Through the modern miracles of instant polling and the 24-hour news cycle, Britons have managed to use a gerrymandered, single house, single seat, first past the post voting system to deliver a calculated blow to Tony Blair without risking any other wackos getting in. It's amazing what can be achieved with such primitive voting technology.
I never fully realised how regional British voting is until I saw the Guardian's funky
interactive map
. My, but England is very blue, and Scotland do get rather a lot of MPs for free.
No-one British seems to admit it until they tick the box on polling day, but Tony Blair is a political genius, and a boy scoutish liberal internationalist at heart. Through superb timing he's presided over a complete upending of the British party system and constitution, while keeping the economy ticking over and making the fairly miserable lot of the British pseudo-poor a bit better.
Yes there's blots on his report card, mostly domestic civil liberties and an ironic ignorance of constitutional form, but you've read about them elsewhere.
Lynton Crosby
Mr Crosby has played a bizarre media role in this election, as the sinister foreign spin-doctor using the black arts of Australian race-politics-fu. It's easy to say after the fact but he was a bit hamfisted really. He's
not the first
Aussie conservative John Howard has sent on a mercy mission to the Tories, but spin-doctoring can only do so much.
Both Crosby and the British media pack seemed to miss the difference between the (Australian) One Nation party and the British National Party. One Nation amateurishly campaigned for a return to the politics of Menzies and Deakin, whereas the BNP has its roots in European fascism of the WWII period. There's also no good analogue to the racially segregated cities of Northern England in Australia - there's multicultural cities, or racially white countryside, with edgy outer suburbs and regional centres getting occassinally narked about it. Race riots in eg Bradford 2001 or Brick Lane in the 80s have no real parallel - not even in Redfern.
Now I think about it, and with the distance of hindsight, the amateurish One Nation has much more in common with the UK Independence Party than the BNP, and it was possibly in defence of this flank that Crosby used so much anti-immigration rhetoric.
The biggest problem the unfortunate Mr Crosby was becoming a story himself. Darth Campbell understood that all too well, but he at least had a few years clear.
Matt Price
This week acres of newsprint have been devoted to a potential Howard-Costello leadership stoush. The only worthwhile reporting is by sketchwriter
Matt Price
:
And with that timely reminder of the futility of the short view I guess we can return to the regular South Sea Republic service.
As the furore broke over the Athens Declaration, Howard's office felt compelled to release a transcript of the chat with Lewis and Farr. It's wonderfully instructive. Howard is being goaded to speak about his retirement intentions, the goadee knows he's being goaded and in turn goads his goaders. The conversation is loaded with mischief and innuendo, but the PM effortlessly swats off the curlier questions and the interview draws to an end. Then Farr brings up Mark Latham's diaries, Howard drops his guard, conversation turns to Beazley and Lewis has one last try. "You reckon you could best him three times?" "Yes. I hope so. Try." With that, the interview was over. Just five words, yet Bing and Bob knew instantly they had a significant story.
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