Hacker News Reader

Comment by chrisseaton | Hacker News Reader

> they're doing in a way that feels somehow good-hearted and doesn't lay bare the naked resentment and hatred that seems to be all we have left in the USA

It's nice that it looks this way, but the different parties and their supporters in the UK absolutely hate each other. Front-bench party members now routinely and openly using words like 'scum' and 'detest' to talk about their colleagues on the other side. I don't think US politics is quite that openly aggressive and hostile.

In the past few years we've had politicians on both sides killed in politically motivated attacks. I think that's a worse tally than the US as well.

View on HN

I would say that the hate between parties is not nearly as strong as the hate within parties, often veiled entirely or hidden in extremely polite language. After all, the other party is opposition, your own party is competition.

I remember Jo Cox, who was the conservative who got killed?

The death of Jo Cox wasn't a party political matter, it was a US-style radicalized loner.

Sir David Amess, Conservative MP for Southend-on-Sea. Murdered almost exactly a year ago.

For the record, she was a Labour MP, not conservative.

I misread that as well - it's asking a question rather than making a statement.

> I don't think US politics is quite that openly aggressive and hostile.

I mean, let us know when a mob storms Parliament to prevent the confirmation of the next PM.

A lot of it is theatre. For example keir starmer congratulating boris on the birth of his child, i think, and sounding sincere. Then pretty much in the same breath, he lashes out at him on some policy or scandal. English people banter a lot more then americans, so its not taken personally.

I mean, given you example I think Keir congratulating Boris was the actual piece of theatre.

It came across well, but should do as opportunities to congratulate Boris do come up regularly.

He is a top shagger.

Many of the politicians insulting each other in the chamber are on quite good terms outside of it. There are exceptions, of course, and the conduct of certain MPs can be troublesome - but it is broadly good natured. If you watch closely during PMQs, you can even see the adversarial act breaking from time to time when one of them gets in a good joke about the other.

Politicians being killed is clearly unacceptable and I'm pretty sure the vast majority of even very politically partisan people in this country would strongly condemn any kind of violence. However, we don't routinely have much security for MPs when they are at their constituency office, so it only takes one nutter to do something. If anything, it's sadly surprising that it doesn't happen more often.

> Many of the politicians insulting each other in the chamber are on quite good terms outside of it.

At least up until recently, this was true in the US too. On camera, in front of a microphone, and they say the crappiest things about one another. Then a few minutes later they're shaking hands, slapping backs, and laughing about the whole thing. Hasn't even been that long since the President schmoozed with politicians from both parties as he made his way to the podium for the State of the Union. Now it's "YOU LIE!"

A cursory glance at the various Wikipedia lists of politicians assassinated in either country rebuts your last point.

US political discourse is vastly more hostile than you give it credit for, as well. Veiled death threats (shooting pictures of opponents, burning in effigy, etc.) are increasingly common, particularly on the conservative side.

> A cursory glance at the various Wikipedia lists of politicians assassinated in either country rebuts your last point.

Huh?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Congress...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_MPs_killed_in_...

UK 3 in last 30 years, US 2. For a US population of 40x larger, and easier access to guns.

> 40x larger

What.

Sorry thinking of land mass - population of 5x larger.

But the absolute number is larger, even ignoring the population size, so not sure what the person I was replying to means.

Looking from the outside, I think US political discourse IS far more hostile.

Britain won't accept things like Politicians being harassed, or one politician calling for other politicians to be harassed (and that's before we even get to anything Trump related).

And the amount of references I see to "civil war" when wandering across anything relating to US politics (i.e. not zero) is disturbing.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assassinated_America...

Nine in the last thirty years, not including the ambassador killed overseas.

I compared Parliament against Congress as that seemed comparing apples-to-apples.

But nine is still less than the UK, adjusting for population! And that's before access to guns!

> In the past few years we've had politicians on both sides killed in politically motivated attacks. I think that's a worse tally than the US as well. (emphasis added)

Worse per capita, for an apples-to-apples group of high-profile politicians.

That's got to be a cause for alarm? In a society with less access to weapons?

In your reckoning, you ignore the difference in access to politicians. UK MPs have weekly 'surgeries' where any constituent discuss issues one on one. It's somewhat harder to meet a representative one on one in the States.

The UK gets it right. Half again as many representatives as the US, while having a fifth of the population. So each MP has about 100K citizens they represent, versus each representative in the US that has more like 750K.

Quite. Jo Cox, David Amess and Andrew Pennington (a local councillor defending MP Nigel Jones) were all murdered at surgeries. Stephen Timms also survived an attempted murder by stabbing.

> Front-bench party members now routinely and openly using words like 'scum' and 'detest' to talk about their colleagues on the other side.

No, only one front-bench political party routinely refers to the other as "scum". Stop pretending that both sides do it.

There was an attempted mass shooting at the Republican practice for the Congressional baseball game back in 2017 [0] that was a politically motivated domestic terrorist attack (per the FBI's report on the incident in 2021). If Steve Scalise (the house GOP whip who was shot that day) hadn't been there with his security detail, a couple dozen Republicans would have likely died that day including Senator Rand Paul and future Florida governor (and the current leading 2024 presidential candidate not named Trump or Biden) Ron DeSantis.

We've had 4 presidents assassinated in our history (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy) and there were attempts on the lives of at least 3 more while they were president or president-elect (Jackson, FDR, Reagan). There have also been a significant number of attempts on the life of presidential candidates (Huey Long and RFK were assassinated, George Wallace was shot and paralyzed) We also don't know where Flight 93 would have gone on 9/11 if the heroes on board hadn't charged the cockpit and crashed the plane in a Pennsylvania field instead of somewhere in DC. The reason why we haven't had many politicians assassinated lately is largely good luck but also because we now have Secret Service protection for all major presidential candidates.

Words like "scum" and "detest" are also not that different from the way people speak about political opponents here. Every presidential election for at least the past 20 years has involved people throwing words like "socialist", "communist", "fascist" and "theocrat" around to describe the other party's presidential candidate even when those candidates were centrists. There's always alarmist insinuations that we're going to turn into the USSR or Nazi Germany if the wrong political party wins the next election. In reality, the US will be largely the same but always getting slightly worse no matter which party wins the election. The difference between the donkeys and the elephants is that one of them makes things worse faster than the other (but people don't agree which is the lesser evil). I imagine Labour and Tory are probably the same way in the UK (although Truss did seem to be especially terrible at her job even compared to her predecessors).

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_baseball_shoot...

Nicola Sturgeon said that she detests the Tories. her own party (the Scottish National Party, whose central goal is Scottish independence) distanced themselves from those comments. Labour are not saying things like this. the Lib Dems are not saying things like this. and the Tories themselves aren’t saying things like this either

this is the exception not the rule, and as evidence of this, it’s something that’s been turned over and over in the (especially right-wing) media for weeks now

the two MPs killed were killed by Islamic and right-wing extremists, respectively. this has no bearing on how the main parties treat each other

> Labour are not saying things like this.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/sep/26/angela-rayn...

the first paragraph of that article:

>the Labour leader distanced himself from her words

you’ve cherrypicked two examples that were disregarded by the parties as a whole, then discussed ad nauseam in the media. this is not evidence of anything

I don't understand this response - it's ok for people in one party to say whatever they want and it doesn't count because someone else 'distances' themselves? It was still said - the damage is still done to the level of civility and more hatred was thrown into the fire.

you’re cherrypicking right-wing talking points to support an argument that doesn’t have much evidence

> you’re cherrypicking right-wing talking points

In your first comment you said you thought the right-wing party weren't talking like this!

No I think the problem is just as bad across all parties - hence those recent examples from a couple of moderate left-wing party members as well.

That's the worst of it - the civility and willingness to work together is down across the board so I can't see a change of government improving it either.

each of the examples you’ve given were and currently are being endlessly rerun and reran in the media. condemned by allies and discussed ad nauseum. this is hardly routine, normalised behaviour you can point to and say “this is representative of the whole”

> Tories themselves aren’t saying things like this either

Maybe not, but pretending they are better while ignoring the homophobia, racism, sexism and offensive class warfare from the like of Boris Johnson seems disingenuous.

It's not disingenuous it's just not related to those issues. You can talk about the government having a sense of decorum without addressing policy issues.

The fact is that Johnson was ousted by his own party, as was Truss. That would never happen in the US because it's party before everything.

who is pretending they're better? me?

That bit of my comment is not accurate - sorry.

I was trying to make the point that The Conservative Party had members making some pretty average comments on a regular basis.

Let's be clear here: there was a left-winger killed for trying to make the country a better place, and a right-winger killed by an ISIS sympathiser (literally no reason to think this MP was targeted for his party)

> Let's be clear here

No, let's not try to dog-whistle one as acceptable and the other as not. That's exactly the thing I'm talking about.

It does, but the comment made it sound as if multiple MPs on different sides were targeted because of their political affiliations. In reality, only one was. I just felt that needed to be clarified.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com