Michael Portillo: Who will form Labour’s next opposition?

[AmericanErrorist]

Apathy will be the winner of the British general election on May 5. If Labour remains well ahead in the opinion polls, many will view the result as a foregone conclusion — as they did in 2001. The turnout will probably be even lower than last time. There is less enthusiasm for Labour and no zest for the other parties either.

Elections strike many as irrelevant. Voters regard national governments as too puny to influence global forces that shape our lives. Nation states appear powerless to stop wars, control oil prices or halt the flow of migrants. That feeling will be subliminally reinforced by the tsunami disaster. Yet our national government seems too remote to stop burglaries, improve the local school or clean the district hospital.

(snip)

Replacing David Blunkett with Charles Clarke offers no relief from Labour’s assault on our civil liberties. Our new home secretary keeps people locked up despite a House of Lords judgment that he has no right to do so.

When a crowd of Sikhs stormed a Birmingham theatre to stop a play, the government did not support the principle of free speech. Why would it when it plans to imprison people purportedly for inciting racial hatred, but with no guarantee that those who merely criticise or lampoon religion will not be jailed? This government’s abdication of responsibility in the Sikh case will encourage new challenges to our freedoms.

(snip)

The election is not about who wins but about how the opposition parties fare. The Tories talk of creating clear water between themselves and Labour, but it is the Liberal Democrats who have done it. They are the pro-civil liberties and anti-war party.

Kennedy has talked of a shadow cabinet meltdown at the polls. Certainly at least four of them are vulnerable if the Labour vote in those seats collapses and switches to the Lib Dems. Opinion polls suggest that the Tories will retain about the same number of seats as now and the Lib Dems might gain a small number. But tactical voting could confound predictions. The Lib Dems under Paddy Ashdown lost votes but hugely increased their representation in parliament. They can benefit from the first-past-the-post system which they claim to hate.

Kennedy’s party has no hope of overtaking the Tories this time; but if it gained seats while the Conservatives stagnated, the momentum gained would be the talking point of the next parliament. That would be especially true if the Tories’ score in 2005 gives them no serious chance of winning in 2009.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2088-1422559,00.html

[justinsb]

1. It's too bad

an anti-war , anti-bush candidate can't win in Britain, It would do the world good.

[autorank]

2. I'm at my DU quota for going off on Labour. Nevertheless...

The arrogance of Labour is stunning. When Iraq goes in the crapper for real and they have to high-tail it out (especially when the Shias get activated), then keeping Blair and sticking with Bush will be Labour's undoing. Bye bye Tony and a well deserved Bye bye to Labour, betrayers of the labor movement and the left. You deserve to fail for keeping Blair and you will get your just deserts.

[Joe Chi Minh]

3. I think it is a distinct possibility

that Kennedy can beat the Tories this time. The Guardian has said it may back the Libs. And who knows, maybe even the Mirror. Not that Kennedy would be up to the job in a normal election scenario, but in the land of the blind....

Incidentally, it was reported in the papers that Thatcher took a cake with her for Mark on a Christmas visit to South Africa! How about some nice cakes for Blackwell?

[non sociopath skin]

4. How times change ...

... having a New Year drink last night with an old political colleague who expressed himself appalled at how quickly people have forgotten just how bad Thatcher was. And here we are on DU discussing seriously the views of a right-wing Conservative so dreadful and so loathed by the left that the watchword of the Tory defeat was called "Were you up for Portillo?"

My views on Blair have been well-aired but nothing will be achieved by substituting him with either Howard (another Thatcherite bete noir) or Kennedy, both of whose parties are well to the right even of New Labour. And, at the expense of repeating myself, let us not forget that the LibDems were anti-war until the Iraq war started, then pro-war, then anti-war again when it went bad. Hypocrisy and opportunism are, in my book, no lesser sins than belligerence and imperialism.

The Skin.

[fedsron2us]

5. Even the Tories do not think Howard can win.

They are just hoping to limit the damage and reduce the Labour majority. The Lib Dems may increase their number of MPs but I am pretty sure that they are near to their maximum representation. The problem with UK politics is that the system offers the public very little in the way of choice. Having spent years working in and around the UK government system I can assure you that Blair's political agenda is not that different from that of Mrs Thatcher. He has smoothed off some of her hard edges and Chancellor Brown's tax policy is a more generous to the poor but the thrust of governement is basically the same as under the Tories. Big business rules the agenda and all policies must be crafted to meet the needs of the multinational corporations. The problem for all UK politicians is that the US brand of capitalism, which is the ideological template for our rulers, has been torpedoed below the waterline by the Chinese and is sinking fast. It appears that the PNAC agenda for a new world order as envisaged at the time of the invasion of Iraq will not come to pass because the Americans can not afford it militarily or economically. As a consequence British politicians are going to find themselves in a situation where their main ally is in increasing difficulty. Add in the fiscal impact of declining oil revenues from the North Sea and UK PLC may be in for some troubled times.

[Englander]

6. I think that Bliar is now in the Late-Thatcher Period,circa early'90...

everything he does is motivated by the arguement with his Chancellor,his legacy will be Iraq,and it would be better for all concerned if he were to have an unscheduled appointment with a passing double-decker.....

As for Polly,I'd imagine that he's no longer on Mrs T's xmas-card list,as he has renounced his former evil self, & appears on the BBC...with Diane Abbott...!!

[non sociopath skin]

7. Whether El Portillo still gets a crissy card from Mad Maggie or not ...

... he's still a mean and nasty piece of work and I would not trust him as far as I could throw him.

The Skin

[Donald Ian Rankin]

11. He's a very good speaker, though

I have seldom been more relieved than when he lost out to Clarke and Duncan Smith in the Tory leadership squabble.

[T_i_B]

8. I don't think people have forgotten Thatcher

If they had, then the Tories might stand a chance in the North of England for instance, but her legacy still dominates British politics. Even today, you find an awful lot of people who still define themselves politically by their attitude to Thatcher.

As it is here in Essex people did well under Thatcher and she is still fairly well thought of, but up in Sheffield for instance the Tories remain loathed for what they did to the local industry and cannot win there for love nor money.

[non sociopath skin]

9. Would that it were so, Thanx...

Here in the North East where industry was slaughtered by the Thatcherite agenda, rarely a day goes by without a conversation of the "Labour-Tory? No difference," or "that Blair is worse than Thatcher ever was" variety. And, particularly among the young, the Tories are having quite a renaissance, remarkably enough because they're seen as being more critical of Bush and the Iraq War. And outside Liverpool, Boris is increasingly being smiled at as "one of the lads."

As I've reflected before, these are strange days and times we live in ...

The Skin

[eric144]

10. Murdoch

Whoever Mr Murdoch decides to put up against his little rent boy Tony will be the next opposition.

It's obvious the Tories have ignored their good players and put up unelectable idiots like Hague, Duncan Smith and now Michael 'the far too slimey to be Prime Minister' Howard.

I take the view that something underhand has taken place, similar to what happened when the tories elected a woman (!!!) , the first female psychopath in British politics - Margaret Thatcher.

Conspiracy theory - yes.

[gomezcat]

12. My 2 pennies..

I get the sense that the Lib Dems may do better this time around. People have really have enough of all of the spin and vacuous policies. I work as a social worker and the job consists mostly of covering your back, manipulating stats and ticking boxes, for which Blair's government must take a large part of the blame. Howard, if anything, will decrease the Tories' vote as he reminds many people just how bad Thatcher's government was.
I hate to say this, but the other big winners in this election may well be UKIP and the BNP. OK, they may not get the seats but their presence is likely to push their agenda even more into mainstream politics.

[sweetheart]

13. Nobody is true to their name anymore

Blair is a tory in the old sense, royalist, and defending his way
as the divine right of kings.
Brown is labour
Kennedy is a conservative
Howard is an opportunist radical neoliberal

I'm confused, for all the bull spouted by the home office about the
english language being important. Then the labour party should
formally change its name to tory-lite and let someone else do the job.

Whatever party puts power back to the local councils and leaves the
british people to make their own decisions would be he wiser one,
yet it is indeed confusing who are the covert authoritarians and
who are sincere about putting such concerns to the local people.

Why not let local councils set pub opening times? Why not let local
councils make planning decisions on whether to build 40,000 new homes
or hundreds of windmills... The presumption that westminster is wiser
is root to the problem. Perhaps its the very opposite, and by the
time they're in belgravia, they've forgotten that the place sits on
britain like a cancer taking its resources, squandering them on wars
whilst failing to give people the very political power that "labour"
would be thought to be empowering.

Brown's covert tax adgenda has been impressivly redistributative, and
i can only consider that he, by uplifting the poorest through policy
is the only person in government dedicated to labour.

[Taxloss]

14. Redgrave's "Peace & Progress" (or whatever) party could be decisive.

It plans to field few candidates of its own, and chiefly endorse anti-war candidates who stand against prowarriors or all stripes. That will mean Lib Dems in many cases.

A very sensible strategy, in my opinion, and not tied to the Respect menagerie.

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. You think so?

I hadn't even heard of it; there's not a single mention of it in Google's News from the past month. Stealth political parties don't stand much of a chance.

[Taxloss]

16. Check out this story:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1352953,00.html

Admittedly, that was the last heard of them really, but we shall see come the election. I thought it was a sound idea.