E.U: Leave or Stay? Your thoughts.

What is the problem with consulting a website of MP voting records? Don't like your facts over easy?

And if he is so principled, why would he compromise this for the party whip?

And what has Merkel got to do with anything?

Point is: He says one thing, votes the other way --usually away from the values of human and citizens' rights. He is insincere and he lacks compassion.

 

The only fact is he voted one way or another. Not why, not on what basis.

I'm saying voting with your conscience on such an issue doesn't indicate much about leadership.
He is voting with his party whip and he is a conservative. If you want to exclude him on that basis as a tory leader then you are excluding everyone else. See?
He hasn't said one thing and voted another, if you want to crucify potential PMs on the bare face of their voting record with no context then no one is what you say they are.

And if you were closer to the american view of civil and individual rights then you'd vote against ECHR. The ECHR goes outside the bounds of its text consistently.

I don't think many of the votes say what you think it says. All you think of is what do I think is a compassionate thing to do and then judge against that, like you have a monopoly on compassion.

 

I am comparing what he says to how he voted and find a discrepancy. I'm sure that he can defend his record eloquently, but that does not mean it is compassionate.

And yeah, voting with the whip against what he believes in makes him as congruent as, say, Theresa May. How is her leadership turning out? Thing with personality is: there has to be a congruent person underneath, else it's just a mask without substance and voters don't respond well to that. Leadership requires much more.

Voting against the Human Rights Act is different from objecting to how the ECHR applies it.

I don't claim to have a monopoly on compassion and I'm not talking about Thatcher, Merkel or Corbyn. I claim that Rees-Mogg's voting record shows a lack of compassion and of congruence. Your counterargument seems to be: "You don't know why he voted that way", and "But he sounds so eloquent, so charming, so polite; how can he not be genuine and compassionate?". Underneath that seems to be the assumption that he'd make a good leader because he appears to handle himself well in public, comes over nice and could give Corbyn a good kicking in a debate. Those are strategic arguments for Tory leadership, not rational arguments for leadership of the country.

 

Can you name lets say three potential replacements for May capable of that other than him?

 

No, which is why May got the job in the first place, and one reason why the Tories haven't jettisoned her yet. The other is that nobody else wants to be holding the Brexit time bomb when it goes off. This is also why Jacob Rees-Mogg hasn't stepped forward to save the party. Best proof of his intelligence is that he doesn't want the job.

But leadership requires not just eloquence and intelligence; it requires congruence and compassion too.

 

Same could be said of Corbyn, the question of 'if not them, then who?' was asked, and Owen Smith was the best they could do...

 

Basically Brexit is a Gordian knot that takes an Alexander the Great to untangle. Turns out all current politicians are not quite Alexander the Great material.

 

We were promised Alexander the Great...

instead we got Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson...

 

Dat hair, though.

 

And when Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept... for the British empire was no longer a thing.

 

In reality all this talk of compassion is just a post hoc justification for your dismissal of him based on inverse snobbery built upon prejudice fostered by his antiquated mannerisms and fortunate birth status. *search your feelings you know it to be true...*

I am saying to say he lacks compassion would require you to admit that they lack compassion. If you are measuring something in any objective fashion it has to be universal.

If you are to exclude him from being compassionate on the basis of whipped votes it would exclude nearly every other tory candidate, in fact likely all. And conservatives stand on a manifesto BTW, they might see implementing it as something they said they'd do
Next is that you determining compassion by those votes requires that it be impossible to have a compassionate motivation either individually, or in the reality of competing interests for limited real resources, and support those measures.

Compassion would come down to your inference of individual motives and as someone who has been on both sides of this political divide in my life I can say that motivations of compassion can involve reducing benefits provision and increasing them, and your reasoning can be totally rooted in what you think alleviates misery the best. That's not to say there aren't bad actors; there are some on the right that simply have no compassion and act in special self interests, and there are some on the left who like to use policy to create a client electorate to continue their special self interests.
The only way I can judge compassion is on the basis of how they talk about why they think something is the right thing to do in relation to that. While we are still talking across threads compassion has to be tempered.

They are strategic arguments for why he should be leader, why he'd win. I think the thing I wouldn't like him to do are off limits and impossible, I think the things I would like him to do will be done, but that's a personal matter not what I am discussing, I don't plan to convince you that a winning conservative government is what you should think is good for the country. But being able to interact with the public, being able to debate, taking a clear direction putting a clear choice to the electorate and being able to persuade putting forth the highest case for your policies is desirable in a leader of a political party.

Parties are there to win elections, I don't spite the left for seeking a winning leader and I wont the right.
(The issues with ECHR as brought into force with the human rights act means that the court can whack out primary legislation by decree and with poor adherence to the text of the EC(on)HR. That was the premise of the private member's bill put forward in its opening statement and a call to create fundamental rights within our current constitution. It's a breach of sovereignty issue)

Be careful with your analogies people, remember what Alexander did with the gordian knot, he didn't bother with the disentaglement and simply chopped it in two...

Davis is quite good in arguing his corner, not with the same oratory and isn't bear trap proof either (remember I'm with DD on women's shirts in his original leadership campaign) so can have gaffes. Similar strain as mogg (libertarian except on marriage.)
Hammond is wet and has the same personality issue as may: It is missing.
Boris is a psychopath that can't argue his way out of a paper bag, eloquence and persuasion is replaced with bumbling and tomfoolery, he stands on nothing except that which advances him
Rudd need I say more... anyone know any necessary hashtags round here?
Ruth davidson hasn't got a seat and seems to like her neck of the woods.
Damian (who?) green.
Sajid javid: never impressed me much.
Leadsom: gaffe prone
Gove: He's a good minister, trouble is he's unlikable.

 

"O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams"
Funnily enough thinking of hamlet I reckon theresa could pull off a good "to be or not to be" nowadays or just the role in general

 

Ooor... you just wish to assume that, so you can dismiss my opinion ("Is it because one is an upper-class toff, my dear fellow?"). Just take my word for it: Jacob Rees-Mogg is not the person you think he is. That's the whole point of his persona. It is so exquisitely refined and polished because he put a lifetime of work in it, and he did so for a reason.

I knew you'd get there eventually. First, I'm not saying that they are not capable of compassion. Most are. But even they are not consistent in their compassion (e.g. Ian Duncan Smith).

The problem here is one of competing values vs emotional avoidance. Values like compassion come at a cost, whether it's defying the whip and risking your political job, the emotional burden of having to deal with a difficult and distressing problem, or conflict with other values such as political or ideological ones. It is natural to want to back away from that and hide behind rationalisation, eloquent argument, rules, principles, bigger-picture ideology and politics. The better politicians are at this, the easier it is for them to do that.

Indeed. And what I see in Jacob Rees-Mogg is a very capable barrister: eloquent, intelligent, rational, skilfully crafted and smoothly polished like the mahogany veneer in the environs he frequents. But not warm and compassionate. Politics is for him a beautiful game, played at grandmaster level like chess.

Only in one version of the myth.

David Davis: bright enough, but lacks the polish that Rees-Mogg has way too much of.
Hammond, I agree, would be just as bad as May.
Boris: technically more a sociopath, but details...
Rudd: #mini-May
Ruth Davidson: best proof of her suitability for the job is that she doesn't want it.
Damian Green: don't know enough about him to have an opinion.
Leadsom is just plain lacking in intelligence. Good at jumping on bandwagons, too dumb to know when to jump off.
Sajid Javid: same.
Gove is a geek of the mad scientist type. Point him at a problem, and he sparks off all sorts of radical ideas. As with all radical ideas, some of them are brilliant, while others are pure crazy. Unfortunately he doesn't know how to tell the difference, and neither always do those in his party.

 

What is compassionate in the short run eg giving money to a destitute drug addict and in the long run tackling the root are different things. What is compassionate for one may come at the cost of another also.
You're assuming what you think is the compassionate thing to do is the compassionate thing to do if we had near perfect information. Again someone with different ideas has possibly the same assumption.

It is the best sport, my favourite in fact.

So with it only sensible to not mess with the leave team, welcome to the Moggtrain*(**)....

*steam obviously.... to this music:

**according to least objectionable option.

I knew you'd get there eventually

 

The compassionate thing to do is the compassionate thing to do, in the moment. No perfect information required. You're not pursuing a strategy or goal; you're acting in accordance with a value.

You keep deconstructing the idea of compassion, rather than explaining how Jacob Rees-Mogg is compassionate. Fact is, all we see is a finely crafted persona --who incidentally has shown himself quite capable of defying the party whip when he wants to, so from where I'm sitting he made choices when he voted the way he did. And I don't think that they were compassionate ones.

Point is, it is a game.

Cult of personality. You may just as well choose Boris Johnson; same thing but with wider mass appeal.

 

Regardless of whatever appeal Boris might have at home (and I'd speculate that has deteriorated since he first burst into the spotlight), there is the problem of his image in continental Europe where he is seen as little more than the class clown of UK politics (which is kind of important if we want to negotiate a good deal with them).

 

Jacob Rees-Mogg would create a similar problem: he'd be regarded as a Dickensian caricature stuck in the days of Empire. Quaintly interesting as a tourist attraction (the Chinese visitors would love him), but out of date and out of touch with modern political reality.

 

I half-agree with this.

I think he is a great parliamentarian, not a great politician. He has a fantastic knowledge of the history of parliament, and how laws work, and would do anything to uphold its traditions and values. But, that a great politician doesn't make. Also, the vast majority of people will never take him seriously. They may take him more seriously than Boris, but that isn't exactly saying much. He would be utterly unelectable and considered out of touch from day one. And I think more and more the Tories don't want OE's running the show (No matter how jokes it is)

Disclaimer. He's the background of my phone.

 

I think that sums it up well.

I suspect that face-to-face I'd find him charming and engaging, but at the same time I'd be wondering which Jacob I'd be really talking to.

It reminds me of a line in the final episode of Person of Interest* recently broadcast on TV:

MP Jo Cox shouted at her colleagues to run before she was killed. She was more concerned about their safety than her own. In a moment that could have been his last, MP Tobias Ellwood** rushed towards danger to help a stabbed police officer. In those moments, they revealed who they really were.

Theresa May had a moment of sorts, and revealed herself in how she handles defeat: not with humility and learning, but by clinging even harder to her brittle persona. Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Nigel Farage: they all revealed themselves after the EU referendum.

Jacob Rees-Mogg has not yet had such a moment. He has not yet revealed who he really is, when push comes to shove. All we see is a finely crafted persona, nurtured and honed in a relatively trouble-free, prosperous life. He may turn out to be a good, compassionate and courageous man. He may turn out to be a mediocre flawed human being. Point is, I can't tell. I see that smoothly polished mask and wonder what he is working so hard to hide. Who he will really turn out to be, when his moment comes.


* If you have never seen this series, please return your geek card now.
** Now there's a Conservative MP who I think could lead this country.

 

That's more than a little disturbing, not that you have Rees-Mogg as your background but that anyone would have pictures of a politician as their background.

Who was it that said politics is Hollywood for ugly people?