exciting, informative, snarky, and very likely fabricated tales of life as an american expat in london

is it possible to have ptsd from an election 10 years ago?

by Jen at 7:17 pm on 5.05.2010Comments Off
filed under: londonlife, rant and rage

tomorrow is the uk general election – the first i’ll have been eligible to vote in since moving here. the system of electing a uk prime minister is vastly different to electing a us president – both have pros and cons, and i’m realising there are things i like better about each.

things i prefer about the uk election:

  • pre-election campaigning is largely limited to a month. the official election period began at the start of april, and it’ll all be over with by the 6th of may.
  • three genuine major parties. you’ve got the conservatives, labour, and the liberal democrats, who, whilst not as big as the top two, play a significant and important spoiler role. plus lost of smaller parties who (theoretically) stand a chance of winning a seat in parliament.
  • less emphasis on personality. with 3 party leaders who couldn’t charm their way out of a wet paper bag (and a prime minister who perpetually looks like he’s got a bee up his bum), uk elections are much less about what the candidates look like and how they come across on television.
  • less television campaigning. the uk recently held its first televised leader’s debates – much ballyhooed as becoming “more american” in the way in which elections are conducted.
  • no silly electoral college.

things i prefer about the us elections:

  • held on a regular, predictable day, at regular, predictable 4 year intervals. none of this waiting for an announcement stuff, as if it’s some kind of electoral surprise.
  • voting for a leader, not a leading party. the last election, people voted for tony blair’s labour party, and then halfway through, got the bait-and-switch gordon brown. that irks me.
  • less paper waste through my mailbox, fewer people campaigning door-to-door. i know i shouldn’t begrudge them my time, but when i’m constantly answering the buzzer during dinner, it gets annoying. and *all the trees* being killed by parties trying to get me to vote for them. at least television adds don’t clutter up my recycling bin, and robo-calls can go straight to voicemail.
  • less emphasis on class background. there are no real parallels in the us to the uk class distinctions, but people in the us do not generally expect their leaders to have come from the same socio-economic background as themselves
  • term limits

even with all the differences, i’ve got a dreadful sense of deja vu building in my stomach. most pundits seem to think the tories/conservatives will be in power by friday – it all feels a lot like the 2000 us elections, when the incumbent/heir to the throne *should* have had an easy ride to the polls… but somehow managed to pull defeat from the jaws of victory. there are lots of similarities – both felt to be too serious, too out of touch with the public, with the long shadow of misconduct by their predecessors still looming in the background.

there’s a groundswell of sentiment that labour (who’ve been the party in power since 1997) have outlasted their usefulness, and with the liberal democrats having a late surge in popularity, we may be looking at a big upset.

we’ve had to declare a truce on political discussion in this household – it is a true test of our marriage that we’ve not yet come to blows over this election. suffice it to say, however, that i’m voting strategically tomorrow, specifically to cancel out my husband’s vote.

whatever will happen in the rest of the country will happen. i’m hoping for the best, but bracing for the worst.

i only hope that the fallout (for the sake of britain and the rest of the world), is not nearly as bad as the george w. bush years.

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