Loser's consent and hypocrisy

 Hi All,

We've been hearing a lot about this concept ever since the 'storming' or 'attempted coup' on the US Congress. The concept of loser's consent is that in democracies the winning side either continues or takes over from another side. That 'other' gracefully hands over the reigns of power to the other and is accepted as the legitimate government. The cycle continues with every election. In America there is a couple of months of transition and co-operation, but in Britain the transfer of power usually happens by mid morning the day after the election and according to the Salisbury convention if the legislation proposed by the government was in the winning party's manifesto, the House of Lords does not veto or delay these bills before the House. 

The left , however, have criticised Trump and his supporters not just for the Capitol Hill debacle, but also because of the refusal of these types to acknowledge that Trump lost and that somehow the election was stolen from him- despite repeated court cases, often overseen by Republican judges and no real evidence enough to prove the voter fraud alleged. So the left feel that in refusal to admit defeat, Trump deliberately de-legitimised the current conventions and norms of  losers consent.

This is a fair point. However the far liberal -left in America have not exactly been any less charitable to the right when it comes to taking over power and are basically being hypocritical here. 

Here are the antics of the left in the House way back in 2001, when it was Bush vs Gore. 

And here is the antics when Trump was being elected : 

(note : the Congressman who objects is the same chap who led the recent Trump impeachment trial. Strange. It's not like they wanted to get rid of Trump from day 1?).

You will note from both clips that the mainstream Democrats as represented by Gore and Biden did acknowledge loser's consent, but it was the increasingly vocal and now dominant strain of the liberal left Democrats who didn't. 

As for Britain and loser's consent, we see here an even greater hypocrisy on behalf of the far liberal- left. We need look no further than the Brexit referendum held in 2016 and five years later we are finally out of the EU. But in those five years we witnessed a near bloodless coup, by those trying to thwart Brexit. It wasn't just opposition, but actually the road blocking and wrecking that went beyond loser's consent. In fact it was worse than that, because the left tried to say the vote wasn't legitimate and that it was all of a conspiracy somehow master minded by Putin. Or that it was a referendum in which the British people were too 'stupid' to understand what they were doing, that it was just a glorified opinion poll or that only 35% of people actually voted for it. 

In fact there are people still whinging on about this even now, although I think the election win in 2019 was decisive enough to convince remainers that it was 'over'. That and the recent vaccine debacle, has left a solid minority core of fanatics who can't stand any criticism of the EU (It was great reading the comments in the guardian wherein some of the most fiercest anti- brexiters got attacked by even more loopy remainers for pointing out the obvious).