Hard News: Mr Brown
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Not getting a poll surge, of course, is Helen Clark, who actually slipped behind John Key in the preferred Prime Minister category of Sunday's TV3 poll.
And just to rain on my own parade, so what? It might actually mean something if New Zealand was the United States, France or any other country where the executive and legislative branches of government are elected separately, but it's not. But I don't think you could even get two poli sci geeks to agree on the extent to which party leadership influences voter behaviour.
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Bryan Gould was memorably described, by John O'Farrell I think:
"he didn't take the result of the Labour leadership election [losing to TB] personally. Apart, that is, from resigning his [parliamentary] seat and moving to New Zealand".I'm not sure if he could be considered to have had any more success at Waikato Uni. All universities basically seem to be such dysfunctional places, with senior management held in such contempt, that if he'd managed to exit with a 50% approval rating he'd be in the running for Pope. And Dalai Lama.
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Heck, yes. Look at the fun Hood is having at Oxford.
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The Guardian is also of the opinion that a challenge would be healthy -
A contest would also prevent the left, and especially some oppositional trade union leaders, from seeking to claim after a Brown coronation that they speak for a wider segment of party and union opinion than they actually do.
The likely challenger from the ranks of the Labour Left not only opposed the Iraq war but also had very fond views of the IRA's bombing campaigns -
It was the bombs and bullets and sacrifice made by the likes of Bobby Sands that brought Britain to the negotiating table.
Ah, the Left.
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Or possibly 'Ah, the Irish'?
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Gordy may be smart.......but .............
Craig Brown captures him perfectly
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/05/15/do1506.xml -
Didn't really have an appropriate place to put this, but:
Russell recently linked to a discussion on the practice of 'bus plunges' being used by newspaper editors to fill up small empty spaces when heading to print.
Well, all is not lost in this shallow digital age! Today's Herald has the headline 'Search for car crash victim after hill plunge' with a very short accompanying story.
Sweet.
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Mal, that would be the same Telegraph that ran a story along the lines of "10 Ways Blair has Ruined Britain".
I struggled with that one. Iraq maybe, but Britain...
They loath Labour with a lively "retired colonel" vigour, providing an amusing if slightly sepia tinged irrelevancy.
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Mal, that would be the same Telegraph that ran a story along the lines of "10 Ways Blair has Ruined Britain".
It's nice how those papers on the right hate Tony Blair for a commie Labour bastard, while those on the left despise him as the true heir of Thatcher. All the time I was in the UK he was a condescending bugger, but he won three elections (& i might have even voted Labour in one election)
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(sad bastard I know, but it meant I also got to see Geoffrey Howe give Margaret T. a totally unexpected mauling)
There's a terrific Julian Barnes essay ('Mrs Thatcher discovers it's a funny old world') on this whole episode.
One of a series of 'Letters from London' that he wrote for the New Yorker covering the period 1989 - 1996. I don't think they're available online, but I've seen several copies knocking around in second hand bookshops.
The book is crammed with good stuff (I reckon he's a much better journalist than he is a novelist) including the memorable observation from a disaffected Tory MP that the Poll Tax was 'only fair in the sense that the Black Death was fair'...
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You're right don, torygraph does have that retired tweed colonel flavour..along with pictures of posh tottie
But
1. At least its not the Daily Mail
2. If you only read the Guardian (for example), you only see the Guardian's view of the world..
3. Craig Brown is a comedy genius! -
They loath Labour with a lively "retired colonel" vigour, providing an amusing if slightly sepia tinged irrelevancy.
Don,do you actually bother reading The Telegraph? I do, and if you think it's some kind of cheering section for the Conservatives then I suspect Lady Thatcher, Messers Major, Hague, Duncan Smith, Howard and Cameron would have a dissenting view point.
And if it's 'sepia tinged irrelevancy' to think the centeralisation of power in Downing Street, a spreading culture of spin and politicisation of the civil service and erosion of civil liberties over the last decade is a bloody bad thing... then I'd say 'relevance' can go hang.
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It is odd, having been based in the UK since 1997 and seeing how the media, even the left leaning Gurdian, have slowley fallen out of love with New Labour. While they have achieved alot of fantastic things for Britain in the last decade, introducing the minimum wage, greater investement in public transport, affordable housing schemes for London based public sector workers... the list goes on..... the invasion of Iraq is always going to be the defining point of this govt's legacy and in a country with large muslim minority thats going to be hard legacy to forget about.
However as a card carrying member of the Labour Party I will be casting my vote for Gordon Brown as party leader. This is mostly based on the best post war economic growth and stability he has delivered for Britain for the past decade and is continuing to do so. Alot of the media over here are gearing up for a Tory victory at the next election. I'm not so sure. Speaking to several Tory party activists over the past year there are many who are not happy with the way Cameron has taken their party to the left. For example he was photogrpahed at a demonstration in London 2 weeks ago in favour of improved rights for illegal migrant workers???!!!?? Could you ever have seen Thatcher doing that?
But I do think the mood up here is changing. I think after 10 years of it voters have had a gutsful of spin politics no matter which party. -
You're right don, torygraph does have that retired tweed colonel flavour..along with pictures of posh tottie
I've not seen a hard copy for a couple of years, but used to think it was quaint the way it still ran "Court Pages".
And I don't think the paper ever fessed up for its several "exclusives" claiming WMD discoveries during the 2003 invasion.
It's a funny old rag...does it know they've lost India yet?
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A lot of the media over here are gearing up for a Tory victory at the next election. I'm not so sure.
Me neither. Assuming Labour and the Lib Dems are prepared to coalesce, it would be hard for the Tories to achieve a majority, wouldn't it? It always surprises me that this isn't much discussed in the British media.
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Remeber its still fpp and with only a 60 odd seat majority it would only take a reasonably small swing in some key marginals to tip the balance. The lib dems arent particularly popular right now either.On the positive side, if the tories did get in they'd have a rather small and maybe unworkable majority though I reckon, and you can never underesimate their ability to do themselves over if europe becomes a big issue again.
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Don,do you actually bother reading The Telegraph?
Well, in the last month, yes. I read all the British press. Head and shoulders above the rest was the Financial Times.
Craig, I am sure we can find criticism of anything "modern" in the Telegraph. It was their blind hatred of Labour not their support or otherwise of the Tories that I was commenting on.
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Craig, The Telegraph has and always will be the prefered broadsheet of the British establishment. Its key demographic reside in the true blue shires and its editorial content is stubbornly conservative and in tone as you would expect. Having said that its hard news content is second to none and I regulary read it for this reason alone. As a liberally minded individual I usually steer away from anything written by reactionaries like Simon Heffer and Boris Johnston as I would a novel written by Dame Barbara Cartland. On the other hand the excellent Craig Brown has been writing Spoof diaries for years in Private Eye and always has me in stiches. My point is that unlike here the British newspapers all have their niche audiences and eyebrows are raised when the editorial content starts to steer away from its usual ideological angle. The left leaning papers have started to fall out of love with labour in the same way that the tory press did with the conservatives in the mid 90's. Not wanting to ailienate theri readers editors can sniff the winds of change and point their products in the appropriate direction.
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From the Telegraph today pushing their terrifying barrow
We must attack Iran before it gets the bomb
even the Bush WhiteHouse has distanced itself somewhat from Bolton as an unsavoury wildcard....not the Telegraph though, who says, on the writer's blog: Bolton should not be dismissed as a 'neocon' nutcase
Even if it is just playing to it's demographic, I find it all rather unsettling
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Simon
Only last week Cheney was rattling his sabre in the direction of Iran from an aircraft carrier in the Gulf and he's hardly distanced from the WH is he? And Bolton would still be at the UN if it wasn't for the Dems election success last year. Bush's surge strategy was the least popular option amongst republicans but he was still influenced by the neocon cabal when he decided to go for it. In my view its not pushing the Barrow to report what key neocons are saying though it is however when your columnists and editorials pushing the same message. Your right it is V unsettling stuff though. -
Robert,
No, you misunderstand me, I'm not saying the Iran stance has changed....as recently as yesterday Bush had a bunch of sub-Falwell-ish Christian Conservatives down there at Penn Ave for a joint sabre ratting group hug (where sabres were rattled by all at China too), but there seems to have been a fairly obvious, and conscious, step back from Bolton, who himself has not been shy about attacking the White House for not letting the blood flow quickly enough.Cheney makes one ludicrous statement after another, but I guess he knows if you tell a lie often enough.......
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My guess is their just playing the Bad cop vs even worse cop game. Bolton may be bit pissed that his boss didn't fight hard enough to keep him at the UN but I doubt if he's as far removed from Bush's ear as we are lead to believe.
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also, my comment about the barrow came from the comments between Bolton's. In particular, I would have thought that this may have been relevant.
As noted in Steve Clement' Washington Note last month, Bolton's key claim to credibility now seems to come from the attention paid to his comments in British right of centre broadsheets.
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I felt that Bolton didn't turn out to be quite the OTT nutjob we'd been warned about during his time at the UN. Now, off the leash, he sounds just like the real deal.
A bit like a certain 'troubled' blog poster, who usually adopts a markedy measured tone here compared to his rants elsewhere.
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