Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The strange case of Britain’s demise

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

471–480 of 584 posts

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#471

Post by pydry »

orhmeh09 wrote: post #30
petesergeant wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> his vote share was around Blair’s average Blair got 35% of the vote after 8 years of power and the Iraq war, against a decent challenger and experienced politician. Corbyn got 32% — as the opposition — against an incumbent who’s approval ratings at the time were underwater and who led an unpopular party who’d been in power far too long already.

Blair wasn’t being sabotaged by his own party that bought Facebook ads to sabotage him. I’d say Corbyn did superbly. https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/labour-hq-spent-50...

He also didn't kiss Murdoch's ring. Being principled really screwed him over.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#472

Post by helloworld11 »

nicoburns wrote: post #340
version_five wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I subscribe to the idea that the most important aspect of democracy is to be able to kick out the incumbents (and less important is that every opinion gets direct representation). I think for all the challenges in the US, it does this quite well.

The problem you have in the US is that you only have one alternative choice, so if neither choice is good, then you have no recourse

This isn't quite right. U.S politics is much less party-centric than it is in many other countries. Basically, though you've got a vast majority of candidates for X or Y office who are either democrats or republicans, their platform tendencies can be quite diverse, even though they often go against the grain of their own party's nominal positions. It's somewhat subtle, but this detail of U.S party politics makes for a strong multi-party diversity of candidates even though there are formally only two parties that mean anything for votes.

This is how you can have, for example, a surprisingly moderate republican senator like Susan Collins, sharing the same party with someone like Trump. And then also in the same party, a Rand Paul type.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#473

Post by WeylandYutani »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #342
gman83 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proportional representation also has its problems. Look at the Netherlands, which has 17 different parties in parliament and led to it becoming increasingly difficult to form coalitions, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021%E2%80%932022_Dutch_cabine...

I'm confused when you wrote "becoming increasingly difficult to form coalitions". Mark Rutte has been PM since 2010. Wiki says: "On 2 August 2022, he became the longest-serving Prime Minister in Dutch history..." Without specific examples that demonstrate a trend, the term "increasingly difficult" is editorial-speak. Also, look at NL economy for last 30 years. Looks pretty good compared to any other highly developed…

Yes politics is irrelevant what makes the Netherlands one of the best places to live is and always has been the economy.

Revolution happens when the bread runs out.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#474

Post by mjfl »

int_19h wrote: post #463
mjfl wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really are not grasping how ubiquitously this concept is used. Biden has declared democratically elected people like Georgia Meloni and Victor Orban, and candidates like Marine le Pen to be dangers to democracy. It certainly isn't restricted to Trump. The fact that you jump to him shows how blind you are.

Democratically elected people can absolutely be a danger to democracy. I remember when Russia democratically elected Putin. In 5 years, all opposition TV channels were owned by the government and the oligarchs that chose subserviency over prison. In 10 years, elections were so blatantly fraudulent that voting became pointless.

Yeah but you don't see the problem with trying to influence the elections in Italy by obviously bad comparison between Georgia Meloni and Putin?

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#475

Post by Adverblessly »

Taniwha wrote: post #328
dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, he's complaining that minority parties can join with the opposition to form a majority and consequently bring down the government (this can happen when government forms a minority government or relies on minority parties to form a government). A shocking example of the perils of democracy.

if the minority parties work together with the opposition to form a majority representing a majority of the public surely that's a great example of real democracy in action, it may be a 'peril' to the governing party .... but at that point they represent a minority of the populous - this is not 'shocking' this is how a democratic country should behave I live in New Zealand we have a proportional representative voting…

The problem is not that the minority parties can cooperate with the opposition to bring down the current government, that's indeed a good thing. The problem is that every coalition in recent years has been so narrow that any individual party in the coalition, no matter how small, is still large enough to bring down the coalition on their own.

And my point in general was not that proportional represntation is bad because it has this specific failure mode, but rather that our political climate has put us in the situation where the failure mode happens consistently, and so the real problem democracies are facing (in my opinion) are the factors that lead to this situation rather than specifically the voting system (which at best is a contributing factor).

> our parties know that if they go beyond the pale they wont get reelected

Ours know that going beyond the pale won't cause them any problems, especially for the smaller parties ;)

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#476

Post by matthewmacleod »

brigandish wrote: post #432
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.

> whose talent base was massively thinned by a Brexit Purity witch hunt How many MPs were removed in this witch hunt? And why is it a witch hunt if the electorate is told "this is the most important question for at least a generation", they vote on it, and the representatives in parliament do their damnedest to prevent carrying out the thing voted for, and thus the electorate decide to remove some of them? That sound…

The “witch hunt” refers to the actions taken by the incoming Johnson government, who kicked a bunch of generally respected, experienced parliamentarians out of the party because they weren’t “Brexity” enough. We’re not even talking about anti-Brexit people - just the ones that resisted the obviously broken approach that was being taken.

The result was a government forced to bang on about how great an objectively bad process was because nobody was left to say “if you’re going to do this then you need to be realistic about the cost”. And implementing a known-bad policy while trying to pretend it’s great completely fucks a government.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#477

Post by iso1631 »

sph wrote: post #452
blitzar wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I spoke to life long remainer lib dems in the Tory/Lab marginal seat of Crewe and Nantwich who were voting Tory to stop Corbyn. I spoke to many who similarly voted to stop Corbyn - they were stopping Corbyn because of his vow to reintroduce gas chambers and exterminate every Jew in the land. I am not sure that was his actual policy but many were adamant it was.

I'm no fan of Corbyn but there was a politically motivated character assassination leading up to the election, where all major newspapers reported him and his party for anti-Semitism. The media all parroting lines fed by the Government with no critical analysis is complicit in Tories, and whoever wants to play the dirtiest, to remain in power and do whatever they want. The naive elector sees Corbyn pissing off the Je…

There's this view amongst Corbyn supporters that everyone would have voted for him if it wasn't for the evil newspapers.

Setting aside that in 2019 under 15% of the country read a newspaper, it's a moot point. Part of the job of being leader of a political party, just like any business, is to handle public relations. Corbyn's team was awful at this. It's no good whining about it, you have to handle it.

Personally his pro-wealthy attacks on making the care system fairer were one major thing that turned me off. He spent a lot of political capital trying to defend the right of millionaires to not pay for their own care (and thus increasing everyone else's tax burden).

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#478

Post by dragonwriter »

version_five wrote: post #280
Adverblessly wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Israel with proportional representation, every small party has outsized power since every one of them has enough power to vote down the current government by joining hands with the opposition. As a result, decisions that are undesirable by the majority are consistently made. We are currently after an election but before forming a new government and as part of the coalition negotiations the upcoming government…

I subscribe to the idea that the most important aspect of democracy is to be able to kick out the incumbents (and less important is that every opinion gets direct representation). I think for all the challenges in the US, it does this quite well.

> I subscribe to the idea that the most important aspect of democracy is to be able to kick out the incumbents

In think you are wrong on both points. The most important aspect of democracy is that it produces a government that reflects the popular will; being able to throw out the incumbents—at which the US does exceptionally badly—has some instrumental value to that, but isn’t an independent goal. And the pervasive use of FPTP elections is a big part of why the US is bad both at tossing incumbents and at providing effectivelt representative government.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#479

Post by BeFlatXIII »

robbiep wrote: post #398
version_five wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I subscribe to the idea that the most important aspect of democracy is to be able to kick out the incumbents (and less important is that every opinion gets direct representation). I think for all the challenges in the US, it does this quite well.

I put to you that it in fact does this terribly, because if the government shits itself midway through term there is no mechanism for removal or new elections, as there are in most other countries. Wait out the 4 year term (or two year cycle) and deal with the tribalism

The upside is that the regular cycle means elections are at predictable intervals. US mid-term elections already have low turnout. Snap elections after a vote of no confidence only would decrease turnout.

Re: The strange case of Britain’s demise

#480

Post by BeFlatXIII »

rayiner wrote: post #397
danaris wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I beg your pardon? Re-election rates for incumbents in the US Congress are very high [0]. In the House, they haven't dropped below 80% for at least 60 years. The Senate is slightly less stable, but still way above 60% ever since Reagan was elected. [0] https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/reelection-ra...

But that’s because people like their representative. It’s everyone else’s representative they don’t like.

People love wasteful spending on jobs programs.
Post reply on HN