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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

#211

Post by mjfl »

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…

Isn't a parliamentary system effectively proportional representation? It's just prime minister that's first past the post, but from a proportional vote in parliament?

Labour is not going to save Britain. They are just going to redistribute money that is more and more and more "not there" anymore. The EU is not going to save Britain, they are having a crisis too. Nothing will save Britain, it is doomed for the next couple hundred years or so.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#212

Post by tailspin2019 »

kybernetikos wrote: post #193
tailspin2019 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. I voted against it, but to properly have an informed enough opinion on it really required a good understanding of our economy and how it interacted with that of the EUs. I believe Brexit was such a complex issue that most normal voters could not be expected to be able to be informed enough to actually weigh up the decision by any useful means other than relying on superficial emotional decision making or…

> Having said that, after some cursory reading on the topic, outside of the normal media spin, I believed that we were better in then out. But I disagree that it was trivially obvious for the average voter to determine this. That might be true, but > Clearly we didn’t make the most of these potential upsides though and we were never going to because the gvnt was clearly not competent enough to see such a complex tran…

Fair enough, but it’s a lot easier to confidently take that position in retrospect, but not so obvious (IMHO) ahead of time.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#213

Post by gghhzzgghhzz »

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…

> What do you call nationalising companies and handing control to the workers? (It's in the manifesto)

There is a confusion here between the situation we have and how we address it.

My water supply - water being that thing that falls from the sky on to the top of my house, and humans die if we don't have any within 3 days - is owned by a Hong Kong investment fund that is incorporated in the Cayman Islands.

If you asked the person on the street then they would say that this ownership model is radical, and public ownership of water is conservative.

However, if you instead ask them to comment on taking water ownership from a private company into the public domain , they'd say that was radical.

The issue is that we've moved so far in terms of financialisation of nearly every aspect of our lives, that any attempt to address that will be seen as radical.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#214

Post by motohagiography »

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.

How is deference earned, one wonders.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#215

Post by notahacker »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #190
notahacker wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 40…

Nationalisation with control handed to the workers . And of course there's also the little thing about McDonnell and Corbyn being Marxist and socialist. Again, too many people still seem not to be willing to see what's not even hidden. History should really be compulsory over the whole of secondary school. Edit: they had hinted it very strongly but did not mention it in the 2017 manifesto apart from calling to promot…

I'm not sure the italicised bit conveys quite the sinister undertones you intended.

Consider the following: if you consider communism to be a bad thing which people should be vigilant against, arguments to the effect that the defining feature of communism is having rail decisions made by employees of a state railway company rather than the boards of Abellio and Arriva[1] probably aren't going to help. Firstly because there's a wee bit more to communism than that, and secondly because the consensus of British rail users is that decision making concerning our railways is currently crap.

There are plenty of decent arguments that Labour's 2019 nationalisation plans wouldn't solve the fundamental problems of those services, but the idea that it's basically Marxist-Leninism isn't one of them.

[1]incidentally entities which are wholly owned by governments, just not the British one

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#216

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

Mezzie wrote: post #6
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 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...

Locally the person that I know that was most heavily involved in politics, serving as organizer for a well known local non profit, campaign manager for a mayoral campaign, etc, finally reached the limits of their patience. Now they use their very considerable organization skills as a marketing exec at a startup.

Lessig proved tiresome in the later parts of his media campaign, but I don't think he was wrong about this basic asymetry: there's some political positions that are far more likely to receive substantial financial support, and this distorts nearly everything in our political system. The people who crusade against this are generally speaking, doing something irrational out of principle, meanwhile the people they're fighting just get more money and power.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#217

Post by [deleted] »

jtrip wrote: post #130
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:…

> (if people from outside the UK can believe it, some local councils are introducing rules which mean you will be fined if you exit your neighbourhood in a car to go to another part of the same city). Can you give an article or city name for this?

[deleted]

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#218

Post by klelatti »

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #157
taffronaut wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because pension and insurance rules (that were largely adopted from Europe) mean that they have to own large amounts of govt bonds Let me help you with the brevity - you mean Solvency II. So you're fine with governments bailing out the financial system with our money, but not happy if they put (admittedly heavy-handed) measures in place to stop the casino mentality.

No, I mean Solvency II amongst other rules. There are many others (pension regulations are even worse). Let me help you with complexity (financial regulation doesn't happen to be particularly simple, it won't yield before your mighty intellect because you had a thought, you have to do the work). Er no, the reason Solvency II exists is to bailout govts (and insurance companies, it is a tacit way of decreasing competit…

Actually key parts of Solvency II (Matching Adjustment - drafted by the U.K.) specifically favours corporate debt over government bonds which is in part why actually U.K. insurers don’t hold much government debt at all. Really odd that you should get this so wrong.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#220

Post by 29athrowaway »

The price of Britain surviving WW2 was losing their superpower status.

During WW2, the US assimilated all of the British technological and organizational advantages. The Tizard mission is an example of this.

After the Suez crisis, they lost their superpower status, and now they are now a vassal state.

Then they had a second opportunity by remaining a part of the EU, and by strengthening the Commonwealth. They left the EU, and now with King Charles we will have to see what happens to the Commonwealth.

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