Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would say that the hate between parties is not nearly as strong as the hate within parties, often veiled entirely or hidden in extremely polite language. After all, the other party is opposition, your own party is competition . I remember Jo Cox, who was the conservative who got killed? The death of Jo Cox wasn't a party political matter, it was a US-style radicalized loner.
For the record, she was a Labour MP, not conservative.
Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister
511–520 of 651 posts
Re: Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister
#512Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t know much about UK politics but why can’t you guys get Kemi Badenoch elected? She is younger and did not go to Oxford. Try something different. Maybe Oxford is overrated:)
Why? She's a Brexiteer running on an "anti-woke" platform, we need more serious people instead.
Re: Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister
#513Earlier quoted context omitted.
Her government proposed an unfunded budget that caused a gilt market panic. Part of the mortgage market dried up. Variable mortgage rates exploded. Pension funds had to resort to emergency measures. The Bank of England had to intervene.
I'd love to know why proposing borrowing to cover top-bracket tax rate cuts sends Britain spiraling into crisis but in America that is just how we do.
Re: Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister
#514Earlier quoted context omitted.
The way I explain it to American friends is that any member of the public, if they have £45,000+ per year to spare, can send their son to Eton. Simple.
Is that really true though? Money is the only factor in admission? No entrance exams? No rejections for “families we don’t want to be associated with”? No special admittances for prestigious families that don’t get charged? If not, maybe that explanation isn’t a very helpful one.
Given the life-long opportunities an Eton education affords someone, and the likely backgrounds of that 75%, you’d be reasonable in suspecting “a system of perpetuated inherited privilege”.
Re: Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister
#515Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t know much about UK politics but why can’t you guys get Kemi Badenoch elected? She is younger and did not go to Oxford. Try something different. Maybe Oxford is overrated:)
She's on the right wing of the ring wing party in the UK, so she's likely not a good candidate for a general election where you need at least some centerist support. This is likely why Labour are doing well with Kier Starmer as he's palitable enough for modorate Tories to vote for.
Re: Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister
#516Earlier quoted context omitted.
Britain, Brazil, Australia, Philippines, India, Turkey, U.S … it is mind numbing that of all the good, talented people these countries have, only the dumbest, worst of the worst end up in positions of power. Depressing. At this point, we can just randomly pick a citizen to be President or PM. We might have better chances that way
> Britain, Brazil, Australia, Philippines, India, Turkey, U.S I know it is fairly popular on HN to say that any party that is coded ring-wing is terrible. But, I genuinely think that there isn't a single person with enough nuanced knowledge of even 3 of those countries at the same time to make any kind of sweeping political statement about them. What makes you think that countries or opposition parties with less spot…
No it's not, HN is definitely biased conservative.
Re: Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister
#517Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agree 100%. IMO abandoning the working class is by far the stupidest thing the Democratic Party has done in recent memory. And even now, as it should be becoming crystal clear, they still don't seem to have the ability for introspection. They keep thinking they should be winning handily, and on the merits this is a plausible argument, but they really have a hard time with culture. I find it very frustrating, because…
The problem is, with what platform are you gone capture those working class people. You can't just win on the rural working class. You need to convince deserve urban working and upper class citizens. In the US, if you want to go after the rural working class then you better be talking correct about abortion and guns otherwise you will get nowhere. Its really not easy to do.
IMO the Democrats would have been better off focusing most of their effort on something like single payer health care, along with minimum wage and housing affordability, things like that. Those are issues that are ostensibly part of the party platform but are not high priorities.
Re: Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister
#518Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nicola Sturgeon said that she detests the Tories. her own party (the Scottish National Party, whose central goal is Scottish independence) distanced themselves from those comments. Labour are not saying things like this. the Lib Dems are not saying things like this. and the Tories themselves aren’t saying things like this either this is the exception not the rule, and as evidence of this, it’s something that’s been t…
> Tories themselves aren’t saying things like this either Maybe not, but pretending they are better while ignoring the homophobia, racism, sexism and offensive class warfare from the like of Boris Johnson seems disingenuous.
Re: Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister
#519Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you need to read more into Thatcher and what happened under her to understand why some sections of society reacted like this. I don't know a huge amount about Regan, but I doubt you can really compare them. Britain in the late 70s and early 80s had huge issues which Thatcher addressed, but in hugely contentious ways, in some cases destroying entire industries and their communities. The structural impact of so…
I've got three books about Thatcher I am reading right now. To interpret Thatcher you need to know about the labor unrest in the UK in the 1970s. Back then there seemed to always be a strike in some chokepoint industry (Coal mining, trucking) that threw the rest of the economy into chaos, almost like a general strike. This gets talked about it in this song https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/(Wish_I_Could_Fly_Like)_Superm.…
The leader of the coal miners union didn't even fight for coal minor wages, he was talking actually revolution.
Some privatizations were sensible, lets remember that Nordics, Switzerland and so on also did that and you can do it well depending on the situation. But they are complex issues that you need to consider rationally on what you want to do.
The British government rail was probably to big, doing to many things and selling part of that and splitting it up and opening it up to some competition is sensible.
In my opinion labor in the 1950/1960 just did poorly, overly focus on some of their socialist hangups rather then making smart policy. Like Britain had debt after the war for sure, but its not like it was bombed to the ground (the Blitz was minor compared what most countries experienced), you have a rebuilding Europe. Britain had a world class aircraft industry, advanced nuclear, building lots of cars, world leading and so and so. Its had a great good electronics sector as well. Being among the best in the world in almost every major technology.
And somehow that couldn't be leveraged into much economic success. You have terrible growth and massive inflation just 20 year later. Something did go wrong, and you can't blame the conservatives. Even when they were in power for period they only slightly slow down the agenda.
To be sure, good things were done in that period as well it certainty wasn't all bad but its hard to look at pre-Tracher Britain and be overly impressed.