After 18 years of Labour control, the Conservative Party routed its opposition in local elections throughout the United Kingdom last weekend as the Labour party suffered its worst defeat in more than four decades, losing 330 seats in local legislative bodies around the country and seeing its share of the national vote drop to 28 percent. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown suffers from his lowest approval rating and nationally, according to the latest polling, the Conservative party enjoys its largest lead over Labour since 1968, with 49 percent of the British electorate favoring the Conservatives compared to Labour's 34 percent. Over the weekend, the Conservatives gained control of 12 town councils while Labour lost 9, giving the Conservatives control of 65 town councils compared to Labour's 18. The Tories posted a net gain of 257 councillors to give them a total of 3,155 elected councillors while Labour lost 334 councillors giving them a total of 2,365 elected councillors. Nationally, the Tories garnered 44 percent of the vote compared to Labour's 24 percent.
Probably the biggest story of the night was the election of London's first Conservative mayor EVER! Boris Johnson, a former journalist who was born in the United States and edited the politically conservative American magazine The American Spectator, beat Ken Livingstone (whose defense of radical Islamic leaders and visits to Cuba and Venezuela where he lavished praise on those dictatorial leaders earned him the nickname of "Ken the Red"). Livingstone was a self-declared socialist who was forced out of the Labour party and only recently re-admitted. Johnson's win over Livingstone by 140,000 votes out of more than 2 million cast cannot be understated. Everyone thought he would close the gap significantly, but no media or pundits predicted that a conservative could win control of the United Kingdom's largest and most politically liberal city. Astonishingly enough, Conservatives now have a plurality of seats on London's General Assembly (the equivalent of a American city council) with 12 seats compared to Labour's 8 seats.
By 2010, it is expected that Conservatives will win a majority in parliament and elect David Cameron Prime Minister, fully returning the Conservatives to power for the first time since the days of Margaret Thatcher and John Major.
This is significant on many fronts. Last year, France elected its most conservative and pro-American president in decades, Nicholas Sarkozy, who pledged to bring free market reforms to the socialist country and implement a far-reaching tax cut.
Just a few weeks ago, Italians returned Silvio Berlusconi to power as prime minister and gave his conservative Forza Italia! party majorities in both houses. Silvio Berlusconi is unabashedly pro-American and supported the War in Iraq politically and militarily. For the first time since World War II, not one Communist or Green party member was elected to the Italian parliament.
And in 2005, anti-American liberal, Social Democrat Gerhard Schroeder was thrown out of office as Germans elected right-of-center Christian Democratic Union candidate Angela Merkel as their new chancellor. Merkel, who was raised in Communist East Germany, is an avid free-market proponent and anti-Communist, having been victim to Communist oppression as a child.
In 2006, Swedish voters rejected the ruling Social Democrats and elected Fredrik Reinfeldt of the Moderate Party (a center-right party) as their prime minister, giving Swedish conservatives only their second victory in 26 years. Reinfeldt ran on a platform of tax cuts, union reforms, and privatization and is also a fervant American supporter (incidentally, he traveled to the U.S. in 2004 to work on behalf of Bush's re-election and his party is a member of the International Democratic Union (ICU), an organization of center-right parties from around the world of which the U.S. Republican Party is a member). Under Reinfeldt's leadership, Sweden supported American involvement in Iraq and is a partner in helping to rebuild the country.
So as Europe tires of decades of experimenting with anti-Americanism, big governmnent, burdensome labor laws, and lagging productivity and high unemployment, the continent is seeking to reform its socialist welfare states and is trending rightward like never before.
The question is: just as Europe begins to elect leaders with similarities to the American values of individualism, capitalism, free market innovations, and limited government, will Americans do the unthinkable and elect one of the most liberal Democrats whose agenda includes socialist elements, and in turn send a message to Europe that we are no longer committed to the ideals that we helped foster and spread to their continent?
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There is more to a name than the name itself. A very little brief research on wikipedia reveals:
As the Labour party has changed its positions, the Conservative party has as well.
First, they abandoned conservative financial principals and became Labour
Economic policy
The Conservative Party long opposed Labour's decision to grant the Bank of England independent control of interest rates. on the grounds that it would be a prelude to the abolition of the pound sterling and acceptance of the European single currency, and also expressed concern over the removal of monetary policy from democratic control. However, Bank independence was popular amongst the financial community The Conservatives accepted Labour's policy in early 2000.
The Conservative Party under David Cameron has redirected its stance on taxation, still committed to the general principle of reducing direct taxation whilst arguing that the country needs a "dynamic and competitive economy", with the proceeds of any growth shared between both "tax reduction and extra public investment".
Second, they abandoned social issues and became Labour
Social policy
In recent years, 'modernisers' in the party have claimed that the association between social conservatism and the Conservatives (manifest in policies such as tax incentives for married couples, the removal of the link between pensions and earnings, and criticism of public financial support for those who do not work) have played a role in the electoral decline of the party in the 1990s and early 2000s. Since the election of Cameron the 'modernisers' appear to have been given more of a voice on social policy.
For much of the twentieth century the Conservative party took a broadly pro-America stance in relations with the United States, favouring close ties with the United States and similarly aligned nations such as Canada, Australia and Japan. The Conservatives have generally favoured a diverse range of international alliances, ranging from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to the Commonwealth of Nations.
Close US-British relations have been an element of Conservative foreign policy since World War II. Winston Churchill during his 1951-1955 post-war premiership built up a strong relationship with the Eisenhower Administration in the United States. Harold Macmillan demonstrated a similarly close relationship with the Democratic administration of J.F. Kennedy. David Cameron has recently sought to distance himself from President Bush and his neoconservative foreign policy, and has called for a "rebalancing" of US-UK ties
Then they abandoned their stance on the EU and probably their opposition to a world government as well. They became Labour.
On the European Union
In recent years the Conservative Party has become more clearly Eurosceptic, as the Labour Government has found itself unwilling to make a positive case for further integration.
They have become the Third Way Party
The Third Way, or Radical center, is a centrist political philosophy of governance that embraces a mix of market and interventionist philosophies. The Third Way rejects both socialism and laissez-faire approaches to economic governance, but chiefly stresses technological development, education, and competitive mechanisms to pursue economic progress and governmental objectives.[1] Third way philosophies have been described as a synthesis of capitalism and socialism by its proponents.[2]
Past invocations of a political 'third way' have included the Fabian Socialism, Distributism, Keynesian economics, Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, and Harold Macmillan's 1950s One Nation Conservatism.[3] A "Third Way" approach has been adopted by some social democrats and social liberals in many Western liberal democracies.[4] While it was pioneered in the 1980s in Australia by the Hawke/Keating Labor governments,[5] the most recent prominent examples are the Clinton Administration in the United States as well as presidential candidates Hillary Clinton[6] and Barack Obama,[7] the Liberal Party government of Canada under Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin as well as then-prime ministerial candidates Michael Ignatieff and Stephane Dion, the Labour Party (New Labour) governments of the United Kingdom under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and the Australian Labor Party under Kevin Rudd.
The third way has been criticized by some conservatives and libertarians who advocate laissez-faire capitalism.[8] It has also been heavily criticized by many social democrats and democratic socialists in particular as a betrayal of left-wing values.
This is not Thatchers anti-communist party this is John McShames party, he even gave a speech to them in 2006. Notice their influences above.
As for the ‘first conservative mayor of London’ Look at his darling work:
The Dream of Rome
Johnson presented a BBC TV series titled The Dream of Rome, which questioned how ancient Rome managed to unite Europe in a way the modern European Union has failed to.
Wasn’t Rome a world empire? Didn’t said empire crumble after millions died?
Nicolas Sarkozypublished a book called La République, les religions, l'espérance (“The Republic, Religions, and Hope”),[83] in which he argued that the young should not be brought up solely on secular or republican values. He also advocated reducing the separation of church and state, arguing for the government subsidy of mosques in order to encourage Islamic integration into French society.
He has been accused in certain cases of failing to respect the separation of powers between the executive and the judiciary by trying to apply pressure in certain cases. Most famously, he was criticised, not only by the left-wing Syndicat de la magistrature judges' union, but also by the centrist Union syndicale des magistrats for attacks on the independence of the judiciary.
Silvio Berlusconi
A key point in Berlusconi's government program was a planned reform of the Italian Constitution. Difficulties in arranging a mediation caused some internal unrest in the Berlusconi government in 2003, but then they were mostly overcome and the law (comprising power devolution to the regions, Federal Senate and "strong premiership") was passed by the Senate.
In 1981, a scandal arose after the police discovery of Licio Gelli's secret freemasonry lodge Propaganda Due (P2), which aimed to move the Italian political system in a more authoritarian regime to oppose communism. The list of people involved in P2 included members of the secret services and some prominent characters from political arena, business, military and media. Silvio Berlusconi, who was then just starting to gain popularity as the founder and owner of "Canale 5" TV network, was listed as a member of P2. The P2 lodge was dissolved by the Italian parliament in December 1981 and a law was passed declaring similar organizations illegal, but no specific crimes were alleged against individual members of the P2 lodge.
Berlusconi later (in 1989) sued three journalists for libel for writing articles hinting at his involvement in financial crimes. In the court, he declared that he had joined the P2 lodge "only for a very short time before the scandal broke" and "he had not even paid the entry fee". Such statements conflicted with the findings of the parliamentary commission appointed to investigate the lodge's activity, with material evidence, and even with previous testimony of Berlusconi, all of which showing that he had actually been a member of P2 since 1978 and had indeed paid a 100,000 Italian liras entry fee. Because of this a court of appeal condemned him for perjury in 1990, but this conviction was expunged by the 1989 amnesty
Several Mafia turncoats have alleged Berlusconi had connections with the Sicilian Mafia.
Angela Merkel
Has been the chairwoman of the Christian Democratic Union CDU since 9 April 2000, and Chairwoman of the CDU-CSU parliamentary party group from 2002 to 2005.
According to the CDU's website, the party is non-denominational Christian-based, applying the principles of Christian Democracy and serving to "unite Catholics and Protestants, Conservatives and Liberals, proponents of Christian social ideals, and men and women from various regions, social classes, and democratic traditions." The CDU believes that mankind has a responsibility to God in upholding the Christian ideals and caring for the environment.
All of the people you listed are collectivists. Have you ever heard of national-socialism?
There is a war on truth; a war on decency; a war on Liberty going on, and we are not winning by compromising on McShame in America or these people in Europe.
The left parties are coming to the center, the right parties are moving to the center, just like Germany did during the Weimer Republic, only now this is on a world wide scale.
You cannot defeat evil by becoming evil. You cannot defeat socialism by becoming a socialist. You cannot defeat communism by becoming a communist and you cannot defeat fascism by becoming a fascist.
This is not some nutty conspiracy theory; this is history repeating itself right before our eyes.
I would do some more research for you but it is 12:00 and I have to be up at 5:30.
John
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