I was doing an open final at university when the head of the Tory students came up to me and said "There's going to be a by-election in Monklands".
Really? "Yes, John Smith's just dropped dead."
This means it's also ten years since Blair stitched Brown up like a proverbial. Good to see how history rolls on over ten years.
May 12, 2006 at 12:52 PM
Anonymous
said...
Well I doubt things would be in quite as big a mess had he lived, but things would still have gone pear-shaped since the rest of the hangers-on were pretty duff
May 12, 2006 at 1:02 PM
Anonymous
said...
An unreformed Labour party would be in opposition.
Michael Portillo would be PM.
Britain would be the richest country in Europe and outside the collapsing EU.
Gordon Brown would have quit politics to become a university lecturer.
Margaret Thatcher would lead the Conservatives in the House of Lords.
My immediate reaction was 'Blair for the leadership by a landslide'. Wish I'd bet the farm on it.
May 12, 2006 at 1:18 PM
Anonymous
said...
I had £120,000 on deposit the day before Black Wednesday. Driving along Old Street I heard that interest rates had gone up 3%. "That's nice," I thought, I'll be £3600 better off this year." By lunchtime they went up another 2%. "Even better," I mused, "another £2400 will come in handy." By tea-time the rate rises had been cancelled. "The bastards" I exclaimed, and I've never voted Tory since.
Hmmm - pity about the LIFFE pits though; even if they were home to a bunch of --- you know - appropriate euphemism??? 'Leading Indicators' sounds about right -with the right setup anyway.
I still find pit noise from the CBoT a boon to trading the eMini's
May 12, 2006 at 1:41 PM
Anonymous
said...
If he'd lived: the Labour Party would have ceased to exist as an independent force, having lost the 1996 general election.
May 12, 2006 at 1:41 PM
Anonymous
said...
the funniest thing about JS's death was the way the Evening Standard had to do a quick "airbrush" between its first and later editions.
The first edition had a JAK cartoon showing the St Barts Hospital's "new" accident & emergency ward entrance at the top of a fire exit (with gasping pensioner barely making it up), as a joke on the government's new scheme to cut waiting lists.
Given that it took 45 minutes to get JS from his flat in the Barbican to St Barts, this was unfortunate timing.
So the next editions of the Standard carried another cartoon, showing Nicolas Scott, then the Chelsea MP and minister for the disabled. The joke was about the fact that his daughter demonstrated against him. The picture showed a drawing room where Sir Nicolas had just thrown down a newspaper in disgust (headline: something like "daughter campains against Scott") and kicked in his TV set, whilst a young lady sticks her head around the door and asks "Daddy, can I borrow the car tonight?"
JS dying was the best thing he did for the Labour Party. He lost them the 1992 election and would have lost in 1997, even against John Major.
Now, assuming it's not an amusing bullshit story, how much did you win?
May 12, 2006 at 2:02 PM
Anonymous
said...
My instant reaction: 'Heseltine's finished'. He'd had a severe heart-attack in Venice (damaging film of his being wheeled to a helicopter) a few years before but was peddling the never-felt-better, purely-private-matter line in the hope of replacing Major. After Smith's death, it never seemed credible.
SERO
May 12, 2006 at 2:02 PM
Anonymous
said...
Antoine Clarke, "JS dying was the best thing he did for the Labour Party"
Perhaps this lesson could be incorporated in some Labour staff development training session for the current lot
I think Smith would have won in '97, and maybe even in 2002.
May 12, 2006 at 2:06 PM
Anonymous
said...
I was in Edinburgh and drove past his house which was surrounded by TV vans. My Scottish Tory relatives were all devastated.
May 12, 2006 at 2:06 PM
Anonymous
said...
a bit off subject, but does this help explain what guido actually does, ie, his day job and where he finds the time to annoy politicians all day......
are you one of those fund managers who retired at 30? bastard......
May 12, 2006 at 2:22 PM
Anonymous
said...
Well Dave, grumpy gordo seems to be doing a pretty good job of achieving a soviet centralised economy for you. OT : Moonbat Miliband was on Today this morning, and it looks like 'progressive' is the new black - he used it every other word.
May 12, 2006 at 2:36 PM
Anonymous
said...
Labour had a 15 point lead in the Polls under Smith.
The unfortunate truth is that Smith would not have won the 1997 election. A monkey on a stick could have won that election, and did, but not one with the Shadow Budget of 1992 behind him. That was the biggest pile of political ordure ever committed to paper (except perhaps the 1983 manifesto) and would have blighted his every move if he hadn't died. I was with a large number of Tories on the day he died - they were gutted. And they were right.
Friends of mine lived opposite him in Edinburgh. He was enormous fun when younger, disparaging his party, his colleagues and their policies with great wit. When he got promoted he had to stop being so frank. Altogether too decent and intelligent a bloke to be an uncritical Old Labour type.
May 12, 2006 at 3:22 PM
Anonymous
said...
John Smith as PM would have been a disaster for the country. He had a sense of integrity though, and might have had higher aspirations than his own political survival, unlike our present leader.
May 12, 2006 at 4:01 PM
Anonymous
said...
dave = dave osler well known Trotskyist of this parish.
It's funny how the most right wing leader of the party (excepting Callaghan) for 60 years is now a great hero of the left.
Truth was, Kinnock too had built up a big lead and he eventually lost.
When Smith died I thought Labour's hopes of winning the next election had died too, i was wrong. But why I was wrong was that Blair had the balls to systematically, one by one, focus on the reasons why people wouldn't vote Labour and put them to bed definitively.
Cameron hasn't come close and Smith won't have dared. Remember - Smith bollocked Straw for even daring to suggest we needed a new Clause IV. Blair just did it.
May 12, 2006 at 4:20 PM
Anonymous
said...
Off topic I know - but BBC online are reporting that the Lib Dems are "reviewing Sir Ming's performance". Is he about to be toppled after a mere matter of weeks?
May 12, 2006 at 4:21 PM
Anonymous
said...
Seems unlikely that he will make it through to the next election if he continues to stumble so embarassingly at PMQs, or if they have a repeat of their whopping 2 seat net gain in the local elections - but I don't think there can be much more appetite within the LDs for a further leadership contest, let alone outside of Cowley Street.
I'm a veteran of such events, but even I am beginning to yearn for the knacker's yard at the mere mention of leadership elections. I have developed fatigue with them.
Still sad about John Smith though. He wasn't a bad man, and wouldn't have been a bad PM. And 55 is a very young age to die at.
May 12, 2006 at 4:32 PM
Anonymous
said...
All together now...
"Mr Blair said he ... was confident there was broad agreement ... in government.
"And that is a significant achievement by any standards," he added.
Surely anyone who wasn't Kinnock or a similar vote-repeller would have beaten Major in 1997? I know Blair has said Smith wouldn't have won, but surely that's part of ACLB's myth-making?
I think Major clinging on to the end eliminates any possible counterfactual regarding his leadership. Smith lives, or leader Brown are the relevant ones from Labour.
What if Major, not Smith, has the tragic heart attack?
John Major did not have a heart. Just big blue underpants, apparently.
May 12, 2006 at 5:51 PM
Anonymous
said...
I was at Southampton University when the Students' Union President announced the death over the loud tannoy. That day we were due to debate renaming the debating chamber (now defunct, and rebuilt as a bar/nightclub) as the John Smith Debating Chamber following a very popular open meeting he had addressed there weeks before. Respecting the fact it couldn't be debated that day the Labour Group withdrew the motion.
We proposed renaming another part of the union to see if the magic could work twice.
The Ted Heath Toilets motion failed to pass and it nearly took another decade for time to take its toll.
Well our dear leader had a bit of a heart flutter the other year, and had a heart operation quite quickly although "it was all quite minor" ... in which case why didn't he have to wait the usual 9 months.
Anyway, fingers crossed he may have a relapse.
[Is it criminal in the UK to wish the death of one's PM - I know if is over in the US (don't the Secret Service come over to interview you if you've said bad things about Nixon etc)]
Death by natural causes would be far better than Bliar deserves. One lives with the hope that the man would lock himself in a room with a revolver and do the decent thing... I believe the focus groups and Gordo are with me on this one.
May 12, 2006 at 6:49 PM
Anonymous
said...
If MI5 are monitoring these comments, I for one hope the PM does not suffer another ‘minor’ heart problem.
May 12, 2006 at 6:50 PM
Anonymous
said...
Hate to be a mong, but BBC aren't reporting the Ming has 6 months line - It's a story from GMTV, who have passed it on to PA, from where the BBC has picked it up.
And the BBC line is wrong. It's not "let's give dear old Ming a bit longer to get settled" - it's actually a case of "Lib Dem President puts Ming on notice: you've got until conference then we come to get you unless you drastically improve you old git"
Dave, the Dear leader has an obsessive tendency to ban things, start pointless wars and allow hoards of dangerous foreigners to roam our fair land ...but hey the NHS is having its best year ever and Two Shaggs gives great value for money as DPM. I feel a rant coming on so I am off to ConservativeHome or Guido will expunge me.
John Smith was a decent and humble Christian man of a firm Protestant foundation, nothing like the facade of a quasi-papist who succeeded him. Smith had integrity and conviction; Blair is but a pale shadow of what might have been.
And don't be nasty about him. Not only is it deeply unchristian to speak ill of the dead, but Baroness Smith might be reading.
May 12, 2006 at 8:39 PM
Anonymous
said...
Guido - you have mentioned a few times that you are an RC. I always understood that while gambling in general is not forbidden by the RC Church, betting on what you know to be a certainty is considered a sin. I hope you confessed it (on your way to celebrate your winnings)
May 12, 2006 at 8:54 PM
Anonymous
said...
DC MP,
That is not your real name, those are not your beliefs, you are not a Tory and you will not find people discussing them at ‘Conservative Home’
Do you write LibDem campaign leaflets by any chance?
The fellow posting as David Cameron mp is becoming a trifle irritating. His postings emit a profound stench of mischief-making that could, as anonymous pointed out, be of a libdem origin.
May 12, 2006 at 10:18 PM
Anonymous
said...
Im progun
That makes you very mainstream in line with The Bill of Rights 1689 and you will obviously favoure repeal of the 1920 legislation brought in to prevent a Communist uprising.
Better to hyphenate "pro-gun" though.
May 12, 2006 at 10:28 PM
Anonymous
said...
If MI5 are monitoring these comments
That's a job for Menwith Hill not MI5 and Menwith Hill like GCHQ is funded by the NSA
Oh we're all probably on MI5's "watched list" by just commenting on here. I mean how dare we question our dear leader - that's treason isn't it??? ;)
May 12, 2006 at 11:26 PM
Anonymous
said...
Over 60% questioned our dear leader at the GE, over 70% at the locals! MI5’s watch list is getting rather long me thinks.
May 12, 2006 at 11:58 PM
Anonymous
said...
If you're not on MI5's watchlist, rest assured Blair's been handing your data over to the NSA for. evah.
David Cameron Mp will be missed, at least by me. I love destabilizing influences. But then, he wasn't ever very amusing, and I am slanted in favour of the amusing, wherever it comes from.
May 13, 2006 at 4:00 AM
Anonymous
said...
MI5's "Watch List" does however leave you free to disrupt public transport, avoid deportation, and generally to develop an explosive personality.................after all Jack Straw, John Reid, Peter Mandelson, Harriet Harman, Patricia Hewitt, John Prescott were probably all on MI5's "Watch List" and it did nothing to hinder them in their long-term plans to undermine the Realm
May 13, 2006 at 6:25 AM
Anonymous
said...
Your exclusion of Blunkett is a little short sighted, was he not the father of ID Cards as well as other little bastards.
"Good one Dave. Tories have such short memories they forget just how far in the pits they were." - bedehouse
As do Labour supporters (and some of the electorate it would seem) who forget what a complete mess the 1979 Labour Government left the country in, with uncollected litter piles in the streets, Trade Unions rampant and uncontrolled, and civil unrest.
The Conservatives have only spent 10 years out of power against Labour's, ooh, 18.
May 13, 2006 at 12:49 PM
Anonymous
said...
Trade Unions rampant and uncontrolled, and civil unrest.
Total bollocks and no worse than the WInter of 1973 that Heath left behind. Callaghan was just too gutless to put the Army in to break the T&G truckers strike. The rest should have been drafted into the Army and ordered back to work.
The real shambles was Edward Heath getting a Miners' strike in 1972 together with power workers and then botching up the country by End-1973 so much so that Jack Jones and Hugh Scanlon became power-brokers.
If Conservative Governments had not spent so much time deregulating credit we might not have had boom and bust. To claim that Labour is incompetent and Conservatives competent is only 50% correct; in fact the Conservatives have been adept at blowing the balance of payments to pieces and creating house price inflation - Brown has just learned from the masters.
May 13, 2006 at 1:42 PM
Anonymous
said...
Your exclusion of Blunkett is a little short sighted, was he not the father of ID Cards as well as other little bastards.
Tom, you are so right. I confess to having a blind spot for Blunkett.......I hope to ignore him and that he might go away, but I realise that the children's game of covering your eyes so he can't see you doesn't work !
May 13, 2006 at 1:44 PM
Anonymous
said...
I think even Kinnock would have won the 1997 election. Michael Foot or Tony Benn might have lost it.
May 13, 2006 at 1:44 PM
Anonymous
said...
I think even John Stonehouse or Tom Driberg would have won the 1997 election for Labour. And we would have been better off with either at the helm of state than the current shower.
Re: the person posting as "David Cameron MP". Please note that just because someone is a boring, unamusing tosser, it does not automatically mean that they are a Lib Dem.
May 14, 2006 at 12:01 AM
Anonymous
said...
This thread is as good a guide to the past 10 years of British political history as any I've seen.
But Guido has never come clean about the amount he actually won. Depending on odds he could have cleared enough to get the entire Labour party drunk.
Fess up!
May 14, 2006 at 7:44 AM
Anonymous
said...
Has John Major not won the 92 election, the Conservatives would have won the 97 election- because the ERM and Black Wednesday would have been Labour's crisis....because they were in with the ERM idea all the way....more so than the Tories.
What a bummer!
May 14, 2006 at 12:39 PM
Anonymous
said...
Well the Germans are paying for the ERM now. Schlesinger at BUBA was the real fool - by not revaluing the D-Mark then and postponing the introduction of the Euro, Germany just locked itself into perpetual decline rather than sacrificing exports for the interim.
May 14, 2006 at 1:49 PM
Anonymous
said...
At the time of his death Labour's lead in the opinion polls was around 10 points. It leapt to nearer 20 when Blair took over.
A counter factual scenario would have him winning the 1997 election if he had lived. But he would have had to fight it without the support of Murdoch and in the teeth of a fierce anti 'tax and spend' gale. So no 100+ majority for him. Probably something around what Blair has now, maybe a little more.
Through a combination of higher spending, and laxity on the PSBR and interest rates (over which government might not have surrendered control) there would have been a mini boom. Like Blair, Smith might have been tempted to go to the country early in 2001 before the economy turned. Another working majority under 100 seats or so might have been the result.
But it would have all gone tits up thereafter as we would have (and still be) experiencing all the benefits of full Euro membership.
William Hague would have romped home by 100+ seats last year.
65 comments:
I was doing an open final at university when the head of the Tory students came up to me and said "There's going to be a by-election in Monklands".
Really? "Yes, John Smith's just dropped dead."
This means it's also ten years since Blair stitched Brown up like a proverbial. Good to see how history rolls on over ten years.
Well I doubt things would be in quite as big a mess had he lived, but things would still have gone pear-shaped since the rest of the hangers-on were pretty duff
An unreformed Labour party would be in opposition.
Michael Portillo would be PM.
Britain would be the richest country in Europe and outside the collapsing EU.
Gordon Brown would have quit politics to become a university lecturer.
Margaret Thatcher would lead the Conservatives in the House of Lords.
Income tax would be 10%.
The pound would buy 3 euros.
You truly have a compassionate heart Guido.
the heart warming aspect of this tale is that IG got turned over.
John Smith,someone who was what it said on the tin.Like Thatcher.
My immediate reaction was 'Blair for the leadership by a landslide'. Wish I'd bet the farm on it.
I had £120,000 on deposit the day before Black Wednesday. Driving along Old Street I heard that interest rates had gone up 3%. "That's nice," I thought, I'll be £3600 better off this year." By lunchtime they went up another 2%. "Even better," I mused, "another £2400 will come in handy." By tea-time the rate rises had been cancelled. "The bastards" I exclaimed, and I've never voted Tory since.
I was 11, and more concerned with the death of Ayrton Senna...
Hundred-and-twenty grand mong,
POST OF THE DAY!
Hmmm - pity about the LIFFE pits though; even if they were home to a bunch of --- you know - appropriate euphemism??? 'Leading Indicators' sounds about right -with the right setup anyway.
I still find pit noise from the CBoT a boon to trading the eMini's
If he'd lived: the Labour Party would have ceased to exist as an independent force, having lost the 1996 general election.
the funniest thing about JS's death was the way the Evening Standard had to do a quick "airbrush" between its first and later editions.
The first edition had a JAK cartoon showing the St Barts Hospital's "new" accident & emergency ward entrance at the top of a fire exit (with gasping pensioner barely making it up), as a joke on the government's new scheme to cut waiting lists.
Given that it took 45 minutes to get JS from his flat in the Barbican to St Barts, this was unfortunate timing.
So the next editions of the Standard carried another cartoon, showing Nicolas Scott, then the Chelsea MP and minister for the disabled. The joke was about the fact that his daughter demonstrated against him. The picture showed a drawing room where Sir Nicolas had just thrown down a newspaper in disgust (headline: something like "daughter campains against Scott") and kicked in his TV set, whilst a young lady sticks her head around the door and asks "Daddy, can I borrow the car tonight?"
JS dying was the best thing he did for the Labour Party. He lost them the 1992 election and would have lost in 1997, even against John Major.
wow Guido... I tip my hat to you, you bastard.
Now, assuming it's not an amusing bullshit story, how much did you win?
My instant reaction: 'Heseltine's finished'. He'd had a severe heart-attack in Venice (damaging film of his being wheeled to a helicopter) a few years before but was peddling the never-felt-better, purely-private-matter line in the hope of replacing Major. After Smith's death, it never seemed credible.
SERO
Antoine Clarke, "JS dying was the best thing he did for the Labour Party"
Perhaps this lesson could be incorporated in some Labour staff development training session for the current lot
I think Smith would have won in '97, and maybe even in 2002.
I was in Edinburgh and drove past his house which was surrounded by TV vans. My Scottish Tory relatives were all devastated.
a bit off subject, but does this help explain what guido actually does, ie, his day job and where he finds the time to annoy politicians all day......
are you one of those fund managers who retired at 30? bastard......
Well Dave, grumpy gordo seems to be doing a pretty good job of achieving a soviet centralised economy for you.
OT : Moonbat Miliband was on Today this morning, and it looks like 'progressive' is the new black - he used it every other word.
Labour had a 15 point lead in the Polls under Smith.
The unfortunate truth is that Smith would not have won the 1997 election. A monkey on a stick could have won that election, and did, but not one with the Shadow Budget of 1992 behind him. That was the biggest pile of political ordure ever committed to paper (except perhaps the 1983 manifesto) and would have blighted his every move if he hadn't died. I was with a large number of Tories on the day he died - they were gutted. And they were right.
Friends of mine lived opposite him in Edinburgh. He was enormous fun when younger, disparaging his party, his colleagues and their policies with great wit. When he got promoted he had to stop being so frank. Altogether too decent and intelligent a bloke to be an uncritical Old Labour type.
John Smith as PM would have been a disaster for the country. He had a sense of integrity though, and might have had higher aspirations than his own political survival, unlike our present leader.
dave = dave osler well known Trotskyist of this parish.
It's funny how the most right wing leader of the party (excepting Callaghan) for 60 years is now a great hero of the left.
Truth was, Kinnock too had built up a big lead and he eventually lost.
When Smith died I thought Labour's hopes of winning the next election had died too, i was wrong. But why I was wrong was that Blair had the balls to systematically, one by one, focus on the reasons why people wouldn't vote Labour and put them to bed definitively.
Cameron hasn't come close and Smith won't have dared. Remember - Smith bollocked Straw for even daring to suggest we needed a new Clause IV. Blair just did it.
Off topic I know - but BBC online are reporting that the Lib Dems are "reviewing Sir Ming's performance". Is he about to be toppled after a mere matter of weeks?
Seems unlikely that he will make it through to the next election if he continues to stumble so embarassingly at PMQs, or if they have a repeat of their whopping 2 seat net gain in the local elections - but I don't think there can be much more appetite within the LDs for a further leadership contest, let alone outside of Cowley Street.
I'm a veteran of such events, but even I am beginning to yearn for the knacker's yard at the mere mention of leadership elections. I have developed fatigue with them.
Still sad about John Smith though. He wasn't a bad man, and wouldn't have been a bad PM. And 55 is a very young age to die at.
All together now...
"Mr Blair said he ... was confident there was broad agreement ... in government.
"And that is a significant achievement by any standards," he added.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4763803.stm
Surely anyone who wasn't Kinnock or a similar vote-repeller would have beaten Major in 1997? I know Blair has said Smith wouldn't have won, but surely that's part of ACLB's myth-making?
I think Major clinging on to the end eliminates any possible counterfactual regarding his leadership. Smith lives, or leader Brown are the relevant ones from Labour.
What if Major, not Smith, has the tragic heart attack?
John Major did not have a heart. Just big blue underpants, apparently.
I was at Southampton University when the Students' Union President announced the death over the loud tannoy. That day we were due to debate renaming the debating chamber (now defunct, and rebuilt as a bar/nightclub) as the John Smith Debating Chamber following a very popular open meeting he had addressed there weeks before. Respecting the fact it couldn't be debated that day the Labour Group withdrew the motion.
We proposed renaming another part of the union to see if the magic could work twice.
The Ted Heath Toilets motion failed to pass and it nearly took another decade for time to take its toll.
stalins gran
he was also missing a top lip.
Well our dear leader had a bit of a heart flutter the other year, and had a heart operation quite quickly although "it was all quite minor" ... in which case why didn't he have to wait the usual 9 months.
Anyway, fingers crossed he may have a relapse.
[Is it criminal in the UK to wish the death of one's PM - I know if is over in the US (don't the Secret Service come over to interview you if you've said bad things about Nixon etc)]
Death by natural causes would be far better than Bliar deserves. One lives with the hope that the man would lock himself in a room with a revolver and do the decent thing...
I believe the focus groups and Gordo are with me on this one.
If MI5 are monitoring these comments, I for one hope the PM does not suffer another ‘minor’ heart problem.
Hate to be a mong, but BBC aren't reporting the Ming has 6 months line - It's a story from GMTV, who have passed it on to PA, from where the BBC has picked it up.
And the BBC line is wrong. It's not "let's give dear old Ming a bit longer to get settled" - it's actually a case of "Lib Dem President puts Ming on notice: you've got until conference then we come to get you unless you drastically improve you old git"
Dave, the Dear leader has an obsessive tendency to ban things, start pointless wars and allow hoards of dangerous foreigners to roam our fair land ...but hey the NHS is having its best year ever and Two Shaggs gives great value for money as DPM. I feel a rant coming on so I am off to ConservativeHome or Guido will expunge me.
Guido,
More gossip.
Less crowing about your petty wheezes.
That is all.
Is this a Liberal website?
No it’s illiberal, go away!
John Smith was a decent and humble Christian man of a firm Protestant foundation, nothing like the facade of a quasi-papist who succeeded him. Smith had integrity and conviction; Blair is but a pale shadow of what might have been.
And don't be nasty about him. Not only is it deeply unchristian to speak ill of the dead, but Baroness Smith might be reading.
Guido - you have mentioned a few times that you are an RC. I always understood that while gambling in general is not forbidden by the RC Church, betting on what you know to be a certainty is considered a sin. I hope you confessed it (on your way to celebrate your winnings)
DC MP,
That is not your real name, those are not your beliefs, you are not a Tory and you will not find people discussing them at ‘Conservative Home’
Do you write LibDem campaign leaflets by any chance?
Guido,
The fellow posting as David Cameron mp is becoming a trifle irritating. His postings emit a profound stench of mischief-making that could, as anonymous pointed out, be of a libdem origin.
Im progun
That makes you very mainstream in line with The Bill of Rights 1689 and you will obviously favoure repeal of the 1920 legislation brought in to prevent a Communist uprising.
Better to hyphenate "pro-gun" though.
If MI5 are monitoring these comments
That's a job for Menwith Hill not MI5 and Menwith Hill like GCHQ is funded by the NSA
DC MP,
Can you post less frequently and more amusingly.
Banning you would be popular methinks.
Oh this is lovely isn't it? Big Gordon is a pretty straight kinda guy judging by this BBC 'news' report.
Perhaps DC MP is suffering from premature hair loss, it does strange thing to a man apparently! Adieu,
Farewell,
bugger off.
If MI5 are monitoring these comments
Oh we're all probably on MI5's "watched list" by just commenting on here. I mean how dare we question our dear leader - that's treason isn't it??? ;)
Over 60% questioned our dear leader at the GE, over 70% at the locals! MI5’s watch list is getting rather long me thinks.
If you're not on MI5's watchlist, rest assured Blair's been handing your data over to the NSA for. evah.
David Cameron Mp will be missed, at least by me. I love destabilizing influences. But then, he wasn't ever very amusing, and I am slanted in favour of the amusing, wherever it comes from.
MI5's "Watch List" does however leave you free to disrupt public transport, avoid deportation, and generally to develop an explosive personality.................after all Jack Straw, John Reid, Peter Mandelson, Harriet Harman, Patricia Hewitt, John Prescott were probably all on MI5's "Watch List" and it did nothing to hinder them in their long-term plans to undermine the Realm
Your exclusion of Blunkett is a little short sighted, was he not the father of ID Cards as well as other little bastards.
"Good one Dave. Tories have such short memories they forget just how far in the pits they were." - bedehouse
As do Labour supporters (and some of the electorate it would seem) who forget what a complete mess the 1979 Labour Government left the country in, with uncollected litter piles in the streets, Trade Unions rampant and uncontrolled, and civil unrest.
The Conservatives have only spent 10 years out of power against Labour's, ooh, 18.
Trade Unions rampant and uncontrolled, and civil unrest.
Total bollocks and no worse than the WInter of 1973 that Heath left behind. Callaghan was just too gutless to put the Army in to break the T&G truckers strike. The rest should have been drafted into the Army and ordered back to work.
The real shambles was Edward Heath getting a Miners' strike in 1972 together with power workers and then botching up the country by End-1973 so much so that Jack Jones and Hugh Scanlon became power-brokers.
If Conservative Governments had not spent so much time deregulating credit we might not have had boom and bust. To claim that Labour is incompetent and Conservatives competent is only 50% correct; in fact the Conservatives have been adept at blowing the balance of payments to pieces and creating house price inflation - Brown has just learned from the masters.
Your exclusion of Blunkett is a little short sighted, was he not the father of ID Cards as well as other little bastards.
Tom, you are so right. I confess to having a blind spot for Blunkett.......I hope to ignore him and that he might go away, but I realise that the children's game of covering your eyes so he can't see you doesn't work !
I think even Kinnock would have won the 1997 election. Michael Foot or Tony Benn might have lost it.
I think even John Stonehouse or Tom Driberg would have won the 1997 election for Labour. And we would have been better off with either at the helm of state than the current shower.
Guido,
Some loser (Macles) has gone running to Daddy about your John Smith piece...
http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6214838&postID=114736304778525385
Note to all uptight readers: Take your sactimonious humour-free uptight forms to a newsagent and buy the Daily Mail.
I never knew that this chap could, perhaps, have also been a miner.
Re: the person posting as "David Cameron MP". Please note that just because someone is a boring, unamusing tosser, it does not automatically mean that they are a Lib Dem.
This thread is as good a guide to the past 10 years of British political history as any I've seen.
But Guido has never come clean about the amount he actually won. Depending on odds he could have cleared enough to get the entire Labour party drunk.
Fess up!
Has John Major not won the 92 election, the Conservatives would have won the 97 election- because the ERM and Black Wednesday would have been Labour's crisis....because they were in with the ERM idea all the way....more so than the Tories.
What a bummer!
Well the Germans are paying for the ERM now. Schlesinger at BUBA was the real fool - by not revaluing the D-Mark then and postponing the introduction of the Euro, Germany just locked itself into perpetual decline rather than sacrificing exports for the interim.
At the time of his death Labour's lead in the opinion polls was around 10 points. It leapt to nearer 20 when Blair took over.
A counter factual scenario would have him winning the 1997 election if he had lived. But he would have had to fight it without the support of Murdoch and in the teeth of a fierce anti 'tax and spend' gale. So no 100+ majority for him. Probably something around what Blair has now, maybe a little more.
Through a combination of higher spending, and laxity on the PSBR and interest rates (over which government might not have surrendered control) there would have been a mini boom. Like Blair, Smith might have been tempted to go to the country early in 2001 before the economy turned. Another working majority under 100 seats or so might have been the result.
But it would have all gone tits up thereafter as we would have (and still be) experiencing all the benefits of full Euro membership.
William Hague would have romped home by 100+ seats last year.