Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Friday, October 14, 2022

Chickens, Roosting

 Brexit was always a terrible idea. It was a transparently stupid idea when it was proposed. It was a transparently stupid idea to leave up to a referendum. It was a stupid idea that brought down David Cameron, Teresa May and Boris Johnson and is now going to bring down Liz Truss. Truss is a terrible person, an opportunist who lacks the policy chops of most PMs. Her and Kwarteng's ideas were laughably bad, a remix of supply side nonsense that never works, except in right wing fever dreams.

Brexit's appeal to baser emotions are exactly why populism is "bad" and why we should buffer popular whims through elected representatives. Britain has historically been really good at moderating those popular whims and so the Brexit referendum has upended that dynamic.

The thing is, Brexit or January 6th should be the end of Conservative/Republican rule for a generation, the way the Depression ended Republican rule for a generation in America.

Yet, the Conservatives will hang on for a while and Republicans seem poised to enjoy a midterm election defined by global inflation and gas prices.

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