In this case the two constituencies that have a vote on this are 1) the 300-and-change Conservative MPs in Parliament, and after they’ve narrowed it down to two final candidates then 2) the 150,000 or so paid-up members of the Conservative Party. That’s who decides who the next PM is. As I said, not representative.
WAG: Boris may be a buffoon, but at least he’s an *articulate *buffoon. For whatever reason, Brits pay a lot of attention to how people speak. Boris may say moronic thinks, but unlike Trump, he doesn’t sound like a moron when saying them.
The real question is, why doesn’t everyone hate him?
British humor is more often aimed at taking buffoons down a peg (Wilt, Bertie Wooster, Blackadder, Yes Minister) and they have a habit of burning people in effigy or doing stuff that would puzzle an anthropologist like running down a hill after a wheel of cheese.
Are you saying other nationalities would just allow the wheel of cheese to escape? 
Other nationalities might still run after the cheese but they would reserve getting stumbling drunk for celebrations that come after the cheese chasing rather than before, during and after.
…and the culture also has its downsides.
(I appreciate that no one bats an eye when I visit and pop into an off license at 8:30am for a bottle of wine. The fact that they’re the only ones open on Sunday mornings, not so much.)
I think Trump just got on the UK’s bad side right from the start. He’s pro brexit, which pisses a lot of people off. He keeps lying about British affairs or just saying stupid shit like “I’d sue the EU for Brexit”, whatever that means. It’s personal because Trump made it so right from the start by being more up in Britain’s business than in other countries where he’s made similar high profile state visits.
The correctly question is obviously why has the U.S. gone utterly insane.
And why has the same insanity infected 28% of people in the U.K.
It’s not the sentiments of the 72% in the U.K. and the >90% in Germany etc. that are shocking to any civilized human being.
As a civilized human being, I am shocked the the Spanish are that much smarter than the French, the Germans, and the British.
Not at all; we like or dislike them on an individual basis, according to their perceived qualities.
Obviously, there’s a range of opinion across the population, but broadly speaking, I’d say it breaks down like this:
We liked Kennedy, didn’t much care for Johnson, and disliked Nixon.
Ford seemed like a bit of a twit, but we mostly liked Carter.
Most of us thought Reagan was a dangerous idiot, but Bush The First seemed mostly sensible.
We rather liked Clinton. Bush The Second appeared to combine the worst of Reagan and Ford, so Obama was something of a relief.
We still can’t quite believe Trump got elected.
From your list, it looks like the average Briton is similar to the average US Democrat. If you asked the average Canadian, Australian or Japanese what they thought of US presidents, they would probably think much the same thing.
As an American, neither can I. But as to how - it was the same process by which you guys voted for Brexit, and by about the same margins, ginned on by pretty much the same people.
I suspect you’re kidding but … just in case.
If you stood in a British street and asked a succession of passers by whether they knew anything about tea being poured into a harbour I think it’s fair to say you would ask a lot of people before you found anyone who understood the reference.
I have noticed that some people labour under the impression that the British are deeply concerned about the events of the 1770’s, the reality is that most people are barely aware of them. Britain has a lot of history and a bunch of colonies in the latter half of the eighteenth century getting pissed off with the, then, government is really a very small part of it.
Best characterisation of him I’ve ever read.
He wants to take out the NHS. That’s sufficient.
Why is that?
This is the correct response. The fact that about 40% of Americans approve of Trump is mind boggling and deeply disturbing.
I saw a clip of a press conference with Theresa May where Trump was asked about the NHS in the context of a trade agreement, and of course he answered like a kid who hadn’t done the required reading. But I was left wondering what the NHS had to do with trade and why an American President would be asked about it. What was the deal? Do US Presidents have some influence on British health care policy?
Anyway, my guess is that Trump’s apparent desire to undermine NATO, which has helped guarantee peace in Europe for 70+ years, also doesn’t sit well with Britain, who has probably enjoyed going the past several decades without sending a generation of its young people to be killed on the Continent.
In most of Europe, and particularly Britain, the media is very critical about politicians of all stripes.
Witness the US ambassador to the Netherlands trying to play the “fake news” card and being humiliated, or Shapiro’s recent interview with the right-wing journalist Andrew Neil.
For us, it’s unbelievable to watch, say, Sarah Sanders lie repeatedly, and even use childish insults against people who correctly point out errors or wrongdoing by the government. She should be utterly humiliated and forced to apologize after any single instance.
Let alone Trump.
Trump is way beyond the pale: he exhibits a level of childishness, vindictiveness and frankly stupidity that is orders of magnitude beyond what you can get away with in the UK; and yeah even including Farage and Boris.
But more specifically some of the policy decisions he’s made are unforgiveable, again even to those on the right wing. e.g. both sides of the aisle agree climate change is a significant problem, so pulling out of the paris accords (while understanding fuck all about the science) is enough for 70-80 percent of the population to hate him right there. Then add on about a dozen things like that.
At the risk of oversimplifying:
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The NHS is a huge buyer of drugs.
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They use their market power to influence prices. Basically, they evaluate the clinical benefits of the drug, they look at the cost of development and production, and they decide what they are willing to pay for it. You sell to them at that price, or you don’t sell to them.
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For obv. reasons big pharma doesn’t like this. They’d much rather it was they who set the prices.
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Tariffs are already low. These days, trade deals are all about reducing non-tariff barriers. Big pharma seens the NHS’s monopsonist position as a non-tariff barrier. They’ll be pressing for any UK/US trade deal to include “fair procedures” for tenderers to the NHS.
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Simlarly with any contracting-out of services that the NHS may engage in. They’ll be looking for terms in the trade agreement which guarantee their ability to participate in that market, and on terms that are profit-friendly.
Basdically, whenever you privatise or part=privatise a public service by contracting it out, there are tensions between (a) the interests of tenderers, who want to maximise their profit in providing the service, (b) the interests of taxpayers, who want to minimise the cost of buying the services and (c) the interets of users, who want a high quality of service. There’s a widespread distrust in the UK of the Tory right, and of the Brexit movement, both of whom are suspected of having a strong ideological preference for privatisation, and of being attentive to the interests of business profitability over those of taxpayes and service users, which will skew the balance when these tensions play out. And there’s a justifiable pride in the publicly-provided, free-to-users, National Health Service. It all adds up to a huge degree of mistrust as to what the agenda is here, and how it would play out.