The Paucity of Political Talent in the UK - Blame the EU
Discussion
Hear me out on this one. The UK was a member of the EU and its predecessor the European Community (aka the Common Market) for 47 years, and in much of that time, particularly latterly, a significant majority of policy and legislation passed by our UK parliaments was simply a ratification of unifying principles, policy and rules agreed at EU level (there are those who will argue this was not the case, but statute proves otherwise).
This led to several generations of politicians who no longer had to have ideas and principles and who didn't have to navigate complex issues in order to win elections as they were simply the public face of a rubber stamping body exercising the will of an organisation that was doing most of the thinking for them.
This turned turned our political class into actors and entertainers rather than thinkers and doers.
Remove the safety net of the European Directive and they are now all to a man/women/insert-chosen-pronoun found wanting.
Discuss.
Tl:DR - admittedly clickbaity title, but UK's membership of the EU made our political class lazy.
This led to several generations of politicians who no longer had to have ideas and principles and who didn't have to navigate complex issues in order to win elections as they were simply the public face of a rubber stamping body exercising the will of an organisation that was doing most of the thinking for them.
This turned turned our political class into actors and entertainers rather than thinkers and doers.
Remove the safety net of the European Directive and they are now all to a man/women/insert-chosen-pronoun found wanting.
Discuss.
Tl:DR - admittedly clickbaity title, but UK's membership of the EU made our political class lazy.
Evercross said:
Hear me out on this one. The UK was a member of the EU and its predecessor the European Community (aka the Common Market) for 47 years, and in much of that time, particularly latterly, a significant majority of policy and legislation passed by our UK parliaments was simply a ratification of unifying principles, policy and rules agreed at EU level (there are those who will argue this was not the case, but statute proves otherwise).
This led to several generations of politicians who no longer had to have ideas and principles and who didn't have to navigate complex issues in order to win elections as they were simply the public face of a rubber stamping body exercising the will of an organisation that was doing most of the thinking for them.
This turned turned our political class into actors and entertainers rather than thinkers and doers.
Remove the safety net of the European Directive and they are now all to a man/women/insert-chosen-pronoun found wanting.
Discuss.
Tl:DR - admittedly clickbaity title, but UK's membership of the EU made our political class lazy.
Citation needed.This led to several generations of politicians who no longer had to have ideas and principles and who didn't have to navigate complex issues in order to win elections as they were simply the public face of a rubber stamping body exercising the will of an organisation that was doing most of the thinking for them.
This turned turned our political class into actors and entertainers rather than thinkers and doers.
Remove the safety net of the European Directive and they are now all to a man/women/insert-chosen-pronoun found wanting.
Discuss.
Tl:DR - admittedly clickbaity title, but UK's membership of the EU made our political class lazy.
CraigyMc said:
Citation needed.
The dates are a matter of history, the screeds of EU legislation (which was info-dumped into UK law as part of Brexit) are a matter of record. You can pick over the details, but the point is that supra-national government is all well and good until you take it away and the lower tiers then have to start earning their living. The late Christopher Booker made this point a long time before I did.Is this yet another thread trying to move the blame for political incompetence from the Tory party onto some other body?
There are good politicians of all hues in Parliament, but they are either currently in opposition, or relegated to the backbenches because the Johnson government (and subsequent iterations) decided that pro-EU Tories were persona non grata. The subsequent conveyor belt of sub-standard PM's and their cabinets is a direct result of this. It's time that the electorate faced up to the fact that the problem isn't British politics in general, but populist Tory politics, which promised the moon on a stick, but barely managed to deliver the stick.
Perhaps the self-immolation of the Tory party are the sunny uplands of Brexit we were promised
There are good politicians of all hues in Parliament, but they are either currently in opposition, or relegated to the backbenches because the Johnson government (and subsequent iterations) decided that pro-EU Tories were persona non grata. The subsequent conveyor belt of sub-standard PM's and their cabinets is a direct result of this. It's time that the electorate faced up to the fact that the problem isn't British politics in general, but populist Tory politics, which promised the moon on a stick, but barely managed to deliver the stick.
Perhaps the self-immolation of the Tory party are the sunny uplands of Brexit we were promised
Al Gorithum said:
Seems more likely that Brexit is the culprit as nobody with any decency/half a brain wants to be involved anymore.
I am being careful not to turn this into an argument for or against Brexit. In some way you could argue the status quo of staying in the EU might have been better, if you are happy to accept that your own country's inept politicians aren't really in charge.tangerine_sedge said:
Is this yet another thread trying to move the blame for political incompetence from the Tory party onto some other body?
Absolutely not. I am however in agreeance that the current Conservative party is truly inept, and the opposite bench is equally inept and gaining favour only because they are getting the benefit of the doubt.Tying themselves in knots over the optics of the middle-eastern conflict shows that they are still in the mindset of being actors rather than thinkers.
Edited by Evercross on Tuesday 5th March 10:39
andy_s said:
The dangerous things are boring, politics now lives in a performance/attention market.
Australia and the US has never been in the EU, yet have produced GW Bush and Trump or Abbott and Morrison (Dutton has gone right off the scale of nuttery).
The EU seems to be going the other way, more towards sanity with Macron beating Le Pen, Germany saying Nein to the AfD.
Our own terrible politicians tied their fates to Brexit, including Eurosceptic Corbyn.
At the best, you can say being in the EU had no part in it.
captain_cynic said:
This. Empirical evidence suggest the opposite to the OPs postulation that the EU results in poor quality politicians.
Australia and the US has never been in the EU, yet have produced GW Bush and Trump or Abbott and Morrison (Dutton has gone right off the scale of nuttery).
The EU seems to be going the other way, more towards sanity with Macron beating Le Pen, Germany saying Nein to the AfD.
Our own terrible politicians tied their fates to Brexit, including Eurosceptic Corbyn.
At the best, you can say being in the EU had no part in it.
US/AU is a straw-man argument. The point is that we had the safety net of supra-national government and it was withdrawn, exposing the fact that our politicians had changed tack and were no longer capable of running things themselves.Australia and the US has never been in the EU, yet have produced GW Bush and Trump or Abbott and Morrison (Dutton has gone right off the scale of nuttery).
The EU seems to be going the other way, more towards sanity with Macron beating Le Pen, Germany saying Nein to the AfD.
Our own terrible politicians tied their fates to Brexit, including Eurosceptic Corbyn.
At the best, you can say being in the EU had no part in it.
US Presidential elections have for decades been popularity contests - nothing has changed there except the players.
Evercross said:
CraigyMc said:
Citation needed.
The dates are a matter of history, the screeds of EU legislation (which was info-dumped into UK law as part of Brexit) are a matter of record. You can pick over the details, but the point is that supra-national government is all well and good until you take it away and the lower tiers then have to start earning their living. The late Christopher Booker made this point a long time before I did.tangerine_sedge said:
Is this yet another thread trying to move the blame for political incompetence from the Tory party onto some other body?
There are good politicians of all hues in Parliament, but they are either currently in opposition, or relegated to the backbenches because the Johnson government (and subsequent iterations) decided that pro-EU Tories were persona non grata. The subsequent conveyor belt of sub-standard PM's and their cabinets is a direct result of this. It's time that the electorate faced up to the fact that the problem isn't British politics in general, but populist Tory politics, which promised the moon on a stick, but barely managed to deliver the stick.
Perhaps the self-immolation of the Tory party are the sunny uplands of Brexit we were promised
Where does he mention the Conservative Party? They're absolutely all lamentable. The Labour party simply isn't any opposition and doesn't have an idea between them, and the Liberal Party seem to have sunk without trace. There are good politicians of all hues in Parliament, but they are either currently in opposition, or relegated to the backbenches because the Johnson government (and subsequent iterations) decided that pro-EU Tories were persona non grata. The subsequent conveyor belt of sub-standard PM's and their cabinets is a direct result of this. It's time that the electorate faced up to the fact that the problem isn't British politics in general, but populist Tory politics, which promised the moon on a stick, but barely managed to deliver the stick.
Perhaps the self-immolation of the Tory party are the sunny uplands of Brexit we were promised
I'm old enough to remember proper politicians, Margaret Thatcher, Neil Kinnock, John Major, David Steel. You might not have liked them or their policies, but at least you got the sense that they believed in what they were doing and they felt it was for the good of the country. That they were professional politicians.
Now all we have is performing seals dog whistling their supporters in a popularity contest.
Ari said:
tangerine_sedge said:
Is this yet another thread trying to move the blame for political incompetence from the Tory party onto some other body?
There are good politicians of all hues in Parliament, but they are either currently in opposition, or relegated to the backbenches because the Johnson government (and subsequent iterations) decided that pro-EU Tories were persona non grata. The subsequent conveyor belt of sub-standard PM's and their cabinets is a direct result of this. It's time that the electorate faced up to the fact that the problem isn't British politics in general, but populist Tory politics, which promised the moon on a stick, but barely managed to deliver the stick.
Perhaps the self-immolation of the Tory party are the sunny uplands of Brexit we were promised
Where does he mention the Conservative Party? They're absolutely all lamentable. The Labour party simply isn't any opposition and doesn't have an idea between them, and the Liberal Party seem to have sunk without trace. There are good politicians of all hues in Parliament, but they are either currently in opposition, or relegated to the backbenches because the Johnson government (and subsequent iterations) decided that pro-EU Tories were persona non grata. The subsequent conveyor belt of sub-standard PM's and their cabinets is a direct result of this. It's time that the electorate faced up to the fact that the problem isn't British politics in general, but populist Tory politics, which promised the moon on a stick, but barely managed to deliver the stick.
Perhaps the self-immolation of the Tory party are the sunny uplands of Brexit we were promised
I'm old enough to remember proper politicians, Margaret Thatcher, Neil Kinnock, John Major, David Steel. You might not have liked them or their policies, but at least you got the sense that they believed in what they were doing and they felt it was for the good of the country. That they were professional politicians.
Now all we have is performing seals dog whistling their supporters in a popularity contest.
If a government has a 50 seat majority, it can pretty much do what it likes allowing for single issue dissenters in it's own ranks, and the opposition is redundant.
This assumes that British politicians were ever not mostly corrupt, mostly incompetent, and mostly interested only in serving the wealthy.
You could probably name a handful of half decent politicans, but what about the rest?
So I think its a case that the EU has simply raised our expectations; against the reality that our politicans have always been s
ts. They just blamed everything that was unpopular on the EU; and took all the credit for popular stuff.
Now without the EU, we're seeing their incompetence and corruption fully exposed once more.
You could probably name a handful of half decent politicans, but what about the rest?
So I think its a case that the EU has simply raised our expectations; against the reality that our politicans have always been s
ts. They just blamed everything that was unpopular on the EU; and took all the credit for popular stuff. Now without the EU, we're seeing their incompetence and corruption fully exposed once more.
Mrr T said:
UK politicians had absolutely power in economic policy including tax other than VAT, law and order, social policy, defence, etc,etc.
Indeed, but for how much longer? UK had autonomy over VAT too for a long time during EU membership but was on the verge of losing it. Corporation tax was also controlled if not dictated, which influences economy (and let's not get started again on the proposed EU defence force...)Again, I am not turning this into an anti EU thread as there are benefits to unified thinking and lockstep policy in a globalist world. I will make the point again though that it leads to a lazy tranche of politicians on the lower tiers who are found wanting when it falls to them to direct the ship.
Case in point - look at how inept our devolved parliaments are because they don't want to take responsibility for anything that matters, and royally screw up when they are forced to.
The dumbing down of society in general
The professional politician, straight from school to university politics degree then into Parliament and becoming an MP … zero outside life skills
It’s not directed at any party but all of them but our national leaders are sadly no more competent than mediocre local councillors
The days of successful people from all walks of life choosing a later career in politics as a vocation are becoming very rare and that is our loss
The professional politician, straight from school to university politics degree then into Parliament and becoming an MP … zero outside life skills
It’s not directed at any party but all of them but our national leaders are sadly no more competent than mediocre local councillors
The days of successful people from all walks of life choosing a later career in politics as a vocation are becoming very rare and that is our loss
For your hypothesis to hold, it would have to apply to every other EU country. Whilst there are some places in the EU run by utter political dreck, e.g Hungary and Germany, there are others where this not the case, e.g. Estonia, Lithuania, Finland.
So I think your proposition is flawed and very one-eyed in that it only looks at Britain. If you want to blame the EU for our continuing dearth of talent, you'll need much more evidence than simply pointing at the UK's politicians of today.
So I think your proposition is flawed and very one-eyed in that it only looks at Britain. If you want to blame the EU for our continuing dearth of talent, you'll need much more evidence than simply pointing at the UK's politicians of today.
Evercross said:
Hear me out on this one. The UK was a member of the EU and its predecessor the European Community (aka the Common Market) for 47 years, and in much of that time, particularly latterly, a significant majority of policy and legislation passed by our UK parliaments was simply a ratification of unifying principles, policy and rules agreed at EU level (there are those who will argue this was not the case, but statute proves otherwise).
This led to several generations of politicians who no longer had to have ideas and principles and who didn't have to navigate complex issues in order to win elections as they were simply the public face of a rubber stamping body exercising the will of an organisation that was doing most of the thinking for them.
This turned turned our political class into actors and entertainers rather than thinkers and doers.
Remove the safety net of the European Directive and they are now all to a man/women/insert-chosen-pronoun found wanting.
Discuss.
Tl:DR - admittedly clickbaity title, but UK's membership of the EU made our political class lazy.
This is not even remotely controversial, it is obvious to anyone with two brain cells to rub together, yet as you'll see the pro-EU lunatics won't be having a bar of it.This led to several generations of politicians who no longer had to have ideas and principles and who didn't have to navigate complex issues in order to win elections as they were simply the public face of a rubber stamping body exercising the will of an organisation that was doing most of the thinking for them.
This turned turned our political class into actors and entertainers rather than thinkers and doers.
Remove the safety net of the European Directive and they are now all to a man/women/insert-chosen-pronoun found wanting.
Discuss.
Tl:DR - admittedly clickbaity title, but UK's membership of the EU made our political class lazy.
The only area that might be expanded upon is that some of the lack of capability comes from the Civil Service remodelling itself into a basic translation service, translating EU directives into English Language. Politicians now also don't get the support they need from Civil Servants who don't have much experience beyond "Does this comply with EU Law?"
Ironically the strongest reason for remaining in the EU was that hollowing out of our governing class that was there front and centre in the remain campaign, but they could never make the case that we should stay in, because look how useless we all are could they.
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