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So, how have the rest of you seen the UK election campaign?

lord henry strikes back

09:24 / 05.05.05

I have never lived outside of the UK and so I'm wondering about coverage of our politics abroad. Over here, the 2004 US election was reported on daily in both the newspapers and on TV. French and German elections also tend to get column inches/air time at least once a week. On the flip side I don't remember any real coverage of a Canadian or Japaese election outside of the announcement of the winner.

How has this election been covered internationally? What appear to be the big issues? Who is going to win? And why?

13:01 / 05.05.05

I haven't seen much on TV or newspapers, but I listen to public radio every day and they've been covering the UK elections. Regular programming includes a BBC World News Report every morning, and the regular news updates include mention of them as well.

What I've gathered is that British public opinion is overwhelmingly against Blair's handling of Iraq and his ties to Bush, but that's going to be trumped by concerns about the economy, NHS, and immigration, and Labor/Blair's going to win the election. There's also some sense conveyed to us that people aren't exactly in love with the Labor party but it's the least of three or so evils.

On the day of the Goldsmith leak, NPR played a show where BBC reporters went to - I believe it was Glasgow - and asked people on the street if they trusted Blair, and if they were going to vote for Labor. The answers were consistently No on the former, Yes on the latter. The reporter kept prompting, "But what about the Scottish National Party?" but no one there liked the SNP much.

20:27 / 05.05.05

Simon Schama did a lengthy piece in G2 today comparing this little local political kerfuffle with the barnstorming jamborees he's more used to in the US.

One thing he picked up on was the happy and absolute absence of Jehovah from the Brit Poll, except for Charlie Kennedy taking the Lord's name in vain in response to a journalist's question. He's a wee scamp, right enough.

12:24 / 06.05.05

Last night I saw a quick report on the UK election on regular TV network news (11pm show). They said Blair won an "unprecedented third term" but that his party lost some seats in Parliament. While technically correct, this is grossly misleading. To anyone who doesn't know how UK elections work (which is most Americans), I think that clearly implies that British voters liked Blair and voted (directly) for him, but that they don't like the Labor party quite so much. By extension it implies they approved of the Iraq war and Blair-Bush partnership, but like us weren't too into the more liberal party this year, which is far from true, no?

On NPR today I heard a soundbite of Blair saying he could be bold about his agenda this term because now "we have a mandate," which, of course, is the exact choice of words that Bush used after his reelection. What's curious is that Bush talked about his mandate because he wasn't really elected the first time around, or at least we all assumed that was the implication. But Blair's sort of using it in almost the opposite situation, where Labor actually won by a smaller margin this time around - so it kind of comes off as just parroting Bush in a weird, nonsensical way.

18:59 / 06.05.05

And it's that parroting or the percieved parroting by neocons and Bush supporters that I don't understand. Can someone break it down for me? How exactly did Blair lose? And is his role of prime minister under threat now or soon to be?

Tryphena Absent

20:25 / 06.05.05

Basically the UK is divided up into 646 seats each represented by one MP. The Labour party lost 47 of the seats that they held last time, they now have 355 in the entire country rather than erm... 402 (is that right?). Quite a lot of the percentages in individual constituencies that have Labour MPs also swung away from the party so that a higher proportion of people voted against Labour and for the Lib Dems, Tories or other party/person, even if the seat went to Labour. This puts Labour in a position of less power, votes in parliament are less likely to go there way, especially those with a big rebel potential (like the vote to go to war, Foundation Hospitals etc.). Blair lost because he has less ability to control parliamentary decisions now.

In addition this is his third term as Prime Minister, which is always more precarious. Margaret Thatcher didn't complete her third term, a lot of people expect him to leave about halfway through and hand the role over to someone else. This is plausible because we elect the party and not the Prime Minister- the party elects its leader (democratically in the case of all three main parties).

21:47 / 06.05.05

Well, the parties elect their leaders in a roughly democratic way - case in point is the tory party- their leader has announced his intention to stand down as leader of his party pending a reviusion of the rules regarding the election of Conservative party leaders...

The last lot of rules regarding Conservative leadership battles were draw up in 1997 in the wake of a crushing defeat. Before 1997 it was the parlimentary party (Tory MPs) that chose their leaders. The idea of the rule change was to give greater input to ordinary grass-roots Conservative party members. Unfortunately, grass-roots Tories tend to ancient, rabidly right-wing and out of touch with reality - the leadership candidates they chose were unelectable, in that only people who were ancient, rabidly right-wing and out of touch with reality would vote for them or the party they reprisented.

So, in order to give their party a leader that might have any appeal to the wider electorate the Conservative party are actually planning to limit the amount of input, the level of democracy if you will, of their party's own selection process...

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

22:36 / 06.05.05

I haven't had a lot of time to listen to Air America or NPR, but the right wing spin is that the British People are firmly behind Blair because of his support for the US. The memo that was released detailing that Bush decided to invade Iraq in the summer of 2002 is being massively downplayed, with most of the usual suspects saying that "Of course, everyone in the US already knew this, this is not a story."

What little I heard on Air America between appointments was that Blair won by a smaller minority, and is an example of "He's horrible, but the other guys are worse."

11:58 / 07.05.05

yep, Blair's majority has been slashed from a three figure majority in his first two terms to 66... which is still a sizable majority and larger than that of maggie Thatcher in her third term.

The labour party is still pretty popular - its the Labour party leader who's autocratic 'presidential' style that has become deeply unpopular...

It's also important to note that the Labour party is not all behind Blair who many charge with being unfaithful to the party's roots - there are about 36 hard-core Labour rebels in the Parlimentary Labour party and if they disagreed with any piece of Blairite legislation they could easily vote against it and, with a reduced majority, stand a good chance of preventing it being passed...

Now unable to force his policy's through by strength of will we are more likely to see a return to some form of consensus politics that is likely to bring better scrutiny to legislation and bring about better laws and better governance as a result...

12:47 / 07.05.05

And yes, the is widespread distaste for both Blair and Howard. Kennedy is well liked but is not yet in a position to sweep into power (although the last three successive elections have increased both the Lib-dems share of the vote and their number of seats overall - they are now better placed to make further in-roads against the other parties)

The man that many want to see lead the country is Gordon Brown. And since both Howard and Blair have said they plan to stand down before the next election Brown is looking increasingly likely to become the next PM... but Blair has seemed less than willing in the past to make Brown his overt political heir... will he hinder or help his comrade who undoubtedly came to Blair's rescue during the current campaign?

We shall have to see...