Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Sheilbh]

Following the water rationing plans, LSE with a bold policy plan. We don't need to build if we just re-allocate people's spare rooms:
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/solving-the-housing-crisis-without-building-new-houses/

Widely spread assumptions that we do not have nearly enough housing space for everyone, and therefore must keep building houses at immense rates, are simply misleading. Findings from our recent research demonstrate how much underutilised, surplus housing exists. We found that over one third of households possess two or more bedrooms above the national bedroom standard and that one quarter enjoy more than double the national space standard. This means that households and individuals enjoying excess housing are more numerous that the numbers in deprived housing.

Britain in 2054 where we've accidentally introduced War Communism because it was less politically challenging than building on the Green Belt

This argument is also very much from carbon perspective and it's going to be a fight for Labour because a lot of planning reform will involve dealing with vested interests that are very popular among Guardian types and a lot of Labour's base (like people who publish National Bedroom Standards and want biodiversity net gain assessments).

I'd add on the spare room thing that the average living space per person in the UK is already very, very low compared with other countries - we're below Japan which we still have this image of "tiny homes" for. Also the whole sharing with people into your 20s and 30s is very much a weird Anglo-phone phenomenon - there is an expectation in most countries that you should be able to live in a one bed flat or a studio on a relatively normal salary.

I think this is also something that reflects a split on the left which has maybe always been there between the answer being in some sense more and abundance, v allocation. I think it's going to get sharper with the degrowther instincts on climate. I used to be more in the allocation camp but the Tory governments have shifted me to the more camp.

[Josquius]

This sort of thing isn't without validity.
It's definitely true we don't make most efficient use of what we do have. 
I believe we have passed the point where we didn't actually have a housing shortage on a national level but still, things remain pretty uneven.

But yes. When it's pushed as an alternative to building more it smells very off. We should do both.

There is a demand now, as there's a steady onroad of new smokers.
If we are able to drastically slash the amount of people starting smoking then soon the numbers of potential customers will dwindle.

Yes, because making addictive substances illegal is bound to drastically slash the number of users. What's that definition of insanity again?

The only place it was tried was NZ where it was then undone before any outcomes could be measured.
So you tell me. What's the definition of insanity?

Yur approach works only if

(a) Truss had a coherent political philosophy
(b) that philosophy was neo-liberalism
(c) The definition of neo-liberalism is that it benefits the City of London and burns the rest of the UK.

As none of those things are true,

A+B: I'm no truss scholar. Given her current flip it does seem those views weren't particularly deeply held. But neo liberalism certainly is the ideology she embraced in the path to power and pushed through as PM.
Note it's not just me saying this. It's common across coverage of her tenure.
C: Sure. Singapore on Thames is definitely talking about Wigan.

you will have to find me some actual actions she took during her mercifully short time in office which were for the benefit of the City of London. If you are right, that shouldn't be too difficult since she published a mini-budget which was chock full of measures.

I just gave you two.

[Gups]

No you didn't. Cuts in corporation tax and income tax applied countrywide. Not just to the City (who had a hugely adverse reaction to something you claim benefited them)

I was expecting you to come up with some kind of bonfire of financial regulations.

[Josquius]

No you didn't. Cuts in corporation tax and income tax applied countrywide. Not just to the City (who had a hugely adverse reaction to something you claim benefited them)

I was expecting you to come up with some kind of bonfire of financial regulations.

Obviously taxes are national. Do you really think it possible a tax could be set just for part of the country?

What she was able to do in her five minutes in power is just a fraction of what she wanted to do. "Unshackling the city", "if London does well Britain does well", "Singapore on Thames".
It's just wrong to suggest she didn't very much have a intent grounded in neoliberalism and trickle down economics that put the city at the core.

[Gups]

In other news, the Times has an absolutely cracking gay Tory MP scandal.

[Gups]

No you didn't. Cuts in corporation tax and income tax applied countrywide. Not just to the City (who had a hugely adverse reaction to something you claim benefited them)

I was expecting you to come up with some kind of bonfire of financial regulations.

Obviously taxes are national. Do you really think it possible a tax could be set just for part of the country?

What she was able to do in her five minutes in power is just a fraction of what she wanted to do. "Unshackling the city", "if London does well Britain does well", "Singapore on Thames".
It's just wrong to suggest she didn't very much have a intent grounded in neoliberalism and trickle down economics that put the city at the core.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just double down instead of admitting you might possibly have got something wrong. Yawn

[Sheilbh]

In other news, the Times has an absolutely cracking gay Tory MP scandal.

What in the world? The dog intoxication bit is...

Everything feels 1990s. It's all very Cones Hotline and "Tory MP chokes to death in freak auto-erotic asphyxiation accident":

Revealed: Tory MP allegedly demanded campaign cash to pay 'bad people'
Mark Menzies, MP for Fylde, used thousands of pounds raised by donors for private expenses. His party had been aware for three months and took no action

Billy Kenber, Senior Investigations Reporter
Wednesday April 17 2024, 9.30pm, The Times


A Tory MP is under investigation over allegations that he misused campaign funds and abused his position after making a late-night phone call saying he'd been locked up by "bad people" who were demanding thousands of pounds, The Times can reveal.

Mark Menzies, the Conservative MP for Fylde and a government trade envoy, rang an elderly local party volunteer at 3.15am in December saying he was locked in a flat and needed £5,000 as a matter of "life and death". The sum, which rose to £6,500, was paid by his office manager from her personal bank account and subsequently reimbursed from campaign funds raised from donors.

£14,000 given by donors for use on Tory campaign activities had previously been transferred to Menzies's personal bank account and used for his private medical expenses.

The Conservative Party has been aware of the allegations of potential fraud for more than three months and has taken no action. The MP was accused of paying for sex from a male escort in 2014.

Locked up by 'bad people'

The phone call came in the dead of night.

"Are you on your own?" the man said, with urgency in his voice. "I've got in with some bad people and they've got me locked in a flat and they want £5,000 to release me."

The caller was Mark Menzies, 52, the Conservative MP for Fylde in Lancashire.

He had rung his 78-year-old former campaign manager, a woman who The Times is not naming, waking her from her sleep to ask her to hand over thousands of pounds from a bank account containing donations to the MP's campaign.

She told Menzies that it was 3.15am and she couldn't transfer any money without leaving the house. He became angry, allegedly telling her it was "a matter of life and death", and demanding she instead lend him the money from her own savings, according to an account she has subsequently given to friends and the Conservative Party.

The woman refused and told the MP that she would speak to his long-time constituency office manager, Shirley Green, in the morning. A few hours later, Green stumped up the money, telling local Tories that she had cashed in her Isa to do so. By then, the sum demanded had risen to £6,500.

Later that day, having been rescued from the flat in which he had been detained, Menzies rang the 78-year-old again.

He told her that he had summoned one of his staffers to London to collect him from the flat. On arrival, the junior staffer handed over his own money, a sum thought to be a few hundred pounds, which Menzies said he owed to two other men.

Asked if he was concerned he could be blackmailed again, Menzies said he would change his phone number.

The following day, on another call, Menzies said that he needed another £35,000 for medical bills.

Told there was no more money in the campaign funds bank account, Menzies was unperturbed. "Oh, we'll raise some more," he allegedly replied.

A source close to Menzies said the MP had met a man on an online dating website and gone to the man's flat, before subsequently going with another man to a second address where he continued drinking. It was falsely claimed that he had been sick at one point and several people at the address then demanded £5,000, claiming it was for cleaning up and other expenses.

The source said Menzies decided to pay them because he was scared of what would happen otherwise, but did not have the funds to transfer the money from his own savings. His aides gave him money "as friends who wanted to help".

Thousands in campaign funds

Green was reimbursed the £6,500 she gave Menzies in December from funds donated by local supporters to cover the MP's campaign expenses.

The money was in an account with the name Fylde Westminster Group and was set up as a local business group to allow supporters to donate to Menzies.

A source close to Menzies said that he had offered to repay this sum, but claimed local Tories controlling the account said he did not need to.

The practice of setting up a local business group is common among MPs because donors do not have to declare a donation to the Conservative Party in company accounts, and donors are not publicly declared at all until they reach a certain threshold. It was used to raise funds for his campaigning activities and was administered by his former campaign manager and by Green, his office manager.

The money used to repay Green was not the first time that this campaign fund was used to cover Menzies's personal expenses.

Four years ago, shortly before the outbreak of the pandemic, Menzies called his former campaign manager seeking £3,000 from the campaign funds, she has told friends.

He claimed to have personal medical bills due urgently that he could not pay and promised to sell some shares in order to repay the money. The former campaign manager and Green authorised the transfer and Menzies received it.

But the MP is understood never to have repaid the money. Instead, he asked for and received a further sum of £4,000.

A source close to the MP disputed this account and said the former campaign manager had been the one who suggested Menzies use funds from the business account to pay his personal medical expenses. She is understood to deny this.

The source claimed that donors would have been happy to donate for this purpose but, in order to avoid disclosing details of Menzies's health, they were not asked to. They argued that paying the medical bills helped to keep Menzies functioning as an MP and were a legitimate use of the funds.

Several years passed before Menzies again received funds from the account, in November. By then, Green had been replaced as an administrator by another local party member. The sum received amounted to £7,000.

Menzies has not repaid any of the £14,000 he has received from the business group fund — money that had been given by donors for campaigning and not for his personal expenses.

One donor, who gave a four-figure sum to the business group, said he had donated after being told by Menzies that the money would be used for campaigning. He wanted the police to investigate the alleged misuse of the funds.

Senior Tories alerted

In the aftermath of the 3.15am phone call in December, Menzies appears to have tried to keep those who knew about it onside, although this has been denied by those allies.

He asked his former campaign manager if she would run his campaign during the next general election, telling her it was "going to be a dirty election, I don't want any gossip and scandal". On another occasion, he gave her a large bunch of flowers.

Nevertheless, at the start of January, she reported what had happened to the Conservative chief whip, Simon Hart, detailing Menzies's misuse of donors' money and the alleged "abuse of privilege" in pressuring staff into handing over their own savings for his personal use.

An investigation was opened, with the case subsequently transferred from the whip's office to Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ).

When Menzies became aware that the male staffer who picked him up had confided in a friend about what had happened, he took steps to try to prevent the allegations becoming public, allegedly saying he would "deny everything" if the press got onto him.

Sex, drugs and a drunk dog

Menzies was born in Ayrshire and was raised by his mother after his father, who worked in the Merchant Navy, died a month before his birth.

He studied economic and social history at the University of Glasgow and worked in the retail sector at Marks & Spencer and Asda before entering politics.

The unmarried MP has never publicly confirmed his sexuality but has appeared on a list of gay MPs produced by the website Pink News.

He was first elected as MP for Fylde in 2010 as one of David Cameron's "A-list" candidates and was earmarked for a rapid rise, quickly taking up a post as a parliamentary private secretary.

However, his ascent up the ranks was halted in 2014 when he was at the centre of a sex-for-money scandal. Rogerio Santos, 19, a Brazilian "rent boy", told the Sunday Mirror that the MP had paid him for sex and asked him to buy an illegal drug. Santos claimed that Menzies had taken drugs on previous occasions.

Menzies, then 42, resigned as a ministerial aide but insisted that some of the allegations were untrue and claimed he would be "setting the record straight in due course". He has not held a ministerial role since.

Three years later, Menzies was interviewed by police over bizarre accusations that he had deliberately got an acquaintance's dog drunk and, when challenged over his actions, started a fight with the friend. The dog reportedly required emergency veterinary treatment for "intoxication" and "poisoning".

Menzies told the press at the time that the allegations were "false and malicious" and police had dismissed the claims. A source close to the MP denied that Menzies had any involvement in the dog drinking alcohol. They claimed the dog had drunk alcohol that had been placed on the grass when the friend fell asleep, and that the friend had given alcohol to the dog on previous occasions.

More recently, Menzies's Lancashire constituency has been abuzz with gossip about a drunken incident at a Last Night of the Proms concert featuring Katherine Jenkins, held in the grounds of Lytham Hall in August.

Menzies, who was invited to the event by the local mayor, is said to have turned up intoxicated and got into a row with other patrons after discovering that seats had not been reserved for his party within the VIP section.

One attendee said the MP "started kicking the chairs and poking the people on the front row", creating a disturbance for ticket holders who had paid £150 each for the event. He was spoken to by security and appeared to be heavily intoxicated by the end of the concert. A source close to the MP acknowledged that he had had too much to drink but said he hadn't intentionally poked anyone and may have done it by accident when waving a flag.

Failure to discipline

The allegations against Menzies were reported to senior Tories more than three months ago, but the wheels of party justice have turned slowly.

Menzies's former campaign manager has given her account multiple times and has sent evidence including bank statements to CCHQ.

The MP has been interviewed by the chief whip and has admitted that he was locked up and that he used campaign funds for private medical bills, although he claims that because this was authorised by the signatories on the bank account it was fine.

The 78-year-old who received the phone call is a devout Tory who has for decades been heavily involved in the party's efforts in the constituency. She has told friends that she feels betrayed by the way the matter has been handled, and believed CCHQ was content to "brush it under the carpet".

In the meantime, Menzies has continued with plans to stand at the next election. The true-blue seat has been in Conservative hands for decades and Menzies enjoys a majority of more than 16,000.

The constituency borders Blackpool South, where the former Conservative MP Scott Benton recently resigned after he was exposed by The Times offering to lobby ministers in exchange for money. It remains to be seen whether Sunak faces another by-election headache in the same region.

In a statement, Menzies said: "I strongly dispute the allegations put to me. I have fully complied with all the rules for declarations. As there is an investigation ongoing I will not be commenting further."

A Conservative Party spokesman said: "The Conservative Party is investigating allegations made regarding a member of parliament. This process is rightfully confidential.

"The party takes all allegations seriously and will always investigate any matters put to them."

[email protected]

[Tamas]

[HVC]

He has a creepy fake smile.

*edit* the politician, not Colbert

[Josquius]

No you didn't. Cuts in corporation tax and income tax applied countrywide. Not just to the City (who had a hugely adverse reaction to something you claim benefited them)

I was expecting you to come up with some kind of bonfire of financial regulations.

Obviously taxes are national. Do you really think it possible a tax could be set just for part of the country?

What she was able to do in her five minutes in power is just a fraction of what she wanted to do. "Unshackling the city", "if London does well Britain does well", "Singapore on Thames".
It's just wrong to suggest she didn't very much have a intent grounded in neoliberalism and trickle down economics that put the city at the core.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just double down instead of admitting you might possibly have got something wrong. Yawn

I always admit when I don't know something.
In this case what I'm saying is the British political equivalent of the sky is blue. Basic knowledge.
Countless articles out there around this. E.g.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/14/liz-truss-neoliberalism-free-market-economics

[Sheilbh]

This all feels rather telling.

Scottish politicians of all parties (SNP, Labour, Tories and Lib Dems) whipped themselves into making binding targets in law that weren't really based in what they were actually planning to do in policy and that their own climate advisors said were implausible - the Greens voted for even more stretching tagets. That then set in and criticism of the targets or proposing to change them were attacked as borderline climate change denial.

Now, a need to u-turn as it turns out that "enshrining stretching targets" in law isn't, on its own, sufficient. I think it's a lot of politics right now - law and, indeed, constitutions as performance of our virtues and ideals rather than ways of doing things. So we've committed to the most challenging net zero targets in the developed world, without policies to actually deliver or Ireland's constitution enshrining the rights of the child at exactly the point that child homelessness and poverty reaches a record high.

In a UK context there's lots of arguments back and forth over the Net Zero target - Sunak's U-turn (or "abandoning" according to the Guardian or Labour) on government climate targets. Labour setting very aggressive ones. But I always think of the BBC report on the national grid that to have any hope of getting anywhere near those targets we need to build more grid infrastructure in the next 7 years than we have in the last 30; we need to invest to bring down the waiting list for renewables to connect to the grid (which can currently run to years and is done on a first come first serve basis). I slightly worry that we will just end up with more "legally binding" targets ending up in the courts, more asessment requirements and less of the actual stuff that we can already do to move to Net Zero: build up the grid, electrification, increasing home energy efficiency etc. (And I think part of the problem is going to be that what people think of as good for the environment is not necessarily the same as necessary to reach Net Zero - it is, above all, a massive infrastructure shift from fossil fuels to electricity.)

On a purely parochial level it is extraordinary for Scotland to lose its lead on this with the rest of the UK given how much hydro and wind power Scotland produces. It reminds me of education and is a pretty terrible indictment of the SNP that on two of their key priorities, education and Net Zero, they started in a far stronger position and have been overtaken by Tory-run England - it's almost like vibes alone don't mean anything.

Scotland to ditch key climate change target


Scotland was aiming to cut emissions by 75% by the end of the decade
By Kevin Keane
BBC Scotland's environment correspondent

The Scottish government is to ditch its flagship target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 75% by 2030.

The final goal of reaching "net-zero" by 2045 will remain, but BBC Scotland News understands the government's annual climate targets could also go.

Ministers have missed eight of the last 12 annual targets and have been told that reaching the 75% milestone by the end of the decade is unachievable.

A statement is expected at Holyrood on Thursday afternoon.

The Climate Change Committee (CCC) - which provides independent advice to ministers - warned back in 2022 that Scotland had lost its lead over the rest of the UK in tackling the issue.

Last year ministers failed to publish a plan it promised - required under the act - detailing how they were going to meet the targets.

Then in March of this year the CCC said for the first time that the 2030 target was unreachable.

Former first minister Nicola Sturgeon saw her SNP administration as world leaders on climate change when the targets were introduced in 2019, often asserting that Scotland had the "most stretching targets in the world."

Hers was the first government in the world to declare a climate emergency and Glasgow hosted the COP26 climate summit in 2021, yet environmentalists believe the emergency response never came.

So scrapping the targets will be seen as an embarrassing retreat for the SNP and the Scottish Greens, their partners in the Scottish government.

Scotland's emissions reduction target for 2030 was tougher than for the UK as a whole, which was for a reduction of 68% by the same date.

Where did the targets come from?

There was a febrile atmosphere around back in 2019 when the Scottish Parliament passed its landmark legislation to speed up the rate of decarbonisation

It was the height of the school climate strikes and just a few days earlier thousands had taken to the streets in support of Greta Thunberg's calls for more action.


Nicola Sturgeon - pictured here with Greta Thunberg and climate activist Vanessa Nakate - portrayed her government as being climate leaders at COP26 in Glasgow

At Holyrood, parties were trying to outbid each other on how quickly the country could go, eventually settling on a pace far beyond what experts had planned for.

The Scottish Greens - who are now in government with the SNP - proposed aiming to cut emissions by a whopping 80% compared with the baseline year of 1990.

But parliament settled on 75% - still 5% more than recommended - and the Climate Change Bill was agreed by all parties except the Greens, who abstained.

One former minister told me there was a "lack of realism" at the time.

What went wrong?

The new legislation required ministers to set annual targets for reducing emissions.

In a sense it was a hostage to fortune with the yearly totals heavily influenced by the winter weather which determines how much gas we use to heat up our homes.

But the trend was clear as eight out of 12 of the targets were missed.


Protestors marched to a rally in Holyrood Park in Edinburgh in the days before the climate targets were set

With the closure of Scotland's last coal-fired power station at Longannet in 2016, politicians conceded that the low-hanging fruit had all been picked and any future progress would require big changes to how we live our lives.

But the Greens believe the current system has fundamentally failed with too much emphasis placed on targets rather than policies.

That might be how the Greens try to convince their voters that scrapping the targets will be the right decision.

Scottish Greens climate spokesman Mark Ruskell said the party was "absolutely determined to accelerate the urgent and substantial action needed to tackle the climate crisis as laid out by the CCC recently, and fully expect the Scottish government to respond to that challenge".

Have emissions been falling?

The short answer is yes, but not by enough.

By 2021 greenhouse gas emissions had fallen by 49.2% compared with the baseline level in 1990.

That's a massive half of our planet warming gases which have already been eradicated from the economy.

But the law required a 51.1% fall by that date to keep on track.

Some industries have seen huge changes that have driven down emissions like the energy and waste sectors.

Others have remained stubbornly unmoved such as transport and agriculture.

What would scrapping the targets mean?

It is likely the Scottish government would replicate the system of "carbon budgets" used by both the UK and Welsh governments.

Rather than annual targets, ministers would be told how much greenhouse gas could "safely" be emitted during a parliamentary term and have to come up with a plan to achieve that.

It would mean an end to the legal requirement of successive environment secretaries having to explain to parliament why the targets have been missed.

There is an argument that the annual targets are a distraction because emissions are influenced by many factors including the weather and that the overall trend is more important.

Having been the first government in the world to declare a climate emergency, scrapping targets will be an embarrassing retreat.

What will the Scottish government do now?

Ministers have a conundrum; they are legally required to produce a "climate change plan" which details how they will achieve their targets.

That plan is now long delayed and the Climate Change Committee confirmed last month that the flagship 2030 target was now beyond reach.

So, it is just not possible to produce that plan any more.

An option would be to set new targets within the existing legislation and then produce a plan.

But one official described those annual targets as nothing more meaningful than a straight line on a graph.

So abolishing them altogether - and perhaps setting a lower 2030 target - seems the most likely course of action available.

[Tamas]

we need to build more

[Sheilbh]

You see the problem

Optimistically, I think it's why Labour are talking so much about planning reform/positioning themselves as more YIMBY is that they know it's going to be a very big fight against lots of vested interests that will spend a lot of political capital (but that's what winning a landslide is for). So talk about it a lot now and you have a mandate/no-one can say they're surprised - while keeping it vague enough to not kick up opposition this side of the election.

Pessimistically, they're talking about in generalities and not details because lots of those vested interests are things Labour/left-wing people as well as just "sensible" types broadly think are good. It's the standard thing that it's very hard to object to, say, a biodiversity assessment or Natural England as a statutory consultee - cumulatively there are lots of requirements, lots of statutory consultees who are quangos focused solely on their one issue and it builds up. But that's never a popular argument on the left. See the LSE piece. And Labour either don't really have an idea how to achieve it, or are internally divided on it.

Not sure which side is right - but given thatt planning reform is a big thing they are talking about and clearly key to Rachel Reeves' growth plans (and, with it, investment for public services) I really hope the optimistic case is right. Not least because planning reform doesn't require any spending by the Treasury. Although I think there's a chance the fiscal situation for Labour may be better than anticipated (I expect that in the first year they'll say it's even worse than they thought which means, regrettably, they'll need to increase some taxes - plus the Tories already taking us to the highest tax take in 70 years).

[Sheilbh]

He's had the whip removed. And has also been suspended from his role as an "unpaid trade envoy to Colombia"....

[Tamas]

He's had the whip removed. And has also been suspended from his role as an "unpaid trade envoy to Colombia"....

Colombia