Redstate

Posted at 2:02am on May 3, 2008 How The Mighty Have Fallen

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

For the past eleven years, the Labour Party dominated the political landscape in Great Britain. And now . . . things are different:

Gordon Brown's first electoral test turned into a nightmare last night as Labour lost an astonishing 331 council seats.

In London, Boris Johnson appeared to be ending the eight-year reign of Ken Livingstone, delivering one more body blow to the Prime Minister as Labour lost a quarter of the councillors who stood for the party on Thursday.

The bloodbath consumed victims across the country, including the North and Wales, leaving Labour's local government and campaigning base severely weakened.

Ministers now fear for their chances of surviving the next general election and Mr Brown's authority was further damaged.

He promised to "listen and lead" and will launch a fightback this weekend, hoping to prove to the country that he, rather than David Cameron, has the experience and stature to take it through difficult times. It had been a "bad night", he accepted.

Yesterday's huge reverses make it almost certain that the next general election will take place in 2010 rather than next year. Mr Brown has an electoral mountain to climb to get his party into a position to win it.

Personal criticism of Mr Brown from the Labour side was muted. Hazel Blears, the Communities Secretary, told him that the message was to "get a grip"; one MP said that he had suffered a "John Major moment"; and his closest ally Ed Balls said that the results could not be dismissed as a traditional midterm kick to the governing party.

The electorate was cross with Labour, Mr Balls said.

I am no fan of David Cameron and my fondest hope is that he wounds Gordon Brown without being able to become Prime Minister himself; perhaps that way, the Tories will opt for William Hague--my favorite candidate as a future Tory leader--to reclaim his leadership position and potentially become Prime Minister (Hague is currently the Shadow Foreign Secretary). But it is increasingly looking as if Cameron will indeed succeed Brown the next time a general election is called. Fate is fickle, to be sure, and at the beginning of his premiership, Brown looked unassailable. Perhaps he will regain his momentum. But ever since backing away from calling a snap election last year--and then claiming fatuously that Labour could have won the election (if so, why didn't Labour call the election?)--Brown has been all thumbs politically. His party has suffered accordingly.

And one day after May Day, the fact that "Red Ken" Livingstone has lost the mayoralty of London is nothing short of delightful. Ah, schadenfreude.

Posted in Boris Johnson | Britain | Conservatives | David Cameron | Foreign Affairs | Gordon Brown | Ken Livingstone | Labour — Comments (3)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 2:22am on Jan. 27, 2008 Let Us Now Praise William Hague

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

Via Mr. Eugenides comes this . . . masterpiece. If only William Hague could return as Tory Leader, he would make the Tories worth voting for again.

Posted in Britain | Foreign Affairs | Tories | William Hague — Comments (8)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 12:04am on Jan. 3, 2008 On The National Health Service In Britain

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

Frightening, ain't it? And amazingly enough, people still appear to think that the NHS is a model for Americans to emulate.

Posted at 2:36am on Nov. 15, 2007 The West Lothian Question

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

Also known as the most important potential political partition you've never heard of.

Posted at 3:16pm on Apr. 11, 2007 The New 'Soldiers of Surrender'

It's not just for the French any more! (or, "Why the case of the fifteen British sailors hacks me off so badly.")

By Jeff Emanuel

On March 23, while conducting a routine boarding operation and inspection of a merchant vessel in the waters of the coast of Iraq, fifteen British sailors and Royal Marines were approached by two speedboats full of Iranian Revolutionary Guardsmen. The armed British surrendered to the armed Iranians without a fight, and within two hours had been taken to Tehran in the Islamic Republic, where they were held captive for just under two weeks.

The Brits’ capture raised many questions, which were covered here at RedState in great detail, with especially great work being done by streiff and by several diarists. For example, why wasn’t their ship, the HMS Cornwall, within range of their operation, so as to provide cover for the rubber inflatable boats (RIBs) from which the boarding teams were operating? Why did the British helicopter tasked with loitering over the RIBs during the boarding operation leave its station? And, most of all, why did fourteen armed British fighting men, and one woman, simply give in, and decide, in the words of Marine Captain Chris Air, that “fighting back was simply not an option?”

The idea of simply surrendering to an armed enemy is antithetical to anything which a trained soldier believes and is taught to do. Doing so in this case – for the stated reason that “a gun battle would risk an escalation of tensions with Iran” – made an already bizarre situation even more so. As a combat veteran, I cannot even begin to fathom the thought process of allowing oneself – and the troops under one’s command – to be taken captive in the territorial waters of the nation which they are assigned to defend so that the enemy capturing them won’t be more hostile.

Read on . . .

Posted in Britain | Featured Stories | Iran | War — Comments (22)/ Email this page » / Read More »