[KaiserPro]

different.

The US government is designed to be inefficient and requires bipartisan agreement or a majority in both chambers to do stuff.

The UK government has significantly more executive powers, far more than the president, and normally has a majority to pass things that can't be done by the excutive.

the problem is that brexit and bad party leaders has been exceedingly disruptive and killed both the conservative and labour party. This is because it ripped apart the coalitions inside both parties. Suddenly the us and them was not our party and thier party, but people within the same party.

The competent have been driven out by the populists, and then they've burnt up and been replaced by the "tim, nice but dims". (populists were boris and corbyn)

Until we actually "deal" with or defuse brexit, and actually begin to structurally reform large parts of the country (education, industrial relations, health and local government to name but a few) we are going to be stuck

[nicoburns]

One might argue that the electoral system (FPTP) is a common denominator in both cases. Under another system, new parties might arise to replace to stale ideas of the old (on both the left and the right). Under FPTP, that's almost impossible to achieve.

It's a common refrain that people don't engage with politics because they feel disenfranchised. Which is perhaps unsurprising, because to a large extent they are!

[KaiserPro]

I think FPTP is a factor but not in the same way. The structure of the US system means that a president with a slim majority in one house can't do anything much. the UK has no such real problems.

In the UK you only have to win the commons (lower house) to run a government. the US you need both and the president.

[gorwell]

Populism is a response to corrupt and incompetent establishments. There's nothing competent to drive out by the time populism rears its head. It was already long gone.

[bratbag]

Populism is taking advantage of discontent to persuade people to act against their own best intrests.

That discontent can be caused be anything. As long as a demagogue can lie about it and use it to kill rights and laws to empower themselves.

[KaiserPro]

> Populism is a response to corrupt and incompetent establishments

populism is a response to discontent, nothing more, nothing less. Populists need an in. If the country thinks that the government is doing ok, or they are happy enough as they are, then populism can't spread. Populists need a cause and a scapegoat.

boris was brexit. corbyn was "enough shitting on the poor and young"