Doesn’t the UK also have one of the highest living costs in Europe as well as some of the lowest wages? I mean the starting salary for teachers here is half of what even america pays.
That’s why they’re turning to facism
How will that help?
Politics isn’t rational.
It won’t
Fascism is misplaced anger. Britons old money is fucking oppressive and suffocates the young.
The natural response to a declining standard of living is to demand economic change. The fascists are not a movement of the poor, although they are supported by the poor. They are a movement of the ultra wealthy to prevent economic and social change.
Agreed friend. The ultra wealthy stirs up misplaced anger to deflect from the real reason why the proles standard of living is declining - which is themselves. Is that a fair summary?
That is precisely the origin of reactionary movements. If we look at Weimar Germany, Francisco Franco’s Spain, and Portugal’s brief experiment with dictatorship, we see a pattern: elite squandering of public resources directly cause the sort of instability that leads to fascism.
Also, Liberal Democracies tend to be very permissive of reactionary movements, owing to a combination of elite preferences for wealth inequality, manipulation of public discourse, and weak democratic structures, which the fascists easily undermine and destroy.
Liberal Democracies tend to have “freedom of the press” which leads to a large number of voices influencing political discourse. The press are usually owned by elites. Elites prefer inequality because that is what allows them to own things. So we have many voices being heard but elite voices are the loudest. This leads to corruption and theft from public funds. In the case of the first rise of fascism, elites bankrupted the states of Europe by pursuing a pointless war. The US was able to abrogate a third World War because they forgave many war debts and instead chose to economically develop nations which had been ravaged by war.
Elite today are looking at US government indebtedness and are falsely swallowing the narrative that public entitlements are causing the problem, when the real issue is war debt incurred by the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars.
This is not surprising at all.
I was recently reading an article in the French newspaper Le Monde.
In Britain, corporations are increasingly using a special system called zero-hour contracts.
These contracts are designed to offer maximum flexibility for business owners, in order to reduce his risks. The employee is guaranteed nothing and must always be available.
« They send my hours on Sunday, but nothing is sure. Sometimes, they cancel the same day » says Yana Petticrew, a young Glasgow Scottish worker who has been on zero-hour contracts for nearly 10 years. « Life is hard. I can’t even plan a meeting with my friends next week, because my boss could call me at any time » Yana says. She can’t refuse, or her boss will get rid of her.
Labor unions say workers on zero hour contracts earn on average less than those who are not. In 2010, 168 000 british workers were on zero hour contracts. In 2024, 1.1 million british workers were on zero hour contracts.
Here is another things that stuns me. I learned that in Britain, employees have no boardroom representation. In France, all companies publically listed on the stock market are legally required to have union representatives on the board of directors.
For instance LVMH :
https://www.lvmh.com/en/our-group/governance
Why can’t british employee have board representatives?!
The UK system is rotten. Brits need to fight for change. They deserve so much better.
Also the French need to do some more striking, when you look at the board of for example adidas:
This is the logical outcome of liberalism IMO.
This is the logical outcome of two things.
1. Their silly campaign finance rules. British campaign finance laws are literally the worst in the Western world, only after the United States. It’s just embarassing.
2. Their First-Past-The-Post voting system. It is a voting system that is designed to create a 2-party duopoly on power.
Show me the incentives of any political system. I will show you the outcome.
Look the recent British elections. Keir Starmer won 65% of seats in Parliament with only 35% of votes. It’s his country now. He can do whatever he wants for 5 years. Greens, SNP or Reform received millions of votes. They get very few seats.
Under the Danish voting system, here is what would happen in Britain.
The Reform Party would tell Starmer : “You don’t have a majority Keir. We can allow you to form a government. But in exchange, we want to reduce immigration. And we want a law banning cousin marriage. Do we have a deal ?”
The Green Party would tell Starmer : “You don’t have a majority Keir. We can allow you to form a government. But in exchange, we want to nationalize water companies. And we a law banning all gambling ads. Do we have a deal?”
This is how it works in Denmark. I feel the overall result is just better.
I aint a fan of a two-party system - I’ll take the slow, stable Danish way any day.
But how is that directly related to disengaged workers?
Seems to track pretty directly to me. Political system that results in less rights and less voice for the people equals less engagement. I mean that’s one to one almost. Particularly when that same system also favors corporations to an absurd degree that exploit workers the breaking point.
I kind of agree, although I wouldn’t say it tracks directly. But less workers rights surely means disengagement, less nuanced goals than just profits surely means disengagement.
Also anglo-saxon management philosophy is definitively part of this.
I don’t think either of those two things would have any bearing on workplace happiness though.
Sounds about right
