Marios Richards

The (lack of) pattern with Views of Trump is particularly surprising - e.g. UK public attitudes (BES) on Trump are *highly asymmetric* - and yet attitudes about Trump are incredibly strong predictors for Authoritarianism/(negative)attitudes about minorities.

I think this is both

(i) reasonable
(ii) also asking Random People to engage in something close to Paid Political Strategy

Not saying I've been playing too much Rogue Trader - but maybe the rabble *just should* stay in their place?

The second one is uh somewhat dwarfed by the US political context.

So in a sense the only question is "what sort of noises do you make about this now? Confident ones or evasive ones?".

The hallmark of this administration is that they obviously don't really know and randomly oscillate with the net effect that they sound like an Opposition Party.

Also, I think it sort of misses the point.

Rejoining the EU/something similar is a multi-term project to - among other things - boost economic growth.

That is supposed to *already be* this administration's priority *that it got a mandate for*.

There are two contradictory issues people raise

(i) it wouldn't happen for ages - it's not in the unilateral gift of the UK PM

(ii) it would instantly take up all govt action

I don't think these can both be right.

> Leaving the EU was associated with a 34% increase in civil
> servant numbers

But that was *because of the mechanics of replicating competences we'd not had to cover as EU members*.

Rejoining the EU would only *eventually* reverse that - but it certainly wouldn't mean *another* 34% bump.

See also Engineers and Intelligent Design.

(Funniest example - anthropologist Evans-Pritchard independently recreating the hypothetico-deductive method in isolation because he had issues with the method sociologists were using based on what logical positivists told them they were logically positive physicists just must be using ...)

"This political science, it is *nothing* like quantum mechanics"

> "Do you ... know anything about either political science or
> quantum mechanics?"

"..."

Get it *and do it* - so fair turnaround!

Ah yes, the Heresy of Unnatural Science that requires a different, more complex Unnatural Scientific Method whose details always seem to go to a different school.

In my experience, nothing triggers as much human creativity/'nuance-seeking' as suggesting housing market problems can be fixed by increasing house building.

Just wait, someone will figure out how to normalise quantum gravity as a footnote in their No Build House theory.

Tyranny and Tyranny, to locate myself in a minority of a minority.

Not content with his campaign of canicide, Stephen Bush moved on to Grand Urbicide.

It's meaningless to point out that the public would be less enthusiastic if you start putting heavy negative cues on Rejoin ... if you're not also going to frame Stay Out as the "so you'd like to see taxes rise AND services get cut while the govt stands their with its dick in its hand?".

Which is trivially true, but irrelevant. It's not Insufficient Public Will which is the limiting factor - there was sod all before the push for an euref - but committed political parties (powerbases within/adjacent).

What gets me about this is the slightly contorted "Yes, well, two thirds support ... but what if you ask people to decide and tell them that Rejoining will be Really Hard and Really Slow and Really Costly, huh? It'll be much lower then!".

It's been nearly a decade, there was a mean age gap of 8 years (mean Remain = 40, mean Leave = 48) and, if anything, that undersells the difference in the distributions.

Somebody has to do it. But it should be a paid job that someone treats like a job - i.e. they should stop out of work time and pay due attention to occupational health.

Good post!

My main takeaway is that humans are fragile and reason is something you protect through your actions *specifically with a humble view of your capacity to maintain your own perspective*.

What happened to J.K. Rowling? For over five years, J.K.

Five years ago, JK Rowling set out her position on the transgender issue with a liberal and reasonable essay.

But increasingly, Rowling’s positions have moved away from liberalism.

What happened?
www.thepathnottaken.net/p/what-happe...

Substack ... is like a tearoom that has been flooded from an open sewer. Lots of people genteely sipping tea and considering What's Wrong With The Centre Left and desperately trying to find an appropriate response to gigantic turds of racism floating past.

* I mean, kids of middle class Germans - certainly German MPs - still get degrees not apprenticeships. The German system is *waaay* closer to "degrees are effectively inherited privileges".

The key political choice here is "Do you want to commit to German-style protected vocational sectors Y/N?".

German public(&business) values vocational qualifications as only moderately inferior* to academic qualifications because the sectoral protections are only moderately inferior.

No, I think that's potatoes. They pealed them twice and that make the Irish angry.

But it happened because of the balance of power in right-wing politics in 2015.

Changing that more than marginally in 2015 is like changing the climate change already in train in 2025. Step 1 - build time machine. Step 2 - see how far back you have to go before intervention is plausible.

I don't think he'd have remained Conservative leader & PM in those circumstances.

I think you can imagine semi-plausible scenarios put a Leave referendum off (LDs get trashed a bit less and there's a shorter 2nd coalition, Cameron stalls on a referendum announcement/when it's called).

Didn't he ... create the police to make corn illegal?

If this were a strategy game and you were desperate to try to figure out some way to avoid this, I think even save game from 2005 is too late.

You've basically got to think "what can I do to undermine the 'Leave power base', given how little is in the gift of the Conservative PM?".