Who should take tony's job?

Why do you distance yourself from it by saying 'you'? Aren't you British?

9 years of prosperity outshines 52 vicitims of terror attacks.

Any British prime minister would of been likely to to take us to war:

Albania
Armenia
Australia
Azerbaijan
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bulgaria
Canada
Czech Republic
Denmark
Dominican Republic
El Salvador
Estonia
Fiji
Georgia
Honduras
Hungary
Iceland
Italy
Japan
Kazakhstan
Latvia
Lithuania
Moldova
Mongolia
Netherlands
New Zealand
Nicaragua
Norway
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Republic of Macedonia
Romania
Singapore
Slovakia
South Korea
Spain
Thailand
Tonga
Ukraine

All joined the coalition, are you seriously suggesting a British prime minister would alienate themselves from some of our closest allies at a time when the west had just witnessed one of the most brutal attacks of modern history?

But the Tories aren't talking about reverting back to thatcherism, this country couldn't survive the 5 million unemployed that thatcher brought with her.

We are no longer in the 80's, we cannot borrow money like America (as we haven't resources to escape such debts), nor can we employ similar monetary tactics to thatcher... instead we must move with the times and David Cameron hasn't shown any sign of doing this.

It was margret thatcher that ended our manufacturing industries?

George Osborne was talking some sense yesterday about the explosion in seriously skilled jobs in India/China etc.

He's right to say we need to massively expand and invest in our science and maths education.

I'd like to see tuition fees slashed for degrees in things like this - subsidise it by increasing media studies et al imo.

china and india are in direct competition.

eventually china will take the skilled economies where as India will take less skilled industries (with the exception of IT).

neither threaten the British ecnomy.

unfortunatly I have a meeting, but when I get back I'm going to pull apart your statistics

Explain why you believe china will take skilled economies but not India?

So much could be outsourced.....I'm loth to pursue a career in interventional radiology, as I can see all the diagnostic X-ray work being exported in 20 years time....

We've got no future in manufacturing surely. We need to be working now to train a science and technology focussed workforce that capitalises on existing experience and our traditional ingenuity to create a modern research and development biased economy - even if the final products are made abroad.

on the china tip its first hand experience... i have factories out there....

but I'll go into it when I get back

you can so tell that you weren't around to experience the 80's 1st hand Brid, if you think things were worse now than they were then.... and where the fuck do you get your figures from?? 15% inflation, 5m unemployed you're just wrong... you just can't have interest aroudn 5% and inflation at 15%.

even I'll admit we're reaping the benefits now of some of what maggie did, but if you weren't around in the 80's you've got no idea how fucking horrific it was, and I'll tell you it's been a fucking lot better the last 10 years than it was then.

You've got a bad case of rose tinted specs when it comes to Thatcher, even the tories these days have turned away from those crazy monaterist policies. We've got some problems to sort out these days... like 1st time buyers being unable to buy houses, and massive personal debt, but thatcherism isn't gonna sort out.

Here's my prediction, Brown will be next leader, and probably win the next election. Cameron might but only if he can adopt policies to the left of where the labour party is now, and that will schism the tories

before I start googling can you explain to me why you belief disabled people shouldn't be on incapacity benefit?

you're wrong on pretty much all of that.

Cameron's still in his honeymoon while labour have had their worst 12 months for a long time. 4-6% behind mid term is fuck all... your beloved maggie came back from a lot more than that regularly

Brown would have won just as easily in '97 as Blair did, and would probably have been the better prime minister as well, and I don't reckon his lack of charisma is going to be much of a problem given his track record. Take out the last 6 months, which have been extraordinary to say the least, and his aproval ratings have been pretty solid. I can't think of a single senior politician in living memory who's been as well liked as brown and for as long!

All cameron has shown at the minute is charisma, all he's offering is "not labour" but he's being a complete blair clone about it :spangled: I think in the next 2 years brown will easily show him up as a bit of a lightweight, with a fairly light shadow cabinet behind him. brown's got a lot of substance but fuck all style, cameron's the exact opposite, but these days I think ppl will prefer the former.

fact is blair is a massive electoral liability, he only won last time cos the tories and libdems were so shit, take blair out and give brown 2 or 3 years to get over it and he's got a much better chance than most ppl reckon of beating cameron.

All you gotta do is check out how much the right wing media is laying into him... cos they know he's the only one in the labour party who can keep the tories out next time. simple as

This is a point a lot of people seem to be making, and I'm a little unclear why.

How can we already be talking about not voting for Cameron on a lack of 'substance', by which I assume we mean policies, when he hasn't seriously announced them yet?

Charisma is definitely a positive characteristic in a leader - but I'll be waiting to see detailed policies from Labour, the Conservatives, and, indeed, the Lib Dems before making any decisions about the next election.

I could honestly end up voting for any of them.

I agree with Si about the 80's but Campbell scares me. I can see people falling for it (him)
oppositions don't win they say, governments lose.
Loads of people hate Tony Blair for Iraq and brown hasn't distanced himself from that.
All Cameron has to do is keep mouthing platitudes and let the government keep making mistakes (ID cards) (NHS privatisation) (Afghanistan) and he could get in.
Anyone under 25 is not going to know what the Tories are really about. All they have known is Labour

cos all he's doing is talking the talk at the minute, he's just pushing all the right butons, which is a piece of piss for any half decent politician. When he comes to having to come up with hard policies he could turn into the emporer with no clothes, specially as they'll be policies that the right of his party won't like much, and the tory right has got a lot more bite than the labour left.

example, he was on Today a while ago saying it was crazy we still make cars that do 12mph, which it is, but when he was asked if he'd outlaw it he had nothing to say. I just don't think he's gonna be able to come up with the hard policies to backup all the nice sounding mood music he's been happy to spew for the last 12 months.

On Iraq I've only ever heard brown say once publicly that he supported the war, and though he did support it he's kept as far from it as possible. ID cards have died for at least this parliament, but basically a lot of the fundamentals are still right, specially the economics which brown gets credit for. there still seems to be a lot of prosperity floating around,and we all know people vote with their pockets.

Cameron's doing all the right things now, but opposition's a piece of piss and he's still a long way from No 10 imho

as far as I know Tony still says ID cards are on for this parliament?