This thread exists to discuss British politics.
Political issues related to Northern Ireland and the Crown Dependencies (the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man) are also considered on-topic here if there's no more appropriate OTC thread for them.
If you're new to OTC, it's worth reading the Introduction to On-Topic Conversations
and the On-Topic Conversations debate guidelines
before posting here.
As with other OTC threads, off-topic posts may be thumped or edited by the moderators.
More specifically, read this post
for some guidance on what we don't want to see.
- There is a dedicated thread to discuss LGBTQ+ rights in the United Kingdom
. That doesn't mean it's always off-topic here, but unless something's directly linked to political events, that's probably a better thread for it.
- There's also a separate thread to talk about your favourite British Prime Ministers
.
Recent political stuff:
- The vote to see if Britain should adopt Alternative Voting has failed.
- Lib Dems lose lots of councils and councillors, whilst Labour make the majority of the gains in England.
- The Scottish National Party do really well in the elections.
A link to the BBC politics page containing relevant information.
Edited by Mrph1 on Jun 7th 2024 at 4:50:10 PM
![]()
Well, that would require people to defer to expertise which is complicated for various reasons.
A number of political decisions involve tradeoffs that are not mainly about facts, but about uncertainty and subjective estimates. Whether to prioritize police funding or healthcare funding, for example. Experts can't do this job better than politicians, but politicians have a political licence (by virtue of being elected) to make a binding decision in that regard.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanNot to get all leftist, but I'd rather defer to a bootmaker than a bootlicker.
Don't get me wrong, there's times when a politician might actually be the expert (or at least qualified), such as actual governance, but ultimately when it comes to legislation, they should be following the advice of experts in the field. Even (especially, one might say) if it's politically uncomfortable for them. It's not even just a matter of knowledge.
Someone working in healthcare knows far more than a politician, even one with a medical degree. A member of a marginalised group who isn't a politician probably has a better idea of what life is like for them even than a politician who's a member of the same group (even if they started their career at the grass routes, but then they'd hopefully know better anyway).
At most, a politician should be an arbiter when multiple experts (that is to say experts; not bigots and fringe viewpoints brought in for a false sense of balance) disagree.
TV Tropes's No. 1 bread themed lesbian. she/her, fae/faerIn other news, it looks like Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (better known by his alias Tommy Robinson) has left the country after allegedly committing assault (BBC article
).
Someone working in healthcare does not however know how important spending on his field is relative to spending on, say, police. Never mind that s/he has a conflict of interest. So there politicians have to decide again. Nor do they know which ethical stances are mainstream and which are not.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanI'm fairly certain Doctors are meant to have backgrounds in ethics. They take an oath about it and everything.
If you mean that you think experts might have a limited perspective, the same is true of politicians. A balanced group of experts is still better than a balanced group of politicians.
While a doctor might not be aware how to prioritise spending between their field and another, they will have a lot better of an idea of where the money is needed. Furthermore, accountants are another type of expert politicians should be deferring to.
Edited by Bisected8 on Jul 29th 2025 at 6:06:34 PM
TV Tropes's No. 1 bread themed lesbian. she/her, fae/faerThat's a big "while" there, and that's why you need politicians. Also the oath doesn't cover every common situation, and what gives it legitimacy beyond "we have always done it that way"?
Limited perspective isn't an issue you can fix solely by picking more experts, partly because nobody can cover all fields. Someone would have to pick the experts too. Hence you have politicians appointing commissions.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanIn that case, it looks like we're on the same page.
An expert will actually be aware of controversies and edge cases better than a politician, (doctors train constantly, for example; if a politician knows about the medical debates better than them, they probably aren't top of their field anyway) However, they would be limited in their own opinion, which is indeed offset by an outside party making sure there's a good balance of experts.
As long as politicians remember they're arbiters, and the experts collectively know better than them (whether they like it or not).
Edited by Bisected8 on Jul 29th 2025 at 7:39:32 PM
TV Tropes's No. 1 bread themed lesbian. she/her, fae/faerPoliticians do also have conflicts of interest though. And frequently don't listen to the relevant experts.
"Can have" and "have by default" are not the same thing - politicians often arbitrate on subjects they aren't involved in (many policy matters don't directly involve politicians), experts rarely do, so the COI issue is much more acute in experts. It's not uncommon for experts to disagree and that's when you call politicians. Either way, subjective tradeoffs can't be settled solely by appealing to facts; all the expert can say is what the tradeoff is, not which option is the better.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanThe problem is that expertise is not generalist, a doctor will know more on how to do a medical procedure, but they aren’t inherently an expert in people management, organisational design or even the administration of a medical system.
The NHS is actually under managed compared to other healthcare systems globally and if you look at schools, the police and even the Civil Service you hit the same problem again and again we’ve taken experts in the delivery of a public service and dumped them with people, bureaucratic and organisational management responsibilities that they don’t want, aren’t skilled in and are often overpaid for. We got rid of lots of low-paid school admin staff in the name of efficiency, so now teachers who should be teaching are stuck doing their own shit admin, police officers aren’t out investigation crime because they have to file their own paperwork because we cut the paperwork filers in the name of efficiency. This is why NHS HR is so often terrible, it’s not run by trained HR people, it’s run by medical personnel who don’t want to be in HR but are stuck there because it was the right career move.
Now this is something that many experts in organisational design have said, but because of the political aspect of “getting rid of bureaucrats so we can hire more doctors/nurses/teachers/soldiers/police” it’s very hard to undo.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranPersonally, I'd consider those bureaucrats a type of expert, for the purposes of the point I've been making. They have a specific job that they understand (hopefully) how to do.
There's a reason the administration isn't elected in the same way as MPs.
TV Tropes's No. 1 bread themed lesbian. she/her, fae/faerThat's because bureaucrats need to carry out the tasks given to them by other people, not come up with the tasks themselves. If you are a bureaucrat evaluating whether a complaint against a housing project is legitimate or frivolous, you are applying a standard politicians gave to you, you aren't supposed to invent one yourself much less apply it.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanNo, standards at that level are written by politicians, and even if not it's not the same set of experts ... never mind that sometimes a set of experts develop a standard but can't enforce it all themselves. Other times, the foremost experts have questionable ulterior motives - for example, folks using fire safety codes as a way to slip in spam for a particular company is apparently a thing in the US.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanSeptimus appears to be referring to what the US would know as "pork-barrel" or "pork", favors unrelated to the bill's ostensible purpose for special interests designed to basically buy legislative votes. Is this correct?
Edited by megarockman on Jul 29th 2025 at 6:48:00 AM
The damned queen and the relentless knight.Sorry, should have been clearer: In this case "spam" means provisions in regulations (not bills) that benefit specific companies not specific districts, and often isn't in the form of spending.
That particular issue is often bigger for experts because they are more commonly tied to companies than politicians & in many governments like the UK, the details of a budget law are up to the government so "pork barrel spending" is less an issue than in the US & provisions benefitting a company is much more questionable than one benefitting a district & there is a lot less scrutiny at the bureaucrat level.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanOf course this is all incredibly complicated, so everything here has a lot more nuance than we could possibly go into.
Honestly I think you (Septimus) may be giving politicians too much credit here. A number of those points make sense in theory, but in practice politicians are also flawed human beings that have many factors affecting their thinking, and it is not at all rare for them to make "wrong" decisions one way or another. Nor is it rare for them to have financial ties to private companies.
![]()
Similar to this, the obvious influence is often in the money. I'm reminded somewhat of the US healthcare system; as a whole, actual doctors have a lot less influence than large Insurance companies, Private Equity, etc.
This is a poll run by a group called Novara Media, and I'm not sure how reliable they are.
However, the poll in question suggests that people currently supporting Reform would be more likely to vote for Corbyn over Starmer.
Interestingly, the poll indicated that they found Corbyn more "principled" and "trustworthy" than Starmer, perhaps indicating that Starmer's attempts to suck-up to the right are having the opposite effect to what he intended.
Edited by PhoenixAct on Jul 30th 2025 at 4:18:47 AM
As political parties across Europe seem unable to discover, pandering to the right never works. So long as they control the narrative, voters will always prefer the "real thing" over an imitator, and the far right parties can always go more extreme. Labour cannot expect to compete with Reform on being nasty to immigrants, not when Farage is a hop, skip and jump away from endorsing "remigration".
"The only thing which is certain, is that something will happen".
