Our institutions are reliable. Our parliament, judiciary, civil
services, while weakened by decades of under-funding, remain
essentially sound and held together by great hard working people with
a deep ethic of civic duty. Our electorate are pretty well educated,
active and dutiful. Our elections are fair and well attended. We have
a multi-chamber carefully segmented government with plenty of checks
and balances to steer a path between conservative and progressive
courses.
On the face of it we should have a model democracy and a prosperous
nation.
But "politics" in the UK is a seedy, corrupt selection mechanism to
find the worst possible human specimens and put them in power. It
rewards childish, irresponsible, petulant, mean-spirited, greedy and
corrupt little bullies who are vain, shallow, dishonest, weak-minded,
cavalier and self-obsessed. And I'm being charitable here.
The era of the statesman is over. No matter how excellent our systems
are they cannot function if staffed by incompetent hooligans.
A massive improvement to British politics could be made simply by
selecting the cabinet and prime minister randomly from the population
and then voting only on policies.
>It rewards childish, irresponsible, petulant, mean-spirited, greedy and corrupt little bullies who are vain, shallow, dishonest, weak-minded, cavalier and self-obsessed.
No coincidence then that the latest batch of fuckups were all Eton educated.
I'm not sure that the electorate are educated well enough though - pro-brexit votes were higher in poorer, less-well educated areas (there was a strong linear correlation between the two published in The Economist).
Agree with your general points but would add that print media heavily influencing uneducated people allows any narrative to be justified.
What's scary that if this is true, if the electorate is too silly to vote the right people in, it's only going to get worse.
Populist leaders are unlikely to fund schools properly, because it's not in their interest to do so, it's not in their interest to have an educated voting base, and on it will go.
I guess eventually, a champion will come from someewhere and help rectify the situation, but who knows how long this will take.
You're confusing educated with "educated". Proximity to the university system breeds pro-EU attitudes because the EU enforces a similar ideology in Europe to that found in universities. There's however plenty of people who are educated in the sense of having knowledge, skills, but who aren't close to the university system, who dislike the EU and voted against it.
Arguably the practice of conflating university degrees with education is harmful. Increasingly universities seem to focus on anything but education.
The problem with the UK Tory party is not the personal defects of the captain. The problem is that you’re not eligible for the captaincy unless you agree it was a brilliant idea to scupper the ship in 2016- and can convincingly act baffled why it has been sinking ever since - David Frum
The Tories won the 2019 General elections and a huge majority.
A big part of that success has been "getting Brexit done".
Inflation might be slightly worse because of the Pound but the main causes are the Dollar and energy. The latter is very largely caused by successive policies (or lack thereof) over the last 40 years. The UK has access to its own gas reserves and could be almost completely insulated from the current 'energy crisis'.
Economic policy is significantly impacted by Covid. There are profound disagreement within the Tory Party and Brexit does play a role there but this is not a desperate situation, either.
>The Tories won the 2019 General elections and a huge majority. A big part of that success has been "getting Brexit done".
That's kind of surface level. A large contingent of people were told that Brexit would be amazing and were told that Britain needed a good, strong, competent leader like Boris who would "get it done".
The reality is that the media barons (Rothermere, Murdoch, etc.) that wanted more than anything for the socialist NOT to win, made sure Boris was painted as the strong and competent leader who could deliver a brighter future even though privately they knew he was an idiot.
The UK public bought it.
The media only started saying what they really thought about Boris after the socialist wing of the opposition was throughly routed. The sheep have now "woken up" to Boris being a dangerous idiot even though it is as obvious now if you paid attention as it was when he demonstrated his leadership credentials by hiding from journalists in a fridge.
The media barons now desperately want a Labour government, of course, now that an unthreatening corporate stooge has consolidated power over the party. Starmer will be painted as the strong, sensible leader this country needs to avoid chaos.
Yes, the Tories won big in 2019 on the promises of better things to come. I don't think that they've actually got much Brexit done since then, just stalled a lot, and what did get done didn't benefit anyone.
Empty promises, it seems, can sustain a party for years. But not indefinitely.
Brexit isn’t the reason they’re failing and losing support. The reason is they are not enacting the policies the electorate expects from them, and in general have been pursuing foolish policies (again, assuming for the sake of argument at least that Brexit itself is not one of those).
> Brexit isn’t the reason they’re failing and losing support
Rubbish. You cannot meaningfully talk about Tory party policies without understanding that they are rooted in brexit, and rooted in Brexiteer denial of reality, of purging the unbelievers from their party until nobody competent was left, of thinking "we'll promise voters pie in the sky and voters will love us for it", which selects for people who truly believe their own fantasies, and which worked for a while, until the bill came due.
Why would you "assume for the sake of argument at least that Brexit itself is not one of those foolish Tory policies" when that is starkly untrue: Brexit is not only the most foolish Tory policy, it is the father of the rest of them.
Brexit is a root cause.
1) Ian Dunt "the terrible, inevitable end of the Brexit adventure"
4) David Frum: "The problem is that you’re not eligible for the (UK Tory party) captaincy unless you agree it was a brilliant idea to scupper the ship in 2016- and can convincingly act baffled why it has been sinking ever since"
Brexit allowed for the decoupling of reality from policy.
"We can have our cake and eat it too"
"Borrowing 45 billion to finance tax giveaways to the richest will spur growth and make us prosperous"
There's just so much utter shit sold as reality to a populace dumbed down by an extreme press and politicians who have zero qualms to be utterly dishonest if it serves their agenda or pocket book.
In my mind there's no doubt that this separation from reality was accelerated by Brexit.
But Brexit has been a massive distraction and point of contention for the party and its governments. When decisions about top posts are made based on stances towards Brexit, it's likely they are not optimal under other criteria. Throwing out MPs over votes, toppling a PM for failing to deliver the stance the hardliners wanted (which wasn't necessarily what the electorate voted for), ... all took energy that could've delivered more useful results.
E.g. I'd be very curious how a scenario went where the Brexit vote went as it did, but you didn't have the ERG et al forcing a hardline course. (Which they still do, if I saw right they were in the media again just now about how they'll not let a new PM weaken the stance on Ireland, despite all the mess that has been).
What’s happened is that Labour’s long-standing unelectability has allowed the UK political scene to become dominated by the digestive tract that is the Tory party. Grassroots-electable Tory MPs go in one end, and gradually work their way through the system, extracting any goodness, until a waste product emerges at the other end. This normally slow-moving constipation of political career development has become fast-flowing diarrhoea in recent months, with the current turd being pushed out before properly flushing the previous effluent, which is now looking up from the bowl through dishevelled hair, looking for a way back in through the newly-vacated opening.
This is pretty similar to the problems which Japan has had for a very long time.
The current party is absolutely hopeless and outdated, but it's essentially been a one party rule since the end of WWII. There are no real opposition, only factions in the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan.
The problem was Brexit, or more specifically it going ahead on 51% of the vote without any plan. I couldn't find a more blatant act of economic self-sabotage if I tried.
Where brexit will really make a difference is in the upcoming recession. The ability to change YOUR economic profile without it being voted out by other countries will be crucial.
If you're a country not depending on imports/exports for anything crucial maybe yes, otherwise you're the little guy with no leverage that has to bend over and take it.
Having the last prime minister’s policies blocked by the EU would have been quite helpful. I don’t believe anything she did would have run afoul of EU rules though, but she didn’t have a lot of time.
Well, the conditions before the revolution were probably pretty bad for the average person, so they happily went along in hopes of getting something better. The same cannot be said about pre-brexit Britain, it was just pure self-sabotage.
I think the problem is the 2 party political system that flip flops between the left and right with one party having full power. We need a more balanced PR based system that forces compromise and gives the smaller parties a voice. I believe Brexit and the latest goonery wouldn't have been allowed to happen in such a system.
Readit News
Our institutions are reliable. Our parliament, judiciary, civil services, while weakened by decades of under-funding, remain essentially sound and held together by great hard working people with a deep ethic of civic duty. Our electorate are pretty well educated, active and dutiful. Our elections are fair and well attended. We have a multi-chamber carefully segmented government with plenty of checks and balances to steer a path between conservative and progressive courses.
On the face of it we should have a model democracy and a prosperous nation.
But "politics" in the UK is a seedy, corrupt selection mechanism to find the worst possible human specimens and put them in power. It rewards childish, irresponsible, petulant, mean-spirited, greedy and corrupt little bullies who are vain, shallow, dishonest, weak-minded, cavalier and self-obsessed. And I'm being charitable here.
The era of the statesman is over. No matter how excellent our systems are they cannot function if staffed by incompetent hooligans.
A massive improvement to British politics could be made simply by selecting the cabinet and prime minister randomly from the population and then voting only on policies.
No coincidence then that the latest batch of fuckups were all Eton educated.
Agree with your general points but would add that print media heavily influencing uneducated people allows any narrative to be justified.
Populist leaders are unlikely to fund schools properly, because it's not in their interest to do so, it's not in their interest to have an educated voting base, and on it will go.
I guess eventually, a champion will come from someewhere and help rectify the situation, but who knows how long this will take.
It would be better to acknowledge that they have real concerns, which ought to be addressed.
Arguably the practice of conflating university degrees with education is harmful. Increasingly universities seem to focus on anything but education.
Deleted Comment
A big part of that success has been "getting Brexit done".
Inflation might be slightly worse because of the Pound but the main causes are the Dollar and energy. The latter is very largely caused by successive policies (or lack thereof) over the last 40 years. The UK has access to its own gas reserves and could be almost completely insulated from the current 'energy crisis'.
Economic policy is significantly impacted by Covid. There are profound disagreement within the Tory Party and Brexit does play a role there but this is not a desperate situation, either.
That's kind of surface level. A large contingent of people were told that Brexit would be amazing and were told that Britain needed a good, strong, competent leader like Boris who would "get it done".
The reality is that the media barons (Rothermere, Murdoch, etc.) that wanted more than anything for the socialist NOT to win, made sure Boris was painted as the strong and competent leader who could deliver a brighter future even though privately they knew he was an idiot.
The UK public bought it.
The media only started saying what they really thought about Boris after the socialist wing of the opposition was throughly routed. The sheep have now "woken up" to Boris being a dangerous idiot even though it is as obvious now if you paid attention as it was when he demonstrated his leadership credentials by hiding from journalists in a fridge.
The media barons now desperately want a Labour government, of course, now that an unthreatening corporate stooge has consolidated power over the party. Starmer will be painted as the strong, sensible leader this country needs to avoid chaos.
Brexit is not done, we have many more years of it to come!
Empty promises, it seems, can sustain a party for years. But not indefinitely.
Rubbish. You cannot meaningfully talk about Tory party policies without understanding that they are rooted in brexit, and rooted in Brexiteer denial of reality, of purging the unbelievers from their party until nobody competent was left, of thinking "we'll promise voters pie in the sky and voters will love us for it", which selects for people who truly believe their own fantasies, and which worked for a while, until the bill came due.
Why would you "assume for the sake of argument at least that Brexit itself is not one of those foolish Tory policies" when that is starkly untrue: Brexit is not only the most foolish Tory policy, it is the father of the rest of them.
Brexit is a root cause.
1) Ian Dunt "the terrible, inevitable end of the Brexit adventure"
https://inews.co.uk/opinion/were-now-witnessing-the-terrible...
2) Chris Grey: "This isn’t just a crisis, it’s a Brexit crisis"
https://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2022/10/total-disar...
3) The Guardian: "this is where Brexit has inexorably led"
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/02/whispe...
4) David Frum: "The problem is that you’re not eligible for the (UK Tory party) captaincy unless you agree it was a brilliant idea to scupper the ship in 2016- and can convincingly act baffled why it has been sinking ever since"
https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/1583402812804722689
"We can have our cake and eat it too"
"Borrowing 45 billion to finance tax giveaways to the richest will spur growth and make us prosperous"
There's just so much utter shit sold as reality to a populace dumbed down by an extreme press and politicians who have zero qualms to be utterly dishonest if it serves their agenda or pocket book.
In my mind there's no doubt that this separation from reality was accelerated by Brexit.
E.g. I'd be very curious how a scenario went where the Brexit vote went as it did, but you didn't have the ERG et al forcing a hardline course. (Which they still do, if I saw right they were in the media again just now about how they'll not let a new PM weaken the stance on Ireland, despite all the mess that has been).
The current party is absolutely hopeless and outdated, but it's essentially been a one party rule since the end of WWII. There are no real opposition, only factions in the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan.
It's scary and sad stuff.
Dead Comment
The dark irony is that it's from someone (Truss) who wasn't originally in favour of brexit.
The FT described her economic strategy as "cakeism" - getting to both eat and have your cake.
https://www.ft.com/content/f8f8d943-35e9-423a-9a9a-b6074a6cf...
Dead Comment