Posted on 05/10/2015 10:04:59 AM PDT by Lorianne
After unexpected political charisma and cunning propelled him to another term as Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron will now need every ounce of those skills to avoid going down in history with an altogether different title: founding father of Little England.
A result that maintained the status quo at 10 Downing Street masked the dramatic transformations roiling Britain, ones that threaten to leave this country more isolated than at any time in its modern history.
“The E.U. referendum is going to trigger a debate over the role we play in the world, and on that, the different parts of the U.K. disagree quite profoundly,” Kearns said.
Thursday’s election underscored the vast and growing political gulf between England and Scotland. Voters in both places delivered a landslide, but in England it was for the center-right Conservatives and in Scotland it was for the left-wing Scottish National Party (SNP).
Just 15 percent of Scots voted for the Conservatives, the party that will now govern the entire U.K., Scotland included, on its own terms and without the mitigating force of a coalition.
Cameron himself played to English national sentiment during the campaign, continually warning English voters about the dangers of a Labor government propped up by the Scottish nationalists. The tactic may have helped him to pull out a decisive victory. But having stoked English passions could complicate his efforts to hold the union together.
“The worry is that if you do play the English against the Scots in this way, you run the risk of accentuating the kind of national divisions that the U.K. has always been able to gloss over,” said Michael Kenny, a politics professor at Queen Mary University of London. “So the argument is, you’re playing with fire here.”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Yes, the election of any conservative is a catastrophe.
A****** LIBERALS!
Hand wringing by the Euroweenies that the Brits are finally wising up and getting out...
These lefty wrters and their topic sentences ie false premises kill me.
Cameron may be a pleasant fellow but he’s hardly a new model.
The problem, as Labour rank and file complained all during the runup to the election, was Labour leadership ie Red Ed Miliband. Labour candidates were being told repeatedly during their canvassing that their voters wanted nothing to do with Red Ed.
Of course, I don’t expect the Wash Post to admit the repeated failures of communism....
Funny thing is even now the Scots have way fewer sovereign powers than a US state. They have very limited ability to levy taxes, do not control their own state healthcare system, do not really run their own social services, can’t borrow money, do not have even nominal control of any military forces, etc.
Britain, like most European countries, is centralized to a degree that Americans don’t understand.
The US Federal government has been fighting hard to make the US more European, and the people are rightly fighting back.
Best thing that Britain can do I think is go with a US type state system with devolved powers. Let the Scots and English do things their way, and, as in the US, let the people vote with their money and their feet.
OMG, the dreaded isolationism and going your own way! No!!! All peoples must be part of a global structure.
If you let nations be isolationist, pretty soon individuals will think they can also live however they want too!
They act its being thrown into solitary confinement.
The evil Tories tricked the voters into voting against the wonderful fantasy world of Socialism and the nirvana of the EU. They are all distraught at the WaPo, they believed their own polls.
The Left is so preDICKtable.
We need only Marxists to run a republic that has our constitution and a free enterprise capitalist system.
As long as those Marxist win, our elected officials are instructed by outlets like the W. P. to not give an inch to the other political party.
When those Marxist lose, the winner is instructed to compromise, be generous to his opponents, and essentially rule as a Marxist.
If a non-Marxist wins, it’s because he was cunning, or popular, or anything other than a wise person the population recognized leadership skills in.
The Washington Post is reprehensible. It can’t go belly up fast enough.
Maybe the individual states in the U.S. will soon come to a similar conclusion.
Unless maybe Pennsylvania has it. I'd ask Arlen Specter but he is dead.
Unless maybe Pennsylvania has it. I'd ask Arlen Specter but he is dead.
That’s not unique. Louisiana has a Franco-Spanish code of laws different from English common law.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.