Current Affairs The Conservative Party

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Since I was a kid, I've basically seen it like this. Simplistic, but right now it seems more accurate than ever to me.

Most of the people at the top of the Tory party are liars, corrupt, self-serving, silver spoon scumbags, with a few exceptions.

Most of the people at the top of the Labour party are fundamentally decent and actually want to improve things for people other than their already disgustingly rich mates, with a few exceptions.
 
Martin Alvito said:
Bingo.

You have met people who would be better at governance than the leaders of the major parties. The major parties do not promote them to leadership. As far as I know, this is true across first-past-the-post electoral systems these days.

This has been true since the era of the sound bite. It has gotten worse in the era of the tweet and TikTok.

It is impossible to govern when success depends upon what you can pack into a six-second attention span, because actual solutions to real-world problems require more time to explain. If we stopped electing people on the basis of their ability to produce lines like "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" and "I feel your pain!" and started electing them on the basis of competence and substance, we would get better results.

That would require the electorate to actually pay attention, but Converse et al proved that people don't do that anymore, and not coincidentally that research was done right before we went from electing people like Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower to people like Kennedy, LBJ and Nixon. The former lot can win a two-front war with multiple major powers; the latter can find a way to start and lose a war with a minor power despite having the resources to put men on the moon.

We elect nimrods who make for good TV because that's what modern media selects for. Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer would be great characters in Downton Abbey. It absolutely doesn't follow that we want them running things. That was more or less the entire point of the show.
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Agree with some of this but I think the nature of the parties themselves (here and in the US) are much more to blame than the media or modern discourse.

To be a politician nowadays, especially a senior politician, requires someone to have started in their late teens. The vast majority of them (certainly in the UK) do not get the chance to achieve anything significant outside politics because demonstrable competence (or ability, or talent) isn't anything like as relevant as making connections, climbing up the ladder and ending up in a safe seat are. Even winning and losing elections are of secondary importance, as the panoply of support jobs (consultancies, think-tanks, commentary and other media roles, charity jobs (very well paid ironically) and public sector roles or peerages etc) are always available to the defeated.

This careerism is of course what results in the vicious opposition to anything that presents a threat to that existence, as we have seen with Corbyn and especially with AOC in the US - the mere fact they both did what they did is a threat to the whole system.
 
tsubaki said:
Agree with some of this but I think the nature of the parties themselves (here and in the US) are much more to blame than the media or modern discourse.

To be a politician nowadays, especially a senior politician, requires someone to have started in their late teens. The vast majority of them (certainly in the UK) do not get the chance to achieve anything significant outside politics because demonstrable competence (or ability, or talent) isn't anything like as relevant as making connections, climbing up the ladder and ending up in a safe seat are. Even winning and losing elections are of secondary importance, as the panoply of support jobs (consultancies, think-tanks, commentary and other media roles, charity jobs (very well paid ironically) and public sector roles or peerages etc) are always available to the defeated.

This careerism is of course what results in the vicious opposition to anything that presents a threat to that existence, as we have seen with Corbyn and especially with AOC in the US - the mere fact they both did what they did is a threat to the whole system.
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I agree partially with this. The bulk of the politicians today follow the career path you indicate. I would toss Warren, Frist and DeLay out as influential politicians that did not follow that path. I would suggest that your path is the most efficient way, but not the only way. You may be correct that the UK system is less tolerant of outsiders like those I mentioned.

Corbyn is an interesting case to support your interpretation. I would hold up AOC as the exemplar of what the social media age creates, and I would suggest that we should tack hard away from that.

Research suggests that losing multiple elections kills both influence and electability. Losing a single election is a big deal; Nixon and Cleveland are major outliers. Lincoln is an even more interesting one.

My short answer would be that the system is a problem, but that the causal arrow for the current system runs through the media, and not the other way around. The media hired Mike Huckabee, and doesn't call out the hypocrisies you indicate. The press is enumerated in the First Amendment because they were expected to check, rather than create, power.
 
Judging by the load of demented nonsense spouted by the Home Secretary today, it is clear that nobody in the Government understands international maritime law, or if by some remarkable chance they do, they think it doesn't matter because Rule Britannia and all that bollox.

The only result of her "policy" announcement today will be refugees stepping on to UK soil from Royal Navy boats instead of RNLI boats.

Probably banking on the type of voter this sort of performatively malicious built-to-fail policy is aimed at pleasing being too thick to realise this.
 
Blue 1 said:
Judging by the load of demented nonsense spouted by the Home Secretary today, it is clear that nobody in the Government understands international maritime law, or if by some remarkable chance they do, they think it doesn't matter because Rule Britannia and all that bollox.

The only result of her "policy" announcement today will be refugees stepping on to UK soil from Royal Navy boats instead of RNLI boats.

Probably banking on the type of voter this sort of performatively malicious built-to-fail policy is aimed at pleasing being too thick to realise this.
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It's all just to look tough, which is pretty grim when you think they're "looking tough" by being gits to people who are just looking for help.
 
This is just terrible, Conservatives have no idea of levelling up and the perception people have of it now. Everyone to be equal... Get over paid a few quid in benefits and just wait for the full wait of the government machine to come after you. Let alone IR35 .The optics of this simply awful-

www.dailymail.co.uk

Treasury writes of £4.3bn taken by fraudsters from furlough

A taskforce set up to get the money back has so far got its hands on around £500million, and is projected to have received a further £1billion by the end of 2023.
www.dailymail.co.uk www.dailymail.co.uk
 
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