History in the making

[sayerbloke]

The Conservatives are 6 minutes away from announcing their new leader.

Be it Cameron or Davis, they stand a good chance of being the next Prime Minister.

Edited to add:

Cameron it is. Probably for the best. Won by quite a way, too.

His acceptance speech has been reasonable as well.

Comments

[thrashbluegrass]

How important is this, in the running of the UK right now? I mean, I'm imagining that I didn't miss an actual Parliamentary election.

btw...what's the third house of Parliament, and what the fuck does it do?

[sayerbloke]

The last election was on May 5th, so the Conservatives now have about 4 years to prepare.

They nearly won this year with Michael Howard [despite the fact most people dislike him], so as long as Cameron can hold onto the old voters and maybe pickup some of those who voted for other parties [or didnt vote] last time, they should do OK next time around.

Blair has said he is going to stand down sometime before the next election and it`s generally accepted that Brown will take his place. That is very bad news for the country.

How important is this? Well, with any luck, today we found out who will lead the Conservatives to victory in 4 years time :)

If they lose, we can look back on this day and wonder if things would have been different if they'd chose the other guy.

Labour winning a 4th term is really something I don't want to think about.

3rd house of Parliament? Not sure. I`ll have a read.

think this can happen?

[valkyrjan]

Cameron on...

* TORIES: "We must transform our party. It must look, feel, think and behave like a completely new organisation."

* PUBLIC SERVICES: "Our aim is to improve public services for everyone, not provide an escape route for the privileged few."

* POLICE: "We have to empower the police. The public wants visible, beat-based policing where police officers actively intervene to confront and prevent crime and disorder."

* SCHOOLS: "We have to reassert discipline in our schools. This will require not only more freedom for headteachers, but more responsibility from parents to back up what teachers do."

* ENVIRONMENT: "We need to take the politics out of the issue of climate change and ensure that future governments cannot take the easy option of short-term electoral gain at the expense of the long-term interests of the planet and the country."

[valkyrjan]

Here's a link to a US article about Cameron

http://www.gopusa.com/news/2005/december/1207_britain_toriesp.shtml

[sayerbloke]

"The Labor prime minister has since then comfortably seen off challenges by William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard, winning elections in 2001 and again last May, when the Conservatives took just 32 percent of the vote."

What they fail to mention is that Labour only picked up around 34%, and if the election was decided purely on votes cast that the Conservatives would have won the last election.