Tuesday, May 10, 2005
Anyone else really bored of people calling for Tony Blair’s resignation?
Yes, how terrible, after waging an unpopular war he only managed to win a third majority. What a liability.
It wasn’t a landslide, but that’s as it should be. The previous two parliaments were far too weighted towards Labour – they did not reflect the composition of the British public. Many of those 1997 gains would have to go back to the Tories, it was inevitable and right – the Labour party does not represent the values of those constituencies. If it wasn’t for the terrible state of the Conservative party they would never have switched in the first place; once anger had subsided and the leadership changed they were always going to drift back.
Blair has managed to secure a probable twelve years of Labour government. Unprecedented. More than that, the electorate’s centre of gravity has moved from comfortably Conservative to quite Labour – where it is now. This is a real achievement. Anyone who thinks that under Brown, or anyone else, there would be enormous Labour majorities is kidding themselves. It won’t be like 1997, or 2001, for a long long time.
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