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British PoliticsWhy is it, though i'm British, i found Obama's presidency ten times more important and interesting than anything that's happened in England politically in the last 15 years?
Also what are your views on the 3 major parties and who would you want to see win power?
...we all know lib dems will never win though...
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There are 3 major parties, those being Labour, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats and well Gordon Brown is in power with the Labour party but it seems the Conservatives under David Cameron will be taking over soon.
Simply Gordon Brown has done well in the financial crisis but hasn't done anything major apart from that. The issue i feel is that the government is so detached with the british public that they're doin' nothing right for anyone who isn't upper class. Also the fact that, although we have an alliance, it seems America can say jump and Britain like a lap dog will do it. That's not a dig at Americans but rather a dig at how cowardly the British government is.
Hopefully some other brits will join in an' describe the situation a little better, but hopefully that gives a bit of an insight?
If you really need to know more, there is a long but descriptive explanation on Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_the_U
Although you live in america, you must be pretty observant...
Aye Labour and the Tories (conservatives nickname) both ruin Lib Dems chances but you have to realise, Lib Dems are really the: "i can't be asked to vote for a better party so lib dems will have to do"
Strange thing is, i know everyone actually likes the Liberal Democrats...they just seem not to want to vote for them...maybe they see it as wasting a vote since they never win?
You think that's a problem in a parliamentary system, you ain't seen nothin' yet. At least if they get a few seats they can maybe become part of a coalition govt or something. Just saying there's at least a chance. This side of the pond, if you don't win the whole shebang, you're effectively powerless, which has sort of created a self-perpetuating 2-party system.
Unfortunately the only other known parties in Britain are the green party who i think are into stopping global warming and the BNP who are racists.
I didn't say it was always a good thing. Also, Godwin's law.
But going back to your original point, why would you say the gov't has been so inactive, in your opinion.
I mean, a guy who is involved in a gang, they've made groups to help him get out of it and to get a proper education and to be law abiding etc etc, but they have nothing for teenagers who aren't affiliated with gang culture or that efficiently protects british citizens. Though the police are quite active nowadays, they're something called community support officers, who dress as policemen and work with them but have no powers and in fact have less rights than normal citizens in the way that anyone can do a "citizens arrest", apart from community support, who aren't allowed to psychically touch anyone.
Whether that is the mayor or the prime minister, i can't tell but that's just one point.
There is also a campaign to get people to use public transport, yet they're raising the fares. They want to stop unemployment yet they keep letting immigrants in who make it harder for british citizens to get jobs due to the low amount of pay the immigrants will work for. They want to cut down on global warming yet they expand our biggest airport.
Frankly it just seems Britain is kicking itself in the teeth
Every General Election people start talking about the Lib Dems chances to get into the government in some way.
Every General Election, they fail to do so.
Well said!
Lib Dems:
The Ultimate Tease.
Lib Dems:
You don't even need to know our policies!
The strategy of the lib dems isn't soley to win the top spot. With a parlimentary system you can influence policy even as a minority. It's not a presidential election where only one person gets through. They also do really well at the local council level, much more of a grass roots way of thinking.
Interestingly this is the problem third parties in US politics seem to have, where all they seem to want is the presidency as far as I can see (Nader, Perot) instead of trying to build a party from the bottom up. It's more about the individual personalities, or maybe thats all that get picked up by the press. Even in the senate and house there seems to be no third partys represented (unless i'm reading wiki wrong)
When was the last time the Lib Dems really influenced something in Parliament?
Local councils are nice, but if you want to call yourself a national party you have to compete on that level at some point.
As far as the US goes - I think there are a few independents in Congress, but nothing you could really call a "third party". And you may be right about there not being much grass-roots efforts, although I do think that the Green Party has a bit of influence in the San Francisco Bay area (but that's such a cultural shift from the rest of America it's hard to really extrapolate that into anything broader).
I think part of it is that, as my political science professor said, if ice cream flavors are the range of ideologies, America has vanilla on the one hand, and French vanilla on the other. Despite all appearances, or at least prior to the last several years anyway, there really hasn't been *that* much of a difference between Republican and Democratic views. They're just arguing over the finer points of liberal capitalist republican democracy. Any third party is therefore a fringe view, and therefore almost by definition doesn't have much support. This would be in contrast to the Liberal Democrats, who, correct me if I'm wrong, are sort of centralists, and thus can attract a wider following.
I cant name any specifics as I left the country for six years ago. I just always thought of that being more their role.
Also "if you want to call yourself a national party" isn't that just petty labels. They do the job they do.
No, that's not just petty labels. That's what the Lib Dems, themselves, aspire to be. They want to be a party of national scope and influence. If that's the case, then a few local councils simply aren't good enough.
62 Parlimentary seats (9.6%), and majority control of 31 councils out of 137. Define "good enough" because as far as i can see that is national scope and influence.
20%
With 20% you have a serious chance of the two majority parties splitting down the middle which means you will have the deciding vote and the chips in play to push for a coalition government.
Everyone who knows anything about the British Parliament knows that 62 seats gets you a good view of the real influential players in government. Nothing more.
Well, in '05 they actually won 22.1% of the vote. They have twice beaten Labour in council elections. In many seats held by Conservatives, Lib Dems are actually the second party. Just no-one realises it.
I've spoken to people in constituencies where the Lib Dems are within reach of the incumbent and Labour are a distant third, but they still blame Lib Dem voters for letting the Tories in.
All of which is behind their next major campaign - electoral reform. Labour on the ropes might just grant it to them.
I'll probably do a better roundup later.
1) Labour.
You don't have to go back too far to find a true socialist party under this name. It is still pretty common to find ex-communists still serving in government including he-of-the-eyebrows, the current holder of the purse, Alistair Darling, an ex-Marxist/Trotskyist (same as at least one other cabinet member, although Mandelson actually left one group to join the mainstream communists - like Alan Johnson - when they became too Trotskyist for him). Some of the New Labour generation are the offspring of the old radicals, like Hilary Benn (Tony Benn's son, although not himself a 'Bennite') and the Miliband brothers (sons of Marxist theorist Ralph Miliband). To become a Labour party candidate usually meant being a trades unionists or having a similar working class background along the lines of John Prescott. Some came up through the NUS (National Union of Students), but they were often regarded with suspicion by the other Trades Unionists, even if being pretty successful in many cases.
In 1979 the Winter of Discontent showed that Labour wasn't really all that good at handling the unions anymore. They got absolutely annihilated and Thatcher came to power. During the next few years the unions lost more or less all of their power. They had been built on miners and the coal industry. North Sea Oil put an end to that, and Thatcher, using powers supported after the '79 strikes, was able to break the backs of the unions trying to support coal. That absolutely hammered Labours main support base and made their recovery much harder.
To try to build a new base, Labour was moved progressively more right. This came to a head when Blair took control and restated their purpose as a socialist party to a 'Democratic Socialist' one, then started pulling together a coalition of millionaire supporters. He was able to harness a lot of the new wealth created in the 80's and early 90's, mostly focused in London and a few other economic centres, while still retaining the (reduced) support of the unions and the North where the Tories had never made inroads. They built up a massive PR and image campaign and started taking modern marketing practices to heart. They then hit the Tories over corruption charges. New Labour swept in in a landslide.
I could probably spend a month talking about Blair, but suffice it to say a lot of people, including Old Labour supporters, are not happy with the direction of the party under his vision. There are still a lot of grassroots movements who still support the Labour party, but disagree with most of the leadership. Similarly the party have been suffering from MP rebellions over a number of issues. It is pretty hard to guess which way they are going to jump next, but it looks like a lot of the Blair changes are now central to British politics.
2) Conservatives.
The Tories are a little harder to pin down ideologically. Not so much socially - they have been winning the same regions and populations for generations. Their local parties are traditionally social clubs, with the local MP pledging his salary to support their balls and dinners. Any MP who can't afford to give up his salary is unlikely to get the nod. This practice is less notable these days, but that doesn't mean there aren't still some places it happens. They have incredible strongholds in the South, notably the South East.
The Tories have had two notable recent evolutions and one major collapse in recent decades. The first was Thatcher, who was pretty clearly Reagan's twin in many political matters. That she had the ability and means to break the unions meant the Tories were in a position they hadn't been in since the war, and she pretty much took things as far as she could. Interestingly, the whole 'greed is good' theme lead to social outcomes and lifestyles she herself detested. She was very traditional, old money and good upbringing, and the influx of new money and vulgar rich into the country was pretty much a necessary evil in her eyes. Yuppies were her hated children.
The Thatcher years were pretty much killed by a slow bleed of scandals and infighting. She was too combative to keep control for long, and was ousted in 1990. John Major was pretty much her appointed replacement, and something of a nothing as far as PM's go. His premiership was largely defined by others actions and the term 'Sleaze'. Affairs, corruption and other scandals destroyed the Tories public image and opened the door for New Labour to wipe them out. (This is totally unfair and ignores his massive success in not being slaughtered in 1992 thanks to great street level campaigning and Neil Kinnock).
Since then the Conservatives have been trying to find a way back and really pretty much flopping. Now David Cameron is leading them more or less exactly along the same lines as New Labour - new image, emphasis on PR and tactics (only now using the web rather than 80's advertising) and jump as far towards the centre as you can to win over the disillusioned while still retaining your core.
3) Liberal Democrats.
The Lib Dems were formed from a merger between the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party. The Liberals were the old Whigs, combined with the Radicals and Peelites, giving them strong Classical Liberal credentials. The SDP were a Labour faction who opposed the far-left Marxist influence on the party and eventually abandoned it entirely to work with the Liberals. Prior to the Tories winning in 1979 the Liberals were working with Labour. During the wilderness years they suffered even more than Labour did, gradually merging the two parties together more and more until they finally created the Liberal Democrats in '88.
They largely started by focusing on individual constituencies where they stood a chance to the exclusion of others. Their early victories were in by-elections. Their first general election they only took 6% of the vote (behind the Greens even), but they pulled together their grassroot organising to manage 17.8% in 1992. They have maintained their reputation during by-elections to this day. A lot of quick called elections (especially by Labour) are to stop the Lib Dems from being able to mobilise in those areas. They also seem to be willing to fight dirty (people always assume Labour or Tories are in control, so the Lib Dems can flat out blame them for their mistakes and get away with it).
They offered people a viable alternative to the other two parties that actually damaged both parties quite nicely. In most 'safe' or traditional constituencies, the main threat isn't the other party being popular, but your party losing the public trust (as in 1979 and 1997). Except that a lot of people who back the Tories or Labour actively hate the other party, so switching is hard. The Lib Dems nicely soaked up those votes and quickly moved into #2 spots in a lot of Tory and Labour strongholds. This made those seats in some cases more secure (splitting the opposition vote) while in others offered a viable alternative to people who are ideologically opposed to the only other serious alternative. Notably Northern, urban Labour seats and councils.
One of the big problems that the Lib Dems have in getting more backing is an absolute lack of interest in policy among most of the population. I didn't feel I had to mention any policy positions during the Labour and Tory sections because they largely don't matter. It's the party history and maybe a couple of year specific events that decide elections. The Lib Dems can't really tap into that all that well. Even worse, local parties often act with a great deal of autonomy (giving them a lot more effectiveness in council and by-elections) which can result in policies that don't have much constancy across the nation. The louder the people at the top cry out about their policies, the worse a time the locals have defending them. This means that several political positions they could try to take as a party (environmental issues, civil liberties, etc) are all too often only targeted by single MP's (and Lib Dem MP's never have their party stated when they make the news). Often they are being muscled out of the media by Tories making the same noises louder.
There are some genuine splits in the party, as well as the general chaotic regional structuring. The two main wings are the dominant social liberals (welfare state, civil liberties, more public spending) and the market liberal/libertarian wing. The current leader, Nick Clegg, is more of a market liberal. This goes some way towards explaining why they have conceded ground to the Conservatives over environmental and civil issues, although from what I heard when he spoke at York he still gives at least lip service to most of the other wings views.
4) The rest.
The other parties that actually fight elections from time to time across the nation are;
- The Greens
- UKIP
- The BNP
- Respect (George Galloway's anti-war party)
Then there are some regional parties;
- Scottish National Party
- Plaid Cymru (Welsh Nationals, caucus with the SNP)
- Democratic Unionist Party
- Social Democratic and Labour Party
- Official Unionist Party (three Irish parties sitting in the House)
- Sinn Féin (Irish separatists who don't take their seats when they win)
There are plenty of other very minor parties, but they tend not to come onto the radar at all while all of the above have had some influence in recent years.
It's not exactly national influence, but controlling so many councils has given the Lib Dems some scope to push forwards their policies, particularly with regards to the environment. Lib Dem councils were among the first to properly implement kerbside recycling as well as other environmental schemes.
That's fair and I guess I just bring some personal biases into the equation.
I have always seen "local politics" as small potatoes.
I would note that their national environmentalist policies are a mess. Mostly because of the strength of their councils and their ability to push for what works in each region. Doesn't work so well when you try to work on those regional strengths for a national policy.
When I saw Clegg talk, he was strongly against nuclear power, and I challenged him on misrepresenting the science. I was then approached by a pro-nuclear lib dem councillor who wanted to push that view harder in the green wing of the party.
I'd agree with that. A lot of the councils in the West Country are Lib Dem or LIb Dem-Tory splits. Most of the councillors do recognise that regardless of what their main party is saying, the only way to keep supplying energy to the West Country are to build a third reactor at Hinkley Point, or to solve energy for the entire south west and parts of Wales by building the Severn tidal barrage, but this would utterly destroy a unique ecosystem. A lot of the local politicians realise that at one point we are going to need one or the other. Even if at a national level parties wish to distance themselves from the idea.