Has anyone noticed that our contemporary politicians, when soliciting our support, claim that we need ‘leadership’? I have been aware of this, for a bit, but I had no explanation for it. Today I found an explanation. And, indicating the importance of seeking stimulus from the enemy, I found the explanation while reading the Guardian. This is an entirely new definition, and it might seem initially surprising, but I think it explains much.
- Leadership = spending money without restraint, hence borrowing money without restraint.
The article which prompted me to this insight was one of the hysterical pieces published by the Guardian since the election of Trump. By Paul Taylor, the piece is about how there is some sort of parallel between Trump’s victory and the collapse of the ‘traffic light’ coalition in Germany. He writes:
The breakdown of the feuding Berlin alliance will leave a political vacuum in Germany for months, just when the EU needs decisive leadership. Instead, the country faces months of introspective electioneering, followed by protracted coalition negotiations, with investment and public spending on hold.
There it is. Did you see it? We need “decisive leadership”. But “public spending” is on hold. Join the dots. Leadership = spending = borrowing.
The reason I read the article was because its subtitle referred to the ‘cult of balanced budgets’. I thought that was a remarkable bit of smearage, sneerage and steerage: as if the humble aspiration to spend no more than one earns is a ‘cult’! Ah, Taylor, you must be
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I”m not convinced that the difference between military and civil, dux and Rex, is all that clear. Military leaders command – but they do so in order to make progress of some sort. They first have to figure out what line of action is needed to deal with a threat or achieve a goal. Civil societies face threats too and somebody has to find solutions; committees rarely do this effectively. The more complex a situation the more people will look for someone to cut the Gordian knot. Powers of persuasion and charisma play a part here. All this leaves the field wide open to megalomaniacs and confidence tricksters – like Miliband. Only by recognising this and rejecting saviours who prove to be doing more harm than good (Miliband again) can those who need solutions to their problems try again to find a competent dux.
Strategic suggestion for the legions of woke: Given how easy it is to make the neolibs decry anything provided the wrong people seem to be in favour of it, why not disown one of your favorite policies for a while. Build a few coal-fires power stations and make noises about opening a new mine or so. And marvel at the speed with which so-called “conservatives” will embrace Net Zero and demand that all use of fossil fuels is halted yesterday. At this point, see the error of your ways and switch back.
“decisive leadership” indeed, but what better model than Sultan Erdogan, may Allah take years from me and give hours to our illustrious Effendi. I wonder why we never hear from our Turkish correspondent about the Hamas hideouts in Turkey, its flirting with BRICS and lots more.
Leadership in a global effort to solve global problems.
All problems no matter what are “global” requiring solutions that are “global”, requiring more power and control transferred from individual Nations to “global” bodies along with the necessary transfer of cash to fund it.
Yep. Mobsters also insist that people acquire their protection services.
Basic rule: beware of anyone trying too hard to help you or others. They’re almost certainly serving themselves, not you.
Rambling shit always arriving at the same foregone conclusion. I think I can sum that up in a single sentence:
Lefties are bad because they’re all like Hitler!
May a merciful deity one day save us from this universal non-argument of the intellectually challenged.
Human Resources, Home Office, Stonewall, Ofcom, Met Office, Biontech, NHS do not represent leadership but the total ossification of the manager-run society and these people keep crying out for leaders in the hope that this will enable them to continue to sell more ossification to the public which is supposed to pay for that, despite it certainly doesn’t benefit from it. It’s supposed to make those who voted for The Millibug feel good about his crazy windmill-plans – leading the way to a greener future! – despite he isn’t leading shit, just executing an old plan created by somebody else.
In contrast to this, Trump can be called a leader, although a bit of a will-o’-wisp type of one, who doesn’t really seem to know where he plans to be going to. In any case, it’ll take leadership to break out of the ossification.
BTW, soldiers are murderers is a (meanwhile) old slogan of… Read more »
Eugyppius summed it up perfectly in the way he illustrated how Germany will effectively have no-one at the controls as long as the parties keep suppressing the democratic will of a large swathe of the population by freezing out AfD.
None of the pathetic leftist Establishment parties can win a majority, so they are forced to make these weak and fractured coalitions, which are the antithesis of strong leadership.
Personally, I hope the EU descends (further) into total farce, and that its rudderless, wasteful, bloated wreck is finally dashed on the rocks once and for all.
“…fractured coalitions, which are the antithesis of strong leadership”. In other words, the old post WW2 political setup in West Germany is still working quite well. The last thing they wanted was another “strong leader”.
If it’s going to end badly, it will be like that. I don’t see the energy or vitality in Europe that you still get in the US to push back an overbearing state. This is an old, tired, much too comfortable continent.
I would very much prefer if the fighters against a federal government perceived to be evil (possibly a late legacy of the US civil war) would “vitally” retract their tentacles from Europe and restrict themselves to playing this silly game at home.
According to David Starkey we are due another Berlin Wall moment. Yet when Woke can’t seem to get any worse, it surprises you.
The German election system is designed such that “winning a majority” is essentially impossible. It’s always just about winning a large enough vote share to become part of the next coalition.
Very good.
I don’t want a leader.
We need stewardship, not leadership.
Perhaps when facing some terrible external and unexpected existential threat a “leader” might be slightly needed (though I have my doubts) – but all of the crises and emergencies we face are either fictitious or actively created or encouraged by “leaders”.
Stewardship (some idea of that, at least) begets onshore wind farms and other “save the planet!” schemes and Johnson deferring to the consensus of international health experts wasn’t him leading anything, rather, him being (gladly) absolved of a duty to he had so carelessly inflicted upon himself with his “Get … done!” campaigning.
Well if you delegate authority to people then they will always end up doing things that someone doesn’t like.
The people voted for Net Zero, but perhaps if the “problem” had not been invented by someone and been given a lot of publicity, the people would have known nothing about it and not given the government any power to make large changes in how our electricity is generated.
Whenever a person A does something, there’ll be a person B who doesn’t like it. That’s a trusim whose purpose I don’t really understand here.
While this seems also unrelated to what I wrote, nobody ever voted for Net Zero. This just came as mandatory part of a package deal, with both Tories and Labour “mysteriously” becoming in favour of it and thus, leaving voters no choice but to accept it.
86% of those who voted in July supported parties committed to Net Zero.
Do you have any proof for the implied assumption that they’d all have voted Reform had Reform been the only party in favour of Net Zero? Because I don’t think that would have happened.
Collectively, the majority of the electorate in the UK will either vote for Labour or for the Tories and since both parties want Net Zero, the majority of voters have no choice but to accept it because their voting decision is not based on this support. That’s something people who boast that they “invest in elections” exploit.
Well obviously it’s awkward because you’re voting for a package of policies and realistically you are never going to support them all.
I will never vote for a party that supports Net Zero – others either support it or don’t see it as a red line. That’s democracy.
It reminds me of the Abortion voters, yes many women are for abortion, but they need to buy food more than they need an abortion.
Speculating about why people do what they do is always a bit uncertain but I think the picture is roughly as follows:
Whenever there’s a general election in the UK, there’s a Tory guy and a Labour guy and one of them will become prime minister. And that’s what people base their voting decisions on. These two guys are on offer. Chose the one you like best or dislike least. In the given case, either guy supported Net Zero, hence, there was never a chance to vote against that while making one’s vote actually count. That’s corrupted democracy — people vote for a candidate at the prospective prime ministers pageant because that’s all they can do. But in many areas, this doesn’t translate into making implied policy choices because some powers who are have made certain that political options unwelcome to them simply don’t exist.
“And that’s what people base their voting decisions on.”
For many people this is doubtless true. I think it’s a foolish approach – but I am in a small minority of loonies. That’s democracy!
That’s de facto the political system of the German Democratic Republic, a multi-party state with regular free votes but without any voter influence on actual politics. It’s just better organized: There’s no need for a state party which always gets the majority of seats, eliminating policy choices in advance while retaining the outward appearance of voters making political choices work just as well.
Rule of the people, democracy translated into English, this is not.
The voters do influence politics by voting for the same set of status quo parties.
I think I’ve explained in some detail why they don’t and that you’re basically blaming the sheep for getting slaughtered. OTOH, if the people behind this scam weren’t – on average – cleverer than those they’re fooling, it obviously wouldn’t work.
Well they are all free to choose who to vote for, as far as I know. They are all adults of sound mind, at least legally speaking. So they are all responsible for their choices. I can only assume they are happy enough with the status quo, as people are here. People say they are not happy but most of them don’t really look into or think about alternative ways to act and to vote, so they are probably not that unhappy. “Covid” accelerated enormously a change in my political perspective that had started with the runup to Brexit – I believe it had that effect on a few people, and a few had already arrived at similar conclusions earlier on. But not many. That’s life.
For most people, this election was about choosing a Labour guy vs choosing a Tory guy as next prime minister and neither of both offered any political choice, especially not the political choice you very much insist on blaming people for not making.
I’ve also learnt something from COVID namely, insofar we’re free to choose our own course of action on anything, that’s not because those who lord over us belief freedom is some kind of so sacred good that everybody deserves to have but solely, because they’re convinced that whatever we chose won’t matter, ie, it won’t be worth the effort of stopping us from doing this or that or something else.
As soon as this isn’t the case anymore, our so-called freedom will survive for exactly as long as a snowflake in the Sahara.
“For most people, this election was about choosing a Labour guy vs choosing a Tory guy as next prime minister and neither of both offered any political choice, especially not the political choice you very much insist on blaming people for not making.”
Who else should I “blame”? We’re all responsible for our choices.
As for freedom, I think it has historically proven hard to oppress people excessively for long periods of time, though I do worry that improved technology will make it easier.
Getting back to the start: Which of the two guys who were on offer for becoming the next prime minister didn’t support Net Zero? Answer: None.
This means there were two options for each member of the electorate: Accept that Net Zero can’t be avoided and try to make the best of a bad situation by making your vote count in the best way it could be made to count. Or waste it, with the three options
Don’t vote. Spoil ballot paper. ‘Protest-vote’ for a party which can be lucky if it gets any MPs at all. Your choice was 3) and you believe to have made a rational decision and one which asserts your intellectual superiority over the people who chose differently as side effect. But that’s not how they see it. To them, you were basically acting like a toddler having tantrum while they – as responsible adults – accepted the unfortunate realities of the situation and made the best of it. That’s very similar to the upcoming election in Germany where all parties which stand a chance of becoming part of the next government support Net Zero (the German variant) and hence, voters have no choice about… Read more »
I don’t much care what they think, as I am sure they don’t care what I think.
I have come to the conclusion that you should vote for the party that best represents your views, regardless of their chances of success – or spoil your ballot paper if none of the parties reach an acceptable minimum level.
If everyone did that, we might occasionally see some significant changes. Parties don’t last forever – it just seems like they do to us.
Who would you vote for, in Germany, and here, in a general election? (I know you can’t vote here, but if you could, who would you vote for and why?).