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The strange case of Britain’s demise

economist.com

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Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#91

Post by justin66 »

brangex wrote: post #59
calewis wrote: post #12

It’s also the heavy manipulation of the free and social press by Murdoch, Paul Darce and state actors.

Do you mean Brexit? Otherwise I don't recall the last time that the Murdoch press has had any influence on any policy in either the EU or the United States. The Murdoch press was for Sweden-style COVID-19 policies and deescalation in Ukraine. If it had been listened to, we'd have low gas prices and economic prosperity now. Instead, Biden pumped up the stock market with COVID-19 relief funds handed out to his interest…

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Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#92

Post by Scarblac »

paganel wrote: post #61
skippyboxedhero wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't (the indicator for this is that Reeves is saying exactly the same thing). It is hard to be brief but: * Financial services - totally fucked, most of the VC funding in the UK comes from overseas investors because pension and insurance rules (that were largely adopted from Europe) mean that they have to own large amounts of govt bonds...the recent problems indicate how wise that was. Everything isn't working:…

I'm not from the UK, but from a distance (the other side of Europe) it looks like UK's ongoing economic implosion seems to also have been caused by the people over there going all in on "the service industry!" sometime in the late '80s - the '90s, and leaving aside almost anything that involved making physical things, from roads to steel to stuff like that. Imo that might work for a very small country or for a city-s…

I think it was kind of possible to go so hard on services, as part of the EU Single Market. It was a place where the EU concentrated lots of its finance industry, for instance.

We know how that went...

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#93

Post by justin66 »

hermitcrab wrote: post #82

>Some at the top still benefit from unearned deference. Indeed. Quote a bit of Latin in a posh accent at most British people and they seem to completely take leave of their senses. A bit like the tonic immobility you can induce in some animal by turning them over and stroking them. This is why we have had ridiculous figures like Johnson and Rees Mogg in positions of power.

There was a time a proper English accent earned one instant respect among Americans. We fixed that by taking some Englishmen and letting them talk on cable TV.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#94

Post by epistasis »

photochemsyn wrote: post #84
hermitcrab wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Promoting the proxy war in Ukraine Taking a lead in helping the Ukrainians defend themselves seems like about the only laudable thing the UK government has done in a long time.

Pushing for the expansion of NATO and promoting a regime change operation in Ukraine that resulted in a government that attempted to ban the Russian language and which had an undeniable neo-Nazi element affiliated with it was not such a good idea in retrospect, was it? Imagine if a regime came to power in the USA, and it attempted to ban the Spanish language, eliminated Spanish-language versions of government documen…

> attempted to ban the Russian language

Yikes, this is a terrible lie. Source: the Ukrainians in my household who were primarily Russian speaking up until February.

Your comment has no basis in reality, is just regurgitating the propaganda of a genocidal autocrat which is attempting to extinguish Ukrainians as a language.

Repeating lies like this is somewhat despicable, and though I'm trying to remain polite because of HN rules, such ridiculous propaganda that you are spouting is beyond the pale and in real life would be close to fighting words.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#95

Post by richliss »

It's planned destruction by bought and paid for politicians from both Labour and Conservative working on behalf of agents of foreign governments. Hell, two of our most recent Prime Ministers have citizenship of a foreign power and no one sees that as something that should stop them from being Prime Minister.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#96

Post by askew »

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #18

Remarkable article. 2000-odd words, goes into great detail talking about politics, psycho-analyzing the Tories...it is all because they went to Eton...of course...the Brexit, the bankers...it is all so simple. A brief sentence is expended on planning, no mention about supply-side problems, the productivity crisis in govt (which is now 50% of the economy)...nothing. I will say this another way, you can measure the int…

> The current Cabinet are fine, there are lots of very obviously competent people

Hah!

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#97

Post by gghhzzgghhzz »

equalsione wrote: post #45
mytailorisrich wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a deeper problem than simply being in power for too long. They have been in power that long because the alternative offer was worse as you mention.

From the outside looking in, was the opposition worse? On the one hand, labour seem really similar to the Tories - disunited, dogma over common sense and oddly out of touch. Their policies _were_ opposite to Tory policies but they are trying to be an opposition so… Yes Corbin was a leftie (corduroy elbow patches and all) but he’s a leader of a left wing party. It’s like complaining that Thatcher was a bit right-wing.…

no it wasn't worse.

There are massive systemic issues in the country. Lack of housing, regional inequality, geographical inequality, falling real terms wages, chronic underfunding of R&D. Basically everything is falling apart. 40 years of financialisation of public services and nearly every aspect of our lives (there's virtually nothing you can do as part of your daily routine that doesn't trigger a transfer of wealth from public or household money to the top). The Brexit vote itself was partially a reaction to these issues.

These things need real solutions and real ideas. Any ideas that even start to address them let alone reverse the issues will look radical, and Labour 2017 / 2019 was barely doing that just offering a mild social democratic platform that would not be out of place in Northern Europe or indeed in the 1983 SDP-Liberal manifesto.

Adding to that we would have had a planned and controlled Brexit, with certain Eu agreements being replaced with equivalent things with different names.

All of this is mostly academic though as the first restrictions in the pandemic would have given the key to removing a Corbyn government by an effective establishment coup.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#98

Post by epistasis »

krona wrote: post #58
photochemsyn wrote: post #36

There are several obvious culprits, here's the timeline: 1) Promoting the proxy war in Ukraine and impeding diplomatic negotiations, plus pushing for the expansion of NATO, had the result of pushing gas prices through the roof, driving record inflation (and enriching a few gas suppliers). This is the primary cause for the recent economic slump. The Neoconomist magazine is not going to address this issue, however. 2)…

> Face reality: the ~40-yr neoliberal program has been an absolute disaster, and should be thrown on the scrap heap of history immediately. I still prefer NHS waiting lists to breadlines.

In the US. The waiting lines for specialists are outrageous, a minimum of months to easily half a year for several types of specialists. And that's with devoting a massive amount of our GDP to healthcare, and receiving bad outcomes for it.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#99

Post by Havoc »

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #48
Havoc wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Economic reform" is just the latest soundbite. Half hearted acknowledgement that current tory policies have failed so by necessity the next thing being pushed must be branded as a change. Hence "reform". I have yet to see anything of substance fly under that banner.

It isn't (the indicator for this is that Reeves is saying exactly the same thing). It is hard to be brief but: * Financial services - totally fucked, most of the VC funding in the UK comes from overseas investors because pension and insurance rules (that were largely adopted from Europe) mean that they have to own large amounts of govt bonds...the recent problems indicate how wise that was. Everything isn't working:…

That is a perfect example of what I mean by reform chatter being thin on substance. Impressive listing of problems. Incredibly hand-wavy on what to do about it:

>which will now require structural changes.

>needs fundamental reforms in multiple areas.

Everyone can see the problems. Everyone agrees there is need to reform. Actual viable game plans on how to fix it seem to be in short supply though. Current political elites (of all shades) are all about "we promise to make it better" rally slogans like increase trade, reduce redtape, boost growth etc. Those are aspirations not plans.

Reform UK (the party) in fairness has more precise language (and numbers) in their policies than labour/con, but even there it goes fuzzy on key aspects that determine viability. Funding for the very specific spending promises comes from very nebulous sources like "reduce wasteful spending". Not that it matters - small opposition parties can promise unicorns for all. By the time they reach enough votes to get to implementation the unicorn has morphed to a donkey with a superglued on horn.

Perhaps I'm just jaded & expect too much from politicians...

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#100

Post by gghhzzgghhzz »

petesergeant wrote: post #74
equalsione wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the outside looking in, was the opposition worse? On the one hand, labour seem really similar to the Tories - disunited, dogma over common sense and oddly out of touch. Their policies _were_ opposite to Tory policies but they are trying to be an opposition so… Yes Corbin was a leftie (corduroy elbow patches and all) but he’s a leader of a left wing party. It’s like complaining that Thatcher was a bit right-wing.…

> Corbyn was a leftie ... but he’s a leader of a left wing party Corbyn was hard left in a distinctly centrist country whose "Left Wing Party" is (despite its roots) very much left-leaning centrist, and who's only ever seen real success while occupying the middle-ground. > voters want something like Tory-lite. Blair did that and no one wants to go back to it If nobody wanted to go back to it then we'd have Rebecca Lo…

The policies were popular. 2017 saw the reversal of decline in Labour votes that started under Blair. Labour got more votes than any Blair election other than 1997.

There is a large constituency against the status quo in the UK. We have proof of that in the 2016 Brexit referendum, where 17 million people voted strongly against the establishment line and effectively against an economic model that we had had for 40 years. People voted in part to take back control, and what is nationalisation of basic aspects of our lives like water / housing / energy / drug manufacturing / transport etc if not taking back control?

Since the pandemic, the implementation of a chaotic version of Brexit, and the cost of living crisis. The underlying aspects of the 2017 / 2019 Labour policies are even more starkly relevant. Everything has been laid bare, and for some reason the two main parties are now completely devoid of ideas or vision.

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