Me.

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DFJ?

Economic record but little things like Iraq and botched NHS reform do make me doubt about their record in other areas.

Immigration may be economically beneficial overall but to the losers like the low paid, low skilled native population it's not good. Also certain cultures don't seem to integrate that well into the mainstream of British life.

Still got a fair amount of faith in representative democracy. It's not perfect but seems to give reasonable outcomes despite the crap that goes with it.

I think it's right to emphasise the representational, rather than naively direct, nature of successful democracies. In fact people like Edmund Burke emphasised it a few centuries ago. Though folk politics (mercantilism etc) is important to think about ignoring the governance structures that moderate it in practice is kind of a straw man.

As for incompetence. I think in part it's because sweeping ideology-driven changes can easily hide their disastrous nature to those who believe in them, under the variations of "can't make an ommelette without breaking eggs". It only becomes really obvious ten or twenty years into your nationalisation programme that you've actually made burnt curdled custard instead of an ommelette.

I'm also not sure about the current crop of politicians when it comes to structures of government, rather than a well-run economy. In the anglosphere we have had a series of fairly successful economic reformers administrators who have also been centralisers and fairly slapdash on the constitutional front.

Now I know it's my pet topic, and I don't want to try to get a Golden Age thing going here. The reforms of Thatcher / Reagan / Hawke / Longie etc were only possible on that scale because they also took power to the centre away from other branches of government without the market focus they had. Both then and in the post-reform era though, the politicians at the top seem to have not a lot of investment in the current layout of government, but I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's because the leadership feel they have a more direct mandate from voters rather than having to work with parliament, so they never learn; or that they don't believe in the worth of those elements of the civic religion any more; or that the committee structures of previous years don't relate well to their experience before parliament, or what.

Blair I guess is a counterpoint in that he pushed through Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish devolution, but it's not like he has a particularly inspiring vision for the House of Lords, or the European constitution. Supreme Court was a good idea, but he didn't really know how to go about it; he just sort of announced it in a cabinet reshuffle.

I guess what I'm getting at is that even though we have a fairly high proportion of professional politicians at the moment, maybe when it comes to running a department or passing a law, they really are a bit pants at it.

_{The Political Science Department of the University of Woolloomooloo}

In the US there are plenty of examples of political parties who give lip service to a given ideology but consistently fail to deliver results in line with that ideology. Consequently, party allegiance can be irrational based on results.

To me there is a single cardinal political problem: most people aren't rational.

This plays it out in many ways, but two have the greatest effect. Politicians seldom look at empirical results when pushing this or that platform so most legislation ends up being a mess of various policies with little to no correspondence to the aims of the politicians who enacted the legislation. Voters seldom look at long term track records when voting for this or that politician so most elected officials end up being a mess of assorted politicians with little to no correspondence to the ideals of those who voted them into office.

I don't know if there is a solution to this.

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There is no more degenerate kind of state than that in which the richest are supposed to be the best.
Cicero, The Republic

Or have you given up on fantasy? Because Reaper's gale is out in 7 days and Night of Knives it out a month after that in mass market.
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This space reserved for whining like a little bitch and being sanctimonious.