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May 16, 2023

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Laban

"Parliamentary sovereignty is a different thing from popular sovereignty."

Yes, because whoever you vote for, some things are a UniParty must-have.

So mass immigration (eg wage suppression), house price inflation, rent inflation, plentiful credit, foreign wars, special status for minorities/women/LBLTQRERTYIOP are UniParty policies.

Think of all those dumb Red Wall voters who put Boris in power! Do you think they were voting for two years of record net immigration?

Scurra

"It lies in the fact that our political system is failing."
That's a symptom not a cause, just like Brexit was. The malaise is much, much wider than just our political system, although it is most apparent there - having said that, sewage rendering rivers ecologically dead probably runs it pretty close, but things like that are currently very isolated examples.

It's the boiling frog but the question that has yet to be tested in modern times is whether or not we will eventually jump out of the pan (like an actual frog actually would.)

Peter Briffa

We’re we to have referenda on the various Race Relations Acts, immigration acts, abortion acts and hanging they would be a lot livelier than the Brexit one.

I guess that proves your point. But it also proves the reactionary’s point: a lot of the recent social change has been inflicted on the public without its approval yet the politicians think the lack of apparent disagreement shows it was right to do so.

Jan Wiklund

A government should never try to legislate somtething against a majority in the people, said the great 19th century Swedish Liberal statesman Louis De Geer, by historians considered the wisest politician of his age. For then politics willl become erratic; just look at France with all its revolutions and counterrevolutions.

ltr

https://mainly macro.blogspot.com/2023/05/why-is-there-asymmetry-in-how-insurgent.html

May 16, 2023

Why is there asymmetry in how insurgent political voices on the left and right are treated by the two main parties in the UK?

The attitude of the two main parties to those further to the right (for the Conservatives) or the left (for Labour) is very different. In the case of the Conservatives since Cameron, until very recently at least, the best word to use would be appeasement. We left the EU as a result. The attitude of Labour leaders (with the obvious exception of when Corbyn was leader) can be characterised as exclusion.

-- Simon Wren-Lewis

ltr

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/18/business/stellantis-uk-auto-industry-cars.html

May 18, 2023

An Automaker Has a Stark Warning for the U.K. Car Industry
Stellantis said post-Brexit export rules and the lack of a domestic battery manufacturer could force it to close its plants in Britain.
By Stanley Reed

[ After Britain developing and thriving with a global focus, the British elite decided to withdraw from the EU and become wildly antagonistic to China and somehow this is being tolerated so far by voters. ]

ltr

...the Tory party exists to support inequality and the status quo. What should concern us is that the Labour party also does so.

[ The essay is brilliant, beginning to end. What a sad, sad political-economic time we are passing through. ]

Blissex

«Thatcher, like her contemporaries in all parties, thought the job of politicians was not so much to sheepishly follow public opinion as to shape it.»

For example:

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/ukraine-s-ex-president-petro-poroshenko-the-army-is-like-my-child-1.4885308
«The idea of Nato was “not very popular in Ukraine” to start, Poroshenko says, with just 16 per cent of Ukrainians supporting integration to Nato in 2013 right before he was elected president – but by the time he finished his term, 61 per cent did.»

«In her 1975 speech opposing the EU referendum, she approvingly cited a letter to the Evening Standard pointing out that if it had been left to the will of the people. "we would have no Race Relations Act, immigration would have been stopped, abortions would still be illegal and hanging still be in force."»

A very principled schoolteacherly argument that true democracy has "guardrails" set by enlightened wykehamist philopher-kings who know right from wrong, and within which "deplorables" should make their freee choices. :-)

«But why have politicians lost that conception of politics and replaced it with the "customer is king" approach?»

Because the customers that matter are middle class property owners and they think that their interests are aligned with the upper class "sponsors" of those politicians...

«But there's another possibility. It lies in the fact that our political system is failing. Politicians are regarded with contempt, not least because they have no coherent answers to the failures of British capitalism.»

Well over a dozen million voters and their families are quite happy about a political system and a capitalist economy that have delivered to them such huge riches, work-free and largely tax-free, entirely redistributed from lower class losers.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jun/29/how-right-to-buy-ruined-british-housing"
My usual example of a 79-year-old retired carpenter in Cornwall: «who bought his council house in Devon in the early 80s for £17,000. When it was valued at £80,000 in 1989, he sold up and used the equity to put towards a £135,000 fisherman’s cottage in St Mawes. Now it’s valued at £1.1m. “I was very grateful to Margaret Thatcher,” he said.»

Blissex

«the Tory party exists to support inequality and the status quo. What should concern us is that the Labour party also does so.»

A repentant neoliberal, Brad Delong, has observed that reaganism/thatcherism were supported by many people who demanded more inequality, in their favour of course.

ltr

My usual example of a 79-year-old retired carpenter in Cornwall...

[ This is a fine example, but the example cannot be duplicated now and in future without a growth base for the economy. Italy stopped growing in per capita terms entirely in 2000. Absent growth, property values will be quite limited from here.

The Cornwell carpenter needs to have a sense of and pride in nationality. ]

Denny Thomas Vattakunnel

Great article. Thank you for sharing this information.

Blissex

“My usual example of a 79-year-old retired carpenter in Cornwall...”
«the example cannot be duplicated now»

It can, for another 10-20 years at least: doubling-up works like magic. People who live in 1 bedroom can share it with someone else. those who share it can put in 2 bunk beds and share it with 3 other people, and so on until each bunk gets rented by half day, as in the good old victorian times, and "coffin houses" and "rope houses" come back. There are many cases of that happening in London.
Every time 1 bedroom turns into a 2 beds room, or a 2 beds room becomes a 2 bunk beds room, the rentable and sale value of that bedroom nearly doubles,

«and in future without a growth base for the economy»

Currently property interests have a big majority of seats in the House of Commons, growth is not needed for that to stay the same, just the protection of the interests of incumbents. The number of incumbents will shrink because property ownership will become more concentrated, but slowly. It is simply a question of political power and will, and the UK ruling classes have made their choice.

ltr

“My usual example of a 79-year-old retired carpenter in Cornwall...”
«the example cannot be duplicated now»

It can, for another 10-20 years at least: doubling-up works like magic....

[ Really fine response, to which I have no counter. This is surely discouraging. ]

ltr

Just as Jeremy Corbyn was successfully used as a scapegoat by Tory and Labour elite, so now China is to be used by Tory elite:

https://twitter.com/spectatorindex/status/1660213843476332549

The Spectator Index @spectatorindex

United Kingdom Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says that China poses the 'biggest challenge of our age to global security and prosperity'.

5:20 AM · May 21, 2023

ltr

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=T3lH

August 4, 2014

Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for China and United Kingdom, 1977-2021

(Percent change)

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=T3lJ

August 4, 2014

Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for China and United Kingdom, 1977-2021

(Indexed to 1977)

Jan Wiklund

Blissex, May 19, 8.53:

Yes, the redistribution since the 80s has greatly favoured the old, provided they have invested in real estate, as Chris Dillow so often has written.

The losers are the young.

Blissex

«Yes, the redistribution since the 80s has greatly favoured the old, provided they have invested in real estate, [...] The losers are the young.»

That's mostly right but also a common misperception based on generalizing too much with "old" and "young", even if "old" is qualified by "invested in real estate":

* Relatively young people get a "leg up" if their parents can afford to re-mortgage to give them a deposit and help them with paying the mortgage, when they don't buy outright a property as gift to their children.

* A lot of old people could not afford to buy housing in a "good" area or even lost theirs because of many rounds of sackings, too low wages, whole areas losing their jobs, etc.

Thatcherite England is a "meritocracy" and only those with merit of having made all the right choices in their life have won big from property: the choice to be born in the right decades, or to parents who made that choice, the choice to belong an affluent family, and a family in an area where governments have spent fantastic sums of public money to attract well paying jobs.

Incumbency is the supreme value of english society, and the governments of the past 40 years have competed to reward incumbency, regardless of age.

Indeed often that's people who are older southern middle class rentiers, but their younger heirs expect to do well too.

Jan Wiklund

Sure. And i suppose that a lot of people would answer Yes to the question "would you like to free-ride, in such a way that you never can be ferreted out?".

But not all can do it. And thatcherism isn't meritocratic, because - according to Branko Milanovic - if you earn more than most people, it's 80 % luck. Merits figure very little. However, it seems that most people are optimists and think they will lave luck.

But should we appeal to politicians to protect us from our own follies? No, that will make us too vulnerable. Better is to organize deliberatively democratic milieus, like the traditional trade unions, with the power to keep politicians in check.

ltr

But should we appeal to politicians to protect us from our own follies? No, that will make us too vulnerable. Better is to organize deliberatively democratic milieus, like the traditional trade unions, with the power to keep politicians in check.

[ Really nice response. Do you have the reference for Milanovic? ]

Blissex

«If you earn more than most people, it's 80 % luck. Merits figure very little»

Them merits of having chosen to be born in the right decades, in good families, in booming areas, are quite thatcherite. People who made those clever choices are winner, those who did not make those choices are losers :-).

Blissex

«Them merits of having chosen to be born in the right decades, in good families, in booming areas, are quite thatcherite.»

The problem with the fantasy of the "rawlsian veil" is that it is mere fantasy, a lot of people already know how the cookie crumbled and vote accordingly:

* Young people who have been born in good affluent families.

* Older people who already got theirs.

They are two fairly big blocks...

Blissex

«organize deliberatively democratic milieus, like the traditional trade unions, with the power to keep politicians in check.»

The Conservative and New Labour parties are the trade unions of the property and finance rentiers, they are (or would like to be) well organized as marketing machines, and the last thing they want to to keep "their" politicians in check. They just want more, more, more self-dealing.

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