe, the Republicans are the party of choice here.
I think that the same thing can be said of Labour in Great Britain. Mr. Blair appears to be viewed by his countrymen as less than honest. But they like much of what his party has done and are ready to swallow the war they don't like.
So, unless polling set to be released tomorrow shows that the recent revelations about pre-war Labour cabinet deliberations have become a major turn-off to voters, it looks like Tony Blair, once Bill Clinton's bosom buddy and now, the wartime ally of George Bush, will be returned to 10 Downing Street.
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