Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Sheilbh]

Compulsory purchase orders exist - but there's lots of rights for owners and occupiers of affected land/properties to challenge them. It's also really expensive - my understanding is that it needs to cover the value of the property, the costs of acquiring and moving to a new property and legal advice to seek compensation or challenge the decision. Plus I think it's all pretty complicated legally so expensive.

I always remember my land law professor - and I'm sure this is an exaggeration saying you should hope to get a compulsory purchase order because you'll get paid, all told, about three times the value of your property

This is an example of where I think there is a justifiable case to reform judicial review or reduce/simplify process and that it isn't automatically just the first step to fascism. I think there's lots of areas where things are clogged by the slow growth of process and rights to challenge or to appeal etc that cumulatively produce a bit of sclerosis in our system. But I think it is a contributing factor to failures on housing, infrastructure and energy over the last 25 years or so. Every government has more or less kicked the can down the road - while the population and demand are growing, the existing infrastructure/housing stock etc is ageing and parts of it are now being decommissioned with no replacement - and we're just hoping there's not too many more supply shocks.

[The Larch]

Over here when you get your land/house/whatever expropriated by the state (not necessarily the central administration, it can be local or regional) in order to build something you're usually paid much less than what you'd get if you sold the land yourself, which is the reason why everyone hates it.

[Josquius]

Just read some elite level NIMBYism in the FT. Community groups in Suffolk are going for judicial review against off-shore wind projects that have been approved. Their objection is in particular to the on-shore infrastructure (like the substation) that's required to link the off-shore wind farm to the grid.

Apparently there's already been successful judicial reviews of similar decisions in Norfolk and no doubt it'll now spread up and down the North Sea coast.

Energy is one of those areas where the British public want to keep the lights on and they want to meet net zero targets - and they will relentlessly vote and litigate against every policy option that would make achieving those goals possible Same dynamic is at play with, say, social care and elsewhere

I know Kwarteng did an interview where he said it's one of the good things about the British system that you can't just impose infrastructure on people - but I think he's wrong. It's a very bad thing and we should start imposiing infrastructure

Though the UK really needs to up its game with beautifying ugly infrastructure.
Force the substation on them.
But make it be dressed up to look like a little rustic cottage or something.
And no fucking palisade fencing.

[Sheilbh]

My proposal: every council is allowed to veto one project, but it will be replaced by a small modular nuclear reactor

[The Minsky Moment]

I know Kwarteng did an interview where he said it's one of the good things about the British system that you can't just impose infrastructure on people

WTF?

[Sheilbh]

Corbyn's been on Times Radio and again making the point of how bad the choice was in the 2019 election. As well as saying that he would like to disband NATO - "as well as all other military alliances" (a bit like how he would always, of course, oppose anti-semitism "and all other forms of racism"). Then this exchange on Zelensky:

Do you admire him as a leader?
JC: I've never met him. I don't know.
Well, I've never met him and I admire him, do you admire him?
JC: I think he speaks well, and I admire that.

Separately more very good news on the polling front for Labour which is now leading as the best party on all questions (except debt) on the economy for the first time since 2005. It's very rare for Labour to lead on those issues - it basically only happened during New Labour with Brown as chancellor. The British public also think the party most likely to cut taxes is Labour....which is probably, extraordinarily right right now

I still fear a 1992 scenario. But Starmer has a lead on best PM, Labour has a durable lead in the poll, Labour are leading on the economy. On other issues the net ratings for the government are.....bad: inflation -60, immigration -58, tax -52, housing -47, NHS -45, welfare -38, crime -32, transport -27, Brexit -24, education -21. Then defence +3 (seems fair) and terrorism +18 (there hasn't been any terrorist attacks recently ). Meanwhile a polling company did polls over 2000 people on what they think of Johnson - 72% of responses were negative (16% positive). Somehow the focus groups were worse - but this was the word cloud of people's responses:


I know Labour have it ingrained in them that they lose and will keep losing - and I still suspect that'll happen. But there are reasons for cautious Labour optimism (no doubt Labour will now book an exhibition centre in Sheffield for a big pre-election rally ).

Edit: oh and I think Starmer's response to Johnson's apology following the fine yesterday was very, very good. Again I'd listen to the quiet on the Tory benches through much of this:
https://twitter.com/lbc/status/1516453611068624899?s=21&t=7jXfr-zF5nvzj5lXUVri5w

[Josquius]

Interesting tactics at work from labour in forcing a vote they'll lose against Johnson just to force the tories to support him.
But will thr masses pay attention? I doubt it.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah the Tories are treating it as a three line whip vote of confidence. So any Tory votes against or abstentions are a very big deal.

I imagine the Labour strategy is that there will be other fines. So they do this each time.

It's not going to topple the government because they don't have the votes but it's good politics and I can already see the leaflets at the next election in every Tory held marginal.

[Sheilbh]

So that didn't turn out as expected. Despite it being positioned as a vote of confidence Number 10 got so much pushback from Tory MPs (who said it was another Owen Paterson vote waiting to happen) initially proposed an amendment so the motion would be that whether Johnson misled parliament would be referred to the Privileges Committee after all the investigations were closed.

That also got massive pushback so the government has had to accept the motion. Johnson is on a trip to India right now which was almost cancelled before it was decided that it would look awful, which brings back memories of the first Tory leadership vote on Thatcher happening while she was at (I think) a European Council meeting in Paris which she didn't win as well as she needed to.

So what was really striking was some of the speeches from Tory MPs on this motion:

Boris Johnson will face Commons inquiry over whether he lied to parliament
Downing Street withdrew move aimed at delaying investigation and two more Tory MPs called for PM to quit
Jessica Elgot in London and Heather Stewart in Ahmedabad
Thu 21 Apr 2022 17.22 BST
First published on Thu 21 Apr 2022 11.30 BST

Boris Johnson will face a Commons inquiry over whether he lied to parliament after Downing Street withdrew an attempt to force Conservative MPs to delay the new Partygate investigation.

In dramatic scenes on the floor of the Commons, two more Tory MPs called for Johnson to quit on Thursday, including the influential Brexiter Steve Baker. "The prime minister now should be long gone," the former minister said. "Really, the prime minister should just know the gig's up."

A Labour motion to launch a parliamentary investigation into whether Johnson lied to MPs about Downing Street parties passed without a vote on Thursday afternoon.

Hours earlier, government whips had pulled an amendment that would have delayed any vote to start the inquiry until after the Sue Gray report was published.

William Wragg, the chair of the Commons' constitutional affairs committee, said he had written a letter of no confidence in the prime minister and that he would have rebelled if the government had not withdrawn its amendment.

"The matter before us is one of the heart of this institution, of our parliament. I love this place, believing it to be a place of high ideals and purpose. What is said here matters," he added.

Bob Neill, who chairs the justice committee, stopped short of calling for Johnson to go but said he had planned to abstain on the Labour motion calling for an inquiry by the privileges committee.

"I am profoundly disappointed in what happened at No 10. People were badly let down, my constituents feel badly let down, I feel personally badly let down and there must be consequences that follow from that," he said.

Opening the debate, the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, said it was imperative for MPs to judge if Johnson had deliberately misled them with his denials of Partygate lockdown breaches in Downing Street.

"He has stood before this house and said things that are not true, safe in the knowledge that he will not be accused of lying. He has stood at that dispatch box and point blank denied rule-breaking took place, when it did," Starmer said.

"As he did so, he was hoping to gain extra protection from our assumption, and from the public assumption, that no prime minister would deliberately mislead the house. He has used our good faith to cover up his misdeeds."

Speaking to reporters on his trade visit in India, Johnson said he had reversed his position on the amendment because he had "nothing to hide" – but appeared irritated at Labour's determination to continue pressing the issue.

"People were saying it looks like we are trying to stop stuff. I didn't want that. I didn't want people to be able to say that. I don't want this thing to endlessly go on," he told Sky News. "But, I have absolutely nothing, frankly, to hide. If that is what the opposition want to talk about, that is fine."

Asked about Baker's call for him to resign, Johnson said: "I understand people's feelings. I don't think that is the right thing to do." He conceded the situation was serious, however.

A senior government source said the amendment on Wednesday night had been tabled to allow an inquiry to take place after the internal Whitehall report by the civil servant Sue Gray is published – although it made no specific commitments that the inquiry would still be allowed.

"We now recognise that – in practice – this is almost certainly likely to be the case and therefore we are happy for the Labour motion to go through if that is the will of the house," the source said.

There were chaotic scenes in Westminster before the debate on the motion. With minutes to go before the debate, Mark Spencer, the leader of the Commons, told MPs they would have a free vote, saying the prime minister was "keen for the house to decide on the business later today".

Chris Pincher, the government's deputy chief whip, then texted Tory MPs telling them Johnson was "happy for the Commons to decide on any referrals to the privileges committee". He added the government would "no longer move our tabled amendment". MPs were told they were on a one-line whip – in practice meaning they were free to leave Westminster and head to their constituencies.

On Wednesday, Tory whips had scrambled to find a way to block or delay the inquiry by the privileges committee. Even among frontbenchers there was palpable disquiet that MPs should be forced to block an investigation into the prime minister, who received a police fixed-penalty notice last week.

But MPs had privately and publicly asked whips not to give Labour the opportunity to paint them as taking part in a cover-up. Earlier in the Commons, the Tory MP Charles Walker had urged the government to reconsider whipping MPs to delay the inquiry.

"I believe genuinely that the prime minister is a good and decent man and he can make the case to the privileges committee directly without having this house to divide and yet more poison be pumped into public life."

To add to the Tory chairs of the constitutional affairs committee, the justice committee and Steve Baker (mainly famous for running the ERG during the Brexit debates) - Mark Harper, formerly Cameron's Chief Whip, has said he put in his letter of no confidence - and there was this from the defence committee chair:

Tobias Ellwood MP
@Tobias_Ellwood
An extraordinary 24 hours in Parliament.

It's time to stop drinking the Kool-Aid.

My suspicion is still that he'll go after the May local elections - and on that the Met have announced that they won't be announcing or levying any new fines until after the elections for purdah reasons (which I think is dubious but I can sympathise, for once, with them). That creates a scenario where the Tories have a very bad election night, then the police announce multiple new fines and it all spirals very quickly from there.

The Tories are already doing their expectations management, leaking that they expect to lose 800 seats in the locals which is absurd

Edit: Incidentally the Guardian quoted Baker's speech at length and it deserves it. He was very annoying on Brexit but he's not Francois and he has some interestingly heterodox positions that always make me like an MP more - and this is possibly another example of that:

Steve Baker explains why he can no long forgive Johnson, and wants him gone

The most surprising speech of the debate so far has probably been the one from Steve Baker, the former Brexit minister who, as a leading figure in the European Research Group, played an important role in helping to bring down Theresa May as PM.

In a question to Boris Johnson in the Commons on Tuesday, Baker (a devout Christian) said Johnson was entitled to mercy. He went on: "Justice leading into mercy relies on a very old-fashioned concept, and that is repentance. What assurance can he give us that nothing of this kind will ever happen again?"

Today Baker said that Johnson had shown "contrition" on Tuesday, "beautiful, marvellous contrition" but that it "only lasted as long as it took to get out of the headmaster's study". Baker went on:

And that's not good enough for me, and it's not good enough for my voters. I'm sorry, it's not.

    And I'm afraid I am now in a position where I have to acknowledge that if the prime minister occupied any other office of senior responsibility, if he was a secretary of state, if he was a minister of state, a parliamentary undersecretary, a permanent secretary, a director general, if he was a chief executive of a private company or a board director, he would be long gone. The reason that he is not long gone is because removing a sitting prime minister is an extremely grave matter, and goodness knows, people will know, I've had something to do with that, too.

    It's an extremely grave matter and an extremely big decision and it tends to untether history and all of us, all of us should approach such things with reverence and awe and an awareness of the difficulty of doing it and the potential consequences and that's why I've been tempted to forgive.

    But I have to say now the possibility of that, really, for me, has gone. I have to say I'm sorry that, for not obeying the letter and spirit - and I think we have heard that the prime minister did know what the letter was - the prime minister now should be long gone. I'll certainly vote for this motion. But really, the prime minister should just know the gig's up.

On Tuesday Mark Harper, the former Tory chief whip, called for Johnson's resignation. Harper and Baker are chair and deputy chair respectively of the Covid Recovery Group, an influential Tory faction that opposed lockdown restrictions.

Edit: Incidentally - polling on this:


Not great for Johnson. But it means every time his defenders say he didn't lie, normally on the basis of "he sincerely believed what he was saying", they're just telling voters they're wrong. Normally that doesn't go down very well.

[Josquius]

With Johnson gone and sunak thoroughly ruined then what?
I struggle to think of anyone likely to take over. Only some who would be terrible and therefore good.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah - that's one of the big reasons I think the Tories haven't moved. There's no clear, obvious successor which means it's a risk.

I think the safest bet would be Ben Wallace who's done well at defence and would be a bit of a safe pair of hands candidate. And I think he might go for it. But he's not well known.

I think Truss is probably still perceived as just a little bit too odd. Javid strikes me as very plausible, as does Zahawi.

But I think there's a chance for a real dark horse - maybe they skip a generation or go for someone from a junior/backbench position. I'm surprised how well Tom Tugendhat does on polls of the membership - and I really wouldn't write off Penny Mordaunt, she strikes me as someone who could come from nowhere.

Edit: Good summary of the day from Sky:
https://twitter.com/SamCoatesSky/status/1517212585082462210?s=20&t=zMWJtW_hzzUm56Og22CD1w

Edit: And on that - odds (I don't understand betting):

Election Maps UK
@ElectionMapsUK
Next Conservative Party Leader Odds:

Liz Truss: 6/1
Tom Tugendhat: 8/1
Jeremy Hunt: 8/1
Ben Wallace: 10/1
Penny Mordaunt: 21/2
Rishi Sunak: 12/1
Sajid Javid: 17/1
Michael Gove: 20/1
Nadhim Zahawi: 23/1
Dominic Raab: 33/1

Via @oddschecker

[Josquius]

Javid does seem to have gotten a bit of populaity lately.
And I can imagine sunak quitting politics in a huff if he steals the first Asian pm accelade.
Several of those names I have to Google. True nobodies.

[garbon]

I know of everyone in thar list bar Tom.

[Sheilbh]

I quite like Tugendhat - which for a Tory MP is probably a kiss of death because if I like them, they're doomed

Having said that I have very little idea of his domestic politics. He chairs the Commons foreign affairs committee and is very good, in my opinion, on Russia, Ukraine, China, Hong Kong, kleptocracy - all that stuff. I think part of the reason he's so high on that list - because I think he's very unlikely - is that he has announced he will run, so I suspect he has started to build a team among MPs and is probably doing stuff to raise his profile with Tory members. I think it would need to be him or Hunt as someone who's not currently a minister, is from the centrist wing of the party etc.

Interesting profile from the Guardian. I think the Stewart comparison is fair (in lots of ways), but Stewart did better than expected, although some of that was with Johnson's whipping team building him up. I'm not sure that wouldn't be an attractive alternative after Johnson. But practically I think he's probably got no chance - on the other hand (a bit like with Mordaunt) I could imagine the membership liking him more than expected:

Tom Tugendhat: Tory centrist loathed by Boris Johnson could be 'a relief'
Tonbridge MP's chances of being PM may be slim at 16-1 odds but military career may attract party right

Tom Tugendhat: 'Would it be great to be PM? Yep, it would be.' Photograph: AFP/Getty
Jessica Elgot
@jessicaelgot
Fri 28 Jan 2022 08.00 GMT

Tom Tugendhat, the high-profile chair of the foreign affairs committee, once described the job of prime minister as like "winning the lottery".

With a dearth of options in the cabinet for the party's centrist wing to rally behind in a future leadership contest, he is the name many more have started to mention should Boris Johnson lose a vote of no confidence.

"Tom would be my first choice," one former cabinet minister said. "I think a lot of people think he would be the best chance for a fresh start with someone who has a lot of relevant experience and deep thinking."

On paper, the MP for Tonbridge's chances of success seem slim – his name comes up often as one of the rank outsiders to succeed Johnson, with odds of about 16-1. But his name is the one that MPs most often bring up of their own accord, once they have finished expressing their varying degrees of doubt about Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss.

Tugendhat is from pure Tory stock, the nephew of the Tory peer Lord Tugendhat and the son of a high court judge. He had a long and distinguished military career, serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, working for the FCO in Afghanistan and for the then chief of defence staff Lord David Richards.

During the fall of Kabul, he was furious at the chaos of the evacuation and the approach of world leaders, including Biden, and gave a raw and personal speech in the Commons that was widely praised.

Like the prime minister, his speeches often lapse into multiple languages, in Tugendhat's case, Arabic, Dari and French. But the pair have a unique loathing for each other, clashing pointedly at select committee hearings and Tugendhat has made little secret of his disdain for the prime minister's approach.

One senior MP said it would be "a relief, by all accounts, to have someone like that in the job at the moment". Another minister said they were also hoping for Tugendhat to run – "though he'd need to convince other colleagues he's got any sort of domestic policy ideas whatsoever. We all know what he thinks about China or Afghanistan."

One issue is Tugendhat has no ministerial experience, although an ally was quick to note he had "experience running governments, just not this one" – a nod to his time in Afghanistan.

Observant MPs say they have noticed a slew of recent interventions by Tugendhat on wider policy matters – particular in the Mail on Sunday – on the need for nuclear reactors, action to stop the deaths of migrants crossing in small boats and social media regulation.

There are aspects that could still attract some on the party's right. Tugendhat has been prepared to judiciously vote against stricter Covid measures – an issue likely to be high on the agenda for any leadership race.

He was also a key player in the China Research Group of Tory MPs calling for a more hawkish approach to China, including opposing Huawei's role in building 5G networks in the UK and lobbying for an amendment to the trade bill as part of recognition of the Uyghur genocide.

He was banned from China as a result, along with fellow MPs Nusrat Ghani, Tim Loughton and Iain Duncan Smith, although when Johnson invited them to the Downing Street rose garden in the aftermath, Tugendhat was not among them.

But Tugendhat has his fair amount of detractors on the party's right, the chief whip, Mark Spencer, is said to have nicknamed him "Tom Tugendtwat" for his pointed criticism of the government and its actions on the world stage, including rebellions on aid, the trade bill and vehement criticism of the Kabul evacuation operation.

"That kind of saintly disposition is not popular among my lot," one MP said. "I can't see him realistically getting past the first round [of leadership voting']." Another called him "the Rory Stewart of the race", a reference to the former development secretary's failed bid in 2019.

One experienced MP said the legacy of Brexit was one that could damage Tugendhat. "There is likely to be significant resistance in [Tugendhat's] wing of the party if the government goes down the road of triggering article 16. I don't think we are in that place yet but for sure any block on that would not play well with the membership."

But he still has some admirers in the cabinet, particularly the levelling-up secretary, Michael Gove, whom he backed for the Conservative leadership in 2017. The pair almost cleared the dancefloor spinning enthusiastically to Whitney Houston at Conservative party conference's karaoke this year.

Whatever the future of his leadership ambitions, Tugendhat has made it clear he would at least like to be offered the chance at a cabinet role.

"I will serve at whatever level I'm asked to," he told Politics Home. "Would it be great to be PM? Yep, it would be. Would it be great to be foreign secretary? Fantastic. Would it be great to be defence secretary? Wonderful. Would it be great to be a minister of any kind? Yes, because all of those opportunities to serve are very much winning a lottery."

Edit: Also on the reasons for Labour to start to hope:

[Josquius]

The trend is there but those numbers are still awful. The country remains doomed as ever.