election
yesterday was election day here in the UK. it's a pretty different experience than US elections, largely because no one, other than the politicians and the news papers, seems to care that much. i guess that's because our most recent election back home was viewed as having such great importance and could have gone either way, while here it was pretty well known that labour (with tony blair as pm) would be re-elected.
couldn't find a post-able picture so here's a link
what's most interesting here is the (essentially) three party system (there are many more parties but 3 main ones, 4 in scotland if you include the scottish national party). labour has move squarely into the middle of british politics, no longer exactly representing the values that its name implies, the liberal democrats are now the party of the left (thus are popular in scotland) while the conservatives are in the tricky position of being forced out of the center by labour but not wanting to stray too far to the right. this is clear in the conservative election motto which was "are you thinking what we're thinking?" which can be read, more or less, as "do you want to kick the foreigners out too?" (seriously, their main campaign issue was to hugely cut immigration and set up a quota system of sorts)
also the conservatives were in the tricky position of not being able to benefit from the widespread anger at tony blair over the war in iraq, because they supported it too; the general thought is that this s why the lib-dems increased (percentage-wise) so much this election.
i like the multi-party system here i have to say but i'm not sure it'd work in the conext of the US. this is because the idea of "local" in britain is different from the idea in america. the UK is about the size of colorado, a large-ish state. so while a "local" radio broadcast might refer to a broadcast across the state of colorado, that would be equivalent to a national british broadcast. the "local" is much smaller over here than back home in other words. with 627 seats in parliament, each mp represents around 40-60,000 citizens based on what i saw on the BBC last night (while the voter turnout is generally around 50%). this means providence, in the british conception of representation would have 3 or 4 representatives. it's this kind of system that would allow smaller parties to grow and compete with the major parties in a real way, where as in the US, with larger constituencies, it's that much harder for smaller parties to break in.
anyway, i've been surprised by the apathy toward politics in general here, one of my flatmates didn't vote and didn't really know much about the election (said he might have voted for the british national party, not realizing their racist history, so in that way it might be good that he didn't). another friend of mine knows so little of his own political system that i was explaing the difference between the the main parties to him. on top of it all not only was i the only one periodically checking in on the election broadcasts last night, but no one even mentioned the election in the studio today. real odd.
i think this now qualifies as my longest ever blog entry.
couldn't find a post-able picture so here's a link
what's most interesting here is the (essentially) three party system (there are many more parties but 3 main ones, 4 in scotland if you include the scottish national party). labour has move squarely into the middle of british politics, no longer exactly representing the values that its name implies, the liberal democrats are now the party of the left (thus are popular in scotland) while the conservatives are in the tricky position of being forced out of the center by labour but not wanting to stray too far to the right. this is clear in the conservative election motto which was "are you thinking what we're thinking?" which can be read, more or less, as "do you want to kick the foreigners out too?" (seriously, their main campaign issue was to hugely cut immigration and set up a quota system of sorts)
also the conservatives were in the tricky position of not being able to benefit from the widespread anger at tony blair over the war in iraq, because they supported it too; the general thought is that this s why the lib-dems increased (percentage-wise) so much this election.
i like the multi-party system here i have to say but i'm not sure it'd work in the conext of the US. this is because the idea of "local" in britain is different from the idea in america. the UK is about the size of colorado, a large-ish state. so while a "local" radio broadcast might refer to a broadcast across the state of colorado, that would be equivalent to a national british broadcast. the "local" is much smaller over here than back home in other words. with 627 seats in parliament, each mp represents around 40-60,000 citizens based on what i saw on the BBC last night (while the voter turnout is generally around 50%). this means providence, in the british conception of representation would have 3 or 4 representatives. it's this kind of system that would allow smaller parties to grow and compete with the major parties in a real way, where as in the US, with larger constituencies, it's that much harder for smaller parties to break in.
anyway, i've been surprised by the apathy toward politics in general here, one of my flatmates didn't vote and didn't really know much about the election (said he might have voted for the british national party, not realizing their racist history, so in that way it might be good that he didn't). another friend of mine knows so little of his own political system that i was explaing the difference between the the main parties to him. on top of it all not only was i the only one periodically checking in on the election broadcasts last night, but no one even mentioned the election in the studio today. real odd.
i think this now qualifies as my longest ever blog entry.
posted by nathan at 1:54 PM
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