It’s not just soccer they’re playing in Britain

John O’Sullivan at NRO takes a look at the upcoming elections in Britain. He predicts that Tony Blair’s Labor party will narrowly defeat the Conservatives. The primary element in Labor’s favor is 13 straight years of economic growth. The fact that, in O’Sullivan’s view, this prosperity is due mostly to Thatcherite reforms and subsequent Conservative fiscal stabilization doesn’t matter.
We experienced the same phenomenon here, when President Clinton rode the prosperity generated by the Reagan revolution. Although Blair is a much better leader than Clinton, and is not corrupt, the fact remains that if Clinton could have kept running, like Blair can, he might still be in office. On the other hand, our Republican party is much more dynamic than England’s Conservatives, so we might have been able to dislodge the slickster.
The war in Iraq goes unmentioned as an issue in O’Sullivan’s analysis. On the other hand, immigration seems to be emerging as an issue after illegal immigrant and terrorist cell member Kamel Bourgass, who was planning to spread the poison ricin, killed a young detective who had come to arrest him. Bourgass had already been arrested twice, and should have been deported. However, the government couldn’t get its act together. The Conservatives are getting mileage from his case, and from their tough stance on immigration. There’s a lesson here for our own government.