In a way, it’s all very refreshing. Al Gore’s Democratic vice-presidential nominee in 2000, Joe Lieberman, has been one of John McCain’s biggest supporters, introducing McCain at this year’s Republican convention. Meanwhile, George W. Bush’s Secretary of State and the man who introduced Bush at the 2000 Republican convention, Colin Powell, comes out for Obama.
Who, eight years ago, could have predicted that Al Gore’s right-hand sidekick Lieberman would be one of the biggest backers of the GOP ticket in 2008, with Powell not far behind espousing how great the Democratic nominee is? (Meanwhile, Joe Biden doesn’t know what he’s saying, as usual.)
It’s too bad that the Powell-Obama and Lieberman-McCain non-partisan lovefests have come about for the pettiest of reasons: Powell is upset that Bush made him look like a fool in front of the world at the UN. Lieberman is upset that Democrats didn’t support him in his primary race against Ned Lamont in Connecticut after he came out and supported the Iraq War so strongly. Does either really have America’s best interests at heart, or are each looking forward to their respective Cabinet appointments in Obama and McCain administrations?
(I long ago lost most of my respect for Colin Powell– who couldn’t have with his appearance before the United Nations? This is also the man keeping gays out of the military.)
If I were Obama, I would therefore be less proud about getting Powell’s endorsement and revel in the endorsement of London mayor Boris Johnson, who is a libertarian (on some issues, at least) and a former Tory member of Parliament. In other words, this is not necessarily an obvious person to stump for Obama. Johnson defeated “Red Ken” Livingstone for the office of mayor earlier this year, and that’s enough for me to love him forever. But he’s also one of those politicians I wish America had, one who can say what he really thinks and still get elected. What a concept.
Anyway, what Boris thinks now is that Obama should be elected for many of the same reasons I’ve mentioned in favor of Obama’s candidacy: the rest of the world will respect it, the Republicans haven’t earned it, McCain has offered little reason to think he can do better, and electing a black man would show the rest of the world that America is truly an accepting place. I agree these are good reasons, but none of them have to do with Obama directly. Johnson obviously respects McCain, but is mostly basing this on the current Republican administration in general. He doesn’t like Obama’s policies and says he hopes that his tax plan is blocked by Congress (I wouldn’t count on that). Melanie Phillips of The Spectator responds that Boris has succumbed to “Neocon Derangement Syndrome”:
How else to explain the fact that for paragraph after paragraph he exults that an Obama victory will be a triumph for black people because he is black – only to conclude that such a victory will demonstrate that being black is a total irrelevance?!
Johnson writes in his Obama endorsement:
It would be tough for any candidate to receive the Republican baton from Dubya, and McCain can be proud of doing as well as he is.
His chief problem is that he does not seem to offer any hope of repair to those American ideals.
Or, to put it another way, it is not clear how America under McCain would recover her standing in the eyes of the world.
as a londoner, i can tell you that people are getting disillusioned with boris. sure, hes a libertarian but hes also gut-wrenchingly, instictively right wing. everyone hated ken but one of the few good things that he did during his tenure is arrange a deal for cheap oil for london with chavez. this meant ken could pass legislation allowing all children under 12 to travel for free anywhere in london. boris derided this as a left wing politically motivated pet project of kens, promptly cancelled it, which means no more free travel for kids, fares going skywards. and i can’t tell you how angry that makes me as a parent who is frankly struggling in the first place as far as the expense of living in this place goes. hes also removed funding for anti-racist festivals, again deriding them as politically correct nonsense. he needs to understand he doesn’t just represent the rich in this city, he should work for everyone. end of term report: must try harder.
marc
October 24th, 2008
So called anti racist festivals were a waste of money. Great career boost for the bands or parasites in the diversity industry. Not only were people gagging for the end of Ken, who paid his partner a hundred grand a year for admin, a complete bargain obviously, they also wanted rid of Lee Jasper, a garrulous charlatan who threw other people’s money away in the ‘diversity’ cause without bothering to see what the recipients did with it. (Not much)
One lone Labour blogger doesn not represent mainstream opinion. Livingstone and his crooks and traitors are going to be out of his office for a long time. And listen to them squeal.
The Duke of Milan
October 24th, 2008
hey, don’t tar me with the labour brush lol. i hate them all equally. theres lots i disliked about ken, and you are fooling yourself if you think tories are somehow exempt from being corrupt crooks (just take a look at todays papers sonny – george osbornes political career RIP).
the fact is, lots of people didn’t vote for boris (i didn’t vote for ken either), mostly in the south east of london, where i live. and we’ll probably get punished for that. we’ll just wait for boris to screw up and then there’ll be another bunch of vapid, corrupt, inept bastards kicked out of office. a pox on all their houses.
marc
October 24th, 2008
and “diversity industry”? what are you, some kind of racist who posts on speakyourbranes?
marc
October 24th, 2008
I don’t know what speakyourbranes is. Suspect from the spelling it’s not too intellectually taxing. Like You.
I know someone who gets £50,000 per annum for talking crap about diversity. Lee Jasper was on £120,000. There is a diversity industry. Or a race relations gravy train. call it what you will.
It’s usually the left who bleats ‘racist’ every time you try to discuss this. Boris is supposedly a ‘racist’, despite being married to a person of colour and attending admirable events like the recent Black Serviceman’s war memorial.
Thanks for calling me ‘Sonny’, incidentally. I’m sure you’d have the courage to do that to my face. (Shaven head, muscles, tattoos, criminal record.)
Goodbye.
The Duke of Milan
October 24th, 2008
Yikes, that’s the first commenters’ fight on Libertarian Girl. Congratulations, guys.
Personally, it’s obvious to me that the cheap heating oil was a tactic by Ken and Chavez to give Hugo Chavez a better image, with money that needs to be spent on Venezuelans, who are a lot poorer than the poorest people in London. Their country is falling apart while their leader goes gallivanting around giving out freebies to pay off communist countries (and mayors). It might have been good for Londoners, but frankly it was stealing from Venezuelans, so I can’t support it. Livingstone might have supported being “anti-racist,” but then he didn’t much care about stealing from the brown people to make himself look good to London, did he?
Livingstone also wasted a lot of quiddage on cronyism and patronage, as Duke of Milan pointed out. I don’t know if Boris Johnson will be better, but this is one former east Londoner who would have happily cast my vote for him to at least give him a chance. In fact, I would have elected a random Londoner off the street over Livingstone and given them a chance to see if they could screw things up as badly.
I don’t think the city of London should be funding any festivals at all, either racist or anti-racist, IMO. That should be done by private organizations. Let the people decide how to spend their own money. I also think the “pageantry” of the various royal events should be paid for by the billionaire royals if they want them, not the UK government.
So Red Ken and I don’t agree on much, I guess. Except maybe gay marriage.
libertariangirl
October 25th, 2008
My question is…..why do we even need a london mayor? We had a mayor back home they only power they had was to own a pair of scissors in public to open an envelope.
Either way their rules and thoughts make not a jot of difference to my life as a brit!
Myles
October 26th, 2008
Nice to make your acquaintance, Liberarian Girl.
you and your readers might be interested to learn that The Duke of Milan, who has also commented elsewhere under the name prospero13, is a specialist in astonishingly vicious personal abuse of bloggers and fellow commenters. This has led to his being banned from the Guardian’s website. He recently informed me that he hopes I die slowly of cancer. Truly, a delightful and well-balanced human being…
Dave Hill
October 26th, 2008
Nice to make your acquaintance as well, Dave.
I don’t applaud that type of behaviour in any way, but I do think he had an excellent point that Ken Livingstone engaged in too much cronyism with public funds. Even the bad apples can be right once in a while.
libertariangirl
October 26th, 2008
And oh yes, Myles, you have an excellent point as well. All this ignores the fact that London doesn’t really need a mayor, since it didn’t have one before 2000 and still existed just fine. It would be interesting to see the mayor’s office budget and what the real return per pound is– congestion pricing could have come in anyway and what has the mayor’s office ever really done?
libertariangirl
October 26th, 2008
The mayors office gave us an opportunity to have an election that doesn’t really matter, add extra red tape to the police system (apparently the mayor of london is in control of the police or something along those lines) and gives us all a jolly good laugh when someone who engages mouth, speaks, everyone laughs, goes home, sleeps then and then engages brain is in power!
Though america has experience of that before us?
Myles
October 27th, 2008
It’s different in America because there are just so many big cities, which have governments entirely separate from both state and federal. The UK is so small that it’s a bit pointless for London to have its own mayor– the UK government could just as easily handle London as it does any other city.
Nevertheless, having a mayor can do good things for publicity, which I suspect is why London wanted one. New York City has a much different feel than London, though.
libertariangirl
October 27th, 2008
ooh i’ve been threatened on the internet, i’m really scared.
marc
October 28th, 2008
i don’t agree that london doesn’t need a mayor. this is an international city, and we need a politician focussed on our interests. while its true that we survived without one, things have run much smoother here (debatable, but i’m not talking party politics, ken vs boris here). londons issues / problems are not necessarily the same as faced by the rest of the country.
and as for the uk being small, again this is true but it has an astonishingly dense population nonetheless. over four million people live in london, which is more people than live in my home country, wales. it needs dedicated supervision and interest.
if anything, the mayor needs more powers (taxation, transport, policing), not less.
marc
October 29th, 2008
libertarian girl: what would be the difference between having a central govt. politician focussed on the capital (which would certainly be the case, if we didn’t have the mayor) and having a dedicated mayor instead?
and if its so pointless, why is the scheme being rolled out to other citities?
best intentions and all that, but its a little bit patronising to say “oh everythings so small over there, why do they bother”
marc
marc
October 29th, 2008
and i’d also like to make the point that many of us want important cultural events funded. we don’t leave things to private organisations here – we believe in taxation for the common good. beyond festivals & such like, tax also funds free entry to musuems and the health service. this is a model NO-ONE has a problem with, right or left, in the UK. I don’t think we are going to be agreeing on this somehow.
marc
October 29th, 2008
I would agree that local rule is usually best; therefore London should have a mayor. However, if it has a mayor and mayor’s office and the country also keeps all the bureaucrats who made the laws for London when there was no London mayor’s office, it’s draining the taxpayers of much-needed funds. If the UK abolished the agency/department/etc. that oversaw London previously, I’m fine with that and fine with London having a mayor.
Taxes don’t really fund free entry to museums; museums are large recipients of funds from benefactors such as the Sainsburys, etc. Most museum funding in the United States is actually private, and I would suspect it’s the same in the UK.
I know many Brits who have a problem with the NHS, actually. One family only goes private since their son almost died after the NHS not diagnosing pneumonia during routine visits over six months when they repeatedly brought him in for respiratory problems.
You can find that story in a previous blog post here:
http://www.libertariangirl.com/2008/02/22/tales-of-universal-healthcare-from-the-nhs-and-china/
In that case, their tax dollars weren’t paying for the “common good” at all.
Of course, anecdotal evidence means nothing, but I do know quite a few Brits who find problems with the NHS. They might not want to get rid of it, but they are glad there is private competition.
libertariangirl
November 30th, 2008
The nhs is as good as it can be in its current state. It needs a radical overhaul, i used to work for the NHS a long time ago and i guarantee you that there are a lot of idiots in jobs who dont know what the fuck they are doing.
My boss at the time didn’t have the faintest idea what he was talking about. The NHS should be controlled by doctors rather than some dude sat in an office going to meetings to discuss how they can spend money rather than looking at the needs and then applying as needed.
My friends granddad is in hospital, he says “there are not enough nurses but thats the nhs you have to expect it” and it is true, there aren’t, but who wants a job in the nhs any more?
Myles
December 1st, 2008
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