tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7985429043801017839.post2258776537763541546..comments2023-10-27T07:50:27.411+01:00Comments on Next Left: The real barrier to a British Obama (or Palin) is ParliamentTom Hampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05917325958130851128noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7985429043801017839.post-8969392188702054102008-11-08T12:32:00.000+00:002008-11-08T12:32:00.000+00:00Considering the total failure that was the Carter ...Considering the total failure that was the Carter Administration*, I don't see why a system that prevents people like him from rising to high office must be such a bad thing.<BR/><BR/>You say that the culture of party politics should be opened up; opened up for who, exactly? By the looks of this posting, you mean for ambitious careerists from comfortable middle class backgrounds who can't be bothered to wait their turn (people like Obama, in other words) rather than for ordinary people. Frankly, I think one of the biggest problems politics has here is that there are too many of these careerists with too much experiance of being around politics and of being "activists" of one sort of another and with no experience of life, of the lives and daily struggles of ordinary people.<BR/><BR/>In any case, I don't think that a politician who polled better in the richest corners of the richest country on Earth than in the coalfields, the steel cities and the textile towns should ever be a model for the Labour Party.<BR/><BR/>*And one of the reasons for its failure was his appalling relations with the Democratic leadership in Congress, neatly summed up by Tip O'Neill's late-on-election-night-phone-call-rant in 1980; "you came in like a bunch of pricks, and that's how you're leaving!"Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com