This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Uh, anyone in the UK willing-and-able to comment on this?
From my warped, media-driven perspective across the pond, like... it looks something like this.
Boris Johnson is a frighteningly intelligent person who managed to become PM and pull off Brexit, freeing the UK from the placid bureaucratic tyranny of Brussels but also from a variety of economically beneficial arrangements with the continent
During the COVID-19 pandemic, however, Boris Johnson ultimately failed to heed Dominic Cummings, turning about-face on a number of lockdown policies which Boris did not, apparently, regard himself as bound by (channeling a lot of U.S. Democrats here)
The economy, predictably, suffers; whether this is due to COVID, Brexit, both, or neither, is a question that will help many economics professors secure tenure
Maybe there is some philandering by someone important in here somewhere? Recollection vague...
A bunch of people resign from positions in Boris' administration
Liz Truss becomes PM
Six weeks later, someone gets manhandled in the Commons over a vote?
Liz Truss resigns as PM
Maybe Boris is coming back?
It's just not clear to me, at all, how Boris managed to get himself removed in the first place; it feels like he was removed for little tiny stupid stuff after massively succeeding on all the issues that genuinely mattered to him and his supporters. He apparently should have heeded Cummings on COVID (and perhaps many other things, too) and it looks like Boris reaped the consequences without actually learning his lesson. But Truss is apparently just wildly incompetent, or maybe she's just catching the blame for what is really Boris' economy?
What's really happening, there. Help me out.
So I can speak to this, given as I know a number of the players and did indeed work for the Tories directly in a previous life. Boris is smart, and not quite the buffoon he sometimes makes himself out to be, but he isn't a 150 IQ super-genius. He was sunk by a combination of breaking the rules his government set and probably lying about it on the floor. But that on it's own wasn't enough. The Tories can be a frighteningly effective political machine but they like the Skaven are often hamstrung by their chronic back-stabbing syndrome. A slight weakness was pounced upon which if the economy had been going well, would probably have not been a huge deal. There was also the Pincher scandal but again that is really just a pretext. Boris starts getting briefed against by his own side, letters of no confidence gets lodged with the 1922 committee and at that point it becomes a matter of time.
MPs usually won't go public with no confidence until they are fairly sure that a lot of their colleagues agree, so it usually goes from 3 or 4 to much larger numbers in what seems like a blink of an eye. Those that break cover first risk trouble if they are wrong but gain political capital if they lead the charge and win.
Truss is a fairly reliable, right wing politician but nothing special, and not particularly principled in my experience, but Tory party members preferred her her to Sunak in the final vote.
Truss put forward a mini-budget which was going to cut taxes (expected for a Tory) and raise spending (not so much), creating so called "unfunded tax cuts". The markets went into freefall and the Bank of England had to step in to buy government bonds. She asked her chancellor to resign and u-turned on most of those changes but given they were her campaign promises the sacrificial Kwarteng did not appease the rest of her party. The same tipping point began and while the 1922 committee in theory can't get rid of her for a year, they could change the rules to do so if MPs agreed.
Then Suella Braverman (the Home Secretary, one of the big cabinet offices) resigns after (I am reliably informed) a screaming match with Truss. Truss, I am told wanted her to announce a liberalization of immigration rules, so that the economic benefits of increased immigration could be used by the OBR (Office of Budget Responsibility) to show Truss's approach (with her new Chancellor and old rival Jeremy Hunt) would be fiscally positive rather than negative. A political slight of hand if you will. Suella however is an immigration hawk to her bones. And refused to go along. She was forced to resign after she used personal email to send a confidential document to a colleague (which normally is a slap on the wrist kind of affair) and used her resignation letter to pointedly say that when mistakes are made the person making the mistake should resign.
In cabinet resignation letter terms, this is the equivalent of calling the PM a fucking idiot. With Truss already weakened she did the one thing you should not do. Lawyers say never ask a question in court where you do not know the answer in advance. In Parliament the equivalent is do not declare a vote a confidence motion unless you know you will win.
Labour had forced a vote to ban fracking (which they had no real chance of winning) and the Tory whips office (at the behest of Truss) declared this to be a three line whip vote. i.e. if you do not support the government you will have the whip removed and have to sit as an independent MP not a Conservative.
However, due to the previous issues there were apparently enough Tory MPs who were willing to take that risk, that just 10 minutes before the vote the decision was made that it was no longer going to be a three line whip vote. But that communication did not get through, the whips were still attempting to ensure all Tory MP's voted the government line. Whips are chosen for their ability to shout and get people in line and having one grab you and frog march you somewhere has happened before. This report is mostly a nothing burger I think, but a politically useful one for the Opposition.
Many Tory MP's abstain from the vote, including the Chief Whip and other party grandees. Truss is therefore finished. She resigns. The 1922 committee knows this looks terrible for the party so they are going to rush through a new process, hoping that MPs will agree on one single candidate (which will prevent party members having a say) but if not they will hold an unprecedented online vote for party members next week.
I don't think Boris will get the nod, he still was technically found guilty of a criminal offence but the problem the Tory party is that they don't have a good successor. Sunak is the favorite currently as he came second last time, but that still means he did not have the support of the Conservative party members. This is a problem. Hunt might have been able to swing it as he had enough influence that Truss had to bring him in as Chancellor in an effort to get his faction onside, but he has ruled himself out.
Honestly if I were advising any of the candidates, my advice right now would be, sit this one out. There is a good chance you will be out in 2-3 months either through an election or another internal issue. It is also worth noting that the Conservatives electoral success (swinging a number of working class Labour areas, as a result of Brexit/immigration) has also caused some problems. Just as Democrats have to contend with getting Joe Manchin on board, the new Conservative MPs for these areas know that their voters are not economic conservatives. One of the reasons Truss's budget got her in trouble is because those MPs are a new bloc that has to be appeased internally.
All in all a mess for the Conservative party, but one they are fairly used to.
This skips one and a half years of increasingly large rebellions from backbenchers over lockdown restrictions. This culminated in him breaking rules, responding to breaking rules by imposing new restrictions (some backbenchers regarded these rules as nothing but petty vengeance for boris being caught), and a rebellion so large that the only reason votes passed is that labour abstained. He then limped on with a powerless government for several months until a largely inconsequential scandal was used as an excuse to finally ditch him.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link