It's open season on "explaining" the U.K. election -- and figuring out what happens next

In the new cabinet Prime Minister Cameron announces in the morning, MP Priti Patel (right) is expected to be one of a group of women considerably expanding the current ranks, which include Education Secretary Nicky Morgan (left) and Home Secretary Theresa May (center). The Telegraph reports that the reshuffled cabinet will be a full third female, with higher-profile roles for some election "stars."


"Want to win from the left? Be left-wing. Offer a real alternative to neo-liberalism."

-- Ian Welsh, on the rout of the U.K.'s Labour Party,
in his Thursday night post on Thursday's election

by Ken

It's easy to ridicule the British election-prognisticating industry for having gotten everything wrong with regard to Thursday's election, and I don't see any reason to hold back on the ridicule. None of them seem to have imagined anything but the tiniest, most minimallly conclusive edge to either the Conservatives or Labour, with much confusion and gridlock ahead.

Still, in retrospect, one thing that may be easier to see now than it was before Thursday is that the U.K. is entering waters that are just about uncharted. Therefore botrh the pundits and the pols are left scrambling to explain what happened and to predict where it's all going to lead, in a situation for which the U.K. doesn't seem to have much applicable historical precedent.


AND THE WINNER IS . . . A CORRUPT SCHMUCK AND STOOGE

I've seen commentarial blurbs attributing a sudden outburst of charisma to Conservative Party leader and now returned Prime Minister David Cameron, and without denigrating his electoral achievement -- or at least not denigrating it too much -- I have to say, huh? Are we talking about the same person?

On Wednesday the guy was a totally corrupt schmuck and stooge, and I don't see that he's anything different now. In point of fact, the photo shows him at 10 Downing Street on Friday. Oh yeah, that's totally the same buttwipe.

What Cameron did, as far as I can tell, was to hold onto his voters, at least in terms of winning seats in Parliament, at least in part by scaring the dickens out of them, raising the specter of radical Scottish MPs in coalition with Labour. This is more than was managed by the leaders of Labour (the party that, after going on a century as one of the U.K.'s two major parties, all but disappeared Thursday), the Liberal Democrats (who, running somewhere to the left of the Tories and the right of Labour, for a while seemed poised to break into the Big Two, or at least have real third-party heft but all but disappeared Thursday), and UKIP, the UK Independence Party (whose vociferous anti-European stance seemed to be making them comers in recent non-parliamentary elections, until they all but disappeared Thursday). Again, this is in terms of winning parliamentary seats; it's not to say that those parties didn't get votes. But if you don't win seats, the votes don't count for much.


ANYBODY HEARD LATELY FROM EX-"DEPUTY PM" NICK CLEGG?

Deputy Nick's rout actually pretty comical. To begin with, when was the last time the schmo did or said anything deputy-prime-ministerial? I suppose he had some sort of voice at the Tory policy-making table, since in the Conservative-LDP coalition government, LDP votes were always needed. But Deputy Nick's status seems to have been reduced to something more Deputy Barney Fife-ish.

And it's not as if he wasn't warned. When Nick pushed the LDP into the coalition with the Conservatives, on the theory that it would give the party a share of power, and a base for goodness only knew what future bounty, there were plenty of people, both inside the party and out, who warned that he was giving the Conservatives what they wanted, power, in exchange for well, nothing -- that he was risking the very future existence of the LDP. In hindsight most everyone sees it now, but there were plenty of people who foresaw it when it was foresight.

It seems clear that in this election LDP candidates weren't offering anything that voters were buying, even -- or especially -- in constituencies they've held easily before.


BUT THEN, THIS IS TRUE OF LABOUR TOO, NO?

In a post written as the exit polls Thursday were forecasting "a likely bare majority government" for the Tories, Ian Welsh described himself as "torn between two reactions" -- on the one hand, a hearty you-asked-for-it to voters who voted Conservative even after five years of knowing what that means (he quoted Mencken: "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it, good and hard"); and on the other hand contempt for the "Tory Lite" Labour campaign of Ed Miliband, running as "the lesser evil," as "not quite as bad as the other bloke, but they’ll get in eventually and do what they were going to do anyway.” ("And that was his platform.")

I’m seeing a lot of despair from my British friends on the left. And my British friends on the sane, for that matter. Here’s what to do: Either take over the Labour Party, or, if you think that’s impossible, pile into the Greens. Or, heck, create a new party.

I will point to Alberta, where the left-most party in Canada won on a platform of, among other things, raising taxes.They came, essentially, from nowhere.   [And you owe it to yourself, if you haven't already read it, to read that May 6 post about the out-of-nowhere victory of "the most left-wing party in Canada" in "the most right-wing province in Canada" in the provincial election. "It would be," Ian wrote, "like an Elizabeth Warren-inspired party winning Texas."]

Want to win from the left? Be left-wing. Offer a real alternative to neo-liberalism.

Ian makes an awfully important point about the revolution wrought by the indomitable Margaret Thatcher. "The true magnitude of Thatcher’s victory," he writes, "was not her policies, it was that Labour became Tory Lite; she changed the acceptable policy matrix for not just the Conservatives, but for the main opposition party as well" (emphasis added).

Until that “acceptable policy window” changes, the trend will continue right -- it cannot do anything else. Each Labour interregnum will be just that, a period in which neo-liberal policies are pursued at a slower rate than during Conservative governments, but in which the trend is not reversed.

This is true in almost every country in the West of which I can think (Iceland and perhaps Finland being the lone exceptions).

Offer a real alternative, with real left wing policies. If you can’t capture an existing major party, pile into a minor party or create a new one. 

WILL CAMERON YET GO DOWN IN HISTORY AS THE
MAN WHO BUSTED THE UNITED KINGDOM APART?

None of which takes in the triumph of the Scottish National Party (SNP), which won 56 of the 59 Scottish seats in the Parliament in London. SNP candidates hoped the election results would have them negotiating with Labour to form a new government. Instead, Scotland will be at the mercy of a central government likely to be pursuing even more austerity and, as Ian Welsh puts it, the sweeping away of "most of the remains of the post-war welfare state."

Ian notes that "Scots may really be regretting not voting for independence" in the great separation referendum. "Most of the wonderful social policies Scots value more than the English," he says, "will now be taken away from them." The lesson? "Failure of courage when there is a real alternative will reap the expected results."

Now we remember the promises Prime Minister Cameron made to the Scots in the increasingly panicky weeks before the referendum when it looked as if they were really prepared to vote for independence, and he stood to go down in history as the man who presided over the busting up of the United Kingdom. Well, he got through that vote, and I don't imagine that any of those promises have been heard from again. You have to wonder about anyone who thought they would be.

One concession Cameron won was a pledge that the independence referendum wouldn't become a regular, recurring thing, that it would be a "once in a generation" deal. It remains to be seen, though, whether Scots will feel bound by a promise made to a man who did nothing but lie to them. Already the PM is insisting that there will no second Scottish independence referendum, even though, according to The Scotsman, "Downing Street sources at the weekend said Cameron is 'very concerned' about the election result, which has left just three pro-Union MPs out of 59 from Scotland." He insists, though, that the government will continue with all reforms and pledges already promised. He says he's "very confident" that he won't be the last prime minister of the United Kingdom.


THE "LET'S GET OUT OF EUROPE" ISSUE ISN'T DEAD

As far as I know, the electoral failure of UKIP was as unforeseen as those of Labour and the LDP. And given the general ugliness of the party's appeal, there's some comfort in this surprise, at least.

The nativist response to economic woes isn't likely to disappear that quickly, especially since Cameron, sensing that it could only be a losing issue for him, tried to skirt it. He's pretty much committed, though, to a vote by the end of 2017 on pulling the U.K. out of the European Union. But, report the Washington Post's XXXXX and Dan Balz, "some are pushing for the vote to come far sooner so that uncertainty doesn't hang over Britain's economic and political fortunes for the next 2½ years."

Polls suggest that if the vote were held today, Britain would choose to stay in the E.U. But the energized voices for “out” are gearing up for the fight, in the belief that the country could better manage itself without meddling from Brussels.

Opponents of an exit say it could be catastrophic, leading to an exodus of jobs and a muffling of Britain’s voice both in Europe and beyond.

Cameron has projected ambivalence on the issue, saying he wants the country to remain inside Europe, but only if he can win critical changes to the E.U. charter — changes his European allies have repeatedly said they are unwilling to grant.

The question will divide not only the country but also Cameron’s government, with some of his top lieutenants likely to push for an exit.

And it's not as if Cameron can expect clear sailing on, well, anything. At first blush, all those reports about the election which include the qualification about his "bare majority" seem kind of niggling. After all, he went from not having any kind of majority, having to rely on his coalition with the LDP, to having an actual majority of his party's own! But commentators point out that the bareness of that majority makes the prime minister significantly more dependent on every crackpot back-bencher than he has been in his first term, when he could usually expect enough LDP votes to cover any dissension in his ranks.

And as the U.K. political system veers ever closer to ours, the likelihood only grows that party leaders won't be able to count on party discipline to stifle such dissension.


ON ONE ISSUE, AT LEAST, WE CAN CREDIT
PM CAMERON WITH GENUINE COURAGE

In the immediate wake of the election results, the Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart pointed out, in a "Post Partisan" blogpost, "David Cameron victory also a win for gay marriage," one marked contrast between "their" conservatives and ours.

Civil partnerships, the United Kingdom’s answer to civil unions, started in 2005. That’s the year Cameron became leader of the Conservative party. In 2010, he became prime minister. The following year, Cameron’s coalition started looking at ways to legalize same-sex marriage in the U.K. Using his conservative credentials to make the case, Cameron succeeded. In 2013, same-sex couples began to wed.

Cameron showed true leadership. Neither his nation nor his party supported Cameron on marriage equality. So, angry were Conservative leaders that they predicted the death of the Tories. The BBC reported in 2013 that Cameron’s move on marriage “is thought to have been one of the factors behind a mass defection of grassroots members to the UK Independence Party (UKIP) in some parts of the country.” It added that a leading Conservative think tank “warned that the party is ‘dying’ and facing ‘an existential crisis’.” And, in a 2013 letter to Cameron, a Conservative leader wrote, “I am personally convinced that the Conservative Party has little chance of winning a majority at the general election unless you reach a sensible accommodation on this subject and draw people back who have gone to UKIP or have no intention of voting at all.”

"Man, were they wrong," Jonathan writes, and adds:

This ought to be a lesson for Republican politicians who always lambast liberal U.S. leadership in favor of our conservative cousins in the U.K. Just look at the GOP presidential candidates. They all oppose marriage equality. But when asked whether they would attend a same-sex wedding of a loved one or a friend, their responses ranged from humane to heartless. These folks need to move into the 21st century with the rest of the country — and Cameron.

"The Cameron victory," Jonathan writes, "is further proof of three things: marriage equality is not antithetical to conservatism, support for same-sex marriage is not a killer at the ballot box, and the electorate ultimately won’t care when they see that the sky hasn’t fallen because the nice gay couple next door can legally marry."

He concludes: "I can’t wait for the GOP to wake up to that reality."

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Does It Matter To You Who Wins The British Election Next Week?

During the American Revolution, Patriots didn't just have the British Army and Hessian mercenaries to contend with. At least 20% of the white colonists, conservatives, were traitors and sided with the British. As many as 2.5 million colonials were Tories or Royalists and after the war almost 100,000 of them fled the 13 colonies for Britain, Canada and other British colonies. Benjamin Franklin's own son, William, was one of them-- a governor of New Jersey who stayed loyal to the crown and settled in London after the British and their conservative allies were defeated.

A week from tomorrow-- Thursday May 7-- the Brits will elect a new government and 632 Members of Parliament. There are 302 Conservatives, 56 Liberal Democrats (so 358 in the coalition) and 256 members of the Labour Party in the out-going Parliament. Right-wing American businessman Bob Dudley, CEO of British Petroleum has endorsed the Conservative Party, as have tabloids the Daily Mail and the Daily Express. Eddie Izzard and Stephen Hawking have endorsed Labour.

Polling shows a virtual dead heat and most seat predictions show the Conservatives winning a narrow victory over Labour, although Labour + the Scottish National Party will command a majority. But what about the rest of the world? Yesterday, The Guardian tried figuring out who Obama, Putin, Modi, Hassan Rouhani and Robert Mugabe would be voting for.

US-- Miliband

Obama himself has established a workably cordial relationship with David Cameron, though the UK has looked increasingly marginal to the White House of late: noticeably absent from recent negotiations with Russia over Ukraine and incurring the wrath of Obama by siding with China over new banking institutions.

A re-election for Cameron also raises the prospect of a referendum on Britain leaving the EU, one of the few issues of domestic UK politics on which Obama has ever expressed an opinion.

Though the current president may have less concern for Britain than his interventionist predecessor or likely successors, he would still rather see a British-flavoured EU than an EU where the French and Germans called all the shots alone.

Meanwhile, many of the Republican frontrunners have already began working on their Atlanticist credentials by making trips to London, and would no doubt much prefer if Cameron were to stay on the other end of the special relationship.

Indeed, one of the first indications that Jeb Bush was poised to join the 2016 race was when he turned up with the chancellor, George Osborne, on a tour of Britain’s conservative power brokers last November. Governors Scott Walker and Chris Christie were not far behind with trips that also suggest the GOP mainstream would feel most comfortable with another Tory-led government in London.

But not all Republicans naturally lean towards the Tories. The libertarian-minded maverick Rand Paul may find more common cause with Ed Miliband on issues of foreign policy, where the Labour leader’s role in blocking western air strikes in Syria chimes with a growing strand of anti-interventionism on the US right.

Conversely, it is far from a given that the more hawkish Hillary Clinton would slot in with Labour anywhere near as comfortably as her husband once did.

Russia-- Cameron

“Who does Vladimir Putin want to see running Britain after May 7?” This was the question posed by Nick Boles, a Tory minister, on Twitter recently. Boles was pretty sure he knew the answer: Ed Miliband and the Scottish nationalists. “The man who abandoned the Syrians to their fate and the woman who wants to scrap our nuclear deterrent,” he wrote.

However, according to Sergei Utkin, an analyst working on Russian relations with EU countries, while the British general election is hardly top of the agenda for most Russian politicians, if anything the preference is probably for a Conservative victory. “In general the Conservatives are a known evil, so even if our relations are not so good there will be an expectation that they won’t get any worse,” he said.

Some in the Russian elite with property in London or family studying in the UK might prefer a Labour victory because they felt the left would be more tolerant on immigration, Utkin claimed, but the political elite would be more likely to err on the side of hoping for the status quo.

There is also considerable interest in the rise of the smaller parties, and the disproportionate influence they could wield in a hung parliament with just a few MPs.

Nigel Farage famously said he admired Putin’s political style, and there are reasons to believe the affection could be mutual. While Ukip has not received the kind of Russian money that other European far-right groups such as France’s Front National have had, Farage is a regular guest on the Kremlin’s Russia Today television network, where his message of a broken Europe goes down well.

On the one hand, Farage’s line that Britain, as a sovereign country, should be able to make its own policy decisions and not be subordinate to Brussels resonates with many Russian politicians on a philosophical level. More pragmatically, they also feel that a referendum on the UK’s EU membership would keep Britain and the EU busy for some time.

“Britain leaving the EU would make both Britain and the EU much weaker, which those in the Russian leadership feel would be good for Russia. And if Brussels and London are occupied with the debate over the issue for years, then it will leave less time for working on a tough common foreign policy,” said Utkin.

Germany-- Miliband

At the start of his tenure, David Cameron was viewed as something of a breath of fresh air in Berlin-- smart, charismatic, youthful-- and a good partner for Angela Merkel to work with.

But Europe is always the first hurdle at which relations between British and German conservatives fall. CDU politicians are, without fail, staunch Europeans. The unbridgeable gulf between them and their Eurosceptic counterparts in the UK has often made relations between two otherwise natural political bedfellows quite a challenge.

Cameron’s performance on the international stage has made German policymakers lose their patience. There was his clumsy resistance over not wanting Jean-Claude Juncker to become president of the European commission, and the tactless enthusiasm with which he withdrew Tory MEPs from the European People’s party.

How telling it is, says Gerhard Dannemann, a German expert on Britain, that: “In the event of a European crisis it was once Cameron that Obama used to call. Nowadays it’s Merkel.”

For Germans who have been following the UK election campaign closely, observing everything from Cameron’s consumption of a hotdog with a knife and fork (“awkward,” said one commentator) to the PM-less TV debate (“cowardly” said another), the only issue that truly matters is Europe.

The nervousness that stems from knowing that a Conservative win equals a referendum on Europe by the end of 2017, and all that a subsequent Brexit might entail, is palpable in Berlin.

Berlin will lose an important EU partner should the UK vote to leave-- not just as a trading partner, but in like-minded thinking on everything from immigrant access to benefits, to ensuring that the EU stays competitive. And without the UK, the domination of the southern states, including France, would be almost overwhelming for Germany.

From that point of view Ed Miliband, even though he comes from a completely different political camp, may make a far easier partner for Merkel to work with than Cameron.

China-- undecided

Lively debates about Britain often pop up in China: from discussions of Benedict Cumberbatch and Premier League matches, to the state of Charles and Camilla’s marriage and the wares at Bicester Village outlet shopping centre.

When it comes to next month’s election, however, there is a resounding silence. There is far greater interest in a poll more than 18 months away-- the US presidential ballot-- than the one in a matter of weeks. One of the few bothering to comment-- the HereinUK account on Sina’s Weibo microblog-- has focused on the process: “The must-have skill for every leader in the election-- taking selfies,” it said, beneath pictures of Cameron, Nick Clegg, Miliband and Farage posing with voters.

The political elite are similarly indifferent to the campaign. For the world’s second-largest economy, the UK is just one among many partners. And while the current British government has been accused of cosying up to Beijing, adopting a trade-first policy largely at the chancellor’s behest after it was frozen out over Cameron’s meeting with the Dalai Lama, there is no sign that Miliband would take a substantially different tack.

“China highly values its bilateral relations with Britain, but I don’t think it worries much about the election outcome-- it won’t drastically affect Britain’s current China policies,” said Wang Yiwei, director of the China-Europe Academic Network and a professor at Renmin University.

“Their attitudes towards China are quite similar: a closer relationship with China means a new and great opportunity for not just London, the financial centre, but the British economy as a whole.

“Though not having a decisive result and forming a coalition might give rise to concerns about investment efficiency, it’s quite clear that Britain welcomes investment from China. I don’t think the authorities would worry too much.”

Zhao Chen, deputy chief of the European politics department at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, agreed: “Whichever party wins the election won’t affect Sino-UK relations and the UK’s China policies much … Labour also highly values the Chinese market.”

If the decision of British voters does end up disrupting relations, it will probably be a long-term and unintentional consequence of other Labour-Tory policy differences. An exit from the EU would reduce the UK’s importance to China.

“Though London is the global financial centre, it is the integrated EU market that makes the UK attractive to Chinese investments. China sees the UK as the bridgehead for the EU and is interested in the 500-million-population EU market rather than just [the] domestic market,” Zhao said.

South Africa-- Miliband; Zimbabwe-- Cameron

Few in South Africa would mourn a defeat for David Cameron. Last year, President Jacob Zuma was scheduled to visit the UK twice but cancelled both times. First he ducked out of Britain’s official memorial service for Nelson Mandela and attended the wedding of Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe’s daughter instead.Then he skipped a summit because, sources say, he was warned that he would “doorstepped” by the media and relations with the UK were frosty.

The leaders’ relationship may never have recovered from Cameron’s first visit to South Africa as prime minister in 2011, when they were poles apart over the ousting of Muammar Gaddafi. Many senior figures in South Africa believe that Libya’s subsequent descent into chaos has vindicated their criticism of western military intervention.

Then, in 2013, South Africa rebuked the British government for stopping direct aid to the country after two decades, describing it as “tantamount to redefining our relationship”. Conversely, Labour appeals to the trade union allies of the ruling ANC and is believed to have offered advice to the party during its 1999 election campaign. Aubrey Matshiqi, a political commentator, says: “Traditionally there have been strong relations between the ANC and Labour, and the ANC has preferred Labour to win.”

This time, however, with South Africa focused on trade partners such as Brazil, China, India and Russia, the British election has received little attention. “There are three South Africans who know who Ed Miliband is,” Matshiqi adds. “I could be exaggerating. It might only be two.”

In neighbouring Zimbabwe it appears that political alliances are reversed. Mugabe has never forgiven Labour for reneging on promises of funding land redistribution made under the 1979 Lancaster House agreement. Only this month he thundered again: “Blair, Blair, who was he? Just the prime minister of Britain. I’m president of Zimbabwe.” After Labour’s defeat in 2010, the ageing president reportedly said: “It looks like I can do business with Britain again.”

British-born Piers Pigou, southern Africa project director of the International Crisis Group, says: “They still live with the antipathy towards Blair and Labour. They don’t seem to get that the party today isn’t that close to the Blair and Labour of the 90s. They have a penchant for the Conservative party and prefer them to win, which is kind of ironic considering that the bulk of opposition to re-engagement is likely to come from the Conservatives.”

Mugabe remains under EU sanctions and has no personal relationship with Cameron, but there is said to have been discreet communication between the two governments. Last year Zimbabwe hosted its first British trade delegation in about two decades, hailed by the finance minister, Patrick Chinamasa, as “the first step in our normalisation of relations between the United Kingdom and Zimbabwe”. But as for 7 May, says the Harare-based political analyst Ibbo Mandaza, “I don’t think they’ve thought about it. I’ve seen no analysis, no reference to the British election at all.”

France-- Miliband

Unlike good wine, British politics does not travel well in France and vice versa. For years, journalists in Paris would write about the “centre-right government of Gaullist Jacques Chirac,” when it was considerably to the left of Tony Blair’s Labour administration.

As François Hollande’s current Socialist government has moved closer to his country’s traditional partner, Germany, Britain seems to have dropped off France’s radar.

Bruno Bernard, a political speechwriter, and parliamentary adviser to a former UMP minister, said: “If you ask, most French still think Tony Blair is prime minister. Since his election David Cameron has made no impression on France. He’s already been in power for five years and I don’t believe people in France even know the UK is having an election.

“Farage and Ukip are making an impression, but because of Marine Le Pen, who is all anyone is talking about in France at the moment.”

Pascal Canfin, a member of the Europe-Ecology-Green party and a former minister for development in Hollande’s Socialist administration, is concerned about how the UK election will play out for climate and environmental issues.

“In the event the only way the Conservatives have a majority is with Ukip, this will leave the government hostage to climate sceptics. However, I have spoken to Miliband’s advisers and special envoys and their position is much more positive for France.

“Europe is another dimension to the British election, and we have to admit that if there’s a Conservative government that is obliged to make an alliance with Ukip, we’ll have a British position on Europe that has moved very far away from the French position.

“Britain will surely seek to negotiate treaties and repatriate powers to its sovereign government. If there’s a Labour government in alliance with the SNP, there will be a closer ally, able to construct a better relationship with France. Clearly, there are two different paths.”

The former justice minister and MEP Rachida Dati, who served in Nicolas Sarkozy’s government, says Brussels is watching the UK election “with a lot of interest."

“The United Kingdom’s place in Europe, and thus the future of Europe, are at the heart of this campaign. David Cameron has had the courage to propose holding a referendum in 2017, because this meets a deep wish of the British people.

“Certain people in Brussels fear the result, for fear of being shaken out of their comfort zone. I believe Brussels and the member state governments would be obliged to hear the message from Britain. I am personally convinced the change in Europe sought by David Cameron is wished for by many Europeans: a Europe that is less bureacratic.”

India-- Miliband

The British elections have attracted little attention so far in India, despite historic links and the repeated visits of ministers over recent years.

“There was a peak of interest when Cameron came in, but even that wasn’t much compared to the interest [Tony] Blair and [Gordon] Brown generated,” says Dipankar De Sarkar, a Delhi-based columnist and former correspondent in the UK.

Many Indians have been put off by the “anti-immigration rhetoric” in the UK in recent years, and the Conservative government’s tightening of visa policies, he says.

“The whole sentiment has just turned people off the UK here. The rise of Ukip hasn’t helped. Indians for a long time looked at the UK as a gateway to Europe too, but that has also slipped.”

If any Indians are tempted to pick sides, there is a historic tendency to favour the Labour party, seen as supportive of India’s independence from Britain in 1947. However, Cameron has visited India repeatedly and Ed Miliband is “an unknown quantity”, according to Kanwal Sibal, a former senior diplomat.

Miliband’s recent promise to remove tax privileges from wealthy foreigners living in Britain, a favoured base of many Indian tycoons, has “ruffled a few feathers," Sibal says, which may lead to “a slight preference for Cameron” among the Indian elite.

The local Hindustan Times noted that the Labour party had not mentioned India in its manifesto, whereas the Conservatives, “viewed by many Asians as the ‘nasty party’,” had “made significant mention of India."

The newspaper noted that the Ukip manifesto had mentioned India too, in the context of its desire “to foster closer ties with the Anglosphere."

Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, has significant support among the Indian community in the UK.

Jaimini Bhagwati, who was India’s high commissioner in London from 2012 to 2013, says that India, though a developing country, has found it easier to “do business” with rightwing governments in the UK and the US, and that many within the emerging power are uneasy with Miliband, who reminds them of an “old-style trade union leader."

“Normally you’d think that a Labour government would be favourable to us but it’s the Conservatives who have their ear closer to the ground in terms of getting things done. At the end of the day, at our stage of development, it’s about technology and capital,” Bhagwati says.

Modi’s first meeting with Cameron took place on the margins of the G20 in Brisbane, Australia, last year. The British prime minister praised his counterpart’s “vision” and stressed India was a top priority of the UK’s foreign policy. After Modi’s election in May last year Cameron spoke of how “Britain and India now both [had] bold reforming governments that believe in free enterprise and progress."

The UK has expanded its presence in India-- the diplomatic mission is one of the biggest in the world-- and has made expanding trade a key objective. On a recent visit, Philip Hammond, the foreign secretary, spoke too of “shared security interests” globally and in the region.

The reality, however, is that British efforts to “move the relationship to another level” seem to have left the Indians largely unmoved. Modi has focused his foreign policy efforts primarily on relations in the region, then on the US, with Europe and the UK a long way down the list. He is expected to travel to London after the election, however.

Australia-- Cameron

Australia’s prime minister, Tony Abbott, is probably the country’s most famous anglophile.

And though he has made no public comment on the British election, there is also little doubt the Australian Liberal prime minister would welcome the return of David Cameron to Downing Street on 7 May.

During a visit by Cameron to Australia in November 2014, Abbott described the relationship between the UK and its former penal colony as “a relationship between, if not quite equals, certainly peers, and as important as any relationship on this earth."

Abbott and Cameron have a cordial personal relationship, though they differ significantly on certain policy issues, most notably on climate change. Cameron was quick to congratulate Abbott on his election victory in September 2013, taking to social media to declare: “It will be great working with another centre-right leader.”

Cameron visited the Australian parliament last year while in the country for the G20 meeting, and the two leaders have worked together on issues such as counter-terrorism.

The connections run deeper. Cameron has Lynton Crosby, an Australian, as his campaign director. Crosby ran campaigns for the Liberal party in Australia in 1998 and in 2001. Mark Textor, Crosby’s business partner, is the Liberal party’s current pollster. Textor is also on board as strategic adviser to Cameron and the Tories for the current campaign.

Iran-- undecided

Iran may have more serious issues to worry about than the forthcoming UK election, but who governs next in Westminster is still important for Tehran leaders. The UK is among the six major powers currently negotiating with Iran to find a permanent settlement to the decades-long dispute over its nuclear programme.

Under the Tories, Iran-UK relations experienced peaks and troughs. In November 2011, the British embassy in Tehran was stormed by a mob who ransacked offices and diplomatic residences. It triggered one of the worst crises in bilateral relations since the 1979 Islamic revolution as Britain withdrew all its staff from Tehran and expelled all Iranian diplomats from London in retaliation for the attack. All but nominal relations were severed.

But since the moderate president, Hassan Rouhani, took office in 2013, Tehran-London relations have improved. Both countries have upgraded ties to the level of non-resident charges d’affaires and taken significant steps towards reopening their missions.

Later in 2013, Cameron and Rouhani spoke on the phone, in the first direct contact between a British prime minister and Iranian president in a decade.

In 2014, a parliamentary delegation from the UK, led by the former foreign secretary Jack Straw, travelled to Tehran to improve ties. Britain’s chargé d’affaires, Ajay Sharma, has also travelled to Iran a number of times trying to mend relations. A group of Iranian parliamentarians have since visited Westminister, in the first visit to the UK by Iranian MPs in nearly 50 years.

In September 2014, Cameron and Rouhani met in New York on the sidelines of the UN general assembly. It was the first encounter between an Iranian president and a British prime minister since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Despite these improvements, Britain and Iran have not yet technically opened their embassies in their respective capitals. That may change with a new prime minister in Downing Street.

Who Said "It's Wrong That Millions Of People Are Going Out To Work Unable To Afford To Bring Up Their Families?"

Maybe you saw Emily Jane Fox's CNN story over the weekend on what it takes to raise a family on three minimum wage jobs. The story takes place in Chicago:

Between the two jobs, Jackson is working about 70 hours a week. He makes $8.75 an hour at Chick-fil-A and $10.22 at Walgreens, where he's been working for three years. He's also studying to get his bachelor's degree in criminal justice and psychology so that one day he only has to work one job, one shift.

His children's mom works at Walgreens, too, making $10 an hour. The kids are in daycare all day, which costs them $150 each month, until she gets off work at 6:30.

One job helps him cover the cost of school, and the other helps him pay the bills. Already, he owes his college $7,000. On top of the daycare fees, he's paying $575 each month for rent, as well as transportation costs to-and-from work and hundreds of dollars for groceries.

What's left over isn't enough to cover the cost of health insurance. When Walgreens said this week it would stop offering insurance directly to its workers in 2014, he shrugged it off as something else he couldn't afford.

Between his two jobs, Jackson makes about $50,000 a year. The bottom line is he couldn't get by with just one. Even if he worked full time at Walgreen Co., making what he makes now, he would bring in less than $21,000 a year. The Census Bureau's poverty income threshold level is $23,000 for a family of four.

This is why workers like Jackson have been walking off work and protesting for a "living wage" for the last ten months. Jackson himself has participated in a few of the demonstrations in Chicago.

"You have to hope and pray for a raise," he said. "I want a job that gives me good hours, good money and lets me come home at night so I can take care of all of my responsibilities with my family."

Until then, Jackson said he has no choice but to keep working these hours. He says it's just something that he has to do.

The video above, by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich makes the case for raising the minimum wage very clearly and succinctly. But when the Democrats controlled the White House, the House and, briefly, the Senate, did they raise the minimum wage to the point where someone could call it a living wage? Not that I recall. And now that they know it's impossible to do because of an obstructionist Republican Congress-- and with the midterm election campaigns kicking off-- they're making a loud ruckus. If they wanted to do more than just create a campaign issue and deceive working families, they would crack the whip on Democrats who voted with the Republicans the last time a minimum wage vote came up March 15. The motion was defeated 233-184. Every single Republican voted against it, of course, always ready to show their hatred and disdain for working families on behalf of their wealthy patrons. But, despite the fuss Democrats were making in July over the issue, 6 Blue Dogs and New Dems, crossed the aisle with impunity and voted with Boehner and Cantor-- John Barrow (Blue Dog/New Dem-GA), Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT), Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog/New Dem-NC), Bill Owens (New Dem-NY), Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN) and Kurt Shrader (Blue Dog/New Dem-OR).

I don't expect much out of this Congress and it's hard to realistically imagine the 114th Congress being in a position to do anything about the minimum wage, even if everything within reach works out for the Democrats. With so many Blue Dogs and New Dems in the caucus-- and with Steve Israel furiously recruiting more and sabotaging progressives who want to raise the minimum wage-- the Democrats won't get this together until long after Israel has been banished from the DCCC. At least California is raising the minimum wage here to $9/hour next year and to $10/hour in 2016. That will bring a family of three just above the federal poverty line. And over the weekend, Ed Miliband, the head of the British Labour Party-- and the man who saved the world from a war in Syria-- announced plans to increase the minimum wage for his country, part of his campaign promise that revolves around an "economy that works for working people."

"[W]e are fighting for all of the low-paid people around our country. One of the proudest achievements of the last Labour government was the national minimum wage, making work pay for people.

"But under David Cameron's government people are falling behind, the national minimum wage now paying people £20 less after inflation than it did when David Cameron came to office. That's just wrong.

"When we see that happening and when we think about one of the big banks, do we really think they can't afford to pay their cleaners a bit more?"

It was wrong that millions of people "are going out to work unable to afford to bring up their families," he said.

Miliband added: "The Labour government will put it right. We will strengthen the national minimum wage. We will make work pay for the workers of Britain.

"That's what I mean by a government that fights for you: abolishing the bedroom tax, strengthening the national minimum wage, childcare there for parents who need it. That's what I mean by tackling the cost of living crisis at this conference. That's what I mean by a government that fights for you."

Miliband has appointed Alan Buckle, the deputy chairman of accountants KPMG, to investigate how the role and powers of the Low Pay Commission could be extended to strengthen the minimum wage.

Buckle will consult employers and employee groups on ways to restore the value of the minimum wage so that it catches up with where it was in 2010. He will also look at which particular sectors can afford to pay more.

Labour said that if the national minimum wage had risen in line with the cost of living it would be 45p an hour higher than the current rate, which is due to rise next month from £6.19 to £6.31.

Buckle will investigate how to restore the value of the minimum wage, although that would not necessarily involve a 45p rise.

Milliband addressed a street rally from a small stage. He said: "Right across the country, from all walks of life, people are facing this cost of living crisis. There will be some people who say the interests of the low-paid and the squeezed middle are just different.

"Well they are wrong. Under David Cameron's government, he has been prime minister for 39 months and in 38 of those months prices have risen faster than wages. That is a record, by the way.

"Living standards falling month after month after month. Gas and electric bills, train fares, petrol prices, the weekly food shop and a prime minister who refuses to act. Why does he refuse to act? He refuses to act because of who he stands for-- he stands for just a privileged few at the top."

Damn, I wish someone would make a video like this for America:

Did Ed Miliband Save The World?

This morning I happened to hear a Southern drawl coming out of the TV in my bedroom when I was washing up in the bathroom. The drawl was making a lot of good sense on Syria, which surprised me. It walked over to see who it was: Lloyd Doggett, a progressive from the Austin area. Figures! He talked about how his constituents are adamantly opposed to an attack on Syria, particularly if it's just the U.S. alone holding Assad accountable. Thank you, Ed Miliband!

The UK's imperialist establishment has the knives out for Miliband, the leader of Britain's Labor Party-- even more than usual. Needless to say, Cameron and his Conservative Party have somehow blamed Miliband for the vote in Parliament against Cameron's proposal to bomb Syria. Unmentioned is that without Cameron's own Conservative backbenchers voting NO, it wouldn't have mattered what Miliband said-- the war would be rolling ahead and it is unlikely Obama-- and the U.S. imperialist establishment-- would have even decided to let Congress have a vote. Cameron's junior partner, the excruciatingly pathetic Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, has jumped on the "It's Miliband's fault" bandwagon. And forget the national polling, of course.

About 60% of those questioned said that, given the level of evidence about the use of chemical weapons by the Bashar al-Assad regime, they were against British troops intervening, while 24% said they were in favour. Among Conservative supporters 34% were in favour and 50% against, while 24% of Labour backers were in favour and 59% against.

The Liberal Democrats are the most evenly split of the three main parties, with 50% in favour and 36% against. More men (27%) than women (22%) back intervention.

A BBC poll released yesterday found that 71% of Britons agreed with Parliament's decision to reject Cameron's call for war and two-thirds of them don't care if that damages U.S.-U.K. relations. Only 20% of those polled felt Parliament had made the wrong decision. That makes it pretty hard for Cameron to bring it up for another vote, despite the Ruling Class freak out in London.

I haven't been a big Miliband fan. He's seemed too tepid and vacillating to me, even if he would be an improvement over Cameron or the ridiculous Clegg. But he sure made the big difference when it really mattered. I am certain, we-- and not just Britain-- would be engaged in a war right now if not for Ed Miliband's courageous stand. I wish he would have asked Cameron if he would have advocated unleashing missiles on Russian or China if one of those powers (who can fight back) had used chemical weapons on their own people. I hope someone asks Obama.

Speaking at a nursery in Hammersmith, west London, Clegg made clear his personal disappointment and strongly criticised Labour's "political point-scoring" for scuppering any prospect of British involvement in strikes against the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

There are growing calls for the coalition to consider holding a second vote on military action, despite the humiliating defeat for David Cameron on Thursday. Sir Malcolm Rifkind, chairman of the Commons intelligence and security committee and a former foreign secretary, led the push for a second vote, as the US said it had evidence that sarin gas was used.

However, Clegg slapped down this idea, saying parliament was "very clear" it did not want military action. "I cannot foresee any circumstances in which we would go back to parliament again on the same question and the same issue," he said. "We can't go back asking the same question over and over. So no, I can't foresee such circumstances."

Despite saying the coalition would respect parliament's wishes, the Liberal Democrat leader called into question Miliband's motives for rejecting coalition plan. He said no one could begrudge Labour "wrestling" with the issue but the party had not behaved in a way befitting the gravity of the situation.

"My own view is that the Labour party seemed to take this as an opportunity for party political point-scoring," he said.

...On Sunday, William Hague and George Osborne said parliament had spoken and Britain would offer only diplomatic support to its allies.

In his first big interview since the government's defeat in the Commons, Hague said he could only envisage a change in UK policy if Labour became "less partisan". His remarks were echoed by the chancellor, who told BBC1's Andrew Marr Show that Miliband looked less like a future prime minister after helping to defeat the government.

I disagree-- and I think the vast majority of Britons do as well, though probably not Tony Blair who still, out of tradition I assume, calls himself a member of the Labour Party. I'd say Peter Hain, writing in The Guardian got it right when he urged Cameron to stop spinning his humiliating defeat by questioning Miliband's motives.

David Cameron has a streak of petty, bullying arrogance which often reveals itself at prime minister's questions-- very un-prime ministerial. Now his henchmen have been trying to spin his humiliating defeat by parliament over military intervention in Syria into an unedifying character assassination of Ed Miliband. It wasn't Miliband who attempted to grandstand by bouncing parliament prematurely into attacking Syria. The Labour leader hasn't been responsible for perhaps the most monumentally misjudged British foreign policy in recent times. Cameron began two years ago demanding regime change-- which didn't work. Then he resourced the rebel forces-- which failed too. Then he tried to send arms to the rebels-- until cross-party opposition in parliament blocked that: perhaps he forgot the series of protests by MPs culminating in the vote opposing his policy by 114 to one on 11 July on a backbench motion moved by Tories?

...[B]ackbench and frontbench Labour MPs made it clear they were unwilling to go along with the PM. As did many Tories too-- though No 10 ignored them, in a way the Labour leader did not with his party. But the real problem is that Cameron gave absolutely no sense of where all this was going to lead. What would happen after a military strike-- "surgical" or not? What about collateral civilian casualties, retaliatory attacks, escalatory consequences? Although they do indeed cross a red line in warfare, chemical weapons actually account for just 1% of all the terrible casualties in Syria. What would parliament be asked to do next?

...The fundamental flaw in the position of the government, the US and its allies is to see Syria as a battle between a barbaric dictator and a repressed people. It's a civil war: a quagmire involving Sunni versus Shia, Saudi Arabia versus Iran, the US versus Russia, with al-Qaida fighters increasingly prominent among the rebel forces. Bashar al-Assad has the backing of 40% of the population who may fear his ruthless dictatorship, but fear much more becoming victims of genocide or Sunni extremism. Surely if western military strikes toppled Assad without a settlement in place, there could be even greater chaos and carnage in a powder keg of a region?

There can be no military victory by either side. The alternative is to drop a failed British policy and promote a negotiated settlement between Assad and his enemies. However impossible that looks today, it's the only way to solve this bloody and increasingly dangerous war.

I tried embedding this video but... well who knows how or why YouTube-- or whomever-- decides what can and can't be seen in which countries and at what times? But this one below can still be seen:

Is Anyone Answering Right Wing Populism In Europe?

I just spent some time in Tuscany with one of my oldest friends, Toon Janssen, a guy I met in the '70s when I was living in Amsterdam. Toon's from decidedly working class Amsterdam Noord and he's been working as a school teacher in the crime-ridden Bijlmer. He doesn't have a single white student in his classes.

Inevitably our attention turned to Dutch neo-fascist, Geert Wilders who-- post trial-- has seen his following and his power grow immensely in the "liberal" Netherlands. In Europe "liberal" usually means neo-liberal (i.e.- conservative). The Dutch government is a neo-liberal right-wing coalition of their version of America's corporatist Republican Party and corporatist Democratic Party. Wilders is adamantly anti-immigrant, particularly anti-Muslim immigrant. And the Dutch are buying his racist claptrap... albeit mostly for economic reasons. The economy is tight and the jobs market sucks. Wilders' pitch against migrants from Morocco and Turkey sounds a lot like Steve King's pitch against Mexicans-- although even worse.

Toon wrote up some of his ideas for us this afternoon: "Today it was made clear by the Centraal Planbureau that the deficit made a rise of 0.2% to 3.7 and unemployment will rise to 9% soon to come, breaking all records. In fact now it's officially exposed what all Dutch people already know. Wilders makes gain out of this. He was little in the news these days, but that was a strategy. Without showing up or making statements his star is rising immensely. But now he calls Rutte a champion In destroying jobs and ruining Holland. He calls him the worst premier Holland ever had. He wants no cuts at all while the government wants to cut 16 billion euros + even 6 more to commit to Rehn's wishes. But he says Rutte destroys jobs (150,000 gone in just one year while Romanian and Polish workers take over), our money is slowly becoming worthless, inflation rises skyhigh and export is so much less, no investments in Dutch companies while we are an export oriented country-- all the result of cuts, and cuts and cuts, which is the policy. And not only cause of cuts but also of raising taxes, what Howie always calls Paul Ryan's Austerity Regime in America. This cabinet wants to frighten people about losing their jobs and while they are frightened new tax rises are inaugurated. All signals are turned to red, he says. Belgian economy is even better than the Dutch, even while that country was without a government! What Holland needs according to Wilders is lower taxes + no support of European countries like Greece etc. + also we better buy Dutch products so our companies get more air. New elections are vital to get rid of Rutte and his 'socialist' gang since Holland is almost drowning (a statement that appeals to the Dutch a lot), new elections even already tomorrow. I'm pretty much sure that Wilders star will grow even while he does almost nothing. The things he says are very appealing to anybody who lost security or stands at the edge of losing it. A lot of people are very afraid indeed and the political athmosphere in Holland is quite negative indeed. All too bad."

Cross the Channel for a moment and I'll tell you a little something about a big story in England that you probably missed in America. It's about how the Labour Party just tried-- and failed-- to articulate England's own problem with foreign workers. The corporate media, on an anti-Labour rampage at the moment, made sure Labour's message would be mangled beyond comprehension, which isn't very difficult while the inept and stumbling Ed Miliband is party Leader. From the Guardian coverage:

Labour has backed down on claims that Tesco and Next are examples of "unscrupulous employers" over their use of foreign workers.

The party became embroiled in a row after the shadow immigration minister, Chris Bryant, briefed newspapers that he would criticise both firms for favouring foreign workers over Britons. But just hours before he was due to give a keynote speech on the issue, Bryant was forced to retreat from his case as Tesco and Next accused him of making basic errors. The senior Labour MP insisted he had meant more generally that "sometimes there are negative sides of migration in terms of the labour market."

The controversy has added weight to concerns that Labour is failing to articulate its key policies this summer. It has also overshadowed Bryant's other messages about the exploitation of foreign workers and sham marriages.

Bryant was forced to clarify his position on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, saying the extracts had not conveyed the fullness of his argument.

In the text of his speech, due to be delivered on Monday but leaked over the weekend, Bryant had said: "It is unfair that unscrupulous employers whose only interest seems to be finding labour as cheaply as possible will recruit workers in large numbers in low-wage countries in the EU... Take the case of Tesco … they recently decided to move a distribution centre in the south-east. The new centre is larger and employs more people. But it has been alleged that the staff at the original site were told that they could only move to the new centre if they took a cut in pay. The result? A bigger percentage of the staff at the new centre are from eastern bloc countries."

Speaking later on the BBC, Bryant said he used the word "unscrupulous about another category of people", not Tesco and Next. He said those firms actually "often go the extra mile" to employ British workers, but can find it difficult to get local staff.

"Both Tesco and Next have had to use non-UK nationals in their new operations … in relatively large numbers. My question is, and always was going to be and still remains today, when we have 1 million unemployed youngsters under the age of 24 and a very high level of long-term unemployment, is there a way we can regulate labour markets better so foreign workers are not exploited, as happens in some cases, not specifically Tesco and Next, and also make sure local workers stand a better chance?"

He added: "I don't think it is unscrupulous to employ migrant workers."

Bryant was also pulled up on a mistake in the speech suggesting Tesco had opened a new distribution centre in Kent, when it should have been Dagenham, in Essex.

Challenged on his errors, Bryant told his interviewer: "You're wanting to get into very specific details which are contested and I'm not sure that's that fruitful."

OK, back to Holland... or at least to Wilders' negative influence on Europe. The Economist noted this week that where Holland was once at the center of the movement towards European integration, Wilders' populism has pulled the country in the opposite direction. Last month Wilders announced he would hold talks with right-wing parties in other countries about forming an anti-Europe bloc in the European Parliament elections this autumn. He has since spoken with Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France, a party similar to Wilders’s Freedom Party, and with the fascist-leaning/racist Northern League in Italy. Having shattered the multi-cultural Netherlands, which once brokered the integration of Europe, Wilders is now proposing to undertake Europe’s dismantling.

Wilders’s party has taken advantage of rising Dutch anger over the euro crisis in the past two years by shifting the focus of its criticism from Islam to the EU. That strategy failed in elections last autumn, when the Freedom Party lost seats, but it seems to be paying off now. Dutch Euroscepticism is reaching unheard-of heights: a Gallup survey in early June found voters split evenly, 39% each, on whether to exit the EU entirely. Most recent political polls put the Freedom Party in a close scrum for the second-largest share of the vote, and one poll has it in the lead. The other strongly Eurosceptic party, the far-left Socialists, is doing nearly as well.

This spells trouble for the government, a coalition between the centre-right Liberals and centre-left Labour, for whom leaving the EU is not an option. Mark Rutte, the Liberal prime minister and a polished salesman, has been pitching voters a mixed message: on the one hand, the EU is the key to solving the economic crisis; on the other, the EU’s excesses must be tamed. In Germany in June he echoed the aphorism of Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, that Europe’s economies are “all in the same boat.” At the same time, his foreign minister, Frans Timmermans, was unveiling a list of 54 policy areas that the Netherlands believes should stay in national hands rather than be handed to the EU, and declaring that the time of an ever-closer union in all policy areas is past.

Anti-European feeling in the Netherlands is rooted in the deteriorating economy. The country weathered the first years of the euro crisis relatively unscathed, maintaining its AAA credit rating and a 4.5% unemployment rate, the lowest in Europe. With their privileged economic position, the Dutch blamed profligate southern Europeans for demanding support from the north. In 2011 they led the AAA countries (along with Germany, Finland and Austria) that demanded Europe harden its 3% budget-deficit limit as part of the price for that support. Mr Rutte still claims the strong enforcement powers granted to Olli Rehn, the EU’s budget commissioner, as a personal achievement.

Yet as deficit-cutting progressed across Europe, the Dutch economy turned south. It has now been in recession for six quarters, with output 1.8% lower in May compared with a year earlier and unemployment rising to 6.8 %. Every economic projection has proved too optimistic. As revenues shrank, the Dutch missed the 3% deficit target they had themselves helped establish. Humiliating visits from Mr Rehn demanding ever-greater austerity have lent weight to Mr Wilders’s charges that the government is slashing spending and raising taxes merely to satisfy Brussels.

During his latest visit in June, Mr Rehn demanded that the Netherlands push through an additional €6 billion ($8 billion) in austerity measures in 2014, on top of those already planned. Mr Rutte will have to pass a revised budget in September though it is not clear whether he can. The Liberal-Labour coalition has a comfortable majority in the lower house of parliament, but is in the minority in the Senate, a sleepy constitutional body whose technical power to block the budget the opposition has now decided to use.

Worse, Mr Rehn’s demand has blown up a “social accord” reached in April, in which the government, labour unions, and business groups all signed on to a budget deal along with a set of labour-market reforms. The accord was a classic example of the old Dutch “polder model” of collective decision-making by different social stakeholders, and was intended to create support for the budget that would induce minority parties to vote for it. But the unions have now withdrawn from the deal. More remarkably, the powerful head of the country’s main business lobby has also come out against the cuts, recommending that the government demand to be granted an exception.

Should Mr Rutte manage to push through the cuts, it could improve Mr Wilders’s chances in the European elections. Mr Timmermans, one of the most pro-European voices in the cabinet, wants to turn the debate away from whether voters like or dislike the EU towards the role the EU ought to be playing. But with public resentment running high, that sort of subtlety will probably be lost.

Here's an ugly choice: choosing between Wilders-style right-wing populism or the bankster-backed Establishment self-serving, neo-liberal claptrap. Europe will really be just like America then! Except they don't have Sarah Palin, or anything like her. Who do you think paid her to do this, Rand Paul or Chris Christie?

New Labour/New Dems... Old Crap

I suspect there aren't many DWT readers who know who George Mudie is. I'd never heard of him until a few days ago when I read in the Guardian that Mudie, a Labour Member of Parliament from Leeds, was about to unload on Labour leader Ed Miliband-- which he has now done. So, you ask-- why should anyone care?

Between Margaret Thatcher and David Cameron's Conservative governments-- with the briefest of technical intervals for John Major and Gordon Brown--Tony Blair moved the Labour Party considerably right with a political concoction called New Labour, basically an anti-union move. New Labour, at least domestically, was never as bad-- in terms of heartless pandering to Big Business and in terms of corruption-- as our own New Dems (let alone America's Blue Dogs). But it still helped muddle the differences between Labour and the Conservatives and it did push the Conservatives further right on a number of issues. Today, according to the long-serving Mudie, voters no longer even know what Labour stands for. But he blames the hapless Miliband.

Labour backbench anxiety about Ed Miliband's leadership spilled into the open on Thursday when George Mudie, a veteran backbencher and former whip, issued a withering assessment, accusing him of being hesitant, cocooned in a bunker and failing to make the political weather.

Mudie, one of the leading figures in the move to oust Tony Blair from the Labour leadership in 2006 and a supporter of Ed Balls in the 2010 leadership election, said that even as a Labour MP he could not describe the party's current policies on education and welfare.

He also said there was a general fear among Labour MPs that the the party's poll lead was weak and unlikely to withstand the heat of an election campaign.

A palpable anxiety has spread in some Labour circles ever since its poll lead started to shrink and it became clear that growth is likely to be higher than forecast this year. There are also political rumbles over the decisions to confront the unions about their role in the party and to accept the coalition spending totals for 2015-16.

... The significance of Mudie's intervention, a self-confessed "cynical old and bad tempered" figure, will depend on whether other MPs voice similar doubts, or he remains an isolated voice. Mudie claimed there was a general concern among Labour MPs that the party's lead in the polls was "not firm enough, big enough and will it withstand a general election discussion?"

He told the BBC's World At One: "I think one of the difficulties a Labour party member would say to you, and I would say to you, I have difficulty knowing what we stand for now. We are 18 months away from an election, thinking that we will put out a document on all these major items and the public will say, 'Oh great'... At the moment the government are setting the agenda, making the weather, and we're responding to it. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown never did that."

He asked: "Do you know, because I don't, our position on welfare, do you know our position on education, do you know our genuine position on how we'd run the health service?

"I remember before we won, the five years to 97, this place was bubbling, we were energetic, we were at them, we thought we had all the answers. We're not at them and we're slightly hesitant and we're slightly confused and I deeply worry about that." Asked whether Miliband was in touch with the concerns of backbenchers like him, Mudie said the leader was "always cocooned by people round him and the basis they are around him is he trusts them".

He said one of Miliband's problems was that "he is young, the way he came to power, the problem with his brother, the fact that the trade unions had a major say. I think he is still trying to find himself and I think the problem with that is that sometimes he is doing things that he thinks a Labour leader should do that he should not do."

Without giving details, he said he knew Miliband had made mistakes. He said unless Labour offered something different and relevant, voters would decide to stick with what they have got.

Miliband has made the strategic decision to hold back on major policy announcements until closer to election, arguing that a five-year, fixed-term parliament requires a more disciplined approach.

I wonder if Miliband gets advice from Steve Israel, who encourages Democratic candidates to keep all but the most insipid, mom-and-apple-pie positions to themselves, and who urges freshmen incumbents to vote with the Republicans in the mostly pointless hope of wooing conservative voters. Two of Israel's worst freshmen, New Dems Sean Patrick Maloney (NY) and Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), have followed his advice and have amassed two of the worst voting records of any Democrats in the House. Both are considered very vulnerable to defeat in 2014. Neither has persuaded many conservative voters to abandon Republicans but both have alienated their Democratic bases who are unlikely to turn out for them at the polls.

MoveOn.org members have launched petitions against 14 Democrats-- including Arizona’s Congresswomen Kyrsten Sinema and Ann Kirkpatrick-- for siding with Republicans in their vote to delay implementation of the Affordable Care Act from 2014 to 2015.

According to The Hill, these members were targeted with MoveOn.org petitions: Reps. Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.) Scott Peters (D-Calif.), Brad Schneider (D-Ill.), Gary Peters (D-Mich.), Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), Julia Brownley (D-Calif.), Sean Maloney (D-N.Y.), Elizabeth Esty (D-Conn.), Dan Maffei (D-N.Y.), Ann Kirkpatrick (D-Ariz.), Bill Enyart (D-Ill.), Bill Owens (D-N.Y.), Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.) and Collin Peterson (D-Minn.).