But then, wouldn't Hameron calling the EU referendum a perfect exemple of the system working as intended? He didn't want to do it, but he anyway gave the option to the Brits to decide: the system gave him incentives to do the democratic thing.
You could certainly make an argument for that, though that will not make liberals any happier that UKIP were able to take advantage of such a perfect system without an inkling of power to their name. My argument rests on that Cameron's decision process was that he only chose to conduct the referendum because back then all the scientific prediction models guaranteed his victory, which is why it was not democratic, and he believed that the event of a Brexit would invite disaster and destroy much of the world; the one time leaders are completely justified in exercising their executive power without any mandate is the simple case of survival.
It is very confusing why giving a referendum could occur would invite any criticism whatsoever amongst Remain and Leave (not now, but back then, before the result), but it was only recently that elections were made to occur on fixed timetables. Previously the Prime Minister could simply wait for/engineer the conditions to ensure their victory and then call an election to guarantee victory, thus the British have hefty skepticism with Prime Ministers calling important elections on their whims - inevitably, they call them in such times as to guarantee victory, as they always have done. No politician calls for a referendum when they believe they're unpopular :]
Would rather like to suggest the unprecedented situation was brought up 'cause of populist politics from UKIP, which forced Cameron to say he was going to do the referendum in the first place for fear of splitting the conservative vote. I do agree that he wouldn't have called for it if he didn't think he was going to win, but he also wouldn't have called it if he really didn't have to. He didn't necessarily do it for his own career, but to eliminate issues that would threaten the Tories in the election.
Quite right, my point was both - he promised the referendum because he believed he would win, and he called it because he believed without the promise he would lose the GE. Lose the GE, he'd have to resign, career over. UKIP just took advantage of this, they won't be the last the longer we keep this system
Cammy then - though this is my biased speculation - refused to plan for a potential Leave vote 'cause he was intending all along to quit if he lost.
I agree yeah, seeing the empty victor's lobby of the Remain camp so early in the morning was a sight to behold. Also I suppose from a practical point of view, he wasn't an impartial leader - he wanted Remain to win. If he came up with a functional plan for Leave, that would increase the chance of Leave winning. His whole campaign rested on Leave being scary unknown, thus to make a known plan would be self-defeating
As an aside: are diplomats/other civil servants considered politicians?
Nope. But there's more to it, because they're brought up a lot in the same context and scrutiny. I suppose it's worth bringing up judges, officers and intelligence officials too. The way I understand it is that politicians propose legislation which becomes policy or law. So for example, foreign policy is going to be enforced by a mix of diplomats, military officers, civil servants and police officers. Proposed legislation gets turned into law by judges, law enforcement officers and civil servants. Ideally, and as part of their job, all the officers, civil servants and judges are supposed to be impartial, loyal to country and not allow political partisanship to take hold (and indeed, not to take part in politics). In most all cases civil servants, judges, officers, officials and so on all occupy incredibly vital roles and thus must be selected by merit and not by public, and cannot be removed on a whim - they will make unpopular decisions in carrying out their duties, and the continuity and experience their permanency provides is of high value. It also inevitably makes them powerful, which is why political neutrality is so important - MPs can't just get rid of them if they disagree, but this is only good on the basis that all the various unelected leaders are not forcing their own agenda through.
Scrambled Clegg and Hameron were the vanguard to ending impartiality, I don't think they made much headway.
I suppose my tl;dr is that a civil servant who is a politician had no integrity, because as long as they retain their impartiality then they're doing their job. I suppose this also ties into general skepticism and scrutiny of whitehall mandarins, as naturally people are suspicious of the permanent bureaucrats; MPs come and go, they're always there, thus have many opportunities to abuse their influence if left unchecked.
Based purely on the letter from Sir Ivan, he seemed to be a dude who took the job seriously. I don't think the U.K. is going to be able to negotiate the terms of its exit from the EU and a trade deal in two years. It took Canada six years to negotiate its trade deal with the EU, and that's without having to unravel 40 years of politics at the same time.
That's cos the EU's useless at negotiations; I'm unconcerned, trade requires no trade deal. I'm more concerned for nations like Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, they could potentially be screwed in the times to come, with falling export prices, potentially lower British demand and the EU restricting their trade with Europe without the UK to serve as their access point. I did not consider their export markets before all this
I also have to disagree with your assertion the SNP are populist :p but, again, I'm biased like that. They did win a majority in the Scottish parliament in a system designed to make majorities difficult to achieve. They also received the most votes in both the seat and list votes in the last Scottish election.
I'm using the definition of populist to mean someone who wants to represent ordinary people, SNP use a lot of that rhetoric in their speeches and particularly emphasize how Labour stopped being populist
It may be too early to say if their Westminster romp was a populist thing or that Scotland thinks that the British parties don't have a clue wtf Scotland wants from politics. The EU referendum makes me think/hope it's the former.
I'd be more concerned that the Scots don't see themselves as a part of the British
I could pretty it up with sugar and honey but it would still end up the same. Do you really want my school writing style?
Anything of substance regardless of style would be appreciated, less sugar and honey, more ham
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