Ok, so Obama has won, the jury is now out to see whether he delivers - but why don't the British have the same level of excitment.........

[guyFAwkesreQuiem]

about elections and politics as the Americans so obviously do??

Is it thats it just not the "done" thing to get excited about democracy, or is it because it's of the way elections and the whole process leading up to them is done.

Yes there are celebrations after General Elections in the UK - I still remember the 1997 Labour landslide, but nothing on the scale of the US.........

Rhubarb - I see your point. Whooping just doesn't work here, we don't have the temperament for it. Thank God.

I thought voter turnout was 70%?

was it - oh haven't seen the news since I went to bed after the Obama speech - had 6hrs solid of it so switched it off and hadn't had a look to see if the turnout figures had come in yet

I'm not sure - something I may have heard on R4 this am, or equally might have made up out of something else entirely...

I honestly didn't think he'd get in, I thought they'd rig it again.

I fear for his safety but I'm also heartened that so many Americans have proved me wrong and have at last voted in someone with a brain and common sense.

(I wouldn't even whoopy for George Clooney, it sounds so common!)

make whoopy? or merely cheer?

mrsruffalo -- James Callaghan was pretty working class (he couldn't aford to go to university, at any rate), and Ramsay MacDonald was impeccably working class (illegitimate son of a farm labourer and a housemaid).

Perhaps because when we have elections, we are (technically) only voting for our own mp. The Prime Minister is the person who is the head of whichever party gets most seats. He can be got rid of mid-term by a vote of no confidence or by stepping down. Several recent prime ministers came into office with no election other than a ballot in parliament; John Major, Gordon Brown for two. So we don't go voting for the Prime minister in the same way that the US are voting for the president.

When John Major became Prime Minister after a vote of no-confidence against Margaret Thatcher, I was working for an American company and my boss could NOT get his head round how we had a new PM without years of campaigning and election fever.

MrsRuffallo - Mrs T wasn't exactly upper class though. I know some people still like to bang on about how much they hate her - seems a bit of a stuck record - but she was not public school, not male. So she was right wing - still an example of someone who broke the mould. If she'd not been Conservative she'd be held up as a role model for what women have achieved and how far we have come since 1918 and before.

Disraeli - Jewish - also a loosening of the establishment.

Now now, I think Sarah Palin has made it quite clear that the only laudable woman in politics is a left-wing one.

/stirring the pot.

Callisto - I'd happily make whoopy with him, but I'd never cheer!

(That's George Clooney folks, not the President!)

I think it has usually been the case that voter turnout in the US has been lower than in the UK. This might not be true any longer but the increasing disillusion with British politics has coincided with an increasing tendency of British parties to use market-style tactics, following the US model -- focus groups, spin, the demise of the manifesto.

When I was younger it always seemed to me that British politics had a far greater grip on British people than US politics had on Americans.

If someone as charismatic as Obama came along that disillusion might temporarily lift, as it has in the US. But I doubt it would mark a profound change -- party politics is no longer about principle so lacks to power to hold us. Principled politics has switched from parties to pressure groups.

Agree threadworrm. I also think that this particular moment in history - in the middle of an economic crisis and with an environmental crisis approaching - provides the opportunity for a return to principled, not market-led politics. I would hope Labour has the balls to seize the opportunity, but I doubt it.

I would enjoy seeing Margaret Thatcher hunting a moose though. I can picture her little check hat perched on that astoundingly inflexible hairdo.

Apparently the voter turnout in the pres election this year was 64%, high by american standards, but in fact only about the same as the turnout in the UK general election of 2005, itself way down on the turnout in earlier decades.

So the implication on the thread title is not quite right.

UK politics has higher-than-US participation, but attracts less and less enthusiasm partly as a result of following US political styles -- PR, spin, focus-group policy-formation.

It is very shortsighted to view this Obama-led burst of excitement in US politics as anything other than a temporary phenomenon. And though ot is fabulous to see a black 'first family', as to policy, we might find the next four years less exciting than the hysteria suggests.

To be frank I'd forgo excitement for just a tad less apathy among British voters.

As someone may ahve mentioned, the Us are voting for a PRESIDENT not a prime minister. He is like their King and prime minister wrapped up into one.

I thin Diana's funeral shows Brits can be just as emotional and OTT!!!

We are apathetic because whoever you vote for, the government gets in. The real power lies with the unelected establishment, not the government, who is little more than a fig leaf of democracy.

I think that UK was proportionately equally excited by Labour victory in 97. But you have to remember that the scale of Obama's win is larger because:
-he is an outsider in lots of ways
-global impact
-coming after Bush vacuum
-socially US is a very divided country so he built big bridges

Blair's victory is more comparable with Clinton's.

I have just spent 3 months in Chicago, Obama's home town, and I don't think that people on the street are at all as excited as the Brits seem to think. The people celebrating with Obama on the night were mostly invited people and although more people that usual actually voted in this election, the US still have a loooot of non voters. I didn't notice that people were particularly excited at all about the election.

I did when (was it '97)Blair got in. Stayed up all night, went out in the streets afterwards. Not the mass celebration as in America but they really Rally over there. They just don't campaingn here like they do there.