A crisis of conservatism creates gridlock on both sides of the Atlantic
In the capital cities of the two great anglophone powers, public business has ground to a halt. On one side of the Atlantic, federal workers are lining up to receive free food while the president holds the government to ransom. On the other side, the House of Commons, a legislative body that likes to call itself the “mother of parliaments,” is completely frozen by its inability to legislate. The government cannot pass the Brexit deal it has negotiated. The opposition cannot unseat the government.
Their double failure is no coincidence. In the 1980s and 1990s, anglophone conservatives were motivated by ideas so powerful that they spread from the United States and Britain to the rest of the world: faith in democracy, faith in free markets, faith in free trade. Pummeled by events — the financial crisis, the wars in Iraq and Syria — both parties have lost that faith. But they have failed to find anything else to replace it. Instead, they have been captured by angry minorities. They are easily manipulated by big funders and special interests. They have stopped thinking about the good of the nation and can focus only on what’s good for the party — or for themselves.
Certainly this is true in Britain, where May’s main focus since 2016 has been party management, not British interests. She adopted the language of the Brexiteer extremists — she told her party that “if you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere,” to great applause — while quietly trying to placate the pro-business center. She lost opportunities for cross-party compromise. Had she been willing to reach across the aisle and forge a compact with the Labour Party, she could have ended the stalemate already: There is a majority in the House of Commons for Britain to remain inside a customs union with Europe, a solution that would let trade continue and avoid the need for a hard border with the island of Ireland.
At least until now, Republican leaders in Congress have also refused to embrace a pragmatic solution — pass legislation to re-open the government, make a compromise on border security — for exactly the same kinds of reasons. Like May, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has refused to reach across the aisle in order to pay civil servants because he fears a split in his party. Like the British Conservatives, American Republicans answer only to their own voters, not to the population at large. As for the U.S. president, Trump’s personal narcissism leaves no room for concern for anyone — not government workers, not his party colleagues. His voters seem motivated by tribalism, not ideas, to support him.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/a-crisis-of-conservatism-creates-gridlock-on-both-sides-of-the-atlantic/2019/01/24/f7b4b776-1ff7-11e9-8b59-0a28f2191131_story.html?utm_term=.a6a91943d862
The crisis started with Thatcher/Reagan but it's culminated in absolute shitshows on both sides of the pond.
