April 2012
Fools rush in
Many glum faces?
No1 glum!
As they say 'fools rush in' but following the 'success' of François Hollande there's a great deal to ponder. Yes it's true there's no real winner yet so to award him the French Presidency now would be wrong but there's no harm in seeing what we have got so far and taking it further. All countries, not least France, have their political traditions and the serving President seeking re-election is, if they are to win, generally doing better than Nicolas Sarkozy is now. There is also the performance of Marine Le Pen. Pretending that her political platform only appeals to a few nutters is not going to work any more. So it's interesting to see the Guardian facing up to this -
A key victory of the night was for the Front National's Le Pen, who came third with around 18% of the vote, beating her father Jean-Marie's record success in 2002, and placing herself firmly at the heart of right-wing politics in France. She said "the battle of France has just begun" and "nothing will be the same again".
The penny drops?
The Westminster bubble wakes up to the death of 'old' politics
Britannia resurgent? It's too early to say!
For a while the signs all pointed to Yorkshire. And the reason for this was down to two men, David Davis and George Galloway. The former is the MP for Haltemprice and Howden and the latter for Bradford West. It takes more than his Alma mater to get to understand Davis and why he frightens his old party. For this you must be able to decipher the insane tribal loyalty that sadly, just like the Labour party equivalent, seems to be essential to mainstream UK politics. An example of this is in the Spectator, classed as a newspaper it was always seen as a rock-solid Tory supporting paper. However, in the last few months things have changed. David Cameron is beginning to disappoint more than a few normally supportive folk who express themselves on the forums of the online edition.
This has unsettled some people,James Forsyth has become H2H, heir to Steve Hilton. Since the cycling Hilton went back to the USA the role of defender and promoter of David Cameron, H2B, heir to Blair, has been up for grabs. And Forsyth is desperate, you can see this by what he wrote about Davis.
Cameron, also, has problems with his own side.