The below felt rather germane to recent ‘debates’…
In truth, the evidence suggests neither left nor right populists tend to fare well when faced with real-world challenges (though of course each charismatic individual claims to offer something unique).
A recent paper in the American Economic Review analysed the performance of 51 populist presidents and prime ministers, from 1900 to 2020. It found that on average, after 15 years, gross domestic product per head tends to be 10% lower in countries run by populist leaders than in similar economies with more mainstream regimes.
“Economic disintegration, decreasing macroeconomic stability and the erosion of institutions typically go hand in hand with populist rule,” argue the paper’s authors, Manuel Funke, Moritz Schularick and Christoph Trebesch.
Another intriguing finding of the research, though, is that despite their economic costs, these leaders tend to be good at holding on to power, lasting on average eight years, compared with four for their more moderate equivalents.
In other words, it is not clear that even when their plans crash, populists immediately pay the price at the ballot box. Like the Brexiters’ promise to “take back control”, their appeal reaches beyond mundane economics.
Essentially, contracts were signed in 2019 that offered a handful of private contractors money to house asylum seekers in hotels. This increased the costs from £4.5 billion to £15.3 billion. The contractors are the usual suspects (G4S, Serco etc).
It sounds like there is a break clause in the contract that can be triggered next year. The whole thing is a mess, but you have to wonder at the backhanders that must have gone on here, because clearly they have been massively overpaying for everything right down the supply chain.
What really bugs me, is its clear that the last government were a bunch of leaches siphoning cash from the state wherever possible. The corruption is off the scale, yet only Michelle Mone has been “caught” for want of a better word.
I know politics is dirty as hell, and i’m not naive enough to think that it stopped with the last government, or didnt occur previously, but this has seriously got to stop and politicians held accountable.
The poison pill contract has been used by various governments. I think the scale has increased since the UK has left the EU, because they aren’t covered by the old public tendering rules. Always be suspicious when politicians refer to “removing red tape”.
Stupid bitch, but I am being too kind really. The idea that social classes even matters in a defensive war (well, they matter internally, but certainly not what she thinks of them), where unity and cohesion is the only thing that really matters, is beyond daft.
If money is not pumped into the armaments industry, fascism wins. The logic ought to be simple, except for the braindead likes of this grotesquely stupid woman. She, and others like her, are literally friends of imperialism and fascism due to their extreme shortage of intellect and complete inabillity to understand the world and how geopolitics works.
It shouldn’t matter the slightest if Zelensky was working class hero or not. Who the hell even thinks like that. What sort of complete short circuit in your brain must happen for you to even considering pushing this narrative…
Starmer is selling Erdogan 20 Eurofighters, one day after the latter brought up espionage charges against his main political rival, who has been already incarcerated for a year. Germany is also hell bent on including Turkey in the SAFE programme.
It’s unbelievable, they have learned absolutely nothing from what happened with Putin.
Disturbing in many ways, including the fact that the Tory vote share hasnt shrunk that much recently, yet the Reform vote has exploded. The country has shifted significantly to the right.
Counter - trumpism was evident in the UK before it was in the US. Trump 2016 could be far better explained with the arguments I got from the Pro Brexit people in my life than anything I saw Americans experts propose.
Generalized dissatisfaction. A lack of faith that a vote for the people who are supposed look out for you will do anything positive for you. A sense that the only way to make “them” understand how badly they’ve let you down is to drop a bomb on it.
As @Limiescouse says that has pretty much been there well before now. The articles @RedWhippet posted a couple of weeks ago are worth reading as is Rob Ford’s pieces on teform’s local election victories.
Corbyn’s party is probably the biggest threat under a FPTP system. The SNP and Plaid have all their votes concentrated regionally, so they will do well in Anglesey or Aberdeen, but won’t affect the vote in Bristol or Birmingham.
The odd thing is that the biggest threat to the remaining Conservative vote is probably now the Lib Dems.
There is a fairly in-depth analysis that was done on the Scottish electorate in March this year. It regards Reform as a subset of the anti-independence vote, and given that the Conservatives are the main centre-right Unionist party it’s unlikely that they would ever vote for them:
I should point out that I have not lived in Scotland for 6 years now. I still have my vote there, but I am a bit out of touch with the general feeling on the street.
I get the impression that Reform are rather anti-Welsh, so I don’t think many that support them would ever vote for Plaid Cymru.
I suspect the Greens are doing this now. I also suspect that the Plaid vote will increase to more parts of Wales. It could be considered a protest vote, or tactical anti Reform vote.
In my experience that is very unlikely, in Wales at least. The main attack line is that Plaid is the same as Labour. Farmers could be the exception in some places though. There could be a few from that “field”. Pun intended
Possibly. I think tactical voting will be a big thing at the next election. There will be a core support, especially for Reform I feel. Outside that, people may jump to whatever party offers the best opposition.
