@Brian – yes, of course, there are exceptions, and the people responsible usually pay the price, but generally institutions in the UK are well oiled and highly organised. We in Malta can learn a lot from the British work ethic and the way they do things.

@ Sandra Peters

‘a well organised country’ … so well organised that some polling stations were caught short of ballot papers and electors turned away before they voted. I thought that this could only happen in Malta.

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Politics/Electoral-Commission-Investigation-Launched-As-Voters-Turned-Away-At-Polling-Stations-Across-UK/Article/201005115626857?lpos=Politics_First_UK_News_Article_Teaser_Region_0&lid=ARTICLE_15626857_Electoral_Commission_Investigation_Launched_As_Voters_Turned_Away_At_Polling_Stations_Across_UK_

I have to add however that if these incidents have to happen in Malta, the voters will certainly not maintain that calm British stiff upper lip.

Sorry, I meant “…2001, Tony Blair achieved almost the same result of 1997, ” – a difference of a decade.

Daphne, you are right about the landslide of 1997. However, please remember that the Conservatives had been in power for almost 2 decades, and John Major was not a great Prime Minister, even though he managed to win his first election in 1992 against all odds.

[Daphne – Labour has been in power for 13 years. The received wisdom is that Gordon Brown is a terrible prime minister liked by no one, and yet….]

The Conservatives had probably stretched it too far in 1992. To remember also that the first half of the 1990s was plagued by a long recession which led to the crises of the Sterling in 1993 among other events.

[Daphne – I don’t think that has anything to do with it. Tony Blair captured the spirit of the times, that’s all – what the Germans calls the Zeitgeist. He made it fashionable for smart people to vote Labour. David Cameron, on the other hand, has not made it fashionable for the non-smart to vote Conservative, though he has almost certainly recaptured the ‘smart’ vote from Labour.]

To me, what was more striking was that in 2001, Tony Blair achieved almost the same result of 1987, with the Tories gaining no ground at all.

As for Gordon Brown, we still have to see the results. The first seats are showing a larger swing towards the Conservatives than the exit poll.

Charles J. Buttigieg.
To be fair, I thought you would be giving an elogy about Mr. Brown’s successes, not his weaknesses. You made some revelations which I had no idea about, like his vision impairment and his tumour surgery, and I can assure you any joking about Mr. Brown is not malicious.

You say “How about having a go at him for having only one eye and limited sight in that as well.” Let us be frank: his vision for Britain seems to have failed miserably. If it were not so, Labour wouldn’t be risking being the third party in British politics, and Mr. Brown is also seriously risking being one of the few of Britain’s Prime Ministers to never be elected to that post in an election.

[Daphne – I wouldn’t run Brown down. The exit polls show he’s put up some very stiff competition to Cameron. I can’t forget watching the exit polls come in when Tony Blair swept out the Conservatives in 1997. It was a phenomenal clean sweep – nothing like Cameron is doing today to Labour.]

He drops his jaw when he takes a breath. It is a case of his breathing disrupting (visually anyway) the flow of his speech. The pauses in speech have to occur somewhere, and sometimes they are for breathing; other times pauses can be for rhetorical effect.

And just as importantly it almost always ensures governability, with one party obtaining a parliamentary majority. This has two benefits – firstly it avoids a small party holding the balance of power and thus punching way above its weight and popular representation and best of all it allows the electorate to kick out a government when it has had enough.

I think it’s more of a trick he uses to pause his mouth until he has thought his words through. Otherwise he’s get into more trouble than the latest ‘bigot’ mishap. Unlike me, a public person cannot afford the luxuries of speaking his mind!

I like Monbiot. He raises some interesting issues with New Labour, some of which I agree with. He veers towards Clegg.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/03/parasite-new-labour-fear-hope

I cannot forgive Labour for the two wars. As you said, Brown seems authentic but I cannot stand a party that votes against its principles for three elections in a row.