British Labour Party gets gay shock.

A recent poll in Great Britain shows a monumental shift politically, if not for the nation as a whole, at least for the Conservative Party. In the poll 1,800 gay men and lesbians were asked whether they would support Labour, the Conservatives or the Liberal Democrats. For the first time the plurality of gay men and lesbians have said they intend to vote for the Conservatives.

The poll showed that 30% were behind the Conservatives while Liberal Democrats and Labour tied at 18%. Those saying they would not vote at all were 17% and 9% said they are unsure. Labour has always considered the gay vote a safe bet. The marks a big shift for gay voters in England. In 2005 they went for Labour with 33% while the Conservatives attracted 21%.

I think there are two reasons for the shift. One is that the Labour governments of Blair and Brown have been openly authoritarian. As bad as the tendency toward a police state has been in the United States it is far worse in the UK. Secondly, the Conservative Party has not been gay adverse, like Republicans in the United States. England does not have a significant number of fundamentalist nutters such as infest the GOP here.

Tory leader David Cameron told gay voters: “I want the Conservative Party to be an open and inclusive Party which speaks for everyone in Britain regardless of their race, background or sexuality…” It is not likely that any major Republican is yet willing to say even that. Tory party chairman, Francis Maude, says that the party regrets their previous positions.
The Conservatives have also said they want more gay candidates to stand for office. Nick Boles, director of the Policy Exchange, and a former Tory Parliamentary candidate said: “There doesn’t need to be much intervention to ensure there is a good selection of openly gay people in winnable seats. I have always been openly gay. I hope to get on the list and to get a seat.”

If you want to see the difference between the British Conservatives and American Republicans below is a video of the Conservative Party Humanist Association being held at the Conservative Party national conference. The speaker, as you will see, is Richard Dawkins.

Two more reasons voters hate Labour.

If you want some indication as to why England’s Labour Party is held in such contempt consider this move on their part. The Labour government is proposing new regulations that will make it illegal for parents to teach their children how to drive.

Under the new proposals only government-approved instructors will be permitted to teach driving skills to new drivers. These state licensed monopolists earn a starting salary of $40 per hour for their work.

In another recent move the Labour government quietly rewrote the regulations establishing how vehicle taxes are calculated. The net result was 1.2 million car owners, mainly those in lower income groups, would see their car taxes substantially increase.

The excuse, of course, is global warming, and the government went after older cars because the emit more C02 into the atmosphere. Of course, one reason people drive older cars is because they can’t afford new ones. The result would be a doubling in taxes for poorer drives. Many of the vehicles would now carry a tax that is just shy of $1,000 per year.

Previously cars purchased before 2006 couldn’t be taxes at more than $420 per year but the new regulations would allow taxes of up to $960 per year. A spokesman for the Automobile Association says the new regulations are “penalising hard-pressed families who have been running the same car for many years.”

I suggest that one reason the government-owned BBC literally floods television views with apocalyptic “commercials” touting the dangers of global warming is to soften them up for moves like this one. Over the last two years I spent about nine months in the UK, and even when I wasn’t there, I watched UK television via my computer. It seemed like every commercial segment has at least one “public service” announcement on the topic. And it seems like tax increase after tax increase is justified on “save the planet” slogans.

The sad reality is that politicians are slime. Any issue, legitimate or not, is used by them to always justify an expansion of their powers and the revenue they take from the pockets of the public. The basic rules seems to be: if they scare you to death, they can tax you to death.

British electorate votes against Labour.

Britain’s Labour Party suffered a stunning series of humiliations in local elections. Even holding elections on the favorite holiday of socialists, May Day, didn’t seem to help. England turned its back on Labour very decisively.

The net result is that in total votes cast Labour came in third place. The Conservative Party came in first and the perennial third place winners, the Liberal Democrats, passed Labour in popular votes to come in second.

In the local councils Labour saw their number of seats decline by 331 and they lost control of 9 councils. The conservatives now hold 65 councils to Labour’s 18 with the Lib Dems in third at 12, 64 councils have no clear majority.

In London the oafish Conservative, Boris Johnson beat out Labour’s Ken Livingstone by a margin of 140,000 votes.

Labour has been facing disaster for some time. Tony Blair, following the advice of George Bush, led the party into the wilderness and it simply hasn’t recovered. Even Blair’s well-deserved resignation didn’t help the party. Gordon Brown, Blair’s replacement, refused to distance himself from Blair’s disastrous policies and the voters fled Labour as a result.

His main benefit has been that he is neither Tony Blair nor Gordon Brown.

Brown has refused to abandon the principles of Blair and that drove voter resentment against Labour. Conservative Party leader, the greasy David Cameron, on the other hand, has simply refused to have any principles whatsoever. But he did benefit because he’s not Tony Blair and not Gordon Brown. Exactly who he is remains to be seen. I suspect he will be the next Prime Minister and he will spend a lot of his first term causing voters to questions the wisdom of electing him.

The Lib Dems are continuing their slow move into becoming England’s second party. There have been some steps within the party to embrace it’s older classical liberal principles, not enough yet to call them true liberals, but enough to warrant attention.

Labour has pushed through many of the Big Brother type policies that George Bush has inflicted on the United States so it is nice to see them slaughtered at the polls. Personally I would have preferred seeing them lose a couple hundred more seats than they did. And I would have like to have seen the Lib Dems receiving more than they have -- they always get shafted in the first-past-the-post seats. Even though they won more votes that the Brownies did they come in third when it translates into actual seats.

One of the ugly incidents in the election was that the fascist British National Party won a seat in the London Assembly pushing their typical anti-immigrant positions. During times of financial stress, usually brought on by inept government management, stupid voters look for scapegoats. And because they stupid they never end up actually blaming the people responsible -- the politicians they put into power. Instead they look to take their frustration on others. Since the defeat of Hitler’s National Socialism it has been very out of fashion to blame every problem on “the Jews” so the dumb have turned to new scapegoats: immigrants and gays.

Le plus ça change ... le plus c'est la même chose.

Just blame the moon.

Just in case you think that American politics has a monopoly on clowns be assured this is far from the case. Politicians the world over are a species unto themselves -- unfortunately they are not an endangered species. But we can always hope.

New Zealand’s Labour government is pretty absurd. Lead by the vicious Helen Clark this government has more than a touch of nastiness and authoritarianism to it. No doubt in previous life Clark had some experience in the SS or the Stasi. Now New Zealand still remains one of the most economically free countries in the world. And their social liberties are damn good in my opinion -- especially when compared to the sad state of affairs in the United States.

Where Clark and he co-criminals are particularly venomous are in matters having to do with staying in power. They are a desperate lot and they will do whatever it takes, no matter how dishonest, corrupt or despicable to stay in power. For instance they recently “reformed” the election code and basically have forbidden private individuals from expressing public opinions about the Clark regime. Technically speaking these people are still free to speak but they must register with the government, report on what they spend, publicize their home address when they do speak out, etc. And the financial restrictions are so onerous that any organized group would find it difficult to do more than publish one newspaper ad critical of the Clark regime.

In other words they have done their level best to stamp out free speech when it comes to dissent against Clark and her fellow Stasi members. This was pushed through parliament with the help of an unsavory much of miscreants. The Green Party scuttled all pretences at supporting civil liberties in order to prop up Clark on this matter. Still that wasn’t enough. The supposedly Right-wing Christian United Future party supported the bill. But Clark bought them out by offering party leader, Peter Dunne, a seat in the cabinet. Dunne can’t refuse anything that makes himself look important and principles take a distant second to promoting Dunne.

And the worst of the lot is a vile and dishonest politician named Winston Peters. Peters and Clark worked out some deals after Clark nearly lost the last election. Peters got what he wants, which is mainly high salaries for himself, and Clark got Peters to prop up Labour. They bent the rules so far that Clark made Peters the Foreign Minister yet claims he is not part of the cabinet. This highly unusual arrangement allows Peters to travel the world at taxpayer’s expense and make a fool of himself in multiple nations. This is quite a step up for someone used to making a fool of himself in just one country.

But the most recent asinine example of the intellectual types that run Labour came when Justice minister, Annette King, tried to explain away rising youth crime rates under the Labour government.

The tiny nation of 4 million was recently shocked when there were 10 murders in one month. This is about double the normal rate. Now whether this is part of a trend or a mere blip on the screen is not the issue. What is the issue is the lunacy, quite literally, that struck the Minister. She blamed the killings on the “full moon” and a “hot summer”. But then Labour’s friends in the Green Party got tricked into voicing support for banning the dangerous chemical dihydrogen monoxide or H2O. So apparently the Kiwi Left is particularly susceptible to crazy theories.

For the record there is no correlation between full moons and crime. Early studies that thought there were didn’t take into account that the period studied had the full moons falling frequently on weekends. And crimes do go up on weekends. When they factored that into account the spike disappeared. Study after study has failed to find any lunar effect on crime rates. In fact, we aren’t finding evidence that the moon really has any impact on human behavour at all.

The word “lunatic” was originally coined by our superstitious ancestors who believed the moon did change human behavour. Today we apply it to people who are just crazy. New Zealand’s Justice minister qualifies as a lunatic. However, given the moral tenor of the rest of the vermin on the 10th floor of the Beehive (NZ’s parliamentary office building) she may be the least repulsive of the lot.

It could be just days now. Stunning defeat for Blair

Watch British politics carefully over the next few days. One bit of good news is that it appears to be just a matter of days before the vile Tony Blair retires. Here is a man who acted as a toady to the lying George Bush and who has worked hard and long at turning England into a fascist state.

Blair's party wants him to go. The British people want him to go. Blair is doing to the Labour Party what Bush has done to the Republican Party -- destroy support for it. In local council races the Labour Party is bleeding support. With about a third of the council elections called Labour has lost over 100 seats while the Conservative Party has gained almost 200 seats. The Conservatives should gain at least 400 seats. Too bad they don't stand for anything anymore.

UPDATE: Eleciton results are coming in very slowly from the UK but there is little good news for the Blairites. with not quite half the councils reporting the Tories have pick up 378 seats while Labor has lost 181, the Liberal Democrats have lost 134 seats. Tories now contol 73 local councils compared to Labour's 19 and the Lib Dems have 11. In the Scottish Parliament the Labour Party has been the force but that appears to be over. Of the seats so far decided they have 32 seats versus the Scottish National Party with 30 seats, Lib Dems with 12 and Tories with 7. A further 47 seats are up for grab so it is possible for Labour to remain the major party but looking unlikely they will hold a majority. Labour will remain the major party but will lose their majority in the Welsh Assembly. In vote percentage terms Labour is almost tied with the third place Liberal Democrats, 27% to 26%, while the Tories seem to have 41%.

FINAL UPDATE: It couldn't have been much worse for Tony Blair. The more election results that come in the worse the news for the man who played lap dog to George Bush. Let us start with the local council elections which are a strong indicator of what voters are thinking. Labour has lost 485 seats across the country, with 9 localities still outstanding. The Tories were hoping to gain 600 to 700 seats and garned an addition 875 seats. They now control 160 local councils compared to Labour's pathetic 33. And Labour is lucky, they control 33 councils while the Lib Dems control 22 since the Lib Dems have 2114 councillors compared to Labour's pathic third place showing of 1803.

In the Scotish Parliament Labour has lost its dominant position to the Scottish National Party. The SNP has 47 seats to Labours 46 while the Tories have 17 and the Lib Dems hav 16 with 3 others. Since no one is anxious to be saddled with Labour as a partner they will be in the opposition there. In the Assembly in Wales Labour is still the dominant force but lacks a majority. It has 26 seats out of 60. In percentage terms this is the worst Labour result in Wales since the First World War.

How many more days will go by before Blair concedes he is one of the most unpopular Prime Ministers in British history and resign his position?

Looking inside the Tory party.

I just returned from a dinner with a top Tory party official. The Conservative Party of the UK is out of power and has been for some years. So I was interested in what he was going to say. It is not critical to me who said it so I will leave that part out, but what was said is interesting.

First, he assured everyone that the Conservative Party members of parliament are totally and completely behind David Cameron. I take that to mean that quite a few Conservative Party MPs are not particularly happy with Cameron.

Typically when a top party official speaks to local party members (I was the only outsider present) he is telling them what the party leadership wants people to believe. And what party leaders want the members to believe is happening is often at odds with what is really happening. You can’t exactly say that reality is the complete opposite of the official line but you are safe in saying that the two never quite correspond.

It became apparent to me immediately what issues are dividing the party. It is Cameron’s Labour-lite policies. I say this because the second point this party leader made was that Cameron’s Green politics and such are “really conservative” principles all along. He hammered home that point several times. So it appears that many Tories simply don’t believe it.

The third point he made was that the policies of Cameron are the reason the party is doing well in the polls. His argument is that there is a body of voters who float between the major parties and Cameron’s policies appeal to them. The reason the Conservative Party had lost recent elections, he argued, was that these voters were turned off by Tory policies and now Cameron has struck a cord with them and they are coming home.

This struck me as totally imaginary or very nearly so. If Cameron’s Labour-lite Greenie politics is the key to Conservative Party success that would imply that the reason Margaret Thatcher became one of the longest serving Prime Ministers was due to her Green politics and her mimicking of the Labour Party on policy. The idea strikes me as farcical.

Let us first ask why Tony Blair succeeded. You had John Major distance himself tfrom Thatcher’s policies. He rushed to the Left much the way Bush Sr. did against the Reagan legacy. On the other hand Tony Blair, like Bill Clinton, moved in the opposite direction.

What drives Tory party poll numbers today? The prime reason that people are willing to vote for the Conservatives is disgust over Tony Blair -- disgust that is as justified as disgust over Bush. But our Tory party spokesman tonight kept insisting that the reason for the poll numbers is enthusiastic support for Cameron and I don’t believe it.

Cameron’s electoral strategy is to appear exactly like Labour on most issues. That wins the party some support but dissatisfies their own base. But he hopes to keep the Tory base simply because they are so anxious to send Blair into the electoral dustbin. Even Labour wants that.

Some time soon Blair will be gone. And Gordon Brown will be Labour Party leader. He has nothing great to offer the voters. But he has the same qualification that makes Cameron appealing to so many voters -- he’s not Blair. When Brown takes over the Labour Party, I suspect our speaker of this evening will be in for an unpleasant surprise. He will find that much of what drove Tory poll numbers was disgust for Blair not support for Cameron. I could be wrong, of course, I’ve have been before. We’ll only see when it happens but when Brown takes over I expect a drop in Tory poll numbers and an improvement for Labour.

But Labour has nothing to solve the pressing problems that plague the country. National Health Service is a mess and people are dissatisfied. All Labour can do is promise to spend more money. The “conservative” response is exactly the same thing -- spend more money. Pensions are in crisis and Labour wants to solve the problem by raising the retirement age. The Conservative Party solution is to support Labour.

The Conservative Party is playing down their own policies, they say, because they don’t want Gordon Brown to nick them before the election. But from what I heard this evening Brown would only be nicking back the policies that the Conservatives nicked from Labour. What I’m not seeing is anything that distinguishes the Tories from Labour other than the fact that Cameron isn’t Blair.

Tonight’s speaker did have one point for the true conservatives in the audience. He told them that Cameron is the only Tory leaders in recent years to say he supported marriage! Well, that went over like, like nothing. No reaction. No one seemed to be excited by it. What does it mean in reality -- a few small tax breaks for married people (and I assume those in civil unions). But those few tax breaks will be eaten up by all the other Labour-lite polices the Tories are rushing to adopt. The net result will be higher taxes not lower taxes.

It isn’t that the Tories couldn’t steal thunder from the Left. They could but they won’t. Instead they are mimicking the worst aspects of Labour. I believe Mr. Cameron could support reduced taxes and some other small government proposals and yet steal support from the Left parties if he would publicly state the Conservatives want the immediate withdrawal of British forces from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Liberal Democrats have done it and saw support grow. At the same time many Lib Dems started sounding more free market and voicing concerns about taxation. No wonder they saw support grow. They were stealing votes from both sides.

Can the Tories win the next election? I suspect they can but not because they are Labour-lite. And the bump they get now, because Cameron is compared to Blair, will die out as well since they won’t be running against Blair. Blair will be on the curb by then. But they will run against a party with no ideas and no means of solving the pressing problems plaguing the country. That will help the Tories to some degree but it appears that they don’t have much to offer either. And it appears their election strategy is to offer nothing.

Like many, come the next election, I’ll be happy about one thing-- Blair won’t be office. I know that whoever is elected president in the United States in 2008 it won’t be George Bush. That thrills me but I have no reason to be excited about any of the likely replacements. And the same is true for Blair. It will be a good thing he is gone and a shame that the main two options will be Brown or Cameron as neither man has what is needed.

Meanwhile I think the Tories should keep an eye on the Liberal Democrats. Just as the Lib Dems have taken support from Labour they are in position to do the same to the Tories. With Cameron sounding very much like a Labour candidate it wouldn’t take much of a shift on the part of the Lib Dems for them to woo over Tory voters. That would create an entire new ball game and a scenario for which the Tories are not prepared.