Zompist Bboard Again

I think The Day Today explained the situation well: summing it up in a word...

But seriously, this does raise the question: why ARE modern British politicians so astonishingly stupid?

You can take that northern ireland quote. Or you can take, for example, the Brexit Secretary saying "We want a bespoke arrangement in goods which recognises the peculiar, frankly, geographic, economic entity that is the United Kingdom. We are, and I hadn't quite understood the full extent of this, but if you look at the UK and if you look at how we trade in goods, we are particularly reliant on the Dover-Calais crossing."

And that's not some heat-of-the-moment interview gotcha, that's what he decided to say in an official speech. And it's not just one thing or another, it's constant ineptitude at every level of government - and Labour are no better (if not worse). Now of course, every era thinks it has bad politicians, and it's usually right. But looking at British political history, even just in my lifetime, and it's really striking how awful the current lot are by any standard. Few of them have any charisma, few of them have any gravitas, few of them have the ability to navigate from one end of a sentence to the other without an existential crisis and hail mary cliché, and surprisingly many of them have the mental capacity of barn-raised veal.

Why?

A couple of explanations spring to mind...

...first, there has been a long term decline in the power of the old aristocracies. This is, of course, generally a good thing. Although in practice it has generally gone hand-in-talon with the rise in power of new aristocracies. But in politics in particular, it has meant that it is no longer the case that politicians, particularly in the Conservative Party (generally the dominant party in UK politics), can be assumed to have had expensive educations, and to represent a culture that valued learning and generally not making an arse of yourself.

...then, there has been a general degradation of MPs and their economic and social standing. MPs used to be respected, influential, and well-compensated. Now, they are universally despised, largely powerless, and in real terms desparately under-paid. It's hard to argue for paying them more, because they're already paid vastly more than most people. But they're paid considerably less can be made in many other jobs. The people who would once have given up a little salary in exchange for the power and prestige of being an MP, perhaps one day a minister, are now off earning half a million or more in the private sector. Why would they consent to take a 70% pay-cut, in exchange for being spat on for four years between demeaning, pointless TV interviews while waiting to get voted out of office? As a result, mostly only the obsessed, the ambitious, and those too inept to get a proper job become MPs.

...the rise of broadcast media made politics less dependent upon personal networks - whether it was Tories in smoky rooms with bankers, or Labour in union offices with shop stewards - and more dependent upon spinning a good soundbite for the news. This meant that properties like charisma, intelligence, and generally not looking like a simpleton to anyone who talks to you for more than two minutes, became less valuable, and easier to do without. As part of the same process, MPs increasingly looked for guidance to their party leaders, and independent thought became a liability more than an asset. Unfortunately, those leaders have now retired, and they've raised a generation of sheep without a shepherd.

...at least the era of spin doctors was professional. But as broadcast media has yielded to the internet, and career prospects depend more on twitter follower numbers than on being in HQ's good books, it's encouraged these sheep to bleat as loudly as possible. That's good, in a way - it's encouraged more popular engagement - but it's further divorced political success from real personal qualities. You can now make a political career simply out of having silly hair, or pretending to live in 1760.

...this has been exacerbated by the rise to power of extremists. The failure of the left lead to the rise of Corbyn, and the failure of the moderate left to accomodate him lead to a mass exodus of talen from the Labour Party, either entirely or at least to the back benches. The dregs Corbyn has been left to pick among are, with a couple of exceptions, agonisingly unimpressive - all the people who were never able to make it to the top until now. If you can eat without food falling out of your mouth, you're a good candidate for the Labour Shadow Cabinet. Meanwhile, on the right, the Brexiteers have been wresting power from the centre-ground - and as their individual reputation is particularly dependent on how loudly they shout and how many things they hate, that's not a great sign for thoughtful leadership either.

...and on top of that, there have been turnovers. The Tories from the 90s refused to go, stunted their party for much of the 00s, before finally getting out of the way for the Cameroons; the New Labour generation were at least somewhat better at getting out of the way for the new generation, but the new generation then all shot themselves in the foot over Corbyn and are back on the sidelines - so with neither old nor young, there's nobody. The Cameroons have backed away - some too old, others chased away either by the humiliation of brexit (and lack of desire to be involved with it) or by the rise to power of May, their enemy. In the background, meanwhile, the 2009 expenses scandal cleared out a lot of the old guard, who could at least have been giving the not-so-bright young things some rope-learning tips. 25 MPs stood down over the scandal, and a bunch more were probably privately swayed by the scandal into not standing for re-election - including five Labour ministers. Combine the 2009 expenses scandal with the 2010 fall of New Labour (who had dominated politics for nearly a decade and a half), the Lib Dem success in 2010 (which toppled a few more from both major parties), and the Tory departures in 2016 and 2017, and a lot of "talent" has been lost.

I mean, George Osborne was ghastly and not exactly einstein, but at least he wasn't sajid javid or dominc raab.


All put together... and everything's descended into farce.

alynnidalar wrote: ↑Mon Jan 21, 2019 11:17 am

Nortaneous wrote: ↑Sat Jan 19, 2019 11:31 pm

alynnidalar wrote: ↑Fri Jan 18, 2019 9:12 pm the Supreme Court is viewed as the ultimate way for common citizens to overrule the legislative and executive branches

What?

US federal courts (with the highest being the Supreme Court) can overturn laws and executive orders on basis of them not being constitutional/violating federal statutes. Trump's travel ban is a good, recent example--the original ban had a bunch of lawsuits brought against it that resulted in a stay of enforcement of the order, forcing the Trump administration to rewrite the ban twice (and parts of it got struck down anyway, although I think the latest version is mostly in effect). Realistically, for citizens who didn't like the travel ban, the courts were the only option to get rid of it. (I mean, what else are you going to do, wait for the next elections??)

But common citizens had nothing to do with it! The Supreme Court is, explicitly and by design, an undemocratic institution, and one that exists to check democracy. The Supreme Court is a device for agents that don't have a conventionally legitimate claim to representing the "common citizens" to check the branches of government that do, not the other way around.

Salmoneus wrote: ↑Mon Jan 21, 2019 6:46 pmFoul Rapscallion, kindly remove thyself from my tapis vert!

As usual, I love your take on politics. But doesn't "politicians used to be smart in my day" kind of suggest a selective memory? We all think public figures get stupider over the course of our lives. I can imagine someone a generation older from west Yorkshire thinking "Oh, sure, Sal. The Tories can do everything short of bomb The North, and ensure no real economic growth for a generation, but as soon as your London tech and finance sectors are threatened now those MPs are really incompetent. Luxury." The point about people being smarter when they all went to Eaton together seems especially off to me. One of the great themes of political history, going at least as far back as Plato and Confucius, is that The Right People never seem to conduct themselves as competently as Very Smart People think they should. But who am I kidding? I'm just playing devil's advocate; you're probably right.

You're confusing "policies I don't like" with "idiocy".

Michael Hesseltine had controversial policies, there's no doubt about it. I think he was wrong on economics. But no sane person could describe him as an idiot. He's a man who can talk very intelligently on almost any topic, and he's also extremely charismatic, at least if you meet him in person. His bad ideas were the result of genuine and intelligent deliberation (and as a result were in practice generally nuanced and available for revision and compromise). This is partly why he continues to be invited as a pundit on political discussion programmes - whereas I'll bet you now, thirty years from now we will not see Dominic Raab or Chris Grayling being asked for their opinions on anything.

For example, Geoffrey Howe, a reasonably intelligent man, sincerely argued for "managed decline" in Liverpool (whereas Hesseltine actually argued for more regeneration funding). He came to this conclusion not by reading a book by Ayn Rand, but by considering the relative effectiveness of funding in different areas and favouring spending in Newcastle instead. And, moreover, Howe expressed this policy in a reasoned letter to the Prime Minister; he did NOT schedule a speech in Liverpool to call for the demolition of Liverpool and then act surprised when he discovered this opinion was not popular. Which it's easy to imagine a modern politician actually doing. (which, indeed, Boris virtually DID do...)


Now of course, I'm not saying all politicians used to be smart and knowledgeable. There have always been surprisingly successful idiots. I'm saying a sizeable number used to be smart and knowledgeable, particularly in the Cabinet and the Shadow Cabinet. Because under Thatcher, or Major, or Blair or even maybe Brown, comments like those made by Raab and Brady (and many other ministers) would have been considered virtually disqualifying for high office; and now they clearly aren't.

I don't think going to Eton necessarily made people smarter; it did make them more knowledgeable. But at the very least, it tended to inculcate an expectation that they SHOULD be smart and knowledgeable, and the skills to conceal it if they weren't. The striking thing about today's politicians is that so many of them are not just half-wits, but unaware that they shouldn't be.

In Brady's case, to take one example: it's stupid and ignorant to not realise that there was sectarianism in Northern Ireland. But to find out that there's sectarianism in Northern Ireland, and still not realise that you'll look like a total idiot if you say you didn't know that before, that's the really stunning bit. Likewise with Raab - nobody in politics should be so stupid that they voluntarily get up on a dais and announce that, after two years of Brexit, they have now, as Brexit Secretary, discovered that due to the "unique geography" of Britain (we're on an island!!!) our imports and exports go through a relatively small number of trade routes (they're called ports!!!) and that in particular the link between Dover and Calais (they're twenty miles apart! Calais was English for centuries! "the cliffs of Dover" has been a common synecdoche for what people see when they return to Britain for centuries! Dover is synonymous with travel to and from the UK! The traffic jams from the trade through Dover are so great that the government has had to implement special rules to periodically turn the nearby motorway into a stationary lorry park*!) is particularly significant. I mean, you have to be pretty stupid not to realise the stuff about islands and ports and Dover, but when you've "discovered" that, you have to be colossally stupid to happily tell people you've only just discovered it. Bernhard Ingham would bitten his head off! Alastair Campbell would have dismembered him and scattered him about the country as a warning for others!



...although that does point out another reason for the current idiocy. Both May and Corbyn are historically weak leaders who couldn't get rid of these people even if they had anyone to replace them with.








*to prepare for the traffic jams of 8,000 lorries a day after Brexit, the government has run, very sensibly, a trial operation to make sure we can handle jams of this size. And we can, yay! One small thing, though: the government asked lorry drivers to volunteer, so our trial run for how we handle 8,000 lorries was only able to run a test with... 86 lorries. Yes, that's the same.

Salmoneus wrote: ↑Tue Jan 22, 2019 6:42 amwhereas I'll bet you now, thirty years from now we will not see Dominic Raab or Chris Grayling being asked for their opinions on anything.

Either you're being very optimistic, or British political discussion programmes are a good deal more intelligent than those in other countries.

I think the US' Supreme Court and Presidency are too powerful. The UK's Parliament is too powerful, while its Supreme Court is too weak.

I am in favour of codified constitutions, but also in favour of allowing the constitution to be wholly replaced in high-quorum referendums.

Raphael wrote: ↑Tue Jan 22, 2019 8:53 am

Salmoneus wrote: ↑Tue Jan 22, 2019 6:42 amwhereas I'll bet you now, thirty years from now we will not see Dominic Raab or Chris Grayling being asked for their opinions on anything.

Either you're being very optimistic, or British political discussion programmes are a good deal more intelligent than those in other countries.

I've personally been shocked by the media longevity of Ian Duncan Smith, despite his obvious lack of personality, intelligence and charm, and the fact his only major accomplishment ever has been a trainwreck and a millstone around the neck of all subsequent Conservative administrations. If ever there was a politician who should fade into obscurity, it's IDS.

Salmoneus wrote: ↑Tue Jan 22, 2019 6:42 am One small thing, though: the government asked lorry drivers to volunteer, so our trial run for how we handle 8,000 lorries was only able to run a test with... 86 lorries. Yes, that's the same.

This is beyond stupid; Reality will hit hard if they just did such a test.

Has the UK really got that idiotic?

Yiuel Raumbesrairc wrote: ↑Tue Jan 22, 2019 7:42 pm

Salmoneus wrote: ↑Tue Jan 22, 2019 6:42 am One small thing, though: the government asked lorry drivers to volunteer, so our trial run for how we handle 8,000 lorries was only able to run a test with... 86 lorries. Yes, that's the same.

This is beyond stupid; Reality will hit hard if they just did such a test.

Has the UK really got that idiotic?

Emphatically yes.

Idiocy of the day: Jacob Rees Mogg suggests that if Parliament tries to block no deal Brexit then we should temporarily shut it down. That's right, we have to protect the democratic will of the people by shutting down democracy. It seems the honorable member for the 18th century has moved his goal from reversion to 1972 to reversion to full-blown feudalism. We're in the middle of a bizarre reactionary revolution...

He legit called up royal fucking prerogative on our arses. Also he seems to think that we should go back to Brussels because a couple of the EU countries are making signals, but the EU itself which is actually in charge of the negotiations is emphatically telling us "this is your problem, you sort it out yourselves now".

Wasn't Charles I's head chopped of for that?

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-46984747
I say good riddance. May Sturgeon reign supreme over the SNP

Frislander wrote: ↑Wed Jan 23, 2019 3:46 pm He legit called up royal fucking prerogative on our arses.

We may need the genuine royal prerogative to sack May and break the deadlock.

chris_notts wrote: ↑Wed Jan 23, 2019 2:58 pm Idiocy of the day: Jacob Rees Mogg suggests that if Parliament tries to block no deal Brexit then we should temporarily shut it down. That's right, we have to protect the democratic will of the people by shutting down democracy. It seems the honorable member for the 18th century has moved his goal from reversion to 1972 to reversion to full-blown feudalism. We're in the middle of a bizarre reactionary revolution...

To be fair, he has a point. The two times it could conceivably be justifiable to use, as he puts it, 'vestigial constitutional means', are when Parliament is directly defying the will of the people, and when people in parliament are attempting to rewrite the constitution. And here, JRM is talking specifically about a case where the parliamentary opposition allies with government rebels to fundamentally rewrite the constitution to take power away from the elected government, specifically in order to ignore the conclusions of a referendum. This is seriously explosive stuff, and JRM isn't the only one looking around for some way to stop it. In fact, prorogation may be eye-catching, but it's much less troubling that the alternative that's being coinsidered...

----------------

So, what's going on?

A cabal of Remainer backbenchers, including former Tory ministers Oliver Letwin [who masterminded Cameron's rise to power), Nick Bowles and Dominic Grieve and former Labour minister Yvette Cooper [who in a prominent and plausible alternative universe did decline to run in 2010 for the sake of her children, ran for Labour leadership instead of her husband, won the leadership election, became Prime Minister in 2015, and did not trigger a Brexit referendum...] have tabled "the Cooper-Bowles Amendment". All that it does is say that, provided that ten MPs elected as members of four different parties agree to it, the first item of business on february 5th will be a debate on a private member's bill put forward by cooper.

Cooper's private member's bill, in turn, says that if the government loses its next vote on the brexit deal, it must seek permission from the EU to extend the article 50 period until the end of the year.

----

Why is this explosive?

The immediate headlines are about Brexit. That's a long time to 'delay' Brexit. What will have changed by then anyway? If we do this once, aren't we going to do the same thing again in December? Isn't this basically a way to cancel Brexit indefinitely, even if it's only done a year at a time?

But the bigger issue here is that an amendment to specify debate time for a bill is a violation of Standing Order 14, which is that government business takes precedence. As Parliament can pass any law, but the government wants to only pass its own laws in a coherent manner rather than letting them be passed willy-nilly and in contradiction to one another by ad hoc coalitions of backbenchers who unite on this or that issue, the government has to control the business of parliament: it sets down what gets voted on, and if it has any free time left over it lets backbenchers vote on some of the potholes-and-streetlight issues. Cooper-Bowles would, in this case at least, take that power away from the government and allow backbenchers to set tha agenda.

The best US comparison I can think of would be the abolition of the Presidential veto.

The procedure here is entirely legal - it's actually less formally objectionable than the case recently when the Speaker caved in and allowed a vote (though not a debate) against government wishes on an amendment that conventionally he "shouldn't" have allowed. Cooper-Bowles is intentionally done by the books, following the conventions - except that it changes the conventions.

This may not seem a big deal to Americans, both of whose parties have been cheerily mangling their constitution for years now. But as we have no codified constitution, we tend to take all of it less seriously than americans take the codified portions of their constitution, but more seriously than they take the uncodified portions. Besides, nobody want to end up like America...

So people are horrified. Even senior Opposition figures were quoted off-the-record saying that Cooper-Bowles was "constitutional arson" that would damage them when they were next in power themselves - though they've since given in and supported it (it's the only thing on the table that can ensure that No Deal is impossible, and Labour can't let constitutional scruples put them in a position of effectively voting for No Deal). It's now expected to pass, next Tuesday (eight Tories have publically backed it).

And if it does pass, we'll have a constitutional crisis.

-------------------------------

What are the solutions?

Option one: let it happen. Theoretically, Cooper-Bowles only relates to this one, single private member's bill - it doesn't explicitly say that the world must end and giant rats must be allowed to roam free. Everyone could just agree to Never Speak Of This Again, and continue with the existing conventions. As for Brexit, Parliament can force the PM to ask for a delay from the EU... but it can't force her to be persuasive.

However, conventions are written by use. Once you break a convention, it becomes weaker, and easier to break again, and again. This could get to be a habit. And if it's passed, the EU probably will accept the PM's 'request', and then we don't get Brexit for another year, and then a year from now we go through this all again. So this isn't appealing for the government. (extra fun: it would mean the next round of brexit quarrelling would line up with the PM's next scheduled party vote of no confidence...)

Option Two: money bill rules. Any expenditure requires a money bill, which are governed by stricter rules giving more power to the government. However, this clearly does not involve expenditure. Also, Cooper-Bowles II could then just change the standing orders about money bills - which would be even more damaging to the government.

Option Three: order the Queen to veto the bill. This is... iffy. It would be a genuine, headless-chickens-offering-commentary-on-every-channel front-page constitutional crisis. The thing is, the Queen must give assent to every bill the government passes. But most royal prerogatives are delegated to the PM - technically she acts on the advice of the PM. The PM advises her to assent to everything, so she does. So what happens if Parliament passes a bill that the PM doesn't want to become law? This is never normally an issue - if it's not a big deal, it's not worth fighting, and parliament can't pass a really important bill that the pm really hates, because the PM controls the majority and resigns when she doesn't have the confidence of the house. But now, the PM doesn't have the confidence of the house, but she doesn't have the honour or decency to resign, and the house doesn't have the courage to force her out of office, for fear of someone worse. The normal response to this sort of thing would be a general election, but even if the PM wanted to she's no longer allowed to do that without parliament's consent, so...
...anyway, what happens if the PM tells the Queen to veto a Bill? Many constitutional theorists believe that the letter of the constitution is that the Queen is obliged to veto the Bill. Other constitutional theorists, however, believe that in the modern world, the spirit of the constitution is such that the Queen is obliged to assent to every Bill passed by Parliament. The Queen is I believe thought to be a stickler for rigid constitutional theory. On the other hand, she's also very keen on democracy, and keen to preserve the monarchy, or at least not be the one to mess it up, and if she violated the will of parliament there would be loud cries for her to be abolished.

Option Four: which is why we're at a place where JRM could seriously suggest prorogation. Now, let's be clear: he's not suggesting Parliament be gotten rid of. Prorogation only lasts a couple of days, so would barely even dent the schedule. But by convention all bills being considered at the time of prorogation are dropped, and have to be restarted in the new session of parliament. Hence, prorogation is a way for the government to prevent a troubling bill from being passed. It's been widely used in other commonwealth countries. But of course it too would be rewriting the constitution, since we don't normally do that here. It doesn't look good. Particularly if the government ends up proroguing parliament a few dozen times in order to force us into No Deal, while parliament keep desparately trying to pass 'the government can't prorogue parliament anymore' bills that get cut off halfway through debate....


----

So anyway, JRM's position is more nuanced and sensible than you might think. He is, of course, still wrong. The government should just accept Cooper-Bowles and hope the convention still holds mostly good for the foreseeable future. In the scheme of things, it's not even an old convention - Standing Order 14 was adopted during 1880s in the furore over Home Rule. It's been a big part of executive dominance in the 20th century, but maybe it's time for a reconsideration - it's long been a target of reformers, who succeeded in gaining a minor reform under the Coalition.

Richard W wrote:

Frislajnder wrote: ↑Wed Jan 23, 2019 3:46 pm He legit called up royal fucking prerogative on our arses.

We may need the genuine royal prerogative to sack May and break the deadlock.

That'd still cause a constitutional crisis though, even if it is legal. As I understand it, the UK constitution operates under the assumption that monarchs are mere decorations that will never use their theoretical political powers.

Yeah, she can't do that. Only time that would happen would be if the prime minister had, say, launched a military coup d'etat.

Although you might imagine the monarch threatening the pm if the pm were unpopular but somehow managing to avoid a no confidence vote? Along the lines of "prove you actually do have the confidence of the house or I'll let someone else try". Monarchs can have a minimal role in this regard around hung parliaments and coalition negotiations - they can have some common sense discretion as a neutral umpire. But ousting a sitting PM who has the confidence of the house? No.

It's almost turning into a King Charles III situation, though I somehow doubt that the Queen is as headstrong as that play's portrayal of Charles.

Salmoneus wrote: ↑Fri Jan 25, 2019 8:15 am Yeah, she can't do that. Only time that would happen would be if the prime minister had, say, launched a military coup d'etat.

Gough Whitlam. It is the nuclear option.

Salmoneus wrote: ↑Fri Jan 25, 2019 8:15 am But ousting a sitting PM who has the confidence of the house? No.

I'm talking about Theresa May.