Mangetout: Thank you for the serious answer to my silly question. 
Nimue is certainly talking about the Scots system - there’s no extra year for honours in England.
Yeah, female, 30, English, from a single parent family, went to an all girls private school and it never did me any harm 
Ummmm…ok…
Seriously though, with a nickname like “The Iron Lady” how could she not be cool?
If she was so awful, how did she get elected and then re-elected twice? I presume that whatever it was, it was pretty much gone by the time she was ousted from the leadership of her own party. I am curious to know what precipitated this. It kind of puts me in mind of Churchill being ousted near the end of WWII.
“Success as a result of industry is a peasant ideal.” -Wallace Stevens.
I’ll try to be objective about this, but since I’m a Labour supporter you may find other dopers will disagree.
One of the chief reasons why the Conservative party was re-elected so easily was that at the time the Labour Party was very seriously divided over internal issues (pretty much the way the Con. party is now). It was easy to suggest that they would not form even a functioning government so winning the election was a shoe-in for Thatcher.
I’ll try to keep this short, but basically the previous Labour government had become unpopular because they had not handled the consequences of the global oil crisis well. Britain’s economy went seriously downhill in the mid 1970s (like many countries), but the Unions seemed to feel that they were entitled to more insulation from the results of that than could reasonably be afforded. Their members were frustrated that their standard of living was falling, yet their traditonal political allies in the Labour Party couldn’t or “woudn’t” help and it led to lots of strikes.
It was easy for the Conservatives to suggest that the Labour Party was controlled by the Unions and this struck a chord with the voters.
Ironically during the 1980s Britain enjoyed the proceeds of its own oil reserves that would have benefited any government, but the Conservatives capitalised on controversial and radical policies because of the weakness in the opposition as much as anything else.
I can’t believe that we have ever had a more divisive government - with millions of people idolising Margaret Thatcher but with millions more hating her guts (put me in the second category).
The same divisiveness started to creep into the Conservative party itself during the mid to late 1980s. Any minister who disagreed with Thatcher was sacked or side-lined, and eventually there was an internal coup to get rid of her. Ever since there has been division amongst them over that, and many of the most talented politicians they had left politics (often to take up highly paid directorships of companies they had privatised, but that’s another story).
It’s easy for us all to get a narrow view of foreign politicians, or to ignore domestic issues, but I promise you if you worked in the coal-mining industry, which was a big employer here once, but which was closed down by Thatcher’s government as a deliberate act of spite, you wouldn’t think that was “cool” at all.
The Iron Lady nickname was originally invented by the Soviet Union as an insult, but of course she absolutely loved it. Sometimes politics has to involve tough decisions but Thatcher made aggressiveness and obdurance an end in itself. Rarely can there have been a more single-minded politician, but in the end this just became a self-serving conceitedness that even people who had voted for her became sick of.
Thatcher would love to be compared with Churchill, but I don’t think he ever made war on his own people the way she did. In 1947, Churchill was just seen as yesterday’s man by an electorate who wanted a post war government to make major social welfare reforms, and knew that he was not the man for the job. It may have seemed disloyal at the time, especially to an American audience, but I don’t think people threw him out - it was more a matter of “thanks, but now we have to move on”.
When Tony Blair became PM last time around there was a lot of anger against the Conservative Party. The time seemed right for a similar change in policy for us as in 1947, but little has changed so far and it remains to be seen whether Blair’s government has got the conviction to carry it through. I voted on my way to work this morning, but the polls suggest that millions more won’t bother. I hope they’re wrong.
What everton said (extremely well put by the way). And there’s also the fact that people en masse are a sucker for a strong leader -it’s that comforting thought of someone really being in charge, which is the impression she gave off to a lot of people.
The result of all this though is that today here on Election day Labour will undoubtedly have another landslide victory against a discredited and often hated Conservative party. The mid nineties were a bit of a nothing-time (John Major? Who?) and now William Hague has virtually zero credibility and it’s pretty damn certain we won’t be living under a Tory government for quite a number of years. Jolly good.
Fran
The possibility of a LibDem government in the near future is still remote, but watch this space.
Mangetout, I’ve got a question. Which online newspaper, one conservative and one liberal, would you recommend to read? I googled UK newspapers, and there was quite a list. So I picked the Daily Mirror, which is a joke right? Please enlighten me.
Apologies for stealing Mangetout’s thunder on this one, but for liberal views you should look at the Guardian and for conservative the Daily Telegraph. Both are serious respected newspapers.
As for Mangetout’s previous posting, I’m not sure I’m ready for a Liberal Democrat government, but how about an opposition?
I’m certain that would be good for them, it would be good for the country, and it would even be good for the Tories to spend a bit of time out of the limelight.
English newspapers are divided into broadsheets (serious) and tabloids (topless girl pictures).
The Times (broadsheet) - read by people who run the country
The Telegraph (broadsheet) - read by people who think they run the country
The Independent (broadsheet) - read by people who would like to run the country
The Guardian (broadsheet) - read by people who would like someone nice to run the country
The Mirror (tabloid) - read by people who think TV stars + sportsmen should run the country
The Sun (tabloid) - read by people who think models with big breasts should run the country
The Star (tabloid) - has lots of pictures
I would suggest the Guardian (slightly left of centre), and the Telegraph (right wing).
glee has done a much better job of answering this than I could have; I hardly read newspapers.
Everton, glee, Mangetout, thanks for the prompt reply. After reading the Mirror, I thought the only news coming out of the UK was football soap operas.
Very good, glee, I’d forgotten how that sequence went (and you’ve used slightly more polite language than last time I heard it :))
The Daily Telegraph is currently the only paper sticking with the Tories. All the others have either given up or are supporting Blair with varying degrees of enthusiasm. The biggest turnaround has been The Sun, which is fundamentally just to the right of Atilla the Hun (or at least to the right of his luscious 18-year-old daughter). More importantly it likes to back a winner, so ditched the Major-led Tory party last time round.
Once upon a time the Mirror was not a joke paper, but a serious one aiming itself at a broadly left-wing , blue-collar reader. Those days are long gone.
There are a couple of other national tabloids that aren’t completely obsessed with trivia, but glee’s pretty much covered the field.
I don’t think they are ready either, but they are starting to be taken seriously, which is good, and I think they are more likely to work constructively as an opposition party than the Tories, who, under Hague are just constantly running around looking for an issue so that they can tell us they wouldn’t do it like that.
Personally, I’d be most impressed by any political party that had the integrity to admit that the party in power has at least some good policies, the LibDems seem to have this quality.
Just the facts ma’am…
Labour won the British General Election last night as expected. The overall majority in the House of Commons is slightly reduced compared to the 1997 result (167 seats this time v 179 last). Labour seats 413 (down 6), Tory 164 (no net change), Liberal Democrat 48 (up 7), Others 10 (down 1).
The turnout was the lowest since World War I (draw your own conclusions).
William Hague has resigned as leader of the Tory party.
More information can be found at the BBC’s site.