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Marios Richards @mariosrichards.bsky.social · 8h

Oh yeah - and just look at the CON-REF balance

England 28:18 -> 46% ~3:2
Wales 33:8 -> 41% ~3:1

Conservatives ... just really weak in Wales. Kind of as you'd expect - they've not bothered with the place for a century, they've relied on having no competition for 30-40% of Welsh votes.

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Marios Richards @mariosrichards.bsky.social · 8h

Also more parties in the 'lib-left' bloc so more people legitimately saying "why would I have an opinion of which of these parties it will make sense to vote for in my constituency until closer to the GE" and being invisible as DK choosers at the moment.

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Marios Richards @mariosrichards.bsky.social · 8h

Wonkrot.

Marios Richards @mariosrichards.bsky.social · 9h

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Marios Richards @mariosrichards.bsky.social · 13h

See also "Why are people getting on their bike to get jobs? They make an awful racket and I don't care for it! Yours, the 72 year old head of the local Conservative Association".

Marios Richards @mariosrichards.bsky.social · 13h

Most of the UK discourse is "why aren't people/companies gambling on investing in sectors that the German government actively - and expensively - commits to but the UK government does not? Is ... not enough esteem?".

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Marios Richards @mariosrichards.bsky.social · 13h

It's mostly people focusing on the wrong end.

It's choices *you make about your labour market* that determine what skills and qualifications are worth getting.

Germany has a strong *vocational qualifications sector* **because those jobs have strongly protected sectors in the labour market**.

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Marios Richards @mariosrichards.bsky.social · 14h

Reminds me of the appeals to Ukraine to Be Pragmatic & Avoid Deaths by surrendering and getting invaded.

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Marios Richards @mariosrichards.bsky.social · 14h

I think the *opposite* of populism is an active conviction that there is *no UnPeople* - that even the people you actively loathe are legitimate citizens who need to be negotiated with - and a high bar to perceiving conspiracy/distrusting institutions.

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Marios Richards @mariosrichards.bsky.social · 14h

Tldr; I think "populists" are also frequently "elitists" - the conviction that there's a shadowy cabal of communists and socialists and jews and blacks consipiring to Greatly Replace the true volk is totally consistent with a conviction that a small enlightened high-IQ group should lead.

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Marios Richards @mariosrichards.bsky.social · 14h

But even I'm not super comfortable with the idea that these are sort of the same thing (despite the observation that (i) can in a number of cases be a gateway drug for (ii)).

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Marios Richards @mariosrichards.bsky.social · 14h

(i) concentration of monetary power
(ii) inferior blood/culture

I'm an inveterate fence-sitter largely unmoved by emotional appeals based on economics, reflexively opposed to anything conspiratorial (can't even rewatch the X-files any more!) ...

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Marios Richards @mariosrichards.bsky.social · 14h

Part of the problem with the term itself is that you notionally have "left-populism" and "right-populism" (really authoritarian, not 'economic right'!) where you're nominally taking a neutral position between claims that there's an UnPeople with illegitimate power based on ...

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Marios Richards @mariosrichards.bsky.social · 14h

The difference is that "populists" focus on a threatening UnPeople within the state who may or not have the vote but certainly aren't legitimate.

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Marios Richards @mariosrichards.bsky.social · 14h

I think it's clearer to say that populism is about the *UnPeople*.

All 'non-populist' national parties in a democracy have a positive sentiment about the legitimacy of the people in the state (even the ones whose votes they probably don't seek).

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Marios Richards @mariosrichards.bsky.social · 14h

Really depends how it shakes out - whether it does anything at all / whether it replaces or complements.

If it leads to mass redundancies among nurses and doctors, fair to say they won't like it. If it makes the job less overstretched and miserable, it'll be popular.

Marios Richards @mariosrichards.bsky.social · 14h

Tldr; It's not about the policy, it's about nutso claims they made.

If you make nutso claims - even about something perfectly harmless - people won't give you permission - because they're going to ask you to explain that behaviour and you won't be able to.

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Marios Richards @mariosrichards.bsky.social · 14h

... but instead an idea that gets floated as a sop to anti-immigrant sentiment.

So you get a couple of years of "ID cards would absolutely punish unpopular minorities" before anyone starts to seriously think about the process of actual serious legislation/getting it through parliament.

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Marios Richards @mariosrichards.bsky.social · 14h

And it's not anyone else's fault for being unreasonable or oversensitive.

The consistent problem is that ID cards get brought up in discourse not as a serious policy the govt would like to implement to make life more convenient for Britons (altho it would!) ...

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Marios Richards @mariosrichards.bsky.social · 14h

But government isn't just "a think tank and a polling firm rolled into one".

You can, in fact, murder a policy - which is supported by the public/policy experts in the abstract - by framing it in a profoundly stupid way.

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Marios Richards @mariosrichards.bsky.social · 14h

That is more or less what happened last time Labour tried to launch ID cards and what is happening this time.

The *policy* is fine - it comes in with broad public support and you can point at ~30 nearby countries who have implemented something similar.

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Marios Richards @mariosrichards.bsky.social · 14h

If a government official went on the air saying that the new rubella jab would make children 10% more sexy ...

... predictable opposition would not actually be about the rubella jab/whether or not other countries managed it just fine, but about the presentation.

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Marios Richards @mariosrichards.bsky.social · 15h

Probably - it was a really big, long-term transition - some of which was happening well before the internet.

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Marios Richards @mariosrichards.bsky.social · 15h

As I said, you don't know anything about the subject and don't appear to be aware of your deficits, so I'm just going to tune you out as noise.

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Marios Richards @mariosrichards.bsky.social · 15h

It also lets you get a measure of party position from the direction the plane is pointing (where would "max like<Party> be/pointing" if - for visualisation convenience - you let it extend outside the plot) as well as valence (what does the plane imply how people at 0,0 like the party?).