Wanna puke?

[Algorem]

DLC | New Dem Dispatch | May 9, 2005

Blair's Accomplishment

http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=131&subid=192&contentid=253317

To fully appreciate Tony Blair's accomplishment in winning a third consecutive general election victory last week, you have to understand what the pre-Blair Labour Party was like. Well into the 1990s, Labour remained stubbornly committed to an Industrial Era politics of class resentment and public-sector expansion. Its party platform embraced the hoary socialist goal of nationalizing most key industries. Its foreign policy views were quasi-pacifist and quasi-isolationist, hostile to both the United States and the European Community. Old Labour was broadly perceived, even by its supporters, as completely dominated by interest groups, and its activist base was so left-bent that a noisy Trotskyist faction was taken seriously. Electorally, the party was completely feckless, losing four straight general elections despite growing public unhappiness with Margaret Thatcher's radicalized Tory Party.

The modernization of the Labour Party, first tentatively undertaken by Neil Kinnock, became the central focus of Blair's New Labour project, which was explicitly modeled on our own New Democrat movement. Like Bill Clinton, Blair understood that the revival of progressive politics depended on a willingness to take seriously and address fundamental voter concerns about the values and goals of the historic center-left parties. And like the New Democrats, the New Labourites concentrated on exhibiting the toughness to govern. That's why Blair insisted on establishing Labour as a party that would be "tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime," that could be trusted to wisely manage public finances while encouraging private enterprise, and that had a positive vision of Britain's role in the world as a bridge between the United States and Europe. And while the Tories and many Labour traditionalists misunderstood New Labour as a "shift to the right," Blair, like Clinton, consistently argued that this comprehensive message and agenda represented a basic commitment to speak and act as a serious governing party rather than a coalition of interest groups clinging to the progressive accomplishments of the past.

Thanks to Britain's parliamentary system, Blair and his New Labour colleagues were able to briskly reform the Labour Party and government itself in a way that was simply impossible for their American counterparts. And this third straight electoral victory (the first ever for a Labour prime minister), despite its modest outlines, showed the fruits of their efforts. Many commentators in Britain and elsewhere have focused on Labour's reduced majority in the House of Commons, or have attributed Labour's success to the haplessness of the Tories. But our take is that the results show Labour is now the natural governing party of the United Kingdom, leaving the Tories to wander in a political wilderness of ideological division and demagogic opportunism.

The May 5 election could hardly have come at a worse time for Labour, given broad public unhappiness with Blair's decision to participate in the invasion of Iraq (which unfairly but naturally identified him with the Bush administration's incoherent and unilateralist rationale for that invasion), and the natural "incumbency fatigue" that affects any party that has been in power for a while. That Labour still managed to comfortably win is a testament to the underlying strength Blair has bestowed to his party...

[On the Road]

1. I Agree with This Assessment

and I think it's the kind of thing Democrats have to do.

Blair is always accused of taking the Labor party rightward, which is true in a sense. But he strengthened the core institutions of government. Plowed a lot of money into improving state-run healthcare. Created a much improved economy which can support the kind of social programs the UK has.

I don't Blair's record is at all similar to the kind of DLC-supported initiatives that are always criticized on DU. Republican programs in the US are by and large destructive, and Democrats who jump on board are enabling them. That's not how I see Blair.

On the other hand, I am as vehemently opposed to his Iraq policies as anyone here, and I'm very glad he got a comeuppance in the election. But that wasn't the focus of the article.

[lancdem]

2. I agree

No barfing here. :)

[MaineDem]

3. Why barf?

I don't have a problem with these ideas.

[Algorem]

4. 2 more for you not to barf at,Gang Of Three:

Dems can learn from Blair's trials

http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/local/11598274.htm
Dan Balz

Analysis

Can the British Labour Party help Democrats in the United States find their way back to power? In a week when Prime Minister Tony Blair was humbled by the voters here on the way to a re-election victory, that may be an odd question. But even a damaged Blair and his party offer lessons that analysts on both sides of the Atlantic say could aid the Democrats as they look toward elections in 2006 and 2008.

Blair has been left weakened by Thursday's election, rebuked by voters for his alliance with President Bush as America's staunchest ally in the Iraq war. His future as prime minister may be limited and his party faces turbulence. Still, Labour's three consecutive general election victories constitute a record the party had never achieved and one the Democrats have not realized since the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Politicians and the press are focused on what went wrong for Blair. For Democrats, the significance of the election may lie as much in the ability of Labour to win an election at a time when its leader was so personally unpopular. The reason is because Labour for now remains the dominant pole in British politics, thanks over the years to Blair's personal talents and the party's success in redefining the landscape.

Once dominated by the left, Labour under Blair won by a landslide in 1997 as it moved to the middle. In power, Labour has governed with a mix of liberal and conservative policies and an eye on so-called middle England. Today, the Labour Party occupies a huge amount of space along the political spectrum, so much that the opposition parties have been forced further to the fringes. "They've done an amazing job of being successfully centrist," said Anthony King, a professor of government at Essex University and election night analyst for the British Broadcasting Corp.


http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_20/b3933009_mz001.htm

From Welfare State to "Enabling State"
"The old, paternalistic 20th-century model isn't viable" says Will Marshall of the centrist Progressive Policy Institute

Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, a centrist think tank affiliated with the Democratic Leadership Council, does not believe that the U.S. faces a choice between rugged individualism and welfare-state dependency. He discussed his "third way" approach to the social safety net with BusinessWeek White House Correspondent Richard S. Dunham. Here are edited excerpts of their conversation:

Q: Is the concept of an economic safety net relevant in today's Information Age?
A: We're moving from a welfare state to an enabling state in which public activism is all the more necessary against the enormous inequities and dislocation brought about by global capitalism. The prospect of downward mobility has become a much more palpable threat to many people. We are asked by our government and our employers to take greater economic risks, but we don't have the same safety net.

The anchoring concept is shared responsibility. People know that the old New Deal safety net has frayed and cannot be rewoven. People understand that government and big corporations cannot any longer guarantee good jobs for life.

Q: So what do we expect the government to do for us?
A: People are not looking for the old, paternalistic safety nets. They are looking for ways to empower themselves economically. They want a government that equips them with new tools for security and success. That's a different model than the 20th-century welfare state, with top-down distribution of entitlements...

[xchrom]

6. ''They are looking for ways to empower themselves economically''

good luck with that.

they are rewriting history with remarks like that.

saying the poor and middle classes were lazy or not driven enough to make more wealth.

well so far the ''money for nothing'' schemes that corporations, cetrist dems and republicans have been touting are leading us all down the drain.

[magellan]

5. Puking here

The May 5 election could hardly have come at a worse time for Labour, given broad public unhappiness with Blair's decision to participate in the invasion of Iraq (which unfairly but naturally identified him with the Bush administration's incoherent and unilateralist rationale for that invasion)...

Oh please. The British people are not nearly as ignorant and deluded as most Americans are -- the UK still has something of a free press churning out the truth. Brits quite FAIRLY identified bLiar with bush** on Iraq and punished Labour for his lies and refusing to own up to them.

Labour's win had nothing to do with the strength of the party: it was totally about the Brits protecting themselves. If the Tories weren't so bad for the middle class, and the LibDems weren't so untried and untested, Labour would have gone down BIG TIME in the election.

My husband is British, we lived there several years till recently and keep in close touch with UK friends and family, so we know what the mood is there. The DLC is unequivocally FULL OF IT.

[Benbow]

7. but only 21 per cent of 44 million UK electors voted for Blair's party

Although Labour won last week's UK General Election, this has to be seen in context, viz

For the first time, a majority government in Britain has been elected by fewer people than those who could not be bothered to vote. Labour’s 36% share of the vote was lower than the 39% of the electorate who didn’t make it to the polling station.

It is an unenviable record for Tony Blair to hold. The "winner takes all" rules of Britain’s first past the post voting system mean he has a Commons majority of more than 65 despite the fact that only 21% of the 44 million electors supported his party - a record low in British electoral history.

The previous holder of this distinction was Harold Wilson, who won the October 1974 general election with a 39% share of the vote, but he only had a majority of four. He could at least claim that with a turnout of 73% he had the support of more than 28% of the electorate.

Perhaps the clearest illustration of the underlying logic of the current voting system is in the number of votes it takes to elect each party’s MPs. On last night’s results a Labour MP only needed 26,858 votes to get elected, compared with 44,241 votes for a Tory MP, and a staggering 98,484 for each Liberal Democrat MP.

In other words 353 Labour MPs were elected on 9.48m votes, 196 Conservatives on 8.67m votes and 60 Liberal Democrats with 5.9m votes.

The democratic deficit involved is bound to fuel demands for reform of the voting system and may even lead to some senior Conservatives openly advocating change.

The above is from Alan Travis' election blog, on the Guardian newspaper web site. Travis is the Guardian's Home Affairs editor.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/global/alan_travis.html

[magellan]

8. Yes, that's right

And in most constituencies, Labour lost the majority of votes to the LibDems. (Which is telling in itself; the LibDems are the only party who openly opposed the invasion of Iraq.) The swing to LibDem was anywhere from 5-12% in a good number of Labour strongholds, if memory serves. And yet the LibDems gained precious few seats because even with the swing, they didn't get enough votes to beat Labour. Meanwhile, a lot of old Tory constituenices that went Labour in the last election swung back to conservative this time.

Of course, while Labour might try kidding the people by saying their 3rd term victory proves their "strength", they are not kidding themselves privately about the loss of 100 seats and what staying with the current election system might mean for them next time. If Labour is, as they like to boast, the UK's "natural party", then that's all the more impetus for them to support a change to proportional voting.

[sadiesworld]

9. Joining in...

:puke: