Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Zanza]

A ridiculous person could never become important though, right?

Oh wait:

[garbon]

Hancock is mostly known for being pathetic.

[Sheilbh]

FFS - Tory backbencher here at the launch of the "Better Planning Campaign":


Here talking about constituencies being "under siege" from development and the launch of this new campaign group. Thing that's striking is the organisations on the back sponsoring the event and just how broad this is.

You have the more well-loved/traditionalist groups like the National Trust, the Wildlife Trust, the Council for the Preservation of Rural England. I'm sure Tamas will be thrilled to see the Bat Conservation Trust is prominent. And the RSPB and Woodland Trust are obviously beloved.

But you've also got groups from more of a left perspective - there's Rights Community Action (a climate arts and activism charity), there's Sustrans (charity for walking and cycling), Friends of the Earth and the New Economics Foundation (a left think tank that's very interesting post-Corbyn). You've even got Shelter an anti-homelessness charity.

Maybe they will really all come together and work out a better planning system that allows for us to sustainably build the housing we need. But it looks to me group of vested interests and wall to wall NIMBYs that, collectively, means nothing will be built anywhere ever. It is insane but you look at those institutions and feel like this is probably going to be one of the broadest and most effective campaigning coalitions/lobbying groups around

[The Larch]

Looks like a footballer given an after match press conference.

[Sheilbh]

Looks like a footballer given an after match press conference.

British politics: sponsored by the Bat Conservation Trust.

[The Larch]

Looks like a footballer given an after match press conference.

British politics: sponsored by the Bat Conservation Trust.

Hey, if you're to devote your politics to NIMBYsm, commit fully to the bit. 

[Sheilbh]

Looks like Sunak's given the Tories a 10-point bounce which is pretty good for a new leader. But they started from an exceptionally low base so have recovered to about 30% which is what should be the Tories' (or Labour's) floor.

But Sunak is far, far more popular than the Tories. They, as a party, have trashed their brand but people still reasonably like Sunak. There's always incumbency bias in this but he leads Starmer by 10 points on "best PM". Normally the leadership/best PM rating matters more than party polling numbers when we're in mid-term. But I think that can be tempered a little here. Sir John Curtice has been making the point that if a government presides over a fiscal/financial crisis (1947, 67, 76, 92 and 2008) they lose the next election whatever the gap between the crisis and the election - in this case the government didn't just preside over but precipitate the crisis.

Separately as well as HS2 the government is apparently reviewing the new nucear power plants They're also looking at cancelling Northern Powerhouse Rail which Truss had re-committed too.

As James Ball points out there's a really vicious cycle of dithering here where our inability to stick to a decision makes the projects vastly more expensive, which in turn makes policy makers more indecisive/likely to cancel or review big projects

Also slightly maddening that part of the problem with Truss from the market perspective was there was no faith in her actually delivering the stuff that would support growth like the stuff on infrastructure and supply side reforms. Having lost it, the government's now regaining confidence in the markets by cancelling infrastructure projects and supply side reforms.

Inevitably the co-leader of the Greens is fairly happy:

Adrian Ramsay
@AdrianRamsay
Pleased to hear #SizewellC is under review.

It would be a burden and risk, not a solution: it would take 10-17 years to start producing energy

But the govt must instead invest in solutions that can address energy & climate crisis, such as renewables & nationwide home insulation

It is very lucky we're not going to need electricity in 10-17 years. Famously energy transition doesn't need much

[The Larch]

It is very lucky we're not going to need electricity in 10-17 years. Famously energy transition doesn't need much

Isn't he actually proposing measures that would take effect much faster?

[Sheilbh]

Isn't he actually proposing measures that would take effect much faster?

Sure. But this is a consistent line - I mentioned before but the Lib Dem and Green opposition to Labour's nuclear plans in 2010 which delayed it by many years was that it would (optimistically) take 10-12 years before it started generating power which would definitely be helpful right now.

I'd also note the Greens are celebrating that a new railway is being reviewed so I'm not convinced they're going to be helpful in installing the amount of grid-level storage and transmission infrastructure necessary from more renewables alone. I might take those comments in good faith if they didn't oppose literally every infrastructure project or development. The Greens have form for campaigning against wind farms because they're not "suitable" for the area. With nuclear they oppose it at all levels, with everything else they support it in principle but actually oppose every project locally.

Also more generally every previous prediction that we won't need nuclear in x years has been wrong. So I'm sceptical that this time they're right. My general view is that the need for energy transition and move to net zero is so important that we can't be picky. We need to do basically everything everywhere at scale.

[celedhring]

Looks like a footballer given an after match press conference.

British politics: sponsored by the Bat Conservation Trust.

Such a wasted opportunity to feature a Batman logo 

[Sheilbh]

Such a wasted opportunity to feature a Batman logo 

I've just looked them up and one of their tasks as a charity is to "record bat related crime" - are they the baddies?

[Syt]

Looks like Sunak's given the Tories a 10-point bounce which is pretty good for a new leader. But they started from an exceptionally low base so have recovered to about 30% which is what should be the Tories' (or Labour's) floor.

I've started to pay much more attention to interest group leaders in Victoria 3, because they can give them unexpected boosts, or modify their interests to open up new legislation that was previously blocked off because of a lack of support.

[Gups]

Isn't he actually proposing measures that would take effect much faster?

Sure. But this is a consistent line - I mentioned before but the Lib Dem and Green opposition to Labour's nuclear plans in 2010 which delayed it by many years was that it would (optimistically) take 10-12 years before it started generating power which would definitely be helpful right now.

I'd also note the Greens are celebrating that a new railway is being reviewed so I'm not convinced they're going to be helpful in installing the amount of grid-level storage and transmission infrastructure necessary from more renewables alone. I might take those comments in good faith if they didn't oppose literally every infrastructure project or development. The Greens have form for campaigning against wind farms because they're not "suitable" for the area. With nuclear they oppose it at all levels, with everything else they support it in principle but actually oppose every project locally.

Also more generally every previous prediction that we won't need nuclear in x years has been wrong. So I'm sceptical that this time they're right. My general view is that the need for energy transition and move to net zero is so important that we can't be picky. We need to do basically everything everywhere at scale.

Worth noting that Hinckley got consent in 2010 and is offically not scheduled to start generating electricity until 2026 and I bet it won't be till later than that. THe review appears to relate to Sizewell C which got consent earlier this year.

HS2 London to B'ham is too far gone to cancel now. All the land has been acquired, construction contracts are in place. THe West Midlands to Manchester bit is under threat though. Unfortuately it is a terribly run project and the Government rightly can't trust HS2 Ltd's cost estimates even with their big contingencies.

[Sheilbh]

Should add that Number 10 have now pushed back quite strongly on the nuclear review and said there's still negotiations on financing but the project is going ahead.

Is there anything to this take from James Ball (from last year when they cancelled the bit to Leeds) in your view?

HS2: Why can't Britain ever get the big things right?
As HS2 shows, there is a problem with the UK that means the country cannot deliver the major projects needed to prepare us for the future.
James Ball

The construction site at the entrance to the HS2 Chiltern tunnel beside the M25 at Denham, Buckinghamshire. -Photo: Chris Gorman/Getty Images

There is a way the UK – or at least its government – would like to see itself: An entrepreneurial, dynamic society at the cutting edge of the modern world. A country in the vanguard for tech and innovation, developing green energy, building a UK version of DARPA (the USA's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), constructing infrastructure fit for the 21st century and solving the challenges of the future, like social care.

Who wouldn't want a country like that? It all sounds great... until it crashes down to earth the second we try to actually do anything which requires more than about three weeks of planning or foresight.

If you need convincing that the UK has become completely incapable of planning for the future, then look no further than the farce of HS2. The latest word on the ill-fated scheme is that its eastern leg to Leeds may be scrapped.

From beginning to end, the ways in which we are making a mess of this project speak volumes for modern Britain's wider inability to build anything big – and leave us with little hope for the future in the absence of major cultural change.

What makes everything worse for the country when it comes to major infrastructure and strategic projects like HS2 is that each individual error ends up compounding the others, leaving the UK like a jammed-up clock, where each malfunctioning cog pressures the next in turn still further – until the whole thing explodes.

Perhaps the most obvious problem comes from the inability of UK governments to trust the public with making the real case for major, long-term infrastructure projects. The real case for HS2 is designed to largely benefit the north of England.

At present, the east and west coast main lines have to accommodate both the high-speed long-distance trains that travel from Manchester, Leeds or York to London as well as much slower stopping services, for commuters to northern cities from nearby towns. That mix of slow and fast trains severely limits how many trains can safely be on the line at one time – it is much harder to overtake with trains than it is with a car.

The idea of the new HS2 lines is that they would be dedicated solely to the intercity, super-fast, long-distance trains – freeing up the existing lines to be used more by shorter-distance commuter trains. Some of the benefits of this are, of course, felt by people travelling to and from London – a faster journey time, but also much more capacity for long journeys, avoiding the endless overcrowding we experience in the present day.

But the main benefit would be from freeing up the existing west and east coast lines, which would let operators run much better, more frequent and hopefully more reliable commuter services in the north – making commuting by public transport viable for far more people than at present.

Instead of trying to tell that story, though, HS2 was sold to the public as a project spending tens of billions of pounds (more on this total later) on a project that would cut travel time from northern cities to London – dooming the project to look like it was yet another scheme designed to benefit the capital, and even then only in a marginal way, rather than the regions. What comes next is a familiar tale to anyone who has looked at any major UK public sector project in the nation's history: we start out with a huge-looking price tag, and then as the scheme gets going it keeps increasing, and increasing, and increasing – making the public think we are completely incompetent at executing projects.

The reality is we are completely incompetent at commissioning projects: departments have to make 'value for money' cases to the Treasury, which will often know far less than them about the realities of projects and costs, but will be the arbiter of the decision all the same.

As a result, departments are incentivised to keep their headline costs as small as possible. This means not only minimising contingency spending or making optimistic assessments, but also almost inevitably adding a discount for usually unspecified 'efficiency' savings. It seems sensible, but it has predictable, costly consequences.

For HS2, the headline figure started at £40 billion, rose to around £60 billion, is now projected above £80 billion, and will surely rise again. The reason for those increases isn't just because of accounting – it's because we make ourselves build in hugely expensive ways. Sometimes this is essential: building a new train line through central London will necessarily involve digging tunnels – but this needn't be the case in the countryside.

However, because of fierce local opposition to land being used for rail, especially in Conservative heartland constituencies, much of HS2 in rural areas will be built through tunnels, which is far, far costlier than the alternative.

Inevitably, this leads us to observe that our projects are far costlier than comparable projects in other countries, leading to yet more suggestions the project is bad and should be cancelled. These estimates are often dishonest, failing to take account of costs such as preparing the ground for the tracks or tunnelling, which are sometimes accounted separately from the main track project, and sometimes not.

A simple analogy is looking at the habit of comparing a full-price, on-the-day, peak time ticket in the UK with a European ticket price to suggest that represents an average – when what we actually pay is fairly comparable with European rail commuters. As it is with tickets, so it is with the tracks.

The UK's unholy coalition of NIMBYs and green groups makes everything tougher – as the two might as well have identical views. The UK's Green Party and campaigners claim to want low-carbon infrastructure to be built – but seem to reject every single actual project in favour of some hypothetical future one.

The main campaign of the UK green movement in the last decade has been opposing a railway line – even more fervently than new runways at Heathrow. Missing the irony here is an essential part of being in the UK's green movement.

The result of this is that governments become unwilling to bear the political costs of these projects, leading to them being scaled back to the point where the benefits are no longer worth the spend, but the headline figure is at least lower. Or they simply cancel the projects, leaving contractors unwilling to bid and businesses unwilling to believe government promises in the long term.

It's easy to look at HS2 and see it as a unique case – but when you look at what's gone wrong with it all together, as above, it is clearly a systemic set of problems, based in unrealistic expectations, short-termism, and a collective failing of nerves that mean the UK cannot get the big things right.

The list of examples is a long and depressing one, and the common factors are always there: optimistic penny-pinching, lack of contingency and general failings in project management: the cost of Crossrail increased by more than £4 billion over its construction – and just three months before the line was due to open, it was suddenly delayed by more than a year... and then a year again thanks to coronavirus. The farce contributed to the shuttering of plans for Crossrail 2 – but not after £115m was spent on it.

The saga of whether and where to build new runways seems just as hapless. And such is the disconnect around UK cost estimates that political parties argue whether renewing the Trident nuclear deterrent will cost £31bn or £205bn. It doesn't bode well for that particular project.

This isn't just a problem under Tory governments though: the New Labour-era National Programme for IT for the NHS – designed to save money and modernise its systems – more than doubled in cost to £12.7 billion and never really worked, before being ignobly scrapped.

That said, things do seem particularly unpromising under this administration. As mayor, Boris Johnson managed, somehow, to spend £43m of public money on a garden bridge across the Thames that was never even started.

Even Brexit itself could arguably have been far less painful if anyone in government just knew how to watch the details – like custom checks and the Northern Irish sea border.

Ah, people say, but what about the 2012 Olympics? The UK did a good job there. Well the country certainly enjoyed the Games and they are very fondly remembered, but the costs spiralled and there were various scandals about contracts that cost a fortune and long arguments about what to do with the sites. It took years to work out what to do with the stadium.

Perhaps once people are gliding through the home counties in a comfortable HS2 carriage they will be similarly forgetful about the problems entailed with delivering the scheme in the first place. But they shouldn't be.

We either need to change our decision-making processes in a huge way, or stick to the small stuff. As it is, we will carry on miserably muddling through, complaining the whole time that we can't pull off anything better.

On the business case for infrastructure it is worth pointing out that from public documents there are infrastructure projects have to do a cost benefit analysis and there are multiple that have a benefit to cost of +2 but we're just not doing them. My understanding is - one for Jos - that projects in London with a far lower benefit-to-cost ratio have been approved than ones in the North especially that just don't happen, ever.

I don't think it's just because people in the Treasury won't personally benefit but I sort of wonder if it's almost an assumption against the North/rest of the country. They get London as an area that is economically successful so get how doing things here would be good, but basically don't really think the rest of the country can actually contribute or grow, so they don't approve the infrastructure projects, so the rest of the country doesn't grow. It's just so annoying because the Manchester Metrolink, for example, has been key to Manchester's growth but hasn't led to similar projects in, say, Leeds.

Similarly Sunak sort of got it when he pointed out that the Central Line is 41 miles long. There's obstacles and it's longer but it's about 70 miles from Liverpool to Leeds or Sheffield. At the minute it takes a couple of hours to travel between those cities with Manchester in the middle. If you had regular quality, regular, relatively fast commuter trains you'd be creating an entirely new economic area. These relatively big but disconnected urban areas could grow towards and with each other. He thought that was a good idea - but word is he's going to cancel plans in that area because it saves some money

[The Larch]

Sure. But this is a consistent line - I mentioned before but the Lib Dem and Green opposition to Labour's nuclear plans in 2010 which delayed it by many years was that it would (optimistically) take 10-12 years before it started generating power which would definitely be helpful right now.

Well, you can't be really surprised that Greens are not keen on nuclear. Also, their measure of improving home insulation should be pretty popular, given that it'd also help raise property values. 

I'd also note the Greens are celebrating that a new railway is being reviewed so I'm not convinced they're going to be helpful in installing the amount of grid-level storage and transmission infrastructure necessary from more renewables alone. I might take those comments in good faith if they didn't oppose literally every infrastructure project or development. The Greens have form for campaigning against wind farms because they're not "suitable" for the area. With nuclear they oppose it at all levels, with everything else they support it in principle but actually oppose every project locally.

That's an issue indeed if they oppose everything. There's a clear divide between utopians and pragmatists in the green movement, regarding how they envision future developments. If they don't allow for anything to be done, how do they actually want things to go forward? By magic? The "no to everything" attitude of some groups should be challenged.

Over here we're only recently starting to experience backlash against certain renewables projects, and some of the complaints are reasonable, but they start to veer worryingly into green NIMBYsm, but luckily no large orgs support that, only smaller grassroots orgs.