[ness31]

She lasted 45 days? That’s some kind of record, surely.

[Godstud]

The best person won... oh nuts. Did I miss something?

[Rugoz]

British politics is hilarious.

In Switzerland the biggest "scandal" of the past 2 decades was when a federal councillor wasn't reelected after 4 years.

[ness31]

Is it because the Queen died under her watch?

[ckaihatsu]

No causing World War 3, please.


= D

[Rich]

British politics is hilarious.

Indeed it is, but we followed humbly in the foot steps of the Americans. The American political system is awesome. Designed by the founders to produce entertainment, it has just kept on giving. From the early episodes like Shay's, burning Kansas and the Civil war though to later stuff like Watergate Monica Lewinsky and Trump, it never ceases to provide entertainment. No one can complain about the American political system unless you're some kind of tedious bore that cares about government policy. in Britain we've tried to partly copy America by introducing primary's for party leadership. We've not had the system for long but already its given us Corbyn and Truss.

Haig I believe introduced it to the Conservative Party. He wasn't stupid, he realised that it made it a lot difficult to be removed. He's now proposing changing the rule back, as its no longer to his advantage.

[ckaihatsu]

American political system

Designed by the founders to produce entertainment, it has just kept on giving.

While this could be taken as *patronizing*, I'll point out that you have an empirical / *logistical* point, since the nation-state *itself* is logistical, *for* society, and/or at its expense. (Note my inclusion of the scale-level of 'empires / nation-states / city-states' at the meta-category of 'logistics', and then also 'regional culture' and 'movements / institutions', in the following diagram.)


History, Macro-Micro -- politics-logistics-lifestyle

Spoiler: show

[Rich]

I see that loathsome hypocrite Keir Starmer is calling for a general election. This is the man that supports the First Past the Post system that gives a virtual dictatorship to a party on a minority of the vote. He supports five year parliaments where the electorate gets no chance to recall their representatives unless the majority of the MPs agree. And he supports a primary leadership system in his party that makes it similarly difficult to remove an unpopular leader.

[Rugoz]

[Skynet]

According Al Jazeera has Liz Truss resigned. Boris Johnson should again overtake the office... or the Tories will loose elections.

[wat0n]

Why are the Tories unable to get their act together?

[Tainari88]

Why are the Tories unable to get their act together?

Because los vendidos are everywhere. Can't be trusted with actually not being about something beyond themselves. Mediocrity reigns as @Potemkin stated. Lol.

They can't think themselves out of a paper bag.

[Potemkin]

Why are the Tories unable to get their act together?

Basically, what @Tainari88 said. The kind of people who join the Tory Party tend to be personally ambitious, but have no political or moral principles beyond that. They see politics as merely a vehicle for their own ego, rather than as a means of helping people or making the world a better place. This is why Liz Truss was happy to ditch all of her political and economic agenda as soon as she ran into trouble, in a vain attempt to cling on. She was in office, but not in power. And that was good enough for her. Basically, they're just sell-outs looking for the best price they can get. Lol.

[wat0n]

@Potemkin @Tainari88 but even if you're right, that has always been the case. Yet it never ended like this.

So what is different now? Do they need an internal purge like the Labor Party did?

[Potemkin]

@Potemkin @Tainari88 but even if you're right, that has always been the case. Yet it never ended like this.

So what is different now? Do they need an internal purge like the Labor Party did?

The difference is that the present generation of Tory politicians are mediocrities. The Tories were always personally ambitious and ruthless, but in the past they tended to have higher standards. As I said before, Thatcher was ambitious, ruthless and pitiless, but she was intellectually brilliant and very hard-working. In the early 80s, she slept only 5 hours a night, and spent every waking hour living and breathing politics and politics only. She bestrode the world stage like a colossus for more than a decade. The present crop are just as evil and ambitious, but they are pitiful mediocrities without an original thought in their heads and without even the political nous to remain in office more than a few weeks. And a purge would do no good at all - if they purged all the idiots and mediocrities from the Tory Party, there would be nobody left except a few members of the 1922 Committee. But nobody's going to vote for somebody who is so obviously evil that they even look like Voldemort....

[wat0n]

The difference is that the present generation of Tory politicians are mediocrities. The Tories were always personally ambitious and ruthless, but in the past they tended to have higher standards. As I said before, Thatcher was ambitious, ruthless and pitiless, but she was intellectually brilliant and very hard-working. In the early 80s, she slept only 5 hours a night, and spent every waking hour living and breathing politics and politics only. She bestrode the world stage like a colossus for more than a decade. The present crop are just as evil and ambitious, but they are pitiful mediocrities without an original thought in their heads and without even the political nous to remain in office more than a few weeks. And a purge would do no good at all - if they purged all the idiots and mediocrities from the Tory Party, there would be nobody left except a few members of the 1922 Committee. But nobody's going to vote for somebody who is so obviously evil that they even look like Voldemort....

And yet, such a purge seems to be necessary if they can't hold their shit together to this extent. Either that, or division.

I also don't think they are any more, or less, evil than other politicians.

[ckaihatsu]

Have they tried a classified job ad in the newspaper -- ?


x D

[Potemkin]

And yet, such a purge seems to be necessary if they can't hold their shit together to this extent. Either that, or division.

I also don't think they are any more, or less, evil than other politicians.

The Tory Party has a different set of problems than the Labour Party had in the 1980s. The Labour Party back then was riven by an ideological split, between moderate left-of-centre social democrats and the hard left. The unions were similarly split, be it noted. Thatcher curbed the power of the unions, and made their ideological split irrelevant. And Kinnock and then Blair ruthlessly purged the Labour Party of the hard left faction. They split off into small socialist or communist parties, as for example Arthur Scargill did, or they just dropped out of politics altogether. This made the Labour Party into a centre-left social democratic party, similar to its continental European counterparts, and made it electable again for the voters of 'Middle England', so when the Tory Party became mired in scandal and mediocrity in the early 1990s, they were ready to take advantage. The Tory Party was all but wiped out in 1997 (they have still never recovered in Scotland to this day), and Labour governed the nation for more than a decade, as the 'Tories Lite'. Margaret Thatcher once quipped that her greatest legacy was Tony Blair. Lol.

The purges worked for the Labour Party, in the sense that it eventually got them back into 10 Downing Street, and not as captives of the militant unions either (as they were in the 1970s). But the Tory Party has a very different set of problems. Their ideological divisions are serious but not fatal - they have always been a 'broad church', as they like to call themselves, and have tolerated these ideological divisions since forever. No, the problem is that most Tory politicians tend to be self-seeking opportunists rather than serious politicians. Thatcher was a conviction politician, who believed herself to be fighting for something greater than her own career - she regarded herself as fighting for the soul of the nation, for the future of the nation itself. So far as I can make out, there is nobody in the present Tory Party who is fighting for anything except their own bank balance and their own social status. That is their problem, and I don't see any way they can fix it.

[MadMonk]

The Tories self-imploded when David Cameron announced that they would hold a referendum on either staying in the EU or not, in case they won the next general election. This was in 2013 and 3 years later the unthinkable happened - the voters actually went for it. Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things except for one minor detail. The Tories never wanted it to happen and could not imagine it ever would. They were dogs chasing a car and accidently caught a stick of dynamite dipped in superglue.

Since then, they have had to successively bring forward one greater clown than the one before to fullfill all the empty promises of yesteryear. Because anyone with a functioning brain knew that nothing could be done and no one wanted to be blamed for it when it all blew up in their faces.

David Cameron Is Sorry. Really, Really Sorry. (New York Times, 21 September 2019)

[ckaihatsu]

Let's all just stay over *here*, on *this* side of the room....


x D