So the UK just had the rough equivalent of a mid-term election as you are due to have in November this year. Actually it's not quite finished yet. The last votes are still being counted in some areas, but it's mostly ower with some very clear results.
It is an interesting situation as many parallels can be drawn between the situations in the US and UK now, especially in terms of the basic relationships, political positioning and history of the major opposing parties.
Despite that Labour traditionally would be a closer political match to the American Democrats, and the UK Conservatives are still generally more to the right, in some ways Tony Blair and the Labour Party can be likened to Bush and the GOP, especially when it comes to foreign policy. They are both roundly criticised at present for Iraq.
As well as the international policy similarities, and with more press attention recently, Blair has been weakened by 'scandal' as the gutter press in the UK insists on calling it. Most people call it corruption and nepotism, but those words have a reading age of above 8.
Although the elections are technically for seats on the Borough Councils (UK local political and administrative domains, normally subdivisions of Counties, which are more like States except actually completely different.) as the name suggests, it is generally recognised that a large part of your decision will also be based on national level politics.
So anyway the Conservatives have scored a big win. They basically have almost 1.5x the number of seats than Labour scored. We have more of a multiparty system than you do in the States, so 3 major parties tend to share most of the votes, with enough left over to see that several more smaller parties can actually have a small number of representatives in some areas.
A futher parallel is the immigration issue. This time in the UK, a party called the BNP (British Nationalist Party), who The Armish and AlwaysBroncin would vote for, has caused a bit of a stir by getting 13 councillors elected, mostly concentrated in 2 or 3 areas. In reality though, the total number of seats is around 3500, so this really doesn't mean much, but for some reason this is a story. Immigration has been a hot button issue especially in economically weaker areas leading up to the Elections as hard working Brits feel the squeeze from benefit squeezing. (Immigrants are getting more and more of the taxpayer's cash.)
You can read all about it and play with crazy interactive maps here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/uk_politics/2006/election_2006/default.stm
But despite these similaraties there are still many differences in the other details of the poltical landscape that in reality there is no reason to see why the US should experience a similar phenomena. I just hope it will.
It is an interesting situation as many parallels can be drawn between the situations in the US and UK now, especially in terms of the basic relationships, political positioning and history of the major opposing parties.
Despite that Labour traditionally would be a closer political match to the American Democrats, and the UK Conservatives are still generally more to the right, in some ways Tony Blair and the Labour Party can be likened to Bush and the GOP, especially when it comes to foreign policy. They are both roundly criticised at present for Iraq.
As well as the international policy similarities, and with more press attention recently, Blair has been weakened by 'scandal' as the gutter press in the UK insists on calling it. Most people call it corruption and nepotism, but those words have a reading age of above 8.
Although the elections are technically for seats on the Borough Councils (UK local political and administrative domains, normally subdivisions of Counties, which are more like States except actually completely different.) as the name suggests, it is generally recognised that a large part of your decision will also be based on national level politics.
So anyway the Conservatives have scored a big win. They basically have almost 1.5x the number of seats than Labour scored. We have more of a multiparty system than you do in the States, so 3 major parties tend to share most of the votes, with enough left over to see that several more smaller parties can actually have a small number of representatives in some areas.
A futher parallel is the immigration issue. This time in the UK, a party called the BNP (British Nationalist Party), who The Armish and AlwaysBroncin would vote for, has caused a bit of a stir by getting 13 councillors elected, mostly concentrated in 2 or 3 areas. In reality though, the total number of seats is around 3500, so this really doesn't mean much, but for some reason this is a story. Immigration has been a hot button issue especially in economically weaker areas leading up to the Elections as hard working Brits feel the squeeze from benefit squeezing. (Immigrants are getting more and more of the taxpayer's cash.)
You can read all about it and play with crazy interactive maps here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/uk_politics/2006/election_2006/default.stm
But despite these similaraties there are still many differences in the other details of the poltical landscape that in reality there is no reason to see why the US should experience a similar phenomena. I just hope it will.
