Wednesday 28 April 2010

UK Election Special: Nick Clegg & The Liberal Democrats


Four weeks ago, no-one had really heard of Nick Clegg; now, he’s the name on everyone’s lips, front page news from Moscow to New York, and the potential future Prime Minister of Great Britain. What happened? Televised election debates.

Unlike America, we’ve never had these before – and the results have been dramatic. Having always been treated as a minority party by the media, Clegg’s Liberal Democrats were given an even platform with Labour and the Tories on primetime TV. With Labour politically moribund after 14 years in power and the Conservatives still struggling to shake off their ‘Nasty Party’ image of the Eighties, Clegg saw his chance and took it; pitching a perfect position between the two old parties, with an easy-on-the-eye performance designed purely – according to Lib Dem advisors – to give the impression of ‘a nice bloke to have a pint with’. Policy was low, Obama rhetoric was high; ‘change’ was the agenda, and Nick was the man to sell it. Lo and behold, the Lib Dems are now the hottest ticket in town.

As the expensively educated child of a financier, with traces of blue blood running through his veins, Clegg sounds, on the surface at least, like a natural Tory. His party, meanwhile, are in many ways at the other end of the political scale: anti-war, anti-nuclear, pro-drugs and in favour of redistributing wealth, their socially liberal stance was, until recently, only generally associated with sandal-wearers and spliff-hungry students. Where the two sides meet is on their approach to the state: like the Tories – and the vast majority of Americans – Clegg’s Lib Dems have no love of big government. His is a classic liberal stance, sprinkled with a dash of socialism: a hands-off approach from Parliament, with local governance brought to the fore and an emphasis on individual freedom, all paid for by a hefty tax on the super rich. However, like his policies – which include an amnesty for illegal immigrants and a £2,500 cap on bankers’ bonuses – Clegg can also be gleefully radical, whether claiming to have bedded a bonk-busting number of women or admitting on the recent debates that he wasn’t religious. Plus, his Spanish wife steadfastly refuses to be part of the campaign trail - change indeed.

And, it seems, irresistible change at that. While the Lib Dems remain highly unlikely to win the election outright, their massive rise in the polls makes a Hung Parliament all the more likely - which would see ‘that nice bloke off the telly’ become kingmaker extraordinaire. Labour and the Tories both know this, practically falling over themselves too woo their one-time whipping boy; what now remains to be seen is who Nick crawls into bed with come May 7th. Will he suppress his party’s centre-left principles and infuriate its core supporters by shacking up the Tories? Will he be left spooning with Labour despite its dismal recent record on civil liberties? Either way, a party whose members would have been planning their summer holidays six months ago are now frantically preparing for power – one way or another, it looks to be coming their way. Who said the revolution would not be televised?


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Who knew the name Nick Clegg one month ago? Now he is the second coming of Christ, or Obama. Sorry, sometimes I get those two mixed up. Kidding aside, I volunteered for Obama's campaign and was glad to see him elected. However, now that he is actually president, I view him as I do any other politician - with a mix of healthy suspicion and downright disgusts tempered by the acknowledgement that someone has to do the filthy job of running my corrupt country. Nick Clegg, despite being another man who blatantly salivates over the prospect of filthy jobs, is not the British Obama. Even British people know that, and it has been less than a month. I refer you to this hilarious list by Richard Adams .

That people initially jumped to this comparison speaks of a fundamental misinterpretation of the significance of Obama's election. His election hasn't brought more power to the people or subverted our disfunctional and increasingly polarized political structures by 'crossing the aisle' and bringing together coalitions to the right and left solve our mounting problems. Regardless of what pundits on the right and left bark, I reiterate: he is fundamentally a centrist politician. The real change ushered in by his election was social. Until John McCain croaked his last and Sarah Palin dissappeared (for a woefully short period) back into the depths from which she came, no one in America believed that a black man could be president. Sixty years ago, Obama wouldn't have been allowed to attend the same schools as the people he ran against. Cleggy boy went to Westminster school, which is one of the nine original British public schools (established by the Public Schools Act of 1868) and has the highest Oxbridge acceptance rate of any school in the world.

Of course, they do have one interesting commonality and it's one of those little secrets that most American liberals are actively trying to forget. Obama wouldn't have had a snowball's chance if he hadn't been preceded by eight years of a guy named W. In this, Barack and Nick have more in common than either would like to admit. They both surged to prominence because their well known adversaries are so despised by everyone else, all they have to do is avoid egregiousness. It worked for Obama, now let's see if Clegg can do that light-footed dance across the razors edge. I'd put money on it. After all, its not like he's got to keep it up for much longer.

Tuesday 27 April 2010

UK Election Special


If you are in America, it may have slipped your attention that there is an election going on in the UK. And an interesting one at that. After almost a century of a two-party system dominated by Labour and the Conservatives, a third party has entered the mix in the Liberal Democrats - and the latest opinion polls suggest it is so tight, they could even wind up winning the damn thing. The combination of recession, war, scandal and a staggeringly unpopular incumbent leader has left the electorate desperate to give the political class a kicking - making this the most unpredictable election in decades. It could be history in the making, and we'll be profiling each of the main parties before the nation heads to the polls on May 6th.

Firstly, though, a little lesson in how it works over here for our American readers:

1) In the UK, you elect a party, not a person. Nobody voted for Gordon Brown to become Prime Minister: his party chose him when Tony Blair stood down two years after the 2005 election. There are signs that this may change, with opposition leader David Cameron promising to alter the law if he comes to power, but for now it stands.

2) The election works on a 'First Past The Post' system: you select a Member of Parliament (MP) for your local constituency, and the party with the most MPs across the country is the winner. This means that a party with a low percentage of the overall vote can still win the election, which is a very real possibility this time around - and perhaps explains why electoral reform is such a hot political issue leading up the the vote.

3) To win outright, your party need an absolute majority - that is, more MPs than all the rest of the parties put together. If no-one gets an absolute majority, you get something called a Hung Parliament; a somewhat confused period in which the winning party decides whether to battle on alone without sufficient power to pass laws through government, whether to saddle up with one of the other parties in a coalition, or whether to head back to the polls to give the public another chance.

All the signs suggest that a Hung Parliament is what we are heading for this time. And this is why everyone is so excited all of a sudden: nobody has a fucking clue who's going to come out in top. Blue? Red? Brown? Green? Time to take a closer look at our frontrunners...

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I don't know very much about the day to day of British politics and barring some sort of cataclymic event that destroys the political pre-eminence of my country while simultaneously restoring it to the crown, I expect to remain this way. Most of my countrymen feel the same way. Normally, I would cite American ignorance in most things that take place outside of the ridiculously self contained bubble that we call home. But this time, It's really just because Britain is a political non-entity to any country with real political (read: economic) clout. So, until that changes, most of what I know about British politics will come from watching Question Time highlights and episodes of the The Thick of It.

My role during this next week of British political commentating will be as a passive observer who points out the peculiarities of the process from my yankee point of view. But where to start? No, wait - I take that back. Since the British electoral process lasts only one month there is no time to waste. Mind you, I'm not proposing that you change to the American system that is essentially a two year war of attrition against the electorate's better judgement. We spend so much time in elections cycles, that, come November 3rd, we have actually forgotten what life is like without being able to turn on the TV and see candidates viciously slandering each other as they smile into the camera. Still, one month?

The other bizarre part of this is the aforementioned "First Past the Post" system. To clarify, Labour can come in third in the election but come out as the ruling party? Regardless of your succinct definition, my dear Tim, this whole thing leaves me fucking baffled. However, we in the United States have the Electoral College which, if possible, makes even less sense and can produce the same outcome. So in the interest of maintaining our congenial relationship, I'll refrain from criticizing your arcane election system if you refrain from criticizing mine.

Tuesday 20 April 2010

Drink: Cause and Solution


"First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you" - F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Any Englishman entering a New York bar would soon find himself in familiar territory. Sure, the décor might be a little different – no piss-stained carpet here – but as the glasses chink expectantly above the warm hubbub, the joyous gleam on the bright faces crowding the room could be found anywhere in the world. Down the dregs, however, and a different vision unfolds: despite a celebrated alcoholic heritage taking in speakeasies, Spring Break and the smooth, smooth syrup of Snoop Dogg, these days, a mere 64% of adult Americans admit to taking a taste. To put this in perspective, a 2009 survey in the UK found that 69% of British males had imbibed alcohol in the past week alone, with just 14% of adults overall declaring themselves teetotal. Drinking is deeply ingrained in British culture; despite the heroic efforts of Hemingway and Fitzgerald, the same simply cannot be said of the States.

You don’t have to look far for evidence to back this up. In America, you can have sex way before you can drink – if you make the momentous decision to bring a baby into the world, don’t even think about wetting it’s head until you hit 21. There’ll be no champagne corks popping when you graduate high school; no beers in the trunk when you get your first driving license (at 14 if you live in South Dakota). Should you enlist and get sent overseas at 18, drink will offer no solace from the horror of war – you guys are trusted with a rifle before your government will let you get your hands on a Bud.
I can assure you that this isn’t an attitude shared on this side of the Atlantic. I’ve sat with groups of regular, respectable middle-class people as they laugh themselves hoarse over memories of drunkenness past, gleefully bringing up vomit-flecked tales of projectile puerility as if it was the most normal thing in the world. Worst of all? I’ve laughed along with them – and have plenty of my own stories to share as well. So twisted is our approach to binge drinking that we don’t see an issue in the standard pre-teen ritual of necking 3-litre bottles of cider in the park, or in the staggering fact that many newsagents sell super-strength lager at half the price of a milkshake. Rest assured we are different: but why?

Here’s a clue: say the word ‘Plymouth’ to an American and it conjures up images of proud protestant pilgrims; in Britain, it’s a particularly lethal brand of gin. The puritans departed these shores for a reason; we’re a hopeless case. In the new colonies, however, their influence was unrivalled, and old habits have made a point of dying hard ever since. Prohibition, which itself had its roots in the conservative Christianity of the South, was only repealed in Mississippi in 1966 – some dry counties even exist to this day. Nowadays, the last remnants of temperance and our cyrrotic legacy face off across the pond: neither of us have got it right. There is a difference between drinking and having a drink, and both of us would, in our respective ways, do well to learn it.

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A friend from Leeds once told me: “Teddy, an Englishman never outgrows an open bar”.

I’m not a fan of stating hard and fast generalizations regarding large groups of people, but this one holds. In my experience with this strange sub-species of human, I have never seen one refuse a drink. Even if that person would very much like to. Even if that person knows that one more will definitively pickle their liver, get them thrown out of the house, put in jail, and have them spewing sick like lesser deities spew water in the fountains of Versailles.

There are some types of domesticated animals that will never refuse food. If you drop a cement mixer full of oats in front of a horse, the beast would gladly eat itself to death. Such is the unique British pre-disposition to booze. If you don’t believe me, try it some time. Find any random Britisher on the street and offer to by him a drink. He will be unable to refuse. When he has finished that drink, buy him another. Continue this process until your new friend is on the floor of the bar, wallowing in a pool of his own excrement and slurring his favourite football songs while imploring random passerbys to “join in on the chorus”. Feel free to leave him there with your phone number written on a cocktail napkin. Not only will he not hold this against you, he will consider you a lifelong friend.
I’m not criticizing binge drinking. I support almost all vices that make lives of quiet desperation a little brighter, if only for short periods of time. It does, however, strike me as absolutely fucking insane that British people, from adolescents to oldsters, can’t seem to control their drinking, given that when sober, they spend so much time self-flagellating on the issue. Barely a month passes in Britain without someone issuing a report blaming binge drinking for the downfall of society. Binge drinking is making people die earlier; binge drinking has strained the NHS to its breaking point; Millions of pounds of government spending is sucked into a black hole created by drunken vandalism and ‘anti-social behavor'. By drinking you not only let yourself down, you let down your countrymen, your queen and your god.

So why don’t people do anything about it? They make token attempts, through legislation, and those wonderfully socialist TV and poster campaigns that feature jarring scenes of violence with quotes likes: “It was supposed to be my stag night, instead, we murdered a cabbie”. But no one is actually bothered enough by the physical, mental, and institutional toll of binge drinking to simply stop going to the pub, or deny themselves a round at last call. The reason, I suspect, is that despite all the rhetoric about the evils of alcohol, the only true ‘anti-social’ behavior that a brit can ever engage in, is not sharing a pint with his countrymen. This will always be one of his most charming and damning qualities.