What Were British Voters Thinking?

[SoDesuKa]

What were British voters thinking when they kept Tony Blair in office? They knew he was a lying son of a bitch, but they voted for him anyhow. Did they think he could protect them from Al Qaeda? He couldn't protect them from the IRA!

Spanish voters saw what was coming and threw Aznar out of office. That was the right thing to do. What was wrong with the British that they couldn't see the same thing? Once you go down that road, there's no stopping. Just blood, and more blood.

[cynatnite]

1. Brits asked the same thing of the US voters when bush stayed in office n/t

[dad]

2. Blair is from the "liberal" party over there

so it was a choice btwn him and a real right winger. An analogy for us would be if the Dems nominated Lieberman vs Bush.

[mrfrapp]

9. Liberal

The Labour Party is in no way a "Liberal" party. The "real right winger" in the UK is Blair. Michael Howard's more openly racist and hostile to minorities but Blair is right wing in everything else.

It stinks.

[BooScout]

12. No he's not...Blair's a Socialist.....

...and a piss poor one at that.

[muriel_volestrangler]

16. Blair practically chokes on the word 'socialist'

at a push, you could call him a social democrat, but he's far more interested in market-based politics than most people who describe themselves like that. His 'third way' push was meant to keep him separate from both socialism and conservatism. He doesn't think of himself as a 'liberal' either - he made a speech saying the "60s liberal consensus" was over.

[BooScout]

17. Thus my comment.......

...that he was a "piss poor socialist" . He's head of the Labour Party which used to be a nice Socialist party until Blair decided to take a right turn to take it to the center. Maybe I should just call him "Maggie in a Skirt"? :9

[muriel_volestrangler]

19. Fair enough

I thought you meant that he was trying to be a socialist, but failing (like Bush tries to be a war leader, but fails).

[rman]

18. Yeah, capitalists don't make for good socialists,

that explains quite a bit.

[Melodybe]

3. They didn't vote for him they voted for the labour party

It's different in the UK, voters vote for the party not the man.

Labour has been good to the Brits, the middle class is flourishing. However, they did loos many seats, even though they still remain in the majority. The other parties, the tories and the liberal democrats made gains in the house and Blair was to blame for those losses.

[ToeBot]

4. A Parliamentary system is not as straight forward as our elections.

To get rid of Blair would mean putting the Tories back in the majority.

edit, syntax

[BooScout]

13. No it wouldn't.....

The Labour party could put Gordon Brown up to replace Blair. There is no way in hell the Tories are going to win back the majority any time soon.

[On the Road]

5. Who Were They Going to Vote For -- The Tories?

They're just as bad on Iraq. Besides, in the British system you would not vote for Blair, but vote to reelect your local Labor Party member of Parliament. A lot of those MPs were against the war and went out on a limb to oppose Blair.

The only other alternative to Labor or the Tories was widely perceived as not ready for prime time. Parties like Respect (Geo Galloway's new party) are marginal even in a parlimentary system.

Despite all that, Labor still lost a stunning 66 seats.

One thing that might have helped Blair is that this is probably his last election. He's already named a successor.

[mcctatas]

6. Ummmm...

glass houses and all that (Remember the headline in the Sun "How can 40 million Americans be so stupid?).

[Anarcho-Socialist]

7. British election campaigns tend to be about domestic matters

The issues of healthcare, education, the economy, law & order came before the War in Iraq for most British voters. The Labour Party was seen as being the "best party for the job" for those 4 main issues and it was why they won. The War in Iraq did play a factor: voter swings from Labour to Lib Dems helped the Lib Dems in Labour/Lib Dem marginals and also helped to elect many Tories in Labour/Tory marginals.

[T_i_B]

8. The main argument I seemed to hear for voting Labour was...

..."Vote for us or it's the Tories".

I've been getting annoyed about this argument for some time as I feel it's rather flimsy to say the least but it does have a point. The main opposition in the UK are the Conservative party, who are even worse then New Labour! I for one was really turned off their election campaign, which relied on obsessive immigrant bashing and I suspect you lot would have been repulsed by their campaign too.

And whilst the Liberal Democrats may be acceptable for some, they are still a third party and as such are not going to win a majority in parliament any time soon.

However bad Blair may be, people don't really see much of an alternative, and now his majority has been cut back he is slightly more accountable then before.

[Taxloss]

10. I personally was thinking "I hope the Tories don't get in"

But then I was also thinking "my vote doesn't make a blind bit of difference", because it doesn't, I live in a Tory safe seat and that's not going to change. So I voted Independent For Peace.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

11. They didn't vote for Tony Blair.

They voted for Gordon Brown.

[BooScout]

14. They sure did........

....and I wish Tony the Twit would walk away so Mr Brown could take over.

[ikri]

15. I didn't vote for Blair

I voted for my local MP, Frank Cook who happens to be a Labour Party rebel.

You really need to pay attention to the choices that we had in the last election. Faced with a choice of three main parties, Labour, LibDem and Tory I chose Labour for a few reasons;

My local MP is damned good.
The economy under Labour has been pretty stable.
Public spending under Labour has increased and the NHS is slowly starting to recover after years of the Tory party.

Now look at the opposition;

The Tories. Scum. Right-wing fascist scum. Good if you earn a ton of money and own an estate in the country. They tend to screw everyone else.

The LibDems. Who knows. The party is made up of people from all over the political spectrum. Currently the party leadership is made up of people who tend to be slightly to the left of Blair and more in favor of civil liberties than some in the Labour party. However, a large portion of their supporters are to the right of Labour and if they, as a government, ever tried to appease this group the country would be far worse off.

All political parties in the UK suck, some however suck more than others.

[zanne]

20. How in the world do you get rid of Tony Blair?

In England, you vote for the party, not the candidate, right? Then how the hell do you ever get rid of anybody? Something here just doesn't make sense. It seems like Tony Blair is a dictator you can't get rid of. Why vote if you have no choice in the matter?

[T_i_B]

21. It works like this...

You vote for who you want as your local MP, and the party with the most MP's forms a government with the leader of that party in the house of commons becoming Prime Minister.

As Labour had a second landslide majority to defend they were pretty safe this time round, but with their majority now only 66 seats strong they may find things a lot more difficult in the next General election.

[julianer]

22. Part of the message given out by Labour

was vote Blair, get Brown, since Brown is reckoned to be more left wing than Blair and far more popular. They have said that Blair will not serve the full term and that there will be a new leadership election sometime in the next two years or so.

Brown will probably win and become the new PM.

Whether there will be any discernible difference remains to be seen. Of course Blair has a record of ratting on Brown, so there are no certainties.

[ikri]

23. Ironically

the Vote for Blair, get Brown was a Tory party campaign slogan early on.

They dropped it when Labour's poll numbers improved since people really liked the idea of Gordon Brown as PM.

The Tory party managed to produce the perfect campaign slogan for Labour.

[julianer]

28. That's right

Mind you it's not surprising that the Tories were completely out of touch with the public - they are still living back in the mid-Eighties.

Concerning misreading Brown's popularity, however, Labour were no different. Three months before the election Brown was replaced as election coordinator by the awful bliarite Alan Milburn. He was destined to take a back seat in the campaign.

Reality soon bit, though, and it became the Blair/Brown show with Gordon everywhere.

[ben_packard]

24. Think of it like the house

in which each congressperson is elected directly. The party with the most representatives would then control the house, with the majority leader becomming PM. Without an executive with a different agenda, it can make for more effective government, as the policies of the leader are by definition supported by the majority of the legislative branch. I'd rather we kept it the way it is than adopt the US system for that reason (though I beleive our head of state should also be the PM rather than Her Maj).

[zanne]

25. That explains it in terms I understand. Thanks. n/t

[ist rad]

26. As the old saying goes, "You should have seen the other guy".

[sadiesworld]

27. The lesser evil.

It's a global problem.