The basis of a world, now vanished like a puff of smoke

 From Richard Murphy's blog on 9th April 2026, entry 'Clinging on to sanity':

'https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2026/04/09/clinging-on-to-sanity/

'For most of my life, I, and I suspect many others, have operated with a set of implicit assumptions about politics.

First, that whilst I accepted that politicians could be reckless, self-serving, or even corrupt, there were still limits to what they would do.'

Since these limits presumably did not fall from the sky like hail, this raises some obvious questions:

1.  Who set these limits?
2.  How?
3.  Why did they do so?

Limits to politicians' action in an electoral democracy are (1) set by voters (2) voting against politicians who break these limits.  Without this, the so-called limits are no limits at all and will soon vanish into thin air, as we now see.

This raises 2 questions:

1.  Was the implicit assumption about politicians facing limits to corruption ever valid?  

2.  If so, why has the electorate changed its behaviour?