The Politics Thread

[I Am A Swede]

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[DRW50]

He's had years of sex scandals and disgusting comments, but has been Teflon. What seemed to bring him down was the revelation that his office was having parties during 2020 lockdowns, lockdowns that were, unlike what went on in the US, enforced, and where a lot of people sacrificed (and a number of people died). They tried to tough through this, but a poor economy and increasing isolation from the rest of the world due to Brexit did not help. They began losing byelection after byelection (special elections), including some that the party had won by massive margins before that point. 

[janea4old]

Okay thanks. I had read that but thought I might be missing something.  If they got rid of US officials for stuff like that, that would be a zillion people.

Shows the damage that Tr*mp did to America, that horrid stuff was accepted by too many people.

It's interesting that Boris would be brought down for a lockdown party, which is a bad thing for him to have done but not as bad as his other crap.

Well they couldn't bring Al Capone down for all his murderous mobster activity but he was convicted for some tax charges.  Whatever works I guess?

Edited July 7, 2022 by janea4old

[DRW50]

Yes I think this is a case where the parliamentary system plays a key part. The party can force a PM out and still stay in power, which makes them more aggressive. This is one of the reasons why the Tories have stayed in power for 12 years (and why they did for 18 years before Tony Blair won), and don't seem likely to give that up anytime soon.

Edited July 7, 2022 by DRW50

[Vee]

I feel like the Pincher sex scandal in the last few weeks/months? has been the tipping point, though, maybe I'm wrong. Someone else can explain that.

Edited July 7, 2022 by Vee

[Cat]

@DRW50 has put it perfectly. I would only add that it was a cumulative effect. One more scandal on top of a mountain of scandals, big and small, and no effort made to meaningfully deal with serious problems plaguing the country. The straw that breaks the camel's back, as it were. And in a parliamentary system, MPs sense quickly when the tide turns against the leader because they are the front line in the constituencies and could lose their seat. Taking the fall for Boris's awful decisions.

[DramatistDreamer]

OMG, at Yakety Sax blaring in the background.

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[Soapsuds]

 

[Faulkner]

Wow.

 

 

[DramatistDreamer]

OMG.

Anything can happen but still, this is shocking.

[Cat]

 

Very shocking for a country where access to guns is very restricted, and which is pretty safe. Abe was a defining figure in Japanese politics for at least two decades. He had an entire economic policy ethos names after him ('Abenomics'). He was only forced to step down in 2020 because of personal ill-health and criticism over early COVID policy missteps.

Japan does have a few lone wolf incidents, which can be horrifying in of themselves -- carried out by young or middle-aged men oftentimes. The Financial Times article I read (below) had a picture of the suspect being brought down by a security guard (both wearing Covid masks, I note). Apparently the gun was handmade by the suspect. Hope you guys can get past the FT paywall to access.

https://www.ft.com/content/de7116d5-f68b-46c9-9681-368f97f7ad15

ETA: Another article with perhaps easier access:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/08/shinzo-abe-japans-former-prime-minister-dies-after-being-shot

Edited July 8, 2022 by Cat

[DramatistDreamer]

The NHK news broadcaster has had an excellent livestream and is really the best source for news coverage. I have watched them for years. According to NHK, the perpetrator is a former navy member who has arms training, so it is not outside of the realm of possibility that he would have acquired some skills or at least cultivated an interest in making weapons, especially since acquiring guns in Japan is so difficult (for good reason). The perpetrator also claims that his grievance with Abe was personal, not political.

Abe left a huge imprint on Japanese politics but he was also a divisive figure. He wanted to shed Japan of its pacifist status, a status that he felt had been forced on the nation as a result of a sort of punishment for the aggression Japan exhibited during WWII and in the wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which still fuels a very active anti-nuclear weapons movement in the country, which often found itself at odds with Abe’s insistence that Japan have a militant that be fully trained and ready to act at a moment’s notice. In the wake of skirmishes with the Chinese government, not least of which surfaces often in the South China Sea, Abe was ever more insistent that his stance was the correct one. I don’t know whether there is any connection between the perpetrator having been in the military and Abe’s stance. I guess we will have to wait and see as more information unfolds.

Edited July 8, 2022 by DramatistDreamer

[DramatistDreamer]

Having spent some time in London in the mid 1990s as a student, I have mixed views about the UK. There were some things I enjoyed about the people that I found myself in the company of and some events that were profound to my education and development, but there were also some disturbing cultural and socio-political attitudes that I encountered there as well. And way too much of a sanitized WWII and post-war mentality. And even then, a barely concealed hostility toward immigrants and children, even grandchildren of immigrants, particularly those from former colonies. One of my housemates at the time, a Bangladeshi student, experienced a very scary incident. I myself was accosted by some weird guy (who was white) and was fortunately scared off by another one of my housemates and the incident left me in shock to this day (so much so that I had blocked out the incident until a few years ago). 
It is sort of scary to realize that it has apparently gotten worse since then.

[MichaelGL]

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Edited July 8, 2022 by MichaelGL

[Cat]

OMG! I watch NHK World (which has English-language news). Outside of the news, I find its shows about Japan very relaxing in an old-fashioned, comforting way, but the news is notable for its scrupulous 'just the facts' coverage and no apparent editorializing or It's Just MY Opinion stuff. They also have journalists spread across the world, and so a breadth of coverage on little-covered countries like Cambodia or Bangladesh, for example. I cannot believe I didn't think about its news stream earlier.

Abe was polarising and controversial as you say for his more assertive stance on all things related to military and Japan's atrocities during WW2 and its empire-building era. The Comfort Women issue related to Korea and China will always be a sore spot between all 4 nations, because Japan absolutely refuses to acknowledge its crimes in this era (apart from offering the women themselves some backdoor pay-offs over the years, which many refused). Until this is resolved, I don't know if these 4 countries (NK and SK both have beef with Japan about this) can ever go forward together. The issue runs deep because I know young Koreans and Chinese mention this a lot when talking about Japan.

I think Abe might have felt his stance on Japan re-militarizing was the right one. The US is still Japan's #1 ally, but there is a feeling that the bond has weakened. The is a small flicker of distrust over whether the US, post-Iraq, post-Afghanistan and post-Trump, would swoop in militarily if China were to actually invade Taiwan or NK were to launch a rocket aimed at a Japanese city. The feeling Abe and his cohorts would have is 'Better to be prepared in case Plan A falls through.' Abe definitely felt the rise of an all-powerful China was bad for the region and bad for Japan unless Japan asserted its own power also. 

The perpetrator having military training is very interesting. It begs the question what his beef with Abe actually was if it wasn't related to his policies/political direction.

I can only imagine how traumatic that incident must have been if you blocked it out for decades!

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 I'm sorry you and your Bangladeshi housemate were confronted with such aggression. I have seen incidents transpire on public transport here that have been absolutely shocking over the years, and people would just look straight ahead and pretend it's not happening. It is only more recently that other people step in and put a stop to it -- most of those that tend to be young people, to their credit, a lot of whom actually do want to change the world for the better.

That post-war mentality you talk about is embedded so deep. I call it post-Empire, because there is a similar thing going on in France and other countries. The UK never confronted its colonial past. The 'colonies' devolved into 'commonwealth' and while most people felt that was a sop to the UK's declining power in the world, it helped to prop up nationalist pride and the feeling of 'we are still better than them! We used to kick em around.' Now, of course, rising powers of black and brown excellence across the world are kicking the UK around on the economic front.

I honestly don't know what the solution is. Having witnessed the collective self-suicide of Brexit, where poor white voters (pauperized by a decade of crippling austerity imposed by the Tory government) decided to punish "foreign workers" instead whilst simultaneously doffing their hats to their Tory 'betters' and giving Boris Johnson a massive mandate... I lost confidence in people and their propensity for rationality.

Edited July 8, 2022 by Cat