TV- debatten Gordon Brown, David Cameron en Nick Clegg

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Op donderdag 29 april 2010 10:50 schreef Monopoly_Man het volgende:

ChristenUnie zit blijkbaar ook in de groep!

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Op donderdag 29 april 2010 11:02 schreef Monopoly_Man het volgende:

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Het kwam vorige week aan bod in het debat... ik weet niet of het vanuit Nederland te zien was. Maar de Tories zeiden dat ze op het gebied van climate change bijvoorbeeld wel in Europa willen samenwerken... waarop de vraag kwam waarom ze dan in een fractie zitten met partijen die niet eens in climate change geloven. Daarop hadden ze geen antwoord.

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Op donderdag 29 april 2010 11:07 schreef freako het volgende:

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De SGP had er eigenlijk ook bij willen zitten, maar die mochten niet van de Conservatieven. De soms controversiële standpunten van de SGP waren een te groot risico.

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Op donderdag 29 april 2010 11:18 schreef El_Matador het volgende:

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"soms controversieel"
De nuance van het jaar!

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Op donderdag 29 april 2010 11:21 schreef freako het volgende:

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Ja, ik heb CU/SGP gestemd bij de Europese verkiezingen vorig jaar. Beginnen over gristenfundamentalistische waanideeën klinkt dan een beetje vreemd uit mijn mond.

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Op donderdag 29 april 2010 19:30 schreef Arcee het volgende:
Clegg zometeen in het RTL Nieuws in het Nederlands.

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Op donderdag 29 april 2010 21:28 schreef Thelonious het volgende:
Zit er klaar voor.
Verwacht wel het een en ander van Brown.


[ afbeelding ]

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Op donderdag 29 april 2010 21:44 schreef Thelonious het volgende:

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Nee, door dat oude vrouwtje het antwoord te geven dat ze verdient a la Obama's "speech on race".

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Op donderdag 29 april 2010 21:44 schreef Thelonious het volgende:

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Nee, door dat oude vrouwtje het antwoord te geven dat ze verdient a la Obama's "speech on race".

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Op donderdag 29 april 2010 21:47 schreef Pietverdriet het volgende:

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dan had ie moeten staan voor zijn Bigot uitspraak en moeten zeggen dat ze racistische onzin sprak en dat ie daar niet voor staat en dat niet accepteerd.

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Op donderdag 29 april 2010 19:30 schreef Arcee het volgende:
Clegg zometeen in het RTL Nieuws in het Nederlands.

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Op donderdag 29 april 2010 21:52 schreef Morendo het volgende:

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Mooie stropdas draagt 'ie. Zou hij dat expres gedaan hebben?

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Op vrijdag 23 april 2010 00:27 schreef Illiberal het volgende:
Die clegg is niet een al te beste kerel:
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Achja, weer een land verloren aan de progressieven. Kan ook niet anders. Ik neem aan dat Netwerk, NOVA en de Nederlandse kranten al lopen te juichen?

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Op donderdag 29 april 2010 22:06 schreef Morendo het volgende:
Ik vind het niveau van debatteren hoger liggen dan in Nederland. Ze weten exact waar ze elkaar op moeten pakken, maar verdedigen zich vervolgens ook weer sterk.

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Op donderdag 29 april 2010 04:51 schreef Morendo het volgende:
Wat ik fantastisch vind aan het Britse medialandschap is dat sommige kranten (tabloids) zo overduidelijk partijpolitiek bedrijven. The Sun bijvoorbeeld steunde sinds '97 Labour maar sinds het einde van vorig jaar staan ze weer achter de Conservatieven. En nu, met de verkiezingen aanstaande, worden de Tories echt elke dag opgehemeld en Labour, met Brown voorop, volledig afgefikt. Check dan hoe tendentieus dit artikel is. Ik kan er wel doorheen prikken, maar veel Britten niet.
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http://www.thesun.co.uk/s(...)ds-gran-a-bigot.html

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General election 2010: The liberal moment has come

If the Guardian had a vote it would be cast enthusiastically for the Liberal Democrats. But under our discredited electoral system some people may – hopefully for the last time – be forced to vote tactically

Editorial
guardian.co.uk, Friday 30 April 2010 18.43 BST

Citizens have votes. Newspapers do not. However, if the Guardian had a vote in the 2010 general election it would be cast enthusiastically for the Liberal Democrats. It would be cast in the knowledge that not all the consequences are predictable, and that some in particular should be avoided. The vote would be cast with some important reservations and frustrations. Yet it would be cast for one great reason of principle above all.

After the campaign that the Liberal Democrats have waged over this past month, for which considerable personal credit goes to Nick Clegg, the election presents the British people with a huge opportunity: the reform of the electoral system itself. Though Labour has enjoyed a deathbed conversion to aspects of the cause of reform, it is the Liberal Democrats who have most consistently argued that cause in the round and who, after the exhaustion of the old politics, reflect and lead an overwhelming national mood for real change.

Proportional representation – while not a panacea – would at last give this country what it has lacked for so long: a parliament that is a true mirror of this pluralist nation, not an increasingly unrepresentative two-party distortion of it. The Guardian has supported proportional representation for more than a century. In all that time there has never been a better opportunity than now to put this subject firmly among the nation's priorities. Only the Liberal Democrats grasp this fully, and only they can be trusted to keep up the pressure to deliver, though others in all parties, large and small, do and should support the cause. That has been true in past elections too, of course. But this time is different. The conjuncture in 2010 of a Labour party that has lost so much public confidence and a Conservative party that has not yet won it has enabled Mr Clegg to take his party close to the threshold of real influence for the first time in nearly 90 years.

This time – with the important caveat set out below – the more people who vote Liberal Democrat on 6 May, the greater the chance that this will be Britain's last general election under a first-past-the-post electoral system which is wholly unsuited to the political needs of a grown-up 21st-century democracy.

Tactical option

The pragmatic caveat concerns the danger that, under the existing electoral system, switching to the Liberal Democrats in Labour-Conservative marginal constituencies might let in an anti-reform Tory party. So, voters who share this principled enthusiasm for securing the largest possible number of Liberal Democrat MPs next Thursday must, in many constituencies, weigh the tactical option of supporting Labour to prevent a Conservative win.

Hopefully, if this really is the last election under the old system, such dilemmas between head and heart will apply less in future. For now, however, the cause of reform is overwhelmingly more likely to be achieved by a Lib Dem partnership of principle with Labour than by a Lib Dem marriage of convenience with a Tory party which is explicitly hostile to the cause and which currently plans to redraw the political map for its own advantage. The momentum for change would be fatally undermined should the Conservatives win an overall majority. The Liberal Democrats and Labour should, of course, have explored much earlier and more explicitly how they might co-operate to reform the electoral system. During the campaign, and especially since the final leaders' debate, the appetite for co-operation has clearly increased and is increasing still. Mr Clegg's Guardian interview today underscores the potential for more productive engagement with Labour and is matched by fresh, untribal thinking from his potential partners.

This election is about serious choices between three main parties which all have something to offer. David Cameron has done what none of his immediate predecessors has understood or tried to do: he has confronted the Conservative party with the fact that it was out of step with the country. He has forced the party to become more diverse and to engage with centre-ground opinion. He has explicitly aligned himself with the liberal Conservative tradition which the Thatcherites so despised during their long domination of the party. He has promoted modern thinking on civil liberty, the environment and aspects of social policy.

Mr Cameron offers a new and welcome Toryism, quite different from what Michael Howard offered five years ago. His difficulty is not that he is the "same old Tory". He isn't. The problem is that his revolution has not translated adequately into detailed policies, and remains highly contradictory. He embraces liberal Britain yet protests that Britain is broken because of liberal values. He is eloquent about the overmighty state but proposes to rip up the Human Rights Act which is the surest weapon against it. He talks about a Britain that will play a constructive role in Europe while aligning the Tories in the European parliament with some of the continent's wackier xenophobes. Behind the party leader's own engagement with green issues there stands a significant section of his party that still regards global warming as a liberal conspiracy.

The Tories have zigzagged through the financial crisis to an alarming degree, austerity here, spending pledges there. At times they have argued, against all reason, that Britain's economic malaise is down to overblown government, as opposed to the ravages of the market. Though the Conservatives are not uniquely evasive on the deficit, a large inheritance-tax cut for the very wealthy is the reverse of a serious "united and equal" approach to taxation. Small wonder that the Cameronisation of the Conservative party sometimes seems more palace coup than cultural revolution. A Cameron government might not be as destructive to Britain as the worst Tory regimes of the past. But it is not the right course for Britain.

If this election were a straight fight between Labour and the Conservatives – which it absolutely is not – the country would be safer in the hands of Labour than of the Tories. Faced in 2008 with a financial crisis unprecedented in modern times, whose destructive potential can hardly be exaggerated, the Labour government made some absolutely vital calls at a time which exposed the Conservatives as neoliberals, not novices. Whether Labour has truly learned the right lessons itself is doubtful. Labour is, after all, the party that nurtured the deregulatory systems which contributed to the implosion of the financial sector, on which the entire economy was too reliant. How, and even whether, British capitalism can be directed towards a better balance between industry and finance is a question which remains work in progress for Labour, as for us all. At the highest levels of the party, timidity and audacity remain in conflict. Nevertheless, Labour, and notably Alistair Darling, a palpably honest chancellor who has had to play the most difficult hand of any holder of his office in modern times, deserves respect for proving equal to the hour. Only the most churlish would deny the prime minister some credit for his role in the handling of the crisis.

Labour's failings

But this election is more than a verdict on the response to a single trauma, immense though it was. It is also a verdict on the lengthening years of Labour government and the three years of Gordon Brown's premiership. More than that, any election is also a judgment about the future as well as a verdict on the past. A year ago, the Guardian argued that Labour should persuade its leader to step down. Shortly afterwards, in spite of polling an abject 15.7% in the European elections, and with four cabinet ministers departing, Labour chose to hug Mr Brown close. It was the wrong decision then, and it is clear, not least after his humiliation in Rochdale this week, that it is the wrong decision now. The Guardian said a year ago that Mr Brown had failed to articulate a vision, a plan, or an argument for the future. We said that he had become incapable of leading the necessary revolution against the political system that the expenses scandal had triggered. Labour thought differently. It failed to act. It thereby lost the opportunity to renew itself, and is now facing the consequences.

Invited to embrace five more years of a Labour government, and of Gordon Brown as prime minister, it is hard to feel enthusiasm. Labour's kneejerk critics can sometimes sound like the People's Front of Judea asking what the Romans have ever done for us. The salvation of the health service, major renovation of schools, the minimum wage, civil partnerships and the extension of protection for minority groups are heroic, not small achievements.

Yet, even among those who wish Labour well, the reservations constantly press in. Massive, necessary and in some cases transformational investment in public services insufficiently matched by calm and principled reform, sometimes needlessly entangled with the private sector. Recognition of gathering generational storms on pensions, public debt, housing and – until very recently – climate change not addressed by clear strategies and openness with the public about the consequences. The inadequately planned pursuit of two wars. A supposedly strong and morally focused foreign policy which remains trapped in the great-power, nuclear-weapon mentality, blindly uncritical of the United States, mealy-mouthed about Europe and tarnished by the shame of Iraq – still not apologised for. Allegations of British embroilment in torture answered with little more than a world-weary sigh. Large talk about constitutional change matched by an addiction to centralisation. Easy talk about liberty and "British values" while Britain repeatedly ratchets up the criminal justice system, repeatedly encroaches on civil liberties, undermines legal aid and spends like there is no tomorrow on police and prisons. Apparent outrage against the old politics subverted by delay, caution and timid compromise.

There are reservations too, though of a different order and on different subjects, about the Liberal Democrats. The Liberal Democrats are a very large party now, with support across the spectrum. But they remain in some respects a party of the middle and lower middle classes. Labour's record on poverty remains unmatched, and its link to the poor remains umbilical. Vince Cable, so admirable and exemplary on the banks, nevertheless remains a deficit hawk, committed to tax cuts which could imply an even deeper slashing of public services. Though the party has good policies on equality, it has not prioritised the promotion and selection of women and ethnic minority candidates.

Matched priorities

Surveying the wider agenda and the experience of the past decade, however, there is little doubt that in many areas of policy and tone, the Liberal Democrats have for some time most closely matched our own priorities and instincts. On political and constitutional change, they articulate and represent the change which is now so widely wanted. On civil liberty and criminal justice, they have remained true to liberal values and human rights in ways that the other parties, Labour more than the Tories in some respects, have not. They are less tied to reactionary and sectional class interests than either of the other parties.

The Liberal Democrats were green before the other parties and remain so. Their commitment to education is bred in the bone. So is their comfort with a European project which, for all its flaws, remains central to this country's destiny. They are willing to contemplate a British defence policy without Trident renewal. They were right about Iraq, the biggest foreign policy judgment call of the past half-century, when Labour and the Tories were both catastrophically and stupidly wrong. They have resisted the rush to the overmighty centralised state when others have not. At key moments, when tough issues of press freedom have been at stake, they have been the first to rally in support. Above all, they believe in and stand for full, not semi-skimmed, electoral reform. And they have had a revelatory campaign. Trapped in the arid, name-calling two-party politics of the House of Commons, Nick Clegg has seldom had the chance to shine. Released into the daylight of equal debate, he has given the other two parties the fright of their lives.

A newspaper that is proudly rooted in the liberal as well as the labour tradition – and whose advocacy of constitutional reform stretches back to the debates of 1831-32 – cannot ignore such a record. If not now, when? The answer is clear and proud. Now.

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Vote of Confidence

The Conservatives offer an optimistic vision for the renewal of Britain. The electorate has made a call for change and they deserve the chance to answer it

The Times has not endorsed the Conservative Party at a general election for 18 years. For far too much of that time, the Conservative Party turned inward and vacated the ground on which British electoral victory is won — a commitment to the prosperity and liberty fostered in a free-market economy and a sense of justice in an open and tolerant society. Tony Blair’s Labour Party took up the promise of modernity, through its commitment to enterprise and the courage to stand tall in the world. Sadly, over the past 13 years that promise has faded. We all know that Britain can do better: it is surely time to regain our optimism.

This election offers a fundamental choice about the future of this country. It offers a moment to put old-fashioned tribal loyalties, class prejudices and social habits aside. We must choose. Either we are to be a country that has lost confidence in the ingenuity and potential of its people, and concludes that the State must continue to grow to protect us from ourselves. Or we can be a country that cares for the needy but reins in the ever-growing appetite of government and frees up people to grow their businesses, nurture their families and pursue their own hopes and happiness.

At an acutely difficult moment in our history, The Times puts its faith in the people rather than the government. It chooses a strong society, more enterprise and a smaller State. It chooses real, radical change. It chooses renewal.

Perhaps the best advertisement of the Labour years can be glimpsed in a scene outside Belfast City Hall on a clear day in December 2005. There, to the backdrop of cheers and pleasure rather than the sound of guns, in a city whose industrial decline had been replaced by the prosperity that has come with modern technology, the first civil partnership was signed. Not everything that was promised and hoped in the roseate glow of 1997 came to pass but one would have to be hard of heart to say that Belfast — like Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Leeds — is not a better place today than it was 13 years ago. Under Tony Blair, Britain also had a formidable presence on the world stage under a Prime Minister who backed the EU’s embrace of countries from the former Soviet bloc while also recognising the importance of the transatlantic alliance. In Kosovo, in Sierra Leone and in Afghanistan, Britain’s military capacity was mobilised in defence of a noble principle. The same applies to the Government’s decision to go to war in Iraq in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. And the Government also merits praise for its handling of the banking crisis, which, for an alarming moment in 2007, looked like it might threaten capitalism itself. Those who supported Labour — including this newspaper — can look back with some satisfaction.

But the costs have been too high. A Chancellor who had proclaimed an end to boom and bust embarked on a spending spree of remarkable improvidence. Public sector staff now earn £2,000 a year more on average than their private sector counterparts. Spending rose, over the Labour years, by an extraordinary 54 per cent. Productivity lagged behind. Gordon Brown savaged the private pensions industry and sold off the bulk of Britain’s gold reserves much too cheaply. In short, Labour squandered the boom. Even excluding the cost of the bank bailout, which was necessitated by the global credit crunch, Britain is now borrowing £163 billion a year. Mr Brown’s pitch at this election is that voters should not risk the recovery by backing the Conservatives. He does not seem to realise that the greatest threat is more of the same. Yes, the economy is in peril. Mr Brown is the danger.

Britain has also paid a high price in terms of trust in politics. What began as a professional spin operation in Downing Street became a machinery of deceit. Anonymous briefings by figures such as Damian McBride and Tom Watson, part of the cabal around Gordon Brown, dripped poison about opponents both inside the Labour Party and outside. The public stopped believing in official statistics as the Budget became plagued with double-counting, and the real cost of new schools and hospitals was kept off balance sheet. The 10p starting rate of tax was abolished purely to score a political point. The nadir of this style of politics was Mr Brown’s refusal to fund the mission in Afghanistan properly and his repeated denials that he had done so, culminating in a false claim before the Chilcot inquiry that defence spending had risen every year. After ten years in which he was found wanting in the top job, for the past three he has just been found wanting.

This campaign has been electrified by the rise of Nick Clegg. He seized the first television debate and became the overnight sensation of British politics. It was always likely that the electorate’s anger over greedy MPs and their sense of expenses entitlement would affect this election. But what a gloriously British revolution it turned out to be. Anger and dismay go on the march, and the Liberal Democrats do a bit better.

But the Liberal Democrat prospectus for power still reads like that of a party that has no expectation of victory. There is still something soft-headed about its pitch. Mr Clegg’s approach to the euro has in the past been misguided, but these days it is just muddled: he was for entering; now he is against entry; and he wants to leave open the possibility of entry in the future. He is prone to bouts of rank anti-business populism. Was it really necessary to weigh into the Kraft-Cadbury bid — to play the Whole Nut card — in the TV debate on the economy? Surely he cannot think all bankers are greedy? Worse, Mr Clegg’s approach to the biggest economic problem of the day, the deficit, is to duck it: he wants to hold a meeting. Abandoning the Trident nuclear missile system would be a mistake, parading fanciful figures for the cost savings is an error. Breaking up the banks would be counter-productive: the investment banks would become far more dangerous. If Mr Clegg understands this he is not admitting it. Mr Clegg has built a platform that might allow him to go back to his constituency and prepare to be the Opposition. He has yet, however, to build a serious platform to prepare for government.

That is something that David Cameron has been able to do. Today’s Conservative Party is a very different party to that which went to the country in 2005. Mr Cameron has led that change. It is now clear that the modern Conservative Party believes in the importance of reducing the burden on enterprise and entrepreneurship. Its priorities on education, social policy and the environment are those of a modern, innovative force in politics. Its young leadership has the energy, intelligence and integrity to govern.

More modernisation still would be welcome. The party’s desire to maintain the aid budget is a victory for political branding over good sense. Its policies on the National Health Service put a tactical desire to neutralise Labour attacks before the need for radical reform. The Conservatives also retain a worrying streak of pessimism about foreign policy. Mr Cameron’s decision to remove Conservative MEPs from an alliance with mainstream centre-right parties in the EU may have seemed principled to him, but it was also short-sighted. Britain must not shelter behind foreign policy realism to retreat to a Little Englander role in the world.

In 2005 the Conservatives put an illiberal approach to immigration at the centre of their campaign. In 2010 the voters have demanded that immigration be central and the Conservative response has been measured and intelligent. Mr Cameron has made his party think again about the condition of the nation. His bold vision of a “Big Society” — that there is such a thing as society, but it is not necessarily the State — is powerful. The idea that competition will raise standards in public services, using the State as a catalyst, is the right idea for the 21st century. It is the point where new Labour left off. Mr Cameron’s social liberalism has brought a more diverse set of candidates into his party. He has acted ruthlessly against racism and against MPs who abused their expenses.

None of this has been easy. It has been bought at the cost of some unpopularity with his backbenchers. All the more reason that Mr Cameron, and his chief lieutenants George Osborne, William Hague and Michael Gove, should be commended for their decisiveness and determination. These are qualities that this country now needs.

The central question of this general election is the economic future of the nation. The Conservative Party has shown the most consistent willingness to deal with the atrocious State of the public finances that this Government will bequeath. Under fire from Mr Brown, they have held to this unpopular line. Amid the sound and fury, a fundamental philosophical difference has emerged: the Conservatives want to reduce excessive public expenditure, the Labour Party wants to keep on ratcheting up benefits, tax credits and other forms of state spending. One party recognises the benefits of individual independence. The other keeps fostering a state of benefit dependency. In the race for growth with India, China and other rising countries, the Conservatives know that Britain’s entrepreneurial spirit needs to be unleashed.

The economy is broken and so is politics. It is time for a change, in both the philosophy and the style of government. It is time for us to believe in the power of the individual, the strength of society and the unique promise of this country. Labour is tired, defensive and ruinously reliant on higher government spending. David Cameron has shown the fortitude, judgment and character to lead this country back to a healthier, stronger future. It is time, once again, to vote Conservative.

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Who should govern Britain?

Forget the hypotheticals and look at the policies. On that basis, the Conservatives deserve to win

IT IS a long time since quite so much seemed to hang on a British election. With a week to go, the polls suggest that the old duopoly, with either Labour or the Conservatives commanding comfortable majorities under Britain’s first-past-the-post system, has been replaced by a three-way split, with Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats on course to pick up around 30% of the votes, just behind David Cameron’s Tories and a whisker ahead of Gordon Brown’s Labour. The way Britain’s voting system works, tiny changes in the popular vote could make huge differences to how many seats each party gets. Horse-trading has already begun in expectation of a hung parliament. And so has conjecture of dramatic realignments—to the centre-left, to the centre-right, to the very United Kingdom.

The exciting possibility that the country’s electoral geometry could be redrawn has overshadowed what should be the centre of an election campaign. Britons must judge the parties on the basis of their policies and their current leaders. As polling day, May 6th, approaches, it is to be hoped that debate will increasingly focus on these substantial issues.

The Economist has no ancestral fealty to any party, but an enduring prejudice in favour of liberalism. Our bias towards greater political and economic freedom has often been tempered by other considerations: we plumped for Barack Obama over John McCain, Tony Blair over Michael Howard and a succession of Italian socialists over Silvio Berlusconi because we thought they were more inspiring, competent or honest than their opponents, even though the latter favoured a smaller state. But in this British election the overwhelming necessity of reforming the public sector stands out. It is not just that the budget deficit is a terrifying 11.6% of GDP, a figure that makes tax rises and spending cuts inevitable. Government now accounts for over half the economy, rising to 70% in Northern Ireland. For Britain to thrive, this liberty-destroying Leviathan has to be tackled. The Conservatives, for all their shortcomings, are keenest to do that; and that is the main reason why we would cast our vote for them.

In the Brown stuff
What of the current lot? In some ways, Gordon Brown is underappreciated. He has stood firm in Afghanistan. He kept Britain out of the euro, which Mr Blair wanted to join. No matter what he did, Britain was always likely to get mauled in the credit crunch: with its reliance on banks and property, it was bound to be hard hit. And, since the economic crisis began, he has mostly made the right decisions. He saved the banks, pumped money into the economy and did as much as any leader to help avert a global depression.

But a prime minister should not get too much credit for climbing out of a hole he himself dug as chancellor. Chancellor Brown poured money into public services. As a result, Britain’s budget deficit is almost as big as Greece’s in proportion to its economy; its public sector is larger. This is a time-bomb of a legacy, and one that Mr Brown is ill equipped to defuse. The prime minister has tended to take the side of producers—especially the public-sector unions—rather than consumers. He frustrated some of Mr Blair’s efforts to reform the health service and education and slowed down others once he became prime minister. There are mutterings about choice in Labour’s manifesto, but Mr Brown too often reverts to old-fashioned statism. He has run a grim campaign (see Bagehot), scarcely bothering to defend his record and concentrating instead on scaring people about the Tories’ plans.

Above all, the government is tired. Mired in infighting and scandal, just as the Tories were in 1997, New Labour has run its course (see article). Some hope that a hung parliament would usher in a refashioning of the centre-left: a Mandelsoned and Milibanded party would arise. But it is better for the country that Labour has its looming nervous breakdown in opposition. A change of government is essential.

The agony and the Cleggstacy
So why not change to the Liberal Democrats? Mr Clegg’s surge has been thrilling, all the more so since the viler attempts to smear him by a panicking Tory press seem to have backfired. This newspaper has been looking for a credible liberal party in Britain for nigh on a century. Mr Clegg is clever and charming. We share his enthusiasm for civil liberties and his willingness to stand up for immigrants. And he is right that the current voting system, which could mean that he ends up with the same number of votes as Mr Brown but a third of his seats, is unfair.

But look at the policies, rather than the man, and the Lib Dems seem less appealing. In the event of another European treaty, they would hold a referendum not on that treaty but on whether to stay in or leave the EU; odd, given that they also (wrongly) want to take Britain into the euro. They are flirting with giving up Britain’s nuclear deterrent. They would abolish tuition fees for universities, which would mean either letting the quality of British higher education slide still further or raising the subsidy to mostly well-off students by increasing state funding. They are worried about climate change but oppose the expansion of nuclear power, which is the most plausible way of cutting emissions. Their policies towards business are arguably to the left of Labour’s. A 50% capital-gains tax, getting rid of higher-rate relief on pensions and a toff-bashing mansion tax are not going to induce the entrepreneurial vim Britain needs. Vince Cable, the Lib Dems’ chancellor-in-waiting, recently dismissed the bosses who argued against the government’s planned National Insurance increase as “nauseating”; that feeling might well be reciprocated by the nation’s wealth creators if the Lib Dems came into power.

An international comparison is helpful. Germany’s Free Democrats have adopted both parts of liberalism: they believe in both civil liberties and the free market. The Liberal Democrats, a coalition between the distant heirs of a once-great governing party and more European-style social democrats, have not yet made the same jump to the radical middle. Optimists cling to the hope that a hung parliament and a realignment on the centre-right would bring that leap about, but for the moment the Lib Dems seem unsure whether they are to the left or the right of Labour. To the extent that elections are holidays from normal politics, Mr Clegg has been a delightful holiday romance for many Britons; but this newspaper does not fancy moving in with him for the next five years.

That leaves the Tories. They plainly have faults. They have run a lacklustre campaign. We dislike their Europhobic fringe and their exaggerations about Britain’s broken society. We thought they were wrong to oppose the economic stimulus after the banking crash. Mr Cameron is prone to bouts of complacency—amply illustrated by his refusal last year to use the expenses scandal as a pretext finally to get rid of Lord Ashcroft, a controversial offshore donor whose money the Tories plainly no longer needed. He has not done enough to convince voters that he is the man to bring change—and thus created an opening into which Mr Clegg has ably stepped.

But just as the kaleidoscope of this weird election has painted Mr Clegg’s relatively small advances in brighter colours, it has dulled Mr Cameron’s much bigger ones. Judged over the past four years, not the past four weeks, he has done a great deal to modernise his party, stamping out social illiberalism, reducing the Europe-bashing and adding environmentalism. During the boom years, his much-maligned chancellor, George Osborne, did not give in to demands from the right for tax cuts, pointing to the deepening hole in the government finances; at the Tory conference last year, when Mr Brown was still unable to mention “cuts”, Mr Osborne was also the first politician to commit his party to an austerity programme.

Since then, like the other parties, the Tories have gone quiet on the question of cuts. But, more than their rivals, they are intent on redesigning the state. They would reform the NHS by bringing in more outside providers; their plans to give parents and teachers the right to set up schools are the most radical idea in this election. Centralisers under Margaret Thatcher, they now want to devolve power to locally elected officials, including mayors and police chiefs. Some of this is clouded in waffle about a Big Society. Other bits do not go far enough: it is foolish to rule out letting for-profit companies run schools and wrong to exempt the NHS from cuts. But Mr Cameron is much closer to answering the main question facing Britain than either of his rivals is. In this complicated, perhaps inevitably imperfect election, he would get our vote.

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Op zaterdag 1 mei 2010 10:08 schreef Monidique het volgende:
Daarentegen is toegegeven dat de media, de gedrukte althans, moedwillig de Liberal Democrats negeren. Kwade zaak. Maar een kwade zaak die voortkomt uit een kwaad systeem.

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Op zaterdag 1 mei 2010 11:14 schreef SeLang het volgende:
Het wordt nooit meer zoals het was in de Britse politiek.

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Op zaterdag 1 mei 2010 11:14 schreef SeLang het volgende:

Voorheen werden ze inderdaad wel redelijk genegeerd, wat eigenlijk logisch was omdat ze toch geen rol zouden spelen in de uitslag.

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Op zaterdag 1 mei 2010 12:01 schreef Monidique het volgende:

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Omdat ze werden genegeerd.

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Op zaterdag 1 mei 2010 12:05 schreef SeLang het volgende:

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Maar je zei "negeren", wat ik lees als tegenwoordige tijd.

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Op zaterdag 1 mei 2010 11:41 schreef Reya het volgende:

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Mwah, je moet je dan vooral afvragen wat de LibDems nou eigenlijk zijn, en waar ze voor staan. Hervorming van het kiesstelsel, daar onderscheiden ze zich duidelijk mee, en een wat liberaler beleid op het gebied van immigratie en buitenlandse zaken, maar daarin verschillen ze al niet meer enorm van Labour. Voor de rest is het een mengelmoes van linkse en centristische standpunten die amper te onderscheiden valt van het beleid van Labour, in het bijzonder waar het de unieke aspecten van New Labour betreft. De LibDems zijn dan vooral Labour zonder Gordon Brown. Vooral dat laatste verklaart waarschijnlijk hun relatieve populariteit op het moment. Als Labour weer een aantrekkelijke, populaire leider krijgt, kan het best zijn dat de LibDems met hetzelfde gemak de vergetelheid ingaan.

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"The longest suicide note in history" is an epithet originally used by Gerald Kaufman[1] to describe the United Kingdom Labour Party's left-wing 1983 election manifesto,[2] which called for unilateral nuclear disarmament, withdrawal from the European Economic Community, abolition of the House of Lords and the re-nationalisation of recently de-nationalised industries like British Telecom, British Aerospace and the British Shipbuilding Corporation. Its far-left policies, along with the popularity gained by the current PM Margaret Thatcher over the Falklands War, contributed to a victory with a substantial majority in Parliament for the incumbent Conservative party. This led to a turning point in the history of the party, which thereafter adopted more free market principles. The epithet referred not only to the orientation of the policies, but also to its marketing aspect. Michael Foot, the Labour leader, had decided, as a statement on internal democracy, that the manifesto would consist of all resolutions arrived at conference, making the manifesto over 700 pages long.

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unilateral nuclear disarmament, withdrawal from the European Economic Community, abolition of the House of Lords and the re-nationalisation of recently de-nationalised industries like British Telecom, British Aerospace and the British Shipbuilding Corporation.

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Op zaterdag 1 mei 2010 12:36 schreef Monidique het volgende:

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_longest_suicide_note_in_history
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Grappig, dingen die je nu niet echt far-left zou noemen.

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Op zaterdag 1 mei 2010 12:36 schreef Monidique het volgende:


Grappig, dingen die je nu niet echt far-left zou noemen.

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Op zaterdag 1 mei 2010 19:19 schreef freako het volgende:
[ afbeelding ]

Ik schrok van deze foto van Tony Blair.

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Op zaterdag 1 mei 2010 19:27 schreef du_ke het volgende:

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Nou inderdaad. Die ziet er niet lekker uit.

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Evidence based voting

What can science and evidence bring to an election? First there are the micro-issues: we can assess the validity of claims made by politicians by seeking out the evidence. David Cameron, for example, claimed that UK cancer services were bad because fewer people die of cancer in Bulgaria than in the UK, which many have already debunked: he used death data from a country with inferior monitoring standards, and a far lower life expectancy, but more than that, he used death data, which is driven not just by treatment success, but also by the number of new cases to start with, which can vary widely for all kinds of reasons.

Still on cancer, but in a neglected example, Cameron also said: “I have a man in my constituency [with] kidney cancer who came to see me with seven others. Tragically, two of them have died because they couldn’t get the drug Sutent that they wanted.” This was odd, because Sutent is actually available on the NHS for kidney cancer, having been approved by NICE in February 2009 (despite costing £54,366 per “quality adjusted life year”, while NICE generally draws the line at £30,000).

Where did Cameron get the idea it was rejected? I don’t know. On the 9th of April the Daily Mail published a bizarre article claiming that 15 cancer drugs (including Sutent) had been rejected by NICE. They provided a list. Bizarrely, 10 of the 15 drugs on that list which the Mail say NICE rejected have actually been approved by NICE. The head of NICE wrote to all three parties on the 9th of April explaining that this article was bizarrely wrong. His letter is posted in full on the NICE website. (NICE did reject Sutent for people with a poor prognosis who are unsuitable for immunotherapy, but only there because they weren’t given any evidence on its use in that group).

As a side issue, of course, it’s always unwise to claim that someone would be alive today if they had a specific treatment, in any situation. The mighty statistician Prof David Spiegelhalter has run through the maths on his Understanding Uncertainty website, and even if you are in the better prognosis group, for whom we do have evidence, you only have a 58% chance of surviving longer after receiving Sutent, and the median survival is 37 months with the drug and 27 months without it. Worth it, of course. I’m just saying.

Alongside the science of individual claims, it’s also worth looking at what the parties say about science itself. Here, only the Liberal Democrats’ manifesto stands out, promising funding like the others, but also making pledges on the use of independent scientific advice in policy (in contrast to the David Nutt affair), and even coming out in favour of open-access academic publication.

But more than anything, this election offers a new opportunity: beyond expecting our politicians to follow the evidence, we can be evidence based ourselves, in our voting decisions, and hold ourselves to the same high standards. VoteMatch can match your views against the party manifestoes. SkepticalVoter knows if your MP believes in the homeopaths’ magic beans. Using TheyWorkForYou I can see that my last MP (Andrew Smith, Labour, Oxford East) voted very strongly in favour of the Iraq war, very strongly against an inquiry into it, very strongly in favour of ID cards, and so on. It’s grim reading. PoliticsPosters will print that on a poster, so you can make sure your neighbours know too.

Websites like these recognise that disseminating data in a meaningful form is as important as gathering it in the first place. Your MPs voting record, and their attendance in parliament, have always been publicly available, but until recently it was an effort to find, so only journalists and lobbyists knew the ugly details. That has changed. In the past we relied on hunches and reputation, but now – uniquely – we have the option to leave tribalism behind, and deploy our vote using data.

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Op zaterdag 1 mei 2010 12:09 schreef SeLang het volgende:

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Wat ik bedoel is niet de Lib Dems maar het feit dat er nu voor het eerst in de geschiedenis live TV-debatten zijn. Dat heeft de hele dynamiek veranderd en die TV-debatten gaan nu nooit meer weg. Het duopolie Tories-Labour is daarmee doorbroken.

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Op donderdag 6 mei 2010 10:11 schreef SeLang het volgende:
Ik heb op de linksen gestemd (Labour)

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Op donderdag 6 mei 2010 10:12 schreef Reya het volgende:

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Wat bezielt je?

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Nigel Farage injured in plane crash on election day

The former UK Independence Party (UKIP) leader Nigel Farage has been injured in a plane crash in Northamptonshire.

The plane carrying two people crashed at Hinton in the Hedges Airfield at Steane, near Brackley, at 0759 BST.
Mr Farage was taken to hospital in Banbury with non-life threatening injuries, and the pilot was transferred to University Hospital in Coventry.

The plane came down an hour after polling stations opened for voting in the general election. The pilot, who was trapped in the wreckage and had to be airlifted to hospital, is believed to be more seriously injured of the two.

General election voting under way

Chris Adams, UKIP parliamentary candidate for Aylesbury, said: "Nigel was unconscious but he can talk.
"He's been coming in and out of consciousness and is now being X-rayed."

The aircraft was due to circle over Buckingham, where Mr Farage is standing as a candidate, trailing a banner, a UKIP spokesman said.

Mike Jose, Mr Farage's assistant, said they had previously flown the plane and banner over the constituency without any problems.

A UKIP spokesman said the aircraft had flown into the airfield from Winchester area and was taking off again when the accident happened

He added: "We've had unconfirmed reports that either the banner got snagged up, or there were cross-winds and it was unfamiliar airfield to the pilot."

But Mr Adams said he had spoken to an aviation expert who said the banner could not have got caught up in the tail fin, as some reports had suggested.

The airfield has now been closed and the crash is due to be investigated by the Air Accident Investigation Branch, Northamptonshire Police said.

East Midlands Ambulance Service and fire crews remain at the scene.

Mr Farage is a Member of the European Parliament, representing South East England.

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Britse verkiezingen: Conservatieven voorop in de peilingen

AMSTERDAM - Vanochtend om 07.00 uur lokale tijd openden de Britse stembureaus hun deuren. In de peilingen loopt oppositieleider David Cameron van de Conservatieven voorop, terwijl de Labourpartij van Gordon Brown en de Liberaal-Democraten onder leiding van Nick Clegg om de tweede plaats vechten.

In 650 districten kunnen de bijna 44 miljoen geregistreerde kiesgerechtigden op bijna 4.150 kandidaten stemmen. Om 22.00 uur lokale tijd sluiten de stembureaus, een uur later worden de eerste uitslagen verwacht.

Geen meerderheid

Volgens de laatste peilingen gaat het grootste deel van de stemmen naar de Conservatieven. BBC vergeleek alle peilingen en stelde vast dat het aandeel van de stemmen dat nu naar de Conservatieven zou gaan op 36 procent ligt, terwijl Labour en de 'LibDems' respectievelijk 28 en 27 procent van de stemmen zullen behalen.

De partij van huidig premier Gordon Brown heeft tijdens de roerige campagnetijd meerdere tegenslagen te verduren gekregen. Zo beging Brown een blunder tijdens zijn campagne en verloor hij de steun van toonaangevende dagbladen The Guardian en The Times.

Volgens alle peilingen zal echter geen enkele partij een absolute meerderheid in het Lagerhuis halen, omdat dit jaar drie partijen in plaats van twee kunnen rekenen op veel stemmen.
Liberaal-Democraten

De voorheen relatief onbekende Nick Clegg steeg in populariteit sinds hij op 15 april als winnaar van het eerste live uitgezonden lijsttrekkersdebat uit de bus kwam.

De partijleider van de Liberaal-Democraten presenteert zich als het alternatief voor de traditionele partijen. Het geloof daarin bij de Britse burger is sterk afgenomen sinds het bonnetjesschandaal dat zich in 2009 afspeelde.

Het zou voor het eerst sinds 1974 in Groot-Brittannië voorkomen dat er geen meerderheid in het Lagerhuis wordt behaald door één partij, wat mede door het Britse kiesstelsel (zie kader) zeer ongebruikelijk is. Dit zou kunnen leiden tot een coalitie van partijen, bijvoorbeeld tussen Labour en de LibDems. Eerder gaf oppositieleider Cameron al aan te overwegen met kleine partijen samen te gaan werken om de benodigde meerderheid te halen.

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Op donderdag 6 mei 2010 23:29 schreef jakkop het volgende:
De wet schijnt te zijn dat je na 10 uur mag stemmen als je al in de rij staat.

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Op donderdag 6 mei 2010 23:39 schreef Dichtpiet. het volgende:
kunnen de tories nog een coalitie maken met die noord-ierse partijtjes? daar was toch ook misschien sprake van?

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Op donderdag 6 mei 2010 23:41 schreef jakkop het volgende:

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Maar Brown heeft eerste recht op het vormen van een overheid.

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Op donderdag 6 mei 2010 23:41 schreef Dichtpiet. het volgende:

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Op donderdag 6 mei 2010 23:39 schreef Dichtpiet. het volgende:
kunnen de tories nog een coalitie maken met die noord-ierse partijtjes? daar was toch ook misschien sprake van?

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Op donderdag 6 mei 2010 23:44 schreef jakkop het volgende:

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Is de regel, zonder absolute meerderheid mag de zittende leading party het eerst proberen.

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Op donderdag 6 mei 2010 23:54 schreef Dichtpiet. het volgende:
Is dat Sunderland een beetje wat bij ons Schiermonnikoog is?

Ik bedoel: Hebben die (bijna) altijd de eerste uitslagen?

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Sunderland hopes to be first to declare

Sunderland council has reported the first result for four elections in a row

When it comes to election results night there's one city whose name we hear first: Sunderland.

Sunderland City Council takes a lot of pride in having been the first to declare a constituency result in all the last four general elections.

Ballot papers from the three Sunderland constituencies will be counted at Sunderland Tennis Centre on Thursday.

Boundary changes mean votes are being cast this year in Houghton and Sunderland South, Washington and Sunderland West, and Sunderland Central.

The 2005 election was the council's proudest moment. It made history by declaring the first three results on the night - Sunderland South at 2245, Sunderland North at 2325 and Houghton and Washington East at 2332.

That was some achievement when you think that polling stations don't shut until 2200, and then the boxes have to be taken to the central counting point.

Efficiency over speed

Sunderland's election officer, Bill Crawford, says the aim is to continue that record this time around, and nothing is being left to chance.

To make sure the ballot boxes get quickly into Sunderland Tennis Centre a group of local school children are being employed to swiftly pass them down a line.

The council's election team has learnt from past counts too. One year they found they had finished a little slower than anticipated, so changed the weight of their voting papers from 100 grams to 80 grams, making them easier to handle.

And voters are under strict instructions to fold their papers only once, from north to south.

Mr Crawford says plans are also being made for the unexpected: they have spare counters in the wings should it be a particularly high turn out, an emergency generator is available in case there's a power cut, and a spare room has been set aside should there be any problems in the main counting room.

The counters take their job very seriously and stress that they pride themselves on efficiency over speed.

Many of them work in banks where they regularly count paper at speed. All have their own tried and tested methods, often preferring rubber thumbs to moist finger sponges which can cost valuable seconds.

We may all be watching the results of election night to see if there's a hung parliament, but Sunderland assure us that all eyes will be on them at the start of the night as they aim to make declaration history again.

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Op donderdag 6 mei 2010 23:55 schreef Hexagon het volgende:
Dat gaan ingewikkelde pnderhandelingen worden

Volgend jaar weer verkiezingen denk ik

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Op donderdag 6 mei 2010 23:58 schreef Q.E.D. het volgende:

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Die Cameron is trouwens niet goed bij z'n hoofd. Ik hoop op een Labour coalitie.

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Op vrijdag 7 mei 2010 00:00 schreef freako het volgende:
Resultaten komen o.a. hier binnen:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/election2010/results/

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Op vrijdag 7 mei 2010 00:00 schreef jakkop het volgende:

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Gordon Brown is veel beter zeker?

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Op vrijdag 7 mei 2010 00:01 schreef jakkop het volgende:

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Is die feed ook in Nederland beschikbaar?

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Op vrijdag 7 mei 2010 00:18 schreef MilaNL het volgende:
Da's weer eens wat anders dan het touchscreen-beamertje van Ferry.

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Op vrijdag 7 mei 2010 00:18 schreef Hephaistos. het volgende:
Is het nou echt zo dat de Liberal Democrats ongeveer evenveel stemmen hebben gekregen, maar Labour toch heel veel meer zetels haalt door dat idiote stelsel? Of klopten de peilingen niet?

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Op vrijdag 7 mei 2010 00:18 schreef MilaNL het volgende:
Da's weer eens wat anders dan het touchscreen-beamertje van Ferry.

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Op vrijdag 7 mei 2010 00:18 schreef Hephaistos. het volgende:
Is het nou echt zo dat de Liberal Democrats ongeveer evenveel stemmen hebben gekregen, maar Labour toch heel veel meer zetels haalt door dat idiote stelsel? Of klopten de peilingen niet?

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Op vrijdag 7 mei 2010 00:20 schreef jakkop het volgende:

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Klopt. Lijkt idioot, maar het heeft ook veel voordelen.

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Op vrijdag 7 mei 2010 00:22 schreef Hephaistos. het volgende:

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Dat moeten dan wel hele grote voordelen zijn, wil het opwegen tegen het compleet negeren van de stemmen van grote groepen kiezers.