Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Sheilbh]

I think it was caught by an off duty Sky News camera person but was challenged by a voter in Winchester (Tory-Lib Dem swing seat) about the NHS. The link looks weird but it must just be the Sky News liveblog. It's a few items down:
https://news.sky.com/story/dominic-raab-latest-deputy-pm-warns-of-chilling-effect-of-setting-bullying-threshold-so-low-in-critical-resignation-letter-12593360

Basically he doesn't handle it well and it looks a bit like he weirdly laughs in her face and then tries to walk away once she starts talking about a personal experience.

[Jacob]

Thank you

[Tamas]

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/jan/19/east-london-school-palestinian-flag-row-could-close-threats-abuse-barclay-leyton

Somebody hung a Palestinian flag from a school in London so they started getting far-right abuse, so they banned political symbols and now getting Islamist abuse.

[Josquius]

Two sides of the exact same coin.

[Sheilbh]

Good piece on the revelations from the Scottish government in the covid inquiry.

I could be wrong but I suspect that those messages probably included lots of strategising on the PR of how to basically do the same as England but different enough to draw a line of distinction between Scotland's policy and the hated UK government's. I also note that even in one of the official minutes in the early days of covid there was minuted discussion of how to use covid to build support for independence.

I'd also note that Leitch is supposed to be a non-political figure. I think it points to the incredible record the SNP has of basically every appointment in the government's gift - quangos, arms length bodies, cultural bodies etc - only going to people who are at least sympathetic to the nationalist cause. For all the talk of the Tories politicising independent institutions they still tend to appoint, say, Blair era politicians or, in charge of Natural England, a former Green Party candidate and chair of Friends of the Earth (they are subsequently shocked to discover that his decisions are not in line with Tory opinion ). Compared to the SNP's (or New Labour's) march through the institutions, it's very underwhelming (and I think it's partly why civil servants went along).

Obviously none of this matters in liberal English opinion. But just another example of the old nickname being true in another way - the SNP as Tartan Tories:

Nicola Sturgeon always wrapped herself in a shroud of secrecy
Even at the height of the pandemic the Scottish first minister knew her emails, WhatsApps and meetings would later be scrutinised — so why weren't records kept?
Alex Massie
Saturday January 20 2024, 6.00pm, The Sunday Times

Last October The Times revealed that Jason Leitch, the national clinical director, routinely destroyed WhatsApp messages during the pandemic. In response to this report, the Scottish government told journalists that it was "not correct to suggest that the national clinical director deleted every WhatsApp message every day".

Let us not be coy or euphemistically evasive here. This was a lie, pure and simple. A lie from a government with form for lying. A government that will lie and lie and lie again whenever it suits.

On Friday the UK Covid inquiry, chaired by Baroness Hallett, revealed the discovery of a "WhatsApp group chat" in which a senior Scottish government official warned that discussions of this sort between ministers and officials would be subject to release under freedom of information laws. This provoked a measure of banter. "Clear the chat!" another civil servant said. To which Leitch responded: "WhatsApp deletion is a pre-bed ritual." This exchange took place on May 13, 2021 but it is obvious that the regular destruction of messages began much earlier than that.

Almost all governments struggled during the pandemic. It stressed the machinery of government like no other public health emergency in recent decades. Mistakes, some of them mortal, were inevitable. But in Scotland a great myth was also created. Here, we were encouraged to believe that Nicola Sturgeon's ministry had a grip on the pandemic, in stark contrast to Boris Johnson's chaotic and confused handling of the situation. Where Johnson floundered, Sturgeon offered reassurance; where he was overwhelmed by the detail of managing a problem of hideous complexity, she rose to the occasion. It was her finest hour.

Awkwardly, much of this proved to be just a triumph of public relations. Outcomes in Scotland were not very different from outcomes in England. Many of the same mistakes were made and even if some were made for understandable reasons their outcomes were still disastrous. It remains astonishing that elderly patients were sometimes discharged from hospitals into care homes even though it was known that they were carrying the virus.

It is important to emphasise that this is not simply a matter of political point-scoring. The Covid inquiry is charged with examining how politicians and their advisers responded to an unprecedented public health challenge. The idea is not just to discover what went wrong and who to blame but to establish what lessons should be learnt in advance of future crises. The inquiry's ability to do that is obviously compromised if records of how and why decisions were taken have been destroyed.

Sometimes, of course, records have not been destroyed because no records were kept in the first place. Sturgeon's confidantes formed a "gold command" group at the heart of the Scottish government. This group, not the cabinet, took most of the most important decisions. As Jamie Dawson KC, counsel to Hallett's inquiry, related: "It appears that no minutes of the meetings of this group were kept."

This can only be an entirely deliberate policy. Sturgeon and John Swinney, her then deputy, were vastly experienced politicians. They must have known that such meetings should have been minuted and that these minutes should have been kept. Consequently, they must also have decided that these meetings — at which policy of national importance and public interest was discussed — should not be recorded properly.

One may only guess at the level of sanctimonious outrage SNP politicians would display if Conservative ministers were discovered to have been behaving in such a secretive fashion. If this were a story about Johnson and Dominic Cummings and Sir Patrick Vallance you may be sure that SNP indignation would have long ago gone nuclear.

And, of course, the British government has many questions to answer too. Both Johnson and Rishi Sunak have been unable to supply the Covid inquiry with all their WhatsApp messages. This has long seemed suspicious and their explanations too conveniently self-serving to be wholly credible. Still, we may enjoy the spectacle of the modern Scottish nationalist justifying his own party's disgraceful penchant for furtiveness and secrecy by arguing that the first minister of Scotland is at least no worse than the worst British prime minister in living memory.

Nor was this a one-off. Sturgeon was first minister of Scotland for eight years and throughout that time demonstrated a penchant for buttoned-up government. She did not rate or trust most of her cabinet colleagues — reasonably enough, you may think — and she preferred to conduct government informally and, wherever possible, without accurate record-keeping.

If this was regrettable, you can also understand that secrecy is tempting. It is harder to understand how and why the civil service would cheerfully permit this kind of shadow government. Yet time and time again officials have meekly gone along with this. The result has been the creation of a public-facing government whose meetings are minuted in the usual fashion and a secret government which actually takes the decisions that matter and whose gatherings are not recorded at all.

It was clear from the very early stages of the pandemic that a public inquiry would be needed to examine how the authorities handled the emergency. Sturgeon recognised and accepted this.

This is the context in which to understand the failure to keep those records. Consequently, the failure to keep them can only be ascribed to unconscionable carelessness or a deliberate policy of deceit and deletion. Neither reflects well upon the Scottish government, its advisers or the civil service but I know — and you know too — which is the more likely explanation.

In August 2021, Sturgeon was asked if she would hand over all her "emails, WhatsApps, private e-mails" and so on to the inquiry. Taking characteristic umbrage, she declared: "Even if I wasn't prepared to give that assurance, which for the avoidance of doubt I am, then I wouldn't have the ability [to do so]. This will be a judge-led public inquiry." We have since discovered that this was a promise she could not keep — and one, moreover, that she must have known she would not keep.

On Friday, the Covid inquiry was told that Sturgeon "had retained no messages whatsoever in connection with her management of the pandemic". Her defence is that other people kept some of her texts, so it hardly matters that she didn't. I am not sure this is an ironclad defence. This whole saga is unsurprising but will anyone be held accountable? Past experience suggests you should not invest too much hope in this being the case.

Needless to say the cybernats are suggesting there's nothing to see here. The official Scottish government policy is that no decisions were made by WhatsApp - which may well be true, but it's difficult to prove when Sturgon's deleted all her messages, her deputy had auto-delete on, the National Clinical Director apparently deleted messages as a "pre-bed ritual" and a civil servant on being told that WhatsApp is subect to FOI messages "clear the chat!"

[Tamas]

Son in this bit: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/21/two-adults-found-dead-with-children-in-norfolk-died-of-stab-wounds-to-neck

the interesting part is:

He said police had previously visited the property on 14 December in relation to a missing person inquiry. On Friday a man called 999 from the property on Allan Bedford Crescent at about 6am, but police were not dispatched. Officers made the discovery about an hour and 15 minutes later after a member of the public alerted them again at about 7am.

So I wonder what stage both the caller (I'd imagine one of the victims) and the 999 dispatcher thought the incident was at the time of the call, considering that it ended with the murder of 4 people, yet in its early stages the dispatcher deemed it not necessary to send police. And then what changed that they listened to a neighbour instead.

[HVC]

From the article sounds like murder suicide. But I agree it's odd, or negligent, that they ignored the first call. I guess it could have been a standard noise complaint rather than a person calling about hearing an assault.

[Sheilbh]

From the article sounds like murder suicide. But I agree it's odd, or negligent, that they ignored the first call. I guess it could have been a standard noise complaint rather than a person calling about hearing an assault.

Yeah the police statements are that it's a complex situation which they're still piecing together but they are "satisfied it's an isolated incident" which heavily implies murder suicide (which I think is grimly quite common with murders in a family and Christmas).

[Sheilbh]

Hundredth anniversary of the first Labour government (and Lenin's death) which is barely being noted by the Labour Party for all the reasons in that other article I posted. But interesting piece by David Torrance - and I'm looking forward to his book. As I say I've always had the Labour orthodoxy about MacDonald but will enjoy having it challenged - and think his life story from illegitimate son of a farm hand and a maid to PM must be interesting.

The other thing is how much of it echoes down through Labour Party history. The fear of betrayal, the utopian v pragmatists - even the Beatrice Webbs (from her criticisms here to her, at its kindest, credulity towards the USSR and Stalin such as the book she wrote with her husband after their trip to the USSR in 1932-3, Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation):

Labour was never a revolutionary movement
Ramsay MacDonald was a paragon of competence and compromise
BY David Torrance

Who's side was he really on? (Keystone-France/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)
What can Keir Starmer learn from his party's ghosts?

David Torrance is a historian and House of Commons clerk. His book The Wild Men: The remarkable story of Britain's first Labour government is out now.
January 22, 2024

All anyone could think about was clothes. As the members of the first Labour Cabinet prepared to collect their seals of office — having formed a government 100 years ago today — the gravity of the occasion was almost lost amid sartorial consternations. As only a few of the new Ministers of the Crown had previous ministerial experience, most lacked the requisite dress. Conscious of this, King George V set aside the usual requirements. John Wheatley, an Irish-born miner and the incoming Minister for Health, defiantly wore a ten-year-old lounge suit. Most of his colleagues, however, did their best to conform. A press photographer captured the "arrival on foot of the tall lanky figure of Noel Buxton and the short Sidney Webb with his nanny-goat beard, both clad in knee breeches and evening dress, white shirt and tails". Labour Left-wingers were outraged, while the future Labour Chancellor Hugh Dalton thought the duo looked "ridiculous".

Fashion is never just about utility, and these first-day uniform anxieties would come to symbolise all the tensions at the heart of the first Labour government, all its neuroses of class, radicalism and ideological purity. To whom did it owe allegiance: its working-class roots, its intellectuals or its own party machine? Some of its members simply wanted to disprove Winston Churchill's notorious assertion that they weren't "fit to govern", conforming to the standards of previous administrations in order to establish a beachhead in the British Establishment. Others were more impatient. They wanted to demonstrate that a socialist government owed more to its voters than dressing up. Ramsay MacDonald, the illegitimate son of a farmhand who had the previous day kissed hands as Prime Minister, belonged in the former camp. In an interview with the New Leader, he turned the argument against his critics:

"I have known people who showed vanity by the clumsiness of their clothes. A tattered hat and a red tie, a tone of voice and religious repetition of Marxian phrases, may be as indicative of a man who has sold himself to appearances as the possession of a ceremonial dress to enable him to attend ceremonies which are historical parts of his duties."

As Ethel Snowden (Chancellor Philip's wife) observed in The Spectator, had ministers attended Court functions "in hobnailed boots, with unwashed faces and collarless shirts", they would "quickly have [attracted] deserved contempt and ignominy". Meanwhile, MacDonald himself could see the bigger picture. And his account of a historic day betrayed both his shock at what had just happened, as well as his apprehension at what was to come: "Without fuss, the firing of guns, the flying of new flags, the Labour Gov[ernmen]t has come in... Now for burdens & worries. Our greatest difficulties will be to get to work. Our purposes need preparation, & during preparation we shall appear to be doing nothing – and to our own people to be breaking our pledges."

This was prescient. Over the next nine months Britain's first Labour Prime Minister would find himself battling on a number of fronts: for acceptance by voters, co-operation with not one but two opposition parties in Parliament (Liberals and Conservatives) and most of all for support from his own colleagues, many of whom were deeply uneasy that a party with only 191 MPs had taken office at all.

The Labour Party as represented in Parliament was complex. Its structure betrayed its chaotic inception, more a fusion of local bodies and ideological factions than a combined party under a unitary authority. The civil servant Percy Grigg described a "Trade Union element", which was more interested in moderate "bread and butter" politics than the abstract economic and social doctrine favoured by the party's faction of "intellectuals". And this second grouping included both former Liberals and those who had emerged from the Independent Labour Party (ILP), a separate but affiliated group. Grigg called the ILP-ers "Montagnards" after the most radical political group during the French Revolution, and remarked they followed "the lead of the Clyde in Scotland and Mr. [George] Lansbury in England". Inclined to be unhappy at the moderation displayed by the trade unionists and intellectuals, the Montagnards would only be satisfied with the building of the New Jerusalem.

But for their political opponents and the press, Labour was singular, lumped together as the "wild men". As it would turn out, they were far from wild, and that was part of their problem. After two months in government, Ramsay MacDonald — consumed by international as well as domestic affairs — grew concerned at the failure of his backbenchers to respond adequately to the "new conditions". Some of what he called the "disappointed ones" had become "as hostile as though they were not of us". He was thinking of malcontents like E. D. Morel, the campaigning journalist, and George Lansbury, a future Labour leader. "I am thoroughly distressed about the Party," Lansbury had told Beatrice Webb in the middle of March:

"Everybody seems so thoroughly cheerful, and thoroughly content with what we are doing, and yet we are doing nothing that is of any real worth. I certainly think the fact that we are so very satisfactory to our opponents... and so very unsatisfactory to the poor devils on whose votes people like me got into Parliament, is a tragedy of the first water."

Webb herself did not accuse MacDonald of treachery ("for he was never a socialist") she saw him as "a believer in individualist political democracy tempered in its expression by utopian socialism". Where he had "lacked integrity", she added, was, "in posing as a socialist, and occasionally using revolutionary jargon. If he succeeds in getting a majority of the electors into this revised version of reformist conservatism embodied in the Labour Party machine, things will move forward." It seemed doubtful that the Prime Minister would have regarded this as a criticism, for "reformist conservatism" was truly his whole aim in office, as it had been in opposition. This isn't to say his short government was inactive. MacDonald worked hard to make John Wheatley's housing legislation a reality, formally recognised the Soviet Union and brokered a new settlement between France and Germany, something he hoped would boost trade as well as soothing post-war wounds. But with only 191 MPs, and a ministry dependent on Liberal votes, he couldn't do everything.

When ministers in the first Labour government pointed out this Liberal support was a necessary evil to remain in office, critics insisted "that it would be better to go down with colours flying than to lower the flag in the hope of keeping the ship afloat". The MP Frederick Pethick-Lawrence occupied a "middle position", sharing disappointment "at the apparent inaction" but also believing "the country would have been annoyed if the Prime Minister, having taken office, had almost immediately courted defeat". This alluded to a strategy favoured by the Left of the party and feared by Conservatives like Lord Birkenhead:

"[Labour would] bring in a Budget, which might include a Levy on Capital, increase of Death Duties and Super-tax. This would, naturally, be defeated in Parliament and then Mr. Ramsay MacDonald would go to the country with what would be regarded by the mass of the electorate as the most popular Budget that had ever been produced. The Labour Party would sweep the country and be in office for the next 5 years."

This fanciful scenario, however, was never in MacDonald's mind, and when Philip Snowden's first (and only) Budget was unveiled in April, its provisions channelled Gladstone rather than Marx, attracting a chorus of approval from many Liberals and Conservatives. Hardly anyone noticed the absence of a capital levy (wealth tax), which had been the centrepiece of Labour's manifesto in the December 1923 election. Instead, like the apostle Paul, the Labour Party put away such childish things and chose the moderate, constructive path. And although this made it, to quote Fenner Brockway, "a Social Reform Government rather than a Socialist Government, a Liberal Government rather than a Labour Government", the fact remained that it managed to be in office as well as in power, which was the only means by which it could deliver anything at all.

The rest of the MacDonald story is well known. His first administration lost a confidence vote in October 1924 and took its case to the country, only for the fabricated Zinoviev Letter (which called for Communist sedition and therefore stoked fears of a "red menace") to derail the election and drive voters back to the Conservatives for five years. In June 1929 Ramsay returned as the prime minister of another minority government, although this time Labour was the single largest party with 287 seats. In the midst of rising unemployment and a sterling crisis, the government agreed to resign in August 1931, but then the King persuaded MacDonald to head a "National" government. Labour's National Executive Committee voted to expel all those who remained in office, and in the election that followed, the National government was returned with a majority of nearly 500 (mostly Tories) and the "official" Labour Party was reduced to just 52 MPs.

This became known within the Labour movement as the "great betrayal", and it took (as David Marquand has argued) some time for the Labour Party to get over its "complex" about MacDonald. Surveying events from the perspective of 1937, the future Prime Minister Clement Attlee did not doubt the "utility" of his party's determination in 1924 to prove that Labour men and women could "administer the country". And, he added cautiously, "the British elector is very sceptical of anything which he has not seen. The mere formation of a Labour Government and its existence for nine months registered a vital change in the political situation. Henceforth Labour was the alternative Government."

Ramsay MacDonald and his colleagues had been dealt a very difficult hand which, for the most part, they played surprisingly well. This had not been guaranteed. The fledgling ministers might have been a disaster, spooking the City of London, offending the King and alienating moderate voters by attempting to pass "extreme" measures. The Labour Party might have been rendered unelectable. But that did not happen, in large part due to the skill of its leader. As a result, the "wild men" so feared in late 1923 had, within the space of an eventful year, shown they were competent men after all. Labour, contrary to Winston Churchill's wounding assertion, were fit to govern. But this only begged the question that has dogged them since: who were they there to govern for?

This is incidentally I think the last time the royals mattered or did something that actually had an impact. I think there's a fair bit to the theory that a key factor in whether democracy survived in a country (at least in Europe, but maybe elsewhere) in the early twentieth century was whether conservative elites (monarchs, business, landowners, church, military) could reconcile themselves to legitimate socialist rule. In the UK, George V did - and if the king (elite of the elites) could, that gave a signal to the rest.

[The Minsky Moment]

Ramsay MacDonald was a paragon of competence and compromise

Compromise, yes.

[Sheilbh]

If you're writing a book about the most loathed man in the history of the British left, fair to say you need a revisionist take.

I think there is probably an argument over the first government.

[Zanza]

French utility EDF on Tuesday again pushed back the start date on its long-delayed 3.2-gigawatt (GW) Hinkley Point C reactor plant in Britain to at least 2029, with a new estimated cost of between 31 billion and 34 billion pounds ($43.06 billion) based on 2015 values.

The project in southwest England, Britain's first new nuclear plant in more than two decades, was at the last update expected to start operations in June 2027, with an estimated cost of 25-26 billion pounds, which also was a revision of a previous 2025 start date at a cost then estimated at 18 billion pounds. EDF had initially said it would be powering British homes in 2017.

[...]

Britain aims to increase its nuclear energy capacity to 24 GW by mid-century, up from 6 GW today, which could meet around a quarter of the country's forecast electricity demand.

Another 3.2-GW planned plant - Sizewell C in southeast England - has not yet had a final investment decision (FID). The government said on Monday it would invest an extra 1.3 billion pounds in the project.

"Hinkley Point C is not a government project and so any additional costs or schedule over-runs are the responsibility of EDF and its partners and will in no way fall on taxpayers," the department for energy security and net zero spokesperson said.

[...]

In a note to staff, Stuart Crooks, managing director at Hinkey Point C, said the firm has had to "substantially adapt" the design of the plant to satisfy British regulations, requiring 7,000 changes and adding 70% more steel and 25% more concrete.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/edfs-nuclear-project-britain-pushed-back-2029-may-cost-up-34-bln-2024-01-23/

Multiple interesting points here:
- Using 2015 prices is misleading - with current prices, the figures are even more astronomical. FT has a figure of 46 billion
- Would a private company just write this project off by now?
- Is the UK government target to quadruple nuclear power until 2050 in any way realistic? Who will invest other than the UK government? Chipping in 1.3 billion on something that will eventually cost 30 or 50 billion is not much...
- The remark about British regulation adding to the cost echos some prior discussions in this thread
- What's in this project for the French taxpayer who ultimately pays the price? Especially considering huge investment need in France itself. I see a political problem for French democracy here. Development aid is already unpopular, building expensive infrastructure in another rich country must be too.
- There was another article that mentioned that the UK would have to shut down most of its existing plants during this decade, leaving it with almost no nuclear power until this plant comes online

[Gups]

French utility EDF on Tuesday again pushed back the start date on its long-delayed 3.2-gigawatt (GW) Hinkley Point C reactor plant in Britain to at least 2029, with a new estimated cost of between 31 billion and 34 billion pounds ($43.06 billion) based on 2015 values.

The project in southwest England, Britain's first new nuclear plant in more than two decades, was at the last update expected to start operations in June 2027, with an estimated cost of 25-26 billion pounds, which also was a revision of a previous 2025 start date at a cost then estimated at 18 billion pounds. EDF had initially said it would be powering British homes in 2017.

[...]

Britain aims to increase its nuclear energy capacity to 24 GW by mid-century, up from 6 GW today, which could meet around a quarter of the country's forecast electricity demand.

Another 3.2-GW planned plant - Sizewell C in southeast England - has not yet had a final investment decision (FID). The government said on Monday it would invest an extra 1.3 billion pounds in the project.

"Hinkley Point C is not a government project and so any additional costs or schedule over-runs are the responsibility of EDF and its partners and will in no way fall on taxpayers," the department for energy security and net zero spokesperson said.

[...]

In a note to staff, Stuart Crooks, managing director at Hinkey Point C, said the firm has had to "substantially adapt" the design of the plant to satisfy British regulations, requiring 7,000 changes and adding 70% more steel and 25% more concrete.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/edfs-nuclear-project-britain-pushed-back-2029-may-cost-up-34-bln-2024-01-23/

Multiple interesting points here:
- Using 2015 prices is misleading - with current prices, the figures are even more astronomical. FT has a figure of 46 billion
- Would a private company just write this project off by now?
- Is the UK government target to quadruple nuclear power until 2050 in any way realistic? Who will invest other than the UK government? Chipping in 1.3 billion on something that will eventually cost 30 or 50 billion is not much...
- The remark about British regulation adding to the cost echos some prior discussions in this thread
- What's in this project for the French taxpayer who ultimately pays the price? Especially considering huge investment need in France itself. I see a political problem for French democracy here. Development aid is already unpopular, building expensive infrastructure in another rich country must be too.
- There was another article that mentioned that the UK would have to shut down most of its existing plants during this decade, leaving it with almost no nuclear power until this plant comes online

For work reasons, I'be been following this closely for some years. There's no doubt that EDF have screweed the pooch on this. They nearly pulled out in 2016 with a 10-7 board vote for continuing.

It's really too late to do so now.

I'm in favour of nuclear in principle but these big sites are massively problematic and the EPR design has resulted in massive cost overruns and delays in all three projects so far. I'm not sure there is another game in town though apart from SMRs.

[Josquius]

I'm not understanding exactly what the problem is here. Costs and time always seem to overrun to extreme degrees in the UK.
Its depressing

[Tamas]

Based on the UK energy provider wing of EDF I wouldn't trust them to build a shed, let alone a nuclear reactor.

Who the HELL uses two customer management systems in parallel?!