(lst_pst2) The 2005 British Elections

Before coming here, I never knew there was a major third party in Britain. The Liberal Democrats trace their roots to the Liberal Party which once held power in the latter part of 1800s. Their history is of challenging the crown and one of Keynesian economics.

In the 90s, after the young Tony Blair re-branded the old left wing 'Labour Party' to 'New Labour' and moved it to the center, the Liberal democrats were left without a political space as all their major policies were now Labour's. They themselves admit that they are left of old labour and right of new labour. But they have now come back strongly due to the strong anti-Iraq war sentiment. They got the highest number of seats that any third party had got from 1929.

The British economy is doing very well. And it is the fear of the public of not wanting to upset that apple cart that really put back Tony Blair to power. Blair is no longer as popular as he was, but remains a brilliant communicator and a great campaigner. In the last days of the campaign his only message was 'if you don't vote for me, you will get a Tory government'. That got the British frightened enough to go and vote for him.

The heir-apparent, Gordon Brown, now the Chancellor of the Exchequer (the Finance Minister) is actually senior to Blair in the Party and is expected to carry the New Labour a little bit more leftward. In fact, he never uses the term 'new labour' and sticks with 'The Labour Party'.

After the French and Dutch electorate's snub to the changed EU constitutional vote, their leaders could not agree on the EU budget and the summit ended with the French calling the British names. The French seems to be living in another century. The politico-cultural attitude which thinks farm subsidies should make up 40% of the EU budget and in which a glamorous poet who has never fought an election can be made the goddamn prime minister does make it look like 'an assisted living facility with Turkish nurses' as Tom Friedman pointed out.