Thoughts of a Historian

It’s been a while since my last post here, I do promise to start posting more regularly!

The big foreign policy question at the moment is what to do with Mugabe of Zimbabwe, there is a concensus that something should be done, but disagreement about what. This probably means that nothing will happen, which actually might be the best idea.

Sanctions against Mugabe haven’t worked, and states like Cuba and North Korea proved that if neccessary, countries can survive whilst under heavy sanctions for years. Sanctions however, do put a squeeze on the regime and the people feel that sqeeze, which I am going to argue might actually be a good thing, despite not being particularly humane.

The idea of invading has been mooted, and whilst I don’t buy the silly rhetoric that it will be viewed as a colonist attack because everybody knows why we are invading, to remove Mugabe for the benefit of the people, but we would never invade a country so soon after the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq - there simply isn’t the political will for it. If we did invade anyway, it’ll no doubt cause civil war, power struggles and the effects associated with invading a country to remove the leader. We’d probably end up with another Mugabe-like figure in power and be back to square one.

The African Union are not going to do anything either, too many of the African nations have had sham elections so natually they are not going to condemn and take action against Mugabe as it sets a precedent for action against themselves. So it’s not a problem that Africa are able to sort out by themselves, but equally its a problem that we shouldn’t really be sorting out because of the dangers of invading and because of the lack of political will to do so.

The best and most likely course of action is that nobody does anything at all. Keep the sanctions there and just ignore Zimbabwe. Mugabe won’t like that as he will miss the publicity so we score a victory there and eventually Mugabe will die or Mugabe will get overthrown. It’s evident that the opposition party have more support than Mugabe’s regime. With the economic situation worsening in Zimbabwe, people are likely to be desperate and could eventually lead to a popular coup and the removal of Mugabe. This would of course create civil war and plenty of bloodshed, but it would happen anyway, if the west invaded it’ll end in lots of death and probably another despot taking power. So actually it’s probably the most peaceful change and probably the correct change as the Zimbabwean people will try and install a leader who they want, rather than one that the west want.

Since Mugabe and his Generals are never going to agree to power sharing and will resist being deposed at all costs, violence is going to occur, and it would be better for Zimbabwe if the violence was on their terms rather than coming from a western nation. Which is exactly why we should just ignore Mugabe, like we ignore many other of the tyrants around the world.

Last night witnessed the final of the TV programme “Britain’s got talent”; the finalists included a Michael Jackson tribute band, a break-dancer who danced to a remix of “Singing in the Rain” and two opera singers, one of whom was tipped by the press to win.

However, it turned out that the press were completely wrong in their predictions and George Sampson, the break-dancer who pranced around on the stage whilst having water poured all over him walked away with the £100,000 prize. This “cringeworthy” performance easily beat the two with real talent and it reflects that our fellow countrymen’s taste is seriously lacking or at least the typical ITV sunday evening audience taste is really lacking, I sincerley hope it’s the latter.

Well it was a huge Conservative victory yesterday in Crewe, winning 20,539 of the votes compared to Labour’s 12,679.

The big question is whether this is just a protest vote against Labour, or it is actually a positive vote for the Conservative Party. The huge margin of victory suggests that it is indeed a bit of both. Statistics suggest that Labour’s core supporters did not turn out in great numbers, suggesting a protest against issues such as the 10p tax rate. But the huge Conservative victory shows that people actively came out and voted Conservative, political analysists are suggesting that for the first time in their lives, many working people voted Conservative suggesting a dramatic shift in the relations between the two main parties in the UK. The fact that people who have never typically voted the Conservatives are now doing so means that the Conservative Party are now under the spotlight, if they can deliver on their promises in the campaign and keep their momentum going then David Cameron is likely to end up in Downing Street. However, there is time for the wheels to fall of the wagan, a resurgent Labour under Brown or indeed a possible replacement or mistakes made by the Conservative Party, perhaps coming from the London Mayor Boris Johnson could put the Conservatives under pressure again.

The extended weekend has given Gordon Brown a reprieve from backbenchers who are nervously looking at their majorities in their consituencies, but no doubt many of them will be speaking to each other and formulating a course of action. The likelihood is that they will not decide to outst Brown as there is no obvious replacement. But tentative lukewarm support for him could be even more damaging in the long term, leaving him going into a general election with a party that is not one-hundred percent behind its leadership.

I haven’t really been following the events in Crewe very carefully, but saw some interesting details on the news this afternoon.

It is an important election for the Labour party given their poor performance in the by-election on May 1st, its also important for the Conservatives and David Cameron in particular - needing to demostrate that they have the momentum to keep going in order to win a general election when one is called.

The Labour Party candidate is Tamsin Dunwoody:

And the Conservative Party candidate is Edward Timpson:

The media is full of the news that Tamsin Dunwoody and the Labour Party have tried to turn the campaign into a “class war”, making out that Edward Timpson and David Cameron are posh “toffs” who are out of contact with the “real people”. Considering that Boris Johnson, the man that speaks the more “toffish” than any other Convervative Politician has recently been elected as London Mayor perhaps this is a risky strategy to take.

The negativity of the campaign may also be viewed as the Labour Party having no positive messages to bring the the people of Crewe - they are just campaigning on the fact that the Convervative candidate is rich - not really a substantive point.

No doubt many will be following the by-election, taking place on Thursday 22nd May. It will certainly be interesting to see whether the Conservatives to keep their momentum going from the local elections, and whether the methods being adopted by the Labour Party help or hinder their campaign.