Hey Brits! (or Yanks) Who will the next PM be?

[Philosoraptor]

Will there be a blair backlash? Will he or she be better or worse? What's the mood there politically? Will he be a co-joined twin of dubya, or the anti-dubya?

[no_hypocrisy]

1. I nominate Glenda Jackson. She's no-nonsense and quite

articulate without sacrificing personality.

[Clark2008]

2. I hate being called a Yank.

I'm a Southerner, thank you.

:evilgrin:

[Prophet 451]

3. The smart money's on Gordon Brown.

Brown is currently the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance minister would be another way to put it). He's a political moderate, very conservative fiscally, superb Chancellor. Far less messianic tendancies than Blair, far less arrogant and far less likely to march in lockstep with Bush. Brown would probably take the US-British relationship on a case-by-case basis, maybe we can find common ground on this issue but we disagree on that one.

That said, I doubt Brown's ability to retain the office in the next election. To succeed in politics at this level, you need either likeability or gravitas and Brown has neither one. Blair has likeability, W used to have likeability (back when his public addresses were very carefully controlled and he wasn't actually saying anything of substance). Thatcher had gravitas (roughly, an air of authority). Bush Sr. could occasionally manage gravitas, Churchill had it in spades. A very rare few, such as Clinton, FDR or Carter on a good day, could do both. Brown can do neither one whereas Cameron (the current Tory leader) can do likeable and Menzies Campbell (the current Liberal leader) can do gravitas.

The political mood here is generally favourable to Labour as a party but violently hostile to Blair as leader of that party. It was widely said that Labour won the last election despite Blair, not because of him. You have to remember that there's a much stronger tie between local people and their candidate here, I've personally conversed and corresponded (by post or email) with our local candidate dozens of times. So while there may well be a backlash against Blair's most strident supporters (Prescott for example), the majority will probably survive and possibly thrive without him.

One thing teh country has said loud and clear is that we will no longer tolerate a PM who places the interests of Washington above the interests of England or even the world. Numerous polls have shown teh British people loathe Bush with a passion. Many regard him as the greatest threat to world peace, above the lunatic in North Korea and Iran's nuclear aims (and remember, this is a country where statistically, we read four times as much as Americans on average and discuss politics constantly). His in-your-face religiousness is suspicious to many Britons (here, religion is largely between yourself and your god and the only people expressing religious views as extreme as Bush's in recent history have been the terrorists in Northern Ireland) as is his tendancy to play fast and loose with the law. We also think his constant bashing of the UN is dodgy.

Most of all, Bush is the thing Brits hate most in the world. We've proved that we can tolerate the corrupt, the angelic, the sanctimonius, womanisers, openly gay MP's and so on but the one thing the Brits cannot and will not tolerate is a hypocrite and Bush and his administration appear to us to be exactly that.

[Philosoraptor]

5. that's encouraging

we can feel the hatred of bush over here too, and we feel it ourselves, just from observing the man on the street.

I liked Tony when Clinton was pres., but when the ape leaped in I lost all respect for him. Then he just kept agreeing and appeasing the ape, political suicide.

[Prophet 451]

6. Most Brits had the same view

When Blair was marching in lockstep with Clinton, we didn't mind too much because Bill's centreist, vaguely left-leaning politics were roughly the same as the average Brit's politics. When Blair started appeasing the terrorist currently in teh Whitehouse, most of the public lost much respect for him and when he followed teh ape into the detested nightmare in Iraq, the rest went too.

[helderheid]

4. *

He'll figure out some way to do it. (of course I'm kidding)