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08 Jun 09

FT.com / UK - Boom to bust-up

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conservative labour UK Brown Cameron 2009

T he British have been here before. The descent into acrimonious chaos of Gordon Brown's administration has disinterred memories of the 1990s. Then, the Conservative government of John Major was busy writing its political obituary. The Tories have since spent a dozen years in the political wilderness. On its present trajectory, Mr Brown's Labour government is heading for a similar fate.
History never repeats itself in the detail, but the sense of déjà vu is inescapable: the hubris and exhaustion of a governing party too long in office; rising public anger at economic failure; factional strife spilling over into struggles for the leadership; politicians who have surrendered strategic purpose to desperation to hold on to their seats at Westminster; and a sense abroad of declining British engagement and influence.

26 May 09

FT.com / Comment / Opinion - A Faustian pact that backfired spectacularly

It is hard now to remember the mood in Britain as it was in 1997, as the 18-year period of Conservative rule ended and Tony Blair’s Labour party won in a landslide.

There was an overwhelming sense that it was time, that this young, articulate, handsome leader was the man for the moment. The mood extended everywhere: even Hove and Wimbledon, whose very names epitomise the tea-and-cucumber-sandwich classes, voted Labour. Among intellectuals, the embrace was close to universal.

Their feelings in 2009 were recently summed up in the London Review of Books by Ross McKibbin, the left-leaning Oxford historian: “Who would care if the Labour party, politically and morally decrepit as it is, lost the next election? Would anyone lose a night’s sleep knowing that the present government was no longer in charge of our futures?” And that was before the scandal over MPs’ expenses broke.

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labour brown blair UK politics