Three unconnected thoughts:
1) Do I want a directly elected president? I would have always been inclined to say no, yet on reading news of Gordon Brown's forthcoming coronation I instinctively felt the whole thing is decidedly undemocratic. Yet it is Parliament elects the Prime Minister and if the Labour party can't bring themselves to have a proper election, there's not a lot you can do about it. And expecting the internal workings of the Labour party - even if they'd decided to have a proper election - to act as a proxy for a proper election requires a stretch of the imagination, to say no more than that. I've always preferred parliamentary systems to presidential ones - but this sucks.
2) I'm not happy about the way Blair announced Brown's Scottishness as a selling-point:
"He made his prediction while campaigning in Scotland on the 10th anniversary of being elected to power.So what? This should keep us happy? We've had a Cabinet stuffed with Scots and we've had a Scottish Parliament with a Scottish Executive led by a Scottish First Minister who keeps going on about how Scotland is the best small country in the world. It isn't a shortage of Scots in power that is the problem; people are fed up with Labour - and while I think it would be a mistake to express this on Thursday by voting for any of the nationalist parties, it's not difficult to understand. And the economy thing. Chancellors don't 'build' economies!
[...]
He told party workers: "In all probability a Scot will become prime minister of the United Kingdom, someone who has built our economy into one of the strongest in the world, and who, as I have said many times before, would make a great prime minister for Britain.""
3) Blair's legacy ten years on? Here the Guardianistas have had a go. Amongst the many problems I have with NuLabour is with the verbs.
Or the lack of them.
New Labour.
Forward - not back.
New - not old.
New, good.
Old, bad.
More bullshit.
Fewer verbs.
I miss the verbs.
Any politician that campaigns on a platform of more verbs and less bullshit has my vote, is all I'm saying.
No comments:
Post a Comment