That things are a shambles in both the US and the UK is obvious. But I want to step back a bit from the immediate issues and look at how in both countries, political norms have been breached that may not be recoverable. In the US, we now have a president who shamelessly and repeatedly utters lies that are known to be lies even as he speaks. He is also corrupt and has surrounded himself with corrupt family and government officials and private advisors. And yet his party supports him and is willing to find excuses for his outrageous behavior.
It is by no means the case that previous presidents and administrations were paragons of virtue. Far from it. The norm that has been breached is the requirement to be discreet and hide their misbehavior in ways that allowed for plausible denial by their supporters. Now we find brazen behavior that has not only been embraced by his supporters but even treated as if they were desirable things to be cheered. Rather than the president’s party and its supporters reining in the behavior back towards norms, Trump has pulled them away from the norms. People who may have initially started supported Trump because they liked his idea of limiting immigration of people of color and building a wall now seem to have adopted an ‘in for a penny, in for a pound’ attitude and decided that since they committed to him, they must follow him wherever he takes them, even if it is to the fetid swamps of outright racism, xenophobia, misogyny, homophobia and transphobia.
In the UK, the norms that are being breached are more procedural. The Brexit disaster and prime minister Theresa May’s ineptness in handling the negotiations have resulted in a breakdown in the ability of the governing party to control the flow of legislation in parliament. The debate and vote in parliament tomorrow shows this clearly, where the government has been forced to agree to debate and vote on amendments from all over the place, including its own backbenchers. Already 19 amendments have been tabled with more possible before tomorrow.
At least three of the amendments are constitutionally innovative, because they would significantly empower parliament in relation to the executive in the weeks ahead. Mostly the government controls the business in the Commons – ie what gets debated – which means it decides what gets to become law. But the Cooper amendment would create time for a bill that the government would never table itself to be passed in February. And the Grieve amendment, along with a broadly similar Lib Dem one, would enable backbenchers to seize control of Commons business to debate Brexit on particular days before 29 March. [My italics-MS]
As I see it, there are two key amendments:
Amendments to prevent a no-deal Brexit. The two most important are probably Yvette Cooper’s, enabling the Commons to pass a bill requiring May to seek an article 50 extension if she cannot get her deal passed, and a softer, non-binding one from Caroline Spelman and Jack Dromey, rejecting no deal in principle.
…Anti-backstop amendments. The two main ones are from the Tories Andrew Murrison and Graham Brady, calling for the backstop to expire by December 2021 or for it to be removed from the withdrawal agreement altogether.
Parliamentary procedure is something that only Robert’s Rules of Order aficionados really understand and there any many possible outcomes tomorrow, depending on what motions are allowed and their order. But what is clear that May’s government has lost the normal tight control over events but is now in a reactive mode, being forced to listen to those normally on the sidelines.
I believe that “norms” are mythological. The US Senate has not been courteous among eachother -- one senator famously beat another with a cane, publicly. Teddy Roosevelt was an openly racist imperialist near-fascist hunk of weapons-grade toxic masculinity. They all lie, and always lied. The discourse has always been a passive-aggressive sham covering incompetence and brutality. Donald Trump, for all of his incompetence, has been far less damaging than Winston Churchill (far less significant, too) -- perhaps Trump is a breath of fresh air that we can now talk openly about his prostitutes and swampload of grifters -- I doubt he’s as bad there as Kennedy or Johnson. He’s just less competent.
Perhaps those “norms” we have lost are like the conservative’s “values” -- a pining for a past that only looks more civilized because it was our parents and grandparents’ propaganda, not ours.
I think that has more to do with her ineptness in calling an election when she had no need to, then completely fucking up the campaign, so the Tories lost their majority, and she lost most of her authority over the party. Because the voters were promised a fantasy Brexit (in which the UK could leave the EU and chuck all the immigrants and foreigners out -- yes, this really was what a lot of Leave voters thought they were voting for, not only EU citizens, but British people of Asian and Caribbean descent, were told by Leaver bigots in the immediate aftermath that they now had to leave -- while saving vast sums of money and keeping all the advantages of membership), there was no way anyone could have negotiated an agreement that would come anywhere near satisfying Leaver expectations. This is obvious if you look at the complete failure of Brexiteer Tories to agree among themselves what they want, and the risible nonsense Corbyn comes out with about his “jobs-first Brexit”.
Because the voters were promised a fantasy Brexit (in which the UK could leave the EU and chuck all the immigrants and foreigners out – yes, this really was what a lot of Leave voters thought they were voting for, not only EU citizens, but British people of Asian and Caribbean descent, were told by Leaver bigots in the immediate aftermath that they now had to leave – while saving vast sums of money and keeping all the advantages of membership)
This.
Marcus Ranum @ # 1: The US Senate has not been courteous among eachother – one senator famously beat another with a cane, publicly.
I think the episode you refer to happened in 1856, when Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner took a nasty beating from South Carolina’s Preston Brooks. Brooks was, fwiw, not a Senator but a Representative, but acting on behalf of a Senator -- his uncle, out of Washington at the time but expected (by his nephew) to call Sumner out for a duel due to unflattering remarks made by Sumner a couple of days earlier. (Sumner took almost two years off to recover from injuries and PTSD.)
For hot Senator-on-Senator action, consider the scene six years earlier, when Mississippi’s Henry Foote insulted Missouri’s Thomas Hart Benton to the point where Benton charged at Foote, who ran to the Vice President’s dais, then turned and pulled a cocked and loaded pistol, aiming at Benton. Benton immediately stopped and (by some reports) bared his chest and demanded that Foote go ahead and shoot, calling him an assassin; Foote insisted he drew the gun in self-defense. Other senators held them back (and took Foote’s pistol); though some called for Foote’s resignation, the Congress apparently preferred to forget the event entirely.
@ Marcus.
Tradition has it that the seating in the UK House of Commons (and perhaps the Lords?) is a bit over the length of two swords to discourage some of the more forceful debating tactics of the 16th and 17th century.
Why do you think the sergeant-at-arms carries a mace? I believe the current sergeant-at-arms also keeps an automatic pistol in his desk.
I agree with Marcus…
I believe that “norms” are mythological.
…and I think people are being blinded by the horror they see today into not recognising that it’s the Internet doing exactly what it promised to do; easing the flow of information, enabling more people to speak out and express themselves and exposing more to people.
We are seeing more of the ugly because we’re simply seeing more in general; it was always there; it is only unmasked.
fentex:
I dispute both of you, if you mean that they are only mythological and not actual.
Perhaps we are using a different referent for norms?
I’m in one of those moods, and so would be more than happy to argue the point, should you care to make an argument that norms are only mythological.
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Marcus:
But the subject at hand is norms, not courtesies. Tsk.