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May. 9th, 2010 06:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
winterbadgerOK, I take it back.
I told the Globetrotter the other evening that I thought that even if Labour managed to get the LDP and some of the smaller parties into a coalition, they couldn't make it up to a majority.
I *think* that Labour + LDP + SDLP + SNP & Plaid Cymru would just barely squeak over the threshold. In the unlikely event they could all come together.
But I think that will be the only way that the LDP gets serious electoral reform; I think Clegg is having to decide at this point if accomplishing some of their other goals and a limited, Tory-flavoured version of ER is worth getting into bed with the Devil.
Frankly, I hope he doesn't. I think a Conservative government would be disastrous for the country right now.
On the other hand, whoever takes the country through the next couple of years will be about as popular as Harold Wilson. Maybe it's better to let the Conservatives have the poisoned chalice...
I told the Globetrotter the other evening that I thought that even if Labour managed to get the LDP and some of the smaller parties into a coalition, they couldn't make it up to a majority.
I *think* that Labour + LDP + SDLP + SNP & Plaid Cymru would just barely squeak over the threshold. In the unlikely event they could all come together.
But I think that will be the only way that the LDP gets serious electoral reform; I think Clegg is having to decide at this point if accomplishing some of their other goals and a limited, Tory-flavoured version of ER is worth getting into bed with the Devil.
Frankly, I hope he doesn't. I think a Conservative government would be disastrous for the country right now.
On the other hand, whoever takes the country through the next couple of years will be about as popular as Harold Wilson. Maybe it's better to let the Conservatives have the poisoned chalice...
no subject
Date: 2010-05-10 12:05 pm (UTC)Yes, and probably unfairly--I think that was just a very difficult time in the UK--the heating up of the Troubles, the UK's struggles with race relations, the second round of decolonization, and on top of it all the bad economy as the UK began to see its slide, from being a strong manufacturing economy to...not, begin.
That period, especially the mid-to-late 70s, was when I first started learning about British politics; the library of the school where my dad taught had a subscription to Punch, which in those days was still at its glorious freewheeling, cynical, clever, sharp-eyed best.