I would vote for The British National Party.

As I understand it, they're a bunch of socialist bully-boys who tend to draw voters away from Labour and the Lib-Dems.  I think I'd opt for the UKIP myself.

One analysis I read of the election was that all 3 major parties were infested with American political consultants advising them all to go after the same 200,000 voters in critical swing districts while ignoring their own base of support.  Certainly Cameron is the wettest leader the Tories have had since Ted Heath, Gordon Brown despises his own voters and can't keep from insulting Clegg while trying to get him to form a coalition, and Clegg wants to unilaterally disarm.  Not a lot to like there.

Right wing, not left wing - the exact opposite of socialism.

Unless you mean National Socialist...

Far right racism.  The only good thing to come out of this election was that they got pretty trashed.

As for the possible upcoming Lib-Con coalition, could be a problem.  Lib Dems will likely get fed up and want to bring it down in the future, but then the Tories would be able to blame them and it would hit them in the election

It is not racist to be pro British.

Yes, I did mean National Socialist.  It's still socialist.  After all, Mussolini, who invented fascism, called it "the perfection of socialism".  All this left-right business came about because of disputes in the Socialist Internationale between whether "international socialism" or "national socialism" was destined to defeat capitalism.  Lenin and later Stalin placed themselves on the left, and the Fascists on the right, of a scale that had no place for capitalism or classical economic liberalism.

The BNP party manifesto calls for opposition to globalism, international socialism, laissez-faire capitalism and economic liberalism.  Sounds like National Socialism to me.

It is when the idea of 'British' is taken to be synonymous with 'white'. It's telling that its competitors (i.e. UKIP) feel the need to distinguish themselves as 'non-racist' conservative parties.

More like the perfection of modern propaganda. That line of bull is still working almost a century after those dictators fell. All because of a most unfortunate intersection of military power and fashion sense. Well, that and a global depression made worse for Germany by the Treaty of Versailles.

Re the UK nationalist parties, I thought it kind of poetic that the UKIP had a leader riding around in a plane pulling an ad banner crash to the ground and come out OK. Kind of like the wee folks said, "You need to work on your xenophobia, but since you're not outright thugs, we'll give you a 'good enough' landing."

Listening to Americans about how to run elections? What a terrible mistake, that's all I have to say. If there's one thing I hate about American style democracy, it's all the game-playing, and the repetitive talking points, the brain-dead punditry, the divisive rhetoric. Oh, and the millions upon millions wasted on campaigning.

My dad is a constitutional monarchist. I hate to say it, but honestly, I'm starting to see the wisdom in that.

Whether or not you choose to decorate a government with living antiques is a minor detail, but having hereditary positions of real public authority is not. What flavor of constitutional monarchist is your dad? And how would establishing a new monarchy help the US with our wretched excuse for a national campaign system?

What we really need is changes to the Constitution that do something to clearly exclude corporate spending from free speech protections and/or limit formal campaign seasons to something like the 6-week cycle they have in the UK. Oh, and PR or ranked-choice ballots would be a big help also. Our problems have two main roots: corporate money being confused with individual speech rights and a structural duopoly that ensures there is never a clear and reliable connection between election results and policy outcomes.

I assume that's a poor attempt at a joke.

Many otherwise sensible people found much to admire in fascism, including Charles Lindbergh, Joseph Kennedy Sr, and H. G. Wells.  I don't think it was the fashion sense. 

Socialism is dead, Long live Conservatism.

Maybe you didn't like the joke, but humour is a matter of taste on the reader's side and for my part, it was an educated and acerbic quip. The aesthetic prowess of the Mussolini and Hitler regimes was unarguably a powerful part of their success in duping the populations that voted away their own democratic rights. SS uniforms are scary to this day because they were terribly well-designed.

p.s. Are you making a joke by trying to claim HG Wells as a fan of fascism? He wasn't; he was a democratic socialist who wrote utopian/dystopian fiction, and Jonah Goldberg is an idiot for trying to conflate democratic socialism with fascism. Also, Lindbergh was arguably insane and certainly no one whose opinion of politics is worth historical attention, and Joseph Kennedy Sr was a successful mobster. Not seeing much funny there, either.

He's more of parliamentary monarchist, like the current British system. You also have to remember he's a New Zealander, which actually is a sort of constitutional monarchy under Queen Elizabeth, so it's not as if he's some sort of wild reactionary. I think he believes in a central figurehead with a lot of conditional and emergency powers but also with a lot of incentive to not use them. Obviously, not every monarch is a Juan Carlos I, but I think he's lost his faith in the objectivity of elected officials. To him, a monarch is objective oversight of the entire system, like a judge.

Me? I consider myself more of a Athenian democrat. Stupid mistakes are bound to be made, but at least in a direct democracy there's no one to blame but ourselves.

But essentially I agree with your opinions about the constitution. I don't think the founders ever really anticipated how insane elections would eventually get.

I never took a proper Brit-US comparison course, but I thought that the UK royals had been stripped of all real government powers (other than their wealth). Is there something in the unwritten British constitution that would have let Elizabeth II tell Mr. Cameron, "Thanks, but no thanks. I have this cousin who would do a much better job of shepherding Parliament through this kerfuffle" if the kerfuffle met some criteria for severity?

If we could replace the slaves with non-sentient robotics and get the world to agree to live in independent city-states with less than 50,000 citizens each, I'd be a fan of direct democracy Periclean-style myself.

Re the US founders, I just so seriously wish that the 'strict contructionist' folks had enough imagination to know how little we can understand the late 18th century and how poorly those late-Enlightenment geniuses would have done with an essay assignment on "The United States in 1986." Electricity was a parlor trick, women were mostly chattel, infant mortality was a huge part of motherhood, etc. Even if you try to ignore all the technological change, the simple fact that we now claim the bulk of North America and have a population well on the way to half a billion really wouldn't fit in the minds of folks even as brilliant as Thomas Jefferson, Abigail Adams, or Benjamin Franklin.

i think the election is over now.........how did the Raving Monster Loony Party do?    lol

oh and the mere mention of socialism brings me out in a rash - all those militants raving about workers rights and yet living in million pound homes 

Well, you know, I'm hardly an expert in the subject, but the queen does have quite a few reserve powers. I think of Juan Carlos I as his "ideal" monarch, and Juan Carlos has pretty much a stellar reputation and everyone loves him because he saved Spanish democracy twice and is super awesome and all that. Of course, the issue with hereditary power is that for every Juan Carlos there's someone embarrassing and terrible. My dad and I argue about this issue, and he contends that if you give these people independent, comfortable lives they aren't going to do all that much unless they absolutely have to.

My dad isn't fond of the idea of exporting monarchy to the United States, but other New Zealanders occasionally talk about removing the queen as head of state and my father is opposed to that. A strange position, as my dad never really stopped being a socialist, either.

Well, my big thing with most strict constructionists is that most of them are "strict constructionists" for a few narrow issues that they care about.  Other than that, I used to point out the founders didn't trust the common people enough, and they never anticipated a well-educated public. I'm not so sure I criticize them for that now, as the media has really successfully divided the country on every issue ranging from environmentalism and the economy to Obama's birth certificate. I really despise the media for making us a neo-tribal society and for eroding public unity at every issue. And honestly, it's not just Fox News. We really ought to have our own version of the BBC.

with our constitutional monarchy we have someone who is above all the party rabble and whom is held in high respect, far better than hanging on the whims of some elected president. maybe when charles takes over things will change but  for now the queen does a good job

Well, Brown resigned and his fellow loonies are now relegated to the back benches ;p

lol fuzzy - maybe we cld force him and his mob to return to scotland where most of em seem to come from

I'm all for Scottish independance. We could then legitimately deport Brown, Alan Hansen and all the other Scottish knobheads we seem to have inherited.

I did some casual poking around and learned that the British monarch does indeed have a bit of a functional role, but mostly limited to things like refusing to dissolve Parliament when asked by a PM or appointing an outgoing PM's chosen successor to office without going through a general or party election. Best I can tell, a king or queen could stir the political pot in a dramatic fashion, but that might well lead to having the particular reserve power used for that stirring formally transferred to Parliament. Your phrasing above made me wonder for a moment whether the monarch was actually head of the military or could offer legislation through the House of Lords or something.

Re the election results, do any of you UK folks know whether London betting houses are offering odds on how long this hung Parliament will last? If I'm reading our decreasingly-professional US news rightly, Cameron and Clegg have formally aimed for a five-year term. Buzz among the chattering classes makes me think we should all be impressed if they last two.

the queen may have limited executive power but she is held in high regard and has seen in and out many governments. in theory the heir can sit in the house of lords and promote legislation but they dont. i think a 5 year fixed parliament is ok if it helps sort out the mess and ushers in proportional representation and an end to the 2 party state

I knew it was something like that. As I said, I'm not an expert, and honestly, it's probably not the specific power that's most important, it's the fact she exists as a monarch. Even if she had no power whatsoever people would know who to turn to if things really, really hit the shit.

Yes, exactly. This is what I'm trying to say, I just couldn't find a way to say it. This is precisely why it is sometimes good to have a monarch, even if they are just a ornament.