From Newsgroup: rec.arts.tv
On 2026-09-29 7:54 p.m., BTR1701 wrote:
On Sep 29, 2026 at 3:14:58 PM PDT, "Rhino" <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:
The British political parties - at least the major ones - have annual
conferences where they come up with new ideas for policies. PM Burnham
has used this opportunity to announce policies to nationalize even more
of the British economy. He's even announced a new policy that will
effectively expropriate property that's been vacant for longer than 6
months.
So if you own some quiet pastureland out in the countryside, the government can just come take it from you because it's vacant?
Why do they still call him prime minister? Shouldn't he be Chairman Burnham at
this point? Or maybe Comrade Burnham?
The Tories had 14 consecutive years in office from 2010 to 2024 and
proved so ineffectual in many ways, especially with regards to
immigration, that the voters overlooked the fact that they accomplished
BREXIT and gave Labour a huge majority. The pundits called it a
"loveless landslide": it wasn't that Labour was popular but the Tories
were so UNPOPULAR that the other parties benefited. The UK is still first-past-the-post and has several alternate parties so the opposition
to the Tories was split among several parties so in a great many cases,
the opposition party with the most votes was Labour. Labour only got 33%
of the total, a historic low for the winning party, but they got the
second biggest majority in history and therefore got the most seats.
Labour has over 400 seats out of 650 so all the opposition parties
combined can't stop them from anything.
Starmer faced all sorts of difficulties during his administration,
including many cosmic flipflops, but most of them happened because he
wasn't radical enough for his MPs. They'd propose something, he'd try to
enact it but the backlash was so fierce that he had to abandon it
leading to flipflop after flipflop. Finally, they chased him out and
replaced him with Burnham who is farther left and therefore more popular within the party. (At least for now.)
The whole system could be described as an elected autocracy: whenever an election gives a majority of seats to one party, it can pretty much do
what it likes until the next election. Labour is taking advantage of
that right now. Your country and mine are variations on the same theme.
Canada works just like the UK but America isn't dissimilar. If the same
party controls the White House, the Senate and the House, the president
can do pretty much what he wants since you have a (temporary)
authoritarian regime (although subject to pressures from the opposition
party and the media!); if different parties control different parts,
then it gets a lot trickier for a president to have his way.
It all comes down to elections; you can't really blame the party leaders
for taking advantage of the system to accomplish they're agenda if they
get enough votes. Burnham is just taking advantage of his majority, just
like Carney and Trump are.
--
Rhino
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