Or how the rising gold price presages the end of Britain's love affair with New Labour. A classic, really.

In the wake of my column on Dutch emigration some suggested that it could be a unique case, not necessarily applicable to other European nations. Well, Iain Murray picks up on a very similar trend, in Britain.

UPDATE: And French emigration too:

The simple fact is that, in the past few years, young people have been leaving France in unprecedented numbers. More worrying still is that although depopulation was a worry in the French countryside in the Sixties, it now has become a specifically urban phenomenon. Nor is it confined to Paris: Lyon, Lille, Bordeaux and Marseille can all report an exodus of young people towards les pays Anglo-Saxons (the United States and the UK). This fact was acknowledged by politician Nicolas Sarkozy when he made his flying visit to London last month to visit the French community there - at 400,000 people this is (as the newspaper Le Parisien helpfully pointed out) equivalent to one of the largest French cities.

The omnipresent CCTV cameras. Tessa Mayes chronicles the latest, startling developments.

So we have entered the phase of the long goodbye as we are still left guessing when the actual retirement date will be. As a result expect a flood of Tony Blair content over the next few months, here for instance are Blair’s ten defining moments.

My take on Blair has always been mixed. His firm stance on joining America in going to war in Iraq remains commendable and it was very clear evidence of how he had been able to reform Labour. From an unelectable far-left outfit indebted to union interests it has now become a modern center-left party that has been very successful in accessing the middle class vote. Yet at the same time I have always felt uncomfortable with the endless spin and Clinton-style power games that often appeared to have precedence over genuine and fundamentally sound policies.

Blair’s place in history is more than secured and his failure to satisfy the obsessive need to match Margaret Thatcher’s term in office will not affect that. The deeper question though will be how the Blair-Brown feuding will impact on Labour’s near term cohesiveness and strength to win the next election.

Margaret Thatcher's last stand on November 22, 1990, finally available on video. An unforgettable and heroic performance. (via Iain Dale).

Here is a fascinating read of Lady Thatcher’s, now into her eighties, life today. What surprised me was the lingering bitterness over her dismissal from Downing Street:

One friend says she 'hasn't had a single really good day' since her departure from Downing Street in November 1990.

[ ... ]

Is her resentment over the way she was treated still there? 'I don't think you could ever get over what happened to her,' murmurs Lord Tebbit, who supported her against the putsch. 'It was very cruel.'

Carol Thatcher, her journalist daughter, says: 'I know how strongly she felt for years afterwards about being betrayed. I don't think she got over it, but I think she's probably come to terms with it. It was awful. Treachery festers in your DNA.'

Remarkable. You could make the very credible argument that she laid the groundwork for another seven years of conservative rule - under the admittedly less than compelling John Major - and the style and substance of Tony Blair’s tenure. The personality traits that contributed to her being Britain’s most successful post-war prime-minister are exactly the ones that inaugurated her downfall, a fact still lost on most of her ardent supporters.

Related Post
Thatcher's 80th

" Nothing lasts forever. Even the longest, the most glittering reign must come to an end someday "

A brilliant actor passes away at 72.

More here.

His masterpiece and a must-see for any art lover, political buff or Anglophile is of course To Play the King. In tribute, I'll be watching it tonight, once more.

This weekend we went to see The Queen, a movie that’s been around for a while but judging from the theater that was packed to capacity the six Oscar nominations continue to give the film enormous momentum.

And deservedly so. The struggle between elected politicians and the hereditary rulers of Britain – like in the inimitable series of fictional PM Francis Urquhart – is solid material for real drama. As I often explain, some European royal families continue to wield significant power and it is an absolute thrill to see the young and freshly elected Tony Blair balancing the strong wishes of Britain’s sovereign against the more popular feelings as they are channeled through his office.

The film puts its finger on the madness that ensued following Princess Diana’s tragic death. It takes Prince Phillip – another cool and steady performance by Babe and LA Confidential star James Cromwell – to point out that as nutty as his royal family is perceived to be, the general unhinged behaviour on London’s streets during that first week of September in 1997 is as disturbing. That painful truth manages to put the entire saga in a very different perspective.

As a result, Queen Elizabeth is somehow rehabilitated by this movie as a human fallen victim to her own sense of duty and tradition as well as her almost justifiable dislike of the late Princess of Wales. Even her emotional encounter with a stag that will eventually die at the hands of a hunter does not really bring home the point that a dead deer moves her more than a dead former daughter-in-law. Indstead Helen Mirren’s performance gives Elizabeth wings to a point where the septuagenarian royal transcends the status of a grey stodgy lady to an attractive and sensitive woman who has just been dealt a most unfortunate card.

There is lots for political buffs in this film too. A poignant moment is Blair ignoring a phone call which according to one of his aides is “Gordon” as is the Queen’s apt prediction that the fresh prime minister too will eventually fall from grace. That piece of wisdom comes at the end of the movie where the Queen and her prime-minister in an amicable way evaluate what actually transpired during that fateful summer. At that point the Queen acknowledges that she never really understood why the aftermath of Diana’s death unfolded in the way it did. Director Stephen Frears and screenwriter Peter Morgan’s masterpiece – which I will not hesitate to put it my top-ten all-time favorite movies - gives you an idea as well as an unexpected amount of warmth and sympathy towards her majesty, Queen Elizabeth II.

Trying hard:

The measures will be seen as a last-ditch attempt by Blair to rescue his legacy on law and order before he quits No 10 in the summer. Despite the prime minister’s boast that overall crime has been falling for the past decade, violent crime is rising.

Rogier van Bakel, who has taken me to task for being too generous with Blair-praise in the past, takes the latest anti-crime plans apart.

Somehow I had missed the news that George Galloway had visited Canada earlier this week. It was not lost on Terry Glavin who wrote a must-read piece for The Tyee about how the anti-war left has become a convenient partner for radical Islamists:

But if you regard the United States as a greater enemy of the left than even Islamism, "what you end up with," says Hashmi, "is 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend.'" And that brings us back to the degeneracy of the "anti-war" activism represented by Galloway and his followers in Britain and in Canada, in their alliance with Islamists.

I would be remiss in not offering you one of Galloway's pearls of wisdom during his tour of the north:

Galloway also weighed in on Canada's Liberal leadership contest, saying that "Anyone but Ignatieff" is a common slogan in British politics.

Of course.

In the wake of last week's alert from MI5, here are more warnings from the UK about an impending al-Qaeda attack:

British intelligence officials believe that al-Qaida is determined to attack the UK with a nuclear weapon, it emerged yesterday. The announcement, from an officially organised Foreign Office counter-terrorism briefing for the media, was the latest in a series of bleak assessments by senior officials and ministers about the terrorist threat facing Britain.

There can be little doubt that the frequency of missives like this will increase over time as European government struggle with stemming the tide of radicalization among its Muslims communities. The Counterterrorism Blog argues that these warnings can be interpreted as a tacit admission – in Britain at least – that the Blair government’s attempts to engage the Muslim community in a dialogue are not yielding the desired results.

Well, maybe. It seems to me that the net result of a ‘dialogue’ is always quite hard to measure and that it is simply impossible to rely on these engagement techniques to counter a severe threat of terror. Talks are always part of a larger effort and the repeated warnings from the UK this week at least gives rise to the conclusion that it is not only this engagement strategy that is failing, but that law enforcement and security may no longer be able to thwart a devastating attack on an urban center. We already knew that of course, but it is highly revealing to see the British security apparatus serving up these repeated reminders.

UPDATE: The Telegraph reports how Iran is increasingly affiliated with al-Qaeda:

Iran is seeking to take control of Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'eda terror network by encouraging it to promote officials known to be friendly to Teheran, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.

According to recent reports received by Western intelligence agencies, the Iranians are training senior al-Qa'eda operatives in Teheran to take over the organisation when bin Laden is no longer leader.

Highly revealing.

It is new to me, but you may want to bookmark Fried Brains, a site devoted to the absurdity and dangers of political correctness. Some of the cartoons they run are hilarious, and some of the articles ominous. Consider this one by Munira Mirza, who has penned another scathing review of the misguided policies that attempt to manage race relations and regulate speech. Rather than deflating racial tensions, they create them where they were previously absent argues Mirza:

Where diversity schemes are introduced in an institution or community, the number of reported racial incidents often rises. The clearest example of this trend is in the USA, where diversity training is already a mature, multi-billion dollar industry populated by consultants and video and guidance literature. Its most notable achievement has been a year-on-year increase in complaints and racial harassment litigation.

Institutions are not the only targets of diversity management. Since the mid-1990s, whole communities have been subject to such policies and practices. The town of Oldham provides the clearest example of what can happen when public authorities take on the role of diversity managers.

In the 1990s, the Oldham police force began a deliberate strategy to raise awareness of racially motivated crimes in the area. Officers were so keen to demonstrate their commitment to dealing with racism that they treated crimes between whites and Asians as racially motivated, even when they were not reported as such.

Mirza makes the absolutely valid point that people today are far more tolerant and able to handle race issues than before, a point mostly lost on government-employed social engineers. It strikes me that a lot of these alarming and often absurd stories are coming from Britain. They underline some of the e-mail I have been getting that our admiration here for Tony Blair should be put into perspective. During his reign the UK has experienced a vast increase in attempts to regulate speech, behaviour and attitudes, often with bizarre and unintended consequences.

The threat of terror:

MI5 knows of 30 terror plots threatening the UK and is keeping 1,600 individuals under surveillance, the security service's head has said.

Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller warned the threat was "serious" and "growing".

She said future attacks could be chemical or nuclear and that many of the plots were linked to al-Qaeda.

It is remarkable that the once so secretive MI5 has now become a very visible public agent. But then the threat has altered in nature too. Nuclear and chemical devices are no longer the domain of powerful foreign entities, they may well be assembled in a kitchen in a Manchester suburb. Or one in Amsterdam. Or one in Los Angeles. The threat is still there.

UPDATE: Manningham-Buller's comments to the press are unusual indeed:

Agencies and academics in Canada were taken aback by the tone and the candour of the spymaster's comments.

“The director-general rarely, capital R-A-R-E-L-Y, speaks publicly,” said Martin Rudner, a counterterrorism expert at Carleton University in Ottawa. “The fact that she spoke and spoke to empirical data, is to be taken very, very seriously. This is not chit-chat.”

Not at all.

Posted by Pieter Dorsman at 09:59 PM | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Churchill-Roosevelt, Reagan-Thatcher, Bush-Blair, and now possibly McCain-Cameron? The Arizona Senator's speech at the British Conservative Party Annual Conference this weekend looks at the past, but also at the future. Key quote:

Inspirational leadership challenges people. It does not seek to mislead them into a false sense of complacency or hide the realities, no matter how intimidating, of a threat. No solution to any great problem can succeed or even be convincingly proposed if the full dimensions of the problem are obscured from public knowledge. Be honest and brave and determined to place the country's interests before anything else, even our personal interests, and the people will give us our chance.

It neatly captures the challenge of having clear and honest political leadership waging a war on behalf of a society that can't be all that bothered to fight let alone pay for it.

Is coming to an end soon as Gordon Brown is preparing himself to take over the reigns which may actually happen sooner than Blair has envisaged it. The reason I keep coming back to this affair is not only its high entertainment value as a political drama. Blair's early retirement will probably herald a significant shift in US-British relations and by extension in US-European relations.

Will continue for a while now that Blair is signaling he will stay on for much longer than was expected earlier. As argued here before, a protracted leadership struggle will ultimately be to the detriment of the Labour Party and its chances to win an election under Gordon Brown’s leadership. And this is not helping either:

Tony Blair's domestic problems over his foreign policy will intensify this month when a new political party launched by the families of British soldiers killed in Iraq lays out its plans to contest every by-election and field up to 70 candidates at the next general election.

Reg Keys, who stood against Mr Blair in last year, unveils details of the launch of his party, Spectre, in the Guardian today. His son, Thomas, was killed with five other Royal Military policemen in Iraq in 2003. "We all feel we've been lied to, ignored and, frankly, insulted. But now it's different. Now we're going to make ministers pay with their seats," Mr Keys said. He said the bereaved relatives behind the new party would meet to establish its strategy over the next two weeks.

It is unlikely that Spectre – remember the other group that used the name – will gain meaningful traction as an independent political force, but it will have the ability to cause further ruptures in the Labour Party. If Blair intends to break Margaret Thatcher’s record tenure in office, he will also have to start taking serious note of the merciless regicide that ended her career.

It’s been going on for quite a while now, but today we witnessed the latest and probably most direct and telling installment of the ongoing Tony Blair resignation saga. Consider this:

British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Monday rejected calls from within his party to name a date for his departure but promised to give his successor ample time to settle in before the next election.

Trying to quash unrest in the ruling Labour Party over when he will stand down, Blair promised a smooth transition and backed finance minister Gordon Brown as his chosen successor.

Blair was forced to speak out after dismal local election results and damaging headlines of government incompetence and sleaze sparked calls from long-standing Labour rebels and previously loyal lawmakers for him to clarify the handover.

The fact that Blair is now put on the spot by colleagues and the press alike about ‘a date’ reveals how far we are in the endgame of his days in office. Labour is in now almost in full rebellion, anyone keen to preserve career opportunities is probably well advised to shift allegiance sooner rather than later. And thus we should prepare for Gordon Brown’s ascendancy soon.

Many have pointed to the analogy with Canada where a defiant and successful ten-year stint in office was not sufficient for Jean Chrétien to ward off the coup by his former finance minister, Paul Martin. What is telling is that Martin’s successful attempt to dislodge Chrétien – who like Blair had long outlived his popularity – was not based on any justifiable policy difference or other quantifiable ideological rift, but on the simple logic that it was Martin’s turn. Not the greatest rationale for seeking the highest office in the land, and we have all witnessed the incredible mess that ensued as it became painfully clear that the absence of any sound content turned Martin’s tenure at Sussex Drive into an utterly forgettable one. It was a power grab for power’s sake, nothing more and nothing less.

It is too early to tell whether Brown’s move into Downing Street will yield the same sorry spectacle, but given the relatively late stage of Labour’s tenure and the strength of a resurgent conservative opposition, it may not be a very pretty one.

NOTE: The Times is suggesting an impending coup:

It has long been contended that Mr Brown would never risk a coup against Mr Blair because he does not want to launch his leadership in a sea of blood. Yet if he senses that the Prime Minister is hostile to a smooth succession, then why not opt to challenge? Mr Brown’s mastery of the trade union section of Labour’s electoral college alone is enough to suggest that he would slaughter Mr Blair if they fought for the crown.

UPDATE: More from Andrew Sullivan who also believes Blair should step back, soon.

Support for the European project has always been split across party lines in Britain and I remember from my days there that the business sector was usually in favor of British integration into the EU. No longer, and some eminent businessmen have come together to find alternative ways for a more flexible and open Europe rather than pursuing the heavily institutionalized and deep integrationist approach that has been followed so far. They have set up a think tank and a very informative website to support the effort: Open Europe.

For those with a more than a casual interest in British politics – and with Tony Blair’s imminent demise we should probably all spent more time on it – do visit Iain Dale’s Diary who has great UK-based political commentary.

The topic of politically active royals has been the focus of some attention here before – some of you may remember Royal Dutch and of course Moonbat Princess – but these were rather low profile exercises compared to the latest affair from Britain. The unauthorized publication of some of Prince Charles’ diaries where he styles himself as a “dissident”, acting as a counterweight to the political establishment has provoked an outcry on a number of levels. Apart from the juicy bits such as the prince lamenting having to fly business class, the most interesting one surely is the political dimension of it all. He may be a dissident, but politicians generally let him and worse, listen to him.

A few years ago British writer-columnist Johann Hari published a rather scathing review of the Windsor clan entitled God Save the Queen and he has offered some extracts of it on his site this week. So to underline the point of political influence that some royals have been granted or simply taken, here’s telling excerpt from Hari:

Thirdly, the Prince acted as an “unofficial envoy” during the war on terror. Charles and his spin-doctors were eager to see this task trumpeted in the press (it made the front page of the Daily Mail) despite the fact that it was meant to be a behind-the-scenes job. Charles’ task was to keep the Saudi royal family – notoriously one of the most corrupt, decadent and totalitarian ruling houses in the world – on side because he is so friendly with them. Yet even in this, he was unsuccessful: the House of Saud has publicly distanced itself from the ‘war on terror.’

Such a role for the prince could be explained away as helpful or as not directly interfering with ministers as Tony Blair did earlier this week. Yet, it is hard not to escape the impression that the extreme deference of elected officials to a future king does have the potential for some unwanted political outcomes. The absence of any tangible public records leaves us to guess whatever it is that Britain’s dissident-prince discussed with his for instance his Saudi counterparts. Or how in turn the prince himself may have become unduly influenced by whatever agenda the House of Saud saw fit to promote when the prince came calling. The release of the prince’s diaries by one of his former assistants – while questionable from an ethical point of view – has once more raised the issue of political transparency in the West’s few remaining monarchies.

Below more comments from readers on David Irving and how his case is materially different from the cartoon controversy. While posting it I noticed that London mayor Ken Livingstone was back in hot waters:

Feisty London Mayor Ken Livingstone was suspended for a month on Friday for comparing a Jewish reporter to a concentration camp guard, a verdict the mayor said struck "at the heart of democracy".

A three-person panel which hears complaints against local authorities ruled in a case brought by a Jewish group that Livingstone, 60, had brought his office into disrepute. It ordered him suspended for four weeks from March 1.

Exactly the same logic applies to Livingstone as it does to Irving: the public arena is there to correct the man and Harry Place's makes a compelling case for that particular argument. In fact, Red Ken's comments are probably fairly innocent and since he was leaving a party maybe Londoners should ask themselves if Ken didn't have one too many. And that raises a completely different set of questions.

I don’t think that Tony Blair has any reason to be overly worried about the new Tory leader, David Cameron, but his successor might. James Stickings is taking a closer look at Cameron’s flying start and wonders if he will be able to turn the British Conservatives Party into a real classical liberal party.

Coming to a home near you, soon, according to Mark Steyn:

The trouble is the British police are a lazy lot and, if it's a choice between acting against intimidating thugs who've made the shopping centre a no-go area or investigating the non-crime of a BBC radio interview, they'll take the latter.

Read the whole thing.

Now contrast this letter from a law abiding gun owner in Canada with the op-ed from Toronto Mayor David Miller (behind a subscriber wall). The latter unequivocally supports a blanket gun ban and actually wants to take things one step further:

If you’re caught with a gun, the courts should treat you the same way they would if you used that gun to commit a crime.

[ ... ]

As far as I’m concerned, sentences for having a gun should be on a par with those handed down for using that weapon in the commission of a crime.

Again, I am not an active gun proponent, but this borders on the ridiculous. Law abiding citizens who have owned and used guns for years are now apparently set to receive the same treatment as gangstas from the hood. But this is not a surprising development as it fits right into the left’s penchant to, in the face of serious social problems, adopt a one size fits all approach. And Ontario appears to be the hotbed for this kind of thinking. Earlier this year it disallowed Muslim communities to apply Shar’ia but that particular ruling came together with a ban on all other religious forms of arbitration. One size fits all.

And the childcare debate is part of this pattern too, a national (no doubt heavily unionized) daycare system for all children is at the center of Canada's left election platform. If you want to opt out, fine but you’re on your own, but we will still expect you to fund our childcare monolith nonetheless. No opt outs possible.

And this is not just in Canada, hop over the Atlantic and you’ll find exactly the same phenomenon. Tony Blair has transformed 1970s style socialism into a new brand where global realism and capitalism have a definite place, but when it comes to individual rights the old school tendency to put forward blanket bans is more alive than ever.

A day to remember. Here are a few select links to quality blogs:

Juliette Ochieng, who takes the opportunity to draw your attention to a very worthwhile charity;

Hootsbuddy's Place;

Kate McMillan;

Tim Worstall;

and Donald Sensing.

And of course there was another milestone speech from George Bush who it seems has found the right tone and content to bring across the challenge we are facing today:

These militants are not just the enemies of America or the enemies of Iraq, they are the enemies of Islam and they are the enemies of humanity.

And we have seen this kind of shameless cruelty before, in the heartless zealotry that led to the gulags, the Cultural Revolution and the killing fields.

Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy pursues totalitarian aims.

Its leaders pretend to be an aggrieved party representing the powerless against imperial enemies. In truth, they have endless ambitions of imperial domination and they wish to make everyone powerless except themselves.

Let's see where we stand with regards to the al-Qaeda strategy and the overall jihadist threat. This weekend I will take a closer look at a new analysis to which I was alerted by a reader and which will tie in nicely to the Bush speech.

It’s been quite evident that the War on Terror is not, never was and never will be a law enforcement operation that can be fought with the tools that the criminal justice system makes available. The same applies to the Paris riots which could have ended much earlier if a more unconventional route to end the mayhem had been taken. Police in riot gear was too light an option, but bringing in the army however was considered to be too heavy a dose of medicine for some. It’s the same with Tony Blair's terror bill which was defeated yesterday, not only dealing a significant blow to his leadership, but raising the question how far anti-terror measures can be pushed in western democracies.

To be clear, the prospect of holding terror suspects for up to 90 days is not an appealing power and if I had been asked to vote I would on balance have come out against it. Those 90 days can be applied to you and me too, you see. The deeper question is if the political will exists to even find the necessary middle ground between the inadequate anti-terror tools we have today and the more severe approaches that start to encroach on our civil liberties. Voting down the Blair package is one thing, finding a viable and politcally palatable alternative is a must.

How pacifism evolved into anti-patriotism and how Churchill came to be viewed with suspicion. Can the US learn some lessons from interbellum Britain?

It’s my birthday today and blogging will be light. Not that I celebrate or anything, really, there’s just quite a bit going on today. There’s one person however who is enjoying a big bash for her birthday, her 80th no less, and that is Margaret Thatcher.

OK, one personal anecdote. The day Margaret was forced from office by some of her fellow conservatives I had taken the afternoon off as Irene had come to visit me in London where I was working at the time. We had obtained some tickets to attend a session of the House of Commons through the Dutch embassy and we strolled along High Street Kensington to the tube station to get to Westminster. The early edition of the Evening Standard was already on display and the headline was clear: “Thatcher Resigns”. I didn’t buy it and Irene hadn’t noticed, so I remained quiet and entered a brief zone of denial. This just couldn’t be, yes there was a leadership contest, yes, Michael Heseltine was making inroads, but this had to be some sort of a joke or even a misprint. I just couldn’t fathom that the Iron Lady would bow out this quickly. But by the time we had reached the underground station I could see the same headline again and I turned to Irene and said, “Do you know what has just happened?”

By the time we got to the House of Commons there was a huge line-up and we never got in, not even with our formal invitations. A shame as that afternoon Margaret gave her last, and what turned out to be one of her best, parliamentary performances ever. Instead we walked back past Downing Street where a huge crowd had gathered to Fortnum & Mason to have tea. We had missed Thatcher’s last stand but it didn’t really matter, we got a flavor of it walking the streets of London.

UPDATE: It seems the Dutch have found their iron lady, Integration Minister Rita Verdonk.

The BBC initiated its own investigation into the alleged pro-Palestinian bias of the British public broadcaster. Further evidence that the Beeb is slowly coming to terms with a changed world emerged yesterday at a media conference in New York:

The avalanche of high-quality video, photos and e-mailed news material from citizens following the July 7 bombings in London marked a turning point for the British Broadcasting Corporation, an executive said Wednesday.

Richard Sambrook, director of the BBC World Service and Global News Division, told a conference that the BBC's prominent use of video and other material contributed by ordinary citizens signaled that the BBC was evolving from being a broadcaster to a facilitator of news.

"We don't own the news any more," Sambrook said. "This is a fundamental realignment of the relationship between large media companies and the public."

It will be interesting to see how, and how quickly, public broadcasters will adopt to these rapid changes. My guess is that they will try and adapt rather than disappear. This by the way was the same confence where Al Gore gave a speech on the changing media landscape.

The British government is seriously contemplating a public inquiry into what lay behind the July 7 London Underground attacks following some pressure from local Muslim leaders.

Now we’ll have to see if this idea comes to fruition, but it strikes me that public inquiries are supposed to deal with investigating how the operation of government failed under certain circumstances, the inquiry into Bloody Sunday for instance is a good example. The investigation into 7/7 and the prosecution of the perpetrators – to the extent they’re still alive – is ongoing and it would be very disruptive and potentially dangerous to these proceedings to have a concurrent public investigation. Think about it, could you have imagined a public investigation into what may have caused Bloody Sunday right after it happened, rather than into what happened on the day itself? Or better still, a congressional investigation into the origins of 9/11 before the 9/11 Commission got to work?

For now, there’s no evidence whatsoever that the British government failed. The idea of a public inquiry has been floated as some will have cleverly identified it an excellent opportunity to steer the outcome of it into a particular direction. And in doing so they could potentially hamper British policymaking for a long time to come:

Muslim leaders believe that a public inquiry into the July 7 suicide attacks will expose a deep well of resentment at Government policy in Iraq and the Middle East.

And that’s the entire point of arguing for a public investigation. It’s another attempt to deflect the world’s attention from the real reasons behind the terror of 7/7 and use the public dime – once more – to smear Blair’s Iraq policies, regadless of whether the findings of such an inquiry would suppport that. The creation of a forum and its accompanying media circus will virtually ensure it.

Anyone keen on an inquiry searching for the root causes may save the British government some trouble and just start by reading this.

A significant number of Labour MPs are now calling for Tony Blair to step down sooner rather than later. The longer Blair hangs on, the more divisive his presence will be for his party. If he makes room for Gordon Brown early, we will see a shift to the left, which for Britain is equally undesirable. Either way, last week's election has heralded a period of deep political uncertainty in the UK.

Exit polls show that Tony Blair has scored his third election victory, albeit with a sharply reduced majority. Not that surprising, more later.

Iain Murray is liveblogging.

Tony Blair may well get his third consecutive election victory tomorrow, but the prospects for his third term, if you can call it that, are hardly encouraging. Gordon Brown’s quest for the top job could unravel the success New Labour has enjoyed to date:

Having worked so long to earn his current reputation as Britain's best finance minister in decades, Brown could as prime minister be confronted with its unraveling amid economic crisis.

The recent history of, and outlook for, Britain’s Labour party is eerily similar to that of Canada’s ruling Liberals. There are just too many parallels: a third consecutive election victory largely because the opposing conservatives are just not credible material, an economy that’s working reasonably well and a successful finance minister as a determined leadership contender who is almost desperate to replace the unbeaten leader who can rightfully lay claim to the party’s successes.

Most of the discussions about British politics these days invariably zoom in on the Blair-Brown feud, much like Canadian politics have been dominated (to this day, almost one-and-a-half years after Chrétien’s departure) by the Chrétien-Martin struggle for power. In a way it betrays the extreme luxury and arrogance a party has acquired if it can afford an endless debate about the leadership, as it reveals there’s no urgent need to unite behind one leader and fight challenges brought on by the opposition parties. Political platforms, while important during an election cycle, tend to take a backseat to lining up behind either leadership candidate, in this case enabling Labour's unity and vision to crumble under the pressure of separate Blair and a Brown camps. In Canada it contributed to deep fissures in the Liberal party which has since Martin’s ascension stumbled and struggled to hold on to power in the wake of a corruption scandal, leaving Martin to trade away the key accomplishment of his political life: balanced budgets.

The same fate may await Brown for I don’t expect that Blair’s ego will allow an early transition of power. It will take a few years and by the time Brown can enjoy the tail-end of Tony’s reign the economic situation may well have changed considerably as will the relative strength of an opposition that could at that point have been locked out of power for thirteen years. It may tempt Gordon Brown, that excellent finance minister, to spend his way to a tenuous new mandate, like Martin is doing in Canada at this very moment. It reveals the deep arrogance of power: no vision, no policies but power for power’s sake. Not a great prospect.

NOTE:
Good round-ups and projections for tomorrow’s election can be found over at Tim Worstall’s, Iain Murray’s and Michelle Malkin’s blogs.

Earlier this week was kick-off day for the British elections and if you want to get a feel on how Tony Blair is going to (marginally) clinch a third term, check out Iain Murray who has an excellent primer. The Economist seems to be ready as well, and in one of its recent editorials looks at the chances of the Liberal Democrats, to conclude (subscriber link):

It is nonetheless disappointing that despite some promising stirrings, the Lib Dems have yet to come close to matching their admirable social liberalism with a rigorous economic liberalism. That is a combination that, for different reasons, neither Labour nor the Tories seem capable of emulating.

There’s not one party on this planet as far as I am aware that has managed to combine socially liberal attitudes and a fiscally conservative free-market oriented approach together with a hawkish approach to foreign policy. To me that would be liberalism in its purest form as it would be true to its original meaning: freedom to trade, freedom of conscience and be ready to stand up and defend that freedom.

Somehow a return to true liberalism is something that will be easier to achieve for conservative parties – who only need to look critically at their social paragraph – than for parties on the left who have to do some serious rethinking on both the economic and foreign affairs portfolios. The Conservative parties in both Britain and Canada have the potential to adopt these platforms as will the Republicans as long as the latter carefully balances the socially conservative undercurrent in its ranks. It’s a far harder task for the left to come terms with, which is why the Democrats are in such a clueless spell at the moment. Tony Blair ironically seems to have been the one person from the left able to move sufficiently rightwards without alienating his left flank, a strategy that worked well for eight years in Britain but that now stands to be revealed as insufficiently clear to guarantee him a resounding win for a third term. Political renewal and a reinterpretation of the word liberal it seems will have to come from the right, on both sides of the ocean.

NOTE: Here my basic coverage of the (mis)use of the word liberal.

I don’t have anything to add to the discussion over the third-in-line to the British throne wearing a Nazi outfit to a party. To some his actions didn't come as a surprise, especially real Brits continue to view their royals as a bunch of morally challenged Germans.

More seriously though, the best comments on the matter comes from Arthur Chrenkoff who wonders why there’s never any outrage when people don themselves in communist regalia:

Why this totalitarian dichotomy? Because our popular culture and public discourse is shaped to such a large extent by people who were wrong on (or at best, indifferent to) the most important political and moral question of the twentieth century and it would kill them to admit they were wrong. Plus, if you admit that Soviet (or Chinese) communism was evil, what does it say about your own loathing of the West, capitalism and your own society?

Another key point comes from Sari Stein who points to the fact that the generation bearing witness is passing away. Indeed, in 10 to 20 years it will be up to the baby boomers to carry on the lessons from Wannsee, Nuremberg and Auschwitz and unless you were force-fed history by your parents or at school the prospects for this generation to raise the awareness of their children when it comes to totalitarianism and its atrocities are dim:

The Holocaust is starting to be viewed not as anything particularly horrible or unique, but just as yet another chapter in the endless saga of the human race's capacity for cruelty and evil and destruction.

Yes, and if you have any doubts about how baby-boom offspring deals with that you just have to take another look at Prince Harry in his uniform.

UPDATE I: The Diplomad is on a roll on this one, diving into the phenomenon of 'celebrity idiots'.

UPDATE II: A reader writers:

The state of Florida, where I taught for several years, requires that the Holocaust be covered in history classes. In my experience, students, who couldn't name the century in which the American Civil War occurred, were very well informed regarding the Nazis, WW II, and the Holocaust. For reasons I don't entirely understand, all things pertaining to WW II are of interest to many American middle & high school students. There are, in fact, organizations all over the US that make Holocaust survivors available for class presentations. During the seven years I taught (1990's), we had four different survivors discuss their experiences with the students, who were eager to ask intelligent and sensitive questions (and always wanted to see the tatoo).

Well, that's both interesting and encouraging. I am not a great believer in the state ordering schools what to put on the curriculum, but I would expect schools to cover both national history and human tragedies such as the Holocaust. I would be interested to see to what degree the Holocaust is covered on both sides of the ocean.

UPDATE III: Andrew Ian Dodge puts everything back into proportion.

Political parties know that it is very unlikely that they will be in power much longer if they have won four consecutive elections. I was reminded of that when I read this piece in the Guardian dealing with the turmoil in Britain’s Conservative Party following their crushing defeat in 1997 at the hands of Tony Blair. They did see it coming and it may be therefore that some leading party members opted out for any role as a potential leader. That certainly applied to Chris Patten, the Conservatives’ greatest post-Thatcher political talent, who by the mid-90s had such a following both inside and outside the UK that he was at that point extremely well-positioned to step into the shoes of the embattled John Major. However, by the time Patten’s term as Hong Kong governor ended in mid-1997 the Conservatives were out of power and seeking to become their new leader was hardly a career move with great prospects. Whatever chances Patten had left to become leader of a distinctly anti-European party were obliterated by taking on the role of EU-Commissioner and taking a debatable position with regards to Middle Eastern affairs. Yet, I know that some must have felt a whiff of sentimentality last week when it became evident that Michael Howard was slated to become the new Tory leader. In an ideal world, it would have been Chris for he probably is one of the few Tory talents that would have been able to recapture that slice of the British electorate that is still solidly in Tony’s hands: the Center.

The left-of-center government has been in power for quite a while and has benefited royally from the fact that the conservative opposition has been hopelessly divided, a situation that is not expected to change anytime soon.

That is the usual line by which you introduce a discussion on Canadian politics. But it is equally true for the UK where Blair has had little worries about a potential threat to his rule at the ballot box, Britain’s Tories have been marginalized by their internal divisions as well as their inability - or maybe their dividedness contributed to just that - to pick a unifying leader. After William Hague it is now Iain Duncan-Smith’s turn to throw the towel in the ring and this hardly comes as a surprise. Political pundits where predicting a rough ride for the uncharismatic leader, knowing that Ken Clarke or Michael Portillo would have been better and workable alternatives with an ability to recapture the center. The first past-the-post system probably contributes to this self-destroying dynamic, centrists really have nowhere to go than to the party that reasonably represents that center and do not have the option to pick from a number of alternatives like you see in democracies governed by proportional representation. Note that Margaret Thatcher benefited equally from a directionless Labour Party under one of the most uncharismatic politicians Britain had ever seen, Neil Kinnock. Had it not been for his successor’s sudden death, Tony Blair might not have grabbed the leadership as early as he did and British politics might have looked distinctly different today.

Like Canada however I do not think that the Conservatives do not have a message that appeals to the British voters, they definitely have a message that can be spinned and adapted in order to attract the center. What they lack is unity and electoral charisma. Maybe they can resolve that with a new and energetic leader, a challenge that the conservatives in Canada are also struggling with at this very moment.

Having written about royal affairs only once I was in doubt whether I should write about the circus surrounding the launch of former Princess of Wales butler Paul Burrell’s book “A Royal Duty”. The usual arguments are tabled, money, media attention, Diana’s legacy, but it was not until I read about Burrell defending his book and wanting to meet with princes William and Harry to discuss it, that I sat down and crafted a post. Here we go:

"I want to go and sit with them and talk about this book, why I did it, why I feel so passionately about it, why I'm proud of it.

This immediately tells you something about Burrell. It’s about him, not about Diana, her boys or anything else; no it’s about Burrell, the former butler of a disgraced royal.

"And I would like to ask [the princes] a few questions too... I think I would like to give them a piece of my mind, and ask them why did they personally did not help me when I needed help, at the worst point of my life.

A piece of his mind? Does he have any perception of reality? He just put out some trashy gossip about their mother and the young princes will now have sit down and spent some time listening to a piece of Burrell’s mind? Note that the man was banned from royal circles years ago as he was correctly perceived to be a serious liability. But it goes on:

"If the Queen would like to be there then that's fine. The Queen has an opinion just the same as anybody else. If she aired that opinion I would air mine too.

The man has lost his wits. Completely. Burrell has violated two basic ground rules of engaging with royals. First, whatever you learn and whatever you know, you keep it to yourself and never disclose it to the outside world. Secondly, you can and will not be, ever, on a par with royals. Even blue blooded courtiers and millionaires curtsy to the queen and her family members, so what on earth does Burrell thinks he is doing when he suggests he can sit down with the princes in order to give them a piece of his mind? Oh and yes, if the queen wants to sit in on it, fine, let her chip in, she may also want to get a piece of Burrell’s mind. He is seriously deluded and he somehow established a third rule: if you cozy up to a royal, don’t pick the one that has fallen out of favor with the rest of the royal family, especially if that person is not exactly the role model of royal behaviour and - some say - mental stability. Do not get me wrong, I have always been sympathetic to the late princess; even enduring three hours of sweltering heat to sign her condolence register at the British consulate in