Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Oexmelin]

the idea of a late middle aged English person

Late Middle Age indeed.

[Josquius]

Stupid woke Henry VIII.

"Not that I particularly care, by the way!"

I feel like that's distressingly common on the crazy right - bemoaning the decline in "traditional values" and Christianity, while not actually bothering to go to Church themselves.

Cultural Christian is how they put it.
Let's them be racist against Muslims without being racist.
Makes me wonder whether we've gone full circle on race. All the way back to the days before black and white were invented and it was all Christians and moors.

[viper37]

Obviously this guy is just a Twitter rando so I won't cyber-bully him. But I love this on so many levels

He is obviously sarcastic.

[Sheilbh]

I really don't think so. From a very quick look at his Twitter feed while he is very Brexit-y he mostly tweets about good news in the UK (because the media don't report anything positive), recommendations of British producers of food (mainly small artisanal producers) and rather sweet tweets about pottering around in his retirement.

There's no sign from what I saw that it's a spoof account or a particularly sarcastic person.

[mongers]

Worth a listen:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001fvj3

Liz Truss's Big Gamble
Archive on 4

Nick Robinson has the inside story of the UK's shortest-ever premiership. Liz Truss gambled her premiership on a so-called mini budget that ripped up decades of economic orthodoxy.

[Tamas]

OMG even this John Harris guy is defending nimbyism, all hope is truly lost:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/27/tories-housing-crisis-public-services

EDIT: if you read the article but especially the comments, you can paint a mental image of a Britain where all small communities are under a relentless offensive by big developers forcing on them an avalanche of new housing, burying them under unbearable levels of car traffic by new residents.

[Josquius]

I'm not seeing nimbyism here.
Whilst nimbyism blocking any development is bad it's also true that a Japan style complete free for all of build whatever you want wherever you want is undesirable too.

[Tamas]

I'm not seeing nimbyism here.
Whilst nimbyism blocking any development is bad it's also true that a Japan style complete free for all of build whatever you want wherever you want is undesirable too.

Maybe, but what we have in the UK seems to be the very exact opposite of that, so worrying about a free-for-all building frenzy and because of this worry calling for a curtail in building, is a bit strong.

[Sheilbh]

Maybe, but what we have in the UK seems to be the very exact opposite of that, so worrying about a free-for-all building frenzy and because of this worry calling for a curtail in building, is a bit strong.

Yeah and this is a little out of date but:


And the average square metres per person in Japan is higher than in the UK too.

We still have the image in this country that Japan is basically in the popular imagination the world of tiny homes and Tokyo as this crazily unaffordable quasi-dystopia, when that's us. I'm willing to trade a bit of ugliness for abundant, affordable, larger housing for people.

[Josquius]

Having experienced what life in Japan is like: I am not.
It hurts enough there even despite their advantages of a big don't cause a fuss culture and a good national railway system.
The same setup in the UK would be mad max level shit.

The Japanese system works well for central Tokyo where you can rent a bedsit for 500 quid 15 minutes walk to Central shinjuku.
It absolutely devestates small towns creating endless urban sprawl and murdering town centres and any sense of the town as a place.

I think the problem is that what laws we do have on building are rather "thin" despite allowing nimbys a lot of power. This means in theory with a minimal of change we can easily completely flip to the other extreme.

IMO what is needed is more government (this is where having regional level governments would be useful) contol over building. Not less.
We need fewer estates built in random fields to make shareholders happy and instead a more tied together integrated plan where transit and development go hand in hand.

Our model should be rather more the Netherlands than Japan- it should work better here with our less fertile land and not so powerful agricultural industry.

[HVC]

Netherlands has a worse ratio the the uk, so you want to make the problem worse to make it better?

[Zanza]

The UK government should stop doing stupid stuff

It should not consider regulatory changes unless they will clearly be for the better

MARTIN WOLF

Barack Obama famously said "don't do stupid stuff". (Actually, he said something even stronger.) This is always good advice. It is particularly good advice for today's UK. It would be wonderful if it could start doing sensible stuff. But one must keep one's hopes in check. It should, however, surely be possible to stop doing really stupid stuff.

Brexit itself was stupid stuff. Few people with a serious knowledge of the matter doubt it. It has raised barriers against the country's closest neighbours and most important trade partners. As the Office for Budget Responsibility noted this month, "The latest evidence suggests that Brexit has had a significant adverse impact on UK trade." It has reduced overall trade volumes and the number of trading relationships between UK and EU firms. The OBR assumes, quite rationally, that "Brexit will result in the UK's trade intensity being 15 per cent lower in the long run than if the UK had remained in the EU". Meanwhile, "Global Britain" has evaporated as hopes of closer trade relations with China and the US have vanished.

While Brexit was stupid stuff, so is the idea that there is a simple way back into a closer relationship with the EU. Renewed membership is inconceivable. This is not only because it would exacerbate the UK's political civil war. It is also because EU members are too sensible to trust the UK to be an enthusiastic member of the EU as it is and is likely to become. From their point of view, the sight of the UK floundering outside is a helpful lesson on the dangers of exit. As important, Brexit has allowed the EU to progress faster than it would have done in the teeth of habitual UK obstruction.

Most alternatives to full membership — such as joining the single market, the customs union or both — would also restart the Brexit civil war, in both main parties. These options are also self-evidently worse than membership, since they would give obligations without a say in the rules. Moreover, once again, the EU has good reason not to trust the UK: its behaviour over the Northern Ireland protocol surely proves that.



Trying to alter the main features of the current unhappy relationship is pointless. But that cannot justify making things even worse. It is, for example, a fundamental conservative principle that one only makes change if there is no good alternative to doing so. Change is itself costly. So, what possible sense can there be to the "retained EU law bill", a plan to "review or revoke" up to 4,000 pieces of EU-derived law that form the basis for much of today's national life? This will simply further increase uncertainty and costs of doing business.

Sensible businesses do not want to operate under a multiplicity of different regulatory regimes. That was the logic of Margaret Thatcher's single market project, apparently something Brexiters remain unable to understand. This sort of plan has to make the UK ever less "investable". The dismal statistics on UK investment do not belie this fear.



What would have been a positively sensible approach for British policymakers to take? It would surely have started from a realistic view of weaknesses and priorities. Consider the difficulty of building on undeveloped land, the failure to make buildings more energy efficient, the persistent regional inequality, the over-centralisation of government, the chronically low national savings and investment rates, the failure of pension funds to invest in the productive capital of the country, the failure to build world-scale companies and the longstanding failure to raise skills to a sufficiently high level.

None of this had anything to do with the EU. But all of it had long been "too difficult" to do anything about. So, instead, we have Brexit as a diversionary exercise, culminating in the Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng show, which was as ill-timed and irresponsible as it was intellectually vacuous. That was Brexit as performance art in its purest form.

I have little hope that this government will do anything much positive before the next general election, particularly in the midst of an energy and inflation crisis. But it is not too much to ask it to stop doing stupid things. So, do not consider regulatory changes unless they will clearly be for the better. Do not promise control over migration you cannot deliver. Do not stick to the option of divergence on food standards, which makes resolving the issue of Northern Ireland so intractable. But do try hard to preserve the ability of our scientists to co-operate closely with their European peers. And, not least, do stop the endless barking by the British bulldog.

Tackling big problems may now be impossible. But, even though the government is now in a deep hole, it can at least stop digging it deeper.

https://www.ft.com/content/5a8d439b-da0f-41c0-9e6b-e857a75c2a30

Great headline!   

[Josquius]

Netherlands has a worse ratio the the uk, so you want to make the problem worse to make it better?

Only if you think there's only one problem.

As I've often said the main problem in the UK is not a lack of houses, it's a lack of jobs where the houses are.

And as said the Netherlands has other local conditions like the agriculture industry, flood control, and being a considerably smaller country that keep building low there.
 

[Valmy]

Anybody in England want to just let Wales have this next match for the good of the Union? If Iran and the USA tie well then both would advance. Think of how throwing this match might strengthen Britain!

[Sheilbh]

Good piece with the "Queen of the NIMBYs":

I never wanted to be 'Queen of the nimbys' — but I was radicalised
The Conservatives want to build houses, but they keep running up against a brick wall. Martina Lees asks the woman leading objectors if we can ever break the deadlock

Rosie Pearson's Community Planning Alliance has tens of thousands of people fighting "inappropriate" development
Martina Lees
Sunday November 27 2022, 12.01am, The Sunday Times

There are those who think Rosie Pearson is chief among Britain's army of nimbys ("not in my back yard"), notes ("not over there, either") and bananas ("build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything"). She might lead a new grassroots movement of 600-plus community campaign groups that threatens to tear down the planning system and the heart of the Conservative Party, but Pearson does not like those labels.

"It makes me so cross," she says."We're giving up our time, for free, to hold unscrupulous developers, rogue councils and the government to account. Once you're putting your heart and your time and probably your money into wanting the best for your community then to be insulted left, right and centre is really galling."

Yet Pearson represents a fundamental clash at the heart of the housing crisis. It rumbles through the countryside, amplified by vast backlogs in the planning system. Last week it reached the Commons, almost upending the government's housing policy. And Pearson is where it all began.


Mark Pritchard, a Tory MP, with residents protesting about plans to build on greenfield sites at Breton Park in Muxton, Telford ALAMY

Fast-talking and warm, the mother of two teenagers never set out to be a campaigner, but "the system radicalises people", she says. Her interest in housing started 12 years ago, with a developer's leaflet on plans for a new town in the north Essex countryside where she had walked and cycled as a child. "I thought, 'No way the trains could take all those people.'" She went to a session at the village hall where the developers "couldn't answer any other questions at all", then bumped into a friend of her parents who suggested she start a campaign. She knew nothing about planning but had given up her business development job and was "quite bored with two very small children". She started going to meetings.

At first the intention was to sit quietly taking notes but "bit by bit I became more militant". The proposals in the wider area around her home grew into plans for three new towns of 46,000 homes — of which 37,000 had been stopped by 2020, thanks to Pearson's campaigning. However, it was the "mutant algorithm" at the centre of plans last year by Robert Jenrick, who was then the housing secretary, that galvanised the movement. The plans, which would have allowed for houses to be built according to a Whitehall formula, sent campaigners apoplectic on Twitter. All over the country, groups connected.

One suggested creating a map where local groups could pin themselves. Within two weeks the Community Planning Alliance numbered 200 groups. "We had no concept of how much was going on across the country," Pearson, who chairs the alliance, says. There are now 600 groups with tens of thousands of followers who combine forces to fight "all sorts of inappropriate development from housing, roads, incinerators", she says.

Having slayed Jenrick's plans, the primary focus shifted to planning policy, specifically the unholy trio of top-down targets, the presumption in favour of "sustainable" development and the rule that councils must have a five-year supply of land for housing. (If they don't, developers can get consent more easily on appeal.)


A protest march in Kent ALAMY

Thanks in large part to their efforts, about 50 backbench Conservative MPs, led by Theresa Villiers, the former environment secretary, signed an amendment to the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill, which is going through parliament, to scrap these measures. Many are moderates who, barraged by campaigners amid the Tories' slide in the polls, fear losing their seats. On Wednesday their rebellion forced ministers to postpone key votes on the bill.

Though it is unlikely to pass, it caused horror among planners, developers and policy wonks who fear the bill could be watered down and make it harder to get houses built. In his Sunday Times column last week, Robert Colvile, director of the Centre for Policy Studies think tank and co-author of the 2019 Conservative manifesto, said the plans betrayed the young: "If you back these wicked proposals, you are spitting in the face of a generation." But as one MP told him, wonks don't have to stand for election.

The targets are controversial. You only need to read the draft local plan of Spelthorne, Surrey, to see how much they matter in the shires. Drawing up the plan was "divisive, bruising and at times unpleasant", the council says in its unusually frank introduction. "The reason for the acrimony is easy to discern: the government's brutal housing targets." The size of the targets is one part of the problem. Westminster formulas, projecting population growth based on outdated 2014 data, force this small borough to produce 618 homes a year — almost double the 347 homes that subsequent census data would have required. But without targets, Matthew Spry, senior director of Lichfields planning agency, estimates the net annual number of new homes in England would fall 25 to 35 per cent.

Industry insiders are almost unanimous that abolishing them would be disastrous. It would be "really, really unhelpful" to scrap targets, a senior planner at a council in the southwest said. Local politics would reduce the number of homes built, she added. "Everybody knows there is a housing crisis, but nobody wants anything built next to them." Alex Morton, director of strategy at the Institute of Economic Affairs think tank, who used to advise David Cameron on housing policy, acknowledges that the system fails to deliver what people want from new homes — "better design, infrastructure and benefits such as discounts for local people and families" — and that must be fixed, he says. "But to scrap the stick before you fix the carrots would be madness and hit housebuilding, especially by [smaller builders], very hard."

Smaller companies used to build 40 per cent of new homes just over 30 years ago, but that has fallen to about 10 per cent. Increasingly complex rules and a severe shortage of local planners mean that applications, like one by Swan Homes for 16 family homes on a previously developed brownfield site, take 2½ years and more than £50,000 to win permission, said Adrian Swan, the firm's founder. You must submit as many as 17 expert reports, as in the case of one small scheme in north Lincolnshire, highways, drainage, archaeology, ecology and more. One mulberry tree blocked 291 flats in Bethnal Green, east London, and 12 natterjack toads delayed the Sizewell C nuclear power station project.

Delays are amplified by a growing crisis in planning departments. Council planning budgets have been cut by 43 per cent since 2009, while the pandemic triggered a surge in applications. Private planning consultancies offer higher salaries and less pressure, meaning that local authorities cannot fill posts. "Anyone with any passion for forward or strategic planning has left. Those who stayed have been burnt so many times that they dare not stick their neck out," a planner lamented on the 50 Shades of Planning blog, going viral in planning circles.

Targets to decide applications within eight weeks have been all but "abandoned", said Martin Gaine of Just Planning, which helps homeowners. "Once they run over, they seem to get lost." You can weather all that if you're Barratt with a planning department of 200 and a pipeline of 19,000 approved plots, but probably not if you're Swan or a family trying to build your own home.

What is the solution? Planners and developers alike want planning application fees raised to increase resources — a step that requires legislation long promised but not delivered. It may help to revise the way targets are calculated, rather than doing away with the system altogether. Nicholas Boys Smith, chairman of the government's Office for Place, advocates design codes and street votes where communities can specify what they want for good, ordinary terraced streets, which would give certainty to anyone, big or small, who applies to build there.

Pearson wants a planning system that is "consultative from the beginning. Don't propose a load of plans, ask people what they think and then ignore everyone. Get everyone in a room and say, 'Write what you liked about your area. What don't you like?' Then propose things and run them by people." Has she ever supported a development? Pearson said she struggled to find an example of a good development, but points to 48 "lovely" new homes in Coggeshall in Essex. Working with residents through the neighbourhood plan group, Higgins Homes designed the houses in the town's medieval style on the brownfield site of a former school. Pearson can't see it over her own garden fence, but if she could, she "really wouldn't mind". "We're fighting for the right things to happen."

Of course she's campaigned successfully to stop 37,000 new homes but can think of 48 that she approves of

Edit: Separately big Census data drop today

Census 2021 - England & Wales
@Census2021
The next instalment of Census 2021 results on 29 November includes:
➡️ religion
➡️ ethnic group
➡️ national identity
➡️ main language & English proficiency

http://ow.ly/83xB50LOGfb
Census 2021 included a voluntary religion question. The religion results will include:
➡️ people's religious identity, including 57 categories
➡️ religion within households

Our ethnic group data will include: 
➡️ ethnic composition within England and Wales
➡️ insights into 287 ethnic groups
➡️ ethnic groups within the household

Our national identity results will include information across 73 national identities that people identify with. This is not necessarily the country you were born in or have citizenship with.

Our language results will include 95 main languages, including:
➡️ people's own main language (including sign languages)
➡️ main language within the household
➡️ English language skills

Learn more about what we've published so far and what's coming in our next topic summaries:
➡️ Welsh language skills in Wales
➡️ housing
➡️ sexual orientation and gender identity
➡️ education
➡️ health, disability and unpaid care

https://ons.gov.uk/census/aboutcensus/censusproducts/topicsummaries
How are you represented in the census results?

With so many different possible answers for national identity and ethnicity, Sarah Wood explains in this blog how we help to make sure that everyone is counted in the next set of census results
https://blog.ons.gov.uk/2022/11/25/how-am-i-represented-in-census-2021-data/