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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

#171

Post by InCityDreams »

hermitcrab wrote: post #51
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…

>not a failure of voters I disagree. That Brexit was a massive con was obvious to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention. But the electorate voted for it anyway.

...failure of a sad bunch that deserve everything they voted for and didnt vote against. They DIDN'T pay attention, and they still don't. The only winners here are the politicians, but given the recent and not so recent turnovers, i fear even they've given up. Bye, Britain- you were great when i was young and the only, only thing i wish for is your Armed Forces keep their shit together, and far away from the cunts in power.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#172

Post by neaden »

nailer wrote: post #31
Mezzie wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still interesting to think about given America's current gerontocracy. My last position put me in contact with a fair amount of local and state level politicians in the US and I'm very concerned about the talent bases/pipelines of the political class here. There but for the grace of God...

If you’re wondering too: gerontocracy is rule by the elderly. And that’s indeed a good description of the US right now.

Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump were all born within a year of each other, with Biden being 4 years older. There is a specific generation of politicians Born within a decade period who managed to get elected young and have clung to power in both parties very successfully, see John Bohner, Nancy Pelosi, and Ted Kennedy for other examples.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#173

Post by Tiktaalik » 

  For both to do so at once—as happened when, amid recent Tory convulsions, Labour was led by Jeremy Corbyn, a hard-left throwback—is a calamity.
haha yes somehow the problem is (the unelected!) Jeremy Corbyn. Good grief.

No Corbyn was in fact the light out of the tunnel, and it's in particular because he was backstabbed and dragged down by his supposed allies that the country continued to double down on the Conservatives' bad policies that things have continued to slide into worse and worse places.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#174

Post by euix »

dignick wrote: post #145

Like in the US, democracy in the United Kingdom is faltering. Our first past the post electoral system means the Tories can retain power with a third of the (active) electorate voting for them. Labour believes first past the post serves them well, but it doesn’t, because they would have been leading a coalition government in the last several elections under Proportional Representation. Instead it requires Labour to b…

I believe this is a common trend through the west. Here in Canada the current Federal Liberals won the last two election with about 30% of the vote which when you take into account how many people even vote amounts to something like ~5 million people in a country close to 40 million. The kind of overarching policies and rhetoric coming out of government is widely disproportionate to that level of mandate.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#175

Post by jodrellblank »

fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #160
jodrellblank wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boris Johnson met ex-KGB oligarch and made his son a member of the House of Lords[1] He said "let the bodies pile high" about his plan for COVID, a plan which ended up killing ~100,000 people.[2][2.5] > " Oh, and the episode with the mural, where he was too stupid to understand why a picture of fat people with hooked noses oppressing "the workers" would be offensive to a certain group. " Is the certain group Jews? We…

Is the goal here to make Corbyn look good by comparison to Johnson? The median voter seems to think they are both unfit to lead, so it’s probably not an effective argument.

The goal is to refuse to let Conservatives leave that kind of spin uncontested.

Everything the comment accused Corbyn of doing leading to "you people will never win in the real world" was done by BoJo, and it didn't stop him winning in the real world.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#176

Post by notahacker »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #148
jemmyw wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They weren't essentially communists, that is taking the Tory press talking point. They were further left than any other recent popular politicians. Left in the form of worker rights, unionism that sort of thing, not communism. Given how far we've gone into a low wage and poor rights economy I don't think a hard left leadership would have been that bad, especially as it would have been tempered by the rest anyway. How…

Not at all. They even wrote it in their manifesto. What do you call nationalising companies and handing control to the workers? (It's in the 2019 manifesto) That's my point: people, especially the young, don't even recognise it when described under a microscopically thin veneer. That's very worrying. They didn't hide it, either. McDonnell did say clearly that he was a Marxist [1] and Corbyn is a socialist in the very…

I'm the first person to criticise McDonnell and Corbyn's radical postures, but the idea that Labour's manifesto proposal to renationalise the railways, Royal Mail and some utilities is communism is utterly laughable.

Somehow we managed state owned railways and utilities for basically the entire Cold War without ever once feeling tempted to join the Warsaw Pact, and the Royal Mail was a government agency for nearly 400 years...

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#177

Post by narag »

dignick wrote: post #145

Like in the US, democracy in the United Kingdom is faltering. Our first past the post electoral system means the Tories can retain power with a third of the (active) electorate voting for them. Labour believes first past the post serves them well, but it doesn’t, because they would have been leading a coalition government in the last several elections under Proportional Representation. Instead it requires Labour to b…

Electoral systems are very difficult to change. The party with enough votes to lead the change isn't going to be interested, because it's the system that put them in that position.

Edit: So we're talking electoral systems, referenda have a big caveat. Usually you vote a goal, but you don't vote how it's going to be implemented. The brexit was sold as a measure against Brussels' regulation and taxes...

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#178

Post by gmac »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #5
petesergeant wrote: post #4

I feel like the article lays it out pretty well? It’s a government who’s been in power too long, whose talent base was massively thinned by a Brexit Purity witch hunt and the impossibility of delivering the Brexit fairy-tale, and who weren’t simply ejected at the last election because of Corbyn’s overwhelming unpopularity.

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.

Counterpoint: that’s utter nonsense.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#179

Post by mymythisisthis »

euix wrote: post #174
dignick wrote: post #145

Like in the US, democracy in the United Kingdom is faltering. Our first past the post electoral system means the Tories can retain power with a third of the (active) electorate voting for them. Labour believes first past the post serves them well, but it doesn’t, because they would have been leading a coalition government in the last several elections under Proportional Representation. Instead it requires Labour to b…

I believe this is a common trend through the west. Here in Canada the current Federal Liberals won the last two election with about 30% of the vote which when you take into account how many people even vote amounts to something like ~5 million people in a country close to 40 million. The kind of overarching policies and rhetoric coming out of government is widely disproportionate to that level of mandate.

The Liberals are in a coalition with the NDP, combined the two parties received a majority of the popular vote.

A better example would be Doug Ford in Ontario. Ford's Conservatives received only 41% of the popular vote but took 67% of the seats.

The First Past The Post System needs to be retired, it is anti-democratic. Either run-offs or a ranked ballot voting system would be better.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#180

Post by PaulRobinson »

prof-dr-ir wrote: post #35

As a former inhabitant of England, I always thought that those in charge suffered from a uniquely wide 'competence gap' which I would like to define as the difference between someone's self-perceived competence and someone's actual competence. (The term is probably useful more broadly...) Maybe it is the historically class-based society alluded to in the article, but it always stunned me how those at the top, and in…

I'd like to suggest you take a look at almost everything done in power by George W. Bush, Donald Trump, François Holland, Paul von Hindenburg, Silvio Berlusconi, Brian Cowen, Jair Bolsonaro... the list could go on... and compare and contrast and then ask if this is subjectively a phenomenon truly unique to the UK.

Bad leadership of the type you describe has shown itself in every country in the World at some point.

the Kamikwasi budget was the end goal of a section of the Tory party who had been planning every single part of it for well over a decade in think tanks, dinner parties and meeting rooms across London and party conferences. Truss told everyone in the party what she was planning to do as part of her campaign for leader. They voted for it because they believed it was the right thing to do for the country. She and her chancellor then went ahead with executing it, and the markets told them to get it in the bin, pronto.

To paint it as a uniquely insane thing to do based on the class system playing out is an odd thing to do to me. It was a political ideology that was planned, plotted, wargamed and ultimately voted for.

It all points to a need for the UK to be rid of the Tories for a generation or two, but I can't see the relationship to a unique and rabid myopic stupidity evident in it that you seem to.

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