Well, politics-watching is fun again ... when it isn't my own! I am already sick of the run-up to 2016, but it's been fun to watch the UK election for the sheer unvarnished Schadenfreude of seeing Ed Miliband's Labour get completely smashed. Frankly, any party that engraves its campaign promises on a huge slab of stone and thinks cozying up to Russell Brand is a winning tactic deserves to lose. At least Miliband can now use the other side of that stupid stone to write the epitaph of his political career. Anyway, here are 3 quotations now that we've had a few days to think about the results:
Quote the First: Amid the usual howls of the defeated Left, one Labour voice actually talks some sense (and is quoted in the Guardian no less):
There’s absolutely no point in blaming the electorate. Any suggestion that they didn’t ‘get it’ is wrong. They didn’t want what was being offered.
YOU DON'T SAY.
Quote the Second: From Daniel Hannan, MEP, on how Labour overestimated its support:
If you want an explanation of the 2015 election in a single sentence, it’s hard to improve on the words of that great Whig, and founder of modern conservatism, Edmund Burke: "Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field."
Quote the Third: David Cameron in victory might need a swift kick in the pants.
We must end the idea that as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone.
WHAT?
Addendum and Bonus Quotation: Now that the election's over, I'm even more tickled by Boris Johnson's verbal assault on Miliband's epigraphical excess with its 6 promises:
It is no joke, my friends. This thing exists, and Ed fully intends that this tasteless, verbless, truthless stele should loom over No 10 like some kitsch version of the laws of Hammurabi, or some new Decalogue – except that he couldn’t think of 10 things to say.
...
Let us therefore consign Milibandias and his tombstone to the bafflement of future archaeologists. Let it go down as the last act of a desperate candidate, and the heaviest suicide note in history.
James Delingpole is in fine form:
"...you're a bit like an hysterical woman who's just had a tarantula drop on top of her in the bath, you just want to GET RID OF IT NOW!"
Read the whole thing, please.
In the aftermath of the riots, David Cameron has asked Bill Bratton (he of New York and Los Angeles crime-fighting fame) to help with law enforcement. Bratton said that criminals currently emboldened by lax policing and light sentences need to fear the cops again. I do hope Bratton works his magic before the usual political suspects hamstring his efforts.
What the hell is going on over in London and the UK? Is this the same city that I love? Good grief -- it's like Jekyll and Hyde. Is this PM David Cameron's "Falklands moment"? It's time to see what he's made of. I don't envy him rushing back from his Italian vacation to see London in flames as thugs run amok in its streets. This isn't "freedom of expression" and peaceful assembly. This is criminal behavior and the willful, wanton destruction of other people's property and businesses. Anyone else remember the Riot Act of 1714? UPDATE: The chaos has spread to Nottingham. Perhaps they could use a good sheriff.
Hmmmm. Will hysterical leftist protests break out? Don't hold your breath, I dare say. UPDATE: Heh.
British PM David Cameron is apparently laying the groundwork for intervention. Perhaps more telling is one British source stating that imposing a no-fly zone is possible without US assistance or a specific UN Security Council resolution. I'll say this for the resounding vacuity from the Obama White House during the Libya crisis: it's forced some of the Europeans to take the lead. See Sarko and France and now the UK. See too this quote of the day: "Inaction is not a neutral position." (And this.) Hmmm.
