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> Vote for London, vote Ken on May 1

Vendredi 25 avril 2008

http://www.kenlivingstone.com/
http://www.labour.org.uk/
http://www.youtube.com/

Cet article a été publié sur Vendredi 25 avril 2008 à 12:32 et est classé dans Socialistes.

5 Réponses vers “> Vote for London, vote Ken on May 1”

  1. kerzantrec a dit :
    Mardi 29 avril 2008 à 3:59

    So… Really, I hope for Ken ! Red Ken…

    Eh oui, “Ken le Rouge”, bien affaibli cependant par la politique travailliste (… ?) de Gordon Brown, après l’inneffable Tony Blair. Bon, OK, il n’avait pas trop mal démarré mais il est parti trop tard et trop Thatchéro-Bushiste (version caniche vis-à-vis du second, le crétin de l’Univers)…

    Il faut reconnaître que, comme David Cameron au plan national, tory plutôt “progressiste” et écolo, son adversaire Boris Johnson est un conservateur atypique, moins “réac” que la droite classique, donc potentiellement électoralement plus dangereux !

    A propos, cher nucnuc, on ne t’entend pas sur l’Italie, où la déroute des élections municipales à Rome complète et “achève” celle des législatives : un post (?)- fasciste à la mairie…

    Je sais bien que le Pape -le PanzerPape !- s’était permis récemment de critiquer la municipalité romaine -et avait donc appelé ainsi à voter à (l’extrême) droite, tout comme son porte-flingue le sinistre cardinal Ruini avait tout fait pour pousser à la chute de Prodi et au retour de Berlusconi l’escroc démagogue réac… (et vulgaire, en prime)-, mais quand même, quel désastre !

    Pourtant, Veltroni a “désidéologisé” au maximum… Il ne se voulait même plus de gauche !!! Il ne fallait plus attaquer Berlusconi -adieu Nanni Moretti !-, voire s’apprêter, sur certains sujets, à travailler avec lui…

    On a vu le résultat.

    Une ligne assez “blairiste”… oserais-je dire “qui te ressemble, cher nucnuc, parfois” ?!? Eh oui, on t’entend si rarement “à gauche”. Dommage, avec ton talent et ton dévouement, tu n’y déparerais pas !!!

    A Gauche, camarade !!!

    Moi, je suis nostalgique d’Enrico Berlinguer… Eh oui, en Italie, j’aurais voté PCI…

    Merci quand même d’accueillir ces lignes “dissidentes” sur ton blog (tu ne m’as censuré qu’une fois… une fois de trop, mais bon !).

    Gaucho nono

  2. kerzantrec a dit :
    Vendredi 2 mai 2008 à 8:22

    Complément… en forme de rectificatif !

    Pour avoir lu plus précisément les articles sur “Boris le Bouffon” hier, 1er mai, je nuance mon jugement de mardi : Boris Johnson est excentrique, certes, mais dans son comportement… Pour le fond il s’est honteusement autorisé nombre de “saillies” racistes ou homophobes… Plus que des dérapages ! Donc “moins réac”, c’était un peu vite dit. Méa culpa !!!

    Par contre, en ce vendredi (10 H du matin) où les premières estimations semblent indiquer qu’on se dirige vers une déroute totale, une Bérézina -la pire depuis 40 ans- des Travaillistes, notamment dans le Nord industriel, l’analyse selon laquelle le “modèle” blairiste est épuisé (laissons le à Jean-Marie Bockel et Eric Besson-le-félon !) et que les tories apparaissent quasiment plus “progressistes”, voire plus sociaux (… !), qu’eux se confirme cruellement…

    Veltroni en Italie, Gordon Brown en Grande-Bretagne, la “désidéologisation” -pour ne pas dire la “droitisation”- n’est, au moins électoralement, pas rentable… A méditer !

    Et toi, dear nucnuc, qu’en penses tu ?

  3. Hugues a dit :
    Vendredi 2 mai 2008 à 12:27

    Quand la gauche française sera épuisée d’avoir été réélue sur plus de onze années consécutives, alors tu nous appellera, comme d’autres, vers de nouvelles victoires. Si le modèle blairiste dont tu parles a mis autant de temps a s’épuiser, c’est qu’il n’était pas aussi foncièrement mauvais. Nous, nous avons l’habitude de mettre moitié moins de temps pour subir une défaite sans appel. Est-ce de l’essoufflement ? La République nous appelle à un peu plus de courage camarade. Et du courage et de la remise en cause, je n’en vois point de ce côté-ci de la Manche ou de ce côté-ci des Alpes…

  4. filipgraindesel a dit :
    Vendredi 2 mai 2008 à 7:24

    Where Ken’s campaign went wrong

    * Andrew Sparrow, senior political correspondent
    * guardian.co.uk,
    * Friday May 2 2008

    Beating Ken Livingstone in an electoral contest is a feat that was beyond even Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair.

    Thatcher decided to abolish the Greater London council when Livingstone was its leader in the 1980s because she had no confidence that the Conservatives would ever be able to take control through the ballot box.

    And when Tony Blair and the New Labour machine managed to stop Livingstone being selected as the party’s official candidate before the first mayoral elections in 2000, Livingstone went on to run as an independent and, as he put it himself, “smashed” Labour into the ground.

    But if the predictions about the outcome of this year’s mayoral contest are correct – the Tories and Labour both expect a Johnson victory – the Livingstone election-winning magic has disappeared.

    Livingstone’s campaign was not disastrous. But there were several reasons why he failed to perform as well as he did in 2000 and 2004.

    1. Boris was right for the contest
    Mayoral elections are not the same as parliamentary or local elections. They appear to favour colourful exhibitionists (which is why a football team mascot dressed up as a monkey once famously won a mayoral contest in Hartlepool). It also seems to help if candidates are not associated with a party machine. In the last two elections, Livingstone has excelled at this kind of mayoral politics. In Johnson, he appeared to meet his match. Johnson is even more of a populist than Livingstone.

    2. The incumbency factor
    Livingstone argued that having done the job for eight years gave him invaluable experience. But Johnson’s message that it was “time for a change” seemed to go down well with the voters. Some observers said Livingstone appeared tired and old (he is 62), and that he was not campaigning with the panache he used to have.

    3. Scandals and cronyism
    In the run-up to the election, a series of stories emerged about the misuse of grants awarded by the London Development Agency. The sums involved were not enormous, but Livingstone seemed unwilling to take the complaints seriously, and the stories reinforced the impression that he was careless about the abuse of public money. Livingstone was also accused of “cronyism” because of the behaviour of some of his political advisers at City Hall. The mayor could have either rebutted the allegations successfully, or disowned his staff. But he did neither.

    4. The Evening Standard
    The allegations against Livingstone were not, on their own, necessarily fatal. But they were pursued aggressively by the Evening Standard, London’s monopoly paid-for evening paper, which published a relentless stream of anti-Livingstone stories. Media studies students will no doubt spend many hours investigating the exact impact this had, but one thing is certain: it didn’t help.

    5. Conservative cash
    The Financial Times reported yesterday that Johnson amassed a £1.5m war chest to spend on the campaign. Livingstone could not match this.

    6. Alienating the progressive vote
    Livingstone has a record of taking unpopular positions on foreign policy issues, but in his second term of office he did something that may have cost him much-needed support. In 2004 he invited the Islamic cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi to a summit in London. The invitation infuriated many of Livingstone’s supporters on the left who viewed al-Qaradawi as homophobic and anti-Semitic. Martin Bright, the political editor of the New Statesman, cited this as one of the reasons why he thought Livingstone was unfit to be mayor.

    7. Crime
    Johnson put crime at the heart of his campaign. Livingstone argued that crime overall had gone down in London while he had been in charge. But Johnson focused on gun and knife crime, issues that seemed to arouse genuine concern. At times, Livingstone’s stance appeared complacent.

    8. The association with Labour
    Labour performed dreadfully in last night’s elections in England and Wales. As in previous years, Livingstone outperformed his party. He must be wondering if he would have done better to stand as an independent.

    9. Johnson’s zone 5 strategy
    The Conservatives invested an enormous amount of energy in getting voters in the pro-Tory London suburbs to vote for Johnson. In 2000 and 2004, voters in these areas appeared to take little interest in the mayoral election. It is said that some of them do not really consider themselves Londoners. But Johnson’s strategy of targeting them appears to have paid off.

    10. The anti-Boris campaign didn’t work
    Labour could never really decide whether to attack Johnson as a harmless joke or as a reactionary Conservative who would harm London’s interests. At times, both lines of attack were tried. But there was inherent contradiction between them, and this probably blunted their effectiveness.

  5. filipgraindesel a dit :
    Dimanche 4 mai 2008 à 6:58

    ‘Underdog’ Brown begins fightback after Labour election flop

    * guardian.co.uk,
    * Sunday May 4 2008

    This article was first published on guardian.co.uk on Sunday May 04 2008. It was last updated at 17:05 on May 04 2008.

    Gordon Brown appears on the Andrew Marr Show

    Gordon Brown began his fightback on the Andrew Marr Show after Labour’s worst electoral performance in 40 years. Photograph: Getty Images

    Gordon Brown this morning admitted Labour may now be the “underdog” of British politics following its worst local election results for 40 years, but said the party was “fighting hard”.

    In the first of a pair of a television interviews, the prime minister told Andrew Marr on the BBC’s Sunday AM show that he had a “clear and unequivocal sense of direction”.

    It was vital for his government to show voters it understood their anxieties about rising prices and standard of living, he said, adding: “I feel the hurt they feel.”

    Later on Sky News he refused to end speculation that a measure to ease the cost of living - such as a further postponement of the fuel duty increase -
    would be announced.

    Visibly uncomfortable at times in both interviews, Brown fielded a series of questions about his personal leadership style and health and admitted to Marr it had “not been the best weekend”.

    The prime minister conceded mistakes had been made over the abolition of the 10p tax rate and allowing speculation about a snap election to run too long last year. He said he did not expect a challenge to his leadership of the party, however.

    “Of course we can recover from this position,” he said, “and I will tell you how.”

    “First of all by sorting out the immediate problem with the economy and showing people we can come through, as we have in the past, very difficult economic times.

    “Secondly by showing people we have a vision of the future that will carry the country - optimistically in my view - into its next phase.

    “That is all about chances, opportunities, a fair deal for working families, helping people get on to the first rung of the housing ladder, helping people get opportunity in education - more universities and more colleges - the big building blocks for the future that we are putting in place.”

    Speaking on Sky News, Brown fuelled speculation that the government would this week unveil a series of measures designed to ease household spending and help Labour recover from Thursday’s election results.

    He did not rule out the possibility of eventually dropping the 2p fuel duty increase already deferred six months in chancellor Alistair Darling’s budget, and due to take effect in the autumn.

    Asked whether the rise would go ahead, Brown said: “This is a decision for the chancellor. It’s a decision in time.”

    “He said he would review it and he will review it.”

    However he indicated that his immediate priority in relation to fuel was to encourage international pressure on the oil-producing countries in Opec to reduce their prices. He said: “I think there is a strong case for putting on pressure.

    “Clearly also there needs to be some international effort with Opec to get the oil price down.”

    Marr asked Brown if this week’s elections - which saw Labour trailing 20 points behind David Cameron’s Conservatives and forced into third place behind the Liberal Democrats - meant his party was now the “underdog” in British politics.

    Brown said: “If we are the underdog, we are certainly fighting and we are fighting hard.

    “We are standing up for people facing difficulties, standing up for what I believe - and what I believe is that opportunity for every citizen in this country should be greater than it is at the moment - standing up against a Conservative party that looks like slick salesmen but actually doesn’t have the answers to the real challenges this country is facing.

    “That is the choice the country will face over the next few years,” he said.

    Brown said the lesson he had learnt from the bruising blows dealt him this week at the ballot box was that “you have got to be resilient in the face of adversity but you have also got to understand, and understand very clearly, how people are seeing things”.

    He added: “I think I am someone who believes passionately in opportunity and fairness. I believe that, over the last 10 years, I have shown that I can take people through difficult circumstances, including economic problems.

    “I believe that the real Gordon Brown is someone who is standing up at all times for hard-working families in this country.

    “That’s what makes me tick. That’s what I am about. That’s what the dividing line in politics is.”

    Responding to criticism about his personality, Brown said: “I think its true that I am a more private person in a public arena.

    “Perhaps I have spent too much time … looking at the detail to solving people’s problems.

    “But to solve people’s problems you have got to understand their problems.”

    He conceded he was more private than his predecessor, Tony Blair, but said he realised he had to be an “open book” so people could know who he was and what he stood for.

    Before Brown’s interviews, the shadow defence secretary, Liam Fox, personalised the Conservative attack on the prime minister.

    Fox said of Brown: “He’s a man who spent his entire life trying to get to be prime minister but doesn’t seem to know what he wants to do with it now he’s there.”

    Speaking on Sky News, the Scottish first minister, Alex Salmond, predicted Brown would struggle to turn the Labour party’s fortunes around, saying that, after 11 years as chancellor, Brown was not a fresh enough face.

    Salmond pointed out that the prime minister not only now works in a city run by a Conservative and has a constituency in a country run by the SNP, but that Brown’s local council was also run by Salmond’s Scottish Nationalists.

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