Big swing in Gwent
Sunday, 8 May 2005, 19:15
I wonder how much John Prescott’s moment of madness in Wales contributed to the Blaenau Gwent constituency returning the biggest swing against Labour.
To be fair, probably not much. Peter Law, the rebel Labour candidate who won 58.17 per cent of the vote there was standing against his party to protest against all-women shortlists.
John Prescott, PR liability
Saturday, 30 April 2005, 23:14
How did I manage to miss this gem? Here’s a exchange in Gwent last week:
Mark Choueke [reporter for the South Wales Argus]: How did you and your cabinet colleagues react to Peter Law’s decision to quit the party after 35 years service to Blaenau Gwent as a Labour politician?
John Prescott: It didn’t even register with us. The voters just have one choice, vote Labour otherwise they’ll end up with a Tory government. It’s unfortunate that some of our decisions upset some people.
MC: But this isn’t about upsetting Peter Law, it’s about upsetting the many thousands of Labour voters in Blaenau Gwent who helped you form a strong government they feel alienated.
JP: Why are you asking me about this, I don’t care, it’s a Welsh situation, I’m a national politician.
MC: Are you too big to care about the Labour voters in Blaenau Gwent? Do you think there may be something in your party’s methods of working that require a rethink when a politician chooses to stand against you after 35 years service to Labour?
JP (walking away): Where do they get these amateurs from? You’re an amateur mate, go get on your bus, go home.
MC: Are you too big for the regional press now John?
JP: Bugger off — get on your bus you amateur.
MC (Following Deputy Prime Minister): Is my interview over John? Because if that’s all you’ve got to say, that’s what will go in the paper.
JP (turns aggressively back to reporter): Ooohh, I’m scared, go ahead, put it in your paper.
Labour candidate for Monmouth Huw Edwards: I could answer this question for you Mark…
MC: I hoped to hear what the deputy prime minister had to say about it.
JP (now ignoring reporter): I’ve never seen a school in such a lovely setting.
MC: Is that my interview over?
At least Prescott didn’t hit the guy. How is this man is the Deputy Prime Minister?
Now Kos joins the fray
Friday, 29 April 2005, 00:59
As some earlier speculation indictated, top American blogger Markos Moulitsas Zúniga of Daily Kos will be crossing the Atlantic during the final week of the UK general election campaign. He’ll be “writing and blogging” for the Guardian.
Lib Dem fundraiser in Washington
Wednesday, 20 April 2005, 22:37
MyDD reports on a Liberal Democrat “war chest fundraising dinner“ — in Washington DC. Jerome Armstrong says he would have attended if he had been in town:
… Among what we here in the US call the cultural creatives or the secular warriors (which makes up the new netroots-based backbone of the Democratic Party), it’s the transactional practice of politics by Democrats that enabled conservatives, which we revolted against within the Democatic Party. As such, I find myself with the same reaction toward Tony Blair that I hold for Joe Lieberman, and I tend to believe (as the post Iraq-invasion elections in the UK have borne out) that there are those in the UK who feel the same. Backing the invasion of Iraq was more than just a political issue— it stems from a worldview.
I’m not predicting an electoral shift toward the LD’s (the cards are stacked against that sort of thing), but it’s plain to see that in terms of holding a worldview that believes in things global, inclusive, fair, and yet libertarian in principle, the Liberal Democrats of the UK share our transformational worldview.
…So yea, I’d gladly chip in to send a few dollars to help elect the democratic wing in the UK.
Iraqcost and interactive budgets
Monday, 18 April 2005, 17:51
WorldChanging points out a little Java app for mobile phones that the Liberal Democrats are distributing. The Iraqcost software allows users to reallocate the £5 billion that the UK has spent on the war in Iraq and send their chosen budget priorities back to the party.
And WorldChanging has an interesting take:
Simplistic? Sure. Overtly political? Of course — there’s a Parliamentary election going on in the UK right now. But it’s also an interesting evolution of the use of mobile phones as a political tool, moving beyond communication and organization into the realm of interactive policy advocacy. It also foreshadows the possibility of doing something like this for real — sending out the budget to every citizen for allocation decisions. A staple of science fiction for decades, the notion of collaborative budgets is undoubtedly riddled with problems … But the idea of being able to tell your government precisely how to spend its money will be compelling to a great number of people.
Weekend blog catchup
Sunday, 17 April 2005, 23:25
Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine says “there’s something very wrong with your life when you start looking on Saturday as blog catch-up day.”
Sunday isn’t much better, I guess. But following a manic couple of days, here are some quick links to things I have somehow managed to find the time to find interesting over the last two days:
- Presenting a list of WMDs that terrorists might want to obtain, the head of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany’s international intelligency agency, says he doesn’t think al-Qaeda has managed to obtain nuclear weapons, but that he his concerned about radiological weapons.
- The Periscope notes a provocative New Statesman article that says organisations in both Saudi Arabia and the United States are exporting fundamentalism.
- Tony Blair should be more careful about where he sticks his fingers — especially when photographers are present.
- Matthew Yglesias has discovered that he would be a Labour supporter in the British election, largely because of Iraq. British readers will find the comments section on this post interesting as an example of how the American centre-left is discussing the British election.
- Speaking of American perceptions of the election, be sure to check out the Christian Science Monitor’s take on MG Rover and the election.
- Looking at the looming referendum in France, the Monitor also has a pro-adoption editorial on the European Constitution:
… one overarching appeal should be made: The EU and its precursors have successfully overcome the aggressive nationalism that caused so much suffering in the past century. Overall, the EU has proven such a success that other countries are clamoring to join. The constitution — no, let’s say the “simplifying treaty” — is the next logical step in this historic experiment.
- Timothy Garton Ash and Timothy Snyder have a lengthy piece about Ukraine’s Orange Revolution in the New York Review of Books.
- Dan Gillmor has an important post linking to various thoughts on the changing economics of journalism.
- Via Gillmor, I also came across a topical article by Chris Daly, a journalism professor at Boston University, entitled “Are Bloggers Journalists? Let’s ask Thomas Jefferson”.
- Major sporting events are bad for the environment, reports the New Scientist. Researchers have found that the 2004 FA Cup final at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium had an ecological footprint of 3,051 hectares.
- And oh yes: John Foster is the first baseball player to have played in both Britain’s top domestic baseball competition and Major Leagues. While he was a college player in 1997, he spent a summer with my club, the Brighton Buccaneers, before going back to the States and becoming a professional. Following a serious injury last year, he’s just been promoted back to the Major Leagues by the Atlanta Braves.
Wayne Rooney for Prime Minister
Wednesday, 13 April 2005, 14:18
Need an argument against lowering the voting age?
Try this:
According to the Kids General Election survey, 15 percent of 9- to 14-year-olds surveyed by the Cartoon Network think 19-year-old Manchester United and England striker Wayne Rooney is the best man to be Prime Minister. Fictional wizard Harry Potter also garnered a greater share of this yoof vote than Tony Blair.
But seriously:
Instead of Iraq, immigration and the economy, youngsters would want a Prime Minister Rooney to address bullying, school dinners and the burning issue of the recent break-up of boy band Busted.
(Speaking of arbitary age limits, I like the idea of U.S.
states lowering the drinking age back to 18.)
Make your own Tory posters
Tuesday, 12 April 2005, 19:12
Now you can make your own Conservative Party posters without committing criminal damage by using this handy tool.
(Via Steve Guy)
Got Tory adverts?
Saturday, 9 April 2005, 17:11
ToryScum.com is soliciting contributions to its collection of, um, creatively altered versions of those annoying Tory campaign posters. You know, like the one about immigration that the British National Party thinks is “spot on”.
US liberal blogs split over UK election
Friday, 8 April 2005, 17:23
The American blogosphere is beginning to notice the UK election.
At Jerome Armstrong’s MyDD, 68 per cent of readers say they would back the Liberal Democrats if they had a vote in the UK election. Armstrong comments on Labour bringing in consultants from the John Kerry campaign:
If Tony Blair is inviting the Kerry consultants over to give him advice, he’s halfway home to being ousted. And in fact, the best thing for the Lib Dems (which is whom most of us here are rooting for) is for the Conservatives to do surprisingly, even shockingly well at beating Labour.
Will the Tories regain power only with the help of the Lib Dems? I doubt that, but having the Liberal Democrats be the kingmaker would be, among other beneficial actions, a great way for the UK to get out of Iraq.
Others on the “reality-based” side of the U.S. blogosphere are sticking with Tony Blair, though.
New Donkey promises to blog about the election “semi-regularly between now and May 5”.
Although he’s “not happy with the moral and intellectual support that Blair has provided not just to George W. Bush’s foreign policies, but to Bush himself”, NewDonkey wants to see a Labour victory because:
on every key issue facing his country, our country, and the world, Tony Blair has an abundance of exactly what virtually all U.S. Democrats say a party of the center-left should have: a clear, articulate vision; a values-based progressive message that does not ignore collective security or cultural issues; and a full agenda for shaping change in the interests of most people, especially those with no privilege or power, even in places like Africa. He is also, of course, one of the few twenty-first century survivors among the wave of center-left politicians who won striking victories throughout the West in the 1990s, consigning, or so it seemed at the time, Reagan-Thatcher style conservative politics to the dustbin of history. And to the extent that left-leaning Labour activists (and their U.S. counterparts) with various issues with Blair hope Gordon Brown succeeds him as P.M. during a third term, let me add that I think Brown is a potentially great leader as well, and shares Blair’s New Labour vision more than a lot of observers realize.
Ezra Klein has some stronger words:
… I’ve no reason to believe that Blair’s support for Iraq was anything but sincere. Some backed the war on gut, anti-tyranny grounds, and right or wrong, their convictions led them. Blair seems to be one of these. But he’s destroying his government and derailing his agenda by refusing to admit the mistake, and he’s isolating himself from ideological allies by allowing the Iraq War to define him. Now maybe it’ll just lead to a Liberal Democrats-Labour hook-up, something I’d find defensible if not necessarily ideal. But in any case, by weakening himself, he’s hastened the end of the Labour project. …
Markos Moulitsas Zúniga posts about Blair’s “Bush” Problem and says he “can’t wait to get out there.” What&rquo;s that all about? Is Kos working for a campaign?
Blog-MSM convergence
Friday, 8 April 2005, 16:59
Nosemonkey, posting at the excellent new group blog about the 2005 UK General Election, has more about how British political campaigns are using new media.
One interesting development is how the major news outlets are turning to blogs or blog-like web sites to cover the election:
… the fact that even media behemoths the BBC and The Times are cottoning on to blogging as a cheap way of publishing should be an indication that the British use of the interweb is a very different one to that of America, where most blogs are genuinely trying to uncover the distortions of the press (often while creating their own).
Perhaps British political blogging with not have the anti-establishmentarian bent of its American cousin.
