United Kingdom: Politics: Campaign for a new term in office for Labour Party, or a 'throw the bums out' win for Tories

At the end of September 2007, Rudi Hayward wrote an article "What are elections for?"; it was the lead item on a webpage headed "Social Transformation," a page on the website Reformational UK. Rudi wrote then:

Gordon Brown is in the midst of making a decision about when to hold the next general election. What will decide the matter? The speculation around the possibility of a “snap election” has been driven by the apparent win-ability of an election by Brown’s Labour Party. Labour are ahead in the polls despite, or perhaps because of, a series of mini-crises (attempted terrorist attacks, floods, foot and mouth and Northern Rock), and David Cameron’s Conservatives have yet to regain the initiative after a wobbly summer. But is this what elections are supposed to be about? Is it purely a matter of the public mood as reflected in the polls and the chances of re-election?

The choice as to when to hold the election has been largely portrayed as a calculation as to Labour's chances of winning, of holding onto or even increasing their majority. These calculations are not even about overall support across the country, but focus on marginal seats. While it would be churlish to demand that no thought of winning or losing elections should enter the equation, nevertheless the government should not be allowed to get away with a purely pragmatic approach to elections. The choice should not be primarily about winning or losing, elections should be about gaining a mandate to govern. So the question for Brown should be, as The Economist has succinctly put it, “either to make it clear that he stands by the policies on which his party was elected, renewing the intellectual case for them and pressing ahead, or to hoist new colours and seek a fresh mandate”.

The whole article continues interestingly, at least for me.

I wish I understood British govt & politics better, not so much in any academic way, but as a stance from which to read the news from Over There. While one finds all sorts of fine British Internet sources of news and opinion, I wish this particular website would give itself a frontpage with political, economic and labour news about the UK -- even where full comment is not possible, even when there's no comment really, but only a selection or even rewriting -- from the hand/mind of a committed reformational, practicising political journalism. This could add great value to the website, bring new readers who just want to follow up a Brit news, dated to indicate its timeliness, with some pauses to check out other areas on the UK reformational website, and enhance the whole international movement we share in larger ways.

And I wish I understood better partly because, in blogging, I don't want my comments on 10 Downing Street, etc, to sound off-the-cuff or assinine to my British readers (who probably disagree among themselves to a fascinating extent). But, given that background reticence on my part, which often stops me from spouting off about UK developments I encounter in the Kingdom's general political news, I nevertheless find that I don't feel I can just shut up on all UK political and other matters, because the UK reformational blogs I love to read and the UK reformational community's own website don't don't seem to have a regular continuing political commentary on their own situation as it develops week by week. There's no indigenous reformational journalism that is politically astute regarding the Brit political situation today, as far as I can tell.

I have learned and hope to continue to learn about the particularism of the Northern Ireland identity, esp among the "Prods", thereby hopefully understanding the news from there better. But today's politics in the Kingdom as a whole, and (at the moment) the status of Scotland's devolved sovereign jurisidiction within the Union has lurched to the forefront around the Ministry of Justice or whatever it's called. Suddenly, the rupture between North America and the UK in its current political-juridical behaviour becomes quite glaring when a Scot politico springs the Lockerbie Mass Murderer from Libya -- set free by Scotland, as it turns out, for consideration of a proposed 20-billion oil deal to stock the UK oil supply properly thru the cold winter.

Gordon Brown, Labour Party

David Cameron, Conservative Party

UPDATE: Since I offered the above comments, the Scottish Parliament has roared its disapproval of the the Justice Minister's complicity in the release of the Mass Murderer from Libya, the Minister sympathizing with the moral slime-oid and not speaking up for the slime-oid's victims. The Minister becomes the co-victimizer with the Libyan hole (you know to which hole I refer) because the terrorist bomberplotter was "sick" and is "dieing." My reaction personally to the hideous man who was sick and dieing in prison is a shrugged "So what if he's sick there or dies there?" Why care about how this bloody man dies?, I woud ask, adding that I can't believe the Justice Minister's hokum. The rhetoric of his "r+teous" invocation of "justice" is the worst sloganeering in the Western world at the moment, a pseudominister of his own kind of "justice" and from whom Libya's hitman gets a virtual reprieve, while the families of the victims are left to rot in rank injustice.

Now, Gordon Brown has disavowed having had influence on the Scottish bullshitter. Brown has denied any form of contact with Libya, mother of terrorists, terrorists who killed some 270 people on the American plane that came down on Lockerbie, Scotland, UK. And earlier, as I remember, Libya made itself the safehouse of the Irish Republican Army. I don't believe Brown in his denial for a moment. Dear Brits, am I wrong? Does this have something with getting you all thru the winter on Libyan oil? Does this have to do with some upcoming election or with jockeying among the factions in his party for the purpose of retaining the Leadership of the Labour Party? What?, I wonder.

Update / Breaking News (Sept5,2k9):
Jack Straw, Britain's Justice Minister says "Oil deal influenced Lockerbie bomber's release


Thankfully, there's no question of the British-USA alliance coming apart. From my perch in Toronto, I remain grateful for the perception regarding Britain's political leadership during recent times past that the Islamofascist terrorists shoud be resolutely opposed. I'm grateful for the Brit soldiers who fawt, some dieing, some living with limbs lost, some perhaps simply surviving now at home their years of military service to liberate Afghanistan and Iraq.

But did the otherwise embattled Gordon the Gorgon inform (or get approval for) the use of the Scottish marionette to placate Libyan bosses? Did Gorgon do so via telephone conversations with the American president, who apparently has a policy of fawning over numerous terror-supporting Arab leaders, long before this most recent scandal regarding of Libya?

Gordon Brown 'wanted Libyan to die a free man' (Australian, Sept3,2k9)

-- Politicarp