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Comment by teaearlgraycold | Hacker News Reader

Why is the UK government in collapse? The same reasons as the US?

I would say, generally, the people in power used to have a certain level of competence, even if they were despicable. They also had to act, outwardly at least, like they weren't deliberately shafting the common man.

Brexit changed all that. All that mattered was whether you believed in One True Brexit. Lots of heretics were hounded out. Behaviour didn't matter. You could say terrible things, as long as you were a BeLeaver.

Then Brexit was over. There was nothing left to believe in, but the cult were still in charge...

1000% correct ... I don't care if this non-substantive comment gets downvoted.

The above is basically why the UK is currently swirling down the shitter ...

different.

The US government is designed to be inefficient and requires bipartisan agreement or a majority in both chambers to do stuff.

The UK government has significantly more executive powers, far more than the president, and normally has a majority to pass things that can't be done by the excutive.

the problem is that brexit and bad party leaders has been exceedingly disruptive and killed both the conservative and labour party. This is because it ripped apart the coalitions inside both parties. Suddenly the us and them was not our party and thier party, but people within the same party.

The competent have been driven out by the populists, and then they've burnt up and been replaced by the "tim, nice but dims". (populists were boris and corbyn)

Until we actually "deal" with or defuse brexit, and actually begin to structurally reform large parts of the country (education, industrial relations, health and local government to name but a few) we are going to be stuck

Populism is a response to corrupt and incompetent establishments. There's nothing competent to drive out by the time populism rears its head. It was already long gone.

> Populism is a response to corrupt and incompetent establishments

populism is a response to discontent, nothing more, nothing less. Populists need an in. If the country thinks that the government is doing ok, or they are happy enough as they are, then populism can't spread. Populists need a cause and a scapegoat.

boris was brexit. corbyn was "enough shitting on the poor and young"

Populism is taking advantage of discontent to persuade people to act against their own best intrests.

That discontent can be caused be anything. As long as a demagogue can lie about it and use it to kill rights and laws to empower themselves.

One might argue that the electoral system (FPTP) is a common denominator in both cases. Under another system, new parties might arise to replace to stale ideas of the old (on both the left and the right). Under FPTP, that's almost impossible to achieve.

It's a common refrain that people don't engage with politics because they feel disenfranchised. Which is perhaps unsurprising, because to a large extent they are!

I think FPTP is a factor but not in the same way. The structure of the US system means that a president with a slim majority in one house can't do anything much. the UK has no such real problems.

In the UK you only have to win the commons (lower house) to run a government. the US you need both and the president.

Our country is crumbling and people are starting to realise it’s the Tory’s fault. 13 years of Tory rule, cutting services to the bone and making themselves rich at our expense is seriously taking its toll. Councils are going bankrupt, schools are falling apart, public transport is in managed decline in a lot of areas, various sectors regularly going on strike, people can’t afford their bills, mortgages sky-rocketed, inflation is high…so many things

It’s widely accepted that Labour are a government-in-waiting.

Labour has largely supported this -- one of the originators is Lorna Woods (University of Essex) who was an advisor to Blair.

The question was "why is the UK government in collapse"

People also forget it was Labour who introduced the "Tell us your password or go to prison" law.

I expected the “Labour bad too” reply but that’s a different topic (not one I wholly disagree with). But it is not Labour who have been in power the past 13 years. The subject of the topic was the Government (and by extension recent governments)

Years of institutional decline and a political class that genuinely loathes the people it rules and anything good about the country they inhabit. You can put the date at 1997, 2010 or perhaps earlier depending on your political leanings.

Maybe those in power have always felt that way, but it certainly seems more pronounced in the post-9/11 surveillance and security state.

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