This is a peculiarity of the current administration made up of people who thought Brexit was a good idea. All the grandees of the Conservative party were thrown out of the party a couple of years ago.

This could well be the "new normal".

How is running for election, and then being elected, considered 'failing upwards'?

The people that won those elections are poor performers, bad strategists and often abdicate their responsibilities as leaders. If they were born poorer or lower class, they would not be where they are now.

They win elections with media support, even when taking opposite stances day to day because the people that own and run those media companies... Went to school with them.

It's like a big club, and most of us ain't in it.

But if you are in it, you can be stupid, lazy, incompetent or even outright evil and still succeed, aka, fail upwards.

That only requires they are more popular than the opposition, not that they are popular in an absolute sense, let alone that they are competent at their briefs. The main UK opposition party is… “meh”, in every regard that matters for electoral success.

In the last few weeks the UK press has been running stories about supermarket shelves being empty and a general collapse of the domestic logistics system; while the articles split blame for this between Brexit and the self-isolation requirements created during the pandemic, in both cases the buck stops with the government.

There have been other substantial indicators of incompetence at least since Johnson took office.

Despite this, the government has generally been ahead in the polls.

You don’t get elected to the cabinet

this is specifically about the cabinet.

They have been chosen because they are mostly either stupid, or loyal.

Patel is the only one there because she's a leadership threat (as shes the only one more obviously authoritarian and populist than Johnson)

Uncle Rupert doesn’t let his favourite nieces and nephews fall too far.

I had specific incidents in mind. Boris Johnson has been sacked, twice, for dishonesty: https://inews.co.uk/news/uk/times-boris-johnson-flat-lied-13...

> Johnson was hired by the Times through family connections, and fired for a front-page fabrication within months – on his very first front page story

> In November 2004, Boris Johnson was a shadow arts minister under Michael Howard, Conservative Vice-Chair, and editor of the Spectator – when it was reported in multiple tabloids that he had a years-long affair with one of the magazine’s columnists, which had resulted in two terminated pregnancies.

> Johnson publicly stated the allegations were untrue, calling them an “inverted pyramid of piffle”, and made the same assurances they were false to Michael Howard. When proof of the allegations was presented, Howard asked Johnson to resign, only for him to refuse and therefore be fired for dishonesty, for the second time in his career.

[sidebar: I'd forgotten that Michael Howard was editor of the Spectator. It's basically the official opinion journal of the Tory party]

Grant Shapps is another one with a significant career of failures; https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/mar/16/revealed-gr... he ran a spammy business under a false name.

He's also got previous for cryptocurrency bribery https://www.ft.com/content/cd8f78f8-2850-3109-b577-269eedb1e... and a bullying scandal that involved the suicide of a young activist https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/grant-shapps-...

Gavin Williamson is a fairly minor offender; his only previous sacking was for leaks, and everybody leaks all the time https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48126974

More broadly, the UK has a whole category of unelected legislators - the House Of Lords - who are political appointees, sometimes with money changing hands, who are not accountable to the electorate and cannot be removed. Can't get less meritocratic than that while still being a democracy.

OP’s suggestion is that Britain is more meritocratic than the USA, so I think your point can coexist with theirs.