{"id":3258,"date":"2005-05-06T02:53:32","date_gmt":"2005-05-06T10:53:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/index.php\/archives\/2005\/05\/06\/the-magician-who-fell-to-earth\/"},"modified":"2005-05-06T02:53:32","modified_gmt":"2005-05-06T10:53:32","slug":"the-magician-who-fell-to-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/2005\/05\/06\/the-magician-who-fell-to-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"The magician who fell to earth"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tJonathan Freedland, writing in The Guardian, puts the British election in context:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Lost among the long faces of Labour was this fact: a party which had never won two full terms in government yesterday won a third. That is not to be dismissed. There was a time, back in the 1980s, when such a feat seemed to be the remotest fantasy.<\/p>\n

Even the midnight rumours of a Labour majority of 50, later revised, would once have thrilled, rather than crushed, the party’s supporters. In 1974, for example, that kind of margin would have felt like a landslide. And, lest we forget, Margaret Thatcher started a revolution in 1979 with a majority of just 44.<\/p>\n

A sober view would say yesterday was no disaster, merely a sign that, as David Blunkett declared, “normal politics has returned” – that the rhythms of the 1960s and 1970s have been restored.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Nonetheless, many of your Labourites do have long faces today, and the usual pack of Communists<\/a> want Tony Blair’s head. This seems a strange reaction to winning a third consecutive election for the first time in your party’s history.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jonathan Freedland, writing in The Guardian, puts the British election in context: Lost among the long faces of Labour was this fact: a party which had never won two full terms in government yesterday won a third. That is not to be dismissed. There was a time, back in the 1980s, when such a feat … Continue reading “The magician who fell to earth”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbifyw-Qy","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3258\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}