Jerusalem watches the rise of Nick Clegg

Israel was maintaining a diplomatic silence Tuesday amid reports from the UK that the Liberal-Democrats, a rising force in British politics whose leader has taken highly critical positions on Israel, would seek control of the Foreign Office and several other senior positions if Thursday’s general elections give the party the balance of power in a hung parliament.

Government officials said it would be inappropriate for Israel to make any comment at all on the British elections, in which Labor Prime Minister Gordon Brown is battling both the traditional rival Conservative Party, led by David Cameron, and an unexpected third-party challenge from the Lib-Dems under Nick Clegg.

Privately, however, the view in Jerusalem is that it would be deeply problematic for Israel were Clegg’s party to unexpectedly prevail in the elections or, more realistically, fare well enough to deny Labor or the Conservatives an outright majority in the House of Commons. Clegg has repeatedly lambasted Israel for using “disproportionate” force in Operation Cast Lead, slammed the blockade of Gaza and, in an op-ed article last year, demanded that Britain and the EU halt arms sales to Israel.

more: http://www.jpost.com/Home/Article.aspx?id=174707

Britian has gone to great lengths to show it is not a friend of Israel, message received. A Cameron victory might actually warm relations between Israel and the UK, but really Cameron has his own issues so I'm not exactly cheering him on.

....."not a friend of Israel"? ..... It's an intellectually dishonest argument.

of apparently finding little to no redeemable attributes, while your party mates accuse Israel of harvesting Organs in Haiti you are no longer a friend, if you ever were in the first place.

America has criticized Israel, recently infact, I'd still call America one hell of a friend of Israel.

Once we were the occupying power but that was long ago. Now, we are both client states of the same country, but otherwise have little to do with each other.

As for Clegg, the right-wing machine is working overtime to find reasons to attack him now that he's become a threat to the established parties. He has already been attacked as anti-British and anti-American. Now he's anti-Israel. Next he'll be anti-Antarctica. Oh, and he eats babies. I don't even particularly like the man, whom I consider just a *bit* less smarmy than Blair or Cameron, but the attacks have been going seriously over the top.

At any rate, I'm just keeping my fingers and toes crossed that the Tories don't get in, or at least don't get an overall majority.

Off to vote shortly!

"Only Nick Griffith (sic) makes some sense - to all englanders - jews all over the world love you - and hope to g-d that the BNP takes power"

Truly, irony is dead. Either that or Jim Sagle has been posting under another name.

Nick Griffin and Avigdor Lieberman aren't just ideological cousins, they're more like twins.

The only big difference is that in the UK Griffin is a pariah, and in Israel Lieberman is foreign minister...

However, while Griffin himself is a pariah, the Daily Mail and other RW tabloids get away with saying a lot of the same stuff, and still pose as respectable. While the tabloids CLAIM to oppose the BNP, I don't see much difference between for instance Richard Littlejohn and Nick Griffin, and both have ideological soul-mates in Jean-Marie LePen, Geert Wilders, Pat Buchanan and Avigdor Lieberman.

CON 305 - LAB 255 - LD - 61 - Other 29.

Trying to find a breakdown of the "other" at the moment...

only 3 seats declared at bloody 9pm at night, due to high turnout, apparently. I suppose the one good thing about having compulsory suffrage here is you don't have these sorts of surprises.

Watching Beeb at the moment, nothing for the foppish, plummy-accented commentators to do except talk out their arses about apple brandy, luckily they're well equipped for that.

looks like neither Tories nor even a Lib-Dem/Labour coalition will be able to get 326 seats. They're going to have to rely on the Scottish parties and Sinn Fein, etc. Amazing result. Dunno if the BNP got any seats, I suppose if they had the Conservatives would be thinking long and hard about whether they could form a coalition with them.

And very very black ironic SNORT at this whole idea of Nick Clegg being this big dangerous bogeyman. Such an incompetent leader that he actually LOST his party seats, is more to the point. Sorry, not happy with his campaign this morning, especially since hearing that my really good LibDem MP, who was considered safe, lost his seat by 176 votes to a fucking Tory.

At least it's no overall majority for the Tories, which is a relief. Thanks to all the *sensible* constituencies in Britain!

One of the funniest things on last night's BBC coverage was Trimbleby taking the piss out of his own coverage:-

"And here we have a shot of Gordon Brown's plane getting ready for takeoff. Not much happening there, it doesnt seem to be moving much. I don't think we'll be watching it too much longer, there's nothing enlightening happening here. Don't know why we bothered in the first place, to be perfectly honest."

I think the reference to "sensible" constituencies was the midland electorates, where elections are typically won or lost, and where people are renowned for talking good old fashioned common sense, as well as frequently alluding to that fact.

I agree about the commentators - with even more uncertainty to fluff about than usual, they ended up as parodies of themselves - and by the wee hours seemed to be deliberate self-parodies!

something like 60% voted for Labour, Lib-Dems, SNP, Sinn Fein and other left-wing parties. Its amazing that the Conservatives can win as many seats as they did notwithstanding that they only got 37% of the popular vote.

Hopefully if Labour can shore up a coalition, electoral reform will be the first thing on the list. The Conservatives won in Cornwall, of all places, because the vote was split between the Labour and the Lib-Dems. Its fairly silly that Labour even allowed that seat to have a three-corner contest - they should have pulled out and given the Lib Dems every chance of winning.

Brown says he's not going to agree to proportional representation, although he has offered the Lib Dems electoral reform. At they very least they should introduce multi party preference voting so that people can give their first preference to a minor party without throwing their vote away.

is that with Clegg as part of any new administration there will be a major voice that will not give a carte blance to Israel to act whatever way it likes. I would imagine it also means that britain would not be part of any new wars in the muslim world unless its security was directly threatened.

(a) we can't afford to; (b) it was really Blair who was a neo-imperialist and Labour in general is far from that. I don't think either Brown *or* Clegg would choose to get into any more wars than we've got. It's harder to predict if the Tories win, but my feeling is that even they wouldn't get into a war of choice until the economy is doing better!

Also, our wars have had nothing to do with Israel and plenty to do with America. So that unless Obama chooses to start new wars *and* drag Britain into them (far less likely than in the case of Bush!), Britain will be staying out of further war. The current one may go on forever, however.