Britons rejected a Labour Party Manifesto that is pretty similar to what Democrats here in the U.S. promise voters, e.g.,
Britain’s route to prosperity and higher living standards is through more secure and better paid jobs. But Conservative policies are causing whole sectors of the economy to be dragged into a race to the bottom on wages and skills. The Government has weakened employment rights and promoted a hire-and-fire culture. Labour believes our economy can only succeed in a race to the top – competing in the world with better work, better pay and better skills. Too many people do a hard day’s work but remain dependent on benefits. We will raise the National Minimum Wage to more than £8 an hour by October 2019, bringing it closer to average earnings. We will give local authorities a role in strengthening enforcement against those paying less than the legal amount. … Labour will ban exploitative zero-hours contracts. Those who work regular hours for more than 12 weeks will have a right to a regular contract. We will abolish the loophole that allows firms to undercut permanent staff by using agency workers on lower pay.
We will introduce tougher penalties for those abusing the tax system, end unfair tax breaks used by hedge funds and others, and bear down on disguised employment.
In other words, the rich will be taxed, the working class will earn more without having to develop any new skills, and the government will decide what are fair wages, at least for people towards the bottom of the wage distribution.
Should the Conservative victory in the UK lead to skepticism about my prediction that Republicans cannot possibly win the 2016 Presidential election? I don’t think so. The U.S. tends to lag Britain politically and economically by at least a few decades. Britons endured many decades of economic stagnation (chronicled and explained by Mancur Olson) and watched the defeated Germans and the invaded French overtake them economically before questioning the idea that government was going to solve all of their problems. Americans, on the other hand, still have a strong prejudice in favor of drama, expecting growth, and can’t accept that boring stagnation while interest groups fight over the scraps (Mancur Olson-style) is a real possibility.
A voter who expects growth as a birthright isn’t going to listen to Republicans talking about how taxes and regulation need to be reduced to encourage economic growth.
[Separately, a Web site whose initial programming friends and I were involved with (back in the 1990s) is supporting the election news. Guidestar.org made IRS Form 990s (tax returns of non-profit organizations) readily available. Here’s an analysis of the Clinton Foundation’s spending that links to the 990s on Guidestar.]
There isn’t really fondness for conservatives, unless “conservative”
now means “social democrat”. Perhaps it does. The British
electorate, like its US counterpart, has no particular principles.
The English are happy enough, for example, with Government telling
employers on what terms they may hire people. The Scots who recently
voted against independence now vote SNP so they can keep taking
English money while embracing their victimhood.
It was fear of Labour making an even bigger mess than usual of the
economy that gave the Conservatives their win. The fear will fade
with time and then Labour will come back.
Only about 30% of voters voted for the Conservatives, and a further 10% for UKIP which is analogous to.the Pat Buchanan wing of the Republican Party. U.S. support for the Republicans is probably higher than that.
The US party system simply doesn’t match the party systems elsewhere, though for some reason some educated US Republicans have a fondness for thinking that they are akin to UK Tories (who demographically, culturally, and in terms of stated policies are actually closer to US Democrats).
Why would the election results of the UK be predictive of any other country’s elections at all? It is in the fairly unique position that it is wedged between two economic power blocs, currently faces issues with respect to secession (something the US is unlikely to face even in the next three decades), and has an electoral system that is most charitably described as ‘very traditional’.
Furthermore, it is an increasingly small country in a world dominated by far larger political entities, and its economic opportunities and challenges are different from those of larger ones.
The interesting thing is as hard as it is to get a Republican President, it is just as hard to get a Democrat Senate anymore because of all the small rural states voter’s running in exactly the opposite direction as the large populous state’s voters. If the next president is a Democrat, she or he is going to have to deal with a Senate that gives him or her bills with Republicans spending priorities for the next eight years. Fun.
@michiel:
UK + former colonies US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand move in parallel culturally, so I would not question a major shift in one country from affecting other countries, or rather being a visualization of a cultural change that has already occurred. Of course, something weird among the Kiwis has much less weight than something weird among the Yanks.
I might remind you that the last election was a rout of epic proportions for the Democrats. You could look no further than your own Commonwealth of Mass. who elected a dare I say it Republican as a governor. But, if your vision extends down the east coast, Maryland did the same thing?? Now I will concede that 2010 was also a rout although of somewhat smaller magnitude yet King Obama got his voters out and Prince Romney did not. But as they say, that is what makes a horse race.
@Viking: To be honest, that statement suggests unfamiliarity with the politics of the rest of the world more than deep insight into anglophone cultural exchange. The UK, even though most Britons might bristle at the notion, is a social democracy very similar to those found on the European continent; you could even argue that the Beveridge report was one of the most influential models for European social democracy.
Its politics are dominated by Labour and Conservative parties, just like, say, Germany or France. Recently that landscape has been disturbed by a populist, anti-European, anti-immigrationist party. Exactly parallelling many European countries like Denmark, France, Belgium, etc. Ironically, the rise of UKIP is a very ‘European’ phenomenon.
But I’m not arguing that the UK is “European” more than it is “Anglophone”. I’m just using the above things as examples to illustrate that the UK is subject to influences that the US isn’t, and vice versa.
The UK is its own thing. Why would the influence of a political shift in the UK on the US be more interesting than, say, the effect of a political shift in Mexico, a more populous country that shares an extensive border with the US?
Folks: I didn’t mean to suggesting that a vote in England would actually influence a vote anywhere else. My point was that one might be tempted to infer from English behavior what Americans are likely to do. My theory about the U.S. is that in many respects it is England with a roughly 30-year lag. The correlated behavior, if any, would be due to common culture, political systems, and circumstances. It wouldn’t be due to Americans saying “We should do what Brits did 30 years ago.”
There is simply no correlation with who wins parliamentary majorities between the UK, Canada, and Australia, let alone between any of these countries and the US, which has a completely different system.
Comment #1 echoes everything I’ve heard about that election. It had nothing to do with a rightward swing.
To buttress Phil’s point about the GOP not having a chance, I would note that there has been (as I recall) about a 26% increase in children born without a father in the home since 2002. Those kids will be more dependent upon the state, and the offers coming from a state under Democrat control will always be more plentiful than the offers coming from a state under Republican control (although the GOP is doing all it can to catch up).