About those UK local elections ...

[Gavin]

The ruling Labour Party got crushed in the UK local elections – not that the elected local punters have much say in anything. The nominal opposition Conservative Party also received a slapping. Lots of protest votes – not that politicians pay much attention to the people. Wildly unpopular Prime Minister “Sir” Starmer vows to carry on.

The interesting dynamic is that this is yet another demonstration of the failure of “democracy”. Brits don’t vote for the Prime Minister – his Party does. It is a rather indirect election. (And the Usual Suspects in the US complain about the Electoral College?).

There are three options.

The PM could resign after this failure, which is what an old “Public” Schoolboy would do. And then the Party would choose a new PM and things would stagger on.

Or the Labour Members of Parliament could toss out PM Starmer and choose a new leader.

Alternatively, the PM could call a General Election – which would almost certainly result in many of the Labour Members of Parliament losing their seats … and having to re-enter the work force while the UK economy is in a dismal state.

Labour is paralyzed because the Members of Parliament are scared the PM will call a General Election if they try to toss him out. Total paralysis because of yet another failure in the mechanics of what we jokingly call “democracy”.

[CTLaw]

Or he does not resign and uses his power to: a) punish the uppity voters for their insolence; and b) rig things to prevent them from repeating it in the next general election in three years.

[jabowery]

@Gavin

yet another failure in the mechanics of what we jokingly call “democracy”

The longer people ignore “Market Democracy”* the deeper into the cesspool of “Liberal Democracy” Western Civilization will wade. And this in an era when the situation I foresaw in that 1992 white paper can no longer be ignored by those who want to ride, rather than being shattered by what Musk calls the “hypersonic shockwave” of machine learning. As surfers are quite aware: To catch the big ones you need to be paddling as hard as you can well in advance of their arrival. 1992 was about the time to start paddling as hard as Western Civ could, but instead it seems to have paddled in precisely the wrong direction.

* The only “votes” in Market Democracy are the the citizen’s dividends paid equally to all citizens that replace politics with market demand. The fact that the only person in “libertarian” circles to have come remotely close to this is Charles Murray speaks to the intellectual bankruptcy of libertarians.

[drlorentz]

these are the special needs people you avoid at the airport lest they start having a meltdown pic.twitter.com/2umohX2LMO

— Michael Malice (@michaelmalice) May 8, 2026