UK General Election 2024

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Hi Stone

The treatment of Japan after WW2 is a subject of controversy to say the least and the way you simplify it to support your own argument is a bit disingenuous.
Also with reference to Germany, Sean is correct the main reason they performed so well after the war was because of their institutions and societal structure. You seem also to happily skip over the fact that Germany was split in half and occupied for quite a while by the West with vast volumes of money being pumped in. During this period an enormous amount of effort was put into rebuilding Germany and its infrastructure. This was hardly an option for Russia. Also I have no idea where you are getting this idea of the USSR having a highly educated and well functioning society. This just seems wrong and against all the evidence.
 
ali k said:
Thread split?

I don’t know, maybe not.

The world is going through significant changes, politically, socially and economically. We are facing an existential crisis, again, though possibly worse than the nuclear annihilation fantasies of thirty years ago (we seem to have dealt with that angst by ignoring it, because it’s now mostly hidden. Climate change is/will be frank).
A lot of that change is influencing our UK political landscape. From reactionary Brexit to immigration, social care, alliances and perceived foreign threat etc etc.
We’re seeing a change in regional alliances and despite trying to step out of that landscape, via Brexit thinking, we’re inextricably part of that reality.
A Quote from Asimov’s “I Robot” (1940s-early 1950s) supposedly uttered in the mid-late 21st century. Where he writes “Robot” he’s actually referencing what we now call AI:
IMG-0165.jpg


He’s probably not far off the mark, if possibly a little optimistic on the “Golden age” stuff.
Things are changing, immigration, economics, networks, the internet, social media, are all combining to reduce “Nation” as the primary definition by which the individual views themselves. Most pre-internet humans, probably spent they’re formative years seeing themselves primarily as their national character dictated; those who have only existed in the current world, seem (to me) to see themselves first as part of some subset of humanity that isn’t bound by national borders (I dunno exactly how to articulate that, “Trans” is a category that springs immediately to mind, if inappropriately, just seems a strong identity. You could probably name quite a few others).
We de facto accept we are part of “The West” region and cleave to those other nations we perceive to be part of that group, for instance.
If the referendum is reasonably described as a test of whether we preferred to be “British” or “Europeans” then ( and adding the demographic split) then we’re about half way to becoming Regionally identified, primary to Nationally.
To where saying “I’m British” is akin to me saying “I’m Cornish” (of which I am proud and see no diminution in light of being primarily British).
 
stone said:
Totally. That is why it was all the more regrettable that western advisors advocated setting things up in a way that was so vulnerable to takeover by such crooks.

My reading of, say, the article I posted above was that there was no “takeover by crooks” suddenly occurring in the 1990s - because crooks prospered already under the Soviet system.

Thanks for the paper. Is there any particular part of it that you believe supports your thesis? I should point out that this guy, who you’ve linked to twice, was basically a foreign advisor involved with the US aid effort, which was far too small. Meanwhile there were Russian economists working on reforms within the Russian government itself. You seem to want it both ways - Russians are the most well educated people in history but also couldn’t produce any economists who understood what needed to be done. Or if there were, then there is an unexplained process in which the Russian leaders ignored their own advisors and preferred exclusively foreigners.

Jeffrey Sachs says that the chief architect of the reforms was a Russian called Yegor Gaidar, writing:

“In October 1991 I received a call from Moscow, telling me that Yegor Gaidar was likely to become the head of Yeltsin’s economic team, and that Russia would launch radical market reforms with or without the rest of the Soviet Union.”

(My emphasis.)

Oh look, a Russian leader making decisions about Russia!

Sachs describes the Russia of 1992 thus:

“I fully understand from the start that the reform task would be vastly more difficult and complex than in Poland. There were several critical and quite obvious reasons for this concern:

“Russia’s economic mainstay, oil and gas production, was already plummeting by the late 1980s, and this was causing a financial catastrophe for the government because oil revenues were a vital source of budget income and foreign exchange

“Russia was entering into an acute external debt crisis as a result of heavy external borrowing during the Gorbachev years

“Russia’s economic structure was far more distorted than in Eastern Europe, with a vast proportion of Soviet industry producing “negative value added” (output worth less at world market prices than inputs such as energy and other raw materials)

“The Soviet region utterly lacked the history and practice of market economics and democratic governance

“The size and complexity of the Soviet Union, with 15 republics and 150 million people stretched over 11 times zones, was incomparably greater than the complexity of Polish or Czech or other Central European circumstances.”

http://www.acamedia.info/politics/ukraine/jeffrey_sachs/What_I_did_in_Russia-exerpts.html
 
Thanks Sean for the interesting link.

I also found this wikipedia page gave helpful background https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_trade_of_the_Soviet_Union
 
The selection process is underway for the next Tory leader. Someone from the Conservative Home website was on BBC R4 saying about how there are slightly more "one nation" Tory MPs than "right wing" Tory MPs. He said normally for leadership contests, the membership get a choice between a "one nation" candidate and a "right wing" candidate and traditionally then choose the "right wing".

This drives home just how much sway Tory party members have over the UK. Again, I implore any of the decent, reasonable people on here who sometimes (unlike me) vote Tory, to become party members.

Currently as a Labour Party member I don't think I have any influence at all. But as Tory party members you really would. All the more so as there are so few Tory Party members.
 
I think they said in the Rest is Politics pod that you had to have been registered as a member by 24th July to be able to vote in this leadership contest.
 
stone said:
This drives home just how much sway Tory party members have over the UK. Again, I implore any of the decent, reasonable people on here who sometimes (unlike me) vote Tory, to become party members.

A part of me thinks: just let them select the most batshit crazy person possible. They deserve each other.

I know there needs to be plausible opposition and I know their decline will only benefit Reform, but - like I said - a part me would welcome their ongoing self-destruction. We all have bad thoughts sometimes.

I'm also currently enjoying Suella's massive hissy fit because the rest of the party refuses to recognise her diagnosis that even more batshittery is the way forward.
 
teestub said:
I think they said in the Rest is Politics pod that you had to have been registered as a member by 24th July to be able to vote in this leadership contest.
My thought was surely that can't mean 24th July this year. I was thinking long term rather than this contest.

To my mind our country would be much much better if we had a Tory party where the centrist types were at the helm. People who wanted the NHS to work well, cared about increasing opportunity, didn't wage culture wars etc. Rory Stewart ran to be leader let's face it.
 
Is there potential that a reduced Tory party, with the centrist > right vote split between them, Libs and Reform might actually get us closer to voting reform? Seen a few bits about Tory MPs considering defecting to Reform.
 
stone said:
teestub said:
I think they said in the Rest is Politics pod that you had to have been registered as a member by 24th July to be able to vote in this leadership contest.
My thought was surely that can't mean 24th July this year.

Of course it means this year. Why would it mean any other? The process is set up this way to avoid entryism.
 
spidermonkey09 said:
stone said:
teestub said:
I think they said in the Rest is Politics pod that you had to have been registered as a member by 24th July to be able to vote in this leadership contest.
My thought was surely that can't mean 24th July this year.
Of course it means this year. Why would it mean any other? The process is set up this way to avoid entryism.
I meant the Labour Party has a much much longer required period of prior membership than that. Many months rather than days.
Just as you say, it is to prevent entryism.
 
stone said:
I meant the Labour Party has a much much longer required period of prior membership than that. Many months rather than days.
Just as you say, it is to prevent entryism.

it was notionally 6 months, but you could pay to avoid this, as many people (120k) did to elect Corbyn. They changed it for the last one to be similar to what the Tories have now.

https://www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2019/12/16/labour-leadership-election-who-can-vote-and-how-does-it-work/
 
Thanks teestub, that's the definitive link -and authored by the arch fixer Luke Akehurst no less!
 
teestub said:
Is there potential that a reduced Tory party, with the centrist > right vote split between them, Libs and Reform might actually get us closer to voting reform? Seen a few bits about Tory MPs considering defecting to Reform.
Are you meaning the UK getting a reform government?

I'm not sure Reform are really intending to be a party of government. It seems more a campaign group to snap at the heels of the Tories so as to manoeuvre them.

I'm thinking of the saying "the dog that caught the car" about what would happen if Reform did ever win a majority.
 
stone said:
I meant the Labour Party has a much much longer required period of prior membership than that. Many months rather than days.
Just as you say, it is to prevent entryism.

I see what you mean, but I can see why they'd want to allow people who joined after the election loss to vote in the contest as thats a fruitful time. I joined the Labour party after the loss in 2019 and voted in the subsequent leadership election, for example. This sort of cut off seems like a sensible balance between encouraging new members and preventing entryism.
 
stone said:
Are you meaning the UK getting a reform government?

I'm not sure Reform are really intending to be a party of government. It seems more a campaign group to snap at the heels of the Tories so as to manoeuvre them.

Sorry one reform with a capital R and one without, I.e. does this current split of voting ranging from centrist right (Lib) to right right (Reform) mean that a drive towards proportional representation voting is now more likely than when you just had 2 big parties scooping up 80% of the vote
 
teestub said:
Sorry one reform with a capital R and one without, I.e. does this current split of voting ranging from centrist right (Lib) to right right (Reform) mean that a drive towards proportional representation voting is now more likely than when you just had 2 big parties scooping up 80% of the vote
Sorry goofy me misreading!

My guess is that proportional representation is least likely when the government has a huge majority despite few votes! The losers will be upset but the losers aren't the choosers.

Perhaps everyone will eventually get disgruntled with the government and then Labour votes will split whilst Tory votes will coalesce (this government's victory has shown that only one half of that equation is needed. Labour romped to victory just from Tory collapse).
 
I know schadenfreude is an ugly emotion, one we should all shun, but I confess to a moment of pleasure from James Cleverly (or his supporters, or both) totally "spaffing" the Tory leadership contest up the wall. Of course, he was never going to win with the membership anyway, but still ...
 
Could the One Nation Tories split, like the Gang of Four did with Labour, now that the Tory lunatic fringe is guaranteed to take over leadership?
 


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