Brits: Let's allow MPs to work as lavishly paid lawyers for water companies

Brits: Let's allow House of Lords members to work as lobbyists.

Brits: Let's have a political system where a single party gets an absolute majority

Brits: What could possibly go wrong?

It's the politics. Show me the political institutions of a country. I'll show you the dysfunctional outcomes. You guys have the worst political institutions of any western country outside the United States.

Britain allows MPs to work as lavishly paid consultants/lawyers for multinationals. It's completely illegal in many countries. In Britain, for some reason I don't understand, it's legal.

Several House of Lords MPs are professional lobbyists. They enjoy lifetime access to parliament and they sell that access. That's exactly what Peter Mandelson did.

The UK voting system is also designed to be unrepresentative.

With the Dutch voting system, here what would actually happen.

Greens would say: "You don't have any majority. You can't form a government. We will support you if you tax SUVs and nationalize water companies".

Reform would say: "You don't have any majority. We will support you if you reduce immigration by 50% and ban cousin marriage".

Lib-Dems would say: "You don't have any majority. We will support you if you ban gambling ads and switch computers to Linux. Do we have a deal?".

That's how it works in a healthy system.

In the UK system, with 40% of votes, Labour has an absolute majority. Starmer and his buddies do whatever they want. Just like the Tories did whatever the hell they wanted.

I genuinely believe that with proportional representative and a ban on MPs having second jobs, private water companies would have been nationalized.

People focus on the outcome. But they should focus on the process