Long time readers are aware of my concerns in democracies of having at least two parties competent to the task of government, from setting sensible policies, consulting with experts, to the simple competency of setting and accomplishing a task in the context of government. If there is only one, then there’s no reasonable counterbalance for those proposals and policies that turn out to be positively awful. Because of this, the word out of Britain concerning the policies and priorities of Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn and his warmest Party supporters, which seemed to derive from the 1950s, were more than a little disturbing. Add in a bit of alleged anti-semitism, and the fact that he was Leader brought the entire Party under suspicion for being unsuitable to the task of governing; they seemed to be a bunch of old, dreaming men, seeing their past through rose colored glasses.
Ahem.
Then came the elections at the end of last year. Corbyn’s Labour Party was crushed by the Conservatives, Corbyn resigned, and the Labour had to reorganize. So I’m pleased to note the reorganization appears to be moving along nicely, as Andrew Sullivan, ex-Brit and in the third part of his weekly tri-partite diary entry for New York’s Intelligencer, reports on how the tradition of questioning the Prime Minister, a Brit tradition, by the opposition party is going:
Labour Party Leader Keir Starmer
And in this context, [Labour Party Leader Keir] Starmer has killed. Last week, he took Boris apart, statistic by statistic. This week, Boris had clearly done extra prep, but Keir still commanded the exchange. He also scored a coup. He asked: “Does the prime minister think it’s right that care workers coming from abroad and working on our front line should have to pay a surcharge of hundreds, sometimes thousands of pounds to use the NHS themselves?” He was referring to a fee of over $750 non-British health-care workers pay on top of taxes to have access to health care. Johnson said there was no alternative source of funding, and so the charge should stay. But 24 hours later, Johnson reversed himself, and agreed to waive the fee. Starmer duly congratulated him on taking his advice. It’s not often that a Commons exchange immediately forces a change in government policy. For Starmer’s second clash with Johnson, it was a triumph.
This is how criticism should work, not the dishonest crap we so often see in American government. Even better:
[Starmer’s] also avoided melodrama and the temptation to berate a government grappling with a very tough plague that arrived suddenly. All his criticisms have been measured and detailed, and point not just to government failures but to how to remedy them.
Honest criticism, with positive and reasonable alternatives, is how adults do these things. As a counter-example, remember how the Republicans tried to throw sand into the gears of the now-defunct JCPOA, aka the Iran nuclear deal? I’m still infuriated at the mendacity. I’m sure there are examples of Democrats also indulging in such behavior, but I disapprove of it done by either side. It slows the betterment of policy.
It’s political malpractice.
Trump was a booster of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, although I haven’t heard anything recently from him. If I thought he was capable of learning, I’d recommend Trump study what appears to be a positive relationship between Johnson and Starmer. It’s salutary.
