[madaxe_again]

Isn’t it the democratic ideal though? Of the people, for the people. If a representative democracy is to truly be representative then the elected representatives should be… representative? Tuberville and Mullin I wouldn’t say were thick so much as they’re pretty average.

[flir]

Nah, you elect the person who best represents your interests, not the person who best represents you.

Look on it as a hiring process. Don't you want to select someone competent?

[altairprime]

That’s a very interesting game theory question: the answer is not always “yes”, especially when it comes to people’s secret motivations!

[flir]

Well the analogy isn't perfect.

I realised I should have said "wishes". Not everyone votes based on self-interest.

(And in a FPTP system you are, IMO, better off voting against the person who least represents your wishes).

[Cthulhu_]

The challenge is that politics is its own profession, just like management. Even though there are people that have the theoretical knowledge on how a country should be run / what policies would work best, working it out into something legalese or balancing the books is where politicians come in. In theory.

[dofm]

Goodness, if Tuberville is average then the USA is in much worse shape than it realises.

Mullin, like MTG, has some political instincts and some facility with the parliamentary process, as it turns out, and I almost feel bad about putting him in the same category as Tuberville, but he is not a smart guy.

Don’t get me wrong, we have many mediocre politicians in the UK, but few like these guys at the parliamentary level.

The difference is this whole flirting with anti-intellectualism thing. Pretending to be less educated or intellectual than you are has just not been a big part of our wider culture.

[Twey]

But we are importing this model now in Boris Johnson and Farage. As far as I can see Farage is doing exactly (a British spin on) the GWB strategy: despite having a pretty classical private-school upbringing he's created a ‘bloke from the pub’ character that is much more relatable to the lower classes, and it seems to be working pretty well.

It was really interesting to me to see BoJo's take on it, which was similar but with aristocratic mannerisms (and stereotypes!) mixed in. I guess it was aimed at the middle class, for whom upper-class dogwhistles have typically landed well.

[dofm]

I don't know if Boris ever faked being unintelligent or faked being a man of the people. Or being a bloke from the pub, actually.

He did fake being a buffoon, of course, but he was doing that long, long, long before Trump. He is terrifically intelligent and obviously absurdly well-educated, he's just a liar and a sociopath.

Indeed his chosen buffoonish, winging-it character hints at that, because buffoon is the easiest comic role to play if you have very little empathy. It blunts all the qualities that would make him unbearable. His buffoon routine was helped by him being very authentically clumsy across all domains both physical and intellectual, and it helped him manage that too. The upper-class twit aspect couldn't be avoided so he doubled down on it from early on.

(He has his brother and sister to thank for humanising him, and his father to blame for his worst impulses)

Farage is definitely playing at Trumpism, and he has the cruelty aspect nailed down, but he lacks the ability to clown, doesn't he? He's fundamentally sour-faced and nasty.

[pjc50]

The remarkable one is Kemi Badenoch, who would be in more trouble if anyone was actually paying attention to the unhinged things she's saying as leader of the Conservative party.

If Farage survives the crypto donation scandal (and is therefore free to take more dodgy money), there's a real risk that the default rightwing party becomes Reform and the Conservatives become irrelevant, which would be a bizarre act of self-destruction.

[dofm]

She apparently can say whatever she likes now! I have noticed recently a considerable shift in the press to asking Ed Davey what he thinks.

Whatever happens re: Farage, the rules around donations will change, I think. We need to keep money out of our politics and make large donations seem intrinsically shady (because they always are)

[rjsw]

That happened in Canada [1] and Farage has been quite open on picking the same party name to hopefully follow the same path.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_Party_of_Canada

[glaucon]

| terrifically intelligent and obviously absurdly well-educated, he's just a liar and a sociopath.

No idea how intelligent he is, I wouldn't say I've seen any obvious signs of outstanding cerebral capabilities.

As to his education, he got a 2.1, quite respectable but given the resources employed (Eton and Oxford) in his education anything less would have been shameful.

[ndsipa_pomu]

That sounds like populism to me. Ideally, people should want to elect either experts in their domain or able to use the advice of experts. Leaders shouldn't just follow the whims of the popular media, but instead have principles that they follow and communicate to the people. However, I may be atypical in that I'm more interested in politicians strongly held views rather than their personality (unless their personality is toxic e.g. Farage).

[JumpCrisscross]

> Isn’t it the democratic ideal though?

Probably not philosophically. But it’s why pure democracies don’t work. And America has a weird problem of not enough electoral representation at some levels combined with electoral fetishisation at many others.