Slightly Left of the Centre

I was about to launch into a long monologue about how I have just noticed that all of the large English speaking nations now have "centre-left" (term used loosely) parties in power. For example:

• In the US the Democrats are soon to be in power with Barrack Obama
• In Australia Kevin Rudds Labour Party ousted the Liberals (who in Australia are right-wing) in late 2007
• In the UK we have been under Labour rule for some years (couldn't be bothered to work out how many). Argue as you may about how log this will last.
• In South Africa Kgalema Petrus Motlanthe is Centre Left not that I understand how South African parliament works
• In New Zealand Helen Clark of the Labour party is Prime Minister. Though by all accounts this may not las long either.

Then I realised that I had forgotten about Canada. To be fair I had always thought that Canada had a centre-left government, but Wikipedia told me that apparently some guy called Stephen Harper is in charge over there and he some kind of conservative.

I had also forgotten about Ireland (Eire) that has I believe a kind of centre-right coalition alliance which is too complicated for me to comprehend. Then again my old American flatmate didn't even realise that Ireland was a separate country to the UK (and his girlfriend was "Irish" - or at least, she drank Guinness)

Myself - I will always be a little left wing. It come from growing up in a household with a teacher for a Dad, a social worker for a mum, a nurse for a brother and an NHS worker for a sister. Being a bit of an environmentalist myself, I have always leaned towards the policies of the Left wing parties.

It doesn't really seem to matter in the UK that a large proportion of the population have recently become a little disillusioned with our supposed centre-left government. You can bet that the vast majority of Brits were rooting for Obama (not that it matters).

I think British people are scared of Republicans. To me they are kind of like Etonians with guns.