Conservative Party UK Leader: Liberal on same sex unions, likely to win in 2010

[grantcart]

Key players of the Republican Party will most likely be reconsidering their opposition to same sex marriage by the end of next year and leaving it to be decided by the states if the Conservative Party wins next year elections as expected. (Here is Cheney doing that today http://www.politico.com/politico44/perm/0609/cheney_on_gay_marriage_3c1bbf10-64bb-474a-99f7-5d6d5909b99e.html)


If this article on the reemergence of the Conservative Party in the UK is accurate then a Conservative Party victory next year will give Republican think tanks pause to reconsider its strategy on fighting same sex marriages in light of Conservative Party successes:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/08/AR2009050802255.html

Feeling Lost, Republicans? Follow Britain's Lead

. . .

But here's a hopeful sign for the Republicans: In recent years, British conservatives have managed to make social conservatism socially acceptable again.

. . .


They've done it through three key moves: enthusiastically signing on to Britain's liberal settlement on homosexuality, recasting pro-family policies as part of an anti-poverty crusade and tying support for the family into a broader recognition that people aren't motivated by profit alone.

. . .

In his first party conference as Conservative leader in 2006, David Cameron declared: "There's something special about marriage." But to the evident displeasure of some in the audience, he went on to say, "And by the way, it means something whether you're a man and a woman, a woman and a woman or a man and another man."

The polls show the Conservatives on course for a landslide victory in the next election, slated for spring 2010.

[pot luck]

1. I hope the GOP does change their stance on this issue.

Maybe it will force our Democratic leaders to become actual progressives and support gay equality.

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. But in some things, Cameron follows McCain: How many houses have I got, again?

In my attempt to explain why they might have these feelings – I confess to shuddering whenever I see that photograph of young David and Boris in their Bullingdon Club regalia – I mention the four houses: “The four properties thing is rubbish. Touching that you believe everything you read in the newspapers!” You patronising git, I exclaim.

“I don’t mean it like that, but…” So how many properties do you own? “I own a house in North Kensington which you’ve been to and my house in the constituency in Oxfordshire and that is, as far as I know, all I have.”

A house in Cornwall? “No, that is, Samantha used to have a timeshare in South Devon but she doesn’t any more.” And there isn’t a fourth? “I don’t think so – not that I can think of.” Please don’t say, “Not that I can think of.” “You might be… Samantha owns a field in Scunthorpe but she doesn’t own a house…”

The rest of the interview was punctuated with Cameron’s nagging anxiety about how this exchange was going to make him sound: “I was wondering how that will come across as a soundbite”; “‘Not that I can think of’ makes me sound… I am really worried about that…”; “I am still thinking about this house thing”; and his parting shot was: “Do not make me sound like a prat for not knowing how many houses I’ve got.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6267193.ece?token=null&offset=84&page=8

[TheBigotBasher]

3. Cheap Shot There Muriel -

It is not as though he was the Chancellor of the Exchequer who used his expenses and Taxpayer funded accountants to build up a £multi million property empire.

To go back to the o/p I am not sure whether it is a Conservative revival or the complete downfall of the Labour Party. In reality I think the latter. (I also say the reverse applied in 1997 - it was not a New Labour victory it was a Tory wipe out).

The New Labour project has been an anathema to Britain. Which is why they secured the lowest vote of any sitting Government in history. (Just over 33%). Extremely authoritarian policies on State Privacy, working with the NeoCons on an illegal war, building the economy on inflated house prices and more debt.

Poverty levels at historic levels.

The expenses issue is just the icing on the cake; in the same way the bonking Tory MPs helped foster the idea of the decaying Conservative Government of 1997.

I'm just not sure it really is a good election for the Conservatives to win.

With regard to the GOP they need to get rid of the religious nuts. They are the ones who are making them unelectable.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. Cheap shot? Not at all.

It is relevant that Cameron is, and always has been, far richer than 90% of the country will ever be, and that this goes for a lot of his shadow cabinet too. And yet he still has his own expenses questions:

MPs will still be eligible for generous "golden goodbye" financial packages. Yesterday Gordon Brown indicated these were being reviewed by Sir Christopher Kelly. Cameron's pledge to consider the recall system came as his own mortgage arrangements received renewed attention. A Sunday newspaper said that four months after the Tory leader took out a £350,000 mortgage on his Oxfordshire second home and started claiming close to the maximum allowance, he used his own money to pay off the remaining £75,000 of the mortgage on his London home.

The Mail on Sunday said accountants they had contacted calculated that between 2002 and 2007, Cameron could have saved taxpayers £22,000.

On Saturday, Cameron defended why he had not paid off more of his second home mortgage with the £75,000, saying that even if he had done so, he would still have needed to claim the maximum allowed by the Commons' authorities.

He said: "I think what I did was very reasonable, which is that I bought a house in my constituency in 2001 at the time of the election. I claimed the mortgage interest on that house. I was actually paying out more in mortgage interest than I was claiming. But, yes, I was claiming a large amount. And over a time I managed to pay down some of that mortgage and I'm now claiming, as well as the mortgage interest, for some very basic bills like council tax, electricity and heating and the rest of it. So I don't think what is being said, that somehow I could have reduced the claim on the taxpayer – I don't think that's right." While there is no suggestion Cameron has done anything wrong, his arrangements will add to bitterness felt by some MPs now departing Westminster over improper claims, who feel the Tory leader has given them short shrift for flamboyant claims such as floating duck houses while himself benefiting from allowances.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/may/31/david-cameron-expenses-election-recall

It's not as if anyone has been "building up a £multi million property empire" as Chancellor. Darling's expenses are nowhere near that league.

I'm just not sure it really is a good election for the Conservatives to win.

No election is really a good election for the Tories to win, overall - they'll screw the country just as badly as New Labour have done. The only good side of it would be if it persuaded Labour to go back left to give them something to differentiate themselves from the Tories.

[TheBigotBasher]

5. Darling is among the worst of the robbing MPs

During 2004-05, Mr Darling claimed £10,910 in mortgage interest payments on the family home, which he and his wife had owned since 1998. He also claimed £2,250 on food and £2,556 on council tax and water bills. After the 2005 general election, however, he told the fees office that he was designating the Scottish property his main home.

This allowed him to use his second home allowance to pay for the purchase, refurbishment and mortgage interest payments on a new apartment within a 19th-century building in south London that was formerly the headquarters of the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes.

Then the second home

Mr Darling bought the flat for £226,000 in September 2005, and claimed on his expenses the £2,260 cost of Stamp Duty as well as £1,238 in legal fees. He went on to claim £906 a month in mortgage interest payments.

Just weeks after moving in, he spent £4,995 on furniture, magnolia carpets and a television and put through all the bills on his second home allowance. This included a two-seat sofa and a chaise longue from Ikea, costing £765, as well as kitchenware, bed linen, vases, tea towels, an oven mitt and a 75p carrier bag.

You have to love the claim for the oven mitt and carrier bag.

The following year Mr Darling continued to bill taxpayers for his mortgage interest payments, as well as £2,116 in service charges and £1,104 for a "large chest of drawers" – more than twice the £500 maximum allowed under the "John Lewis list".

He also used the allowance to pay his £1,129 council tax bill and claimed £3,050 for food.

£3050, about the same as someone on jobseekers allowance gets per year to live on.

Mr Darling was appointed Chancellor in June 2007 and was given the use of the apartment in Downing Street that goes with the job. The month after he started his new job, he claimed reimbursement of a £1,004 service charge which been invoiced six months in advance for his south London flat up to Christmas Eve.

However, in early September he changed his second home designation to the grace-and-favour flat in Downing Street, meaning that taxpayers had paid in advance almost four months' worth of service charges on a flat where the Chancellor no longer lived. In fact, he had begun renting out the flat in September 2007.

He is now claiming his second home is his the one in Scotland and charging mortgage on it again.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/5418768/MPs-expenses-How-Alistair-Darling-nominated-four-properties-as-second-home-in-four-years.html

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. And yet, if you compare Darling and Cameron, side by side:

Year ending: 2008            2007            2006    2005                2004                  2003           2002
Cameron	  £19,626 (406th) £20,563 (368th) £21,359 £20,902 (joint 1st) £20,328 (joint 169th) £19,722 (joint 1st) £18,009 (joint 2nd)
Darling    £9,837 (554th) £20,675 (364th) £19,436 £15,341 (481st)     £15,406 (459th)       £14,792 (525th)     £15,756 (229th)

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/david_cameron/witney
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/alistair_darling/edinburgh_south_west

In every single year, Darling has claimed less than the median MP. In the years up to 2007 (when Darling became chancellor, so that their situations didn't become equivalent, because of 11 Downing St), Darling claimed £19,477 less than Cameron. Really, for all the talk about him, Darling has been one of the cheaper MPs. And Cameron, until he became Tory leader in 2005, was one of the most expensive.

[AllentownJake]

6. UK Politics are quite different than ours

Labor, or better said "New Labor" has been no friend to the working class.

You also have to remember, the UK is less Religious nation than we are and those that are Religious are most likely to be Anglican or Catholic.

[marmar]

7. The main reasons for Labour's demise are two massively unpopular wars and a near depression.....

..... It's really not that complicated.

[TheBigotBasher]

8. It started before the depression

when Brown worked everyone up in to election mode and then bottled it. As the Liberal Democrats put it, Brown went from being Stalin to Mr Bean in one week.

[ShadowLiberal]

9. Part of the GOP's problems now is that you don't shed an image overnight

While it's certainly possible, and far easier, to get a negative image in a short amount of time, it takes time to build up a better image for your party.

That's what's really going to hurt the GOP right now, they can't very easily run on a campaign of say fiscal discipline, when they had such a horrible record on fiscal discipline under Bush, with government spending going up as much as 30% I think.

On social issues as well you don't shed a label overnight. The democrats didn't go from the southern party to the black people's party overnight, nor the GOP go from the accepting and tolerant party to the racist southern party overnight. The democrats were winning to take big risks to win the black vote, with Johnson signing the civil rights act of 1964 and pushing it through congress. The GOP's southern strategy on the other hand didn't take place overnight either.

In order to shed the intolerant and bigoted labels the GOP's social conservatism has bought them they'll need to show they've actually changed on the issue, by doing something that their social conservative base will hate, like endorsing and massively voting for a hate crime protection bill for gays, or endorsing gay marriage, or civil unions for gays.

There's no question about it though, the GOP's current strategy is losing ground badly, and very fast. I mean seriously, the GOP didn't even win the white vote among the 30 and under voters, they lost it by 10 points, 55 to 45, and the white vote is their base of support. In 2004 they won the white vote among the under 30 crowd, so it shows just how toxic the GOP's rhetoric on stuff like gay rights has become to youth vote.