Thank you, Dick Umbrage, for letting us come over and watch your cable. The great thing about watching BBC election coverage here in the US (via C-SPAN) is the fact that you don’t have to stay up into the wee small hours. Especially when C-SPAN cuts the Beeb off at 10pm (in favour of a very special Laura Bush Yom HaShoah; is there no escaping Laura Bush?).

A much-reduced Labour majority leaves me feeling conflicted. On the one hand, thanks to the fact that my British political brain lives in a permanent 1990, I’m honestly wowed by a third Labour term. This puts the party on an equal footing with the Tories’ record, and Blair on an equal footing with Thatcher (in oh so many ways, but let’s not go there for now). And like Thatcher, he’ll probably get booted out in the middle of his third term. Except there’s already an annointed successor, Gordon Brown. On the other hand, Blair blew it with the war and I wish he’d lost.

BBC election coverage is a wonderful thing. There is, of course, the Swingometer. No, this isn’t a device measuring 1970s sexual funkiness. It’s a large - and increasingly computerized - needle that the BBC has been using for decades to display the swing for or against a given party. It’s a glorious two-party relic, but it’s always nice to see how they’ve zazzed it up with nifty graphics. However, the real highlight of the evening in terms of animation was the illustration of how far the three major party leaders would need to go in order to become Prime Minister. This was accomplished with a virtual Downing Street, and computer animated versions of each leader that looked exactly like characters from Grand Theft Auto. I kept expecting Michael Howard to run over a hooker.

For the uninitiated (i.e. Americans), in Britain each seat’s results are announced by the local returning officer, with all of the candidates standing behind him or her on stage, thusly:

The people in stupid hats are representatives of tiny, fringe joke parties like the Monster Raving Loony Party and the Conservative Party (whoever they are). Tony Blair, therefore, had to share the stage with everyone who had the five hundred pound deposit needed to run (which you lose if you get less than 5% of the vote; there’s no fucking around with petitions in order to get on the ballot like here in the US). In this case, that meant Blair sharing the stage with a man called Reg Keys, whose son was killed in Iraq.

Reg Keys ran against Blair in protest of the war. He received 4,000 votes to Blair’s 24,000. Blair was directly in the background as Keys delivered these words:

If this war had been justified by international law I would have grieved and not campaigned. If weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq — again I would have grieved, not campaigned. Tonight there are lessons to be learned. I hope in my heart that one day the prime minister may be able to say sorry. That one day he will say sorry to the families of the bereaved. And one day the prime minister may be able to visit wounded soldiers in hospital.

The camera, of course, zoomed mercilessly in to a close-up shot of Blair’s face as Keys said this. Blair looked like he was trying so hard to remain stony faced, he would give himself an aneurism.

The anti-war, former Labour MP George Galloway also beat out Blairite Oona King in Bethnal Green and Bow, in the East End of London. Galloway had formed his own party, called Respect (pronounced Respec’). I’m not well-informed enough to know how dodgy Galloway really is. He was accused of taking money from Saddam Hussein by the Daily Telegraph, but I think he won his libel case against them. Then again, thanks to British libel law, winning a libel case doesn’t really mean you didn’t do the thing they said you did. Galloway did visit Saddam at one point.

The race between him and King, however, was rancorous to say the least: she is black and Jewish, the constituency has a very large Muslim population, and accusations of anti-Semitism were slung about. At one point Jewish graves were desecrated. Galloway, while saying that the British government was part of a “war on Muslims”, denied that race was a factor by saying that he was concerned with women in Iraq who had “blacker faces than hers.” King, in turn, stated: “What makes me sick is that when I come across someone who is guilty of genocide I do not get on a plane and go to Baghdad and grovel at his feet.”

I’m not entirely sure what to make of all this. There’s massive racism against Muslims in the East End (think being beaten up after school every single day), and Galloway’s victory on a protest vote doesn’t surprise me. But there’s also a definite undercurrent of anti-Semitism to some British anti-war sentiment, and I’m not sure the degree to which that was really a factor here. Anyone in the know care to fill me in? In either case, be sure to click here and then, in the top-right hand corner, on the link to BBC anchor Jeremy Paxman’s clash with Galloway during the election coverage last night. A punchy Paxman, in the small hours of the morning, attacked Galloway in a way that you would never see on US television. Seriously. Watch this. It’s kind of amazing.

Finally, I’m as usual struck by the contrast between all this and American politics. British politics is adversarial to the core. Conflict, confrontation and head-on debate are built into the system. When there isn’t an election, that means things like Prime Minister’s question time where, each week, the PM goes head to head with the leader of the opposition on the floor of the House of Commons. Thanks to the separation of powers and the lack of an opposition “shadow president”, this never happens in the US. And can you imagine George W. Bush sharing a stage on election night with the father of a soldier killed in Iraq, and having to listen to that man’s speech against the war? As LMV pointed out while we watched Reg Keys, he would have been bundled out of the room and roughed up by the Secret Service.

The US system is set up to avoid rigorous debate. Despite all the current protestations about polarization, at best in this country the two parties - such as they even differ - get to talk at cross purposes, over the heads of each other. With the possible exception of stage managed presidential debates, the American people never get to see their leaders dealing directly with each other. Whatever else is wrong with the British political system (a largely unelected upper house and a hereditary head of state come to mind), it’s a much healthier democracy.