The Paucity of Political Talent in the UK - Blame the EU
Discussion
Hear me out on this one. The UK was a member of the EU and its predecessor the European Community (aka the Common Market) for 47 years, and in much of that time, particularly latterly, a significant majority of policy and legislation passed by our UK parliaments was simply a ratification of unifying principles, policy and rules agreed at EU level (there are those who will argue this was not the case, but statute proves otherwise).
This led to several generations of politicians who no longer had to have ideas and principles and who didn't have to navigate complex issues in order to win elections as they were simply the public face of a rubber stamping body exercising the will of an organisation that was doing most of the thinking for them.
This turned turned our political class into actors and entertainers rather than thinkers and doers.
Remove the safety net of the European Directive and they are now all to a man/women/insert-chosen-pronoun found wanting.
Discuss.
Tl:DR - admittedly clickbaity title, but UK's membership of the EU made our political class lazy.
This led to several generations of politicians who no longer had to have ideas and principles and who didn't have to navigate complex issues in order to win elections as they were simply the public face of a rubber stamping body exercising the will of an organisation that was doing most of the thinking for them.
This turned turned our political class into actors and entertainers rather than thinkers and doers.
Remove the safety net of the European Directive and they are now all to a man/women/insert-chosen-pronoun found wanting.
Discuss.
Tl:DR - admittedly clickbaity title, but UK's membership of the EU made our political class lazy.
CraigyMc said:
Citation needed.
The dates are a matter of history, the screeds of EU legislation (which was info-dumped into UK law as part of Brexit) are a matter of record. You can pick over the details, but the point is that supra-national government is all well and good until you take it away and the lower tiers then have to start earning their living. The late Christopher Booker made this point a long time before I did.Al Gorithum said:
Seems more likely that Brexit is the culprit as nobody with any decency/half a brain wants to be involved anymore.
I am being careful not to turn this into an argument for or against Brexit. In some way you could argue the status quo of staying in the EU might have been better, if you are happy to accept that your own country's inept politicians aren't really in charge.tangerine_sedge said:
Is this yet another thread trying to move the blame for political incompetence from the Tory party onto some other body?
Absolutely not. I am however in agreeance that the current Conservative party is truly inept, and the opposite bench is equally inept and gaining favour only because they are getting the benefit of the doubt.Tying themselves in knots over the optics of the middle-eastern conflict shows that they are still in the mindset of being actors rather than thinkers.
Edited by Evercross on Tuesday 5th March 10:39
captain_cynic said:
This. Empirical evidence suggest the opposite to the OPs postulation that the EU results in poor quality politicians.
Australia and the US has never been in the EU, yet have produced GW Bush and Trump or Abbott and Morrison (Dutton has gone right off the scale of nuttery).
The EU seems to be going the other way, more towards sanity with Macron beating Le Pen, Germany saying Nein to the AfD.
Our own terrible politicians tied their fates to Brexit, including Eurosceptic Corbyn.
At the best, you can say being in the EU had no part in it.
US/AU is a straw-man argument. The point is that we had the safety net of supra-national government and it was withdrawn, exposing the fact that our politicians had changed tack and were no longer capable of running things themselves.Australia and the US has never been in the EU, yet have produced GW Bush and Trump or Abbott and Morrison (Dutton has gone right off the scale of nuttery).
The EU seems to be going the other way, more towards sanity with Macron beating Le Pen, Germany saying Nein to the AfD.
Our own terrible politicians tied their fates to Brexit, including Eurosceptic Corbyn.
At the best, you can say being in the EU had no part in it.
US Presidential elections have for decades been popularity contests - nothing has changed there except the players.
Mrr T said:
UK politicians had absolutely power in economic policy including tax other than VAT, law and order, social policy, defence, etc,etc.
Indeed, but for how much longer? UK had autonomy over VAT too for a long time during EU membership but was on the verge of losing it. Corporation tax was also controlled if not dictated, which influences economy (and let's not get started again on the proposed EU defence force...)Again, I am not turning this into an anti EU thread as there are benefits to unified thinking and lockstep policy in a globalist world. I will make the point again though that it leads to a lazy tranche of politicians on the lower tiers who are found wanting when it falls to them to direct the ship.
Case in point - look at how inept our devolved parliaments are because they don't want to take responsibility for anything that matters, and royally screw up when they are forced to.
CivicDuties said:
For your hypothesis to hold, it would have to apply to every other EU country. Whilst there are some places in the EU run by utter political dreck, e.g Hungary and Germany, there are others where this not the case, e.g. Estonia, Lithuania, Finland.
So I think your proposition is flawed and very one-eyed in that it only looks at Britain. If you want to blame the EU for our continuing dearth of talent, you'll need much more evidence than simply pointing at the UK's politicians of today.
Once again missing the point and leaping (unnecessarily) to the defence of the EU.So I think your proposition is flawed and very one-eyed in that it only looks at Britain. If you want to blame the EU for our continuing dearth of talent, you'll need much more evidence than simply pointing at the UK's politicians of today.
There is a converse to this of course, in that certain EU members' politicians (Italy for example) are constrained when attempting to be bold and break a deadlock and do something different but come up against EU resistance. Ireland being another example.
Again though not the point. People are inherently lazy and will allow others to make their decisions for them. The UK politicians had nearly 5 decades of this and are now having to stand on their own two feet and they are all rushing around desperately trying not to.
CivicDuties said:
I'm not missing any point. You're trying to make the point: "Membership of the EU makes politicians lazy and therefore we have a dearth of political talent in the UK". If you want people to agree with that point, you have to evidence it. The only evidence you are proposing is the current dearth of political talent in the UK. That is insufficient evidence to support your hypothesis, because there are many other countries in the EU...
Indeed, but there's only one that was a member and then left. Correlation may not be the same thing as causation, but your point that there are plenty of EU members doesn't disprove my theory.What might would be if another was to leave and immediately demonstrate its native parliament to be a beacon of success. That of course could still be put down to a cultural difference between that country and the UK.
My point still stands insofar that most of the legislation that passed through the UK parliament between 1993 and 2020 was to ratify EU laws and ideas. That is a matter of record.
If someone is handing you ready-meals for 17 years and then they suddenly stop, how good a cook do you think you'd be if you've never prepared a plateful in that time?
Edited by Evercross on Tuesday 5th March 11:50
President Merkin said:
I don't see Switzerland on its arse or Norway, Iceland. Equally, you can look at Serbia, Turkey. Albania & see a different story.
When did any of those countries spend 47 years as part of a supra-national legislative body and then suddenly leave it?Please folks refrain from turning this into a pro/anti EU thread. It demonstrates a lack of basic reading ability and critical thought if you think for a minute that this is what this is.
2xChevrons said:
I'm not sure about Evercross's hypothesis that the EU is responsible for our dearth of political talent because our governance was 'outsourced' to Brussels.
That is kind of my point, but it is irrelevant that the outsourcing was to Brussels. More that it was outsourced at all. I've given another example of how it leads to a paucity of political talent that does not involve the EU ie. our devolved administrations within the UK.My objective point is that too many layers of government when in place for too long lead to inept policy, especially when the layers are deliberately maintaining a pretence that they are in charge but are exposed when the layers are stripped away and they suddenly have to be in charge. The recent Covid enquiries exposed a lot of the smoke-and-mirrors that was going on with leaders feigning competence while just dressing up someone else's ideas as their own (see Sturgeon as a classic example).
Edited by Evercross on Tuesday 5th March 12:34
The only politician I can think of in the last 30 years who had to step up to deal with a problem that wasn't his doing and who didn't have a playbook to follow or a crowd to mimic and hide within, or a bigger organisation to blame while doing nothing was Alistair Darling. The 2008 financial crisis hit and he took bold steps to shield the UK from the worst of it. He went against the herd mentality.
I can't think of a single person in the current crop across the entire political spectrum who would do the same today. Politics is now just a sales-pitch for someone else's ideas, until of course those ideas dry up.
I'll say again - why obsess about Israel and Gaza? Because it avoids talking about local policy because no-one has a clue what to do. For too long local policy and the money to enact it was handed down (why do you think local councils liked sticking EU flags on everything). It doesn't matter who was handing down, just that it was.
The consequence is an entire political class that is unfit for purpose because its purpose changed overnight and it wasn't prepared to step up.
Everyone is now waiting for a change of government, but what are we expecting? The opposition's tactic for victory is to almost literally sit on its hands, commit to nothing and try to say as little as possible about anything.
I can't think of a single person in the current crop across the entire political spectrum who would do the same today. Politics is now just a sales-pitch for someone else's ideas, until of course those ideas dry up.
I'll say again - why obsess about Israel and Gaza? Because it avoids talking about local policy because no-one has a clue what to do. For too long local policy and the money to enact it was handed down (why do you think local councils liked sticking EU flags on everything). It doesn't matter who was handing down, just that it was.
The consequence is an entire political class that is unfit for purpose because its purpose changed overnight and it wasn't prepared to step up.
Everyone is now waiting for a change of government, but what are we expecting? The opposition's tactic for victory is to almost literally sit on its hands, commit to nothing and try to say as little as possible about anything.
Edited by Evercross on Tuesday 5th March 13:44
CivicDuties said:
If this is indeed the case, then the only rational conclusion to draw would be that the political talent running the EU was superior to that in the UK, and it would therefore be inadvisable to leave the EU.
False logic.It could equally be argued (which was my original point) that UK political talent was once equal or even superior to the supra-national government entity, but the talent waned when it was felt there was no need to have it there as what was incoming policy was 'good enough' (plus easier to scapegoat).
The greater point is that the danger of outsourcing any skill is that it will eventually be lost to your own workforce.
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