Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[crazy canuck]

You don't think any of these things encouraged private investment?

The Big Bang I've read about so that I can discuss.

The Big Bang was not the granting of special favors to finance, it was removing regulatory barriers.  It was the removal of a handicap.

ie greatly encouraging a industry where London was traditionally strong.
Along with this were numerous actions that hurt industries where other regions were strong.
And actions to directly help the development of the city.
You can't look at any one thing alone. Its all part of the holistic whole.

Yi qualifies his views by saying they are based on his limited knowledge.  The odd part is that whenever anyone gives him new information that should change his view, he merely defends his view because it is supported by his limited knowledge.

[Sheilbh]

ie greatly encouraging a industry where London was traditionally strong.
Along with this were numerous actions that hurt industries where other regions were strong.
And actions to directly help the development of the city.
You can't look at any one thing alone. Its all part of the holistic whole.

But it's six of one half dozen of the other. I always wonder how much politicians matter even one who are apparently transformative like Thatcher. Because as you've pointed out London was already strong in services and the effect of Thatcher's policies played to that - or, ultimately, she maybe marginally accelerated or catalysed existing economic patterns. So I think you probably need to zoom out and look at the postwar as well, or maybe the whole of the twentieth century.

For example Britain was not strong in those other industries that it had - they were old, unable to compete with lower cost or more efficient industry elsewhere and, bluntly, they were in the wrong industries. I always think of that line from Keynes wishing for a friendly American bomb to fall on British factories when no-one was in them (except the management) because they weren't competitive strong sectors. That didn't happen so while European countries spent their time developing 20th century industries the UK was propping up 19th century ones. The story of industry in the 20th century is massive underinvestment, low productivity and bad management (a bit like the story of the British economy in the 21st century). There's the famous examples of all of manual processes still being standard in Clydeside shipbuilding that were built as automated in South Korea. But we literally still had cotton mills.

On services the question, I think, is more why services weren't strong elsewhere - and they were at one point. The UK is already a predominately services economy before WW1 (and already has fewer than 10% of the workforce in agriculture). There were really strong services sectors all over the country - when The Batman uses Glasgow and Liverpool as Gotham, those Art Deco office blocks were built for big insurance companies and banks. But the same is true across the UK - there were many service sectors (this is also true in the US I think). Part of the story is probably inevitable consolidation as communications technology improves.

Part of that was policy which constrained private investment but it was the challenge of fitting a booming services sector into Britain's post-war planned economy Birmingham is the most extreme example - from Professor Henry Overman on the LSE's Spatial Economics blog (it's old and I think I've posted it before - I won't bold because it's short and I'd bold the whole thing ):

Booming Birmingham and the Need for Rebalancing
For all those worrying about London's 'booming' economy and the urgent need for rebalancing, here's a fascinating lesson from history (sent to me by a colleague* and taken, I believe, from Birmingham 1939-1970. History of Birmingham Volume 3 by A. Sutcliffe and R. Smith):

---
Birmingham itself was second only to London for the creation of new jobs between 1951 and 1961. Unemployment in Birmingham between 1948 and 1966 rarely exceeded 1%, and only exceeded 2% in one year. By 1961 household incomes in the West Midlands were 13% above the national average, exceeding even than those of London and the South East. Although employment in Birmingham's restricted manufacturing sector shrank by 10% between 1951 and 1966, this was more than made up during the early post-war period for by employment in the service sector, which grew from 35% of the city's workforce in 1951 to 45% in 1966. As the commercial centre of the country's most successful regional economy, Central Birmingham was the main focus outside London for the post-war office building boom. Service sector employment in the Birmingham conurbation grew faster than in any other region between 1953 and 1964, and the same period saw 3 million sq ft of office space constructed in the city centre and Edgbaston. The city's economic boom saw the rapid growth of a substantial merchant banking sector, as major London and international banks established themselves within the city, and professional and scientific services, finance and insurance also grew particularly strongly. However this service sector growth itself attracted government restrictions from 1965. Declaring the growth in population and employment within Birmingham to be a "threatening situation", the incoming Labour Government of 1964 sought "to control the growth of office accommodation in Birmingham and the rest of the Birmingham conurbation before it got out of hand, in the same way as they control the growth of industrial employment". Although the City Council had encouraged service sector expansion during the late 1950s and early 1960s, central government extended the Control of Office Employment Act 1965 to the Birmingham conurbation from 1965, effectively banning all further office development for almost two decades.

Up until the 1930s it had been a basic assumption of Birmingham's leaders that their role was to encourage the city's growth. Post-war national governments, however, saw Birmingham's accelerating economic success as a damaging influence on the stagnating economies of the North of England, Scotland and Wales, and saw its physical expansion as a threat to its surrounding areas – "from Westminster's point of view was too large, too prosperous, and had to be held in check". A series of measures, starting with the Distribution of Industry Act 1945, aimed to prevent industrial growth in the "Congested Areas" – essentially the booming cities of London and Birmingham – instead encouraging the dispersal of industry to the economically stagnant "Development Areas" in the north and west. The West Midlands Plan, commissioned by the Minister for Town and Country Planning from Patrick Abercrombie and Herbert Jackson in 1946, set Birmingham a target population for 1960 of 990,000, far less than its actual 1951 population of 1,113,000. This meant that 220,000 people would have to leave the city over the following 14 years, that some of the city's industries would have to be removed, and that new industries would need to be prevented from establishing themselves in the city. By 1957 the council had explicitly accepted that it was obliged "to restrain the growth of population and employment potential within the city."

When the minister is discussing it they wanted to "restrain less essential building and to reduce the general pressure of demand on the economy" because of building office space. But also allowing uncontrolled growth of services "would be manifestly unfair to industry [which was already restrained] [...] office employment did not contribute its share to the redistribution of development. Moreover, the continued growth of the conurbation is a threat to the economic balance of the region."

The effect of those restrictions on industry building was not that investment was redirected to the north, as intended, but that companies built smaller premises that weren't affected by the targets - which again relates to under-investment because even British manufacturing that was growing and modern was constrained. On the services side it just didn't fit into a planned economy - it also overlapped with post-war urban planning. In general it's not true that urban planners did more damage to British cities than the Luftwaffe - it is probably true of Birmingham where there was massive decanting from the city centre, they built a massive ring road and it is still Britain's most "American" city built around the car.

But also it is, from the 21st century, insane that the UK ever had a Control of Office Employment Act that applied to different areas of the country to stop services or "less essential" building taking up too large a share of balance of payment, or failing to contribute to national or regional economic distribution. I've said it before but I think in the same way as the UK went maybe more neo-liberal than most of the West under Thatcher - I think we were also as close as anyone to a fully socialist democratic country in the post-war period.

But all of thsoe factors were in place before Thatcher. I think part of why London was able to escape a little bit of that - especially in services - was simply that it was too big and too politically powerful (until Thatcher abolished the GLC) to entirely strangle as Westminster did other parts of the country. Part of it is also the story of the post-war nationalisation of policy - there is a reason the heyday for many cities in the UK was also the heyday of municipal power (and municipal socialism). I think London was more able to hold to that because it was bigger and stronger - it's why I think the key is decentralisation both away from the post-war plans and just unleashing market forces on top of those plans/existing trends.

I purposely focused on private investment because that's the part I wanted to dispute.

But isn't part of the issue exactly the point Gove is making. That governments have done the capital investment and produced a public realm in London that supports private investment (despite it being far more expensive) - and you see this all the time.

This is from civil service calculations of cost benefit ratios of various projects in London and the Leeds/West Yorkshire conurbation:


All of the London ones have gone ahead; the ones in Leeds and West Yorkshire, broadly speaking, haven't. I don't think it's a plan or conscious by civil servants that somehow the projects that get funding and built are all in the city they live, but it does seem to be a problem.

[Valmy]

As "nepo babies" is a subject in the US, I found this piece in Vice interesting (but sadly not surprising - though still enraging) on the UK equivalent, or basically the entire creative sector:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/3adgnk/american-nepo-babies-have-nothing-on-the-british

To be fair this sounds basically how most of the world functions. You have elite schools or whatever that tend to produce most of the elites. Sure outsiders can through incredible luck and merit crack into the club from time to time but it is structured to ensure that while there are a few of these they are always a minority.

[Sheilbh]

Incidentally I know it's very small but another example of pennywise and pound foolish. After the government decided to stop funding the BBC World Service they pushed it into the BBC, so it's now funded from their pot and competing with domestic broadcasting obligations. From my understanding this saves the government something like a couple of hundred million - which is the equivalent of a rounding error for the Treasury but there we go.

Anyway the BBC has decided to eliminate the BBC Arabic radio service which is doing its last broadcast right now - it was the first foreign language radio service and has been running for 85 years. Again minimal savings - I suspect the wrong decision given the general value of good news in the world but also when audio media is booming (maybe they should have looked into that instead).

And again media and culture is something we're good at - especially with the BBC. So inevitably it gets a thousand little cuts

[Jacob]

To be fair this sounds basically how most of the world functions.

To be fair, a whole bunch of people think it's not fair.

[Valmy]

To be fair this sounds basically how most of the world functions.

To be fair, a whole bunch of people think it's not fair.

It isn't. But nothing distinctly British about it.

[Jacob]

It isn't. But nothing distinctly British about it.

Nepotism with British Characteristics 

[Sheilbh]

Even excluding the acting dynasties this seems fairly and maybe unusually dense:

A private education can certainly be advantageous for an actor, as the sheer number of them suggests. Like Foxes Sr and Jr, Cumberbatch too went to the all-boys, all-boarding Harrow. Then there's Eddie Redmayne, Dominic West, Damian Lewis and Tom Hiddleston: Old Etonians, at the present-day cost of some £15,000 a term. Tilda Swinton, Imogen Poots and The Queen's Gambit star Anya Taylor-Joy are alumni of Queen's Gate in South Kensington – alongside the actual Queen-Consort Camilla. Emma Corrin and Carey Mulligan attended Woldingham in the rolling Surrey hills, where boarding prices start at £13,000 a term. Newly crowned A-lister Florence Pugh, Game of Thrones' Emilia Clarke and Sebastian Croft, and Skins' Sebastian de Souza of Skins studied at St Edward's Oxford, known as "Teddies" – as did, historically, Sir Laurence Olivier.
[...]
But, Beard's book would suggest, it's not their exemplary tuition in drama giving them an edge, but the connections and "way of being" they gain along the way. "If it was just school, no one would pay so much money," he writes. A private education can serve as a pipeline into the performing arts by bringing those who weren't born well-connected in contact with those who were.

Robert Pattinson, for instance, is not from a theatrical family, but The Sandman's Tom Sturridge is: His mother and maternal grandfather are both actors and his father, a BAFTA-winning director and screenwriter who has often cast his mother. Pattinson and Sturridge have been friends since they were 13, having both attended the Harrodian School (Netflix comedian Jack Whitehall, newly-cast Guardians of the Galaxy star Will Poulter and 1917's George Mackay are graduates, too). Pattinson is even godfather to Sturridge's niece – while Sturridge's sister Matilda also an actor.

It goes on: In their early days in Hollywood, Pattinson and Sturridge were friends and occasional roommates with Redmayne (Eton), Andrew Garfield (Priory Preparatory, City of London Freemen's School) and Charlie Cox (Sherborne). Sturridge was in a relationship with Sienna Miller, an alumna of the famed Lee Strasberg drama school, which her mother used to run in London. The couple reportedly introduced Pattinson to FKA Twigs, who attended St Edward's School in Cheltenham (though on scholarship) – where she appeared in a production of Bugsy Malone alongside The Crown's Josh O'Connor.
[...]
That self-belief can be rocket fuel behind any acting hopeful. Sixteen-year-old Henry Cavill, then a boarder at Stowe School in Buckinghamshire, introduced himself as an aspiring actor to Oscar winner Russell Crowe, who was shooting Proof of Life on the grounds: "I thought I may as well go over and ask this famous guy about it."

When combined with opportunity, it can seem as though acting success was always fated. Emily Blunt has said her career "fell into my lap" after she was head-hunted through Hurtwood House's drama programme; her "first real non-school play" was opposite Dame Judi Dench. (She appears to have paid it forward, with her little brother Sebastian playing a soldier in The Edge of Tomorrow, having previously only appeared in short films.)
[...]
With family connections thrown in, the elements normally left to chance for show business success are greatly reduced. After deciding to aspire to acting at age 12, Bridgerton's breakout star Phoebe Dynevor was well set up to succeed between her parents being Coronation Street actor Sally and screenwriter Tim, and the incubation of private school (Cheadle Hulme School, also the alma mater of Sex Education's Aimee Lou Wood). Dynevor landed her first job aged 14.

The schools benefit from their reflected success, too. George Mackay's school newsletter trumpets his family "as Harrodian legends", with Mackay's costume designer mother and former lighting and stage manager father both lending their talents to productions.

Also we have actors from working class backgrounds ringing alarms about the issue: Christopher Eccleston, James McAvoy, Michael Sheen, Kathy Burke, Gary Oldman. And the most talented minority talent who have said they moved to the US because of struggling to get roles because of class and/or race or very limited (and limiting roles):  Daniel Kaluuya, Idris Elba, Dev Patel, David Oyelowo, Riz Ahmed, Thandiwe Newton (I feel like Michaela Coel will make the jump for similar reasons).

The thing about confidence rings true - it's something I always remember my dad saying that private schools give kids self confidence, that's it. And in settings where there's lots of kids from it you can see it and I think if you're recruiting you almost need to adjust for it because (as our recent leaders demonstrate) the line between self-confidence and bullshitter is incredibly thin.

But I also worry a little bit more generally about education - the UK has gone up the PISA rankings in the last decade, in England more working class kids are getting into university than ever and most minority groups have a higher average educational attainment than white kids. All of which I think are signs of progress in education, especially in cities. But I worry that things like music, drama, sports - the extra-curricular "rounding" stuff is becoming a preserve of people who can pay for education. Plus I really hate this whole idea that education is just about produce "skilled" people for the job market - it's a really important function of education but not the only thing.

It reminds me of the Clive James line about why Australia tends to beat England at cricket and rugby: class. It's only certain schools that play cricket and rugby (although I think cricket is broader in some areas), while others play football. In Australia all schools play them and you can put out a better team if you're not handicapping yourself by only giving kids at, say, 7% of schools a fair chance. No normal schools can compete with Eton's three theatres (plus resident designer, resident professional director, filmmaker-in-residence, professional backstage staff for the twenty productions a year - who can all help kids interested in that side of things), but we should at least make sure the door is open.

And I don't think this is good:

But that is not a reason not to care about the UK's creative class gap. For a start, it is more pronounced than in other sectors, with a colossal 250,000 working-class people needing to be employed for the industry to be more representative. "Creative occupations are amongst the most elite in the economy," Carey tells VICE. Key creative roles are now more dominated by people from privileged backgrounds than doctors, judges, management consultants or stockbrokers.

[Admiral Yi]

But isn't part of the issue exactly the point Gove is making. That governments have done the capital investment and produced a public realm in London that supports private investment (despite it being far more expensive) - and you see this all the time.

I would dispute the direction of the causality.  Did private investment move into London because the transportation was nice, or did transportation get built to accomodate people moving to jobs in London?

[Richard Hakluyt]

To be fair this sounds basically how most of the world functions.

To be fair, a whole bunch of people think it's not fair.

It has got worse, at least in the UK, in the past 50 years. There were far more working class actors, comedians, musicians etc back in the 1960s and 70s. All the continuing talk of "increasing diversity" in arts and culture tends to irritate me; with the important exception of skin colour diversity is on the decrease.

Not enough talk about class and its complete dominance on life outcomes these days :raisesredflag

[Syt]

  

[Sheilbh]

It has got worse, at least in the UK, in the past 50 years. There were far more working class actors, comedians, musicians etc back in the 1960s and 70s. All the continuing talk of "increasing diversity" in arts and culture tends to irritate me; with the important exception of skin colour diversity is on the decrease.

Not only that but also grammar school kids at really senior levels of politics, civil service etc.

It leads the right to bang on about bringing back grammar schools, which I think is wrong. My understanding is that according to studies it is less that grammar schools were great for social mobility and more that there was space at the top. I think across a lot of sectors - including creative - the space at the top has been restricted. After a bit of open-ness in the immediate post-war, it's closed down to a more static society.

Not enough talk about class and its complete dominance on life outcomes these days :raisesredflag

Agreed.

[Sheilbh]

 

I've never seen a front page so mocked by everyone (and it's not really being shared by any of their reporters)

It's from Maxwell's lawyers - my only guess on why they'd pubilsh something like that is that someone senior at the Telegraph/the Barclays family is pretty heavily tied to Epstein/others implicated in the Epstein scandal (and worth remembering that Robert Maxwell was a British press baron).

[The Larch]

"Frolicking". 

[Richard Hakluyt]

You don't need much room for a frolic in my experience 

But maybe a royal duke demands a massive four-poster bed or something