Interesting that you compare the hope many in the US will be feeling today with that felt by many here in 1997. I very much hope, for the sake of the US and indeed us, that the similarity ends there. But if Obama is the US Blair, we can look forward to an awful lot more heart-string tugging rhetoric, blindingly glossy PR, and a ghastly vacuum where sound action and delivery should be. Fingers crossed!

"But I do envy a large percentage of those people who go to the polls today, because I think they are voting for change, and voting for hope."

Thats what they will be doing come the UK GE, sadly Gordo will hang on till the last possible second..... amd a fat lot of good it will do him too.

As I recall Godzilla was a name for an ape, and given the intelligence level of your comments, I think you chose very wisely. Sadly, it may be the last wise thing you ever do.

Loyalty is a fine attribute Bob, and one that I, for what it's worth, value most highly.

Its a perfectly fair comment on what you wrote. Given of course you were unlikely to agree with me, I note that as per usual you just revert to type by using insults. Thats not terribly grown up is it?.

Yes, but is Brown loyal to you?

Godzilla was a giant lizard from the prehistoric time zone.

But it is sad today to see that if you can afford the best drugs you will be allowed to, if your poor then you have had it. How long will it now be that people on the NHS will be like America at the bottom of the pile.

I agree, Robert.

Godzilla (sniggers) no, but it sure is fun.

Gordon has impressed in the last couple of months. The guy is growing in stature by the day, he could yet become a very good PM.

Although a bit of me really envies you for having loyalty I can't help but disagree with the concept.

OK, so you are a life long supporter of Aston Villa and they are currently doing well - I imagine you even stuck by them through the darker days as well and I kind of admire that. That is OK for football, not for politics. Even you must have had some thoughts such as - we need to get new players or we need to get rid of this player or that player (or Mr Ellis) or maybe had a brief moment of concern about being controlled by an American.

My problem is, how does one stay loyal to "Labour-ish" ideals when all that is left is the name - and I am not loyal enough to vote just for a name!

My dilemma would, of course, be easier if there were viable alternatives!

If you, as a Labour Councillor and probably one of the most influential Labour bloggers, feel "little real sense of expectation or anticipation", imagine what it must be like for us plebs.

It's a great day for many and I, for one, never thought I'd live to see a black US president. My cynicism level is slightly lower than usual today.

Having said that it really begs this question: why did it take so long? I can think of a couple of Muslim countries that have already had female leaders so the Merkins have been rather slow in electing anyone other than a white male to the top job.

Two other things worry me. I read the other day that white male Americans of McCain's age only have a one in three chance of living another four years. I wonder if Obama will last that long? Black political leaders in the US tend to have a very short shelf life.

The second worry is that Obama refers to god quite a bit. I really wish the Merkins would choose someone a bit more rational occasionally. Asking some imaginary super-being for foreign policy advice is bit 17th century.

I think Obama has done it.

I went to bed at 9. I didn't sleep, but I did have the world shut out. :)

Tom, I have always been a trade unionist first, and Labour second. If the unions, as the only real representatives of the organised working class broke from Labour, that would stretch my loyalty beyond breaking point and I would go to. I do feel there is little expectation or anticpation, so like many I will vote to keep the Tories out. But history doesn't stop at a point in time, and I also live with some hope that if there is ever to be a movement towards democratic socialism, as you say, there is no viable alternative to Labour.

Alternatively, of course, you could take the view that we are part of the problem... not the solution.

Great quote from the historian, Simon Schama:
Thomas Jefferson wrote the declaration of independence creating 'all men equal under God'
He was a slave owner!
Today Obama realises the dream and fulfils the quote.
Bet the people sleeping rough in downtown bronx will be overjoyed sleeping in cardboard City(-3).

Bit like watching the cup final, once it's over it's over, and this is now over. Went on for a couple of years, and we at least will have no further interest in it unless the chappie pops over for a chat, and then the Daily Mail readers will be moaning about how much his security cost them, and how they were unable to park. We'll watch it on the news before switching over for the film, nothing changes, and nothing will change now.

I'm weary of all this "the last decade's been a disaster for the left" nonsense. I remember the same being said of the Wilson governments. As a councillor you must know how difficult it is to change anything in this deeply conservative country.

And the unions are representative not of the working class but of their members which is at best only a small sub-section of the class and certainly includes many middle class workers. (Did you see the wonderfully talkative girl on John Prescott's programme who said "I must be middle class because I don't work”?).

For example, it was Gordon Brown, not the unions, who transformed the lives of my working class in-laws by using the available funds to give them pension credits rather than divvying it up amongst every state pensioner regardless of need as the unions urged him to do...

I managed to stay up until 3am, by then it was all over bar the shouting and I crashed out on the sofa in the lounge instead of dragging myself off to bed.

PS How would you or the unions have financed the hospital or school building projects? How was Attlee's government's taking out long-dated Treasury Bonds and getting loans from the US to (over) pay for the mines, railways and doctors any less "mortgaging the future" than PFI is?

Brian, you misread me. I didn't say the trades unions were exclusively working class, but that they are the only body representing the organised working class. There is a difference.

As for your latter point, I would have used borrowing, but government borrowing instead of the far more expensive private sector borrowing used in PFI agreements, which would have substantially reduced the cost of the projects. However, the Chancellor, like his Tory predecessors was determined to keep the PSBR (as it used to be known) down below the levels required by our old friends in the EU...

Finally, no, I didn't watch the Prescott programmes. I saw the trailers and cringed at the bloody embarrassment without having to sit through two hours of the crap.

And you think YOU'RE bloody weary?

Forgive me for being a little obtuse, but wouldn't there be more cause for celebration on the 'land of the free' front if we were acclaiming President Running Deer?

It isn't only the EU that wants the PSBR kept low; the whole international financial machine insists on it. Governments’ hands are tied, if Labour had done as you'd suggested and borrowed to finance the building there'd have been an immediate and massive "run on the pound" leading to a good old fashioned Sterling Crisis (I'm sure, like me, you remember those?).

PFI is far from perfect but at least it gets the work done. It seems to me to be largely a wheeze to keep the (international) markets happy but that's the sort of pragmatic thing that real governments have to do - especially when their predecessors have stripped all the national assets without reducing national debt (so it is mostly Her fault – if only we’d hung on to that North Sea Oil until the price went up we could have paid for the lot).

Attlee's government similarly had to keep the financial markets happy by borrowing from them and paying over the odds for the bankrupt industries it nationalized – it couldn’t just seize them without destabilising the whole house of cards. It bought off the City in a similar way to that by which it bought off the consultants (in their case by allowing them to work inside the health service but still treat their private patients), as Bevan put it, by "stuffing their mouths with gold".

It's a tricky old world...

When the founding fathers assembled in Philadelphia to draft the United States Constitution, there was a lot of debate regarding the number of representatives that were to be allocated to individual states - obviously it had to be proportional to their overall population. Eventually it was decided that, although a black slave would never have the opportunity to cast a vote, each of them constituted 3/5ths of a human being, and the figures were adjusted accordingly. Although slavery doesn't seem to play a significant role in Obama's personal history - and he didn't emerge from the civil rights movement like a lot of black leaders - I think we should all be grateful for the change that was over 200 years coming.

Also, for me there were two especially poignant moments last night. The first was McCain's elegant concession speech, or at least before he reeled off all that 'We're Americans....' nonsense. I think McCain's reputation as a moderate has been shaped by his own personal decency and his willingness to work constructively with Democrats, rather than his political stances (which are always right-wing), and he showed a lot of the honesty and humility that makes him a sympathetic character.

The second was the image of a tearful Jesse Jackson adrift in the crowd - as a student of contemporary American history, it's obvious that Obama could never have made it without people like Jackson to help pave the way (in the face of enormous hostility and ridicule). I think the weight of expectation on Obama now will be impossible to fulfill, but if Election 08 gives young black kids in fraying, marginalised communities like Watts the belief that they have the same right to happiness and success as the rich, white, prep school elite then it will all have been worth it.

That is what politics is supposed to be about.

Ever the idealist, John. The US people had a choice between two social and economic conservatives. I'll praise Obama when he does something, not just parrot on about change. Thatcher did nothing at all positive for women, in or out of politics.

Hughsey... tut, tut, tut, what to do with you? We had one of your good old fashioned 'runs on the pound' just a couple of weeks ago... when we borrowed far, far more than the PFI schemes to bail out the banks. Did Brown cave in to the speculators? Did he hell as like, and allowing Education Authorities and the NHS to borrow on gilt government rates rather than pay the greedy bastard rate makes far more economic sense. We are not talking about whether there should be borrowing, nor debt. But the Government can borrow at much lower interest rates than the NHS can secure from private lenders. Atlee's borrowing WAS government borrowing. The French Government broke the EU borrowing limit year after year and stuck its fingers up to the EU central bank every time they told them not to.

What's wrong with a bit of childlike optimism Bob? Quite frankly, I'd think less of myself if, after studying nearly 400 years of American history predicated on the innate superiority of white Protestants, I wasn't a little excited by the election of a black President.

I suspect you're just grumpy because you lost to Newcastle. That's the real issue here!

Run on the Pound? Call that a run on the Pound? That were nowt like the runs on the Pound we had in the good old days when I were a lad. You young chaps don't know yer born...

Not sure we've paid back Attlee's borrowing even yet (hard to tell because government bonds keep getting issued every time the previous lot matures). I think he fell for an interest only "easy payment" loan scam.

And you really don't want us to behave like the French do you? Try shrugging your shoulders whilst saying "perf" and you'll realise we simply haven't got the style...

John... there's a little of that. Anyway, keep your youthful delusions as long as you can... you're a long time cynical.

Anyway... how's the geography (or whatever it was) degree going?

Johnthestudent said:studying nearly 400 years of American history.
All went pear-shaped when Roy Rogers and Trigger were no more. You'll have been reading about them, what with you studying history and the like. Happy days.

Can't fault a word that you write in this post Bob.

Me? I am a Tory.

Yep once again Bob i think you are spot on with your post. I'm glad Obama won if only becuase it stops Nut Job Palin getting her hands on power. But in the UK the next election will be a rather negative one, but isn't it always like that when the Right is on the up. The left always seems to come in on a wave of optimism just look at 1997 or 1964 or 1945 compare them to 1951, 1970 or 1979. They were very different elections, which is why being on the left means you have a life of moments of blissful joy interrupted by long periods of dissapointment, where as on the right its just long periods of whinging about the good old days.

I'm a little longer in the tooth than John the Student, and a little more cynical. However, I shed a small tear when I heard the news about Obama. It was a tear of relief I think, perhaps mixed with idealism, and hope. I don't expect him to change the world - but by god it's a historic event.

If anybody was wondering why I kept alluding to the fact I'm studying history (that's you mike), I got 93% on my first essay and therefore passed my first year. And I'm not above showing off.

Hurrah for me