High Ridge government pondering

I was re-reading House of Steel, and started I was pondering a few things about the Janacek Admiralty, and by extension the High Ridge government, and came to a few conclusions that made me sit back and really question things.


Both High Ridge, and Janacek are of EXTREME Conservative leanings, and both repeatedly fought against any military budget increases, against R&D funding increases (thankfully they never knew about Gram to resist that too), against building up to resist the Peeps in the first place, against retaliations during Pavel Young's court-martial, and countless other times where they tried to play the patronizing noble who isn't immediately resorting to violence.


Yet, they also were incredibly quick to try and then take credit for those very same things, and not one person (seemed to) stand up with proof that in fact they resisted every single notion they are now busy taking credit for having started and operated; despite it actually being the Crown Loyalists who got the votes to do it, and operated them all the way through until the Cease-fire.


I'm just incredibly surprised that neither Queen Elizabeth, nor Hamish or someone else suitable ever brought up those sorts of public records to remind the public how short-sighted the High Ridge government was.


Surely someone thought of going all the way back to the time of then-Lieutenant & Prince Roger originally suggesting the build-up and then-Commander Janacek's scathing condemnation of it (later Admiral Janacek dislocated his arm, patting himself on the back over that same issue and his DEAR cousin Hemphill doing the research).

There would also be not-so-historical records that vote after vote, and numerous speeches AGAINST any form of increased military would surely have gone a long way in cutting High Ridge's government off at the knees wouldnt it? Especially when they got to the Naval Budget debates that Honor & Hamish spent so many occasions arguing against.... having the ability to bring up 'proof' that both the Conservatives and Liberals have always resisted that spending at every occasion, and then now after taking credit for the same super military immediately tried to disband nearly the entire Navy the very second 'active military operations' were halted due to a cease-fire pending peace negotiations (not even a formal peace treaty).


Or am I really over-thinking things here?

Politicians lie. People who already support those politicians tend to ignore anything that contradicts the lie. People already opposed to them don't need more evidence to strengthen their positions. People in the middle tend to ignore anything that they don't perceive as directly effecting them unless it is a personal hot button issue.

I strongly suspect that the information was brought up in-universe but it had no real effects, and RFC just didn't see any reason to spend time writing about it.

Agreed. Pointing politicians' hypocrisy out doesn't seem to work.

We can hope that the Manticore populace is far better informed than the average human on Earth today, but RFC did point out that they had biased newsies even in Manticore. For that, just look at WoH and the same High Ridge government period.

Another problem that muddies the waters here is that, despite having always been spending conservatives, the High Ridge government was spending like crazy. Literally, they had checked their sanity at the door and were spending on what didn't need to be spent on. So that disarmed the arguments of their opposition.

Manticoran politics was extremely anachronistic even by our standards. The House of Lords was their primary legislative chamber with the power of the purse and provided the Prime Minister. They never have to worry about being voted out by angry constituents.

Indeed, High Ridge's own party did not have many seats in the Commons, if any. All he had to do to stay in power was delay the next election, which would result in new peers being seated(from San Martin).

My impression is that his party(which strikes me as more socially conservative than fiscally conservative) mostly saw his "Build the Peace" projects as an opportunity for personal enrichment and tolerated the rest of it as camouflage or the price of staying in power with their Liberal and Progressive allies(who had large chunks of Commons seats) as they did what they could to preserve their current social order with the Lords' impending expansion.

Of course, that sort of thing has been ended. High Ridge's tenure backfired so hard that the Lords lost their primacy, with the purse transferring to the Commons, although they still get to provide the Prime Ministers.

Hmm... that means Willie Alexander is literally the first democratically elected Prime Minister of Manticore. Others before him may well have enjoyed high levels of voter and Commons support but they had to be backed by at least a working majority of Lords to take office.

I certainly understand your incredulity.

But if Elizabeth's very hard stance made no difference, nothing else would.

Times change. Generally now it's the Conservative governments who spend on the military, and the Progressive governments who spend on welfare.
RFC's original political stance over 20 years ago may have painted a picture that slanted things. Not having universal adult suffrage would greatly influence politics.

Daryl wrote:Times change. Generally now it's the Conservative governments who spend on the military, and the Progressive governments who spend on welfare.

Not necessarily. I think that's a very current view of affairs, not necessarily a constant.

If you go back further, to Medieval and Modern times, the conservatives would not want the government to field a large military because that would threaten their primacy. In fact, the concept of national military forces is a rather new thing. Meanwhile, early liberals were the city-dwellers merchant class and they may have wanted expansionism for their markets. They would have then supported conquering foreign lands.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Daryl wrote:Times change. Generally now it's the Conservative governments who spend on the military, and the Progressive governments who spend on welfare.

Not necessarily. I think that's a very current view of affairs, not necessarily a constant.

If you go back further, to Medieval and Modern times, the conservatives would not want the government to field a large military because that would threaten their primacy. In fact, the concept of national military forces is a rather new thing. Meanwhile, early liberals were the city-dwellers merchant class and they may have wanted expansionism for their markets. They would have then supported conquering foreign lands.

Yes. The names of political parties usually bear no resemblance to their core ideologies after enough time has passed. These names just become marketing brands eventually.

So we end up with a Conservative party which doesn't conserve anything(socially or fiscally), a Labour party which doesn't work, a Liberal party which isn't, a Progressive party which regresses and a Monster Raving Loony Party which makes perfect sense.

From what I understand of the USA, it's the same. The Democrats and Republicans swapped around at least once, about 100 years ago.