I’m disappointed but not surprised to wake up this morning to find Theresa May is still leading the Conservative Party, having seen off a vote of no confidence by a 2:1 ratio. In my opinion Theresa May is an appalling prime minister even if you disregard Brexit: she’s a nannying, authoritarian, dimwit with no vision, no principles, and no charisma who sees the British population as little more than a nuisance. Add to that her handling of the Brexit negotiations – which appear to be a mixture of devious cunning where Britain’s interests were concerned, and incompetence and capitulation in front of Barnier et al. – resulting in a deal which nobody is happy with, and she is likely to go down as the worst PM anyone can recall. That nobody among the ruling classes can mount a challenge to her, either within the party or from the opposition benches, almost beggars belief.
But like I said, I’m not surprised. The yawning chasm that’s opened up between the ruling classes and the majority population has been evident for some time, and that 200 Tory MPs have given their blessing to Theresa May and her Brexit deal merely confirms the people’s parliamentary representatives have no intention of representing anyone’s interests but their own. In some ways, last night’s vote is a good thing in that it may ram home this point to those who for some reason thought differently. How anyone still believed it having watched Blair and Cameron rule Britain for a combined 16 years is anyone’s guess, but here we are. In short, May winning the vote demonstrates how utterly bereft of talent and competence Britain’s ruling classes have become, and it’s interesting to look at why.
Those 16 years I mentioned earlier explains a lot about where we are now. Both Blair and Cameron epitomised prime ministers for whom the big decisions over governance were solved by a combination of a collapsed Soviet Union, unprecedented wealth due to globalisation, and a handing over of major policies to the EU. Neither man had to tackle a single, difficult domestic issue: even the NI peace process was mostly wrapped up by the time Blair took office, allowing him to claim credit for it. From 1997 onwards, Britain was rich, peaceful, and faced no serious threats – except, in hindsight, from its own government. This allowed people like Blair and Cameron, who lacked any principles save for a desire to be in power, to tinker and meddle and make changes on the fly, many of which had devastating consequences down the line. Where previous prime ministers had to deal with the Soviet-backed communism, independence of the colonies, general strikes, deindustrialisation, and the oil embargo Blair and Cameron busied themselves banning foxhunting, creating thousands of new petty crimes, foisting political correctness on critical institutions, and micromanaging people’s lives. And while they did this, the majority of the population didn’t weep with despair and head abroad like I did – they stood and cheered, and said “Ooh, what a nice man!” Until Blair joined in with the wrecking of Iraq, anyway.
The irony is many of those people who voted for Blair and Cameron are now bitterly disappointed at the current situation, both leavers and remainers who think May’s deal is abhorrent, albeit for opposite reasons. Well, what did they expect? The British population allowed the ruling classes to be captured by a bunch of wet, unprincipled, and not especially bright charlatans, and were happy to let them rule provided they were doing all right regardless of the long-term costs. Whenever somebody with even a whiff of intelligence, backbone, or principles showed up on the political scene, the middle classes would clutch their pearls and launch into a frenzy of virtue-signaling (nowadays they just start shrieking about Nazis). And now, finally, the British ruling classes have been given a genuinely difficult, statesman’s task and they are simply not up to it: May has proven hopeless, and her closest rivals can’t even inspire enough colleagues to get rid of her. What does that tell you about the substance of Johnson and Rees-Mogg?
It’s time the British public got serious. Over the next few months the ruling classes will be found wanting once more, unable to make difficult decisions: May’s deal probably won’t pass a parliamentary vote, and a general election will be called where people are given a choice of another loser Tory or Jeremy Corbyn. This will being about a disaster no matter who wins, and this might – might – bring to the fore a different sort of politician, one we haven’t seen for a long time in Britain. How the population reacts will be crucial, and there will be howls of anguish from the metropolitan elites and a subsection of the middle classes who would prefer politicians stick to banning sugary drinks and shutting down hate speech on Twitter than actually governing. These voices will need to be shouted down with full force if Britain is going to change. But I’m not even sure it wants to.
In short, the public are going to have to start making difficult decisions. The trouble is, like Blair and Cameron, they’ve never had to. Can they learn? Time will tell, but if they can’t they might as well stay in the EU and let someone else rule over them. It’s going to be a testing twelve months.
Don’t forget that there’s a hefty payroll vote, so the backbenches are more two thirds against her. Thats not a sustainable position, regardless of the 200-117 numbers.
I think you’re wrong about JRM – I think he is a man of substance who would make an excellent PM, but he would never have any support from the pygmies who are the majority of the rest of the Tory Party (and the entire UK ruling elite nowadays). Thats why he gets such a terrible press and hatred thrown his way – they hate what he stands for, despite I suspect him being far more popular in the country than amongst his peers.
Ah well cheer up at least you have the relative political stability of the French leadership team to govern over you and act in your best interests throughout this winter of discontent.
Not the Tory Party Jim. The members see through the bullshit clearly enough. It is the Tory Hierarchy/Grandees and the CCHQ crowd. Along with the SCS. All of those cunts need to be destroyed.
“That nobody among the ruling classes can mount a challenge to her, either within the party or from the opposition benches, almost beggars belief.”
It’s not that nobody can. It’s that nobody wants to. They want May to do the deal and take the blame for its flaws. Nobody is prepared to to step up and say “I could do better”.
For all May’s undoubted uselessness, she has an impossible job. She has no majority, a divided party and an opposition that would vote for nuclear war if the government was against it, and she has to come up with something that will satisfy enough MPs to get through parliament. The only conceivable way for that to happen is a new election that delivers a government with a strong enough majority to act decisively, and May’s already played that card and fluffed it.
The Conservatives have opted for a (short term) quiet life before. In 1940 Chamberlain managed to get a majority (of 80) in the Commons confidence vote after the debacle in Norway (the Conservative nominal majority was 210). Only 40 Conservatives changed sides to vote against him (although 60 abstained – the traditional political cop-out).
Chamberlain resigned – true – but the Tory grandees didn’t choose Churchill to be the next leader. Instead they selected Lord Halifax. Halifax was not, I think, the type of Conservative who would have lined up with Clarke, Soubry and Grieve to both support May and deliver the UK trussed and bound to the EU and cough up £39 billion for the privilege. OTOH he would have done a deal with Hitler to give him – at the very least – a free hand in Europe.
Say what you like about Attlee’s disastrous years as post-war PM, but by his refusal to serve in a Halifax-led administration he did his country an unparalled service. He effectively forced the acceptance by TPTB of Churchill as PM which meant that the UK fought on even after Dunkirk.
For all May’s undoubted uselessness, she has an impossible job.
No, I’m not buying that. She had a difficult job, but not an impossible one, and a lot of the difficulties are of her own making, e.g. running an inept GE campaign which cost her a decent majority. For sure, it’s an impossible job for her but that’s why you don’t let mediocre careerists grab the top jobs. What May’s being asked to do would have been normal for a statesman in years gone by, but as I said in the post the current ruling classes don’t know how to do anything difficult any more.
I’m reminded of the mediocrities I’d see in the oil industry who would spend their entire careers climbing the greasy pole and knifing each other for a Project Director job. Then when they finally get it the whinge and complain that it’s difficult: well yes, it is, which is why useless cowards with no balls or principles should be in that position!
I’ve been thinking a lot about the lack of political leadership recently and its been quite depressing.
Readers who also follow Tim Worstall’s blog may remember I posted a quote from, and a link to, an inspiring Ronald Reagan speech from the early ’60s. Following that I went back and listened to his inauguration speech and it really is quite inspiring, bearing in mind he took office at a difficult time in terms of the USA economy and world affairs.
For comparison I listened to Obama’s inauguration speech, which also took place in times of economic difficulty and world affairs. Obama used similar themes and even some of the same examples, but he came across as a hectoring member of the political elite telling the plebs what they needed to do and how the collective and State should fix the problems.
Reagan was sympathetic and talked about the individual and how its was those people who are the everyday heroes. If Reagan came along now and looked at the Brexit mess and decided that we might be better of staying in (I don’t think he would) I’d bet he’d persuade most of the population to follow him.
But then Reagan was well read and used to go out and meet workers at their place of work and listen to their everyday problems. Those weren’t stage magaged phot ops to be seen with hard hats and hi-viz vests, he was employed to make speeches to the workers. That’s why he committed the worst crime ever – starting as a Democrat and then becoming a small State Republican:
It really is was dispiriting watching the political pygmies wandering on and off the airwaves last nigh,t and for those who think Boris is the solution he was nowhere to be seen. Leaders don’t hide in times of crises plotting their Machiavellian schemes, they step forward.
This mistakes May, and her colleagues’ motives.
They are remainers. Her strategy is to create a ‘leave’ proposal so awful that the people reject it, and stay in. Job done, rich rewards from EU.
To this end, she is doing an excellent job, and is hence widely supported by the Remainiac crew of “Conservative” MPs. That they are betraying the referendum, and breaking their own election manifesto, so what? Who cares what the voters think? Labour are also breaking their ‘leave’ manifesto with ‘remain’, so what’s the difference.
It only looks like incompetence if you assume Brexit is the intention.
Democracy is dead in the UK. As you say though, any leader capable of refreshing it will not be nice. The US got lucky with Trump, nary a reeducation camp built yet. Yet.
“In short, the public are going to have to start making difficult decisions. The trouble is, like Blair and Cameron, they’ve never had to. Can they learn?”
I doubt it. Part of the problem is that the media – especially the BBC – has been telling people for some time that the very worst thing that can happen to you is a mild insult based on someone not valuing your victimhood.
Excellent final paragraph which shows how far we have come down this sad and shitty road. If we do indeed get the leaders that we deserve, then we are not worth saving. Except, of course, as a bunch of docile consumers and the subjects of social experimentation.
The lack of quality among the political class is down to one thing – allowing politics to be a whole career, rather than an add-on to a largely completed one. Of course our politicians are idiots, all they know is politics. They’ve gone from PPE at Oxbridge to think tank to Spad to prospective candidate to MP etc etc. Anyone who has reached age 50 will have far more experience of life and how the world works than any politician. I’ll bet 90% of the people commenting on this website could have made a better fist of the Brexit negotiations than the current lot, just because they’ve had to deal with similar scenarios throughout their career. When will a politician ever have negotiated anything other than a political fix?
I keep saying we need to ban anyone under 50 from entering Parliament. Stop the conveyor belt of people who want to be in politics at the age of 20 from reaching it, by putting a hefty period of time they can’t skate over between them and their goal. If they’re still desperate to be in politics after 30 years+ of real life working in offices and factories, then they won’t be the same person they were aged 20, and will have a far more rounded personality, and hopefully some wisdom. Time will also have weeded out a lot of the real life no-hopers who infest politics – if you’ve failed miserably at life for 30 years no-one is going vote for you aged 50.
Her strategy is to create a ‘leave’ proposal so awful that the people reject it, and stay in.
I tend to lean to the cock up theory of history and I doubt it was that well thought out. Granted, she first got the leadership as the “not-Boris” candidate but since then she’s veered between overconfidence and panic.
So first she draws red lines to calm the ultras who are looking restive then she gets an ultra-remainer to do the actual negotiation. She triggers art.50 when the cries of get on with it get too loud before calling an election that she think’s she’ll walk.
Above all the one thing she priorities in negotiations is what remainers think leavers want (an end to free movement) whilst compromising on absolutely everything else.
She’s a competent middle manager hopelessly out of her depth.
+1 Tim
This idea that May has done well considering the difficulty of the task is being pushed and is just wrong.
Art 50 – she was correct to trigger, especially as the EU was refusing to speak absent a trigger. This was done 9m after the vote and created a 2y window. Enough time – if managed properly
However:
From a process and risk management perspective, once the notice was delivered the assumption should have been “prepare for no deal, and any deal will be a nice to have not a must have”.
From a negotiation perspective, working on no-deal but happy to negotiate makes it very clear that you don’t need a deal and maximises your leverage
Working on no-deal as your base case also means maximising it, so you should (“optimise your BATNA as your MBA teaches”)
1. declare that as a base case you will incorporate EU law as it stands today, then spend 2 years announcing what will be dropped on day 1. In finance I can point to plenty of regs that do nothing for investor safety and cost a huge amount
2. start negotiating free trade agreements. The EU says the UK can’t even discuss them (that is a wierd reading of the law and anyway how do they stop the UK and say NZD talking?). They can’t come into force yet, but agreements can have post-dated effective dates. Or just organise a big signing party on the 29th of Mar 19. This also makes clear that you will work on the basis of mutual recognition (your standards are good enough), but are not going to commit to copy the other side (we left in order to get the ability to diverge).
From an economic perspective, give people certainty as soon as you can. The UK has still not said what the rules will be for EU citizens to stay here. I know plenty of people on 100k+ who have accepted jobs outside the UK from a mixture of uncertainty and UK govt showing that giving people clarity was low priority. Almost all EU financial centres are offering all kinds of gifts to lure firms from the UK, the UK has done nothing to compete. The UK could have made a legal commitment on future tariff schedules years ago and that would let people plan to something specific rather than have to assume wto. The unneccessary uncertainty has harmed business investment, though that has been masked by a strong uk/world economy.
The execution by May and the civil service (to be fair to many of the other ministers they have been over-ruled and lied to) has been shockingly incompetent.
This matters as
1. a belief that she got the best deal implies that a better deal is not possible, once you see how shit she has been it is clear that a better deal is available – though most likely from the outside
2. it shows that the project fear, the pleading to sign and move on for “certainty” is dishonest. Almost all of the forecast disruption is predicated on the UK govt screwing its own people (which is why assumptions are hidden and the stories come as leaks). The UK could have provided lots of certainty and continues to refuse to do so – no deal needed there.
In short, Mr Ecks, do you have a second shotgun I can borrow.
(and this is before we get to using the electoral commission to tie down brexit supporters, deny anybody access to UK govt assumptions, then whine that nobody else is putting forward a plan).
(and before we get to the charity commission being used to shut down no-deal plans from legatum and the IEA – apparently that is political. When oxfam pushing their retarded numbers on inequality is somehow not political.)
The lack of quality among the political class is down to one thing – allowing politics to be a whole career, rather than an add-on to a largely completed one.
Which is only possible because the job no longer involves much more than petty meddling.
Jim has it nailed down. I said it this way many years ago on a different forum, that we pick politicians and are idiots to be surprised that they well and truly fuck things up, when the first opportunity they ever get to well and truly fuck something up is when running the country.
They’ve just never had the opportunity to fuck something less important up before, and learn from it.
“Which is only possible because the job no longer involves much more than petty meddling.”
No, quite the opposite, its involves petty meddling because thats all the type of people in politics can conceive of, and are afraid of anything larger than worrying about supermarkets using plastic bags or selling chocolate at the tills.
The problem is that politics is self selecting – people choose to go into it, the electorate only get to vote for one of those who stand. And the quality of the candidates chosen from a cohort of 30 year olds who have been ‘into politics’ since their teens is going to be utter shite. Take a cohort of late 40s early 50 year olds who have had careers but still want to go into politics and you’ll have a lot more quality, because life will have sorted out people into winners and losers by that point, and by and large you’ll be choosing your politicians from the winners.
No, quite the opposite, its involves petty meddling because thats all the type of people in politics can conceive of, and are afraid of anything larger than worrying about supermarkets using plastic bags or selling chocolate at the tills.
I disagree, and think you’re putting the cart before the horse. I’ve lived in countries where the major issues have not been solved, and politicians don’t concern themselves with minutiae like chocolate at the tills and upskirting. It’s a symptom of a society becoming wealthy and safe, yet still keeping politicians kicking around with idle hands. Of course you’ll attract the dross because now the job description has been hollowed out anyone smart and capable will go and do something else.
They’ve just never had the opportunity to fuck something less important up before, and learn from it.
This happens in business too, and I talked about this on my second podcast. In modern organisations, managers get their first opportunity to actually manage something in their forties, and they make rookie mistakes which should have been ironed out by letting them fuck up something small in their twenties. People go from being craven sheep with no responsibility for 20 years to suddenly being project manager. The results are as you’d expect.
I like the age idea (and I wouldn’t qualify).
You have made some money so don’t need the job (you might need a job but at least you have options) and have been roughed up by the world a bit so you have some common sense.
Should apply to MPs and heads of charities as a start.
Apparently I am the only person happy with the deal and if she obtains a better deal I’ll be even happier. Everyone else today appears demented or enraged….tis good to be happy or deluded or whatever I’ll be called.
Jim’s age idea has much going for it when you consider this type of representative: https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/576316/Mhairi-Black-youngest-MP-x-rated-Twitter
It’s the customs union bit which is the pain in the arse. For so many, many reasons. Personally I’ve always been of the EFTA/EEA school.
But hey that would have been far too simple…
May is a remainiac agent and has been from the start. She intended to fuck up Brexit all along but is also a useless mental case who has conned herself but nobody else–anyone who believes in her “deal” is a lying twat or a genuine moron. She has repeated her lies about Brexit endlessly as a way to keep out of her consciousness the knowledge that she is a liar and a traitor and not Daddy’s good little girl at all. This is to our benefit as trying to cancel Brexit or have a People’s Wank will be difficult for her as she would have to admit that she was a remain traitor all along.
“I’ve lived in countries where the major issues have not been solved, and politicians don’t concern themselves with minutiae like chocolate at the tills and upskirting. ”
All societies as they get wealthier will tend to focus on increasingly unimportant issues. Not much you can do about that, its human nature to always have something that bugs you and needs fixing, if humans weren’t like that we’d have stuck at a certain level of development and never gone further. Its just the things that get focused on get less and less important as problems are solved one by one.
When the main concern of the masses is 3 square meals, and a roof over their heads then wannabe politicians won’t get far going into elections talking about micro-aggressions and plastic bag bans. What you do need to do is make sure that the people who are being elected in wealthy and mature democracies are as rounded and experienced as possible so they can be realistic about what they should do and should not do.
I always say that the supply of half sensible politicians ran out in the 80s, as the wartime generation retired. Fighting a war tends to put things in perspective – you wouldn’t get a Parliament of ex-soldiers banning smoking in pubs for example. People like Blair and Brown got in in the 80s as well, aged 30 and 32 respectively in 1983. Cameron was a little older, making MP aged 35 in 2001. I really don’t think a a 30-35 to has any right to be making decisions on behalf of the nation with so little experience of life behind them. Especially in today’s society where childhood effectively extends to leaving university at a bare minimum, often much further as children return to the parental home after uni for a number of years before finally becoming independent adults.
“”….wartime generation….”””
Unfortunately this wartime generation wiped off last bastion of civility and common sense in Europe.
Before the war, it was okay to be white, have your own ethnic group in your own country etc.
So, current mess in the Western Europe is ” we won the war ” issue.
Bloke in North Dorset
“For comparison I listened to Obama’s inauguration speech, which also took place in times of economic difficulty and world affairs. Obama used similar themes and even some of the same examples, but he came across as a hectoring member of the political elite telling the plebs what they needed to do and how the collective and State should fix the problems.”
I always thought Obama came across as an irritated school principle, who found the job beneath him and took it out on his inmates.
@isp001. Nailed it. Anyone here could have made a better job of the negotiations which implies that the government and civil service didn’t want to and cut the legs out from those who did.
The projections are *exactly* predicated on the government doing things to harm the population. My question to a modeller who was presenting the results of their work about tariff assumptions revealed they assumed the gov would retain and levy the common external on imports from EU. This puts prices up and is incident on the Uk consumer. My next question “Why would you assume the Uk gov would do something so stupid?” Answer “it’s our planning assumption”. Err ok. And this at a *very* well known institution packed to the rafters with economists. It’s deliberate and if you raise awkward questions your career suffers. Had several come up to me afterwards and, quietly, thank me for asking 6-7 difficult questions.
This might get nasty if the population finds out what actually has happened. Deliberately destroying the BATNA. Accepting the EU timing of talks to weaken Uk position Etc etc.
@tim “they make rookie mistakes which should have been ironed out”
Oh so true. I’ve just been turned down for a mid manager role as I my examples of managing people in the interview didn’t have enough detail. I gave textbook answers on influence and motivating people but I didn’t say “and when I had two direct reports I did X. Thing is I’ve run £m projects with 80+ people, had a department of 30+, had countless direct reports and have loads who want to work for me when I move on. I was a director of a financial services firm with £bn balance sheet. I ran a European GI “direct to SME business” . I’ve restructured and had happy campers afterwards and cut people which I hate as I think the best of everyone.
The younger guy who told me who I missed out working for has such little experience they’ve walked into a constructive dismissal case and I can take them to the cleaners. I’ve given them a dozen chances to fix it and the guy has fucked it up every time, to the point of writing down that the new job I had to interview for was the same as my current one with some small differences aka redundancy and constructive dismissal as I shouldn’t have to interview….
And yet it’s me that doesn’t have the experience….
Jim, 2.48pm: ‘The lack of quality among the political class is down to one thing – allowing politics to be a whole career’ Spot on; disagree with your solution of banning under-50s from entering Parliament though (don’t forget Winston entering Parliament at only 25—albeit with a few wars under his belt).
Our mistake was starting to pay them in 1911. We had far better MPs when they enjoyed no salaries or expenses than ever since: J.S. Mill, Edmund Burke, radicals like William Cobbett, PMs such as Pitts Elder and Younger, Wellington, Peel, Palmerston, Salisbury, etc. Other than Winston, who have we had since that compares to those political titans?
With few opportunities to dip one’s snout into the taxpayers’ trough, entering politics was seen more as a service to one’s country. Being unsalaried, it required them to have actual talent: to make money (as ex-Sergeant Major Cobbett did, financing himself through his writing) or to convince a patron that they were worthy of their support (as Burke convinced Lord Verney and William Hamilton), or to have made their fortune before entering politics (such as successful naval officers rich from prizes, like Sir Edward Pellew).
MPs once saw their job as simply steering Plato’s ‘Ship of State’ safely, taking in a reef here, setting full sail there, battening down the hatches and seeking safe harbour when necessary—not be forever trying to rebuild the entire ship from the keel up, as our MPs do now, seeking headlines for their latest whim to radically restructure our country. For many, being an MP was part-time (and being unpaid, the public little minded them taking long holidays or concentrating on their businesses), with MPs such as John Norris, who combined representing Rye (1708–22, 1734–49) and Portsmouth (1722–34) with a Royal Naval career, commanding operational cruises to the Baltic; and Admiral Thomas Cochrane (the inspiration for C.S. Forester’s Hornblower) who led daring expeditions against Buonaparte’s forces in the Med while representing Westminster constituency (1807–18). Now, our MPs constantly try to ‘be seen to do something’, perpetually passing new laws and regulations to nag us with.
If you want a better class of MP, stop paying them.
We should also ask some hard questions about the very nature of our political system, and whether democracy is all it’s cracked up to be.
Take the famous Chartists’ demands, as taught in our state schools as if Holy Writ:
* ‘All men to have the vote (universal manhood suffrage)’: Has that worked out so well, comparing the s**tshow that is 21C. Britain with 19 or 18C. Britain? We hand out votes like smarties, not asking for any knowledge or qualifications or public service—not even citizenship, with citizens of 53 foreign countries allowed to vote in all our elections and referenda.
* ‘Voting should take place by secret ballot’: To protect people from intimidation but introduces corruption of its own—as we see in the US with the controversies over electronic voting, and here with postal voting (especially in Muslim areas). Where once we could look around and count the hands, now it is a matter of (as Stalin said): ‘It’s not the people who vote that count, it’s the people who count the votes.’
* ‘Parliamentary elections every year, not once every five years’: The only Chartist demand unimplemented, and with the 2014 referendum followed by the 2015 GE then 2016 referendum and assembly election then the 2017 GE—how’s that annual election idea sounding now?
* ‘Constituencies should be of equal size.’: The holy grail of equalliiddeeee. This removes links to constituencies, as communities are split and bundled together and then frequently changed. Further, it increases the political weight of densely populated urban areas—whose residents share broadly the same issues—at the expense of smaller communities who find themselves haphazardly bundled together with other communities with sometimes quite different issues.
* ‘Members of Parliament should be paid’ & ‘The property qualification for becoming a Member of Parliament should be abolished’: See arguments at start of missive.
In conclusion: The Chartists Did Nothing Right.
There is this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq-WW0wajAg
Unfortunatrly it is supposed to be satire but even more unfortunately, it’s true.
‘All societies as they get wealthier will tend to focus on increasingly unimportant issues.’
This is alos progresivism writ large, they always have to find a new issue to campaign on but all the major human rights ones (womens/gay rights etc) have been won, hence the current focus on minor issues (to most people) like trans rights.
Regarding Jims point about age thats why the US consitiution has a minimum of 35 for the presidecy, I also think ScorchedEarth is right about paying MP’s having an effect. In the past it was seen as serving the country to be a politican, not the other way round.
@Jim on December 13, 2018 at 12:13 pm
Yep, 142 out of the 200 are on the payroll of PM May.
A cull of Cabinet & Minister numbers is long overdue, 50% gone as a start. MPs beholden to PM for their wage makes a mockery of representative democracy.
@Tim Newman on December 13, 2018 at 1:55 pm
Yep.
You are correct to be cynical. Since RoI independence in 1922, has there has Never been a Hard Border, thus EU scare of Returning to one (pre 1998 Belfast Agreement) is a lie.
UK and RoI have had Common Travel Area since 1922, no ID cards/passports reqd & free movement.
UK was nice, friendly and co-operative to departing RoI. EU & RoI to UK departing? Rage and punishment.
I was born & grew up in NI and still visit relatives. In 1995 I was there for months and regularly drove to Dublin – no checks.
Post 2002(?) EU rules dictated all air/sea passengers ID must be recorded, prior to that Ferry was like a bus – buy ticket, travel. Last 10 years or so all main road crossings have ANPR – EU rule again.
1998 Belfast Agreement & Annexes have Zero mentions of: border, customs, trade, tax. In Annex 2 one use of word Europe – EU will support UK.
Be cynical, it’s a political red-herring and May has imo deliberately used it to prevent Brexit.
@Tim the Coder on December 13, 2018 at 2:08 pm
May My way or Brexit cancelled
May I’m off to Brussels you suckers
@ Scotched Earth:
Our mistake was starting to pay them in 1911. We had far better MPs when they enjoyed no salaries or expenses than ever since: J.S. Mill, Edmund Burke, radicals like William Cobbett, PMs such as Pitts Elder and Younger, Wellington, Peel, Palmerston, Salisbury, etc. Other than Winston, who have we had since that compares to those political titans?
Maybe, although I’m not sure how far that’s just due to the general decline in the quality of British elites over the same period. I mean, is there any part of the establishment whose members don’t seem like moral and intellectual pygmies compared to their Georgian and Victorian predecessors?
Tim is right in the post and the comments. Although I would say that Rees-Mogg, despite my occasional doubts, is proving to be top-class politician, and a future Thatcher.
Caminski (Cameron in skirts) has been a disaster ever since she managed to turn a shoo-in election to a barely-there power-share. That this is still under debate is most surprising.
I’m disappointed that you share the widespread fallacy that the Iraq intervention was a buffoonish blunder. Saddam Hussein was a mass murderer of Mladi?ian or Aminian scale and badly needed to be twepped. Tim Collin’s account “Rules of Engagement” has been supported by many other sources both inside and outside the British Army and it is likely that if the British style of hearts and minds had been followed, the occupation and handover of Iraq would have been a success. But never mind Tim, possessing such idiosyncrasies makes you more human. It’s a bit intimidating dealing with someone whose opinion is always right.
@The original Mr. X- I suspect a big reason is the huge casualties among the officers in WW1, the upper classes suffered a much higher % of losses than the middle and working. My theory is this loss of so many potential innovators, businessmen and leaders was a blow the UK never really recovered from.
What this vote illustrates to me is that two thirds of Conservative MPs are conservative, meaning resistant to change. They would and did vote against the nationalisation of coal, railways, steel, health etc. But would not and did not change things back once back in office.
The other third are liberals and would promote private enterprise. It was only when a Manchester school liberal by the name of Thatcher became leader that privatisation got going.
Unfortunately as long as there is a socialist party with a chance of winning the liberals will be forced to remain with the conservatives simply to stop socialists making things worse.
There is some hope in that the leaders of the socialists are becoming more and more different from the working class on whom they depend for support.
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I’m disappointed that you share the widespread fallacy that the Iraq intervention was a buffoonish blunder.
I don’t. I think Blair’s domestic record should see him swinging from a scaffold, but there’s no denying most people are angry at him for what he dd in Iraq. Personally I think it was defensible.
Although I would say that Rees-Mogg, despite my occasional doubts, is proving to be top-class politician, and a future Thatcher.
I initially thought so but time is fast running out for him to do something other than talk. If he’s that good he’d have drummed up enough people to want him as leader.
Late to party.
” the current ruling classes don’t know how to do anything difficult any more.”
That’s been my beef for a while. See here for example:
https://www.desertsun.co.uk/blog/8592/comment-page-2/#comment-431933
Oddly enough, I think everyone agrees with this: the argument is what to do about it.
– Remainers are ambivalent about whether the EU is the reason that we are in this mess, but think the situation is hopeless and we need the EU to continue to survive
– (some) Brexiteers see the EU as the reason that we are in this mess and that we will not, cannot, fix it until we are out. Getting out necessarily shines a light on that full horror.
That’s been my beef for a while. See here for example:
You’d probably find half my blog posts are based on opinions swiped from my comments section. 🙂
Also, there is a corollary to the “trade agreements make it easier to trade” argument, which is that, absent that trade agreement, governments appear to collude to make stuff arbitrarily difficult.
Trucks full of stuff aren’t just arriving on spec. They are arriving because a company and/or persons in country A has ordered and agreed to pay for the truck load of stuff from a company and/or persons in country B and, further, have paid for and arranged for a company and/or persons to transport it from A to B.
If the stuff in the truck is manifestly unsafe or wrong or whatever, the receiving company is in trouble. Even to voice idea that the people we have manning the borders will know more about the widgets in the truck than the myriads of people, each of whom has individually actually contracted to pay for that particular load – in all the myriad of cases of trucks containing widgets or chickens or turbine blades or spline-reticulators – is to show how laughable such an idea is.
>>Although I would say that Rees-Mogg, despite my occasional doubts, is proving to be top-class politician, and a future Thatcher.
>
>I initially thought so but time is fast running out for him to do something other than talk. If he’s that good he’d have drummed up enough people to want him as leader.
A lot of people do want him as leader. Problem is, a lot of Tory MPs don’t. But that’s how it was with Thatcher as well.
The problem isn’t him, the problem is, as ever, that useless party that pretends to be Conservative but is in reality full of wets and cowards.
A lot of people do want him as leader. Problem is, a lot of Tory MPs don’t. But that’s how it was with Thatcher as well.
Sorry, but if that’s the reason he hasn’t put himself foward for leadership and is not going around whipping up MPs into supporting him, he’s not much of a leader.
The problem isn’t him, the problem is, as ever, that useless party that pretends to be Conservative but is in reality full of wets and cowards.
Then why did he join them? He doesn’t sound much of a leader if the reason he’s not in charge is because the organisation he’s joined is full of wets and cowards.
“disagree with your solution of banning under-50s from entering Parliament though (don’t forget Winston entering Parliament at only 25—albeit with a few wars under his belt).”
I hardly think you can compare a Victorian era 25 yo who has fought in a war with one of todays 25 yo snowflakes who have only just left Uni and may still be living with their parents, and get triggered by someone saying nasty things. 21st century living is so easy compared to 100 years ago, it takes most of a lifetime for people to have had to deal with enough sh*t that they understand a bit more about life. There may be 25-30 year olds today who are mature enough to become politicians, the evidence is that none of them are getting into politics and we’re getting the usual bunch of psychological misfits.
On JRM.
To bring together two themes from this thread, JRM is possibly one of those politicians who would prosper in a previous century. How he could prevail among our modern pygmies and payroll vote system is a problem a yet unsolved.
@ Andy in Japan:
@The original Mr. X- I suspect a big reason is the huge casualties among the officers in WW1, the upper classes suffered a much higher % of losses than the middle and working. My theory is this loss of so many potential innovators, businessmen and leaders was a blow the UK never really recovered from.
That might be part of it (though I recall reading — I think it was in Mud, Blood and Poppycock — that the middle classes actually suffered the most, proportionately speaking), although I suspect that the loss of self-confidence among the elites was ultimately the most damaging. Reading back on the interwar period, it just seems like the ruling class as a whole had simply come to believe that they couldn’t and shouldn’t lead the country to greatness, with the consequence that they simply stopped trying and became easy to push around.
@ Tim:
Then why did he join them? He doesn’t sound much of a leader if the reason he’s not in charge is because the organisation he’s joined is full of wets and cowards.
To be fair, if you want to stand a serious chance of becoming an MP, you’ve pretty much got to join one of the major parties, and it’s not like the average quality of Labour or Lib Dem MPs has tended to be any better.
It doesn’t appear to be on the BBC yet but it appears Britain has signed a bilateral trade deal with the Swiss. Which is nice.
(sarcasm) I’m sure it will make the 6 o’clock…(/sarcasm)