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The elite that failed
- lettergram 8y agoThis is a time where the monarch can and should apply mild pressure. That’s kind of the benefit of a monarchy, they have the long term interest at heart and can (used sparingly) knock people into place
- lainga 8y agoWouldn't that only aggravate republicans?
- zjaffee 8y agoThe monarchs continued legitimacy and global reach is only sustained through a lack of domestic political involvement.
- lettergram 8y agoThat's the claim, I'm saying is bullocks. There are monarch's who've been asked to return and there are monarchs (such as Norway) who have a very high approval rating. Assisting in fixing the whole Brexit thing would be amazingly good for them politically.
- paulpauper 8y ago2016: brexit vote indicates failure of elite 2019: failure to ratify vote indicates failure of elite pick one
- topspin 8y ago> pick one That is a model example of a false dichotomy.
- Supermancho 8y agoIt can be interpreted as a model example of a paradox just as easily. Depends on how you want to interpret the actors and motives.
- Gibbon1 8y agoYeah that is just sophistry. 2016: Incompetent elite's create a problem. 2019: Incompetent elites make it worse. Deeper problem is part of the neoliberal revolution was popular will was to be neutered, the political process was to be neutered. So that they couldn't interfere with the the free market or oppose the power of the rentier class. So now you have voters, politicians, and the media that see politics and policy as a game that doesn't matter. Two generations of this and people wonder why there is no competence. Big wonder!
- User23 8y agoThe problems of the EU were well known among educated persons well before the Maastricht treaty was even signed. https://www.lrb.co.uk/v14/n19/wynne-godley/maastricht-and-all-that https://www.lrb.co.uk/v14/n19/wynne-godley/maastricht-and-al...
- Gibbon1 8y agoAnd that's just another data point that shows incompetence. The Maastricht treaty took away fiscal and central banking tools that governments could use and replaced them with... nothing. That just proves my point here.
- georgeecollins 8y agoThere is a great Alvin Toffler quote that foretold this: " One of the functions of a legislature is to negotiate compromises among various constituencies. Well, the constituencies today are so numerous, their demands are so complex, and the rate of change in their demands and in the constituencies is so high that nobody in Congress represents anybody anymore. They represent themselves. Because their constituency changes from day to day. And as a consequence, their ability to broker out differences to arrive at compromise is more limited than it was. "
- jbob2000 8y agoI had this same thought when thinking about Toronto and their distinct lack of action on public transit. We keep flip flopping on whether or not to build this or build that or tear down this or that, blah blah blah. It’s all because the city is waaaayyy too diverse and there’s literally no way to meet in the middle on this; somebody is going to lose, and anybody losing is unfathomable, so the better option is... for everybody to lose.
- georgeecollins 8y agoAnother thing is how commentators describe constituencies in psycho-graphic terms, not concrete interests. You hear that rural people are "unhappy and left behind." Well some rural people in England are that, and some work at the Nissan factory and they probably don't see Brexit as being good for their job. The point is that there aren't enough people working at an automobile plant (in England) to form a really powerful constituency. Society is more fragmented and there are fewer large blocks of people who have a concrete political interest.
- fishermanbill 8y agoA system failed not the ‘elites’. This was a referendum we should never have had. This was a referendum that was badly executed. This was a referendum whose result was impossible to achieve. This is a disaster of a modern democracy. Never have a referendum that doesn’t explain in detail how to achieve either result. If you can’t explain how to achieve the results then it’s not a matter that is appropriate for a referendum. Brexit falls squarely in the latter camp.
- oh_sigh 8y agoPerhaps if the Brexit referendum required 66% or some other supermajority, this would not be so hard to make happen. I don't know enough about Brexit to know whether I would be in the leave or remain camp if I was allowed to vote in the referendum, but I do know that they screwed up in the beginning by making this massive decision only need 50% + 1 vote in order to be passed. However, since those were the rules of the game, I do think they should go forward with it.
- pintxo 8y agoThe required acceptance level is one factor. But I guess an even more important factor is the „what are we actually voting for“ question. I‘d have solved this by having two votes, one to start a negotiation about the exit terms. And then a second one, once an agreement on the terms has been reached. That way, everyone can know ehat they are actually voting for.
- benmmurphy 8y agoI'm not sure how this is a failure of the elite. The elite want to be in the EU and we are still in the EU. That doesn't seem to be a failure to me. That seems to be a success.
- kuhhk 8y ago> and we are still in the EU Ben, I hope you do realize your premise changes in roughly ~10 weeks, unless something extraordinary happens. Theresa is determined to leave..
- fullshark 8y agoSeems like the "elites" are holding out hope for something extraordinary to me, like a second referendum. Brexit being as painful as possible is a means to achieve said goal.
- benmmurphy 8y agoI actually think this is unlikely. I actually I hope it happens because I think the EU is a long term con. Basically the EU is holding free trade as a hostage. Free trade offers great benefits but the EU as an institution can continue to force a greater political union on the countries forming the union even if this political union is not to the benefit of these countries. We are seeing it right now with the Brexit negotiations. There are two clear paths that solve the Irish issue but neither of them are possible because it would destroy the EU as an institution. Solution 1) Split the tariff union and the political union. The UK joins the tariff union. I honestly think most leave voters would be happy with the compromise of losing control over tariffs if they retain control over everything else. However, this basically destroys the EU as a political union because the EU as political union only exists because of the benefits of free trade and if every country can defect and maintain free trade they will. Solution 2) The EU offers a free trade area between the EU and the UK. This has some negative consequences for the EU and the UK in that they are restricted in the way in which they can increase tariffs from before the agreement to post the agreement. Again I think most leave voters would be happy with this trade off. Also, this restriction should not be a big deal for the EU. However, from the point of view of the EU as institution this is very bad because the UK is basically enjoying the benefits of free trade without the political union. If the UK is able to do this then all the other countries who do not benefit from the political union will want to do it and the political union will collapse. The EU is a big problem for the UK going forward because they can keep demanding a closer and closer political union and use the threat of the UK losing free trade to make this possible. At what point should the UK walk away from the EU? I think it is better to rip off the band-aid now. And just to add. Most economists believe free trade is beneficial to all parties. So why are the UK and the EU not able to agree on a WTO free trade area deal which would solve the Irish issue and presumably benefit both the EU and the UK in a post-brexit world? Surely, this is a win-win outcome unless you are trying to punish someone for taking a branch in the game tree you don't want them to. The reason I think it is unlikely that the UK will leave the EU with a hard brexit is because it doesn't seem like the government has taken reasonable steps in order to maximise the benefit for this course of action. Surely, if you considered a hard brexit an option you would be actively negotiating bilateral and free trade agreements with other countries. I understand if you were resource strapped this might not be something you would pursue but the UK government is not resource strapped and it would seem to make sense to pursue these deals even if there was like a 10% chance of a hard brexit. May and her government are probably massively incompetent but it is hard to believe that they are that incompetent. I suspect either May or her bureaucracy believe the Britain's interests are best served staying in the EU and they are trying to engineer the situation to maximise the chance of this happening.
- makomk 8y agoI've seen the argument this article trots out that the referendum should've required a supermajority a lot, but it always seems more like an attempt to block something the author doesn't want than an actual principled argument. There was no supermajority required to take the major and quite possibly irreversible step of joining the EU. Indeed, there was no referendum on it at all; the 1975 referendum was on leaving after we'd already joined, and came with the same terrifying warnings about the perils of leaving as the more recent one. The government of the time just decided to join and put it through parliament like any other law. It squeaked through the House of Commons on an incredibly tight 309-301 vote...
- flukus 8y ago> the 1975 referendum was on leaving after we'd already joined Something I see forgotten often is the referendum experience in other countries like Canada and Australia (who have them more frequently) is that most referendums fail, it's incredibly hard to get a vote to change the status quo because you have to convince people why changing is necessary. A vote to remain in the EEC/EU should not be seen as the same as a vote to join would have been. I suspect this is why there has not been a second brexit vote, they know how much momentum there is behind leave side. Well that and the decade of uncertainty of stay vote would bring.
- scarmig 8y agoIt's tricky. The EU of 1975 is very different from the EU of 2018 (indeed, the "EU" didn't exist then, just the EEC). Does joining a customs union even require a referendum? My initial strong gut response to this is that it shouldn't, but it's also abundantly clear now that a customs union can easily lead to much greater integration over decades. Boiling a frog. Note that all the increased integration was accepted by the elected governments of the UK, so you can't write this off as some authoritarian, anti-democratic power creep by the EU bureaucracy. And now the immediate implications of leaving the EU are much greater than the immediate implications in 1975 of joining a customs union, so even if a 50%+ referendum was enough for a customs union, a strong argument can be made that leaving the EU should be held to a higher standard. I think the main takeaway of this experience should be this: the EU should never accept new members unless there's durable majority support in the member country for being a part of the EU. One plausible version of this is 60%+ support in two consecutive elections.
- netwanderer3 8y agoThe law of the universe dictates that our world is always moving toward entropy (chaos) no matter what, and things will keep getting more and more chaos everyday. These so called "elite" politicians are after all just homo sapiens, thus limited by human capabilities. They are nothing more special than you and me. Nobody really has any fucking clue what's going on or how to fix it. Nobody has been more wrong throughout the history than those expert economists. Everybody sort of just wings it and hope they will get lucky. Even a broken clock is correct twice a day. This shows you what a clusterfuck we are all in. Stop fighting, go get a drink and just enjoy the ride as there's nothing we can do to fight against the force of entropy. Shit will sort itself out.
- scarmig 8y agoEquating the popular sense of chaos and entropy doesn't really provide much insight into "the world," unless you're making a literal claim that all microstates of "the world" are equally plausible and we ergodically explore them.
- hemantv 8y agoBut human nature is Inertia. So humans should be striving for less Chaos.
- netwanderer3 8y agoWhich I think precisely is reason why so many people are suffering with depression and anxiety. People just cannot cope with the speed of change everywhere around the world. Compared to the 80's or 90's in which life was much more slower and calmer, today everybody is living life on steroid. Everyone constantly feels they must optimize every detail of their life to increase productivity and yet it's still not enough. Things will get more chaos everyday and there is no way for us to avoid it. We just need to let it all go and accept the fact that nobody can change this world, especially not by these politicians who are completely useless. Don't cling onto the life of the past, embrace the state of entropy and do not fight it.
- sierdolij 8y ago
- rbg246 8y agoFrom my reading of Brexit it appears that there are a lot of elites on both sides of the fight... Just seems to me that one side of elites has co-opted the non-elites more effectively on this occasion.
- timwaagh 8y agohow is it a failure? they are in power. all a politician should care about is getting into power and remaining in power (and gracefully exiting gracefully before people shoot you out) they promised a referendum because that's what people wanted in order to vote for them. success #1. they held the referendum and accepted the result, based their policy on it, because that was people had voted for. the result was winning an election and clinging to power. success #2. perhaps the new leader of the tories will do things differently and ignore the referendum, but that will only be a succcess if he manages to win the election. but to me it seems unlikely that will be a succesful strategy especially with that corbyn dude breathing down your neck. papers like the economist tend to dismiss him as an extremist, but he's a man with an affinity for populism and a serious problem for the tories. apparantly chooosing your schoolmates to be your running mate is the recipe for success in politics. perhaps power is all about whom you can trust. maybe boris johnson is an idiot, but he is someone who has affinity for the common man, she knows him from way back and she knows he would not stab her in the back. that makes him a rather useful idiot.