for my UK voting friends
May. 6th, 2010 02:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
winterbadgerA poll for those of you able to vote in today's general election.
[Poll #1561058]
You can enlarge on "other" comments in comments. I'd also be interested to hear what outcomes people are hoping for (as distinct from which candidate they are actually voting for) and what outcome they think is actually going to come about.
[Poll #1561058]
You can enlarge on "other" comments in comments. I'd also be interested to hear what outcomes people are hoping for (as distinct from which candidate they are actually voting for) and what outcome they think is actually going to come about.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-05-06 06:32 pm (UTC)Cameron's Conservatives worry me, as does his concept of Big Society. It's High Thatcherism by the back door, but if people voting Conservative only really remember John Major, they will have no idea what Thatcherite policies really looked like. It's going to be bloody tough.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-06 06:49 pm (UTC)One commentator I heard on the radio here this morning was suggesting that Cameron's attempt to soften the Tories by embracing gay rights &c. was something that the US conservatives might want to adopt to broaden their appeal. That struck me as misunderstanding the difference between the two countries and the two parties. The Tories, it seems to me, are following Labour's lead of the past 15 years by trying to win votes by moving towards the middle, at least rhetorically. While the last 30 years of Republican legislative dominance are a vindication of their party's move to the extremes, rejecting of compromise and moderation, which only seems to be intensifying with the rise of the Tea Party movement.
Another journalist demonstrated equally poor comprehension by suggesting that the rise in support of the Liberal Democrats was a parallel to the Tea Party movement, totally missing the dynamic of both groups (LDP = liberal, Europhilic, international; Tea Party = deeply conservative, anti-intellectual, xenophobic). It was a striking example of politics fail, as the young people say.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-06 07:20 pm (UTC)Wow, a spectacular misreading if ever I saw one ...
The Tories, it seems to me, are following Labour's lead of the past 15 years by trying to win votes by moving towards the middle, at least rhetorically.
I think you're right, though what is striking is that Cameron is having a hard time taking his people with him on things like gay rights, etc. I've started to lose count of the number of Conservative candidates who've written or said jaw-droppingly awful things about homosexuals and other Tory-vote targetted groups in recent weeks. There have been some spectacular own goals, and it really is going to take more than having a few openly gay ministers around the place.
Clegg has also tried to position his party towards the right of the middle ground, to pick off the undecided Daily Mail vote, I think (risky, very risky); at least, I assume this is why he has what seem to me to be quite startling judders to the right before suddenly remembering the Libs are mostly a centre left party. He's certainly a lot further right on economic issues than I am, though we're still socially quite left. We shall, as they say, see ...
I agree with you that people who vote for the Conservatives thinking "Anything must be better than Labour! and this chap doesn't sound too bad.." are going to get a nasty surprise.
They have no idea what is going to hit them, for the most part. The only comfort is that he will probably be out on his ear again at the next election.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-06 07:33 pm (UTC)One of the few accurate comments in this press discussion I heard was someone pointing out that this is one of the differences between the UK system and the US; US party leaders have a good bit more control of the message and are better at whipping in dissident candidates who start straying. Which is ironic, as it used to be the other way around, at least in my memory.
One American reporter was gushing about party manifestoes and how different they were to the US party platforms that no one reads and candidates don't really feel obliged to support. British voters, he assured us, read manifestoes avidly, cover to cover, and cared about party positions much more than in the US. I wondered how good a read he had on either country. IME, US voters don't care much about platforms, but they jolly well do care where candidates stand on important issues.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-06 07:39 pm (UTC)I think so, but a lot of MPs have become unhappy at the power of the whips.
Further down the electoral food chain, in the councils, it's harder to keep councillors and candidates toeing the line, so it tends to be rather easier to discover just what kinds of nutters are out there (and it's not confined to the Conservatives).
British voters, he assured us, read manifestoes avidly, cover to cover, and cared about party positions much more than in the US.
Er, yeah, right ... though I think people have suddenly become a lot more aware of what parties stand for since the leaders' debates. But honestly, I've never even read a Lib Dem manifesto all the way through, and I'm actually interested.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-06 09:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-07 05:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-07 08:33 pm (UTC)