So John Stewart did some hilarious stuff about the British Election so I will let him entertain you so I don't have to. Here they are in chronological order. Enjoy!
There is this concept in a lot of Greek mythology and other literary works throughout history of a doomed hero. One who tries his hardest to fight against what the cards deal him and yet cannot. Often, it is this attempt in and of itself that leads to or accelerates their downfall. I feel that in many ways, this describes Gordon Brown, who today resigned as Prime Minister and leader of the Labour Party. The Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have formed a coalition and David Cameron took office as Prime Minister earlier tonight. This is not an attempt to defend or condemn Gordon Brown’s policies but instead my attempt to explain why I have and still do admire him.
To begin with, let me give you some details about James Gordon Brown that I feel are important to our story. He started the University of Edinburgh at the age of 16 (interestingly, he is one of only five Prime Ministers to not go to Cambridge or Oxford) and went on to get a PhD there as well. This man is very clearly not dumb.
During his first term in University, he suffered a retinal detachment in his left eye after a rugby game. Four surgeries later, it was removed. When he experienced similar symptoms in his right eye a year later it was only a highly experimental surgery that managed to save some of his sight, which has been apparently deteriorating in the past years and he still has to be concerned about further trauma that could cause the retina in his right eye to become fully attached. This means that he can only read very large print, something that can severely impact your ability to do something like read notes during debates in Parliament or Prime Minister’s Question or in attempts to write hand written letters to the families of each military member killed in service (which he did. Last year, there was controversy after he may have spelled a name James instead of Janes. The news did suggest this might have been due to a combination of his poor eyesight and naturally sloppy handwriting). I suspect this means he has to hold a lot more information in his head than a normal person would in order to prepare for things like debates or PMQs. I also admire that he doesn’t really bring it up. In fact, there were many British people who did not realize he had a glass eye until well after he became Prime Minister.
He lost his first race for Parliament (something that is not uncommon. It is relatively normal for candidates to be placed in unwinnable seats to sort of pay their dues before they can move to seats where they have more of a chance). In 1983 he won his seat in Dunfermline East (which would later become Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath). Labour was in opposition at the time, and had been since 1979. It was at the height of the Thatcher era and would take another 14 years for them to regain power. He served in the shadow cabinet (opposition leadership) until he became Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1997.
In 1994 the leader of the Labour party died unexpectedly. Even though he was perhaps the more qualified candidate, it is widely believed that, at a meeting in the Granita restaurant in London, Brown agreed that he would not stand for the leadership and would instead support Tony Blair who it was thought could help bring in new Labour voters. In exchange, Brown was allegedly given greater control over Labour’s economic policies and an understanding that Blair would step down if Labour won a second term when Brown would be next. Blair denies that this explicit agreement took place but it is clear that Brown agreed to delay (if not give up completely) one of his lifelong ambitions for the good of his party and what he believed to be the good of his country.
His wife Sarah had their first child Jennifer, who was born prematurely, on December 28, 2001. Jennifer died 10 days later. In response, they set up the Jennifer Brown Research Fund to sponsor research into new healthcare techniques for premature babies. (For more information, including how to donate go to http://piggybankkids.org/our-projects/jennifer-brown-research-fund ). Five years later, their third child, James, was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis. David Cameron, the now Prime Minister of the UK, had a son Ohtahara syndrome—a combination of cerebral palsy and epilepsy. He died in 2009 at the age of 6. Gordon Brown canceled Prime Minister’s Questions that day and took the time to express his condolences. It was an interesting and intensely human moment, I thought, between two political opponents both affected by such a heartbreaking situation.
Within a month of him finally becoming Prime Minister in 2007, there was a terrorist attack in Glasgow airport, a new outbreak of foot and mouth disease, and a series of storms caused massive flooding in parts of the country. None of these could reasonably be construed to be his fault. He did face other problems where he was not necessarily blameless but also doesn’t deserve to be leveled with all of it for much of them either.
He was in many ways very opposite from Tony Blair, known for being dour and un-charismatic with an awkward smile and often being relatively frank in his speech. I for one do not mind. I would rather have someone who is smart than good looking or smooth talking –so focused on the sound bites and slogans that the message gets lost. Gordon Brown is by no means a perfect man—he is known to have a temper and there are definitely things he could have done better as Chancellor and then as Prime Minister—but he has many of the attributes I see to be important in a politician; brilliance, passion, and a genuine desire and drive to do what he believes to be best. I also greatly admire his perseverance despite all of the hardships and clearly bad luck he has suffered. These attributes are often forgotten or lost when people look at politics today but are amongst the reasons I choose to study it. I hope that Prime Minister Cameron will continue to uphold those values during his time in office. It will be interesting to see what happens next.
PS. Sorry this is so heavy. I'll try to do something funnier next.
(Note that information was taken from the BBC, the Labour Party, the Telegraph, Time Magazine)
Been brushing up on your Mandarin lately, Britain?
Well, even if you haven't it may flatter/shock some of you to learn that there are currently more people in China leaning English than there are residents of England, Wales, and Scotland combined. Even more flattering/shocking, despite the decidedly anti-English bent present in China owing to a longer-than-average national memory surrounding that little issue of Hong Kong and the sacking of the Summer Palace in the 1840s, the demand for English teachers with a British accent is higher than it's ever been. Even in China, American English gets no love, despite our sensible spelling system and colorful colloquialisms! I blame the Queen - was there ever such an adorable national leader?
Anyway, in addition to hogging all of the ESL teachers with British accents, China also has an incredibly hilarious news website that features dual English/Chinese articles. For some reason, the people who write these articles (poorly, in the English case) have a weird fascination with the UK. Yesterday's headlines, for example, included: "Average UK child watches 4.5 Hours of TV," "British Prefer Light Beer," and a really very strange article I couldn't make heads of tails of at all - even in Mandarin - called "Britain's Pendulum Clan." Yeah. No clue on that one.
Of these and other truly amusing stories, I've chosen to focus in particular today on one rather confusingly called "The Dave and Nick Show as British Leaders Show Funny Side." Apparently, PM Cameron and the leader of the LibDems decided to turn their first joint press conference into the 'Dave and Nick Show,' which, as the article described, "was complete with a jovial, even matey atmosphere." Nick and Dave are, after all, very matey fellows.
The article proceeds to describe how the two men "let their hair down, even though there [sic] faces visibly reddened several times." That sounds a lot more interesting than the press conference I watched!
The link to the dual language news website is offered below, should a sudden urge to read the China Daily's take on the lives of the British ever strike you. It makes for some compelling (read: hysterical) reading.
The Chinese are coming, and they're speaking English with a British accent. Be warned.
So, I study Communist China. Katie studies the UK. This means that I know quite a lot about propaganda, and she knows quite a lot about the specifics of the ongoing saga that is the 2010 election in Britain (see her friendly guide to it below). In my attempt to contribute to the conversation, I have decided to go over some of the more amusing election advertising (read: hilarious propaganda) that has seen some use in the UK in the past few months. Some are more obviously Photoshopped than others. Highlights include:
Ooo. Ominous. But not as bad as:
Rather more to the point, but still pretty rude. Here comes a personal favorite (notice how "favorite" is spelled correctly, Britain):
While the one above, made by one of Britain's many irrelevant third parties, appealed to my cynicism, the Star Wars geek within jumped for joy with the next one:
Tory leader as Obi-Wan, with a side of Vader. And finally, to draw some useful comparisons to propaganda in the Chinese tradition, which is rather more fond of fat babies than political messages:
The banner reads, "Long Live Mao Zedong!"
I do not, of course, own any of these images. But I wish I did.
This is Gordon Brown.
He was (and technically still is, but we'll get there) the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the Leader of the Labour Party. The Labour Party has been in power (had the most seats in the House of Commons) for the past 13 years.
This is David Cameron. He wants to be (and probably will be, but we'll get there) Prime Minister. He is also the leader of the Conservative Party (AKA the Tories). The Tories have been the main opposition party for the past 13 years.
This is Nick Clegg.
He also wants (but never will be) to be the Prime Minister of the UK. He is the leader of the Liberal Democrats. The LibDems have been the largest of the small parties with something around 60 seats (out of 650) over the past 13 years.
There are various other parties with a few seats in the Commons. Typically nationalist parties in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. While cool and all, we don't really care about them for the purposes of this post.
The Issues
This is the economy.
In case you haven't heard, it's not doing all that well. This is particularly bad for Gordon Brown because before he became Prime Minister in 2007, he was the Chancellor of the Exchequer for 10 years. Which means he was in charge of the economy. Whoops. Bad luck there, Gordon.
This is the European Union.
The British aren't too sure how they feel about it. On the one hand, it does have some economic benefits. On the other, there are worries about immigration and giving too much control over people in Brussles.
This a moat. A couple of years ago, one MP decided that the tax payers should pay to clean his, because the moat was in his "second home". There was also an MP who claimed reimbursement to build (and I am not kidding) a duck island. Various other MPs from all three parties were caught claiming for various other things they shouldn't have. Thus, an expenses scandal was born.
Other issues in the debate included the National Health Service, defense, terrorism concerns, and the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, which the UK is playing a large role in.
The Pitches
Gordon Brown argued that people should vote Labour because the Torry plan would be bad for the economy and that the cuts they wanted to make would be detrimental.
David Cameron emphasized change. He wanted to have the people take more control over things that were government run and take responsibility for them. He also pitched something called the "big society" which not a whole ton of people really knew what it meant.
Nick Clegg had some arguments too. Especially involving electoral reform. He wanted to change the winner takes all electoral system the UK has now and instead move towards a proportional representational system. In a proportional system each party is awarded seats based on the percentage of the vote they recieved overall. Many people feel this to be more fair but it can lead to issues like a hung parliament (stay tuned for more info) more often. However, many view the LibDems as the "not" party-- being neither the Tories or Labour.
Each party had other arguments as well, but those were the main ones.
The Background
The United Kingdom is constitutionally required to have an election for the House of Commons every five years, although they can do it earlier if the Prime Minister so chooses. Since Gordon Brown did not so choose, this meant that everyone knew about when the election would be before it was even called. So in April, when the Prime Minister announced the election would be on May 6, the campaigning had largely began already.
For the first time, the UK held American style televised leadership debates between Gordon Brown, David Cameron, and Nick Clegg. After the first of three, Nick Clegg was widely considered to have won and Liberal Democrat support went up considerably.
The Results
Of the 650 seats in the House of Commons, the parties won the following number of seats (from the BBC):
Party
Seats
Change
Vote %
Conservative
306
+97
36.1
Labour
258
-91
29.0
Liberal Democrat
57
-5
23.0
The other third parties we don't really care about won 28 seats.
Recall that there are 650 seats in the House of Commons so you need to have 326 seats to have a majority (although technically, you could have 321 because Sinn Fein, which won 5 seats in Northern Ireland refuse to actually take their seats). This means that no one party has a majority (a situation known as a "Hung Parliament"). This is a problem, as we shall now see.
So What's All the Fuss About?
There are a couple of things to note about these results:
1) Despite all of the fuss about Clegg and his popularity, the Liberal Democrats actually lost seats.
2) Labour lost a ton of seats and the Conservatives gained a ton, but not enough to give them a majority.
In order to understand why we care about this, a very short digression into the nature of the British political system.
Since the UK has a Parliamentary system, it means that the Chief Executive (Prime Minister, in this case) is appointed by and responsible to the Parliament-- in the UK's case, the House of Commons. Since the UK still has a winner takes all electoral system, there are usually only two major parties and one of them has a majority. The party that has a majority then gets to "form a government" and choose the Prime Minister and other cabinet Ministers.
OK. Digression over. Since no one party has a majority, the issue becomes very thorny. It means that in order to form a government that will have a majority, there has to be a coalition between various parties.
Constitutionally, Gordon Brown has the right to be the first to try and form a government (hence, he is technically still the Prime Minister). But since the Tories got both the plurality of votes and seats, Nick Clegg says they have the moral right to try first. This is important because it is Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats that either party would be trying to woo.
Another thorn in the mix is that of the Queen. Technically, she is the one who invites someone to form a government, as it is her country and all. However, she is supposed to remain neutral in the whole situation so she has to let the three leaders fight it out before she formally invites someone to the palace to direct them to form a government.
So Where Do We Go From Here?
On Friday night, David Cameron and Nick Clegg met to hash out a deal. Gordon Brown said that, should they fail. He would be willing to talk to Mr. Clegg. Nick Clegg now has to go talk to his party members to get their approval or disapproval. This means that there are a few possible outcomes:
1) The Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats form a formal coalition. This means that David Cameron would be Prime Minister but there would likely be a few LibDems on the front benches (in the Cabinet). This is somewhat tricky because the two parties disagree with each other quite a lot.
2) The Conservatives form a minority government. This means that they basically go it alone and would have to make deals with various members of the Liberal Democrats or other third parties to have them vote their way or abstain from each specific vote.
3) Labour and the Liberal Democrats form a formal coalition. They might have to add a few of the other third parties as well, since the two parties together form a plurality but not a majority.
If you forced me to guess, I would waver for a long while and say that either option 1 or 2 were more likely and if option 3 occurred, I am not sure how long Gordon Brown would last as Prime Minister.
So it's all getting very interesting with many of the political pundits in Britain flailing about basically saying "We have no clue what's going on" and the politicians fighting it out amongst one another.
Hope you enjoyed my beginners guide to the British election (I told you I could go on forever). There may be some amusing anecdotes about it later on if I get bored. And feel free to ask any question you wish and I will find an answer somewhere.
Greetings from The Other Cambridge, just across the river from the fine city of Boston, Massachusetts. In addition to being named after a much nicer city in England, and having really quite a lot of brick architecture, Other Cambridge is also known as the home of America's oldest and most overrated university, Harvard. Barring some great tragedy on my way to my final exam, I will be graduating from here in a few weeks with a degree in contemporary Chinese studies.
Imagine, if you will, a very pale, very redheaded, very befreckled young woman of Irish descent wandering around Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Imagine her being followed by a gaggle of little Chinese children taking pictures. Imagine this very obviously non-Chinese person attempting to address this little flock of children in Mandarin with a heavy American accent, and imagine them laughing hysterically. This, in effect, was my undergraduate experience.
The next obvious step, of course, was to go to London School of Economics and Political Science and get a graduate degree in speaking poorly accented Mandarin and being laughed at by the fine citizens of the People's Republic of China. Since I am something of a glutton for punishment, I hope to go on to make a career of this, most likely by teaching other university students how to do the same thing. Naturally, I look forward to making very little money, but enjoying every minute of it.
This blog is my attempt to adjust to life in London, where I will be moving in September after completing a summer job in Beijing running Harvard Summer School's absolutely insane nine-week language program, followed by a luxurious weeklong vacation in a yurt in Inner Mongolia. It was totally Katie's idea (the blog, that is, not the yurt). I'm honestly just glad she's letting me sleep on the floor of her flat.
In short, stay tuned as this very locationally confused graduate student attempts to find decent Chinese takeout somewhere, anywhere, in the UK. It should be a fun trip.
Hello All. Well, no one yet, since no one is following us. But I digress...
Siodhbhra and I decided to write a blog to keep us amused and appease our friends and family so that they know we are still alive while we party it up in London. Oh yeah. We might want to study too. There will be some of that. And it should be noted that "partying it up" for lame geeks like us involve things like going to see Shakespeare plays and spending all Sunday listening to crazy people talk about random things at speaker's corner. Maybe I'm not selling this whole blog thing too well. But it should be fun. And Siodhbhra is a much better/ funnier writer than I so you should enjoy her posts.
We are not in London yet. But we will be sometime in the middle of September. We thought we would keep you updated about the process of moving to a foreign country and all of the great "fun" that entails. Also, there was a British election yesterday which went rather interestingly so I'll be talking about that later. When we do finally get to the UK, I will be getting my Master's in International Relations at the London School of Economics. And Siodhbhra will be studying... something involving China (see her post for further details).
One confession up front. I really like British politics. Not quite sure why. Except that it's awesome. I like it enough to spend a year and a half of my life studying and writing a senior honors thesis on it. If you don't want to waste a lot of time with me, don't bring it up because I can go on forever. If you ever have a spare half hour however go to this site: http://www.number10.gov.uk/news/prime-ministers-questions and watch a session of Prime Minister's Questions. And then come talk to me.
I also tend to watch/ listen to more British TV/ radio than I do in the US. Especially Doctor Who and various political satire shows.
So how did the daughter of two engineers become obsessed with a political system in a country several thousand miles away? Well, I don't know. It is kind of a mystery where this Anglophilia stemmed from. Until I studied abroad in London in the summer of 2008, I had never even been there. (It should be noted that this was well after my obsession had taken hold). But, the heart wants what it wants and I seem to want an antiquated yet usually quite functional system full of weird hangovers form anywhere from the middle ages to modern times.
The plan for right now (and we'll see how well this holds up) is that we will each post blogs separately as we see fit. Feel free to leave us questions/ comments etc. And we might address them. It might be kind of sparse over the next few months, but should ramp up after that. So stay tuned.
Sitting at home in Long Beach, CA with nothing to do,
Once upon a time, two young women met at a high school in inner city Long Beach, once attended by Snoop Dogg. (Cameron Diaz too, but more on that later.) Because one had a name that frequently caused her to be mistaken for someone of ethnic descent, she was admitted to Harvard University. The other nobly exiled herself to the wilderness of Michigan (we don't know where that is either), where she spent four years pining for the marginally better weather of London. Separation proved long and difficult, and when the latter brilliantly worked her way into the hearts of London School of Economics (LSE) admissions officers, the former jumped on the bandwagon. Thus a blog was born. These are the continuing tales of Kathryn and Siodhbhra, bold Yankee adventurers in a strange and rainy place.
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