17 ms·

The gathering crisis in the UK

156 points by aydnina 4y ago

beckingz 4y ago
I love Charlie Stross: "And feel free to use the comment thread to discuss what's coming next for the UK as the vector sum of Brexit, COVID19, the energy crisis from the Ukraine war, and the worst inflationary bubble since 1980 punches us in the face."
PaulHoule 4y ago
It's a bit like blaming the Democrats for the political crisis in the US but I have to ask "what the hell is wrong with Labor?" The Tories have dominated politics in the UK since the later 1970s except for the Blair administration, and Blair was an honorary Tory.
- WaxProlix 4y ago
  There's something wild going on there, too. Leaked documents have shown how their best chance at real Labour-style governance (Corbyn) was intentionally smeared from within as an antisemite, among other things, in order to torpedo his popularity. Instead, Labour has the hugely ineffectual Tory-esque Keir Starmer now. Feels very much like a managed opposition.
  - kspacewalk2 4y ago
    Corbyn seems to have done a fine enough job smearing himself over his long and illustrious career of far-left populism and terrorism apologia. His campaign signed up a lot of fly-by-night party members and was successful in getting him elected party leader, but convincing the general public was far more difficult. (Part of the answer to why Labour has been out of power for 13 years is the Corbyn disaster, it explains half of that time span).
    - throwyawayyyy 4y ago
      There's an alternate history in which it was David Miliband who became Labour leader, not his brother. Who knows of course, but there's a decent chance it would have prevented the disaster of Brexit (and the related disaster, for Labour and the country, of Corbyn).
      - drcongo 4y ago
        He's just another diet Tory like Starmer though.
        throwyawayyyy 4y ago
        In a sense, I don't disagree. But when the only Labour politician of my lifetime to win an election is Tony Blair, you have to consider that the UK is a pretty Tory country, and you have to work with what you've got...
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - pasabagi 4y ago
      Eh, they did quite well in 2017 - in fact, the best performance for the Labour party since Blair was under Corbyn[0]. [0]: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7529/ https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-...
      - kspacewalk2 4y ago
        And then they lost 60 seats under Corbyn in 2019. Winning 202, the lowest number of seats since 1935.
        WaxProlix 4y ago
        That was the result of the aforementioned internal torpedoing of Corbyn though, right? Cutting off the nose to spite the face or something.
  - banannaise 4y ago
    Sounds very similar to this, from the original author, in the comments: The situation is not irretrievable in theory, at this point. The problem is that in practice a solution requires the political elite to collectively admit the falsehood of the axioms they built their entire careers on. If an individual political leader defects from the nationalist-neoliberal consensus, then they get treated exactly the way Jeremy Corbyn was. Corbyn was a soft-brexiter -- his distrust of the EU was based on it having emerged from the EEC, as a capitalist institution: what they hated him for was for being an unreconstructed hang-over from the 1970s when Labour was actually a left-wing party. Neoliberal politicians can't admit that the crisis is rooted in neoliberal policies.
- damagednoob 4y ago
  A couple of things: Tories have done well to court the people that show up at the polls with things like keeping the Triple-Lock pension guarantee[1]. Like the Democrats, Labour's demographics have started to shift more to the well-educated (though I suspect this will swing back massively, come the next election). This alienated their traditional working class base who care more about their own economic realities than whatever social crusade is the flavour of the week. Young Labour went out of their way to paint pro-Brexiters as racists and bigots. The dirty secret is that even Corbyn has been a long time Euro-sceptic. Because of the in-fighting on the correct position, Labour didn't take a hard stance on Brexit until very close to the end, IIRC. At which point, anti-Brexit votes were being siphoned off by the Liberal Democrats, with pro-Brexit votes going to the Tories. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Pension_(United_Kingdom)#Pensions_Act_2007 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Pension_(United_Kingdom)...
  - orwin 4y ago
    But if an euro-sceptic like Corbyn (distrust of the EEC more than the EU idea) was in power to negociate brexit, i'm pretty sure the negotiations would've gone better. I don't believe the EU technocrats would've sabotaged him, they care much more about being right than supporting their political side somehow (worked with them two years ago on a project, it was enlightening, made me appreciate technocrats much more than politicians)
  - TMWNN 4y ago
    >Young Labour went out of their way to paint pro-Brexiters as racists and bigots. The dirty secret is that even Corbyn has been a long time Euro-sceptic. I'm pretty sure that a reason Labour did much better than expected in the 2017 general election is that Brexit voters suspected that Corbyn had secretly voted for Leave.
- catsitter 4y ago
  Funny, from the outside, UK always sounds as if it is overrun by leftist politics. I wouldn‘t have guessed tories were in charge most of the time. London has a Labor major and it is the economic Center, so maybe there was a lot of Labor influence on the economy after all?
  - asdff 4y ago
    Maybe if you know nothing of Margaret Thatcher...
    - kkjjkgjjgg 4y ago
  - ReflectedImage 4y ago
    UK doesn't have much in the way of Left wing politics.
    - kkjjkgjjgg 4y ago
      [dead]
seibelj 4y ago
Green energy (except nuclear) is inefficient, expensive, irregular, and the money for it goes straight to China and developing nations who mine the rare earth elements. Even Germany finally backed off from de-commissioning their last nuclear plants as the Greens realized it was illogical. Need to remove red tape, stop controlling prices, de-regulate business, establish free trade agreements, and do all manner of things to increase real productivity and not the government-pretend kind of productivity. Reality is a tough pill to swallow and it will likely take several years of misery before the obvious solution becomes the only solution.
- swader999 4y ago
  Green energy will save the environment and save the poor decades from now when these sophisticated and complex climate and economic models predict the poor will really suffer from an apocalypse. It is unfortunate that the poor will likely die at a higher rate in the next three years from reduced economic output, ESG induced famine, inflation and that Germany is back to coal and firewood in the short term. But realize it is for a greater future.
- cowpig 4y ago
  > Need to remove red tape, stop controlling prices, de-regulate business, establish free trade agreements, and do all manner of things to increase real productivity and not the government-pretend kind of productivity. Is there any historical evidence of this approach leading to positive change? Just theoretically, I don't see it--energy is a public good with tons of externalities (both positive and negative).
- willyt 4y ago
  What is 'red tape' though? No-one ever defines what red tape they would remove. Also, surely the problem at the moment is that energy prices are controlled by series of regional monopoly energy providers, the only thing stopping them from putting bills up astronomically is price controls. If you removed the regulation stopping them from raising prices energy bills will be so high that you will have rioting in central London that would make the poll tax riots look like a church fete. I think that would be a rash move.
reb 4y ago
It’s eerie how similar the issues facing western nations are and how intractable the disagreements over solutions have become. Desperate balkanization coming for many, I think.
- rgrieselhuber 4y ago
  I always wonder why balkanization is described as "desperate" or some other extremely bad thing.
  - ebiester 4y ago
    What percentage of these country breakups end up in some sort of destabilizing violence and lowered standards of living for a generation?
  - BbzzbB 4y ago
    Because breaking up countries, let alone over fuzzy ethnic lines, is seldom a peaceful process that leads to prosperous smaller countries (over one's lifetime anyway). A most common outcome seems to be violence and war short-mid term followed by poverty and corruption long term.
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    The war in former Yugoslavia was pretty horrible and they're by no means over it.
    - rgrieselhuber 4y ago
      But how much of that was caused by the invention of "Yugoslavia" in the first place?
- Victerius 4y ago
  Or an opportunity for a powerful figure to take power by force and rule over all. I'm not for dictatorships, but we already have too many countries in the world. And provinces and states within these countries. Too many little fiefdoms. Too many wannabe lords. Too many presidents, premiers, prime ministers, governors, chancellors, kings, emperors. Too many parliaments, congresses, too many senators, deputies, representatives. Too much division. Hell, we're going to have American, Chinese, and European bases on the Moon and Mars. No wonder we can't tackle collective challenges. We'll be traveling through other galaxies and still call ourselves based on the particular piece of land we were born in on this particular planet called the Earth. I fully acknowledge that this is a privileged point of view on my part. I am lucky enough to live in an industrialized and peaceful enough country to be able to hold this opinion without having to worry about my basic survival.
UncleOxidant 4y ago
"Brexit has delivered some deregulation, though: notably, the Conservative government ditched EU standards on effluent discharges, resulting in the (private) water companies discharging raw sewage into almost every river, and the seas around the UK coastline. So it is no longer safe to swim in UK waters." Holy crap! "the Bank of England are forecasting 13% inflation towards the end of the year." And we thought things were bad in the US. This article sounds absolutely dire, can someone in the UK comment - are things really that bad there?
- puchatek 4y ago
  That cannot possibly be the only thing it delivered. The likes of Farage have been working on this thing for decades. They must be getting a lot more it of it
  - di4na 4y ago
    Yep. Less anti corruption
  - skrtskrt 4y ago
    As much as I want socialized medicine in the US, I worry when look at Britain and see how a wave of regressive politicians can damage carefully built government institutions so quickly
    - TremendousJudge 4y ago
      >so quickly it's been 43 years, as the author points out
      - multjoy 4y ago
        But the last decade has been especially bad, and the last two years even worse than that.
  - origin_path 4y ago
    There's plenty but obviously someone who sums up leaving the EU as literally sewage isn't going to give you a straight story on anything. This piece is basically just yet more anti UK propaganda from the Remainer set who never accepted that they lost for good reasons and will continue telling everyone how horrible the UK is until they die. It's a genre, ignore it.
endo_bunker 4y ago
wen transatlantic natural gas pipeline
chroma 4y ago
I'd ignore Stross. He's been predicting inflation and famine since Brexit passed.[1] Something about the past decade has broken his brain. Obviously the issues he mentions are worth worrying about, but they're not going to cause the UK or the rest of europe to fall into anarchy. 1. https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/10/facts-of-life-and-death.html https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/10/facts-o...
- actionfromafar 4y ago
  How quickly do you think such systemic changes are going to play out? And it already did kill people. The covid response was not exactly stellar.
- matthewdgreen 4y ago
  Brexit didn't really come into force until January 2020, so we're only what, 2.5 years into its implementation now? Seems a little early to be dismissing the dire predictions.
- mrec 4y ago
  Yeah, Charlie was an early victim of Brexit Derangement Syndrome. I stopped following him after a long "state of the world" links post where every single link was to the Guardian. Granted, the Grauniad isn't much worse than any other paper, but if it's your only window onto the world then you're going to get a very distorted picture of reality.
- justin66 4y ago
  > I'd ignore Stross. He's been predicting inflation and famine since Brexit passed. Thank God he was wrong about all that, it's hard to imagine what the UK would look like with close to 20% inflation. Wait...
Victerius 4y ago
The more time moves forward, the closer we are inching to a one-world government. Or is democracy too dangerous to be left in the hands of the people.
- actionfromafar 4y ago
  What, how?! Currently, it looks further than ever.
  - Victerius 4y ago
    I don't see a way to solve humanity's problems with hundreds of governments each pursuing its own agenda.
    - swader999 4y ago
      Central planning across a large geography failed miserably and killed hundreds of millions in the 20th century. I'll take hundreds of localized solutions/experiments any day thanks.
      - Victerius 4y ago
        The United States government has been extremely successful as the central point of authority of the 50 states. Central planning has been extremely successful in lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in China, and making China a superpower. And, I shall add, a superpower that's now remained in existence (73 years) longer than the Soviet Union did (70 years). I'm all for local experimentation, but not for local authority to block progress for all, like countries not doing anything about the climate crisis.
        swader999 4y ago
        China has enjoyed a huge trade imbalance from a one sided take on globalization. Should we all strive for China's approach to the climate crisis? Should we ask the 12 million Uyghurs how things are going?
mjevans 4y ago
Some of England's problems are unique to them, but I think the reason those who voted for Brexit did so is that they felt the current deal wasn't working for them. Already, way back then, they weren't on a path to a bright future where there was a house of their own to live in, a job that was a good fit for them and society, a future to believe in. I believe the same things that fueled Brexit persist as malaise today in England. In the US. Probably everywhere else where regulations allow unregulated profit to be squeezed from the less well off. Rent seeking cultures morally bankrupt and rot from the core.
- poulsbohemian 4y ago
  This might sound like cheap shots, but I say it with love for my friends in the Uk... If you look at Britain historically...coal is dead. Wool is dead. The island itself is fairly small for much agriculture. There aren't a whole lot of natural resources. They had power and resources through their empire, but that is gone. Their one shot, so to speak, was like many developed nations - services, including financial. But Brexit was signaling, and companies saw that there was little incentive to stay and do business there vs. Frankfurt, Zurich, New York, etc. So... yeah, a lot of us pre-Brexit saw this malaise not only for what it was, but what it was going to become. It isn't a pretty picture and the utter void of competent political leadership means this is probably a protracted decline.
  - TremendousJudge 4y ago
    Sounds like the country is regressing to the mean then. Thanks to the empire they are used to being on top of the world, but all their advantages are gone now except for the tax havens and an old cultural narrative that the British are inherently better than everybody else.
    - tim333 4y ago
      We have odd strengths in spite of being kind of crap at most things. Books for example. >According to a new report from the International Publishers Association (IPA), UK publishers released 184,000 new and revised titles in 2013. This equates to 2,875 titles per million inhabitants, and places the UK an astonishing 1,000-plus titles ahead of second-placed Taiwan and Slovenia (1,831). Australia is considerably lower, at 1,176, while the US published just 959 titles per million inhabitants. Also music, universities, financial services, tea rooms etc.
paulpauper 4y ago
This is why all of these people who are always predicting collapse or crisis keep getting it wrong...the collapse if and when it happens, will not hit the US first...it is other countries instead like the UK, Lebanon, TUrkey, etc. Yes, the US has problems, but we see over and over that elsewhere has worse problems. Even the UK (inflation), Germany (inflation, dependence on Russian nat. gas), Japan (a recent assassination, bad demographics). The US dollar hit yet another high yesterday.
- badpun 4y ago
  Yep, exactly. The US is nowadays Rome, and the Western world is its modern Roman empire. When the actual (Western) Roman empire fell into decline, Rome (the city) was hit last in terms of decline in standards of living. It's the peripheries which got cut off first.
abeppu 4y ago
> This is the sort of crisis that brings down nations. What does "bring down nations" mean though? Replacing a government? Violent overthrow and then writing an actual constitution? Because a bunch of the challenges being faced would still be issues under any regime right? A different government isn't going to magically get more potatoes this year, or significantly more energy from strained European countries this winter.
- swader999 4y ago
  Create a crisis, provide a solution. Install bought/captured politicians, perhaps a dash of tyranny, CBDC and social credit for all. Total surveillance and enslavement. It doesn't require violence, people will demand these 'solutions' when they are stressed enough. Every tyrannical regime in the past had a constitution. Rendered mute by a uni-party system, captured media and judiciary. Now you can add big tech collusion to the fray.
  - dane-pgp 4y ago
    > Create a crisis, provide a solution. The problem with that simplistic analysis is that it relies on the unspoken assumption that if it weren't for those sneaky, all-powerful, conniving [members of whichever out-group is being blamed] then the whole world would be peaceful and prosperous and free. Having said that, I absolutely agree with the rest of your comment about what's ahead of us.
    - swader999 4y ago
      Of course it doesn't guarantee we'd be prosperous and free but it does allow a hundred more rolls of the dice that a way might emerge.
- javajosh 4y ago
  A nation is, technically speaking, it's rulers and the rules they impose (on others and themselves). So bringing down a nation would imply a sea-change in rulers & rules. Considering that authoritarianism is humanities Default form of Government, it stands to reason that "bringing down" a democracy means reverting to that default. This will happen with the alternative is worse. (The situation in Somalia is arguably worse than authoritarianism, for example). Authoritarianism might also serve, at least in theory, as a kind of "boot loader" for something better - although the transition always seems to require a great deal of blood.
throxaway 4y ago
I think when discussing this, it should be recognised that there is ample evidence that Russia has worked last several years to undermine the stability of western democracies. Brexit vote and resulting chaos being one glaring result. I am suggesting that we are just starting to understand the magnitude in which Russia has been able to cause havoc in the west by taking advantage of our freedoms. Link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_Brexit_referendum https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_...
- pphysch 4y ago
  Despite a 24/7 media campaign to suggest otherwise, there is no proof that Russia actually did this. The first line of your link agrees. I think the relentless scapegoating by Western elite of Russia/China/Iran/COVID/$CURRENT_BOGEYMAN/etc. is the real problem. They are avoiding responsibility for a collapsing system, which is only going to allow that collapse to continue.
  - api 4y ago
    Both things can be true to varying degrees. Russian propaganda exists but it wouldn't be nearly as effective if it weren't for our elite fumbling so badly.
    - pphysch 4y ago
      Yes, every important organization (nation, religion, corporation) does PR. Its normal and healthy to have some public image management when competitors may try to destroy your image for their own gain. This is a far cry from having a coordinated disinformation campaign to cause political instability in a foreign country. The evidence of Russia doing this to any effect with Trump or Brexit is extremely scant and circumstantial. Such a campaign would be massive, well beyond the capacity of a hidden conspiracy. It would involve entire media companies and NGOs. There would be far more smoking-gun evidence than the current standard of "guilt by association with someone who spent some time in Russia".
klelatti 4y ago
I think Brexit has allowed a sort of nihilism to creep into U.K. politics. If you can live with a policy that has such a demonstrable adverse effect on the economy and so many other things then why worry about the impact of other policies. The standard approach for the government now seems to be to look for short term wins in the tabloids and ignore the long term. And this is on top of the huge distraction that Brexit has been.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  > The standard approach for the government now seems to be to look for short term wins in the tabloids and ignore the long term. Was this ever not the case?
  - dragontamer 4y ago
    * The 1800s of the USA were marked by a large, government program to invent pocket watches to solve the issue of trains crashing into each other. * There were additional long-term government projects, such as ARPA's Network (aka: the internet). * Strategic supercomputer initiatives as well. * The debate over USA's social security is all measured in the year 2040 or later. People constantly use social security as an example of "short term thinking", but policies from the 1980s have been forward looking for at least the next 50 years. ----------- I dunno much about UK politics, but I imagine that similar forward looking projects and/or decisions / debates have occurred.
    - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
      Just because you demonstrated some long-term thinking in the future does not mean the US government was not short-sighted in the past. I don't know if it it was or not, but a few counter-points is not proof. I am sure you could find millions of counter-points that the US and the UK are currently long-term thinking (even though I think most of us can agree that isn't the subjective truth).
      - dragontamer 4y ago
Proven 4y ago
[dead]
beginning_end 4y ago
Good points from Stross in the comments: "The problem is that in practice a solution requires the political elite to collectively admit the falsehood of the axioms they built their entire careers on."
throwaway787544 4y ago
> This is the sort of crisis that brings down nations. It's really not. This is some pretty sad FUD. Unsafe to swim in waters. Trash not taken out. Crop failure. Inflation. Low heating fuel reserves (in a country that doesn't even get snow). Strikes. Absent politicians. This is basically an average week in many countries.
eisa01 4y ago
This is not limited to the UK Europe has been in an energy war with Russia for the past year, we have a drought affecting hydro power and the French nuclear fleet is just out of service The government action up to now has been almost nothing, basically amounting to announcing a few LNG import projects and updated 2030 targets. Nearly nothing has been done to the demand side nearly six months into this crisis What needs to be done that can help 0-6 month time scale: Gas supply * Ramp up of Groningen (with payments to affected people living there) Electricity generation * Restart of all possible coal plants (only two have announced restart in Germany!) * Removal of any restrictions limiting oil and diesel fired gensets from operating * Extension of the three reactors in Germany, and likely also the three shut down reactors Demand * Have utility field forces inspect every gas boiler, starting with the vulnerable population, to set the correct flow temperature on condensing boilers (saves 5-10% !), check for easy fixes (e.g., leaky drafts that can be plugged) * Mandate utilities to pay for avoided gas/electricity use for people on fixed retail tariffs - everyone need to be price responsive, not only large industrials * Mandate commercial customers to raise AC setting to 25C * Mandate everyone to lower thermostat to 18C * Cash payments to households (at least vulnerable customers), but do not link it to the consumption levels and do not lower the price indirectly by other means (e.g., VAT reduction) This will also require that permits, supply chains, labor etc. get fixed. Apparently that's stopping some of the coal restarts in Germany. That would not be a restriction if this was a shooting war...
- ska 4y ago
  > This is not limited to the UK Sure, everyone is struggling but there are some unique twists and turns in the UK right now, and some have been made worse by own goals.
- rich_sasha 4y ago
  Yeah, it's all fairly bad, but then I'm not sure where I would move to. US seems bonkers in its own way, Germany is buckling under the gas crisis, France... lovely place but i can't understand how it stays afloat. Poland is just about in free fall. Italy and Spain seem (?) perpetually in the grip of a political crisis. Other countries i know less about. Switzerland? Netherlands? Denmark?
- 4y ago
reggieband 4y ago
I am reminded of the story of the fat cat that I recently read in a Brothers Grimm collection. In case it is not familiar to you: A cat and a mouse decide to team up and store up some surplus food for hard times. They agree during abundant times to both put a little extra fat into a shared pot. They then store the pot in a safe place. The cat, however, is overcome by hunger even in the abundant times. Every few weeks the cat sneaks to the pot and takes just a little bit, maybe just a few licks at a time. Over the course of a couple of years of sneaking and small stealing the cat manages to completely deplete the pot. Then hard times hit, as both expected. The cat and the mouse both go to the pot together to divide their savings. But when they lift the lid they both gasp in surprise that the pot is empty. The mouse slowly realizes what must have happened. The cat is guilty but won't stand being accused and so it turns on the mouse and eats it. My whole life I had heard of the rich upper-classes described as "fat cats" but I didn't really understand the message until I read the story. From at least 2008 we were supposed to be saving for the next crisis. Yet here we are at the next crisis and low and behold the pot is empty. The reason we fall for this over and over again is that the short-term memory of civilization is shorter than the cycles these things happen over.
- usgroup 4y ago
  Are you talking about the budget deficit? It’s not really like a pot you only look into when times are hard since it’s constantly known. I really like your metaphor, but it is misleading.
  - banannaise 4y ago
    It's not the budget. It's the hidden cuts to services, the declining maintenance to infrastructure, the privatization of essentials. Those are the licks they take from the pot, while they tell you the pot is still full.
    - usgroup 4y ago
      Apologies but what money is spent on in the UK is public information —- it is part of the budget. The fat cat and the hoodwinked mouse is a poor metaphor.
polotics 4y ago
If I may point to the elephant in the room: https://www.crystolenergy.com/assessing-future-north-sea-oil-gas/ https://www.crystolenergy.com/assessing-future-north-sea-oil... The UK used to be Nigeria, now it's Mali.
- actionfromafar 4y ago
  I don't understand.
  - selimthegrim 4y ago
    Vis-à-vis oil.
anigbrowl 4y ago
The Queen is the main thing holding the country together. When she dies, expect civil disorder at best.
_emacsomancer_ 4y ago
Cf. Cory Doctorow's "Tory Britain is crashing and burning - They got Brexit done" - https://doctorow.medium.com/tory-britain-is-crashing-and-burning-5b38811d49e1 https://doctorow.medium.com/tory-britain-is-crashing-and-bur...
mikewarot 4y ago
Wow, what an optimistic view of things. From my view, the UK is about to take a 50% drop in their standard of living, if they manage things well, they might recover it all within a decade. This is if they make a trade deal with the US. If they fail this, and are left in the breeze, they'll eventually have to beg for a seat at the French lead EU (if the EU survives), and things won't be as nice. The world is deglobalizing, because the US won the cold war, and it's no longer in our interest to keep subsidizing the rest of the world's free trade. If you're not in our trade group, things are going to be about as rough as they were for your nation prior to WWII.

156 points by aydnina 4y ago

I love Charlie Stross: "And feel free to use the comment thread to discuss what's coming next for the UK as the vector sum of Brexit, COVID19, the energy crisis from the Ukraine war, and the worst inflationary bubble since 1980 punches us in the face."

PaulHoule 4y ago

It's a bit like blaming the Democrats for the political crisis in the US but I have to ask "what the hell is wrong with Labor?" The Tories have dominated politics in the UK since the later 1970s except for the Blair administration, and Blair was an honorary Tory.

WaxProlix 4y ago
There's something wild going on there, too. Leaked documents have shown how their best chance at real Labour-style governance (Corbyn) was intentionally smeared from within as an antisemite, among other things, in order to torpedo his popularity. Instead, Labour has the hugely ineffectual Tory-esque Keir Starmer now. Feels very much like a managed opposition.
- kspacewalk2 4y ago
  Corbyn seems to have done a fine enough job smearing himself over his long and illustrious career of far-left populism and terrorism apologia. His campaign signed up a lot of fly-by-night party members and was successful in getting him elected party leader, but convincing the general public was far more difficult. (Part of the answer to why Labour has been out of power for 13 years is the Corbyn disaster, it explains half of that time span).
  - throwyawayyyy 4y ago
    There's an alternate history in which it was David Miliband who became Labour leader, not his brother. Who knows of course, but there's a decent chance it would have prevented the disaster of Brexit (and the related disaster, for Labour and the country, of Corbyn).
    - drcongo 4y ago
      He's just another diet Tory like Starmer though.
      - throwyawayyyy 4y ago
        In a sense, I don't disagree. But when the only Labour politician of my lifetime to win an election is Tony Blair, you have to consider that the UK is a pretty Tory country, and you have to work with what you've got...
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - pasabagi 4y ago
    Eh, they did quite well in 2017 - in fact, the best performance for the Labour party since Blair was under Corbyn[0]. [0]: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7529/ https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-...
    - kspacewalk2 4y ago
      And then they lost 60 seats under Corbyn in 2019. Winning 202, the lowest number of seats since 1935.
      - WaxProlix 4y ago
        That was the result of the aforementioned internal torpedoing of Corbyn though, right? Cutting off the nose to spite the face or something.
- banannaise 4y ago
  Sounds very similar to this, from the original author, in the comments: The situation is not irretrievable in theory, at this point. The problem is that in practice a solution requires the political elite to collectively admit the falsehood of the axioms they built their entire careers on. If an individual political leader defects from the nationalist-neoliberal consensus, then they get treated exactly the way Jeremy Corbyn was. Corbyn was a soft-brexiter -- his distrust of the EU was based on it having emerged from the EEC, as a capitalist institution: what they hated him for was for being an unreconstructed hang-over from the 1970s when Labour was actually a left-wing party. Neoliberal politicians can't admit that the crisis is rooted in neoliberal policies.
damagednoob 4y ago
A couple of things: Tories have done well to court the people that show up at the polls with things like keeping the Triple-Lock pension guarantee[1]. Like the Democrats, Labour's demographics have started to shift more to the well-educated (though I suspect this will swing back massively, come the next election). This alienated their traditional working class base who care more about their own economic realities than whatever social crusade is the flavour of the week. Young Labour went out of their way to paint pro-Brexiters as racists and bigots. The dirty secret is that even Corbyn has been a long time Euro-sceptic. Because of the in-fighting on the correct position, Labour didn't take a hard stance on Brexit until very close to the end, IIRC. At which point, anti-Brexit votes were being siphoned off by the Liberal Democrats, with pro-Brexit votes going to the Tories. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Pension_(United_Kingdom)#Pensions_Act_2007 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Pension_(United_Kingdom)...
- orwin 4y ago
  But if an euro-sceptic like Corbyn (distrust of the EEC more than the EU idea) was in power to negociate brexit, i'm pretty sure the negotiations would've gone better. I don't believe the EU technocrats would've sabotaged him, they care much more about being right than supporting their political side somehow (worked with them two years ago on a project, it was enlightening, made me appreciate technocrats much more than politicians)
- TMWNN 4y ago
  >Young Labour went out of their way to paint pro-Brexiters as racists and bigots. The dirty secret is that even Corbyn has been a long time Euro-sceptic. I'm pretty sure that a reason Labour did much better than expected in the 2017 general election is that Brexit voters suspected that Corbyn had secretly voted for Leave.
catsitter 4y ago
Funny, from the outside, UK always sounds as if it is overrun by leftist politics. I wouldn‘t have guessed tories were in charge most of the time. London has a Labor major and it is the economic Center, so maybe there was a lot of Labor influence on the economy after all?
- asdff 4y ago
  Maybe if you know nothing of Margaret Thatcher...
  - kkjjkgjjgg 4y ago
- ReflectedImage 4y ago
  UK doesn't have much in the way of Left wing politics.
  - kkjjkgjjgg 4y ago
    [dead]

seibelj 4y ago

Green energy (except nuclear) is inefficient, expensive, irregular, and the money for it goes straight to China and developing nations who mine the rare earth elements. Even Germany finally backed off from de-commissioning their last nuclear plants as the Greens realized it was illogical. Need to remove red tape, stop controlling prices, de-regulate business, establish free trade agreements, and do all manner of things to increase real productivity and not the government-pretend kind of productivity. Reality is a tough pill to swallow and it will likely take several years of misery before the obvious solution becomes the only solution.

swader999 4y ago
Green energy will save the environment and save the poor decades from now when these sophisticated and complex climate and economic models predict the poor will really suffer from an apocalypse. It is unfortunate that the poor will likely die at a higher rate in the next three years from reduced economic output, ESG induced famine, inflation and that Germany is back to coal and firewood in the short term. But realize it is for a greater future.
cowpig 4y ago
> Need to remove red tape, stop controlling prices, de-regulate business, establish free trade agreements, and do all manner of things to increase real productivity and not the government-pretend kind of productivity. Is there any historical evidence of this approach leading to positive change? Just theoretically, I don't see it--energy is a public good with tons of externalities (both positive and negative).
willyt 4y ago
What is 'red tape' though? No-one ever defines what red tape they would remove. Also, surely the problem at the moment is that energy prices are controlled by series of regional monopoly energy providers, the only thing stopping them from putting bills up astronomically is price controls. If you removed the regulation stopping them from raising prices energy bills will be so high that you will have rioting in central London that would make the poll tax riots look like a church fete. I think that would be a rash move.

reb 4y ago

It’s eerie how similar the issues facing western nations are and how intractable the disagreements over solutions have become. Desperate balkanization coming for many, I think.

rgrieselhuber 4y ago
I always wonder why balkanization is described as "desperate" or some other extremely bad thing.
- ebiester 4y ago
  What percentage of these country breakups end up in some sort of destabilizing violence and lowered standards of living for a generation?
- BbzzbB 4y ago
  Because breaking up countries, let alone over fuzzy ethnic lines, is seldom a peaceful process that leads to prosperous smaller countries (over one's lifetime anyway). A most common outcome seems to be violence and war short-mid term followed by poverty and corruption long term.
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  The war in former Yugoslavia was pretty horrible and they're by no means over it.
  - rgrieselhuber 4y ago
    But how much of that was caused by the invention of "Yugoslavia" in the first place?
Victerius 4y ago
Or an opportunity for a powerful figure to take power by force and rule over all. I'm not for dictatorships, but we already have too many countries in the world. And provinces and states within these countries. Too many little fiefdoms. Too many wannabe lords. Too many presidents, premiers, prime ministers, governors, chancellors, kings, emperors. Too many parliaments, congresses, too many senators, deputies, representatives. Too much division. Hell, we're going to have American, Chinese, and European bases on the Moon and Mars. No wonder we can't tackle collective challenges. We'll be traveling through other galaxies and still call ourselves based on the particular piece of land we were born in on this particular planet called the Earth. I fully acknowledge that this is a privileged point of view on my part. I am lucky enough to live in an industrialized and peaceful enough country to be able to hold this opinion without having to worry about my basic survival.

UncleOxidant 4y ago

"Brexit has delivered some deregulation, though: notably, the Conservative government ditched EU standards on effluent discharges, resulting in the (private) water companies discharging raw sewage into almost every river, and the seas around the UK coastline. So it is no longer safe to swim in UK waters." Holy crap! "the Bank of England are forecasting 13% inflation towards the end of the year." And we thought things were bad in the US. This article sounds absolutely dire, can someone in the UK comment - are things really that bad there?

puchatek 4y ago
That cannot possibly be the only thing it delivered. The likes of Farage have been working on this thing for decades. They must be getting a lot more it of it
- di4na 4y ago
  Yep. Less anti corruption
- skrtskrt 4y ago
  As much as I want socialized medicine in the US, I worry when look at Britain and see how a wave of regressive politicians can damage carefully built government institutions so quickly
  - TremendousJudge 4y ago
    >so quickly it's been 43 years, as the author points out
    - multjoy 4y ago
      But the last decade has been especially bad, and the last two years even worse than that.
- origin_path 4y ago
  There's plenty but obviously someone who sums up leaving the EU as literally sewage isn't going to give you a straight story on anything. This piece is basically just yet more anti UK propaganda from the Remainer set who never accepted that they lost for good reasons and will continue telling everyone how horrible the UK is until they die. It's a genre, ignore it.

endo_bunker 4y ago

wen transatlantic natural gas pipeline

chroma 4y ago

I'd ignore Stross. He's been predicting inflation and famine since Brexit passed.[1] Something about the past decade has broken his brain. Obviously the issues he mentions are worth worrying about, but they're not going to cause the UK or the rest of europe to fall into anarchy. 1. https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/10/facts-of-life-and-death.html https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/10/facts-o...

actionfromafar 4y ago
How quickly do you think such systemic changes are going to play out? And it already did kill people. The covid response was not exactly stellar.
matthewdgreen 4y ago
Brexit didn't really come into force until January 2020, so we're only what, 2.5 years into its implementation now? Seems a little early to be dismissing the dire predictions.
mrec 4y ago
Yeah, Charlie was an early victim of Brexit Derangement Syndrome. I stopped following him after a long "state of the world" links post where every single link was to the Guardian. Granted, the Grauniad isn't much worse than any other paper, but if it's your only window onto the world then you're going to get a very distorted picture of reality.
justin66 4y ago
> I'd ignore Stross. He's been predicting inflation and famine since Brexit passed. Thank God he was wrong about all that, it's hard to imagine what the UK would look like with close to 20% inflation. Wait...

Victerius 4y ago

The more time moves forward, the closer we are inching to a one-world government. Or is democracy too dangerous to be left in the hands of the people.

actionfromafar 4y ago
What, how?! Currently, it looks further than ever.
- Victerius 4y ago
  I don't see a way to solve humanity's problems with hundreds of governments each pursuing its own agenda.
  - swader999 4y ago
    Central planning across a large geography failed miserably and killed hundreds of millions in the 20th century. I'll take hundreds of localized solutions/experiments any day thanks.
    - Victerius 4y ago
      The United States government has been extremely successful as the central point of authority of the 50 states. Central planning has been extremely successful in lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in China, and making China a superpower. And, I shall add, a superpower that's now remained in existence (73 years) longer than the Soviet Union did (70 years). I'm all for local experimentation, but not for local authority to block progress for all, like countries not doing anything about the climate crisis.
      - swader999 4y ago
        China has enjoyed a huge trade imbalance from a one sided take on globalization. Should we all strive for China's approach to the climate crisis? Should we ask the 12 million Uyghurs how things are going?

mjevans 4y ago

Some of England's problems are unique to them, but I think the reason those who voted for Brexit did so is that they felt the current deal wasn't working for them. Already, way back then, they weren't on a path to a bright future where there was a house of their own to live in, a job that was a good fit for them and society, a future to believe in. I believe the same things that fueled Brexit persist as malaise today in England. In the US. Probably everywhere else where regulations allow unregulated profit to be squeezed from the less well off. Rent seeking cultures morally bankrupt and rot from the core.

poulsbohemian 4y ago
This might sound like cheap shots, but I say it with love for my friends in the Uk... If you look at Britain historically...coal is dead. Wool is dead. The island itself is fairly small for much agriculture. There aren't a whole lot of natural resources. They had power and resources through their empire, but that is gone. Their one shot, so to speak, was like many developed nations - services, including financial. But Brexit was signaling, and companies saw that there was little incentive to stay and do business there vs. Frankfurt, Zurich, New York, etc. So... yeah, a lot of us pre-Brexit saw this malaise not only for what it was, but what it was going to become. It isn't a pretty picture and the utter void of competent political leadership means this is probably a protracted decline.
- TremendousJudge 4y ago
  Sounds like the country is regressing to the mean then. Thanks to the empire they are used to being on top of the world, but all their advantages are gone now except for the tax havens and an old cultural narrative that the British are inherently better than everybody else.
  - tim333 4y ago
    We have odd strengths in spite of being kind of crap at most things. Books for example. >According to a new report from the International Publishers Association (IPA), UK publishers released 184,000 new and revised titles in 2013. This equates to 2,875 titles per million inhabitants, and places the UK an astonishing 1,000-plus titles ahead of second-placed Taiwan and Slovenia (1,831). Australia is considerably lower, at 1,176, while the US published just 959 titles per million inhabitants. Also music, universities, financial services, tea rooms etc.

paulpauper 4y ago

This is why all of these people who are always predicting collapse or crisis keep getting it wrong...the collapse if and when it happens, will not hit the US first...it is other countries instead like the UK, Lebanon, TUrkey, etc. Yes, the US has problems, but we see over and over that elsewhere has worse problems. Even the UK (inflation), Germany (inflation, dependence on Russian nat. gas), Japan (a recent assassination, bad demographics). The US dollar hit yet another high yesterday.

badpun 4y ago
Yep, exactly. The US is nowadays Rome, and the Western world is its modern Roman empire. When the actual (Western) Roman empire fell into decline, Rome (the city) was hit last in terms of decline in standards of living. It's the peripheries which got cut off first.

abeppu 4y ago

> This is the sort of crisis that brings down nations. What does "bring down nations" mean though? Replacing a government? Violent overthrow and then writing an actual constitution? Because a bunch of the challenges being faced would still be issues under any regime right? A different government isn't going to magically get more potatoes this year, or significantly more energy from strained European countries this winter.

swader999 4y ago
Create a crisis, provide a solution. Install bought/captured politicians, perhaps a dash of tyranny, CBDC and social credit for all. Total surveillance and enslavement. It doesn't require violence, people will demand these 'solutions' when they are stressed enough. Every tyrannical regime in the past had a constitution. Rendered mute by a uni-party system, captured media and judiciary. Now you can add big tech collusion to the fray.
- dane-pgp 4y ago
  > Create a crisis, provide a solution. The problem with that simplistic analysis is that it relies on the unspoken assumption that if it weren't for those sneaky, all-powerful, conniving [members of whichever out-group is being blamed] then the whole world would be peaceful and prosperous and free. Having said that, I absolutely agree with the rest of your comment about what's ahead of us.
  - swader999 4y ago
    Of course it doesn't guarantee we'd be prosperous and free but it does allow a hundred more rolls of the dice that a way might emerge.
javajosh 4y ago
A nation is, technically speaking, it's rulers and the rules they impose (on others and themselves). So bringing down a nation would imply a sea-change in rulers & rules. Considering that authoritarianism is humanities Default form of Government, it stands to reason that "bringing down" a democracy means reverting to that default. This will happen with the alternative is worse. (The situation in Somalia is arguably worse than authoritarianism, for example). Authoritarianism might also serve, at least in theory, as a kind of "boot loader" for something better - although the transition always seems to require a great deal of blood.

throxaway 4y ago

I think when discussing this, it should be recognised that there is ample evidence that Russia has worked last several years to undermine the stability of western democracies. Brexit vote and resulting chaos being one glaring result. I am suggesting that we are just starting to understand the magnitude in which Russia has been able to cause havoc in the west by taking advantage of our freedoms. Link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_Brexit_referendum https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_...

pphysch 4y ago
Despite a 24/7 media campaign to suggest otherwise, there is no proof that Russia actually did this. The first line of your link agrees. I think the relentless scapegoating by Western elite of Russia/China/Iran/COVID/$CURRENT_BOGEYMAN/etc. is the real problem. They are avoiding responsibility for a collapsing system, which is only going to allow that collapse to continue.
- api 4y ago
  Both things can be true to varying degrees. Russian propaganda exists but it wouldn't be nearly as effective if it weren't for our elite fumbling so badly.
  - pphysch 4y ago
    Yes, every important organization (nation, religion, corporation) does PR. Its normal and healthy to have some public image management when competitors may try to destroy your image for their own gain. This is a far cry from having a coordinated disinformation campaign to cause political instability in a foreign country. The evidence of Russia doing this to any effect with Trump or Brexit is extremely scant and circumstantial. Such a campaign would be massive, well beyond the capacity of a hidden conspiracy. It would involve entire media companies and NGOs. There would be far more smoking-gun evidence than the current standard of "guilt by association with someone who spent some time in Russia".

klelatti 4y ago

I think Brexit has allowed a sort of nihilism to creep into U.K. politics. If you can live with a policy that has such a demonstrable adverse effect on the economy and so many other things then why worry about the impact of other policies. The standard approach for the government now seems to be to look for short term wins in the tabloids and ignore the long term. And this is on top of the huge distraction that Brexit has been.

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
> The standard approach for the government now seems to be to look for short term wins in the tabloids and ignore the long term. Was this ever not the case?
- dragontamer 4y ago
  * The 1800s of the USA were marked by a large, government program to invent pocket watches to solve the issue of trains crashing into each other. * There were additional long-term government projects, such as ARPA's Network (aka: the internet). * Strategic supercomputer initiatives as well. * The debate over USA's social security is all measured in the year 2040 or later. People constantly use social security as an example of "short term thinking", but policies from the 1980s have been forward looking for at least the next 50 years. ----------- I dunno much about UK politics, but I imagine that similar forward looking projects and/or decisions / debates have occurred.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
    Just because you demonstrated some long-term thinking in the future does not mean the US government was not short-sighted in the past. I don't know if it it was or not, but a few counter-points is not proof. I am sure you could find millions of counter-points that the US and the UK are currently long-term thinking (even though I think most of us can agree that isn't the subjective truth).
    - dragontamer 4y ago

Proven 4y ago

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beginning_end 4y ago

Good points from Stross in the comments: "The problem is that in practice a solution requires the political elite to collectively admit the falsehood of the axioms they built their entire careers on."

throwaway787544 4y ago

> This is the sort of crisis that brings down nations. It's really not. This is some pretty sad FUD. Unsafe to swim in waters. Trash not taken out. Crop failure. Inflation. Low heating fuel reserves (in a country that doesn't even get snow). Strikes. Absent politicians. This is basically an average week in many countries.

eisa01 4y ago

This is not limited to the UK Europe has been in an energy war with Russia for the past year, we have a drought affecting hydro power and the French nuclear fleet is just out of service The government action up to now has been almost nothing, basically amounting to announcing a few LNG import projects and updated 2030 targets. Nearly nothing has been done to the demand side nearly six months into this crisis What needs to be done that can help 0-6 month time scale: Gas supply * Ramp up of Groningen (with payments to affected people living there) Electricity generation * Restart of all possible coal plants (only two have announced restart in Germany!) * Removal of any restrictions limiting oil and diesel fired gensets from operating * Extension of the three reactors in Germany, and likely also the three shut down reactors Demand * Have utility field forces inspect every gas boiler, starting with the vulnerable population, to set the correct flow temperature on condensing boilers (saves 5-10% !), check for easy fixes (e.g., leaky drafts that can be plugged) * Mandate utilities to pay for avoided gas/electricity use for people on fixed retail tariffs - everyone need to be price responsive, not only large industrials * Mandate commercial customers to raise AC setting to 25C * Mandate everyone to lower thermostat to 18C * Cash payments to households (at least vulnerable customers), but do not link it to the consumption levels and do not lower the price indirectly by other means (e.g., VAT reduction) This will also require that permits, supply chains, labor etc. get fixed. Apparently that's stopping some of the coal restarts in Germany. That would not be a restriction if this was a shooting war...

ska 4y ago
> This is not limited to the UK Sure, everyone is struggling but there are some unique twists and turns in the UK right now, and some have been made worse by own goals.
rich_sasha 4y ago
Yeah, it's all fairly bad, but then I'm not sure where I would move to. US seems bonkers in its own way, Germany is buckling under the gas crisis, France... lovely place but i can't understand how it stays afloat. Poland is just about in free fall. Italy and Spain seem (?) perpetually in the grip of a political crisis. Other countries i know less about. Switzerland? Netherlands? Denmark?
4y ago

reggieband 4y ago

I am reminded of the story of the fat cat that I recently read in a Brothers Grimm collection. In case it is not familiar to you: A cat and a mouse decide to team up and store up some surplus food for hard times. They agree during abundant times to both put a little extra fat into a shared pot. They then store the pot in a safe place. The cat, however, is overcome by hunger even in the abundant times. Every few weeks the cat sneaks to the pot and takes just a little bit, maybe just a few licks at a time. Over the course of a couple of years of sneaking and small stealing the cat manages to completely deplete the pot. Then hard times hit, as both expected. The cat and the mouse both go to the pot together to divide their savings. But when they lift the lid they both gasp in surprise that the pot is empty. The mouse slowly realizes what must have happened. The cat is guilty but won't stand being accused and so it turns on the mouse and eats it. My whole life I had heard of the rich upper-classes described as "fat cats" but I didn't really understand the message until I read the story. From at least 2008 we were supposed to be saving for the next crisis. Yet here we are at the next crisis and low and behold the pot is empty. The reason we fall for this over and over again is that the short-term memory of civilization is shorter than the cycles these things happen over.

usgroup 4y ago
Are you talking about the budget deficit? It’s not really like a pot you only look into when times are hard since it’s constantly known. I really like your metaphor, but it is misleading.
- banannaise 4y ago
  It's not the budget. It's the hidden cuts to services, the declining maintenance to infrastructure, the privatization of essentials. Those are the licks they take from the pot, while they tell you the pot is still full.
  - usgroup 4y ago
    Apologies but what money is spent on in the UK is public information —- it is part of the budget. The fat cat and the hoodwinked mouse is a poor metaphor.

polotics 4y ago

If I may point to the elephant in the room: https://www.crystolenergy.com/assessing-future-north-sea-oil-gas/ https://www.crystolenergy.com/assessing-future-north-sea-oil... The UK used to be Nigeria, now it's Mali.

actionfromafar 4y ago
I don't understand.
- selimthegrim 4y ago
  Vis-à-vis oil.

anigbrowl 4y ago

The Queen is the main thing holding the country together. When she dies, expect civil disorder at best.

_emacsomancer_ 4y ago

Cf. Cory Doctorow's "Tory Britain is crashing and burning - They got Brexit done" - https://doctorow.medium.com/tory-britain-is-crashing-and-burning-5b38811d49e1 https://doctorow.medium.com/tory-britain-is-crashing-and-bur...

mikewarot 4y ago

Wow, what an optimistic view of things. From my view, the UK is about to take a 50% drop in their standard of living, if they manage things well, they might recover it all within a decade. This is if they make a trade deal with the US. If they fail this, and are left in the breeze, they'll eventually have to beg for a seat at the French lead EU (if the EU survives), and things won't be as nice. The world is deglobalizing, because the US won the cold war, and it's no longer in our interest to keep subsidizing the rest of the world's free trade. If you're not in our trade group, things are going to be about as rough as they were for your nation prior to WWII.