Blair’s Mandate

Why is it that when Tony Blair is re-elect­ed with rough­ly 55% of the seats in par­lia­ment, the news reports his slim vic­to­ry; ver­sus Bush’s man­date with just 51% of the vote? The BBC reports Blair speak­ing humbly about gov­ern­ing dur­ing his third term:

The British peo­ple want­ed to return a Labour gov­ern­ment but with a reduced major­i­ty… We have got to lis­ten to the peo­ple and respond wise­ly and sensibly.

Who knew that politi­cians could have that kind of humil­i­ty, even if they’re fak­ing it? The Wash­ing­ton Post also makes it sound like Blair took some beat­ing, which I’m not deny­ing. It’s just amaz­ing to me the dif­fer­ent spin here. I could­n’t believe that after three mis­er­able debates, Bush was re-elect­ed and the news report­ed the next day that Bush was prac­ti­cal­ly cho­sen by God. Blair wins by have more seats in par­lia­ment (okay, not the same as a pop­u­lar vote, but we’ve got to start some­where) and the news leads one to believe that he’s been castrated.

Published
Categorized as Politics

By Jason Coleman

Structural engineer and technical content manager Bentley Systems by day. Geeky father and husband all the rest of time.

2 comments

  1. Good point. Appar­ent­ly the Brits don’t under­stand mar­ket­ing very well. You got­ta spin it like a record, man! Gad, this coun­try makes me sick sometimes.

    PS — I just quit my job. My last day the 25th.

  2. You told me via a com­ment on my blog that you quit your job. You are so mod­ern. Well, good for you. I have no idea what you have planned, but since you’re the smartest guy I know, I think you’ll be okay.

    As far as the UK goes, their elec­tions always seemed to me to be more grass­roots than ours. Less spin machine and more talk­ing and work­ing. I may be roman­ti­ciz­ing it some­what (espe­cial­ly since Carville and Begal­la got him elect­ed the first time), but I don’t think their elec­tions for MP’s have the same giant cor­po­ra­tion mar­ket­ing blitz feel that ours do. Case in point, The Dai­ly Show did a fun­ny lit­tle com­par­i­son of a town hall meet­ing with Blair ver­sus one with Bush. The one with Blair had young Brits just rip­ping him apart and he was sweat­ing like a whor… well, you know, sweat­ing heav­i­ly. Then they show the ones of Bush, where the lit­tle old lady’s ques­tion is “I’m proud to have you as my pres­i­dent.” Just some observations.

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *