Results tagged “tonyblair”

Vote. Obviously.

There are lots of other bloggers out there who will tell you who they are voting for and why, so I don't need to add to that. But I will tell you about the 3 main things I'm feeling today.

The first is apprehension about the result and what it could mean not for politics in this country, but for people. There are some big choices that will need to be made in the next parliament, and if those decisions aren't called correctly, significant numbers of people will be much worse off. This whole general election campaign has focused on the process of politics, especially through things like the leaders' debate. But the campaign should have been about the content, because that's what will make the difference in the next 5 years.

The second is bemusement. How on earth we don't know the outcome of this election is actually beyond me. In his last party conference speech, Tony Blair said this of the Tories:

If we can't take this lot apart in the next few years, we shouldn't be in the business of politics at all

and

They think it is all about image... the next election won't be about image unless we let it be.

The inevitable conclusion is that Labour did let it all be about image and that they didn't take the Tories apart. And yet, despite this, the public has still figured it out for themselves: from a 28-point lead in one poll in September 2008, the Tories are averaging an 8-point lead in the final polls yesterday. My bemusement is therefore that both Labour and the Tories lost this election.

And the third is excited. The sad thing is that, when the dust has long settled on this general election, my excitement will remain.

As the exchange goes at the end of Rio Bravo:

Pat Wheeler: A game-legged old man and a drunk. That's all you got?
John T. Chance: That's what I got.

Alas. Politics is that game-legged old man and the drunk.

If you wanted to talk to the Lib Dems about electoral reform they were absolutely open to the conversation.

If you wanted to talk to them about public service reform. If you wanted to talk to them about the hard issues on the economy. If you wanted to talk to them about the difficult questions that government is actually about.

They weren't up for it. That was the problem.

Electoral reform doesn't change the nature of the decisions: on the economy, on public services, on welfare, on anything.

Before I tell you who said that, just consider first whether you agree with it.

Now, it was this chap speaking on Newsnight on Tuesday.

Here's something interesting for you: if David Cameron becomes Prime Minister, he will be the PM with the shortest length of service as MP of any post-war Prime Minister.

Being elected in 2001, he will have had 9 years' service as an MP. The past Prime Minister with the shortest service is John Major, who had 11 years as an MP before he became PM.

If Nick Clegg becomes Prime Minister, he will have served only 5 years previously as an MP (2005-2010).

Full details of all PMs and years as an MP prior to becoming Prime Minister are below.

• Clement Attlee: First became PM in 1945. Length of time as MP prior to becoming PM: 23 years (1922-1945)
• Winston Churchill: PM in 1940, Length of service: 38 years (1900-1922, 1924-1940)
• Anthony Eden: PM in 1955, Length of service: 32 years (1923-1955)
• Harold Macmillan: PM in 1957, Length of service: 31 years (1924-1929, 1931-1957)
• Alec Douglas-Home: PM in 1963, Length of service: 19 years, (1931-1945, 1950-1951, 1959-1963)
• Harold Wilson: PM in 1964, Length of service: 19 years (1945-1964)
• Edward Heath: PM in 1970, Length of service: 20 years (1950-1970)
• James Callaghan: PM in 1976, Length of service: 31 years (1945-1976)
• Margaret Thatcher: PM in 1979, Length of service: 20 years (1959-1979)
• John Major: PM in 1990, Length of service: 11 years (1979-1990)
• Tony Blair: PM in 1997, Length of service: 14 years (1983-1997)
• Gordon Brown: PM in 2007, Length of service: 24 years (1983-2007)

And the two other candidates in the current general election:

• David Cameron, Length of service if becomes PM in 2010: 9 years (2001-2010)
• Nick Clegg, Length of service if becomes PM in 2010: 5 years (2005-2010)

A good question, to which John Lanchester has the answer:

What’s unique is that it’s the first time (at least in the last hundred years or so) that both of the main parties are being led by somebody with a first-class degree. Brown got a first in history at Edinburgh, Cameron a first in PPE at Oxford. ‘Thick Nick’ Clegg only has a 2.1 (social anthropology, Cambridge).

And there's more:

Harold Wilson also had an Oxford first in PPE. Attlee, Heath, Thatcher and Blair all had seconds from Oxford (in history, PPE, chemistry and law, respectively); Balfour got his second from Cambridge in moral sciences. Baldwin was the only 20th-century politician to earn a third (Cambridge, history). MacDonald, Churchill, Macmillan and Major either did not start or did not finish degrees, for a variety of reasons.

The Labour Party Manifesto 2010

[O]n the economy, they seem to be buffeted this way and that, depending less on where they think the country should be, than on where they think public opinion might be.

— Tony Blair, speaking on the Tories during a speech he gave in Sedgefield this week.

Marbury picked this particular line up, and he's right to emphasize the key distinction between responding to public opinion and shaping it.