Comparative Politics - Comparative Problems

 Reading the Scottish Review gave rise to this post. While reading A crisis of democracy and public life, I reached this point and thought of our own Republicans, especially the MAGA variety, who now control the House of Representatives:

Tory strategists are increasingly (according to The Spectator's new political editor Katy Balls) looking around desperately for issues that they can use to weaponise and embarrass Labour and their other political opponents, including the SNP. Balls identified two major ones – going hard on the issue of 'stopping the small boats' crossing the English Channel and the Scottish Parliament and trans rights. These will be added to the war on 'woke', a prescriptive take on British history, and various 'culture wars' against liberal opinion in the BBC, universities and elsewhere. It is against this background that the Section 35 order should be seen.

The scale of Tory failure is stark after 13 years. Their record is one of adject failure. There is little idea inside the Tory tribe about how to address the state of Britain and this is something senior Tories acknowledge in private. One Tory minister has put the condition of their UK Government, headed up by Rishi Sunak: 'It's so much worse because it doesn't look chaotic. Clear and slick on the outside, but the corpse of a government inside'.

The House Republicans certainly lack any notion of slickness. Grace, skill, subtlety, sanity seem well beyond them, but like their Tory counterparts they lack any idea of how to address the state of the United States. That is, other than investigating Hunter Biden's laptop.

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