5 ms·
Polls have shown that a majority of "the great British public" now believe Brexit was a mistake, so I don't think it is fair to say they "still have their heads
by goodcanadian 5y ago
Polls have shown that a majority of "the great British public" now believe Brexit was a mistake, so I don't think it is fair to say they "still have their heads in the sand."
- FerretFred 5y agoMaybe.. it's the way it was implemented for what passes as a Government here (in the UK). It would've been better to keep the Common Market and just ditch the unelected Brussels bureaucrats. I've heard that Poland and France are making *exit noises too...
- r00fus 5y agoUntil the Tories and nationalists that pushed Brexit face consequences, you can still argue the public has their head in the sand.
- mdoms 5y agoI'm not British but I follow your politics and with the quality of Labour candidates you guys dredge up it's no wonder people keep voting Tory.
- mattmanser 5y agoIt's a first past the post system. Which results in a two party duopoly and voting for anyone else can actively harm your interests. So we don't actually have a choice, our politics are as rigged as American politics. A small cabal pick the two PM choices, and we have to pick between bad or worse.
- r00fus 5y agoThe same forces that drove Tories to the extreme right also spent decades dividing Labour between itself. The first-past-the-post electoral system has no defense against well-funded interests essentially buying all the candidates. One could wonder if the substandard electoral system exists purely because of this flaw (or feature for the few powerful).
- Bayart 5y agoFrance has a completely different political structure and electoral system, and yet we've broadly seen the same phenomenon of the right wing's center of gravity always moving righter (is that even a word ?) and the left wing digging and splintering its way into irrelevance. The difference being that the electoral system produced a centrist rather than a populist (but in both cases Macron and BoJo are a pure product of their respective countries' establishment). I don't think different systems differ so much as far as being rigged goes, it's just the rigging that changes. In the end, power is always in the process of cooptation.
- r00fus 5y agoAlso BoJo is no centrist. He's spearheaded Brexit (some allege his buddies made bank by arbitraging currency futures pre/post vote), and he's been coordinating with Farage for a long time.
- Bayart 5y agoI can't fathom why you'd think I was alluding to BoJo as the centrist in the story.
- Brian_K_White 5y agoThats the way I parsed the sentence that mentioned Macron and BoJo.
- r00fus 5y agoFrance is essentially first-past-the-post with a single runoff for presidential (who is a very powerful executive like US model + he can dissolve parliament). The dynamics are same prior to runoff because the plurality electoral system gives no representation to the majority that didn't vote for the winner (almost a given since there will be >2 candidates). You'd need proportional representation and/or an electoral system like Borda,RCV,Star or instant runoff to significantly proof against spoiler mechanics that the wealthy can exploit. Again, none of these measures guarantees against money corrupting electoral processes, just makes it more costly and unsure that any given corruptive effort pays off.
- cutler 5y agoDon't you see the whole problem is personality politics. If more voters understood the economic consequences of Brexit it would have died a death.
- cutler 5y agoThere are people in Cornish fishing villages decimated by Brexit who would vote the same again. Don't underestimate the British island fortress mentality.
- goodcanadian 5y agoThere are idiots everywhere, but that does not mean the general public are blind to the consequences of Brexit. Heck, your hypothetical Cornish fisherman could be fully aware of the consequences but still think it was worth it for any number of other reasons (as a sizeable minority of the population obviously still do).