UK Politics Thread

[Furunculus]

I think you mean it the other way around, unless you want a stronger monarchy.

To quote Askdifference i am: "An advocate of, or believer in, monarchy" as opposed to a "supporter of a particular royal regime".

It's in the image captioning, but these survey materials are from 2020. So for example the numbers would be higher for the US today. I don't know about the rest, but I doubt they've diminished for the UK. You seem confident that they have or are, but the long-term discontent the Conservatives are sowing makes that estimation a gamble. I didn't expect half the British public condemning fundamental aspects of the existing system to be a cause for optimism.

My confidence is of course hedged around with caveats. And yet both the similarity and the contrast with comparitive nations is striking - accepting that the data is ~2020.

The substance of your judgement on the relevance of Labour politics is difficult for me to judge objectively - would 39% vote share be qualitatively less relevant than a 42% share? - but this expectation

The system is what the system is. People understand how it works - including its limitations - and yet they choose to retain the system.

would bely your confidence that Britain is inherently resilient to social upheaval. It's also a troubling outgrowth of a certain political Americanism, namely that it is up to the center-left to take responsibility for the center-right's flaws. You probably said this on the basis of the parliamentary opposition's traditional role being to devise optical and electoral penalties against ruling parties, but to go beyond that and invert the responsibility for good government just reproduces American pathologies.

How would you like to measure societal resilience?
You might look at the last last time it was subject to revolutionary upheavel relative to its peer nations...

TBH I think one thing that has become clear is that simple FPTP is one of the worst available electoral systems, including all the others. If stability is the highest priority, it's clear that ditching FPTP would alone offer considerable inoculation to the French, British, and American polities. Notwithstanding all the other problems - that is, FPTP alone is such a major and singular source of dysfunction that removing it would support the lifespan of almost any political system.

That is a view, but it is not one i share.

I remain of the view that:

a) a significant proportion of the alleged coursensing of political norms and institutions is nothing more than performative outrage, from a political pole that has forgotten that the role of "HMML Opposition" entails more than just pavlovian shrieking on general broadcast...

b) ...further, that not only is a significant proportion invented behind performative outrage, another significant proportion [IS] that performative outrage; where calls for 'direct action' are fine, and every action is perceived through in the least charitable interpretation possible.

c) that we have a political system that prioritises internal coalitions that negotiate manifesto platforms in public before an election, rather than external coalitions that negotiate policy platforms in private after an election...

d) ...and that such a binary choice requires a manifesto offer that appeals to the electoral common ground, across the geographic and social divide, which should obsolete niche policy proposals that generate widespread electoral distaste.

Be relevant. Don't shriek all the time. Get into power. Do what you said you would do to make the world a better place. Be accountable for the consequences. Reflect on where ambitions failed to meet reality. Rinse. Repeat.