As a non-brit, one of the most hilarious - or sad - thing is how easy British political elites can get away with breaching rules.
In France, there is now an independent agency, the authority for ethics and transparency (HATPV) in charge of ensuring politicians respect ethics rules. And if they breach rules, they can face very heavy fines and even jail.
HATPV isn't joking. They have prosecuted dozens of french politicians.
In Britain, you have a bunch of toothless watchdogs that say "The honorable gentleman did not act honorably"
Acoba is an utter JOKE. Their enforcement mechanism is a strongly worded letter 🤦 🤦 🤦
Seriously, this is just embarrassing.
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