Coup De Grâce
The UK will hold general elections on July 4 which seems -- I don't know -- somehow self-deprecating.
Rishi Sunak was probably hoping to get at least one Bank of England rate cut before calling a vote, but Wednesday's inflation update nixed any hope of a move at the bank's June meeting. With services price growth still running near 6% (consistent with wage growth), a cut in August isn't a foregone conclusion.
But the election result is. A foregone conclusion, I mean. The idea of waiting around
The Tory party has been doomed since Boris Johnson’s failure, subsequent leaders have at best been place holders.
He must have been worried about being tossed out by the Tories for leadership and figured he would take his chances with a parlimentary election. Or perhaps he figured things could only get worse for his and his party’s prospects. Either way, he has a much less chance to get re-elected than Trump has of getting back in the White House.
How do we get the Maga party (the party formerly known as ‘Republican’) to be this assured of defeat?
The Republican Party is no more, we should highlight this to the electorate. There are two parties still, but one is not the Republican Party.
I take issue with the MAGA acronym. These are mostly Theologians who are pushing the idea that beating up on thy neighbor is good for business and prosperity. Therefore I think we should push a different moniker, MAGATs.
I spoke with a senior civil servant yesterday who said that in his 40 year career he had never seen a government so utterly bereft as this one. I wouldn’t ordinarily join the soothsayers predicting a wipeout for the Conservatives, but it really does look like this is going to be a humbling experience. Which makes me smile, inside and out.
This piece made me think of Trump’s legal defense “team.” Anyone with working eyes and ears might have thought we hit bottom with the execrable Michael Cohen (or perhaps even Roy Cohn before him). But alas, cruel history has trotted before us the motliest (?) possible crew spanning the bimbo brigade of Christina Bobb, Pam Bondi, Jenna Ellis and Alina Habba, the veteran underminers of Ty Cobb, Kenneth Chesebro, John Eastman, Boris Epshteyn and Don McGahn, the zealot zoo of Sidney Powell, Ken Starr, Victoria Toensing, Cleta Mitchell and Jay Sekulow, and, finally, the consigliere wing that calls Joseph DiGenova, Samuel Alito, John Lauro, Joe Tacopina, Stefan Passatino and, of course, Rudy Giuliani as proud members. Good thing the legal profession was never great, cuz there ain’t no making it great again after this bear market run.
And apologies in advance for this disconnected side rant. But perhaps we can take another page out of the British playbook and follow their having elections on American Independence Day by incarcerating a former president on our election day.
The USA today truly is “Idiocracy”. That movie, “Idiocracy” is supposed to be a comedy but it is frighteningly close to today’s reality in the USA.
Come now, give our relations a break across the pond. While Cluster may be an understatement, taking wild risks resulting in wild outcomes is part of the British condition. It is a condition we may never fully understand even if we devote a lifetime of study. They are their own people acting for the most part more adult than us here on this side of the pond. Can a child understand the logic of an adult for more than a few seconds?
I know I am playing into mostly undeserved cultural predilections by bringing up adulthood. However, with Donald Trump’s recent antics and our inability to provide the child with a sound spanking I am not sure we do not deserve to be seen as an errant country of children needing a good spanking.
I am however delightfully entertained by this article which is mostly an addition of color to the goings on.
TBH, it’s going to be tough for Labor to redress the bar.
Basically, the UK needs an abundance agenda (energy, housing, industrial policy etc). The problem is, this means goring a few sacred cows (esp. around housing) and raising taxes to pay for industrial investments.
In a country that has gotten smaller and nastier for decades, letting go of what you have (accepting home values going down) AND contributing to the common good (via higher taxes) is a tough ask for anyone, even the most charismatic of leader. And I don’t think Keir Starmer is particularly charismatic…
The UK’s political dysfunction looks “normal” to me. The US’ political dysfunction looks “abnormal”. As in, the British don’t seem to be ready to throw away their democracy.
Yeah, I’d agree with this. But it’s important to remember that the Founders never really wanted a democracy anyway. They wanted a republic. They put in a bunch of checks on majoritarian rule and now here we are, two and a half centuries later, with minority tyranny.