The Brits Vote for No Government

By Alan Caruba

I doubt that many Americans paid any attention to the elections held in Great Britain on Thursday. A great many Brits apparently did not either because thousands showed up too late to cast their vote.

Those that did vote ended up not giving either the Tories, the UK equivalent of our conservatives, or Labour, the UK equivalent of our liberals, sufficient votes with which the party winning the most seats in parliament could then form a government under a Prime Minister. There was also a third party called the Liberal Democrats which, to American ears, sounds very much like our own liberal Democrats.

What struck me was the way, here in America, almost every election and every poll splits right down the middle. There is always the hard core who will vote the party line no matter who is running. It is the independent voters who decide elections these days. Then, too, there are the voters are too young or too dumb to understand any of the issues.

We are becoming more and more like the Brits insofar as they have perfected the concept of a Nanny State in which the government determines just about everything in one’s life. Right now, it is busy bankrupting everyone. And so is ours.

This accounts for why the polls show that the primary concern in America is the economy and, one presumes, this is true for the Brits, but they are far more vulnerable because of their membership in the European Union, the worst idea to come out of Europe since World Wars One and Two.

The Brits have to some extend the same problems as in America. High on the list is immigration and England now is a polyglot of people from around the globe. It has a huge Muslim population that pretty much terrorizes the rest of the Brits and is constantly demanding more and more sovereignty over Muslims as opposed to other of the Queen’s subjects.

My favorite British columnist, Melanie Phillips of the Spectator, wrote that the Brits have been shouting their unhappiness from the rooftops insofar that “they were concerned that all politicians were venal, incompetent and untrustworthy, and that people had had it up to here with the entire political system.”

I think this reflects a similar line of thinking here in the United States where a significant number of voters have opted out of both parties to self-identify as independents.

With the inauguration of Barack Obama, it only took a few months for an eruption of Tea Parties that have become an umbrella for disaffected Democrats and Republicans who think the government is unresponsive.

Speaking solely for myself, I have long ago concluded that we have the greatest collection of dunces and grifters ever assembled when it comes to the aggregate membership of Congress. As for the White House, it is overflowing with the worst elements of Chicago’s political system, sprinkled liberally with loonies otherwise known as environmentalists.

The incompetence of our huge federal government is now a constant topic of conversation whether it is its obvious inability to spot an Islamic terrorist before he blows up Times Square or how long it takes for anyone in government to do anything about a huge oil rig accident in the Gulf of Mexico.

England’s economy revived under the conservative leadership of Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, but after the past thirteen years of Labour Party governance, the island kingdom is in such deep debt that the Queen will be taking in washing any day now. But then, who are we to criticize when we just voted a president and party into office that has tripled the national debt in just under a year and a half?

“So now all is murk,” wrote Ms. Phillips. “And no, the likely political paralysis is not good at all. But then, no party was offering any prospect of getting to grips properly with anything important anyway. It is the condition of British politics, and beyond that the state of British society, which is not good at all and of which this election result is an accurate reflection.”

Politics is about policies and programs that solve problems. Or, at least, that’s what it should be. What the Britis have encountered and we, too, are experiencing are politics that create the problems and then fail to come up with any solution or an effort to undo the mess.

© Alan Caruba, 2010