2011 - Another Year for British Politics

Geez guys, don't everyone celebrate at once!

 

Best thing that could happen.

 

I can sleep soundly tonight knowing that when I left the Conservative Party 4 years ago I made the right decision. Cameron is a gutless amoral creep who has betrayed his party.

 

You Brits are very, very strange.

 

Interesting that Osbourne was made chancellor yet his two top advisers are Lib-Dem guys. This suggests to me that the Tories know that Osbourne probably is a bit rubbish at economics but as the face of the treasury he will get all the praise for whatever the Lib-Dems come up with.
So at the next election when the parties divide Cameron will say "look how great Osbourne was", when in fact it wasn't him.

Clegg & Cameron do seem to get along quite well, but then they are both Eaton boys.

 

Wow. What did he possibly do that makes you so angry?

 

I assume Karde is up in arms at Cameron forming a coalition with the Lib-Dems. However, given the number of seats the parties ended up with and the need for a stable government to tackle the economic crisis, I'm not entirely sure what else Cameron could have done?

 

He should have formed a minority government or a very least negotiated a much more limited deal.

His proposal in many areas are a disgrace. His plan to further vandalise the British constitution (to a far greater degree that Labour ever did)are abhorent to any conservative, his proposed hike in Capital gains tax is economiclly absurd and he has put a radical envioonmentalist in charge of Britain's future energy supplies.

Like I said I'm glad I left when I did. I know a lot of Tory activists who are disgusted. They didn't campaign for this.

 

If it hadn't been for UKIP, maybe the Conservatives would have secured an overall majority?

Its all very well cynically criticising and sniping from the side-lines, but I'm going to wish the coalition all the best and hope that it can secure the country's future as we face a terrible economic storm over the next year or so.

 

The Lib-Dems are the right guys to put in charge of the environment. They take it seriously and realise we need much greater change.
It's also good they got put in charge of Scotland. The Tories have pretty much no representation there so having an MP from their own party there might have been more difficult.

Not impressed by the proposal for 55% vote to get an election, it's a seedy plan by Cameron to keep himself in office as long as possible and should not be tolerated.

Also not impressed by the homophobic "equalities minister".

 

What is this silly 'deputy prime minister' bit?

 

Deputy Prime Minister is basically just a title a Prime Minister hands out to massage a certain politicians ego.

John Major gave Michael Heseltine the DPM title in the 90's. Tony Blair made John Prescott DPM. Now Cameron has given the title to Nick Clegg.

DPM's don't really do anything in particular, but the title does give them a certain amount of power and perhaps most importantly the ability to knock heads together when people aren't getting on.

They also stand in for the Prime Minister at PMQ's when the PM is away - So yes, at some point in the next few months we'll see Liberal Demorcrat leader Nick Clegg taking Prime Ministers Questions and the Tories will be obliged to cheer him on - Which will be fun to see considering they (along with Labour) always used to heckle him and shout him down.

As far as the 55% thing goes, I think thats a red herring really. If any government loses a confidence motion by 50% +1 the government would fall. The pressure and backlash would be so great in the media and public that the government would have no choice to call an election. Which really bodes the question why are Cameron and Clegg bothering to change it to 55%? I can only think that Clegg insisted on it to try and bring his party with him in coalition, but it seems a pointless change to me.

I'm going to make some predictions.

I think this coalition will last the full five years. Not only that, I think this represents a permanant realignment of politics. I think at the next election we'll see Nick Clegg and a certain number of other Lib-Dems standing on on a joint Conservative - Demorcrat ticket. Indeed by then we may even have a new party name for the coalition, say Liberal Conservatives or Conservative Demorcrats. I suspect the Conservative Demorcrats will win a very decent overall majority.

This will leave the leftie Lib-Dems to either join Labour or more likely to just go it alone. Irrelevence beakons for them as has happened so often to the Liberals in the past 90 years.

And what of the Tory right? I suspect they will mainly stay within the Conservative Demorcrats up to the next election, but beyond that I do wonder if they might break away and form a new right wing party?

So by 2015 we end up with Labour on the centre left. Conservative Demorcrats or Liberal Conservatives on the centre to centre right. Remaining Liberals an irrelevent rump or swollowed up by Labour. And possibly a right wing breakaway party from the traditional Conservative Party (possibly on a joint ticket with UKIP)

I believe we really have seen an historic few days in British politics resulting in some of the most pivitol changes to our political parties in a century And just think, it basically all happened by accident and was simply a result of a strange general election result that itself happened quite randomly.

 

Heres the full coalition agreement then.

I've got to say I can easily sign up to the vast majority of this. The stuff on civil liberties alone is a joy to behold after 13 years of Labours prying, bullying and snooping.

This document would probably have made a better Conservative manifesto than the dirge Letwin and Hilton managed to come up with.

 

Most of the stuff in there is pretty good.

The problem is all the stuff Cameron has had to drop and his proposed constitutional vandalism.

He will also pay a very heavy price for his actions of yesterday and today. He might think he has won a victory by destroying the 1922 Committee but a time will come when he needs his backbenchers and many of them will not forget what he has done.

 

Presumably the dropped stuff is ready and waiting for if/when the Conservatives secure an outright majority next time?

Which part of the proposed "consitutional vandalism" has annoyed you the most Krade?

Re the 1922. I agree it does seem like Cameron is being more provocative than he should. He is clearly trying to noble the party while he has the authority to do so. I guess he's attempting to ensure he doesn't go the way of Eden, Heath, Maggie and IDS (just off the top of my head) Though the more he provokes his party, the more he may be ensureing his party eventually destroys him....

 

Cameron is foolish to try and fix things so that he is protected if the coalition sinks. In effect he is trying to force the government to hold together no matter what.

In the end, if the coalition falls apart, there is very little that can be done to keep the government in power.

 

Fixed term parliaments and the absurd 55% idea.

 

So, what does everyone make of Chancellor Osbourne's spending cuts?

 

"2010 - A Big Year for British Politics" has become a bit of an understatement now, hasn't it?

The NYT suggested that Cameron was looking for much deeper defense cuts - maybe up to 20% instead of the 8% he got. That would have been an amazing achievement.

 

There are some tough cuts, particularly in welfare, Police and for the BBC and arts. Defense department will survive well enough.
I don't see the issue with cutting child benefit to high earners. Someone earning £50,000 a year is hardly going to need benefit.

An interesting article in the Independant about the cuts is a bit doom and gloom, but highlights the typical Conservative mentality of making the poor suffer and giving less trouble to the rich.

 

Again I think if he'd been able to cut more deeply into defense Cameron wouldn't have cut so deeply into everything else. It is fascinating to me that a country as socialized as Britain could actually get away with these kinds of spending cuts when the U.S., despite all the brash talk from Republicans, just doesn't have the institutional constitution on either side of the aisle to take on that kind of government downsizing.

It's an awfully dangerous experiment at an awfully dangerous time. Seriously, the part the article get right without any doubt is that they are going to absolutely tank the economy in the short term - reduce consumer spending and gut the employment rate.

 

It depends on your economic views though. There are those I've talked to who support these kinds of cuts to reduce the debt, whereas some such as the guy who wrote the article cite the fact that countries such as South Korea which spent heavily came out of recession first.

 

I'd like to find out more about the economic theory that says increasing unemployment and reducing the discretionary spending of the poor and middle class will boost the economy. Sounds a lot like Reaganomics.

 

Usually it's the people who badmouth Keynes or deny that Nobel Prize winning economists like Krugman & Stiglitz actually know anything (people who write articles like this)
Basically, it's a right-wing form of economics instigated by our right-wing government. It shouldn't be very suprising given the Conservative Party's history. It's just a shame the Liberal Democrats didn't push harder for their own economic views to be recognised instead of bowing to the Tory demands on everything.

We face an uncertain time, with big increases in cost for Universities and rent and transportation. The country may survive in the short-term, but it will be damaged in the long-term.

 

On the other hand managed austerity is a reasonable approach to creating a fiscally responsible government for the people. But everyone has to be honest about what will happen. People get it mostly. That's why there were riots and strikes in France and demonstrations in Greece.

Carving fiscal responsibility out of the poor and middle class, the way Republicans in the U.S. like to do it, is only one of several options though.