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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 wit

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.

mytailorisrich 4y ago
It's a deeper problem than simply being in power for too long. They have been in power that long because the alternative offer was worse as you mention.
- mannykannot 4y ago
  I agree. In a pattern that seems to be repeated globally and frequently, dissatisfaction drives polarization, which in turn pumps up the dissatisfaction, and also encourages actions which are ideological rather than pragmatic and at least as rash as they are bold - and when they go wrong, it gives objective reasons to be even more dissatisfied.
  - AtlasBarfed 4y ago
    Two party polarized systems, aside from the murky money enabling shadow control of both parties, enables centralized control of policy because rather than on a per-issue consensus decision, it enforcesstrictly "party line" votes. ... the "party line" being decided by the small cabal in charge of making the "party line", usually the ones with the most access to monetary funds. But the inability to see even 10% of party legislators deviate from party lines in various votes means that not only is rational policy not being well served, regional representation is being undermined since adhering to the party line does not optimize for the policy for their region/district. And in the US house/senate, the seniority system is another undemocratic institution. Why should changing representatives reduce your effective power in a legislative house? I can't think of a system where codified seniority was a good thing
    - mannykannot 4y ago
      Maybe I am reading something into your comment that isn't there, but I don't think this is particular to two-party systems. Israel is explicitly not a two-party system (it uses proportional representation), yet it seems to becoming increasingly and strongly polarized.
- equalsione 4y ago
  From the outside looking in, was the opposition worse? On the one hand, labour seem really similar to the Tories - disunited, dogma over common sense and oddly out of touch. Their policies _were_ opposite to Tory policies but they are trying to be an opposition so… Yes Corbin was a leftie (corduroy elbow patches and all) but he’s a leader of a left wing party. It’s like complaining that Thatcher was a bit right-wing. It seems like the core issue is that the voters want something like Tory-lite. Blair did that and no one wants to go back to it. So this is what you’re left with
  - mytailorisrich 4y ago
    Corbyn is a hardcore anticapitalist whose aim is a socialist society (soviet block style). He is in favour of Brexit, too, for this reason. Same goes for McDonnell, a Marxist. That's very far left and is opposed by most people including in the Labour Party. Basically, those guys were the Communist Party and unsurprisingly people did prefer to keep the Tories... It was the same in the 80s when Labour was essentially unelectable. Blair saw that the centre left was politically the best bet, and pragmatically that social policies needed the private economy to produce wealth.
    - gghhzzgghhzz 4y ago
      The 2017 Corbyn manifesto was praised by Polly Toynbee of all people for goodness sake! https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/11/leaked-labour-manifesto-cornucopia-delights-tories-jeremy-corbyn-theresa-may https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/11/leaked...
    - andrekandre 4y ago
      > Blair saw that the centre left was politically the best bet, and pragmatically that social policies needed the private economy to produce wealth. in the end, what happened to the produced wealth? is everyone doing much better now than then?
  - petesergeant 4y ago
    > Corbyn was a leftie ... but he’s a leader of a left wing party Corbyn was hard left in a distinctly centrist country whose "Left Wing Party" is (despite its roots) very much left-leaning centrist, and who's only ever seen real success while occupying the middle-ground. > voters want something like Tory-lite. Blair did that and no one wants to go back to it If nobody wanted to go back to it then we'd have Rebecca Long-Bailey as Leader of His Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition, not another centrist.
- gmac 4y ago
  Counterpoint: that’s utter nonsense.
- iso1631 4y ago
  The government in power from 2010-2015 was very different than the one today. For starters it was a coalition with the Lib Dems, but even comparing today's rump with Cameron's second ministry shows massive divergence in competence as well as policy.
- cauch 4y ago
  Judging what is "worse" is tricky. Of course, if the alternative is proposing policies that don't fit with your ideology, you are going to judge them badly ("how can they be good politicians, they haven't even understood what is obvious to me"). But it does not mean they are worse, it just means that they are not representative of your ideology. In a healthy democracy, the community should accept that there will be people with different ideology, and that there will therefore be political parties representing them. I think this is the problem: politicians representing the ideology X can afford to be mediocre because they have some room before "voting for mediocre politicians that still agree with what I believe is the best" is worse than "voting for non-mediocre politicians that disagree with what I believe is the best". If a party ends up with mediocre politician, it is its own failure, and the other parties (even if they themselves have bad politicians) are not responsible: the other parties represent other people. If the party that represents your ideology is managing to put forward mediocre politicians, then, it is your failure for letting that happens or accepting this situation. (I'm not saying that you are incompetent: you may have failed because it was impossible. Still, it's certainly not the responsibility of people who have a different ideology) In short, in a healthy democracy, there will always be a "worse" party. It cannot take away the responsibility of the party you have voted for for being bad. It's a bit like having giraffes and lions at the zoo, and having the lions saying "the meat is full of maggots and really bad quality, but the alternative is having the vegetables that suits the giraffes, so, it's the giraffes' fault".
  - mytailorisrich 4y ago
    Except pretty much everyone agrees, even within Labour, that Corbyn was unelectable... in part because his team and policies where squarely on the far left. A repeat of the Micheal Foot days in the 80s. So, yes, in the end people may have had issues with the sitting government but they concluded that they were the "least bad" option. A healthy democracy needs a credible opposition.
    - cauch 4y ago
      > Except pretty much everyone agrees, even within Labour, that Corbyn was unelectable... in part because his team and policies where squarely on the far left. That does not make of him a bad politician (he can be, but you keep saying "he is a bad politician because I don't like his ideology and his ideology was not popular enough", which is NOT a criteria to decide if it's a bad politician or not). In a democracy, every ideology must be represented, even if they don't correspond to the majority and are therefore unelectable. But again, that is not my point: Corbyn was shit, unelectable, whatever, ... And yet, the other party had bad politicians. Corbyn is not the one putting those politicians there. Corbyn supporters neither. Neither Corbyn or his supporters have any say in this, because they have a different ideology and therefore cannot build a good-politician party that defends an ideology they don't agree with. The fact that the restaurant A serves expired food is not a good excuse for going to the restaurant B, eating slightly less expired food, pay your bill, leave without complaining about restaurant B, and conclude that the main reason is that restaurant A was bad. Restaurant A is bad, and we can, and should, complain about it, but when there is an article about restaurant B explaining that they are failing to serve correct food, you cannot bring in restaurant A as an excuse for the failure of restaurant B. The MAIN REASON restaurant B serves bad food is BECAUSE RESTAURANT B IS FAILING. You may even be centre-left and chosen Tories for the first time just because you did not like Corbyn. But as soon as you vote Tories, the quality of the politicians in the Tory party is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY. If you vote for them, you are part of the process that reward their choice of bad politicians. (I use "you" as the "hypothetical you", not you in particular) Also, your idea that what matter is the electability is really bad for democracy. Basically, it implies that minorities should never be represented. > A healthy democracy needs a credible opposition. If your definition of "credible opposition" is "an opposition that I would have maybe voted for", you are dead wrong. In a healthy democracy, when you have two main parties, one in power, one in opposition, then, there is one party that you should think is okay, and one party that you should think is shit (it's more complicated than that, but it is to illustrate). If you like all the parties, it just means that you have just one ideology represented.
Mezzie 4y ago
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...
- nailer 4y ago
  If you’re wondering too: gerontocracy is rule by the elderly. And that’s indeed a good description of the US right now.
  - neaden 4y ago
    Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump were all born within a year of each other, with Biden being 4 years older. There is a specific generation of politicians Born within a decade period who managed to get elected young and have clung to power in both parties very successfully, see John Bohner, Nancy Pelosi, and Ted Kennedy for other examples.
    - JPKab 4y ago
      Tyranny of the boomers, or apathy of gen X? That's the question I always ask when viewing the gerontocracy. In academia at least it's been very clear that the boomers were shameless about working long past the time they should retire, preventing gen Xers from rising to top positions.
      - stopnamingnuts 4y ago
        Most broad statements including GenX really need to be qualified by noting its size (slightly greater than half) relative to either of the two pigs working their way through the python before and behind it. Three when you count GenZ. Apathetic? Maybe. But even if we were all on the same page as a group (which we're not) I don't see how we have the numbers to force a systemic turnover on our own. I am, of course, a member of GenX. Sometimes, as Planck said, progress has to happen one funeral at a time. None of this brings me any joy to observe.
krona 4y ago
If Anna Soubry was still an MP then the entire country would be on a different trajectory. Even though Brexit happened only 3 years ago. Definitely.
jrsj 4y ago
Hadn't Starmer already replaced Corbyn by the last election? I don't think you can blame this on him. I don't think he's really the most unpopular element of Labour either. Even after most media was slandering him as an "antisemite" and all that other garbage because neoliberals have captured all of the institutions in the UK.
- petesergeant 4y ago
  > Hadn't Starmer already replaced Corbyn by the last election? No.
  - jrsj 4y ago
    Yep, you're right. I guess all that felt longer ago than it actually was
- ogogmad 4y ago
  The accusations were partly based on him cosying up with terrorists, from Hamas, Iran, etc. Is it too much to ask that a candidate for Prime Minister should respect the Rule of Law? There's also his support for Chavez/Maduro, his suicidally naive pacifism which helps the enemy, etc. Oh, and the episode with the mural, where he was too stupid to understand why a picture of fat people with hooked noses oppressing "the workers" would be offensive to a certain group. And what kind of adult sees the world in that way anyway? [edit] Whatever. Downvote me. You people will never win in the real world.
  - jodrellblank 4y ago
    Boris Johnson met ex-KGB oligarch and made his son a member of the House of Lords[1] He said "let the bodies pile high" about his plan for COVID, a plan which ended up killing ~100,000 people.[2][2.5] > "Oh, and the episode with the mural, where he was too stupid to understand why a picture of fat people with hooked noses oppressing "the workers" would be offensive to a certain group." Is the certain group Jews? Were they offended by Boris Johnson's book with rude Jewish stereotypes?[3] Or his other racist public writings?[4] > "Is it too much to ask that a candidate for Prime Minister should respect the Rule of Law?" Is it too much to ask that the actual Prime Minster respect the law? Partygate, for example[5] What's that saying "with Conservatives, every accusation is a confession". [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-62068421 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-62068421 [2] https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-pms-former-adviser-confirms-johnson-said-let-bodies-pile-high-2021-05-26/ https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-pms-former-adviser-confi... [2.5] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/26/ons-figures-show-uk-passed-100000-covid-deaths-by-7-january https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/26/ons-figures-sh... [3] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-book-jews-control-media-general-election-a9239346.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson... [4] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/jan/23/london.race https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/jan/23/london.race [5] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-60124162 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-60124162
mattlondon 4y ago
The way we elect a prime minister (i.e. we don't) plays a large part here I think. Parties themselves select the leader. Johnson, Corbyn, Truss, Sunak - all voted in by relatively small numbers of people (e.g. 80k in the case of Truss IIRC), yet they are somehow the leader of the party and potentially even PM. This is where labour shat the bed I think with Corbyn - totally obvious that he would be terrible as a PM yet the favourite of the popular vote of self-selected labour party, who of course are too extreme to represent the common person on the street.
- skippyboxedhero 4y ago
  No, Labour isn't a popular vote. It is a popular vote AND a union vote (and the PLP, although they have never mattered in practice, they tried to oust Corbyn three times iirc...didn't work). Corbyn had popular support but, like Miliband, relied relatively heavily on unions...and one union at that: Unite (and btw, his popular support was always overstated hugely...in late 2019, you had a sizeable minority who thought he would walk it, he was massively popular in the Westminster bubble...this is despite him being regarded as a totally odious figure under Blair when he was a backbencher). The Tories have never had this issue because their electorate is relatively diffuse, and MPs have been quite willing to stab their leader in the back at the first sign of trouble. Blair (like Thatcher) was an accident. I agree with your point but the Tories have been generally able to produce more effective leaders with their constitution.
  - mytailorisrich 4y ago
    Corbyn and McDonnell were essentially communists and therefore unelectable. Blair took the realistic route: Socialism does not work, let's have a market economy create wealth that can then be used to finance social programs. A flavour a social democracy. I think a reason Corbyn was so popular among the young is that enough time has passed so that this generation has no idea what socialist countries in Europe were actually like.
    - skippyboxedhero 4y ago
      The problem with Blair was that he lost the right on EU/immigration and lost the left on everything else. Brownites sound good but say nothing specific...often the specific stuff is bad too. I agree with you in that there is a route in the centre, but Labour aren't. The party is fundamentally broken. Starmer isn't it, Reeves isn't a leader, Streeting is a joke. Obviously, they have moved to the centre on immigration and crime but...the party are just mad, and it doesn't seem authentic at all (Starmer was a human rights lawyer, getting rid of ECHR is the only course...you would have to be an idiot to believe he would do that, it just isn't credible). The ambiguity of Labour is causing part of these problems. For example, their position of ambiguity on healthcare...clearly, it is broken...but they decide to be ambiguous (again, classic Brown) so their polling numbers stay up. There needs to be some kind of cross-party move towards reform but it is impossible when one side just wants to score points as the "protector of the NHS" (and it will end up with Labour winning, then finding out they are neck deep in trouble trying to do reforms that don't work...it will never be fixed).
tobylane 4y ago
I don’t think overwhelming is the right word, his vote share was around Blair’s average. Now that half of Tory MPs have been cabinet members, it’s harder to demand loyalty by dangling a job for votes. Especially the ministerial roles that the public are aware of. The article seems to be avoiding the term "lame duck period". It reads an excessively selective set of opinions, and it's unclear who should be trying harder.
- petesergeant 4y ago
  > 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.
  - tobylane 4y ago
    Yes, I missed out the bit where that 3% difference in vote lead to a 93 (out of 650) difference in seats.
    - iso1631 4y ago
      Corbyn got 202 MPs in 2019, Blair in his 3rd term got 355 Corbyn wasn't just deeply unpopular across the country outside of student areas. 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. Across rural areas in Cheshire people were voting Tory because they were scared of Lib Dems backing Corbyn. Due to the way that FPTP works, his concentrated support in student/young urban areas was wasted, with the result being a Tory landslide.
      - petesergeant 4y ago
        > life long remainer lib dems This describes me. Luckily I was able to meaningfully vote LibDem, because I really could not see myself voting for BoJo or Corbyn in the last election. Neither Starmer nor Sunak would be my first choice, but in contrast I could hold my nose and vote for either of them if I had to.
makomk 4y ago
The article is part of the problem. UK politics and the media narratives around it have beeen utterly wrecked by the fight over Brexit and the attempts to give its creators the boot. For example, take this claim: "Investment is down and inflation higher than it would have been inside the European Union." The UK's inflation in the year to November 2022 was 10.7%, compared to 10.1% in the Eurozone. It just doesn't seem at all plausible that the UK would somehow have substantially lower inflation if it were in the EU, based on what countries actually in the EU have experienced, yet it's treated as so obviously true that only lying Brexiters would reject it. This belief is boosted by the fact the British press only ever compares our inflation with France, which has the lowest inflation in Europe due to substantial nuclear generating capacity and energy subsidies funded through borrowing. Our government was attacked for attempting even a fraction of those energy subsidies to the point they did a U-turn because ultimately the public pays for it, but that downside is ignored when talking about France. They also also have substantially more national debt for obvious reasons... but luckily the UK national debt is usually only compared with Germany's.
- benj111 4y ago
  10.7% v 10.1% is 0.6%. how long before that compounds into a sizable figure? I never really bought into the doomsday scenarios. Just a slow slide of Spanish package holidays getting more expensive and people not connecting the dots.
  - sbaiddn 4y ago
    Pretty long. Itd take 120 years for relative prices to double, compared to 7 years doubling at 10% inflation. Also, 0.6% is probably noise or error
- pharmakom 4y ago
  > The UK's inflation in the year to November 2022 was 10.7%, compared to 10.1% in the Eurozone. It just doesn't seem at all plausible that the UK would somehow have substantially lower inflation if it were in the EU Why not?
  - 4y ago
jillesvangurp 4y ago
Democracies elsewhere can learn a thing or two from recent election rounds in the US, the UK, and elsewhere. Basically, we've seen a surge in populism and irrational sentiment dominating politics and being translated into actual policy with disastrous results. The lesson there is that you can win an election and then loose an empire. I don't think it's a British problem either. We've had populists dominating politics in quite a few countries in recent decades. France just had a close call where a neo fascist came close to winning the elections. The Austrians have actually gone there. My home country the Netherlands has had populists come close a couple of times as well. Italy just elected a populist. The issue is that the type of policies populists preach tend to not involve a whole lot of carefully considered long term planning. Big gestures that are supposedly popular and then all hell breaks loose when reality and fantasy meet. Brexit sounded great to people with no clue about how economies work. Now they are dealing with inflation, lots of failing policies, and the notion that they might soon have to rename their country as it is won't be great or united anymore if Scotland and Northern Ireland cease to be a part of it. I don't think anyone voted for that in England. But it would be a direct consequence of what they did vote for.
- mike_hearn 4y ago
  "Brexit sounded great to people with no clue about how economies work. Now they are dealing with inflation" As is pointed out in every single one of these threads, inflation in the UK is no different to inflation in the rest of Europe. Like elsewhere, it's created by money printing to pay for lockdowns and other COVID measures, along with embargoes against Russia. It's really quite impressive how often this claim about inflation and Brexit comes up on HN, despite it being so easily disproven by looking at the numbers. It seems to happen on literally every single thread about the UK. The idea that Remainer-ism is a bastion of economic logic and common sense doesn't fit with the frequency with which bad economic claims in support of EU membership are made.
- brigandish 4y ago
  Like you, all of my political opponents are stupid or evil, often both! It's so convenient… Is there no one you disagree with politically who is just popular instead of populist, knowledgeable and yet disagrees with you? If you can't think of any then I'd suggest the problem lies within you. By the way > as it is won't be great Great is a geographical term. Just as British people remain european after leaving the EU, they (those on the island of Great Britain) would remain part of Great Britain. But do continue to regale us all from up high with your superior knowledge about economies and such, knowing things like why Great Britain is named as it is, that's just a trifling fact for plebs.
brigandish 4y ago
> 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 sounds like democracy in action to me (and anti-democracy by those who tried to stymie Brexit).
- matthewmacleod 4y ago
  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.
  - brigandish 4y ago
    My first question would be, respected by whom, and my second would be, whose respect matters? My guess would be that it was the voters who were most important as they provided a majority to the next most important people, the executive. Do you think those voters respect those MPs? Let's see. 21 Tory MPs had the whip removed for defying the party line and signalling their intent to defy Brexit: - Kenneth Clarke, sniffed the political winds and stood down. Got given a golden handshake to the Lords. - Philip Hammond - you must be joking, right? Still managed to get a seat in the Lords though. - Rory Stewart. Do you think those who voted Brexit respect him? Might win in a contest with Hammond over who is disliked less. So well respected he couldn't even keep his campaign for mayor of London going to the start line, even with London being a remain stronghold. - Dominic Grieve would not even beat Guy Verhofstadt in a contest voted on by leave supporters over who is liked less, as evidenced by losing his seat to his Tory replacement. I half expected Guy Fawkes day to be renamed Dominic Grieve day. Still could. - David Gauke has an instructive Wikipedia entry[1]: > Gauke stood in his constituency as an independent candidate, and came second with 26% of the vote, by far the best result of any of those former Conservative Members who sought re-election as independents. That'll make the rest of the list an anti-climax but let's have some fun drilling the point home: - Antoinette Sandbach, stood as a LibDem and lost. - Sir Oliver Letwin, didn't stand again. I don't know anyone that respects him[2]. - Justine Greening, did not stand. Why not? She was savvy enough to see what was coming. - Sam Gyimah, stood as a LibDem, lost seat to Conservatives, coming third behind Labour. - Guto Bebb, didn't stand. Previously managed to gain much respect by bullying a man with Asperger's[3]. - Anne Milton, lost seat in 4th place. Tories kept her seat with a leave supporter in her place. - Alistair Burt, Caroline Nokes, Greg Clark, Sir Nicholas Soames, Ed Vaizey, Margot James, Richard Benyon, Stephen Hammond, Steve Brine and Richard Harrington had the whip restored. Soames didn't stand at the next election, Harrington, Vaizey and Benyon got bumped up to the Lords where they love remainer Tories. Stephen Hammond and Steve Brine kept their seats with much reduced majorities. Jo Johnson and Amber Rudd also resigned from the cabinet in support of the rebels and stood down at the next election. Johnson was bumped up to the Lords, because there aren't enough anti-democratic lords, apparently, though their record (and entire structure and history) would suggest otherwise. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Gauke https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Gauke [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Letwin#1985_Broadwater_Farm_memo_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Letwin#1985_Broadwater_... [3] https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/aberconwy-mp-guto-bebb-embroiled-7728164 https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/aberconwy-...

mytailorisrich 4y ago

It's a deeper problem than simply being in power for too long. They have been in power that long because the alternative offer was worse as you mention.

mannykannot 4y ago
I agree. In a pattern that seems to be repeated globally and frequently, dissatisfaction drives polarization, which in turn pumps up the dissatisfaction, and also encourages actions which are ideological rather than pragmatic and at least as rash as they are bold - and when they go wrong, it gives objective reasons to be even more dissatisfied.
- AtlasBarfed 4y ago
  Two party polarized systems, aside from the murky money enabling shadow control of both parties, enables centralized control of policy because rather than on a per-issue consensus decision, it enforcesstrictly "party line" votes. ... the "party line" being decided by the small cabal in charge of making the "party line", usually the ones with the most access to monetary funds. But the inability to see even 10% of party legislators deviate from party lines in various votes means that not only is rational policy not being well served, regional representation is being undermined since adhering to the party line does not optimize for the policy for their region/district. And in the US house/senate, the seniority system is another undemocratic institution. Why should changing representatives reduce your effective power in a legislative house? I can't think of a system where codified seniority was a good thing
  - mannykannot 4y ago
    Maybe I am reading something into your comment that isn't there, but I don't think this is particular to two-party systems. Israel is explicitly not a two-party system (it uses proportional representation), yet it seems to becoming increasingly and strongly polarized.
equalsione 4y ago
From the outside looking in, was the opposition worse? On the one hand, labour seem really similar to the Tories - disunited, dogma over common sense and oddly out of touch. Their policies _were_ opposite to Tory policies but they are trying to be an opposition so… Yes Corbin was a leftie (corduroy elbow patches and all) but he’s a leader of a left wing party. It’s like complaining that Thatcher was a bit right-wing. It seems like the core issue is that the voters want something like Tory-lite. Blair did that and no one wants to go back to it. So this is what you’re left with
- mytailorisrich 4y ago
  Corbyn is a hardcore anticapitalist whose aim is a socialist society (soviet block style). He is in favour of Brexit, too, for this reason. Same goes for McDonnell, a Marxist. That's very far left and is opposed by most people including in the Labour Party. Basically, those guys were the Communist Party and unsurprisingly people did prefer to keep the Tories... It was the same in the 80s when Labour was essentially unelectable. Blair saw that the centre left was politically the best bet, and pragmatically that social policies needed the private economy to produce wealth.
  - gghhzzgghhzz 4y ago
    The 2017 Corbyn manifesto was praised by Polly Toynbee of all people for goodness sake! https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/11/leaked-labour-manifesto-cornucopia-delights-tories-jeremy-corbyn-theresa-may https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/11/leaked...
  - andrekandre 4y ago
    > Blair saw that the centre left was politically the best bet, and pragmatically that social policies needed the private economy to produce wealth. in the end, what happened to the produced wealth? is everyone doing much better now than then?
- petesergeant 4y ago
  > Corbyn was a leftie ... but he’s a leader of a left wing party Corbyn was hard left in a distinctly centrist country whose "Left Wing Party" is (despite its roots) very much left-leaning centrist, and who's only ever seen real success while occupying the middle-ground. > voters want something like Tory-lite. Blair did that and no one wants to go back to it If nobody wanted to go back to it then we'd have Rebecca Long-Bailey as Leader of His Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition, not another centrist.
gmac 4y ago
Counterpoint: that’s utter nonsense.
iso1631 4y ago
The government in power from 2010-2015 was very different than the one today. For starters it was a coalition with the Lib Dems, but even comparing today's rump with Cameron's second ministry shows massive divergence in competence as well as policy.
cauch 4y ago
Judging what is "worse" is tricky. Of course, if the alternative is proposing policies that don't fit with your ideology, you are going to judge them badly ("how can they be good politicians, they haven't even understood what is obvious to me"). But it does not mean they are worse, it just means that they are not representative of your ideology. In a healthy democracy, the community should accept that there will be people with different ideology, and that there will therefore be political parties representing them. I think this is the problem: politicians representing the ideology X can afford to be mediocre because they have some room before "voting for mediocre politicians that still agree with what I believe is the best" is worse than "voting for non-mediocre politicians that disagree with what I believe is the best". If a party ends up with mediocre politician, it is its own failure, and the other parties (even if they themselves have bad politicians) are not responsible: the other parties represent other people. If the party that represents your ideology is managing to put forward mediocre politicians, then, it is your failure for letting that happens or accepting this situation. (I'm not saying that you are incompetent: you may have failed because it was impossible. Still, it's certainly not the responsibility of people who have a different ideology) In short, in a healthy democracy, there will always be a "worse" party. It cannot take away the responsibility of the party you have voted for for being bad. It's a bit like having giraffes and lions at the zoo, and having the lions saying "the meat is full of maggots and really bad quality, but the alternative is having the vegetables that suits the giraffes, so, it's the giraffes' fault".
- mytailorisrich 4y ago
  Except pretty much everyone agrees, even within Labour, that Corbyn was unelectable... in part because his team and policies where squarely on the far left. A repeat of the Micheal Foot days in the 80s. So, yes, in the end people may have had issues with the sitting government but they concluded that they were the "least bad" option. A healthy democracy needs a credible opposition.
  - cauch 4y ago
    > Except pretty much everyone agrees, even within Labour, that Corbyn was unelectable... in part because his team and policies where squarely on the far left. That does not make of him a bad politician (he can be, but you keep saying "he is a bad politician because I don't like his ideology and his ideology was not popular enough", which is NOT a criteria to decide if it's a bad politician or not). In a democracy, every ideology must be represented, even if they don't correspond to the majority and are therefore unelectable. But again, that is not my point: Corbyn was shit, unelectable, whatever, ... And yet, the other party had bad politicians. Corbyn is not the one putting those politicians there. Corbyn supporters neither. Neither Corbyn or his supporters have any say in this, because they have a different ideology and therefore cannot build a good-politician party that defends an ideology they don't agree with. The fact that the restaurant A serves expired food is not a good excuse for going to the restaurant B, eating slightly less expired food, pay your bill, leave without complaining about restaurant B, and conclude that the main reason is that restaurant A was bad. Restaurant A is bad, and we can, and should, complain about it, but when there is an article about restaurant B explaining that they are failing to serve correct food, you cannot bring in restaurant A as an excuse for the failure of restaurant B. The MAIN REASON restaurant B serves bad food is BECAUSE RESTAURANT B IS FAILING. You may even be centre-left and chosen Tories for the first time just because you did not like Corbyn. But as soon as you vote Tories, the quality of the politicians in the Tory party is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY. If you vote for them, you are part of the process that reward their choice of bad politicians. (I use "you" as the "hypothetical you", not you in particular) Also, your idea that what matter is the electability is really bad for democracy. Basically, it implies that minorities should never be represented. > A healthy democracy needs a credible opposition. If your definition of "credible opposition" is "an opposition that I would have maybe voted for", you are dead wrong. In a healthy democracy, when you have two main parties, one in power, one in opposition, then, there is one party that you should think is okay, and one party that you should think is shit (it's more complicated than that, but it is to illustrate). If you like all the parties, it just means that you have just one ideology represented.

Mezzie 4y ago

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...

nailer 4y ago
If you’re wondering too: gerontocracy is rule by the elderly. And that’s indeed a good description of the US right now.
- neaden 4y ago
  Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump were all born within a year of each other, with Biden being 4 years older. There is a specific generation of politicians Born within a decade period who managed to get elected young and have clung to power in both parties very successfully, see John Bohner, Nancy Pelosi, and Ted Kennedy for other examples.
  - JPKab 4y ago
    Tyranny of the boomers, or apathy of gen X? That's the question I always ask when viewing the gerontocracy. In academia at least it's been very clear that the boomers were shameless about working long past the time they should retire, preventing gen Xers from rising to top positions.
    - stopnamingnuts 4y ago
      Most broad statements including GenX really need to be qualified by noting its size (slightly greater than half) relative to either of the two pigs working their way through the python before and behind it. Three when you count GenZ. Apathetic? Maybe. But even if we were all on the same page as a group (which we're not) I don't see how we have the numbers to force a systemic turnover on our own. I am, of course, a member of GenX. Sometimes, as Planck said, progress has to happen one funeral at a time. None of this brings me any joy to observe.

krona 4y ago

If Anna Soubry was still an MP then the entire country would be on a different trajectory. Even though Brexit happened only 3 years ago. Definitely.

jrsj 4y ago

Hadn't Starmer already replaced Corbyn by the last election? I don't think you can blame this on him. I don't think he's really the most unpopular element of Labour either. Even after most media was slandering him as an "antisemite" and all that other garbage because neoliberals have captured all of the institutions in the UK.

petesergeant 4y ago
> Hadn't Starmer already replaced Corbyn by the last election? No.
- jrsj 4y ago
  Yep, you're right. I guess all that felt longer ago than it actually was
ogogmad 4y ago
The accusations were partly based on him cosying up with terrorists, from Hamas, Iran, etc. Is it too much to ask that a candidate for Prime Minister should respect the Rule of Law? There's also his support for Chavez/Maduro, his suicidally naive pacifism which helps the enemy, etc. Oh, and the episode with the mural, where he was too stupid to understand why a picture of fat people with hooked noses oppressing "the workers" would be offensive to a certain group. And what kind of adult sees the world in that way anyway? [edit] Whatever. Downvote me. You people will never win in the real world.
- jodrellblank 4y ago
  Boris Johnson met ex-KGB oligarch and made his son a member of the House of Lords[1] He said "let the bodies pile high" about his plan for COVID, a plan which ended up killing ~100,000 people.[2][2.5] > "Oh, and the episode with the mural, where he was too stupid to understand why a picture of fat people with hooked noses oppressing "the workers" would be offensive to a certain group." Is the certain group Jews? Were they offended by Boris Johnson's book with rude Jewish stereotypes?[3] Or his other racist public writings?[4] > "Is it too much to ask that a candidate for Prime Minister should respect the Rule of Law?" Is it too much to ask that the actual Prime Minster respect the law? Partygate, for example[5] What's that saying "with Conservatives, every accusation is a confession". [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-62068421 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-62068421 [2] https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-pms-former-adviser-confirms-johnson-said-let-bodies-pile-high-2021-05-26/ https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-pms-former-adviser-confi... [2.5] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/26/ons-figures-show-uk-passed-100000-covid-deaths-by-7-january https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/26/ons-figures-sh... [3] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-book-jews-control-media-general-election-a9239346.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson... [4] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/jan/23/london.race https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/jan/23/london.race [5] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-60124162 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-60124162

mattlondon 4y ago

The way we elect a prime minister (i.e. we don't) plays a large part here I think. Parties themselves select the leader. Johnson, Corbyn, Truss, Sunak - all voted in by relatively small numbers of people (e.g. 80k in the case of Truss IIRC), yet they are somehow the leader of the party and potentially even PM. This is where labour shat the bed I think with Corbyn - totally obvious that he would be terrible as a PM yet the favourite of the popular vote of self-selected labour party, who of course are too extreme to represent the common person on the street.

skippyboxedhero 4y ago
No, Labour isn't a popular vote. It is a popular vote AND a union vote (and the PLP, although they have never mattered in practice, they tried to oust Corbyn three times iirc...didn't work). Corbyn had popular support but, like Miliband, relied relatively heavily on unions...and one union at that: Unite (and btw, his popular support was always overstated hugely...in late 2019, you had a sizeable minority who thought he would walk it, he was massively popular in the Westminster bubble...this is despite him being regarded as a totally odious figure under Blair when he was a backbencher). The Tories have never had this issue because their electorate is relatively diffuse, and MPs have been quite willing to stab their leader in the back at the first sign of trouble. Blair (like Thatcher) was an accident. I agree with your point but the Tories have been generally able to produce more effective leaders with their constitution.
- mytailorisrich 4y ago
  Corbyn and McDonnell were essentially communists and therefore unelectable. Blair took the realistic route: Socialism does not work, let's have a market economy create wealth that can then be used to finance social programs. A flavour a social democracy. I think a reason Corbyn was so popular among the young is that enough time has passed so that this generation has no idea what socialist countries in Europe were actually like.
  - skippyboxedhero 4y ago
    The problem with Blair was that he lost the right on EU/immigration and lost the left on everything else. Brownites sound good but say nothing specific...often the specific stuff is bad too. I agree with you in that there is a route in the centre, but Labour aren't. The party is fundamentally broken. Starmer isn't it, Reeves isn't a leader, Streeting is a joke. Obviously, they have moved to the centre on immigration and crime but...the party are just mad, and it doesn't seem authentic at all (Starmer was a human rights lawyer, getting rid of ECHR is the only course...you would have to be an idiot to believe he would do that, it just isn't credible). The ambiguity of Labour is causing part of these problems. For example, their position of ambiguity on healthcare...clearly, it is broken...but they decide to be ambiguous (again, classic Brown) so their polling numbers stay up. There needs to be some kind of cross-party move towards reform but it is impossible when one side just wants to score points as the "protector of the NHS" (and it will end up with Labour winning, then finding out they are neck deep in trouble trying to do reforms that don't work...it will never be fixed).

tobylane 4y ago

I don’t think overwhelming is the right word, his vote share was around Blair’s average. Now that half of Tory MPs have been cabinet members, it’s harder to demand loyalty by dangling a job for votes. Especially the ministerial roles that the public are aware of. The article seems to be avoiding the term "lame duck period". It reads an excessively selective set of opinions, and it's unclear who should be trying harder.

petesergeant 4y ago
> 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.
- tobylane 4y ago
  Yes, I missed out the bit where that 3% difference in vote lead to a 93 (out of 650) difference in seats.
  - iso1631 4y ago
    Corbyn got 202 MPs in 2019, Blair in his 3rd term got 355 Corbyn wasn't just deeply unpopular across the country outside of student areas. 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. Across rural areas in Cheshire people were voting Tory because they were scared of Lib Dems backing Corbyn. Due to the way that FPTP works, his concentrated support in student/young urban areas was wasted, with the result being a Tory landslide.
    - petesergeant 4y ago
      > life long remainer lib dems This describes me. Luckily I was able to meaningfully vote LibDem, because I really could not see myself voting for BoJo or Corbyn in the last election. Neither Starmer nor Sunak would be my first choice, but in contrast I could hold my nose and vote for either of them if I had to.

makomk 4y ago

The article is part of the problem. UK politics and the media narratives around it have beeen utterly wrecked by the fight over Brexit and the attempts to give its creators the boot. For example, take this claim: "Investment is down and inflation higher than it would have been inside the European Union." The UK's inflation in the year to November 2022 was 10.7%, compared to 10.1% in the Eurozone. It just doesn't seem at all plausible that the UK would somehow have substantially lower inflation if it were in the EU, based on what countries actually in the EU have experienced, yet it's treated as so obviously true that only lying Brexiters would reject it. This belief is boosted by the fact the British press only ever compares our inflation with France, which has the lowest inflation in Europe due to substantial nuclear generating capacity and energy subsidies funded through borrowing. Our government was attacked for attempting even a fraction of those energy subsidies to the point they did a U-turn because ultimately the public pays for it, but that downside is ignored when talking about France. They also also have substantially more national debt for obvious reasons... but luckily the UK national debt is usually only compared with Germany's.

benj111 4y ago
10.7% v 10.1% is 0.6%. how long before that compounds into a sizable figure? I never really bought into the doomsday scenarios. Just a slow slide of Spanish package holidays getting more expensive and people not connecting the dots.
- sbaiddn 4y ago
  Pretty long. Itd take 120 years for relative prices to double, compared to 7 years doubling at 10% inflation. Also, 0.6% is probably noise or error
pharmakom 4y ago
> The UK's inflation in the year to November 2022 was 10.7%, compared to 10.1% in the Eurozone. It just doesn't seem at all plausible that the UK would somehow have substantially lower inflation if it were in the EU Why not?
- 4y ago

jillesvangurp 4y ago

Democracies elsewhere can learn a thing or two from recent election rounds in the US, the UK, and elsewhere. Basically, we've seen a surge in populism and irrational sentiment dominating politics and being translated into actual policy with disastrous results. The lesson there is that you can win an election and then loose an empire. I don't think it's a British problem either. We've had populists dominating politics in quite a few countries in recent decades. France just had a close call where a neo fascist came close to winning the elections. The Austrians have actually gone there. My home country the Netherlands has had populists come close a couple of times as well. Italy just elected a populist. The issue is that the type of policies populists preach tend to not involve a whole lot of carefully considered long term planning. Big gestures that are supposedly popular and then all hell breaks loose when reality and fantasy meet. Brexit sounded great to people with no clue about how economies work. Now they are dealing with inflation, lots of failing policies, and the notion that they might soon have to rename their country as it is won't be great or united anymore if Scotland and Northern Ireland cease to be a part of it. I don't think anyone voted for that in England. But it would be a direct consequence of what they did vote for.

mike_hearn 4y ago
"Brexit sounded great to people with no clue about how economies work. Now they are dealing with inflation" As is pointed out in every single one of these threads, inflation in the UK is no different to inflation in the rest of Europe. Like elsewhere, it's created by money printing to pay for lockdowns and other COVID measures, along with embargoes against Russia. It's really quite impressive how often this claim about inflation and Brexit comes up on HN, despite it being so easily disproven by looking at the numbers. It seems to happen on literally every single thread about the UK. The idea that Remainer-ism is a bastion of economic logic and common sense doesn't fit with the frequency with which bad economic claims in support of EU membership are made.
brigandish 4y ago
Like you, all of my political opponents are stupid or evil, often both! It's so convenient… Is there no one you disagree with politically who is just popular instead of populist, knowledgeable and yet disagrees with you? If you can't think of any then I'd suggest the problem lies within you. By the way > as it is won't be great Great is a geographical term. Just as British people remain european after leaving the EU, they (those on the island of Great Britain) would remain part of Great Britain. But do continue to regale us all from up high with your superior knowledge about economies and such, knowing things like why Great Britain is named as it is, that's just a trifling fact for plebs.

brigandish 4y ago

> 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 sounds like democracy in action to me (and anti-democracy by those who tried to stymie Brexit).

matthewmacleod 4y ago
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.
- brigandish 4y ago
  My first question would be, respected by whom, and my second would be, whose respect matters? My guess would be that it was the voters who were most important as they provided a majority to the next most important people, the executive. Do you think those voters respect those MPs? Let's see. 21 Tory MPs had the whip removed for defying the party line and signalling their intent to defy Brexit: - Kenneth Clarke, sniffed the political winds and stood down. Got given a golden handshake to the Lords. - Philip Hammond - you must be joking, right? Still managed to get a seat in the Lords though. - Rory Stewart. Do you think those who voted Brexit respect him? Might win in a contest with Hammond over who is disliked less. So well respected he couldn't even keep his campaign for mayor of London going to the start line, even with London being a remain stronghold. - Dominic Grieve would not even beat Guy Verhofstadt in a contest voted on by leave supporters over who is liked less, as evidenced by losing his seat to his Tory replacement. I half expected Guy Fawkes day to be renamed Dominic Grieve day. Still could. - David Gauke has an instructive Wikipedia entry[1]: > Gauke stood in his constituency as an independent candidate, and came second with 26% of the vote, by far the best result of any of those former Conservative Members who sought re-election as independents. That'll make the rest of the list an anti-climax but let's have some fun drilling the point home: - Antoinette Sandbach, stood as a LibDem and lost. - Sir Oliver Letwin, didn't stand again. I don't know anyone that respects him[2]. - Justine Greening, did not stand. Why not? She was savvy enough to see what was coming. - Sam Gyimah, stood as a LibDem, lost seat to Conservatives, coming third behind Labour. - Guto Bebb, didn't stand. Previously managed to gain much respect by bullying a man with Asperger's[3]. - Anne Milton, lost seat in 4th place. Tories kept her seat with a leave supporter in her place. - Alistair Burt, Caroline Nokes, Greg Clark, Sir Nicholas Soames, Ed Vaizey, Margot James, Richard Benyon, Stephen Hammond, Steve Brine and Richard Harrington had the whip restored. Soames didn't stand at the next election, Harrington, Vaizey and Benyon got bumped up to the Lords where they love remainer Tories. Stephen Hammond and Steve Brine kept their seats with much reduced majorities. Jo Johnson and Amber Rudd also resigned from the cabinet in support of the rebels and stood down at the next election. Johnson was bumped up to the Lords, because there aren't enough anti-democratic lords, apparently, though their record (and entire structure and history) would suggest otherwise. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Gauke https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Gauke [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Letwin#1985_Broadwater_Farm_memo_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Letwin#1985_Broadwater_... [3] https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/aberconwy-mp-guto-bebb-embroiled-7728164 https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/aberconwy-...