please empty your brain below
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Yes, I know I oversimplified X and you actually liked Y, but try and run with the overall theme rather than picking apart the detail.
diamond geezer | Homepage | 22.07.22 - 12:21 a.m. | #
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Blimey, my head hurts. I’ll have another cup of tea and then a lay down.
Ray Burns | 22.07.22 - 7:37 a.m. | #
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Agree with all of this. But at least we have a choice. When it comes to our head of state we have none. And most of us seem strangely to approve of this institutional nepotism.
Bernard | 22.07.22 - 7:43 a.m. | #
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A sound summing up, but least we are not faced with Putin v Putin.
It makes me wonder about Proportional Representation, but that system gave us Brexit as UKIP only gained traction once they were milking the European Parliament's expenses system to fund their UK activities and turn the Conservative party into somewhere between UKIP and BNP.
NickW | 22.07.22 - 8:15 a.m. | #
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Not that most of us get to participate from the UK, but the 2020 US presidential election also fits the theme. Trump v Biden. One old white man, a 74 year old egotistical narcissist heading a nepotistic regime, whose three nominations embedded a conservative majority on the US Supreme Court for a generation, versus another even older white man, 77 nearly 78, whose problem with stumbling over words may be more than the remnant of a childhood speech impediment. End of quote. Repeat the line.
Andrew | 22.07.22 - 8:26 a.m. | #
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As implied, the election process is permeated with anomalies. The central one is that the Prime Minister is not directly-elected, but has evolved into a quasi-presidential figure. The "emergence" of a party leader in the days of the men in grey suits at least did not give any illusion of democracy.
cau1khead | 22.07.22 - 8:49 a.m. | #
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Quite agree with your analysis - if Clegg hadn’t had been so keen to form an alliance back in 2010 and the subsequent killing of the Lib Dems as a Parliamentary force, both the main two parties would have had to have manifestos that courted the centre ground, rather than lurching towards the extremes of their political beliefs.
Nick Clegg is the (unwitting) villain at the root of this, but Labour must share some of the blame for being an incredibly ineffective opposition, thus allowing the Conservatives to make an absolute Horlicks of pretty much everything.
The silver lining in all this? It’s not as bad as the USA.
Marc | 22.07.22 - 9:01 a.m. | #
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DG4PM
scrumpy | 22.07.22 - 9:14 a.m. | #
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12 years on and I still don't understand how/why people thought that the Lib Dems would be able to implement all of their policies as a minority partner in a coalition. At least they saved us from another 5 years of New Labour under Gordon Brown (the most inept Prime Minister we'd ever had - up to that date). The sight of Brown cling on to the door frame at number 10 as they had to drag him out was pitiful. Shame we haven't seen a similar scene with Johnson but he's still there and we and probably seemingly on going nowhere.
NPIan | 22.07.22 - 9:15 a.m. | #
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Very unhappy with your use of ‘fascism’ to describe any mainstream political party in Britain - some of us have relatives who lived (or didn’t) through actual fascism back in the day and that involved an awful lot more killing and an awful lot less freedom to attack and criticise on a blog
barbicanman | 22.07.22 - 9:19 a.m. | #
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We get what we deserve, unfortunately.
Alex McKenna | 22.07.22 - 9:22 a.m. | #
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Personally, the rot set in with the choices Blair made (continued by Brown).
Especially the decision to set the course of the British economy around low wages (to be "business friendly") in the context of the EU expansion rather than doing everything possible to upskill and encourage (through a higher minimum wage) the underused domestic workforce into work.
MilesT | 22.07.22 - 9:29 a.m. | #
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Started today feeling mildly depressed. Even more so now.
Frank F | 22.07.22 - 9:31 a.m. | #
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We could have had something a bit nearer to proportional representation but the nation comprehensively rejected it, as the major parties told them to. We like it like this.
Tony | 22.07.22 - 9:35 a.m. | #
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Sunak V Truss v Starmer is a fascinating contest for an unexpected reason. Since 1900 there have only been 2 PMs whose surnames are in the second half of the alphabet compared to 21 whose surnames are in the first half. We are guaranteed a third with Sunak or Truss and possibly a fourth if Starmer wins the next general election.
There are a number of articles about the tyranny of listing authors in alphabetical order on academic papers but another impact of this process is seen in politics. Ballot papers for internal party posts and public elections are almost always listed in alphabetical order. Look at any multi-member council ward and 9 times out of 10 the person with the most votes for each party is the one nearest to the start of the alphabet.
In all the top posts in Government there is a clear over representation of people whose surnames are at the start of the alphabet which is not reflective of the distributions of surnames generally in the population.
bontempi | 22.07.22 - 9:44 a.m. | #
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Let's face it: why would any sane person want to be Prime Minister? It follows, therefore, that candidates should undertake a thorough psychological assessment as part of the selection process. Using such a filter would have prevented several hopefuls on the list from progressing.
Frank | 22.07.22 - 9:47 a.m. | #
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The politicians and their politics are beside the point when a solid majority of the electorate takes absolutely no interest in proceedings, and are in any case literally ignorant about any matter outside their immediate surroundings. Life for most of us is complicated and confusing enough already without having to sift through political muck heaps. A test at the point of voting to ensure that the voter has even a small understanding of the issues at hand seems impractical. A test to ensure that the candidates themselves are worthy seems unfeasible. Therefore, I favour a modern system of It's A Knockout with parties competing in ludicrous slapstick games, the candidates dressed in outlandish costumes. Regional heats, a grand finale. Then, and best of all, on to Europe - Les Jeux sans Frontières reborn. What I wouldn't give..
jpmac | 22.07.22 - 10:16 a.m. | #
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Personally I quite liked the coalition government.
It's easy to stay pure on the outside, just criticising the 2 main parties (in England and Wales) but when in power and get your hands dirty, inevitably there will be times when you compromise your principles. That's how coalition government in countries with PR works.
Instead the Lib Dems got punished for it and we ended up with a Tory government which lost a Brexit vote and purged its centrist wing.
Mikey C | 22.07.22 - 10:19 a.m. | #
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I still think the Referendum shouldn't have been a binding vote, but a fact-finding mission. Then Cameron could have come back and said the results were too close to call so more research into the pros and cons were needed.
Actually, that's what they should have done before even mooting an In/Out vote!
No one has mentioned that neither Sunak or Truss were even around when Brown was kicked out, so our future is going to be in the hands of two very inexperienced, career politicians
Cornish Cockney | 22.07.22 - 10:35 a.m. | #
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One wonders if the Lib Dems will ever come back. A difficult prospect considering their interesting policies as of late, along with the fact they've lost the Scots.
Luke | 22.07.22 - 12:39 p.m. | #
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Hopefully Brexit will be reversed. I am not following the contest for leader of the Conservative party as I have no say on the outcome and do not like any of the candidates.
A General Election should be called to give get a new PM with mandate.
John | 22.07.22 - 1:53 p.m. | #
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It's odd that so many people seem to think we have a Presidential system of electing a government rather than Parliamentary sovereignty.
JohnC | 22.07.22 - 2:48 p.m. | #
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The lib dems did nothing bad by entering a coalition. Where they went utterly and disastrously wrong was to choose the wrong partner.
Malcolm of Kent | 22.07.22 - 4:33 p.m. | #
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At least in the USA participation in the primary system is quite open and voters get a chance to register as a Republican or Democrat and vote for their candidate, without having to pay to join the respective parties as a member (I think? In most states?).
On the other hand, as stated, the system still produced Trump v Clinton.
James | 22.07.22 - 7:55 p.m. | #
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Binary choices saves energy most and also avoids the problem of singularity (like in Russia or China).
Inevitably political stances come down to binary. Not even the PR dominated Germany can avoid this -- in some sense they have to be PR because they have been multi-polar for most of their history.
Patrickov | 23.07.22 - 2:09 a.m. | #
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