UK Election 2010

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

andhow: A tribble is a furry little pet that, when fed, reproduces at a phenominal rate.  Cute, cuddly, furry, purry, and completely unproductive.  First seen in the Star Trek episode "The Trouble with Tribbles".

sneakeypete:  Of course Hitler didn't mention his genocidal views until after he came to power.  It was all part of his big lie.  Watch out for those.  Any neo-Nazi movement must be killed off before it comes of age.  Such infections are toxic.

psander5:  It wasn't just the Jews of Europe.  It was also Gypsies, Slavs, and anyone else who was non-Aryan even to the third and fourth generations.  A BNP nose in the tent is dangerous more because of their heritage.  The era of white supremacy is long gone.  If Britain is overrun with immigrants, you can look at it as a snap back stemming from the colonial days.  Any kind of extremism is pretty much a non-starter except for rabble rousing pols these days.  Pulling out of international organizations is a first step to isolationism.  You see what that got the Americans in the twentieth century.  With respect to Eire, there would soon be a shortage of Gaelic speakers with the BNP in the act.

[saltandsauce 0]

well, for some reason we have an immigration system from the days when Britain had a labour shortage.

immigration today is different because there are now huge "enclaves" of immigrants which are completley free to exist without contact with the "rest" of society. for any Brits who are deluded or those who live outside the UK the average house price is £160,000 when the average salary is £28,000 and this is in a recession. mass immigration allows property speculators to say "oh with 500,000 people a year moving into the country then prices must go up" (say what you like, property speculators are leeches on society more so than those "benefit theives" you hate so much) and for some reason the media still reports falling house prices as a horrible, terrible thing.

In the past migrants were hated just as much as migrants are now (probably more so since you couldn't be ostricised then for it)

look at the Irish in the 1850s they were loathed because they were all poor (not many doctors and lawyers moved in the potato famine) and worked for much lower wages, lived in the most dilapidated housing (the irish is where "dirty foreigner" stems from) and followed an alien religion (Catholicism which was wiped out from Britain in the 17th century). Glasgow still has a huge legacy from the Irish influx in the form of sectarianism celtic/rangers conflict and Liverpool also got huge numbers of Irish in the space of 4 years. the Irish are the same colour and at that time were part of the same country (Ireland was part of the UK) yet they were more despised than the Italians(1900s) or Polish (1940s) or any other immigrant group. more Irish moved to Britain than emigrated to the USA.

it is human instinct that outsiders moving in makes one feel threatened and hostile i.e. if the whole of Scotland moved to London (the Londoners wouldn't be too happy about that and rightly so) In a nutshell, multiculturism should be dumped along with pure Communism since it goes against human nature. people have an instinct to hate outsiders just as humans don't like the dark, prefer to be lazy, like to procreate and eat sweet or greasy food.

yes i know i'll get a right b****king from everybody for this but it is TRUE, the ugly truth - people hate each other

[Meg 368]

For now, we can try to discuss this at a conceptual level.    But please be aware that hate speech is not acceptable here.

Originally posted by: saltandsauce

immigration today is different because there are now huge "enclaves" of immigrants which are completley free to exist without contact with the "rest" of society. quote>

In the US, it tends to be that way for a generation or two.  Then the immigrants assimilate.

for any Brits who are deluded or those who live outside the UK the average house price is £160,000 when the average salary is £28,000 quote>

Back in the days when it was more difficult to get credit, the rule of thumb was your mortgage shouldn't be more than 2.5 times your salary.   So far, this is all sounding normal to me.

mass immigration allows property speculators to say "oh with 500,000 people a year moving into the country then prices must go up" quote>

It's a basic economic principle called "supply and demand".

In the past migrants were hated just as much as migrants are now (probably more so since you couldn't be ostricised then for it)

look at the Irish in the 1850s they were loathed because they were all poor (not many doctors and lawyers moved in the potato famine) and worked for much lower wages, lived in the most dilapidated housing (the irish is where "dirty foreigner" stems from) quote>

and, like many immigrants were willing to take jobs that most non-immigrants didn't want.   Why hate them for that?

and followed an alien religion (Catholicism which was wiped out from Britain in the 17th century). quote>

"alien" religion?  In the overall scheme of things, the differences between Catholicism and the Church of England aren't all that significant. 

The phrase "wiping out" sounds a lot like "ethnic cleansing".   

Glasgow still has a huge legacy from the Irish influx in the form of sectarianism celtic/rangers conflict and Liverpool also got huge numbers of Irish in the space of 4 years. quote>

You make this sound like a bad thing.   The differences we are talking about are not all that radical.

the Irish are the same colour and at that time were part of the same country (Ireland was part of the UK) yet they were more despised than the Italians(1900s) or Polish (1940s) or any other immigrant group. quote>

Where or how has hatred accomplished anything positive?

more Irish moved to Britain than emigrated to the USA. quote>

hmmm. . . I'd have to see the numbers.   I know that, currently, there are more Americans of Irish descent than there are people in Ireland.

it is human instinct that outsiders moving in makes one feel threatened and hostile i.e. if the whole of Scotland moved to London (the Londoners wouldn't be too happy about that and rightly so) In a nutshell, multiculturism should be dumped along with pure Communism since it goes against human nature. quote>

It goes against human nature?   You seem to be arguing that hatred and xenophobia are "natural".   Was Hilter's goal of having a "pure" race natural?   It seems pathological to me.

people have an instinct to hate outsiders just as humans don't like the dark, prefer to be lazy, like to procreate and eat sweet or greasy food.

yes i know i'll get a right b****king from everybody for this but it is TRUE, the ugly truth - people hate each other

quote>

Well, it sounds like YOU hate people who are not like yourself but that doesn't mean that everyone does.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Well, saltandsauce, you have declared yourself in that little manifesto, and Meg has taken you to task on it.  Peace!  Be still!

Every country in the G7 has its immigration problems.  Our solution in Canada is a multi-cultural mosaic in which newcomers probably feel as welcome as possible.  We publish newspapers in over 100 languages, including English.  If you don't like the way things are going in the U.K. then get on your high-horse and emigrate to Canada.  There is only one fly in the ointment for you and that is that ghettos here last only one or two generations.

We don't push assimilation.  In fact, we encourage people to keep their cultural heritage.  What we don't encourage is ghettos.  If you don't speak either English or French, you will find yourself somewhat marginalized in most communities.  The big cities tolerate ghettos but they are more of a curiosity than a large gang.  We don't tolerate criminal behaviour on any level, including overseas grudges, vendettas, and general nastinessess.  Canadians are known world-wide for their politesse, but don't back us into a corner ...

[TheQuiltedLlama 34]

Originally posted by: mightygoose

I will vote BNP in direct protest to my disapproval of the overall centrelining of the major mparties.quote>

Well you're a ----.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Originally posted by: TheQuiltedLlama

Originally posted by: mightygoose

I will vote BNP in direct protest to my disapproval of the overall centrelining of the major mparties.quote>

Well you're a ----.

quote>

Watch your language!

A vote for the BNP is not a protest vote.  It is a vote for an avowed neo-Nazi party.  You are a fool.

[saltandsauce 0]

stop trying to get people who just hate each other to like each other IT'S NOT GOING TO WORK.

if Britain couldn't assimilate the Irish in the 1850s (at this point, no working class britons thought any job was "beneath" them. you had to work to eat or you would die. simple) why are we being told to accept huge numbers from everywhere? it makes no sense.

It goes against human nature?   You seem to be arguing that hatred and xenophobia are "natural".   Was Hilter's goal of having a "pure" race natural?   It seems pathological to me.quote>

yes xenophobia is "natural" it's known as "territorialism" you see it everywhere in the animal kingdom and in human society (gangs). don't use hitler as a strawman arguement since this is about immigration, that is genocide, don't tie immigration and genocide together since they are not the same thing (although once could eventually lead to the other)

humans are 98% animal and 2% human and it's the 2% human that causes the trouble - some guy

"alien" religion?  In the overall scheme of things, the differences between Catholicism and the Church of England aren't all that significant. 

The phrase "wiping out" sounds a lot like "ethnic cleansing". quote>

in some places it actually was. the use of Latin and having a Pope in Rome was enough difference for most people in a world where most people hadn't even heard of Islam and Bhuddism, Catholicism was pretty alien and foreign to them.

and, like many immigrants were willing to take jobs that most non-immigrants didn't want.   Why hate them for that?quote>

the situations in the "new world" and the "old world" are different

something a lot of people don't seem to understand is that they do take jobs that native people want, these are often the people least equipped to cope with change. bad education, poor prospects and priced out of everywhere else they used to do the jobs that migrants do now and they have now been deprived of a semi-respectable livelihood. once migrants start doing one certain occupation it becomes "unusual" for a native to do the same job (plumbing, corner shop owning, farming) and since unemployment benefit is available (and slightly better paying than "migrant" wages) they go on the dole. i think it's at least reasonable that they can get angry. Migration rarely affects wealthy people first.

also during the potato famine, the rest of europe had a famine at the same time and hundreds of thousands of irish moved into Britain (and other places) expecting to be fed. the highland clearences were going on at the same time and these highlanders arrived in Glasgow with no jobs to go to. oh yes they sat on the dole as usual the "native" bigots that they were.*

more Irish moved to Britain since it's a shorter crossing and therefore cheaper.

by the way, 2.5 x 26,000 = £73,000 which can't buy any house or flat.

a way to define social class is attitude to immigration. if you think it's fine you are middle class, if you think it's rotten then you're working class. one could argue that immigration is a new way of hating poor people since they have to compete with immigrants. it's unfashionable to hate poor people for being poor but it's very fashionable to hate "racists" and "bigots" who often happen to be poor.

you remind me of the people who put "in the order of servants, who is directly underneath the Butler? circle appropriate answer (housekeeper, sullery maid, nursemaid, cook, maid, laundress, knave, footman)" on the STANDARD IQ test sat by everyone in state education (imagine a working class child trying to answer that) or the people in Britain trying to get rid of the NHS.

i think i should try and get this topic off mass immigration and back onto the election

[psander5 195]

 Immigration, along with health and education is consistently an election issue, so I think it's ok to discuss it. I think it's important to extricate the issue from the debate about the relevance of the BNP.

If xenophobia is part of human nature then I am an aberration of humanity. Tribalism on the other hand, is part of human instinct. We evolved living in small social groups consisting of family and close friends or allies competing against other local tribes for resources. These days those tribes still exist, only we no longer live next door to our fellows. The old, instinctual tribalism is irrelevant in modern human society. We have the fantastic tools of language and reason, that enable us to learn the consequences of tribal hostility and reason it out of our minds. We know that a large collection of scattered tribes (a city or country) can work together for mutual benefit and progress. Xenophobia is different. It may still be instinctive that we fear those who have a different language and customs, but we have the power of reason to tell us that the French aren't evil monsters aiming to pillage our lands, they are just French people. It is the idea of London, Leeds, England, France Germany etc that are false. Xenophobia only exists because of our modern capacity for language and the differences in culture that arise . I'm sure that a French rabbit who could speak and habitually drinks wine would have difficulty integrating with English rabbits who speak with a different language and drink beer. The fact that they don't have language and culture means that French and English rabbits can eat grass and make babies together all day long.

Well, that doesn't help the immigration dilemma, but the problem with immigration is that it is always tied up with racism and xenophobia. Immigration is a problem born of modern society with it's distinct borders. Internal migration is equally as problematic. I'm sure there would be problems if half of Edinburgh suddenly decided to move over to Glasgow for the better weather... although I suspect there would be slightly less animosity because, essentially, people from Edinburgh just about blend in with Glaswegians (yes I know the accent might give them away). I think that the majority of British people can see plainly that immigration is sometimes problematic in this country. It's just that the racists go overboard with bile, while the normal people react to that and go ultra defensive and claim that there is no problem.

The whole 'hating people from another land' argument needs to be ignored completely. Sadly though that will never happen. People's ignorance will always be there.

Interestingly no-one ever complains (outside of comedy panel shows) about all the thousands of Australians who are here stealing all our bar work. I wonder if that's because they speak English (well, sort of ) and drink beer just like we do. They also have Neighbours and Home and Away... which always helps. It seems to be just the Asians, Africans and Eastern Europeans that get the bad treatment.

People always forget the vast amount of ex-pat Britons exploiting the value of their passports in foreign lands too. If you swapped them for all the foreigners currently in Britain I'd guess that there wouldn't be too much of a difference in numbers. This BBC article from a few years ago suggests 5.5 million. If we expelled all our foreigners I'm sure there would be a reaction of reciprocation, and we would have to give jobs and homes to however many Britons! They would probably prefer not to come back to Britain too. I'd rather have enthusiastic foreigners than disillusioned locals.

Since this thread is about the election I think it would probably be appropriate to introduce some policies on this issue.  

Here's Labour taken from their website (link to page):

Controlled migration brings undoubted benefits to our country but we also recognise people’s legitimate concerns about the impact it can have on communities. Net inward migration to Britain as measured by the Office for National Statistics has fallen for the last three years. We are delivering the biggest changes to our immigration, citizenship and border security systems for decades – we are bringing in a new Australian-style points-based immigration system which allows us to be more selective so that only those with the skills that we need to build a stronger economy can come here, and to ensure that as growth returns, we will see rising levels of employment, skills and wages not more immigration. We have brought in 100 per cent biometric visas, are rolling out ID cards for foreign nationals with 170,000 already issued, and electronic border controls will count people in and out of the country by the end of 2010. To build on this we will introduce a points-based system for permanent residence and citizenship clearly spelling out the rights and obligations of legal migrants to Britain, as well as the requirements for earning British citizenship. These requirements will include learning English, paying tax and obeying the law– because we believe those who look to build a new life here should earn the right to do so. Our Earned Citizenship plans for newcomers, together with the points-based immigration system will reduce overall numbers of economic migrants coming to Britain and the numbers awarded permanent settlement. We recognise that the impact of migration is felt differently by different communities; and how rapid change can place pressures on local public services – the Migration Impact Fund, paid for by contributions from migrants has over the last two years has contributed £70 million to services in local areas experiencing rapid population change. We have reformed housing allocation policy, empowering local authorities to give greater priority to local people, and to those who have spent a long time on the waiting list.quote>

And Conservatives (link to page):

Britain can benefit from immigration, but not uncontrolled immigration. Look at any aspect of life today and you can see the contribution that migrants have brought - and not just to the economy. We want to continue to attract the brightest and the best people to the UK - but with control on the overall numbers coming here.

Since 1997, Labour's open-door immigration policy has seen the largest and most sustained rise in immigration in our history. In 1997 net migration - the number of people who come to settle here, minus the number who leave - was 48,000. In 2008 it was 163,000.

A Conservative government will reduce immigration to the levels of the 1990s - tens of thousands a year, instead of the hundreds of thousands a year under Labour.

Our immigration policy is based on three strands:

• an annual limit on the numbers of non-EU economic migrants allowed to work here, taking into consideration the effects a rising population has on our public services and local communities;
• preventing illegal migration, with important new rules to tighten up the student visa system - the biggest hole in our border controls - and a dedicated Border Police Force to crack down on illegal immigration and people trafficking; and
• promoting integration into British society, as we believe that everyone coming to this country must be ready to embrace the core values of British society and become a part of their local community. There will be an English language test for anyone coming here to get married.

A Conservative government would also apply transitional controls as a matter of course for all future EU entrants.quote>

I'm not the BBC, so I don't have to do this, but here's the Liberal Democrats version too (link to page)... there's something in this policy that I reckon Saltandsauce might take issue with! 

Years of incompetence, and failure to plan for the effects of unprecedented immigration, has led to a crisis of public confidence that threatens Britain’s historically liberal approach to immigration. We must recognise that we can only secure the substantial economic and cultural benefits of a liberal immigration policy if we make the effort to plan for the impact and consequences of that policy. But since the Tories and Labour abolished exit checks in the 1990s, we have no way of knowing how many illegal immigrants live here.

Liberal Democrats want an immigration system that works. A system that is firm but fair, which plans for the effects of managed legal migration and promotes integration. We believe in the benefits that immigration has brought this country but we do not believe our borders should be a soft touch.

Liberal Democrats would take control of our borders and immediately reintroduce entry and exit checks. Our National Border Force would have the power of arrest. We will bring unscrupulous employers and people traffickers to justice. We will offer families who have been here for years and want to pay taxes a route to citizenship, provided they want to work, speak English and want to commit to the UK in the long term. We would also introduce a Regional Points-Based Immigration System to ensure that immigration is targeted on areas that are under-populated and want more immigration, like Scotland.

We will make the asylum system, for those fleeing real persecution, fairer by taking responsibility away from the Home Office and giving it to a Canadian-style independent agency, which will substantially reduce the number of decisions overturned on appeal. We will end asylum-seekers’ dependence on benefits by allowing them to work to support themselves and their families.quote>

I joke about the relevance of the Liberals, but if I'm honest I actually agree with them more than the other two on all matters.  Unfortunately though I have to be a tactical voter and choose Labour to try and keep out the Tories.  If I lived in a labour/Lib Dem marginal then I'd probably choose the Liberals. 

With these three policies I think they're pretty much the same.  Typically at the moment, the Tories' policy looks well presented but vague and feels like an empty promise, while Labour's version looks well meaning but flustered and tired.  Oh yeah, and I almost forgot  there's the Lib Dem one, which fair and nice but irrelevant

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

You should all choose the Party of Sweetness and Light or the Party of Light and Sweetness. Avoid the Parties of Darkness and Strife.

[JanYpe 17]

Originally posted by: N_O_Body

You should all choose the Party of Sweetness and Light or the Party of Light and Sweetness. Avoid the Parties of Darkness and Strife.quote>

Vote B'stard 2010! 

[psander5 195]

This is quite an interesting survey/poll.  (Link)

It shows who might win the election if we all voted purely on policies, not personalities or tradition.  I came out as being 75% in favour of the Green Party and 25% Labour.  The overall results suggest that the Green Party's policies are the best of the bunch, with Labour and the Liberal Democrats following closely behind.  There we have it then.  The internet says we should have a Green led government this time... we'll see what happens! 

After doing that survey I did some research on my local Green candidate...

I think he deserves my vote for not looking anything like a standard politician.  

It's a nice experiment, but the survey doesn't really take in many of the 40+ demographic who are mostly right wing and aren't renowned for trawling the internet. 

It would be interesting to see what the results would look like if they did it properly and took an appropreate national sample

[Boggy1 45]

That was a fascinating quiz. These are the results I got:

Was absolutely horrified I chose BNP as one of the options. Most of their healthcare points just made so much sense!

Also surprised that the Lib Dems came so low; being that I am going to vote for them. Unfortunately, the Green Party...really doesn't happen at all in my area.

Anyway; tonight is television history. The first ever live televised debate between the three political parties. I shall be watching with great interest.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Originally posted by: Boggy1

Also surprised that BNP came so low; being that I am going to vote for them. Unfortunately, the Green Party...really doesn't happen at all in my area.

quote>

Why would anyone vote for a radical right party?  Look at their history and remember that leopards can't change their spots.

[Boggy1 45]

..oh dear. Typo. No way would I ever vote for the BNP. I meant to say Liberal Democrats. I do apologize!

[Barbarossa 51]

.

  Edited September 8, 2012 by Barbarossa  

[TheNewTeddy 5]

I'm still projecting a Tory Majority of 5-55 seats.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Originally posted by: TheNewTeddy

I'm still projecting a Tory Majority of 5-55 seats.quote>

As an outside observer, I tend to agree.  Its their turn.

[Viles 0]

Well after our first TV prime ministerial debate last week it has really blown the whole election open. The Liberal Democrats leader Nick Clegg was by far the most impressive of the three leaders in the debate.  As a result the Liberals have seen large gains in support, weakening Labour and more significant cuts in Conservative support. Many of the polls are suggesting that the Lib Dems are now second in terms of support, with the Conservatives holding a small lead. Converting the latest polls into seats means that a hung parliament is at the moment looking like the most probable outcome. 

It will be interesting to see over the next couple of weeks where the momentum is going.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

"And the great big saw came nearer and nearer and nearer and nearer and nearer ..."

It may be that you get a minority government with the Conservatives with the most seats, but not a majority, and the Liberals second with not enough seats to form a coalition with anybody else who would cooperate with them.  This is the situation in Canada, and I have to tell you that we are all right, Jack.

[Timmystwin 201]

Originally posted by: mightygoose

I will vote BNP in direct protest to my disapproval of the overall centrelining of the major mparties.quote>

wow, hold your horses. It is conservatives who are moving away from what they originally stood for, and do you really want to vote for a predominantly racist/facist party?

Labour still stands for socialism (ish) and the liberals have always said what they wanted and not what would win votes,(hence lack of votes). Conservatives have gone for the centre, but still favour the rich. A rise in NI would benefit the poor but a rise in VAT and not NI would favour the rich, not the poor. Guess what the Tories want.

If you are gonna protest vote go for the monster raving loony party, please please dont vote BNP.

And thier healthcare points funding will come from where?........

Sorry, but Lib Dems all the way. Or labour, but preferably Lib Dems, remember, they created the benefit system so workers were better off, and with the unemployment now, we have them to thank for getting it off the ground,

And the only other worthwile government we have had has been a labour one, so why conservative?

[TheQuiltedLlama 34]

Interestingly the current polls which put Labour in 3rd place would actually result in Labour winning the most the number of seats, thanks to the nature of the First Past the Post system. But with no overall majority and such a low percentage of the popular vote I doubt the Labour party would be able to form government. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8609989.stm (Click on the Poll of Polls for 20 April to see an estimation of the distribution of seats.)

[Timmystwin 201]

/\ true /\, and then nothing would get done as they would all row, that is the only time you want centrelining.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

OK, so what are the possibilities for a Labour/Lib coalition?

[Timmystwin 201]

possibly high, i cant imagine them working with conservative. Still think liberals will be third though, as thier power base is in the southwest, andd thats it. They would do better with proportional representation though, which if im right, Labour said they were going to do, it was thier main thing.....

[Boggy1 45]

 

Cool Debater Helps Britain’s Also-Ran Party

Andrew Testa for The New York Times

“I have my flaws and failings, but I’m sufficiently in touch with reality to know that what goes up can come down,” said Nick Clegg, leader of Britain’s Liberal Democrats.

By JOHN F. BURNS

Published: April 20, 2010

Nick Clegg sped across the lush green landscape west of London by train on Tuesday, he spent much of his time disputing suggestions that with the May 6 election just two weeks away, he is well on his way to causing the biggest upset inBritain’s recent history.

 

Andrew Testa for The New York Times

Students and staff members waited for an appearance by Nick Clegg at an agricultural college in Chippenham, England, on Tuesday.

Mr. Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats, perennial also-rans in the three-party contest that has dominated British politics for decades, has been buoyed by polls suggesting that last week’s first-ever televised debate between candidates for prime minister lifted his party into close contention with Labour and the Conservatives.

The election was already considered too close to call when it seemed likely to be a two-horse race between Labour and the Conservatives. Now, with some surveys showing the Liberals and Conservatives neck-and-neck and Labour trailing by a few points, political commentators are starting to say that the televised debate had the effect of a political volcano, remolding the electoral landscape.

Mr. Clegg, a trim, tall, multilingual 43-year-old in a well-tailored suit, is nothing if not cool, the quality that appears to have transmitted itself to the television audience. True to form, he insisted as he traveled to one of the constituencies in the west of England that have long been sympathetic to the Liberal Democrats, that he was not going to allow the polls to turn his head.

When asked in an interview aboard the train what he thought of comparisons to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, Mr. Clegg laughed. He said that any grand analogies — with Mr. Obama, with former Prime Minister Tony Blair in Labour’s landslide election victory in 1997 or with Winston Churchill, to cite three comparisons made by British newspapers at the weekend — were “daft.”

“Some of these claims are absurd,” he said. “I have my flaws and failings, but I’m sufficiently in touch with reality to know that what goes up can come down. The further people push you up, the further you have to fall. That’s the law of gravity.”

Polls have been notoriously out of whack in at least one British election in the last 20 years, when John Major’s Conservatives came from behind in 1992 to beat Labour, but the movement to Mr. Clegg and the Liberal Democrats has been sharp and, in the case of Labour, which finished in third place in The Guardian/ICM poll for the first time, historic.

Mr. Clegg appears to be riding a maelstrom of voter disgust with the established parties, similar to the anti-Washington passions that have driven American presidential politics for a generation.

Last year’s scandal over expenses of members of Parliament remains a gaping wound, and some experts wonder whether voter turnout this time will match the last election in 2005, when there was a decades-low turnout of little more than 60 percent. Mr. Clegg, though, is betting that one element of Mr. Obama’s winning formula — the re-engagement of millions of young people — could be at work here.

That was one reason why he visited a small agricultural college in this town 90 miles west of London, bantering with students over the clamor of wheelnut drills and spluttering engines as two teams of students reassembled tractors from parts piled on a barnyard floor.

“A lot of people are tired of the rhythms of the old politics,” he said in the interview, one of many he conducted with a press contingent that has more than doubled since the debate. “What I’m committed to try and change is the clapped-out, two-party system. People are tired of being bamboozled into making a choice between the red and the blue teams, and they want to make up their own minds.”

Few political experts here give Mr. Clegg much chance of putting himself in the prime minister’s seat. The Liberal Democrats’ poll numbers, many of them heavily concentrated in favorable districts, tend to obscure the daunting challenges in winning the large number of seats that it would require. Even 100 seats in the 650-seat House of Commons, up from the 62 they won in 2005, would be seen as a major breakthrough.

But Mr. Clegg’s surge has energized the battle between Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Labour and the Conservative leader, David Cameron, who spent much of the TV debate facing off acrimoniously while Mr. Clegg concentrated on addressing the TV audience. Since then, the two other leaders have said votes for the Liberal Democrats will serve only to achieve what the voters seem intent on avoiding: “five more years of Gordon Brown” (Mr. Cameron’s pitch) or a return to the old elitism of the Conservatives (Mr. Brown’s).

That has left Mr. Clegg to plough his own furrow, avoiding any hint of which party, Labour or Conservative, he would back in the case of a hung Parliament emerging from the election, as many political commentators predict. Mr. Brown, often dour in his public appearances, has seemed positively cheerful since the debate, perhaps judging, like many pundits, that Mr. Clegg is more of a threat to Mr. Cameron.

That is because Mr. Clegg shows signs of having have inherited the mantle of the fresh-faced challenger that Mr. Cameron enjoyed for so long in the bid to unseat Labour. Like Mr. Cameron, he is a product of a wealthy family, educated at an expensive private school and at Cambridge. It is a background every bit as exclusive as Mr. Cameron’s, though Mr. Clegg has so far avoided being tagged by Labour as “posh,” as they have done with Mr. Cameron.

Mr. Clegg spoke enthusiastically in the interview of his American experiences, including a coast-to-coast drive in the year when he was a postgraduate student at the University of Minnesota. He also worked as an aide to a senior official in the European Commission in Brussels, where he met his Spanish-born wife, Miriam González Durántez, an international lawyer who has earned plaudits in the British press by breaking with tradition and saying she has little time to campaign with her husband.

The challenge now, commentators say, if Mr. Clegg is to maintain his surge in public support, is for him to defend Liberal Democratic policies that Labour and the Conservatives have denounced as soft-headed but which, they say, were largely ignored as long as the party was stuck for decades with the support of barely a fifth of the electorate.

Mr. Clegg’s opponents have vowed to focus sharply on these policies, one of which is to scrap the $30 billion replacement of Britain’s Trident nuclear missile submarines, something Labour and the Conservatives say would strip Britain of a key element of its defense.

“No! No!” Mr. Clegg said, disputing his rivals’ charges about nuclear policy. He said the party favored looking at cheaper alternatives to the Trident missile system, including air- or sea-launched cruise missiles, and at ways of combating the threat of terrorists obtaining “dirty” bombs, not in eliminating Britain’s nuclear force altogether.

“All I’m saying is that the world is changing,” he said.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

About Nick Clegg.

I refrain from quoting a news article verbatim.  Click on the link above.  This election is getting dirty.

[Timmystwin 201]

YAY something i want to happen is happening. ( put the kibosh on liberals for twenty years there). And i think this one is gonna be an interesting one. May need penalties.....

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Sounds like the same old mud-slingers to me.  They are all standing on manure spreaders.  As usual the electorate will get fertilized.

[Boggy1 45]

Polls have opened! Less than 12 hours until they closed.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Fasten ... seat ... belts.  Rough ... going ... ahead.