UK Politics: Who Pays the Andyman?

[Jeor]

2 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I believe a VONC is legally tight and not simple convention that can be defied on a whim, but the PM stays as PM until the people who passed the NC motion come up with a replacement. So a VONC is symbolic unless the majority can agree on a new PM. A VONC doesn't automatically oust the PM.

Thanks for the clarification. I guess the UK is stuck with Boris as PM for five years until he either calls an early snap election himself (assuming Fixed Terms Act is repealed), or a vote of no confidence is called and successfully followed through. Both are pretty high bars given the strong Conservative majority.

I guess the other possibilities are that he either resigns or is deposed as Conservative leader by an internal challenge (which would be poetic justice) although in both cases the government would still remain Conservative.

I used to think five year terms was a good idea. In Australia the federal government only serves 3 year terms, which means there's very little imagination as the next election is always looming around the corner, and making correct (long term) but tough (short term) decisions are never considered. If the government doesn't make any tough decisions in its first budget year you can write off the 2nd and 3rd years of government.

But in cases like these where the elections are not decided so much by policy manifestos and scrutiny, but by a unique set of chaotic events (ie Brexit) it is a real issue to be stuck with a government for five years.

[mormont]

4 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I believe a VONC is legally tight and not simple convention that can be defied on a whim, but the PM stays as PM until the people who passed the NC motion come up with a replacement. So a VONC is symbolic unless the majority can agree on a new PM. A VONC doesn't automatically oust the PM.

Until the Fixed Term Parliament Act, a vote of no confidence was, like much of the rest of the UK constitution, simply a convention with no legal standing. Since Johnson has pledged to repeal the FTPA, unless he replaces it with something that makes such votes binding (unlikley), presumably they go back to being merely a convention.

This is the thing you need to understand about UK constitutional arrangements. The last few years have been an anomaly. Parliament holding the government to account is rare in this country. The way it normally works is that the leader of the largest party - rarely, if ever, a party that commands the support of even half the electorate - has essentially complete and untrammelled power over the executive and legislature. The Prime Minister appoints the government, controls a majority in the House of Commons, can make appointments to the House of Lords, and exercises most of the powers of a head of state, notionally on behalf of the Queen but in practice in their own right.

The only restraint is that they must hold an election at some point within five years of the last one - but they get to pick the date, and will of course invariably use that power to their advantage. The courts can sometimes intervene to stop the government behaving unlawfully - but Johnson wants to curtail those powers, which are pretty limited to start with. It's described as an 'elective dictatorship' and that's essentially what it is, when the PM has a large majority: so long as they maintain party discipline, they have five years of complete control. And Johnson's manifesto pledges to take even more power to the executive and remove what little restraint exists.

[Jeor]

16 minutes ago, mormont said:

It's described as an 'elective dictatorship' and that's essentially what it is, when the PM has a large majority: so long as they maintain party discipline, they have five years of complete control. And Johnson's manifesto pledges to take even more power to the executive and remove what little restraint exists.

It's always been moving that way ever since the House of Lords has been (correctly, in my view) marginalised. With the Lords neutralised as a check on power that leaves the UK as essentially as a single-chamber parliament, so when one party achieves a large majority that's basically it. As I understand it (I may be wrong, not being a student of UK history) the Lords was generally a conservative chamber anyway by dint of its membership bias.

The alternative is the US or French system where the head of government doesn't control the parliament/congress. But those have their own faults too; they're not particularly productive or agile forms of government, and everyone's obsessed with pinning the blame on the other side (which happens everywhere, but I think is probably more pronounced in those systems).

In a situation like this latest UK election, the only real power the opposition has is in shaping public opinion. It's a soft and hard-to-exercise power, especially in this day and age where truthful information is overridden by spin and outright lies, but Johnson and the Tories may still be susceptible to public opinion and having to campaign on their record and popularity. Granted it's not a lot to work with, but it's something.

[A True Kaniggit]

1 hour ago, mormont said:

The only restraint is that they must hold an election at some point within five years of the last one - but they get to pick the date, and will of course invariably use that power to their advantage. The courts can sometimes intervene to stop the government behaving unlawfully

Is that why this election was on a Thursday instead of the weekend?

In the U.S., elections are held on Tuesdays, which always hurts the poor who have to choose between voting and working.

Is this also an issue in the U.K.?

[Jeor]

3 minutes ago, A True Kaniggit said:

Is that why this election was on a Thursday instead of the weekend?

In the U.S., elections are held on Tuesdays, which always hurts the poor who have to choose between voting and working.

Is this also an issue in the U.K.?

As I understand it, UK elections are traditionally on Thursdays. Not sure of the reasoning.

[Maltaran]

29 minutes ago, Jeor said:

As I understand it, UK elections are traditionally on Thursdays. Not sure of the reasoning.

I believe it was so that the newly elected members could travel to London over the weekend for Parliament to start on Monday

[Raja]

I know things are grim atm, but this made me laugh.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

8 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

My understanding is the PM is the PM until he or she is replaced by someone else. So if this election had been a hung parliament Boris would still be PM until some group of parties would get a majority in Parliament to vote for a new PM. Only if Boris lost his seat would he not be PM the day after the GE if no party got an outright majority.

 

Because capitalism is failing the vast majority of humanity. While it works extremely well for a few it depends on exploitation of masses of people to benefit the few, which makes it long term unstable.

Is Marxist style socialism the only alternative to aggressive corporate captialism?  Or are there other socialist/capitalist hybrid alternatives?

[SeanF]

5 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Is Marxist style socialism the only alternative to aggressive corporate captialism?  Or are there other socialist/capitalist hybrid alternatives?

Capitalism is preferable to socialism, but there's no reason why one can't adopt elements of both.  Most rich world governments do so.

[SeanF]

One big takeaway from the election is that while the Conservatives have a big city problem, Labour has a towns problem.  And, there are more town than city constituencies. 

[The Anti-Targ]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Is Marxist style socialism the only alternative to aggressive corporate captialism?  Or are there other socialist/capitalist hybrid alternatives?

Whenever something is failing, the typical reaction of some of those who are suffering under the current regime is to go to something starkly different. There's no quasi-capitalist system in place at the moment that doesn't rely on exploitation of workers. So whatever combination might work does not exist in the real world right now.

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Is Marxist style socialism the only alternative to aggressive corporate captialism?  Or are there other socialist/capitalist hybrid alternatives?

Blair crowed about the advantages of the "third way", which was still basically capitalism but with a bit more money paid into the NHS.

The problem is that socialism is where things are done to benefit society as a whole and capitalism is where things are done to benefit a small number of mostly already-rich individuals. There is the possibility of someone to break through and become extremely rich with a new idea, but it's relatively rare. The model is inspirational: as long as people think they can make it big and go up the ladder and make a lot more money, and there's the odd few examples to "prove" it's possible, they're content to think that capitalism is a success for everyone, despite this not being the case.

The British rail system is a good example. Under the nationalised model, every penny made by the railways was put back into the railways. Under the privatised model, a huge amount of that profit is off-shored to the mainly overseas owners of the companies (including the nationalised rail networks of the Netherlands and Germany, the cheap fares on which British commuters are subsidising), so that's a hugely substantial sum, running sometimes to hundreds of millions to billions of pounds, which is taken out of the system and does no further good. Under the national model, investment in the railways is also continuous, every day, whilst under the private model the companies put investment in during the start of the contract and the early years, and then scale it down as the contract approaches its end because they have no idea if they'll retain the contract and they don't want to be putting money into the system to benefit the next company that takes over (in effect, their competitors).

The current system also does not work because it was based on the idea of 7-10 companies bidding for each contract, but in reality only 2-3 do, which is how companies who have fucked up one contract somehow end up running another one (or the same one) despite being demonstrably shit. More embarassingly for the process, when only 1 company bids, the government isn't allowed to just award them the contract so has to temporarily nationalise that one line and wait for more companies to come on board. Every time they've done that, the nationalised line has done extremely well, much better than when in private ownership.

[A wilding]

One of the problems with capitalism is that, unchecked, it tends to lead to the formation of monopolies, who can then effectively hold everyone to ransom. Indeed at present corporations sometimes actively lobby governments to help them obtain or maintain monopolies (generally in some disguised form, such as creating barriers to entering their market).

Another UK privatisation is a good example of this. 25 years after they were privatised, most of the water companies are now a shell. Their infrastructure is effectively owned by some unaccountable offshore entity in a tax haven somewhere. The water company itself has to maintain and run the infrastructure and also pay vast fees to the offshore entity. That makes it easy for them to go to the government regulators and say with a straight face that they are desperately stretched and that the water rates must go up again.

And yet US boarders wander into this thread and declare that anyone who supports bringing the water pipes beneath our streets back into public ownership is a Marxist!

 

[Jeor]

Following bits of this conversation, I think both extremes are unworkable. Pure capitalism and pure socialism have obvious and fundamental errors - even when socialist systems are strongly implemented, gradually the black market and cronyism creeps in, and you end up with oligarchies (Russia, some of South America) or a socialist system with some market characteristics (China).

To me it seems that the more realistic question is what the appropriate mixture is between capitalism and socialism. People who say they are capitalists and people who say they are socialists rarely actually mean that in the black and white sense of the word, they usually mean their mixture favours one more than the other.

I think most people would agree that the Western hemisphere has become too skewed towards capitalism. Personally, I think capitalism works as long as the government still plays a big role in healthcare, social safety nets (e.g. unemployment benefits and the pension), the environment, education, and some important public utilities (e.g. energy, water, transport). In those areas (which tend to intersect with most basic human rights) I trust the government to do a better job of looking after the electorate's interests than private actors who only have a profit motive.

To bring it back to the UK, Corbyn's agenda might have had a popular destination, but the aggressive posturing and pace of it probably made it seem a bit too radical for the general electorate, and too easy for the Tories to mount a scare campaign on. I'm concerned that Warren and Sanders are going to fall into the same trap in the USA.

[maarsen]

1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said:

 

You can think of this as a version of the three body problem in Newton's theory of gravitation. There is no way of solving the problem. The same thing with voting systems. Once you have three or more conditions to be met with those conditions varying, then the math needed to solve the problem becomes intractable.

[polishgenius]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

(including the nationalised rail networks of the Netherlands and Germany, the cheap fares on which British commuters are subsidising),

Yeah, I've got to thank you London guys for helping out with my 100-Euro all-zones (which reaches well outside of Berlin) monthly railcard.

 

 

39 minutes ago, Jeor said:

 

I think most people would agree that the Western hemisphere has become too skewed towards capitalism.

 

I think we wish that to be the case more than it actually is.

[Jeor]

9 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

I think we wish that to be the case more than it actually is.

Yes, I might have stretched a bit far with that one. 

It's hard to know what the general populace is thinking, especially when election results like these seem to say otherwise. I've been thinking more on @The Anti-Targ's point that even in a compulsory voting environment like Australia, right-wing conservative governments have won power reasonably consistently. It may be that the left-wing bubble does have a blind spot when it comes to gauging the general electorate.

[karaddin]

4 minutes ago, Jeor said:

Yes, I might have stretched a bit far with that one. 

It's hard to know what the general populace is thinking, especially when election results like these seem to say otherwise. I've been thinking more on @The Anti-Targ's point that even in a compulsory voting environment like Australia, right-wing conservative governments have won power reasonably consistently. It may be that the left-wing bubble does have a blind spot when it comes to gauging the general electorate.

What I find interesting here is that you'd consider yourself a conservative (I think? At the very least significantly to the right of me) but we don't really disagree on the fundamentals of this conversation - just where we'd draw the lines.

And 20-30 years ago I feel like your views are pretty in line with where most right of centre people were at. Recently the 5% (or whatever the very small minority was) of our countries that want American style culture war have worked in conjunction with American business and religious interests to import said culture war and attack the institutions that are widely popular so the ultra wealthy can sweep in and suck up more wealth.

[SeanF]

6 hours ago, Jeor said:

Following bits of this conversation, I think both extremes are unworkable. Pure capitalism and pure socialism have obvious and fundamental errors - even when socialist systems are strongly implemented, gradually the black market and cronyism creeps in, and you end up with oligarchies (Russia, some of South America) or a socialist system with some market characteristics (China).

To me it seems that the more realistic question is what the appropriate mixture is between capitalism and socialism. People who say they are capitalists and people who say they are socialists rarely actually mean that in the black and white sense of the word, they usually mean their mixture favours one more than the other.

I think most people would agree that the Western hemisphere has become too skewed towards capitalism. Personally, I think capitalism works as long as the government still plays a big role in healthcare, social safety nets (e.g. unemployment benefits and the pension), the environment, education, and some important public utilities (e.g. energy, water, transport). In those areas (which tend to intersect with most basic human rights) I trust the government to do a better job of looking after the electorate's interests than private actors who only have a profit motive.

To bring it back to the UK, Corbyn's agenda might have had a popular destination, but the aggressive posturing and pace of it probably made it seem a bit too radical for the general electorate, and too easy for the Tories to mount a scare campaign on. I'm concerned that Warren and Sanders are going to fall into the same trap in the USA.

There's no system better than capitalism for creating wealth.  Without it, we'd still have a seventeenth century standard of living.

But, it has rough edges.  That's where socialism comes in.   Big welfare states ensure that the losers under capitalism do have a safety net to fall back on.  The social market economy is the norm, but different countries fall on different parts of the spectrum.

[Chaircat Meow]

1 hour ago, SeanF said:

There's no system better than capitalism for creating wealth.  Without it, we'd still have a seventeenth century standard of living.

But, it has rough edges.  That's where socialism comes in.   Big welfare states ensure that the losers under capitalism do have a safety net to fall back on.  The social market economy is the norm, but different countries fall on different parts of the spectrum.

Why did you vote for Brexit then?

EU membership boosted UK efficiency and competitiveness. The economy is probably 10% larger now than it would be if we had stayed out of the EU in 1972.

You know how compound interest works, yes. The losses from leaving the EU year-on-year may be small; they will stack up though. You have consigned our nation to relative economic decline.