[furball]

Originally Posted by Ste

I'm pretty sure a lot of Conservatives are really confused what to do when the Labour party are putting forward Tory policies and won't vote against them.

Ditto if the Conservatives started promoting socialist policies.

Originally Posted by Ste

The Labour backbenchers (a lot of whom are very decent people) will then be free to vote against the stupid tory policies.

A decent handful of them already feel free to vote against the stupid labour policies anyway

Originally Posted by Toccata & Fugue

You say we wouldn't elect somewhat like George Bush on the basis of his religious outlook. but I feel I misinterpreted this becasue I don't believe that americans voted for him fort hat reason either. it is true that there are many religious Americans. but the religious right represents a relatively small proportion of the electorate and as I have said, most voters would have voted on more serious issues than religion and abortion. I wouldn't even say that George Bush's administration was even particularly characterised by his religious conviction. In terms of his fan base he actually polls very low. It is worth recalling that the majority of American voters did not vote for either of the main candidates and people generally can't see a worthwhile difference between the Democratsor Republicans. I think your analysis of American politics is oversimplified and you seem to have just lifted out of the mainstream media.

In 2000 Bush got a lot of votes based on his apparant compassionate conservatism (public services, welfare reform) and his pledge to be "a uniter, not a divider". This appealed to a lot of Americans who were sick of the divided government under Clinton, who had battled against a Republican Congress for six of his eight years in office.

However, in 2004 these issues had been cast to one side. The election was fought on national security, with Kerry attempting to go head-to-head with Bush on this. It was essentially clinched by the 527 group Swift Boat Veterans For Truth destroying Kerry's record, rightly or wrongly. Voters were voting on the personality of the two men, and the continuous attacks on Kerry clinched it for Bush.

I think you may be trying to over-complicate things. The soundbite nature of American politics as part of the TV war at election time means that candidates don't have time to outline all of their policies - and instead they fight over only a couple of key issues. The party bases are rallied by core issues, and for the Republicans these are gay marriage, abortion and now immigration. As for your suggestion that I'm simply lifting my words from the mainstream media, I don't think that's anywhere near close to the truth. My own pitiful credentials are A-Level Politics, with a specialism in American politics (especially the Supreme Court). I've kept pretty up-to-date on everything and followed the 2004 election like a hawk. I'll concede that I read the Washington Post because it's got one of the better websites, as well as a focus on American political machinations, but if you can find me somewhere with better analysis then please do so. America's lack of a credible national newspaper is pretty annoying.

Originally Posted by Toccata & Fugue

i never said that you said the miners strike was about extra pay. But you characterised Thatcher's destruction of workers rights as a fight against workers demanding more pay. that was simply not true. its not even true fo the French example. Furthermore as I sai it hasn't stopped strikes. there are stikes all over the country its just that they don't get reported so much. What about the Liverpool dockers for example. Massive strike went on for years, you don't even mention it. That tells us alot about the reporting of stikes and about your anaysis of the political situation in the UK.

I wasn't alive at this time, so you'll have to excuse me for not being incredibly thorough. I didn't characterise the miners as fighting for more pay, at least not intentionally.

As for reporting of strikes, I'm not going to be able to argue against issues which aren't reported and which I wasn't alive for. As far as I'm concerned you could tell me anything, say that it hasn't been reported as part of an Establishment conspiracy against the working class and I'm not going to have a rejoiner to it, am I?

Originally Posted by Toccata & Fugue

Furthermore its not just the idustrial working class who have suffered. Most workers have less stable working conditions than 30 years ago, the gap between richest and poorest is growing at a very rapid rate. People have had their pensions stolen and all the Government can do is wring its hands. I don't see what CAP has to do with anything.

I'm not going to get into an in-depth analysis of workers' rights in an elections thread. The pensions crisis is the fault of a recent stock market collapse and the current Government's policy on pensions. I brought up CAP because it's been extremely good to the UK's farmers, and provides a contrast between the UK's industrial workers and agricultural workers.

Originally Posted by Toccata & Fugue

If as you say we simply can't compete with China and co why bother dismantling employment rights on the pretext of competitiveness?

I didn't say that.

You said that:

Despite allegedly invoking these policies to make Britiash industry competitive even casual observers will note that there is no such thing as British industry as factory after factory closes down and the workers are left powerless to do anything about it.

I simply replied that this is has a lot to do with multinational companies moving their factories to cheaper and cheaper areas. However, their growth wasn't foreseeable at in the 1980s, so unless the Conservative government at that time had a crystal ball then frankly I'm not so willing to blame everything on them.

Originally Posted by Toccata & Fugue

Its an interesting thing about financial services because I think generally speaking most people feel let down by their bank, their insurance company and their pension provider. I think most peopel believe the Housing boom and huge mortgages resulting from that to be something of a scam. So you must be using some stramge definition of the word superb which I have been hitherto unaware of.

No, I was using a different definition of the word 'financial services' - the firms in the City and Docklands - the banks, insurers and investors.

Everyone's always hated insurance companies. No-one's ever really liked their bank. The 1980s housing boom-bust was sadly standard for the times, and credit must go to Clarke, Brown and the Bank of England for ending this cycle (I won't mention Brown's other policies though). The failure of endowment morgages was indeed the fault of lenders, but they're not what I'm talking about. We're a world-leader in investment of stocks and shares with the largest financial centre in Europe - for example, all of the world's big insurers have offices here.

Originally Posted by Toccata & Fugue

eh?

Originally Posted by furball

Furthermore, federalism in America has been a failure because of the three issues which you identified.

Essentially the federal-state relationship is a mess because the issues which need federal money don't get it, and the states aren't able to provide it on their own without raising taxes. Elections every two years mean that most state congressmen will stick to populist measures only.

Originally Posted by Toccata & Fugue

While it might seem like a sensible way for departments to work I don't knwo that it has ever been this way. If you consider that there have been 8 pensions minister in 9 years. If you consider that the Education minister has been moved but the education White paper remains, if you consider that her predecessor Charles Clarke had little or in interest in Education whatsoever, but was fortunately moved to the Hoem Office where he proved to be singularly useless. If we consider the farce at the ODPM where a man like John Prescott has been in charge for years. If we look at Margaret Beckett's almost ghostliek presence at DEFRA, her single achivement to completely smother any progress on the environment by the UK. The names change but the shit policies stay the same.

Is this the fault of Labour politicians or a general malaise? I don't have your level of insight so I can't really comment much on this. Most of my knowledge of the executive comes from the Crossman Diaries and the diaries of Alan Clark. Certainly Richard Crossman attempted to do what I said - or at least did in his own mind.