The All New Adventures of His Majesty's Government
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To add to this, up to the mid 19th century the main parties were the broadly classical liberal Whigs, and the traditionalist conservative Tories. In the 1820s the Tory wing of parliament was dominated by the Pittites, followers of William Pitt the Younger who considered themselves "Independent Whigs" but aligned a lot more closely to the Tories. When this group collapsed over disputes about several issues, Robert Peel set about forming a new faction based on his Tamworth Manifesto, which was called the Conservatives. In the 1850s the free trade supporting Peelite wing of the Conservatives and the protectionist wing split up, with the protectionists being the foundation of the modern Conservatives, and the Peelites joining the Whigs to create the Liberal party. As they were, roughly speaking, the successors of the old Toryism, the Conservatives continued to be referred to as Tories.
The House of Lords is a very old and wonky institution that formerly represented the aristocracy, as opposed to the Commons which represented everyone else. Over time, the Commons gained supremacy over the Lords, to the point where their powers have been stripped down to being able to scrutinise and draft amendments to legislation which must then be sent back to the Commons. All members are ostensibly appointed by the monarch in some way, and now contains a mixture of political appointees, people appointed for their services to the country, and a small number of hereditary peers.
We had austerity under David Cameron and Theresa May, then Boris came in who was a lot more populist but had to allow some tax rises. Now we've got Truss who the Tories elected on a platform of tax cuts, which have now all been reversed by the new chancellor.
This whole mess can somewhat be traced back to 2015, when David Cameron made a Faustian bargain that allowed him to win the 2015 general election in exchange for a referendum on our membership of the European Union. He assumed he'd easily win that, but lost, so he resigned and was replaced by Theresa May, who proved totally incapable of uniting the Europhile and Eurosceptic wings of her party, so she called a general election to try to improve her legitimacy. She lost her majority in that election, and got no further forward, so was then replaced by Boris Johnson, who called another election and won a huge majority, kind of botched the whole COVID thing, and then turned out to have broken his own COVID regulations and also appointed a sex pest to a senior position. This prompted mass resignations from his government, so he resigned in favour of Liz Truss, who has lost control of the narrative pretty much instantly as she's arrived amidst global economic malaise and a serious inflation crisis at home, which she has only managed to make worse in the short time she's been in power. She's also an unfathomably terrible public speaker, which is actually a serious hazard because the financial markets really are all about confidence, and nobody inspires less confidence than her.
I seriously wonder what possessed the Torries to vote for Truss over Sunak. He'd be a bad prime minister too but he'd probably at least be a functioning one. And even if Truss didn't seem so incompetent then she still chained herself to the thoroughly discredited policy of Thatcherism.
The Tory membership is very overwhelmingly wealthy old white men, who'd stand to personally benefit from Truss's tax cuts. Sunak was the favoured candidate of the MPs, who are rather more diverse, but his (relatively) more moderate platform didn't play so well with the members. (Probably didn't help that he's not white)
I'll note that the US congress is designed not to work. It is really hard to push bills through. This is not the case for Westminster system
The US pushes all the power away from Congress and onto the presidency (and Supreme Court). In the UK, the Prime Minister does not need to do Executive Orders etc to get anything done. If they want something done, they do it through parliament, not Executive Branch.
Easy. Sunak said that recovery would be difficult in the short term and they couldn't lower taxes much. Truss said everything would be fine, no need for economic difficulty, they could lower them straight away (for the rich and corporations primarily, of course). Tory members sided categorically with blue-sky economic illiteracy.
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Bet Sunak's having a good old chuckle to himself in one of his many massive houses this morning.
The rollback of pretty much all of Truss' policies on tax. She's now keeping taxes even higher than Sunak was going to, and cutting taxes was pretty much her thing.
Puerile? Yes. Funny? Yes. Horrifying? Yes.
They've got to be doing that on purpose.Puerile? Yes. Funny? Yes. Horrifying? Yes.
"What, are you saying that the common masses don't want to simply give all the money to the rich so that they can redistribute it to the deserving, like me? Piffle."
Dammit I was literally about to post that myself.Puerile? Yes. Funny? Yes. Horrifying? Yes.
