Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Josquius]

Today I learned Rees Mogg's seat is in the Bristol suburbs and more likely than not to go Labour.
Pleasing.
But yes. Farage looks odds-on to win a seat. Ugh.
I wonder how he gets on with Galloway? I somehow get the feeling despite supposedly standing for complete opposites they get on well. Sounds like a great potential sitcom. Two back bench populist MPs sitting beside each other, one an old school marxist, the other a neo liberal crypto-fascist, they're actually best friends.
Assuming Galloway wins of course, checking up his seat seems very competitive though Labour are favourites.

Explain the recent stories on the topic then?

BBC News - Impact of pylons plan is devastating, say farmers
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cv221gxkzm9o

What do you want me to explain? Despite the headline, this is about underground cabling, not pylons. I'm involved in this project and it's absolutely typical of NG's approach. No design so seeking powers for a 200m wide construction corridor  right through the middle of my client's land entirely destroying his business. No compensation until way after the event, once the business is dead.

Oh you're against the vagueness and for the farmers. I misunderstood you were on the opposite side.

Surely the vague range makes sense at this point as with the various nimbys all up and down the line you never know quite where you'll end up making it?

What I understood from the articles is its the farmers playing nimby behind the delays.

[Gups]

It's nothing to do with adjusting the design to take into account landowner objections - it's about a failure to properly survey or to do detailed design.

The biggest difference by far between the way we do public infra (private - solar farms etc is different and much better) in the UK and how they do it in France and other countries is that we get the authorisation, then the funding then the detailed design and then the implementation. In france  - it's funding, detailed design, authorisation, implementation.

This is the core reason why it takes so long and costs so much money. It's nothing to do with "Nimbys" who barely have any impact on project length or cost. But much easier to blame them rater than deal with the more boring underlying issues.

[Tamas]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/18/labour-landslide-projected-tory-seats-conservatives-general-election

 

[Jacob]

Galloway and Farage should get on well I imagine, given they are both Moscow loyalists.

[Richard Hakluyt]

They are both very egocentric though and would not want to share the limelight.

[HVC]

I'm sure putin could mediate.

[Sheilbh]

[HVC]

Post office tried to hinder probe


Like I said before, stuff like this needs jail time.

[Josquius]

Has anyone ever had an election door knocker?
I see them on TV but...never heard of them in reality.

Got a leaflet through the door today from Labour. Wrapped in it, strongly suggesting the same person had posted it, was one from the communist party .

[Sheilbh]

Yes. I had literal doorknockers in the locals (wfh when they were here) and have had like three Labour leaflets already, plus a phone call. But I've not been in when those leaflets arrive.

I'm in a very safe Labour area so I assume a lot of the canvassing is just updating their data.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Got called on by the independent (SWP) fellow. We had quite a pleasant conversation slagging off the Tories and I promised to think about it (won't be voting for him but did do some thinking    ). This particular fellow also stood for Respect back in the day; I suspect he will get quite a lot of the Muslim vote plus that of the few marxists that presumably live here.

Also got a leaflet off him and one Labour leaflet that mentioned no local issues whatsoever.

[Sheilbh]

Unfortunately he is unlikely to win in Clacton, which is hugely brexity and tory for some reason.

However, he would make an excellent Doctor Who whilst waiting to be given a better seat.

In fairness it's quite smart. He's got a lot of press for being very well dressed - and comes across like a very good candidate (local lad, mum a midwife in the local hospital etc).

On the Tory vote you're probably right but also in the past when Farage has run as an MP (I think he last time was 2015), I think in the past there's been an element of Lib Dem and Labour tactical voting for the Tory candidate to stop Farage. I am not sure that will exist in this election.

It's also the same reason Cummings wanted the Leave campaign to be split and that the Tories would be mad to let Farage in. Farage has a very hard ceiling - and even in the polling in this election, since he's joined the campaign his approval ratings have fallen. The more people see of him, the less people like him and the narrower his support gets.

[Richard Hakluyt]

We live in hope. I can't see Farage contributing anything of value if he was in the Commons.

Meanwhile the closest we can get to an official appraisal of the governemnt has been published :

"Tory government from 2010 to 2024 worse than any other in postwar history, says study by leading experts
As John Stevens reports in a story for the Daily Mirror today, Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, was complaining at a private Tory dinner earlier this year about the electorate's "total failure to appreciate our superb record since 2010".

But just how good is the Conservative party's record in government over the past 14 years? Thankfully, we now have what is as close as we're going to get to the authoritative, official verdict. Sir Anthony Seldon, arguably Britain's leading contemporary political historian, is publishing a collection of essays written by prominent academics and other experts and they have analysed the record of the Conservative government from 2010 to 2024, looking at what it has achieved in every area of policy.

It is called The Conservative Effect 2010-2014: 14 Wasted Years? and it is published by Cambridge University Press.

And its conclusion is damning. It describes this as the worst government in postwar history.

Here is the conclusion of the final chapter, written by Seldon and his co-editor Tom Egerton, which sums up the overall verdict.

In comparison to the earlier four periods of one-party dominance post-1945, it is hard to see the years since 2010 as anything but disappointing. By 2024, Britain's standing in the world was lower, the union was less strong, the country less equal, the population less well protected, growth more sluggish with the outlook poor, public services underperforming and largely unreformed, while respect for the institutions of the British state, including the civil service, judiciary and the police, was lower, as it was for external bodies, including the universities and the BBC, repeatedly attacked not least by government, ministers and right-wing commentators.

Do the unusually high number of external shocks to some extent let the governments off the hook? One above all – Brexit – was entirely of its own making and will be seen in history as the defining decision of these years. In 2024, the verdict on Brexit is almost entirely negative, with those who are suffering the most from it, as sceptics at the time predicted, the most vulnerable. The nation was certainly difficult to rule in these fourteen years, the Conservative party still more so. Longstanding problems certainly contributed to the difficulties the prime minister faced in providing clear strategic policy, including the 24-hour news cycle, the rise of social media and AI, and the frequency of scandals and crises. But it was the decision of the prime minister to choose to be distracted by the short term, rather than focusing on the strategic and the long term. The prime minister has agency: the incumbents often overlooked it.

Overall, it is hard to find a comparable period in history of the Conservatives which achieved so little, or which left the country at its conclusion in a more troubling state.

In their concluding essay, Seldon and Egerton argue that poor leadership was one of the main problems with the 14-year administration. They say that Boris Johnson and Liz Truss were "not up to the job" of being prime minister, and they have a low opinion of most of the other leading figures who have been in government. They say:

Very few cabinet ministers from 2010 to 2024 could hold a candle to the team who served under Clement Attlee – which included Ernest Bevin, Nye Bevan, Stafford Cripps, Hugh Gaitskell and Herbert Morrison. Or the teams who served under Wilson, Thatcher or Blair. Michael Gove, Jeremy Hunt and Philip Hammond were rare examples of ministers of quality after 2010 ...

A strong and capable prime minister is essential to governmental success in the British system. The earlier four periods saw two historic and landmark prime ministers, ie Churchill and Thatcher, with a succession of others who were capable if not agenda-changing PMs, including Macmillan, Wilson, Major and Blair. Since 2010, only Cameron came close to that level, with Sunak the best of the rest. Policy virtually stopped under May as Brexit consumed almost all the machine's time, while serious policymaking ground to a halt under Johnson's inept leadership, the worst in modern premiership, and the hapless Truss. Continuity of policy was not helped by each incoming prime minister despising their predecessor, with Truss's admiration for Johnson the only exception. Thus they took next no time to understand what it was their predecessors were trying to do, and how to build on it rather than destroy it.

Seldon's first book, published 40 years ago, was about Churchill's postwar administration, and he has been editing similar collections of essays studying the record of administrations since Margaret Thatcher's. He is a fair judge, and not given to making criticisms like this lightly.

The book is officially being published next week, and I'm quoting from a proof copy. In this version, the subtitle still has a question mark after 14 Wasted Years? Judging by the conclusion, that does not seem necessary."


Seems about right to me.

Quote is from the Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2024/jun/19/uk-general-election-2024-live-updates-latest-today-rishi-sunak-tories-labour-reform-ipsos-poll

[Sheilbh]

Lots to agree with - although I never really get on with Seldon

This is partly why I've found Labour so frustrating - I genuinely think that for the vast majority of the last 14 years the Tories have been there for the taking. People memed themselves into thinking it's Orban's Hungary/rainy fascist island when it just required a bare minimum of competence, as Starmer (who is not sweeping the country in a frenzy of Starmermania) is showing. (And that's why I voted for Andy Burnham and neither Miliband )

[Josquius]

Brexit is the greatest defeat the UK has suffered since Suez. And it was entirely avoidable.

I do think it's wrong to under estimate the impact of social media and manipulation however. Even without foreign interference (which was absolutely a thing) the tories have been quicker on the uptake of those darkest of dark arts than anyone else.
It's a sad fact of human psychology that level 1 surface thinking messages are just so much easier to spread.

Also Miliband was/is great.