Here's hoping le pen dies in random car crash( the French election thread) and general European ting

[Captain Scumbag]

UK employment law should be made solely by UK-based politicians who have been elected to the national legislature. It shouldn’t have to comply with directives made by a foreign-based bureaucracy populated by people who, however well meaning, are beyond democratic control. This really isn’t a radical idea. It’s a basic principle of representative democracy.

If Mrs May and Team Evil’s post-Brexit reforms include abolishing maternity leave, bringing back the workhouse and reducing the minimum wage to 1p per hour (or whatever else people imagine), then the obvious solution will be to vote them out and replace them with another government, preferably one with a kinder disposition towards ordinary workers. I’m not being glib. That is literally how representative democracy is supposed to work.

People who want the UK to have better employment laws (or merely avoid a regression) should perhaps participate in the democratic process and campaign to make them a reality – not just fob the responsibility off onto the unelected technocrats the European Commission. I know the latter approach is easier – politics is always easier when you can sidestep any meaningful interaction with the unwashed masses – but it’s an incredibly risky way to ‘do’ politics unless you have unequivocal faith in the EU Commission’s ability to make good decisions. I sure as shit don’t, and lefty types probably have more reasons to be distrustful than I do.*

I know this idea is hard to appreciate when the present UK government largely consists of free market ideologues, but inherent within the idea of Brexit is the possibility of more progressive policy across a whole raft of areas. Contrary to some of the nonsense spewed out on the right, the EU Commission is not full of unreconstructed Marxist loons. It is routinely and very effectively lobbied by corporations (not least due to its remoteness and the relative lack of media oversight) and it usually ends up reinforcing the neoliberal consensus rather than challenging it. Removing our national politics from the commission’s purview could actually be very advantagous for the left.

*See here for a decent piece explaining why.

 

[Oeuf]

I'd be a lot more sympathetic to this argument if we didn't have an enormous great democratic deficit in the UK. As things stand our political system is neither very representative nor very democratic. If it was I shouldn't have to worry about the Conservative Party getting a whopping great majority because it wouldn't even be possible. Methinks those in glass British houses shouldn't throw stones at our European neighbours.

 

[JaseTheVillain]

I'd be a lot more sympathetic to this argument if we didn't have an enormous great democratic deficit in the UK. As things stand our political system is neither very representative nor very democratic. If it was I shouldn't have to worry about the Conservative Party getting a whopping great majority because it wouldn't even be possible. Methinks those in glass British houses shouldn't throw stones at our European neighbours.

Proportional Representation is the way to go, but there's no chance of that due to said worries/jubilation (dependent upon your viewpoint) about the Tories getting a whopping great majority.

 

[Benji]

I know this idea is hard to appreciate when the present UK government largely consists of free market ideologues, but inherent within the idea of Brexit is the possibility of more progressive policy across a whole raft of areas. Contrary to some of the nonsense spewed out on the right, the EU Commission is not full of unreconstructed Marxist loons. It is routinely and very effectively lobbied by corporations (not least due to its remoteness and the relative lack of media oversight) and it usually ends up reinforcing the neoliberal consensus rather than challenging it. Removing our national politics from the commission’s purview could actually be very advantagous for the left.

I would have more faith in this proposed future of yours if the Brexit campaign wasn't run on almost entirely on the basis of "too many foreigns". You may have an altogether more coherent belief about why we shouldn't be in the EU. But what happened on the day is that a lot of the people who voted with you were doing it for reactionary and spiteful reasons. I don't have any faith that anyone who voted to leave on the basis of Farage's repulsive poster of refugees will be siding with me on enough issues to alter the government.

My stand point on Brexit is that I don't know enough about global trade and economics to know what is really best for Britain. In politics (and most things), I am happy to admit that I don't know an awful lot. What I was very aware of is that one side was putting ideas into the foreground that I cannot agree with. Michael Gove claiming the people are tired of experts, Boris Johnson continuing his tradition of spouting random lies about the EU, Farage being Farage.

It is the fact that these types of people are the winners through "democracy" which makes me hopeless that Brexit can be a positive change.

 

[.V.]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39858788

 

[Captain Scumbag]

I'd be a lot more sympathetic to this argument if we didn't have an enormous great democratic deficit in the UK.

I had this argument with you (or your fruity alter-ego, at least) about a year ago in the EU thread. My main thoughts on the matter are in this post.

In short, our democracy is shit, but none of the usual domestic reforms proposed to improve it (scrapping FPTP, fire-bombing the House of Lords, etc.) would make much difference if we remained members of the EU.

Brexit isn’t a panacea – not by a long way – but without it home-based democratic reform (especially that towards making it more representative) is practically useless. Whether reform of our system will occur post-Brexit remains to be seen (as with most things, I’m less than optimistic) but making the required first step is better than not making it.

Proportional Representation is the way to go, but there's no chance of that due to said worries/jubilation (dependent upon your viewpoint) about the Tories getting a whopping great majority.

It’s a more general problem, namely that the only way a political party can be empowered to do anything about FPTP is by winning a general election via the FPTP system, in which case you’re asking politicians to do something completely counterintuitive, i.e. reform a system they’ve just benefitted from.

The Labour Party moaned a lot about FPTP during Thatcher’s heyday. It then had 13 consecutive years of majority government (1997-2010) and did fuck all about it. Why? For the reason described above – the same reason why the Tories don’t want to do anything about it now.

Most UK politicians pay lip service to the idea of representative democracy but very few care about it in a “first principles” sort of way that transcends any narrow, short-term efforts towards maintaining party-political advantage. And we shouldn’t just blame the politicians here because a similar sort of thinking is prevalent throughout our political culture. Most voters are fairly sanguine about FPTP if their side is the beneficiary.

It is the fact that these types of people are the winners through "democracy" which makes me hopeless that Brexit can be a positive change.

I think this sort of defeatism and short-termism is one of the reasons why ‘the left’ (employing the term in its broadest possible sense) in the UK is getting its arse handed to it at the moment.

The point I’m making about Brexit and the left requires people to think beyond Mrs May and imagine a post-Brexit scenario in which the government is one more to their liking. Is that really so hard? I know sulking and doom-mongering is in right now, but do people actually think the Tories are now going to rule Britain in perpetuity? If not, why be completely pessimistic?

 

[.V.]

Interesting article about cyber security, which touches on democratic capitalism.

"Here, the logic of democratic capitalism is no more: governments are not restraining the toxic activities of companies; rather, they engage in toxic activities of their own, which companies mitigate with activities that are either more or less toxic – depending on one’s views about the parasitic nature of economic activities pursued by rentiers. The second political effect of the ever-expanding surveillance apparatus is the disadvantage it creates for small companies and non-profits, not to mention individuals. Remember the early utopian vision of a digital world, where we would all be running our own mail servers and, with time, might even master our own version of the connected home?...

...Democratic capitalism is thus always democratic monopoly capitalism – and even more so in its digital version. The idea that the normal imperatives of capitalist competition would exert extra pressure on digital giants seems quaint. There’s no garage big enough to house a startup that can unseat Google, not with its trove of customer data and artificial intelligence."

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/06/cyber-insecurity-hackers-data-theft-protection

 

[.V.]

At the moment, I am unable to see anything but a Conservative government for at least the next 10 years, if the Conservatives are able to secure a majority close to 100, on the 9th June.

It will be the Conservatives who will shape post Brexit Britain, and once things are taken from us they will be harder to get back. See the reaction from the press and the Tories to the leaked Labour manifesto.