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Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister

bbc.co.uk

621–630 of 651 posts

Re: Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister

#621
post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All arguments from leftists are just "we want to win" in disguise so are completely untrustworthy. I don't understand how you can argue for an unbiased situation and then disregard the entire left side of the political spectrum. How can election results represent anything other than the will of the public?

I 100% support direct democracy but don't really see the point of having general election (i.e. electing representatives that then vote instead of you) ahead of schedule.

Do you feel the same about when the conservative government called for an election in 2017 ahead of schedule?

Re: Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister

#622
post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 100% support direct democracy but don't really see the point of having general election (i.e. electing representatives that then vote instead of you) ahead of schedule.

Do you feel the same about when the conservative government called for an election in 2017 ahead of schedule?

Yes, and fortunately they were punished for it.

Election timing shouldn’t be gameable.

Re: Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister

#623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For all parliament's faults, it's still largely populated by well educated, intelligent individuals who are skilled orators and debaters. Even some of the most awful parliamentarians would easily talk circles around me in any kind of debate. For anyone not aware, a large number of our politicians come from a background at public schools such as Eton, and read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford. Institutions…

I've read some debates held between MPs in Hansard. I can't speak for any sizable portion, but what I did see on the topics I was interested in is a shockingly low form of discussion abound with fallacies, name-calling, and soliciting the opinions of unqualified individuals to inform the law. Sure, they may run circles around you or me when it comes to debating some aspects of policy. But not around someone who's inv…

That varies a lot by party. I watched some debates during COVID to do with lockdowns. One stuck in my mind because it was to do with the accuracy of epidemiological modelling.

On the conservative side you have several politicians who had actually been programmers before they went into politics, one who worked with implementing risk models at a betting firm. They had generally read the Ferguson/ICL papers and understood why they were deeply flawed, and could talk at length about the concrete technical problems that had undermined COVID modelling, both statistical and implementation wise. For example, one MP talked about a specific paper and why it was based on circular logic, others about the validation of the underlying assumptions. And of course they asked a lot of pointed questions about how such shoddy 'science' had been allowed to dominate the government, about how the quality of scientific advice could be improved. Concrete things that they'd already thought about a lot.

Then the SNP and Labor MPs stood up. It was night and day. They were, primarily, angry that a debate was being held in the first place. Their entire spiel was "How dare the evil Tories criticize amazing SCIENTISTS who are only trying their best". One even cited the conclusions of the specific paper a Tory MP had just ripped to shreds 10 minutes earlier, apparently without realizing he was discussing the same research. None of them had any knowledge of the actual topic whatsoever. Their worldview went no deeper than: academics are brilliant, Tories are evil, why are we even wasting time debating this?

This is ultimately the reason the conservatives have such long durations in government. The quality of MP they attract seems to be much higher overall. Yes they have lots of the Oxford PPE types but overall they're less angry, way more polite and analytical, and way more likely to have concrete skills obtained outside of politics. A good example of this problem for the left came up just a few days ago where a supposedly neutral Channel 4 presenter was caught on a hot mike calling Steve Baker a "cunt". Baker - a Tory MP and one of their former programmers - just politely brushed it off, clearly the better man.

This sort of thing is routine in Labour circles and it puts voters off. Whilst some may rail against classism, ultimately most people want to see civilized debate between politicians who don't clearly want to kill each other.

Re: Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister

#624
post #98

I am really sick of this UK drama. They’re really the Kardashians of the world politics at this point. Trying to stay relevant constantly. Just go away.

Don't worry, Trump will be back soon enough and all eyes will be on the USA again!

Biden seems to be doing already a stellar job at that.

Re: Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister

#625

What the UK really needs right now is a second Boris stint, this time with the bid to get the UK back into the EU. Nothing less will suffice.

I don't think the EU would want us back right now. There are too many who oppose the EU and they would risk Brexit happening all over again.

Re: Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister

#626

I’m not sure what is more of a shit show: the GOP seeking to control every aspect of a woman’s life and undermine democracy or UK governance. It’s insane. What’s next? They bring back Boris?

> They bring back Boris?

There's a good chance that will happen.

Re: Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister

#627

This might sound crazy... but if the UK is already de facto ruled by financial markets, in the sense that the PM has to step down if the markets don't like what they're doing, maybe it's time to try prediction market-based governance for real? What would've happened if instead of simply announcing the proposal, Truss had described the proposal and the government had sponsored a conditional prediction market on the ec…

This happens all the time. People close to any administration "leak" plans to the media to see how they land. Not good? Just deny it. Good? Guess we go ahead.

That's not the same as what he's suggesting though is it? He's suggesting a market based approach where you present possible policies to the market and arrange it so that the best one for your metric (e.g. reducing inequality) is also the best one to invest in. Then you enact the policy with the highest price.

Essentially you enlist the modelling skills of all those extremely highly paid quants to figure out which policy is the best.

I imagine it would be quite hard to set up - especially in a way that keeps the incentives you want intact - but I think it's a very interesting idea and deserves to be tried.

Re: Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister

#628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US parties _can_ do that, too (and notably did with Nixon). The refusal to do it with Trump was a moral failing of the Republican leadership, not an inherent systemic limitation.

Does it matter? It will never happen again in the US.

... Wait, what? The US will never get a bad president who should be removed before their term ends again? That seems... optimistic.

Re: Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister

#629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Abortion and guns are different. Many rural voters own guns and personally feel a loss from gun control. The average rural voter has a basically libertarian bent and would probably be pretty happy with a truce that they are left alone about guns and women are left alone about abortion. Like it or not the electoral map favors rural voters, Democrats can recruit more urban voters and it will make no difference for winn…

Depends on how those votes are distributed, in both directions, but I doubt either would make a huge difference. One thing to remember is that rural areas are less red than cities are blue. A 75/35 split seems to be the most common rural distribution, whereas many city districts are 90% dem with the GOP struggling to outperform the greens or libertarians.

The GOP stands to gain nothing in the urban cores outside of a few southern cities and Texan cities, but they currently live for the suburban fight. The Dems biggest struggle out in the sticks is less that they can't field any candidate that isn't an 80 year old union man or a local youngin' fresh out of college who says all the wrong things (and is thus unelectable).

Re: Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister

#630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Making abortion an effective wedge issue was an excellent strategy by the GOP, no doubt. And continuing to pursue gun control is an unforced error on the part of the Democrats (though they eased off quite a bit on that starting with Obama, to be fair). 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 affordabilit…

The GOP didn't so much make abortion a wedge issue as much as evangelicals captured a big chunk of the party's lame duck platform during the various positional realignments of the 60s-80s. The GOP, by almost sheer luck, managed to stumble in to an apathetic voter block, and came out with one of the strongest, most long lived cores of voters out there.

The real strategic leadership of that block mostly died off in the 2000's though, leaving evangelicals headless and politically adrift. These days most seem to have reverted back to being somewhat apathetic in the positive direction, and aside from abortion, are voting completely based on the products out outrage culture.

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