Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Tamas]

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/dec/09/gig-economy-workers-to-get-employee-rights-under-eu-proposals

I would like to dedicate this to the India-born Uber driver who explained to me once he voted Leave because he couldn't tolerate East European immigrants getting free handouts.

[Sheilbh]

I don't follow why people are surprised (much less defend them) when obviously chaotic bullshit artists like Johnson or Trump come into office and things turn out a mess.

I've not really understood the last decade of British politics because I just don't get the attraction of Cameron or Johsnon.

I think with Johnson it is helped by the fact that he was a fairly successful mayor and that London hosted the Olympics well on his watch. So he'd spent a decade as an MP and longer in the media circles (Have I Got New For You? etc) as a joke. Then he had two pretty decent terms as mayor which gave him credibility. He was less transformative than Ken, but, I'd argue, probably better than Sadiq.

I also think a big part of it is the Have I Got News For You? thing - Johnson isn't a very good bullshitter because voters are pretty aware of it and don't buy it. He was popular on that show because he laughed and made jokes about himself and Tories. As, Tom McTague's said (and I'm nicking his examples), I think if anything his entire career has been one long nod and wink with the public. The public is in on the joke with him, mocking everyone else in politics's bullshit. They're not duped. For example in his UN speech on climate when he talked about people still clinging to the notion that "the world was made for our gratification and pleasure" and that whatever mess we make, someone else will always clean it up - we all know he's talking about himself there.

Or in 2019 when May stepped down and lots of Tory candidates were declaring their duty to serve and higher purpose motivating their leadership campaigns. When Johnson announced his he was asked if he wanted the job by a journalist and replied "I think....ahm....look...erm....ahm.....I'm going to go for it. Of course I'm going to go for it." Nothing about a higher calling or public service - which is the day-to-day bullshit of politics - just an "of course".

I think part of it is that he is the only politician I can think of in my lifetime who people genuinely find quite funny - and normally in a self-deprecating way. And I think humour is a hell of a weapon to win over the British public (far more than sentimentality, for example). If you look at the polling people don't believe Johnson, they don't think he's trustworthy - but they think they're in on the joke while most other politicians are lying and bullshitting but pretending not to. Just look earlier in this thread where people are saying that despite everything politicians say, the real motivations are normally vaguely psychopathic drives to have power - that's an entire system encrusted in bullshit, and it's not an uncommon view (though I think it's wrong). Johnson's more likely to come in and say of course ego and power has a bit to do with why he's in politics - he's in on the joke and let's the public in too.

But as I've said before - and as is true with lots of jokes - my view is that Johnson's schtick will get old at some point (it may be happening now) and when it does, people will turn very, very quickly.

Edit: For example - this was shared separately Tim Bale on some issue. Here's the public's take on Johnson on the day he became Tory leader. That, to me, seems pretty fair. The big point was they preferred that to Corbyn. The public knew what they were getting they thought it was better than another couple of years of wrangling over Brexit or Corbyn and his clown car of anti-semitic fellow travellers:


Edit: Another example of Johnson not doing the normal bullshit/letting people in on the joke I remember, I think it was in his first mayoral campaign, when a journalist asked him what the price of a pint of milk is - because that's the sine qua non of being in touch (and according to aides prominent candidates literally get coached on this stuff to avoid a Bush I fumble). Johnson said "I've no idea. I can tell you the price of a bottle of champagne - how about that?"

At least people like Sebastian Kurz carefully cultivated an image of competence and ability before the facade came tumbling down.

Yeah I think most people, because RH is right, the vast majority of people don't follow politics will have seen that he was a Tory who won London twice, was in charge at the Olympics and then Foreign Secretary. So he had executive experience - you'd need to follow pretty closely to realise that he was a bad foreign secretary and that he had a very strong team that he relied on very heavily when he was mayor (and even that indicates good executive experience assembling a team and knowing when to delegate)..

I think my focus would go onto the Tory MPs who knew all of Johnson's flaws up close, who are political obsessives and who still decided to back him as leader. I think it was pure cynicism.

[The Larch]

I guess that the whole Boris clown act would be much more pallateable if it didn't take place in the context of a massive global pandemic. In quieter times it'd be far more tolerable.

[Sheilbh]

I guess that the whole Boris clown act would be much more pallateable if it didn't take place in the context of a massive global pandemic. In quieter times it'd be far more tolerable.

That's not had a huge impact with voters - and I agree. I don't think there would be much difference whoever was in charge because I think a lot of the flaws and issues were structural. The polls basically showed people didn't blame Johnson for the first wave/viewed it as a natural disaster, blamed him for the second wave (rightly), gave credit for the vaccine roll-out and that's now run out. I don't think that's an unfair appraisal. In the context of Europe the UK is still in the position at the end of the first wave at around the same levels as Italy, Spain and Belgium.

Separately the Indy have got a copy of the leveling up paper and it sounds promising (and in line with what Tyr wants ), but inevitably the Treasury have already said they have a veto over the economic policies But any sign that ministers are noticing the institutional mess of English local government is good.

Ministers plan sweeping changes to local government as part of levelling up agenda, leaked paper reveals
Exclusive: Draft levelling up white paper, seen by 'The Independent', reveals key details of government's flagship policy
Anna Isaac, Ashley Cowburn

The government plans to radically alter local government in England, replacing it with a single-tier mayoral-style system, according to a draft of the government's levelling up white paper seen by The Independent.

The document – marked "Official Sensitive" – states the government is setting out a "new devolution framework for England" based on a model of a directly elected leader "over a well-defined economic geography".

The ambition is to strip back layers of local government and replace them with a single-tier system, as in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland, but the government is already braced for a backlash to the plans, according to one senior official.

"Levelling up requires coherent local institutions," the document reads. With local government split across county councils, district councils and unitary authorities there needs to be a more streamlined approach, it suggests.

At present, across most of England there are two tiers of local government, county and district, which share responsibility for council services. The proposals would scrap those tiers and take an approach seen in London and other metropolitan areas where one single structure takes charge of all services.

The plans proposed in the draft paper would mean a huge overhaul of local government, and either scrapping or merging England's 181 district councils and 24 county councils.

The step towards single tier local government would need to be under way by 2023 in order to coincide with changes in funding for regions. A new Local Growth Funding Roadmap detailing how this will work will be released in 2022, and then enforced in 2023, according to the paper.

Boris Johnson's government will also define its flagship levelling up agenda with a host of end-of-decade "missions" on crime, health and living standards.

The document lays out 13 missions with which to "anchor" the agenda, which the prime minister has described as the central purpose of his administration, and all come with a 2030 deadline.

The government's white paper was promised before the end of the year, but last week it emerged the proposals would be delayed until 2022 as ministers grapple with controversies on multiple fronts and the increasing threat of Covid with the new omicron variant.

The missions include targets from narrowing gaps in life expectancy to an undefined target to reduce the numbers of people renting "non-decent homes".

There are also commitments to have nationwide gigabit-capable broadband and 4G coverage, to increase the number of adults in training in low-skilled areas by 20 per cent, and to increase KS2 outcomes in the bottom third of local authority areas by more than a third by 2030.

"By 2030, we will have a globally competitive city in every region and nation of the UK," the paper reads.

The proposals amount to "wholesale changes to information, incentives and institutions" which "underpin decision-making in the UK".

While the commitments are UK-wide, much of the paper focuses on what can be achieved within England, noting limits to Westminster's powers to override existing devolved powers in the other nations of the UK.

Each mission will be "a rolling 10-year endeavour", and reviewed at each spending review by the Treasury and there is an additional document that sets out metrics for measuring progress on each.

But the 2030 targets are likely to be seized on by opposition parties at Westminster amid the backdrop of imminent concerns over living standards this winter, the manifesto-flouting 1.25 percentage point increase to national insurance, and the unequal impact of the government's social care reforms in different areas of the country.

The white paper also aims to reform the collation and sharing of data across local government. Each of the levelling up missions will be measured against data dashboards, to make it easier to monitor progress. The metrics used to create these will be published alongside the government's white paper.

Several parts of the draft paper show that key decisions from the levelling up cabinet committee and the Treasury have yet to be signed off.

A Treasury official told The Independent that this department would have the final call on economic policies laid out in the white paper.

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities declined to comment ahead of publication.

[Tamas]

system, as in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland

All economic powerhouses well worth to emulate for some quick economic levelling up action. :p

[Sheilbh]

All economic powerhouses well worth to emulate for some quick economic levelling up action. :p

Scotland has a bigger economy per capita than most English regions - you've been in the South-East too long! (I think Scotland is the richest region/nation after London and the South-East despite English sneers )

And I hadn't realised but even Wales and Northern Ireland are ahead of the North-East.

But I think the basic point is correct - you cannot reduce regional inequality without establishing regional leadership and power. The devolved nations are models but so is London and so is Manchester and the Tees Valley where two very different mayors are getting results, frankly so is almost every other country in the world with more coherent, less over-lapping and disempowered local government institutions.

The reporter who got the scoop says she'll be writing about more of the detail - as there's a lot - over the next few days but has also apparently discovered that local government Twitter is a thing My view is these reforms sound good but they still need money. And we are obsessed with skills in this country, despite being ahead of, say, France or Germany on PISA comparisons - I think the area we really lack is physical infrastructure. But skills are nice, nebulous and don't require anyone to build anything anywhere ever so I'd far rather see a target for say - number of historic woodlands cut down for new public transport or rate of falling property values due to overdevelopment

Edit: Andrew Mitchell on Newsnight with a veiled threat here: "The mood of the Conservative Party is sulphurous and we need to see some grip from No 10...the history of the Tory Party is littered with ruthlessness on these occasions but I'm confident that Boris will get a grip."

[Tamas]

  The neverending and completely avoidable hole-digging continues.

Party implies balloons, says minister, explaining why he referred to No 10 Christmas 'gathering'
Paul Scully, the business minister, drew the short straw this morning and was doing an interview round on behalf of the government. Jack Doyle, the communictions director, is normally the person who decides who gets put up by No 10 on the morning programmes, but when Scully was asked on BBC Breakfast whether Doyle should still be in his job, in the light of reports that he gave a speech at the 18 December No 10 party last year, he would not comment on this.

On LBC Scully got drawn into an argument about the defintion of a party. When it was pointed out that he kept talking about a "gathering", not a party, Scully implied that the absence of balloons could be a mitigating factor. He said:

Look, 'party' suggests, and you see some of the graphics that go around with some of the coverage here, with balloons and poppers and these kind of things. It suggests that there's big invitations going out and lots of people coming in from elsewhere and those kind of things, so I think it's right to be proportionate until we know the detail.

But Scully refused to appear on the Today programme. Justin Webb, the presenter, said that was because Scully was "was not prepared to come on the programme and face the kind of interview we might have conducted", and Nick Robinson, Webb's co-presenter, told listeners that they had missed out on Scully saying, on another programme, that it had been a "difficult" week for the government and that he was "very comfortable about the prime minister's integrity".

[The Larch]

No balloons, no party!

[Sheilbh]

Poor guy on the invitations comment - The Times have just reported invitations went out three weeks in advance to about fifty people. There would be cheese and booze (but no balloons)

This is why ministers don't want to do media: they don't trust that the line they get from Number 10 will be revealed to be untrue within minutes.

[Tamas]

Poor guy on the invitations comment - The Times have just reported invitations went out three weeks in advance to about fifty people. There would be cheese and booze (but no balloons)

This is why ministers don't want to do media: they don't trust that the line they get from Number 10 will be revealed to be untrue within minutes.

This means they'll just have to dig in on the balloons requirement.

[The Larch]

I wonder about other requiriments for parties. How about funny hats? And confetti? Squeakers?

[The Brain]

Imagine a world where you have adults in government.

[Tamas]

PM might not have known about No 10 parties because it's such a big building, claims chief whip
Mark Spencer, the government chief whip, like all whips in parliament, tends not to give media interviews. But this morning he was on BBC Radio Nottingham (he is MP for Sherwood), where he got the prime 8.10 slot.

No member of the government has managed to emerge from a media grilling about the Downing Street Christmas party last year with any credit, but Spencer deployed some novel arguments that civil servantss might describe as "brave". Here are the main points.

Spencer said that Boris Johnson might not have known about parties in No 10 because it was such a large building. When asked how Johnson could not have known what was happening, Spencer replied:
Let's be absolutely clear about this. When you describe it as a house, it is a department of government. This is a huge, huge building, literally with hundreds and hundreds of offices and rooms. No single person could account for what is happening in those buildings. They are huge buildings.

Spencer is right about the Downing Street complex being larger than people might think looking at it from outside, but "hundreds and hundreds of office" is an exaggeration. Spencer also insisted that he was not aware of any parties taking place last Christmas, and he said he had been assured everyone followed the rules. He said:

I am assured that everybody in that building played by the rules, and that's why the prime minister has asked the cabinet secretary to do a thorough investigation to find out and establish the facts and that's what I expected him to do.

He argued that what was described as a party on 18 December was probably just a "meeting" and he claimed that the leaked footage of Allegra Stratton joking about the party was not evidence that a party took place. Asked by the presenter, Sarah Julian, why No 10 staff needed to have a mock press conference "to work out how they were going to lie to us about it", he replied:
Somebody made a joke about whether there was or wasn't a party. And, actually, when you listen to what Allegra Stratton said, she actually said the imaginary party.

Julian said that at the mock briefing Stratton was asked if the PM condoned holding a Christmas party, and she said if there was no party, Stratton should have been able to say no. Instead Stratton said, What's the answer?" Spencer replied:

Because there was no party, that's where the joke was ... That's my interpetation of what happened. Someone made a joke about a meeting that had taken place the night before, or a couple of days before, where they clearly were in the office discussing issues surrounding dealing with Coronavirus, and some wag had said, 'You were all in the office together, were you having a party?'

"C'mon Mark," said Julian in response, making it clear she thought this was was implausible.

Spencer said that Johnson had a "miserable Christmas dealing with all of this [Covid]". He was responding to Julian's point about people being furious because they had a miserable time last Christmas.
He claimed No 10 staff were not drinking alcohol in Downing Street. He said people in No 10 were working "day and night" trying to solve the problems the country was facing. And he went on:
I am told that they were not, you know, drinking alcohol and having parties while that was going on.

This is significant because, although some insiders have argued that what happened on 18 December was not a party, they have not challenged reports that some staff did have a drink in the office at the end of the day on some occasions during that period.

[Sheilbh]

This means they'll just have to dig in on the balloons requirement.

It's very The Day Today

The thing that would worry me if I was sat in Number 10 is that to begin with it was all the Mirror and Pippa Crerar getting the scoops. In the last few days she's still leading but there's also been new stories in the FT and the Times all of which suggests there's now multiple people talking - and as with Paterson the press can smell and are hunting as a pack.

Plus Dominic Cummings is dropping stuff on Twitter and doing an Ask Me Anything, as he truly transitions into the Gossip Girl of Johnson's government.

And there's a difficult byelection on Thursday

[Tamas]

In this week's "it's not Brexit's fault" news, economic recovery seems to have come to a screeching halt in October with 0.1% growth.