Election in Lemmingland

Alex Bensky

Ah, yes, Melanie, over here we were promised that the Obama administration would be marked by a hands-across-the-aisle bipartisanship, or even nonpartisanship. Under the leadership of the One our petty differences would be bridged in a common quest for that one true way.

It hasn't worked out so far but maybe it will over there.

procopious

"We will get permanent coalition, policy paralysis, absence of democracy and institutionalised corruption." Yes, quite a change from the present situation:)

Jimmy

"Änd" ... He will change his again and again. Can you trust this guy?

William Boyd

The logical (not to mention morally just) solution then would be to elect the Lib Dems into government all by themselves, which for my money is probably what will happen.

Pamela Monks

"Oh --and as Lord Tebbit observes today, almost certainly the BNP taking part in the government of the country."

It's the thought of Labour, the LibDems, or even Cameron's Conservatives taking part in the government of the country that worries me. The BNP seem quite sane by comparison.

Augustus

William Boyd - Would they get past the vote on the Queen's speech? If not, the only outcome then would be resignation, followed by another General Election.

Dee Ranged

If we have a hung parliament, the bankers will be calling the tune and life will be even more miserable.

GaryO

My only solution: abstain.

paul

The three elephants in the room are only being tackled by UKIP. The three elephants are debt,EU and immigration according to Tebbit. So staightaway there is one choice. We certainly cannot go on the way we are. None of the parties are tackling the real issues. When you tackle them and dare to mention immigration you are labelled a bigot. At least John Major got out his soapbox and talked to people on the hustings. These guys are real wimps and need hand picked studio audiences. Churchill would be turning in his grave.

Derek BLADES

PR certainly has its problems but there is a much better option that no one in Britain seems to consider. Here in France we have a two-round system. It gives us one-party governments while at the same time ensuring that all those elected get more than half the votes cast. Just because it is a French invention is no reason not to consider it.

Terry, Eilat - Israel

Lemmingland, I really think that just about sums it up.

Augustus

Derek BLADES - Aah! The fifth Republic. Nicolas Sarkozy is a short man, President Charles de Gaulle was a tall man. Does that mean that the system might be in decline?

Dixon

What a cute little animal. can I have one? Perhaps it will jump off my window-box!

Sam Armstrong

David Cameron caused all this to happen because he is so afraid of what the trendy multi-culti sect will say if he doesn't capitulate to their fashionable consensus.

The man is clearly not broad sighted enough to realise that his adopted progressive 'values' are the laughing stock of far bigger fry than the brain dead, coke snorting fashionistas of Notting Hill.

He can't see the bigger picture: that Socialism has failed everywhere and wrecks lives. He doesn't realise that Britain, which is a country with enemies everywhere, is on the world-stage a complete joke and that the Chinese, Russians and Islamists are killing themselves with laughter as Cameron's political class delivers the land most of us would die for on a plate to tyranny.

Having sold the only method of truly protecting ones country, Conservatism, totally down the river, perhaps for good, he has positioned himself as possibly the worst Tory leader of all time, and maybe the last.

But what brought about Cameron? Cameron was brought about after Michael Howard dumbed the Tory party down for the '05 election. The Tories initially began to dumb themselves down to escape the terrible reputation that Baroness Thatcher had given them. Apparently, after her, they were the nasty party.

So the root of all this mess is in my opinion the end result of a) deposing of Mrs. Thatcher in the way the Tories did; and b) the Tories childish refusal to stay true to her thrice election winning formula.

In essence, Tories are mostly pussies, with the notable exception of the likes of Tebbit and Redwood.

Blantyre

Melanie. Why the surprise? The Liberal Party and its various morphs into the Lib-Dems has deluded itself that it will hold the balance of power in a coalition with Labour or Conservatives for as long as I can remember, and I aint young!It's a long time since Asquith, and thus rather pathetic to see them still flailing around in the forlorn hope that they'll ever achieve any even vaguely resembling political significance.

Liz

Terry in Eilat - should that perhaps not read Lemmingrad?

Nick

Sam Armstrong, Socialist governments seem to work rather well in Scandinavia, Germany, the US and the UK. I don't see any signs of a resurgence from the Right. If anything, they're tearing themselves to pieces. Shame, really.

Jimmy

Paul - Churchill IS turning in his grave.

Paul Freeman

paul

You are absolutely correct. One cannot mention immigration now without being called a bigot. And you will not have missed the breathtaking irony in today’s story about Gillian Duffy.

Mrs Duffy told Gordon Brown that you can’t talk about immigration without being called - she didn’t say what, but it was clear what she meant. And then, just when he thought he was out of earshot, he called her…a bigot, thus proving her right.

But the irony doesn’t end there. This is the same Gordon Brown who, only last November, declared to the nation that it wasn’t racist to want to talk about…immigration!

However, even that isn’t the last word. As if to silence discussion of the issue once and for all, the BBC sent an impeccably well-spoken reporter named Arif Ansari to Rochdale where he interviewed locals and raised the question of immigration. Now remember, these are people who have suffered badly from immigrants taking their jobs. Be that as it may, anyone who so much as demurred on the subject was immediately silenced by someone else saying how immigrants had every right to be there. The community was clearly censoring itself for fear of the accusation of bigotry.

The hapless Arif Ansari continued to prod for the truth as best he might. But in the end, what could they say about how they felt about immigration - what could anyone say - to a reporter named Arif Ansari?!

Such is the stranglehold that political correctness and fear of the thought police now have on a once proud nation.

hadrian

The sharpest analysis yet. We are truly rudderless in hazzardous seas. Blind leading the blind. Still there is the faintest glimmer of hope from the very latest polls.

hadrian

Immigration? I call it invasion by the back door and without the need for weapons or military strife as the native populace are so ground down into docility. For thousands of years this country has been blessedly delivered from mass invasions only to roll over in a few short decades and actually welcome horrendous levels and waves of aliens. Any nation suffering this is under Judgement.

david elder

Advice from Australia: if someone calls you a racist simply for discussing immigration in a reasoned manner - be glad. The average voter won't publicly endorse you on the media-go-round - they won't get a chance to, they won't be allowed to get a word in by the chatterers. But they will be more inclined to vote for you. If ever the 'silent majority' tag applied it is on this issue. John Howard of Oz benefited mightily from such counterproductive chatterer witch-hunting for four election victories. Voters knew well enough that when chatterers rounded on Howard on this topic, they were expressing disdain for the average voter in the process.

Baron Pippin II

At the last election more than three quarters of the electorate voted against Labour or abstain, yet Blair got a very comfortable majority.

You call it what Melanie, a democracy? Hmmm, to me it smells of minority dictatorship.

By boosting the share of the confused party to near par with the other two happens to be the only way that the great unwashed could engineer the end of a system that has seen the country seesawing from one disaster (1997) to another (2010) with the added doping of sleaze, lies, wars, expenses scandal, lobbying interference and stuff in between.

The country no longer divides between the creed of labour and that of capital. It’s time to move on, and try a different constitutional arrangement, one that gives voice to the sizeable non-ideological creeds that the contemporary society splits by. We’ve dropped the shilling, abolished the hereditaries, broke down the United Kingdom. Perhaps the time has come to elect those who govern us differently, too.

Augustus

Paul Freeman - how interesting about the BBC crew in Rochdale. This reminds me of a story in Holland a few months back. A Dutch TV crew wanted to make a documentary about how Muslims were treated in a bigoted fashion there by indigenous Dutch folk, so they went to Amsterdam and asked a Muslim woman to drop a bag of oranges in the street and show that no passers by would help her pick them up. But as it happened a French TV crew were also filming there and they showed that many people offered to stop and help the woman, but every time someone tried they were told to go away by the Dutch crew. They only had one objective; their own false propaganda which they determined
to serve to the TV viewers. Needless to say, the TV network was a socialist one.

Aurelian

It is the absence of adversarial politics which is responsible for the present dissatisfaction.
An election which merely rotates another face of the Lib/Lab/Con policy consensus into view is pointless.

S.J, Israel

Liz, how about Lemmingstan? ☺

& thanks to Melanie I had a great laugh, over the title of this article.

Helena Jofan

I went the job center after I was made redundant I went there to collect my jobseekers allowance and look for a job, everybody in there is a muslim, they have two entrance doors one is for the men one for the women, before I had a good job I am middle class white I didn't know there was places like this in the country, one time the manager a muslim told us we have to sit separate rooms if you are men one room if you are women different room, I basically drop out I didn't feel comfortable going there I stay home with out a benefit, but this is weird which country I am in? Britain or Saudi Arabia? I don't know, yesterday I watch Gordon Brown's comment about immigration he didn't like it, the labour don't like this kind of questions it upsets them, they don't know what to do because they bring to the country so many immigrants who believe sharia law.

Dominic L-R

A brief comment on PR, which Melanie seems to think will be 'the end of Britain as we know it': Under the present voting system, it's possible for one party to get 33% of the votes and less than 100 seats, and another party to get only 30% of the votes and yet be rewarded with over 300 seats.

Who is willing to step up and defend this absurd paradox?

Sam Armstrong

Nick:

Please explain how these countries have benefitted from Socialism. Do point me to the legions of unbiased articles that report how successful Socialism has been in these places.

The fact is you cannot do that. Socialism is a scam, dreamt up by cranks and weirdos who don't fit in.

John Coupe

As an Australian I admit to being somewhat confused by the current state of play in British politics. The two major parties almost certainly do not have majority support for their electoral platform, the Liberal Democrats seem to live on both sides of the fence so it appears to me that there is only one party, the BNP, that has given the electorate any real certainty as to what it stands for. If by some chance it holds the balance of power why should not the BNP and one of the major parties form a coalition Government? It may not be progressive but it would be definite, certain and is that not what the country needs at this time?

DaveP

There two elephants in the room

1. The EU

2. The AGW/ACC scam is to tax and tax and tax again.

Islam though, is a T-Rex in the room.

Stuart Seacole Smith

That lemming looks like a guinea-pig to me!