Consider This from NPR - Is Britain's Political Turmoil a Lesson in Democracy for the U.S?

Episode Date: October 22, 2022

This week, politics in the UK looked a little — crazy. Outraged members of Parliament yelled their demands for Prime Minister Liz Truss to resign, a head of iceberg lettuce managed to outlast her, and former Prime Minister Boris Johnson -who was just ousted a few months ago over the "partygate" scandal- is back in play as a possible replacement for Truss.It feels like political theater, but the consequences are very real as people in the U.K. continue to struggle through an economic crisis. As the very "un-British" chaos continues to unfold, is it proof that the British political system, at its messiest, is still less dysfunctional than U.S. politics? NPR's Cheryl W. Thompson speaks with Rosa Prince, editor of "The House", a magazine that covers U.K. Parliament. And expat Brian Klaas of The Atlantic, explains why he thinks the latest fallout is proof that British democracy is in better shape than American democracy. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] episode was produced by Tyler Bartlam. It was edited by Jeanette Woods. Our executive producer is Natalie Winston.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all. On the web at theschmidt.org. Mr. Speaker, I am a fighter and not a quitter. That's Liz Truss, the British Prime Minister taking questions from members of Parliament where she took a shellacking from Labour Party leader Keir Starmer. A book is being written about the Prime Minister's time in office. Apparently it's going to be out by Christmas. Is that the release date or the title? And by the next day, Starmer was right, ahead of schedule.

I have therefore spoken to His Majesty the King to notify him that I am resigning as leader of the Conservative Party. The resignation makes her time as Prime Minister the shortest in British history. Brian Closs is an associate professor at University College London. The last 44 days in British politics have been disastrous. Liz Truss has managed to blow up the British economy and crash the pound. It has been utter chaos in Westminster. Of course, this saga has been more than just political theater. The consequences are real for the people of the UK as they struggle through an economic crisis. But the Brits have managed to keep calm and carry on. The good thing about Britain is we like to laugh at our problems,

and that is where the lettuce came in. Andrew Gilpin is an associate editor with the British tabloid The Daily Star, the outlet behind a livestream video stunt that went viral, showing iceberg lettuce and posing the question, which would last longer, the head of lettuce or the head of state? One of our senior editors saw a piece in The Economist which likened Liz Truss' premiership to having the shelf life of a lettuce and sometimes the most simple campaigns are the best. The Daily Star couldn't resist capitalizing on the comparison.

They raided petty cash and sent a reporter to the produce aisle of a local supermarket. He brought a lettuce. He got a printout of a picture of Liz Truss and put it next to the said lettuce. By the end of the first day, the lettuce had goggly eyes, it had a mouth, and he'd also purchased a wig off eBay. Outfitting the first day, the lettuce had goggly eyes, it had a mouth, and he'd also purchased a wig off eBay. Outfitting the lettuce to resemble the beleaguered prime minister was a surprising hit with the public. They just wanted a bit of fun. They wanted something to take their mind off the awful state of our politics at the moment. This week, the whole ecosystem of British politics has looked, well, a little crazy. From outraged members of parliament

yelling their demands for trust to resign, to a head of letters that, spoiler alert, managed to outlast her. But what's behind all the very un-British chaos? Does what's playing out across the pond hold any lessons for America? From the outside perspective, it looks like everything is just falling apart. I look at this and I see that the system is working because Liz Truss is clearly one of the most incompetent and least successful prime ministers in British history. Consider this is what looks a chaotic mess proof that the British political system is actually less dysfunctional than the United States? That's coming up. From NPR, I'm Cheryl W. Thompson.

It's Saturday, October 22nd. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today or visit wise.com. T's and C's apply. That just does not happen in this country. Lots of people are saying, we're not Italy.

We don't have a big turnover of leaders. So in that respect, it's very unexpected. Rosa Prince is editor of The House, a magazine that covers UK Parliament. I asked her how things went downhill so fast. She says we need to look back a few months ago to the ouster of then Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who, wait for it, is currently on the list to replace Truss. One of the fundamental problems is that Liz Truss never had the support of her parliamentary party. So the way that the contest to replace Boris Johnson worked was that MPs were allowed to kind of whittle down the candidates to two and then those two names went forward to the members, to Conservative Party members.

Even in the contest for the MPs, she only kind of scraped through. There are successive rounds of voting and it was only really at the last minute that she got through. Originally she came third but then some votes kind of transferred to her. So when she became Prime Minister she never had the backing of her parliamentary party. Then she didn't really try to make friends. She put only her allies into her cabinet. She isolated those who had opposed her rather than trying to unify the party behind her so she was kind of fighting with one hand behind her back from the start then she went ahead and implemented some very far right in economic terms policies really cutting taxes for the wealthy which she didn't pay for by cutting programmes everywhere else. She said

she was going to pay for by borrowing. That spooked the markets. There was a run on the pound. The pensions market had to be propped up by the Bank of England. And one by one, she had to ditch her policies, ditch her allies. She lost her chancellor, she lost her home secretary. And in the end, her MP said, look, you're going to have to go, otherwise we're going to force you out. And sure enough, that's what she did. Why not just dissolve parliament and hold an election so the British people can have another say in their government? That is very much what the opposition Labour Party would like to happen.

The trouble is that opinion polls are showing that if the Conservative Party did that tomorrow, they would be wiped out. I mean, we're talking unpopularity that has not been seen probably since the Second World War. So all of those MPs who have got rid of Liz Truss, a big part of their motivation is because they want to continue to be MPs after an election. And they know that if an election was held tomorrow, that wouldn't happen. You know, Rosa, this upheaval to someone like me, an outsider, looks so chaotic. But in reality, at the end of the day, the members of parliament seem to come together. And that seems different than the US when we're dealing with partisanship. I don't know if that's right. I mean, I think you're right that it is very chaotic. And to me, it feels pretty divided, actually more divided than usual

in terms of usually the fissures are down between the Labour Party and the Conservative Party, who you might broadly compare to the Democrats and the Republicans. But what's happened in our ruling party, I guess, is in a way similar to the Republicans in that you have a bit of a split there. So you have some who are more economically right wing, which Liz Truss certainly was, and some who might be called moderates, who would be like liberal Republicans. And they are really divided about the future for their own party. And one suggestion is that the Conservative Party might actually split over this. Now, I can't quite see that happening, just as it seems like perhaps the Republican Party wouldn't split because it's so well established. But right now, they are a divided party. And I think what might have to happen is for a general election, for them to be out of government to

decide what they want to be. Is this a turning point in British politics and in the Conservative Party? It feels like it. It feels like a turning point to the extent that they really can't go on like this. But I do wonder whether they'll keep lurching on. I mean, any of the candidates that you look at and you examine are not overwhelmingly popular with the members, with the MPs. It's not like there's one there that you think, oh, well, if they elect them, then everything will settle down and be fine. It doesn't feel like that. I mean, I'm sure you're aware that Boris Johnson, the guy that just got kicked out, is currently the leading candidate to replace Liz Truss. So that doesn't

seem like a very good way of kind of unifying the party. All the problems that existed with him would still presumably be there. So I can't quite see how that works. So I kind of think it's not a turning point in that I think the crisis may well continue. I think they would like it to be a turning point and we'll have to see if they can manage it. So the other question is, are there parallels that you see here between what has been happening in the conservative branch of British politics and US conservative politics? There are definitely some parallels. Like the Republican Party, the Conservative Party is fairly divided. There are economic liberals and moderates on one side. There are quite hardline fans of, I guess you would call it Reaganomics or trickle-down economics on the other side.

There's also some divides over the kind of woke wars that you see in the States. And then you've got that big figure looming over it all in the form of Boris Johnson and in the States, Donald Trump. So I definitely think that there are parallels. It's interesting how the American system is in many ways more stable because you've got that strong figurehead of a president that's quite hard to get out unless you impeach them. So in a parliamentary democracy, it's kind of easier to turf a leader out. So the parallels aren't exact, but there are definitely lessons that can be learned, I think, if looking back and forwards across the Atlantic. That was Rosa Prince, editor of The House, a magazine that covers Parliament,

and author of books on UK politics, including Theresa May, The Enigmatic Prime Minister, and Comrade Corbyn, a very unlikely coup. Coming up, an American expat on why the U.S. should take a lesson in nonpartisan political leadership from the British. There's just a healthier political culture over here. And I say this as a very subjective assessment as someone who's lived in the UK for over a decade but watches American politics very closely. This is a situation in which people actually still feel shame. They are shamed out of office. That has stopped in American politics for the most part. That's Brian Kloss again.

He says that shame is part of what led to Truss's resignation. And a lot of that censure was, to use an American term, bipartisan. So Truss's downfall came from her being turned on by both the electorate and by her own party. And neither of those things took root in the United States under Trump. Kloss says that the UK media also played a role in holding trust accountable in a way that might not happen in America's polarized media landscape. The first is that the media environment is very different. So if you flip on BBC News or BBC Radio, you're getting a perspective on politics that is generally shared across the overwhelming majority of the population. I think that this aspect of this sort of shared sense of reality in British politics has been maintained despite the sort of fracturing that has happened in the American media ecosystem, where people basically choose their own reality. They self-select either into MSNBC if they're on

the left or Fox News if they're on the right. Of course, Kloss acknowledges that the way that political leaders are elected in the US and UK are completely different. He says all you need to do is look at the polling to see how those differences play out. You also have the aspects around things like districting, which means that in British politics, minor changes in the polls can lead to electoral wipeouts for members of parliament, for hundreds of members of parliament. So when you look at the polling that Liz Truss faced in recent weeks, the forecasts for a general election, if it were to be held with those poll numbers, showed that the conservatives would lose literally hundreds of seats. They would lose probably more than half of their current seats. He says that in the U.S.,

elections hold fewer consequences for elected officials. Compare that to the midterm elections that are upcoming in the United States. Probably more like 25 to 30 are actually genuinely competitive. And what that means is that about 90 percent of members of Congress don't have to worry about the electorate when they're deciding how to respond to a political issue. And that lack of accountability leads to greater political dysfunction in the U.S. He believes that while what's going on in Britain looks out of control from the U.S. point of view, there is a crucial lesson that the U.S. should take away. Be less partisan. When you think about these dynamics in American politics, what you're really dealing with is a world in which it pays to be partisan. And in

Britain, that is less the case, partly because it's a smaller country with shared political identity. Klaus says while the kind of instability on display this past week causes dysfunction in Parliament, he still believes that at least when it comes to democracy, the UK system functions. So you can look at how the economy is functioning day to day. And on that one, the US wins. But I would rather have a system where people who fail are thrown out of office than a system in which growth happens for a while, but the very fabric of democracy is being torn apart. It's two systems both broken. One, the democracy itself is broken. The other, the economy is broken. And over the long run, I would much rather be in a system where the democracy works,

but the economy can be eventually saved. Brian Kloss teaches global politics at University College London and is a contributing writer for The Atlantic. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Sheryl W. Thompson. Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography. Kauffman.org Support for NPR and the following message come from Carnegie Corporation of New York,

working to reduce political polarization through philanthropic support for education, democracy, and peace. More information at carnegie.org.