There are two particular blogs I'd like to mention. The excellent Ministry of Truth is presumably written by a Labour Party activist in Brighton. He isn't exactly a Blair loyalist! It has a lot of good stuff, including an investigation into a BNP councillor that I've mentioned before and some opinion-changing background material on that horrible school face-slashing.
Meanwhile Gary Monro is a Tory councillor in Redbridge, and spasmodically blogs under the name "English Conservative". He's what I'd call a right-wing Tory, and I doubt if we'd agree on many issues. But an exchange of comments on his site usefully shows the clear distinction between people like himself and the BNP:
BNP supporter: "Congratulations Gary. You should defect to the BNP. Because your policies are BNP policies -- Tories like Cameron like uncontrolled immigration, and the Tories have contributed to the multicultural mess we see in Britain today."
Munro: "I'll decline the offer thank you. I regard the phenomena of large-scale, uncontrolled immigration to be damaging to our society. Coupled with the left's appalling attitude towards ordinary people's ordinary opinions and concerns it amounts to an absolute disgrace. But the immigrants themselves are often decent people, many simply looking to better themselves through work and education. That's called enterprise and I respect enterprise. My enemies are not immigrants; my enemy is the liberal-left. I suspect the BNP despises the immigrants too which will be one of several areas where we could never agree."
As an aside, perhaps we have to come up with a word for people who are appalled by the current immigration shambles but are not racist. It's amazing that this government - which likes to micromanage local councils in every way it can - is unable to know the number of failed asylum seekers to within the nearest 100,000.
9 comments:
You could also check your old links. Some of them don't work.
Thanks Ano - I've fixed a couple - were those the ones you found...?
It seems so.
Coalition is a subject about which your leader is understandably hazy at this stage. The electoral maths mean that it is fairly likely that the next parliament could be hung. What factors do you think should be weighed in choosing which way the Libs should jump if this happened?
I think Ming is absolutely right at the moment not to talk about coalitions - there's still a lot that could happen before the next election.
But let's be naughty and discuss it for a minute. Assume that Blair is no longer Labour leader and that parliament is 'balanced' (to use a Lib Dem term). I think the factors should be:
a) the policies of the other two parties.
b) which of the other parties has the most seats
c) which of the other parties has the most votes
d) how long Blair's successor has been PM i.e. have the public 'voted for a change'
e) just how much of a mess the world is in.
I actually doubt though whether we'd go into coalition with anyone ... Also I think that Cameron irritated the hell out of some Lib Dems (including myself) by the heavy-handed attempts to get us to defect. Maybe we'll forgive him eventually.
My friend Unity on the Ministry of Truth is actually one of that little group of left-leaning West Midlands bloggers, but he can certainly write well.
Cameron's got a LibDem coalition firmly in mind - that's why he spends so much time in Birmingham as an example of how the Tories can dominate their Liberal Democrat coalition partners, who are pathetically grateful for any crumbs of policy thrown from their masters' table.
CB - Thanks for the mischief, but I am sure you could be bolder ;-). I'm not sure I see the relevance of d). No mention of voting system? On that theme, which is more important b or c? Maybe I am being too cynical but the only political certainty is that you will coalesce.
PH/CB - Checked out the ministry of truth for the first time today. Yep, he's a goodie. Maybe I even prefer him to PH. He even seemed to understand what might happen next with the CSA.
PragueTory - regarding d)- if a brand new prime minister called an immediate snap election and we ended up with a balanced parliament, the mood of the country might be to "give him a chance".
On the other hand, if he had waited a year or so, and we then ended up with a balance parliament, the mood might be "the people have spoken - it's time for a change"
But it's far too early to talk about this...
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