andrewducker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
andrewducker) wrote2018-01-09 12:00 pm
andrewducker) wrote2018-01-09 12:00 pm
Entry tags:
- advice,
- age,
- apple,
- argument,
- bbc,
- bitcoin,
- bodies,
- china,
- computers,
- conservatives,
- conversation,
- cute,
- depression,
- drone,
- drugs,
- english,
- europe,
- fail,
- forests,
- funny,
- history,
- iran,
- johannhari,
- labour,
- life,
- lifespan,
- links,
- longevity,
- maps,
- marriage,
- mentalhealth,
- music,
- nature,
- ohforfuckssake,
- personality,
- politics,
- powerpoint,
- psychology,
- relationships,
- research,
- sad,
- scotland,
- sex,
- trees,
- tv,
- twitter,
- uk,
- usa,
- viaswampers,
- video,
- winter,
- women
Interesting Links for 09-01-2018
- On The Turing Completeness of PowerPoint
- (tags: video funny powerpoint computers )
- Chris Grayling's 27 Seconds as Conservative Party Chairman
- (tags: conservatives fail viaSwampers )
- Donald Trump's tweets aren't random - he's live-tweeting his favourite tv
- (tags: tv politics usa twitter )
- The couple who got engaged and married on the same day
- (tags: marriage )
- The plummeting Conservative membership makes the party ripe for entryism
- (tags: Conservatives funny politics )
- How to argue, in eight easy steps
- (tags: argument conversation advice )
- Lemurs mob BBC News reporter
- (tags: video cute bbc )
- The Omnicopter, A Super Agile Omni-Directional Drone That Can Play Catch With a Ball
- (tags: drone video )
- Goodbye iPod, and Thanks for All the Tunes
- (tags: music apple )
- Is everything Johann Hari knows about depression wrong?
- (tags: depression OhForFucksSake johannhari mentalhealth psychology )
- Plans unveiled for new Northern Forest from Liverpool to Hull
- (tags: forests trees nature uk )
- Beginner's guide to longevity research
- (tags: longevity lifespan research )
- The reshuffle that wasn't: May blows it again
- (tags: politics conservatives fail )
- 7 articles that are basically free therapy
- (tags: advice life relationships )
- Ibuprofen alters human testicular physiology
- (tags: sex drugs )
- Iran Bans English in Primary Schools
- (tags: english iran )
- Jeremy Corbyn insists UK cannot remain in single market after Brexit
- (tags: UK Europe labour )
- China wants an orderly exit from Bitcoin mining
- (tags: bitcoin china )
- Tory MSPs back call for Scottish Parliament to reject UK Brexit Bill
- (tags: scotland uk europe politics )
- A 430-Year-Old World Map, Taking Up 60 Square Feet
- Link to a zoomable version: https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~303661~90074314:Composite--Tavola-1-60---Map-of-the
(tags: maps history ) - Swallowable sensors reveal mysteries of human gut health
- (tags: bodies )
- New insights into lifetime personality change
- (tags: personality age psychology )
- Women more likely to suffer winter depression and mood changes
- (tags: women depression winter sad )
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The Tories have a long history of hanging together to avoid hanging separately. They are usually able to agree to stay in power doing nothing when they are unable to agree what they want to do.
However, this time they are in the middle of a national crisis, something has to be done and they still can't agree what to do.
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Individual Tories will scheme and machinate, plot and backstab to get power for themselves up to, but almost never beyond, the point where they risk damaging the Party's electoral performance or worse, splitting the Party.
What I think is perhaps going on here is that several individual Tories have told their own Prime Minister that they are willing and able to risk the ruination of the Tory Party if they don't get their own way. That may not have happened since the Corn Laws.
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And the answer that Dan is giving, as far as I can see, is that the current situation "may not have happened since the Corn Laws" - i.e. it's so unusual that the Prime Minister wasn't able to weigh it correctly.
Which doesn't seem to be ignoring your question, to me. What am I missing?
*Interpreting that as a question, that is.
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So the basic question, as I explained it before, is, and I quote, "I don't need to know why things are as they are so much as why they're different than they were on previous occasions when they've been as they are."
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It is not matched to our best interests, is probably beyond our capabilities, is not under our control and is not well supported domestically.
For most of the last 200-250 years the following have mostly been true:
The British Government has had good control over the British state.
The British state has had good control over the territory of Britain and significant influence over the political discourse in the territory of Britain.
Britain has been either an obviously assending power or a zenith imperial power (or within living memory of that).
So the head of the British government has enjoyed freedom of unilateral movement. They could pursue policy A, or policy B or pursue no policy and if anyone got hurt they were usually poor and foreign and didn't matter.
At times when the above have been less true the Tories have either had some ideological or personal alignment, been very electorally strong or have not been in government.
They have never been in a position where they have had to risk the ruination of the British state and (worse) the ruination of the Tory Party at the same time. They've always been able to dodge the question. Often this has been because,when in difficulty they could use some of Britain's economic or military or foreign policy momentum to call a pause in their own divisions, do nothing, and remain in power. They are now up against the clock and can't take a time out.
At the moment the British state is in crisis.
Its foreign policy has collapsed. It is clearly not only a waning power but a waned power. No one has told the British people this. They expect Gloriana and Brittania to crest the wave of Victory any day now.
The government does not have good control of the state. There are successful independence movements in both Scotland and Northern Ireland. It is not clear that the British civil service can do what it is being asked to do. It is not clear that the civil service believes that what it is being asked to do is possible. Britain's domestic policy and institutions are in a poor shape.
A decade of austerity politics and poor productivity growth have left the British people disatisfied and truculent. There seems no prospect of an economic improvement to boost moral and to pay for some political compromises.
There is a real possibility that if the UK mismanages Brexit it could end up with food riots, a civil war in Ireland, Scotland leaving the Union and then another one or two decades of real economic pain. For which the Tories will be blamed.
The Tories are electorally weak and probably weakening.
They are more than averagely divided on issues other than Brexit.
May, has almost no room for manouvre and everyone knows this. The only thing keeping her in place is that almost everyone also knows that if they replaced her her replacement would have less room for manouvre.
Hunt (and others) has demurred on a move from a job he wants. Ordinarily the PM would banish (eg) Hunt to the backbenchs. He might challenge for the leadership. He might win or lose. The Tories might be electorally disadvantaged by this squabble but nothing really bad would permanently happen.
At the moment it is probably the case that May is the only candidate for PM who is acceptable to all of the various factional groupings in the Tory Party. This is partly the case because she is the incumbent and therefore no factional group increases their power by leaving her in place.
But the the Tories are not far away from having a knife fight in a phone box, in public, with likely results that the DUP pull their support for the goverment, the Brexit talks stall catastrophically, the Labour Party win the election in 2018, and 2023 and 2028, and a third of the Tory Party join the Lib Dems.
And I think Hunt et al in complete knowledge that Britain's position is appalling bad and that, if Brexit fails, the Tories' position would be apocalytic, have quitely pointed out to May that, actually, they *will* trigger a leadership contest if they don't get what they want.
They are able to do so because Britain's foreign policy is awful. They know May will have to give them what they want because the alternative is that a Tory leadership fight triggers economic ruin for Britain and permanent electoral damage to the Tories.
Foreign policy is the root cause.