Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Sheilbh]

I've mentioned before - but I think the record on emissions by the Brown through Johnson governments is actually impressive. We've maybe done the easy stuff now and it'll be more difficult in the future. It's an interesting example (like pensions reform) of one of those areas where a broad cross-party consensus emerges - I'm not quite sure why those areas become consensus politics

Prompted by the latest stats on emissions from BEIS which estimates it's the biggest fall since the General Strike:


Thread by Ed Conway of Sky:

Ed Conway
@EdConwaySky
Thread: Since the UK has just released its latest data on greenhouse gas emissions, this feels like as good a time as any to look at the numbers and ask: what's really going on? The broad picture is v promising (see these headlines from earlier): emissions falling fast.
Before we go any further, this is not a thread about "the science". It's not a debate abt climate change. Feel free to debate that elsewhere. This is abt the DATA. And while there are some interesting question marks over the data, the overarching aim of govt right now is v simple
The UK has committed, in law, to get greenhouse gas emissions down to zero in net terms by 2050. If you consider the starting point for that effort to be 1990, it's now nearly (but not quite) halfway there. This is quite something...

You might be wondering: in that case why did a lot of newspapers report last week that we were ALREADY halfway there? They were basing that on an estimate by the brilliant @DrSimEvans
. But since then BEIS have revised a lot of their data. So actually we're not quite there yet.
414 million tonnes of emissions in 2020. Where did they come from?
Intuitive answer is: power stations. But these days they are only 19% of UK GHG emissions (vs 33% a decade ago; more & more power coming from renewables vs fossil fuels).
More emissions come from TRANSPORT.

Within a few years domestic greenhouse gas emissions (mainly our boilers) will prob be higher than those from power stations.
Note which lines are going down and which ones aren't. This is why getting to net zero will be tricky. Power generation, it turns out, was the easy bit.

I feel like housing and transport will involve costs to individuals and that will be distributed unevenly - so I suspect that may be the point when the consensus might break down.

[Admiral Yi]

The Economist had an article awhile back about the superior relative performance of Britain.

[Zanza]

Volt has seats in e.g. European Parliament (from Germany), Dutch parliament and some German regional/communal assemblies. Its deliberately pan-European.

They did surprisingly well in our elections, as newcomers. I have to say I was tempted as well, I might vote for them in the next euro elections. So strange we can only vote for our own country's parties in european elections.

The party groups like EPP, ALDE, S&P in the European Parliament become slowly more visible. See the recent EPP/Orban spat.

[Sheilbh]

The Economist had an article awhile back about the superior relative performance of Britain.

Being able to close lots of coal factories is very helpful And, in fairness, we are a minnow compared to the rest of the world (though not in terms of our historical emissions ).

But this chart is really striking and you can see the gear change starting with Brown in 2007 and then continuing despite 10 years of Tory-led government:


I don't know how or why this issue has become an area of such strong cross-party consensus (and it might breakdown) but I think it's probably interesting to work out given how tribal UK politics generally is. There may be useful insights on how to almost de-politicise the issue and move it into technocracy, which may be relevant elsewhere.

[Valmy]

The UK is back to levels of CO2 Emissions Queen Victoria would recognize.

Well I hope the UK is as big of a leader in reducing CO2 emissions as they once were in increasing them.

[The Larch]

Incidentally, are there any successful "expat parties" in Europe? Back when EU nationals were first allowed to vote in local elections, there was a project to found a German party in Mallorca, but it never went anywhere.

Arguably some of the parties in the Turkish diaspora?

Once again the Netherlands has us covered, there's a recently created party there that represents the Turkish community (and apparently is accused of being basically Erdogan's puppets).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denk_(political_party)

[celedhring]

I meant parties seeking the expat vote (in EU local elections). The voters of those Turkish parties are nationals of Netherlands/Germany/whatever.

[The Larch]

I meant parties seeking the expat vote (in EU local elections). The voters of those Turkish parties are nationals of Netherlands/Germany/whatever.

I guess for that you'd need a sizeable enough population in order to reach a certain critical mass. Some towns in Alicante and that area do have local independent parties that are formed by foreign residents there, mostly British and Germans, for instance.

[Josquius]

Excellent news from Manchester. Hopefully the rest of the country follows. Desperately needed up here.

BBC News - Greater Manchester bus network back under public control
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-56523708

[Sheilbh]

Excellent news from Manchester. Hopefully the rest of the country follows. Desperately needed up here.

BBC News - Greater Manchester bus network back under public control
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-56523708

I meant parties seeking the expat vote (in EU local elections). The voters of those Turkish parties are nationals of Netherlands/Germany/whatever.

I'm not aware of any. I also don't think there's any area of the UK where there'd be a concentrated enough expat vote in that way to make that much of a difference. Possibly in some diaspora communities - so I know there's been links from divisions in Bengali politics to some big rows in the Bengali community in Tower Hamlets. Similarly if you go back far enough Liverpool elected an Irish nationalist MP and used to have a lot of Protestant Party councillors (but they were more anti-Irish locals).

[celedhring]

Barcelona, for example, has 30k registered Italians. If they were a voting block* they could land one seat in the council, which would be enough to play kingmaker.

*A bunch of them are actually Argies.

[Barrister]

Barcelona, for example, has 30k registered Italians. If they were a voting block* they could land one seat in the council, which would be enough to play kingmaker.

*A bunch of them are actually Argies.

Italians agreeing to work together and vote as a block.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah - I suppose in the UK this is where voting systems come into play. FPTP and lots of small multi-member wards so they'd need to be fairly concentrated to have an impact. So I'm in a ward of about 15,000 people with three councillors and quite a small area. There will be wards where a diaspora or expat community can win elections on their own but I think they'd probably be pretty rare

Possible exception would be London Assembly elections or devolved elections where there's an element of PR and a list system.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

I meant parties seeking the expat vote (in EU local elections). The voters of those Turkish parties are nationals of Netherlands/Germany/whatever.

they probably have two nationalities and the reality is that they're more turk than dutch.

[Sheilbh]

I feel bad for mocking the pint of milk MP now. He was making a very quirky point about the right to protest. But he then had a wider interview and he comes across as a very nice - interestingly he has OCD and serious anxiety issues and (possibly relatedly) a very severe needlephobia so is not being vaccinated until it can be done nasally or with a pill. So he also goes to the dentist every four months to avoid the need for anything that needs anaesthesia and he volunteered for the nasal vaccine trial (but they need to take blood to monitor your immune response).

It was really interesting hearing someone, especially someone prominent actually explain his feelings and situation.