Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[HVC]

Ms allen's a bitch. Don't shoot them, make sure they starve to death.

Also, British deer look weird.

[The Larch]

A major hurdle is resistance to venison, which has never been a popular menu item in the country.

Oh come on. You don't eat your own fish, and now you don't even eat your own game meat? Not everything can be deep fried. What a limited palate the UK has. I hope at least the Scots would be up for it, they invented haggis after all.

Also, if you have lots of venison you don't know what to do with, just make school lunches out of them.

Ms allen's a bitch. Don't shoot them, make sure they starve to death.

Concur, utterly infantilistic way of thinking. One more proof that PETA is not to be taken into account for these matters.

[Sheilbh]

Oh come on. You don't eat your own fish, and now you don't even eat your own game meat? Not everything can be deep fried. What a limited palate the UK has. I hope at least the Scots would be up for it, they invented haggis after all.

I'll give you one guess why the British don't eat their own game meat

It's class. We don't have peasant food because we've not had peasants in a long time (blame capitalism) - and that is normally the greatest food tradition in any cuisine. Venison was reserved for the rich who owned the land - and still there are big private shooting estates all over the Highlands. It's perceived as a fancy meat you have if you're very posh - I imagine the Royals eat venison - and in some restaurants. It's also quite a "country" meat - so you're more likely to get it in rural towns or good food pubs in the countryside than in the city.

I love cooking and I've roasted venison maybe two or three times with a lovely blackberry sauce We sadly don't have a big game culture - which is a real shame because it is sustainable meat and we have good quality game in quite a lot of abundance especially in Scotland.

It is more common in Scotland, but still very much a restaurant food.

I'd add, our default cooking method isn't deep frying but roasting And you can roast venison beautifully

Also, if you have lots of venison you don't know what to do with, just make school lunches out of them.

I think it'd be a challenge to get British kids to eat venison

Concur, utterly infantilistic way of thinking. One more proof that PETA is not to be taken into account for these matters.

Yeah and fundamentally impractical to do that over the entire country as well.

It's not serious.

[Josquius]

I do like the irony of venison for the poor.
I'd love to get some but it's hard to find and expensive stuff.
Must say I've never roasted anything. The sheer amount of oil necessary sends me into wallet based convulsions.

On the taxes stuff.... I note it talks of raising taxes as an absolute. I'm not sure how I would answer that question. A tax cut for the lower income brackets is an OK idea whilst a rise for the rich is definitely needed.

[Tamas]

I don't think game is a sustainable source of meat once you put significant portions of the population on it.

[garbon]

I don't think game is a sustainable source of meat once you put significant portions of the population on it.

Perhaps another English quirk?

[Richard Hakluyt]

We are eating a lot of deer in the Hakluyt family; really tasty.....my Bambi Bolognaise is regarded as vastly superior to the beef version 

Once more people start buying it I daresay the price will rise, but at the moment it is competitive with decent beef/chicken/pork.

[Sheilbh]

Still suspect planning reform is a big risk for the Tories - on the one hand their future success probably depends on lots of young people becoming home owners; on the other hand anything to do that will inevitably piss off existing home owners:

'It's tearing us all apart': housing plans in Sussex turn nimby against nimby
Rival community groups await Horsham council decision on where to locate new homes to meet government targets


A banner opposing the Adversane plan on the edge of the South Downs national park. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian
Robert Booth Social affairs correspondent
Sun 4 Jul 2021 13.00 BST

A tussle over a plan to build more than 16,000 homes on West Sussex countryside is pitting two of the Conservative party's biggest donors against each other and "tearing apart" community groups, in the latest housing row to threaten the Tory heartlands.

Horsham district council will reveal this week where it intends to locate new settlements to meet government housing targets, with rival developers parading nine plans to build estates of up to 7,000 homes each on fields edged by areas of outstanding natural beauty and the South Downs national park.

The plans face an array of nimby opposition groups whose interests conflict, increasing community tensions and political discontent. The Conservative council is also "hopelessly divided", said one developer, and a council source said ever-increasing housing targets sent from Whitehall were causing exasperation. The strategy will go to a full council vote at the end of the month.

"What is tearing us all apart is that when we win, others lose," said Dave Tidey, a leading member of one of the opposition groups. "It doesn't work. The government is standing back and letting the local authorities fall apart."

Residents fear the destruction of habitats for turtle doves and purple emperor butterflies, as well as traffic chaos, with enough houses planned to accommodate a town the size of Dover.

The tussle is echoed in similar cases across southern England and has been politically supercharged after the Liberal Democrats overturned a huge Tory majority at the Chesham and Amersham byelection last month, where discontent over ministers' plans to weaken local democratic control over housebuilding was a key issue.

The government has announced a bill to loosen planning rules that would allow developers to more easily build housing on greenfield sites. It is facing opposition from several Conservative backbenchers. Bob Seeley, the Tory MP for the Isle of Wight, said last month that communities should not be treated "as the planning equivalent of a foie gras goose with ever more housing shoved down them." Labour has called it "a developer's charter".

The government made a manifesto commitment to build 300,000 homes a year in England by the middle of this decade (a 69% increase on 2019 supply). It has set Horsham a target of building close to 1,000 homes a year, plus more to help neighbouring Crawley – more than double its current output. Targets, based on 2014 estimates of household growth, are increased in areas such as Horsham where house prices are least affordable.

"So many people in the country are overwhelmed by plans for houses in places that aren't suitable, I think Conservatives will lose seats," said Tidey, a leader of the West Grinstead Action Group, which is opposing a scheme for 3,500 homes on land that provides a wildlife corridor for species including the white stork. Its developer, Thakeham Homes has donated more than £500,000 to the Conservatives and boasts on its website of its access to the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, and the former prime minister Theresa May. It has also attracted opposition from the neighbouring Knepp Estate, a rewilding project led by Isabella Tree, who described the experience in her award-winning book Wilding.

Yet the need for housing – particularly low-cost homes – is acute. Average house prices in the district are up 17% in the year to May 2021, to £491,000, according to Hamptons, a property agent, and 806 households are on the council's housing list, up nearly 50% in the last two years. Care workers, hospital porters and retail staff are among those who cannot afford housing in the area, said Turning Tides, a housing charity in Horsham. "A lot of the developments are marketed as affordable, but they are not affordable to the average working person or a person who is homeless," said Catherine Hill, the charity's deputy head of operations.

Thakeham Homes said its provision of affordable housing would be in line with the council's call for at least a quarter of the homes to be offered at either the cheapest social rents or "affordable" rents – up to 80% of market rent, which many do not consider affordable.

Councillors are likely to choose between Thakeham's site and 3,500 homes being proposed at Adversane by a consortium led by Sir Michael Hintze, one of the Conservative party's biggest donors, and key figures in the development of Poundbury, Prince Charles's model new town in Dorset. Also vying for inclusion are large sites around Billinghurst, land near Crawley and a council-owned golf course.

The contest has created tensions between the opposition groups. "We would certainly say [Adversane] was a better place," said Frances Martin, a campaigner against the Thakeham plan, who said the proposal on her own doorstep would be "a disaster", wrecking ancient hedgerows and ending the nightingale song she hears on her dog walks.

"We're all involved in nimbyism in some way," she said. "It's tough luck for one of us and we just want to make sure the one of us is not us."

Julian Trumper, who opposes Adversane, six miles west, said the approach was "upsetting given we are all affected by this ... there should be more solidarity."

One developer involved described the process as "a poster child of why the planning system needs reform". "It forces people to think locally and small," they said. "We are playing pass the parcel and you get the least best option. The current system forces people to be nimbys."

A Thakeham spokesperson said: "Thakeham have worked collaboratively through the local plan process, being one of only a few sites to hold public meetings and consultation events, responding directly to feedback from the local community."

Our Place, the developer at Adversane, said "The controversy surrounding the future of the planning system underscores the importance of delivering homes that are truly sustainable, beautiful and embracing of the open space that people love and enjoy." It said it was trying to provide an "alternative to soulless housing estates".

Lynn Lambert, Horsham district council's cabinet member for planning, stressed that the local plan was obliged to accommodate central government's housing target. "The council is therefore now working to prepare a local plan which seeks to deliver the homes required of us in a way which minimises any environmental impacts, delivers affordable housing and provides new or enhanced community facilities needed by any new development."

[Josquius]

A big risk with it that I can see is its naturally pushing the opposition into supporting nimbyism, which won't play well with educated segments.
Could I guess be helping the tories to maintain/scrape back those people in light of their lurch to hard right populism.
Labour is really leaning heavily into the community control direction, which seems to mean nimbyism, and it is very worrying.

The hs2 stuff is particularly awful on this. Saw an article the other day about a village moaning about the Cambridge to Oxford link which will split their quaint little village in two - the village obviously growing where it did because of the line through the middle.

[Sheilbh]

A big risk with it that I can see is its naturally pushing the opposition into supporting nimbyism, which won't play well with educated segments.
Could I guess be helping the tories to maintain/scrape back those people in light of their lurch to hard right populism.
Labour is really leaning heavily into the community control direction, which seems to mean nimbyism, and it is very worrying.

Yeah community control definitely means nimbyism. It's the sort of political challenge of the problem I think - it is nationally very important to do this and, on a national level, has support. But it is more or less everywhere politically unpopular locally.

And on the well educated thing - I don't know. I mean this is stockbroker belt. My guess is everyone quoted in that piece is well-educated, similarly I think the Greens do well with well-educated young people but they oppose all new developments even of things like HS2 which is public transport infrastructure. I've seen the Lib Dems oppose plans in a London borough to build three thousand houses that replace *an abandoned bus garage* And even in London where there is support for development there are normally (legitimate) issues that cause opposition around social cleansing/luxury flats/not enough social homes provision - but part of me sort of thinks that an element of this is a numbers game and if we just build enough those worries matter a lot less.

I think what we're seeing is probably why every government in, say, the last 15 years has announced big planning reforms to finally build enough houses to match population growth only to end up passing far less substantial reforms that don't really make that much of a difference.

[Josquius]

Oh sure. When it's your estate they're disturbing then education doesn't factor into it. More educated people are more likely to be nimbys even.

But when it's happening at the other side of the country I think educated people are more able to see the logic of why nimbys are bad and really oppose this.

I think a big part of the problem of nimbyism is that people don't see any trade off from it. There's this whole thatcherite "I've got mine so don't you dare touch it" attitude that has really set in deep across the country.
I wonder whether following the approach of the Niigata shinkansen and giving direct payback to local communities is a way :in that case they agreed to the high speed railway plowing through their part of saitama in exchange for a new local line tacked onto the side.
But even this... I don't see people being so community minded. They will make claims about protecting the local children in their excuses but so much of it just comes down to I walk my dog on that field so no.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah - I like the idea of some sort of community payback. It's actually one that's really pushed as an idea by the more Thatcherite think tanks. Not least because in this context I don't think people resisting developers are the Thatcherites, I think the developers are the Thatcherites

Interesting piece by the editor of the New Socialist on the consequences of Batley and Spen. I think this gives a strong indication of why the factionalism in Labour is going to stay the main focus for a while to come. The left think Starmer (now seen as on the right) wants to force them out, at the same time it is right that the Unite election is essential. There the left couldn't unite around a single candidate so the right candidate might win (who's been called, variously, a Cold War unionist and that he'd be the most right-wing union boss since the 50s - which I'm not sure is actually a bad thing).

But also in this piece I think you get a sense of one of the problems of the left in Labour that they are most obsessed with gaining control over the party machinery and internal party processes. It's always been their focus - going back to the full-on entryists - and they always talk about "democracy" and in a way they're right. They mean that everything is always subject to a vote. But in a practical level they tend to have more committed activists who will turn up to every meeting and who can make meetings unpleasant for others, so there's sort of a war of attrition on "normal" members until only the left are turning up and democratically voting.

And - to be blunt - I think there's a lot of chutzpah in publishing a piece like this pre-emptively condemning Starmer for trying to crackdown on the left, when it's pretty clear the left would have tried to oust Starmer if Labour lost - both from the alternative media figures like Jones, Novara etc and the briefing around the Socialist Campaign Group and Rayner.

Now obviously this is an internal facing piece. But, what you won't see much of is any sense of how Labour should be an opposition or how it should be a government - and that's a huge problem

What Labour's Batley and Spen victory means for the party's left
Tom Blackburn
The byelection win has strengthened the hand of Keir Starmer: now he'll be under pressure to marginalise dissenting voices
Sun 4 Jul 2021 13.00 BST

After an ill-tempered, hard-fought byelection campaign and what seems to have been a frantic last-minute get-out-the-vote operation, Labour clung on to Batley and Spen by the narrowest of margins – a mere 323 votes, down from 3,525 in 2019. At the very least, Labour's victory was a (perhaps inadvertent) triumph of expectations management: with the Tories having been widely expected to take it, a tight win in a seat the party had held for the preceding 24 years is now presented as a personal vindication of Keir Starmer.

In truth, however, Starmer was largely absent from the campaign – an indication, in all likelihood, that the party leadership genuinely wasn't expecting to win – while local election literature kept references to the Labour party itself to a minimum, instead playing up Kim Leadbeater's local credentials. Nevertheless, the Tories' failure to dislodge Labour from the seat will be bitterly disappointing for them; their unsubtle hints that pork-barrel goodies would flow if Batley and Spen returned a Tory MP seem to have made little headway with voters.

For Starmer, meanwhile, his position as Labour leader now appears to be secure for the time being. It was strongly rumoured in the days leading up to the byelection that in the event of a Labour defeat, deputy leader Angela Rayner – seemingly antagonised by Starmer's botched reshuffle in May – would launch a leadership challenge with the backing of a section of the Socialist Campaign Group. Instead, with Leadbeater hanging on to Batley and Spen, Starmer too appears likely to hang on through this year's party conference and beyond.

Those hoping that this byelection result will pour oil on troubled waters and bring an end to Labour's factional infighting are likely to be sorely disappointed, however. On the contrary, the party's right wing will most likely take the win in Batley and Spen as a green light to step up its factional war on the left. Sources close to Starmer have already started issuing thinly veiled threats of vengeance against Rayner, as well.

Just last week, some of Starmer's allies were suggesting he should make do with being another Neil Kinnock; in other words, give up on any hopes he might have had of becoming prime minister and instead settle scores with the Labour left on their behalf. In particular, this means ensuring that the left is never again in a position to win the party leadership, specifically by changing the rules for future leadership elections.

There will therefore be pressure on Starmer to capitalise on the win in Batley and Spen by further marginalising the Labour left, deterring future leadership challenges from this quarter and possibly clearing the way for a shift in policy direction. Starmer won the Labour leadership promising to bring about unity and a decisive end to its years of exhausting internecine strife, precisely what party members wanted to hear. But just over a year on, it remains as divided as ever.

To this end, there is speculation that Starmer and his backers are planning to return to the old electoral college system. This would give the parliamentary Labour party – where the left accounts for only a fairly small minority – a disproportionate share of the vote, presumably making it all but impossible for the Labour left to win again. This is despite the fact that it was actually the Blairite right that successfully badgered Ed Miliband into introducing "one member, one vote" in the first place, in what transpired to be a calamitous miscalculation.

This is why some members of the Socialist Campaign Group were ready to back Rayner. Lacking sufficient nominees to launch their own challenge to Starmer, the pro-Rayner Campaign Group MPs had swung behind her in the hope that she'd be prepared to work in good faith with the left, and that she'd kill off any attempt to revive the electoral college. With the race to replace Len McCluskey as Unite general secretary on a knife-edge – rightwinger Gerard Coyne has a real chance of winning – there has been a palpable sense of urgency.

While the tendency in recent years to reduce union elections solely to their implications for the Labour party is lamentable, a great deal does indeed hinge on this summer's Unite election. The left-of-centre vote in the union is split between Steve Turner, endorsed by the United Left faction, and executive officer Sharon Graham. This could be enough to let Coyne, who came within 6,000 votes of beating McCluskey last time, snatch the win. If that happens, the potential consequences for the Labour left are likely to be seismic, setting the stage for a confrontation that could tear the whole party asunder.

Starmer and his backers on the Labour right will be praying that a Coyne win materialises, as it would almost certainly allow them to make sweeping changes to the party constitution. Jeremy Corbyn's leadership delivered only modest improvements to Labour's often byzantine internal party democracy, but with the right – which, after all, was briefly given the fright of its life by Corbyn's grassroots insurgency – in a wrathful mood, determined never to let anything of the sort happen again, even these incremental gains are under threat.

Within the Labour party, Starmer may well be getting the rub of the green. But control of the machinery is not a substitute for an inspiring vision, and this is still entirely lacking, as it has been throughout the pandemic. Voters remain in the dark about how a Starmer-led government would avert climate disaster, address the housing crisis, or tackle social inequality. Even Starmer's own advisers complain that it's unclear what his leadership stands for. Labour's right wing may dream of a cliched clause IV moment, but without transformative policy, lasting renewal will evade the party.

    Tom Blackburn is a founding editor of New Socialist

[Josquius]

Yeah, the far left are a massive problem.
What really annoys me about them, well apart from the whole hating the centre left more than the right thing, is their hypocrisy.
They're always banging on about those people in the party who wanted Corbyn to lose and implying they were a bigger group than they were and starmer was one of them, and how absolutely awful this was and that everyone should stand united....
But then they're putting even more energy into exactly the same shit.
They'll happily scream treason about the completely valid leadership election post brexit ref then think nothing of demanding starmer be sacked this instant.

Also Incidentally, the last line there... Lately I've noticed they really seem to be ramping up socialist gate keeping. Effectively accepting the rights definition of socialism as being the only valid socialism.

In terms of content there though... Starmer does need to start standing for something it's true. Sadly it seems it'll be nimbyism. I agree with what you said earlier though that he could do well pushing the better handling of crime thing. Anti social behaviour is a massive concern for people these days. Huge perception the police are getting wrapped up in numbers and big stuff they can prosecute and letting petty crime be.  Where they can't levy a quick fine that is.

[Sheilbh]

There is a bit of me that slightly wonders if it would be worth Labour trying to eat the Tories lunch and make a full pitch for rural votes. I've heard some rural crime horror stories and, following austerity, those police forces are really pretty thin now compared with, say, the Met (and I think this also links into stuff like the Sarah Everard vigil - a sort of they have time and officers to attack women at a vigil but not to fight rising crime in our community line). But also make some overtures to the NFU after Brexit and make a pitch to farmers that Labour won't shaft them for every trade deal that we get offered and will work to improve their ability to trade in Europe again.

I don't think it'd be enough to turn the countryside red - but even just a shift in the Labour vote outside of metropolitan areas would change the picture for the Tories, not least because they might need to start pumping some resources into those areas defensively and they may even lose some seats to the Lib Dems.

I think that's probably unlikely because I think a lot about that line that Labour cares a lot about who votes for them - and I frankly think they'd rather lose but retain working class, industrial heartlands of 75 years ago than win with a new coalition. Also I think they might lose some urban votes to the Greens (of the re-wilding/anti-rural kind). And in fairness I would at this strategy because one of my few abiding political beliefs is that we should concrete over the countryside

As I say I don't think it'd be transformative but I think it'd be better than nothing and possibly an interesting thing for Labour to try - especially if you could tie it in with a sort of "one nation" Labour approach - ideally with a similar pitch to towns and suburbs. Especially because you could do it in England but also in the rural seats that the Tartan Tory wing of the SNP win in Scotland, or Tory-held Welsh rural seats.

I think Miliband thought about/tried to hint in this direction but never really got anywhere.

[Sheilbh]

So it is the 73rd anniversary of the NHS today - to much comment on Twitter. And personally it gives me an excuse to post this picture:


Which is from the "NHS Day" when it launched Nye Bevan is watching a demonstration of a new stretcher in Preston - and the taller man next to Nye Bevan is my grandad. I'm not fully sure why he's there because I think at that point he was a builder - but I think he had been an air warden/working on the ambulances during the war so it may have been something to do with that

It's also famously the day when Bevan made his "vermin" remarks in case we think divisive politics/language is somehow novel (this only 3 years after Churchill said Labour would need a Gestapo to implement socialism): "That is why no amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party...they are lower than vermin"

As with the Churchill remarks - Clem Attlee was critical


There are some theories - including by Harold Laski - that the "lower than vermin" remark cost Labour the next election. Laski estimated it cost Labour about 2 million votes in what was the closest election, I think ever, in 1950. It certainly helped the Tory Party mobilisation/membership - people around the country started wearing "Vermin" badges and setting up "Vermin Clubs". Which again is a useful reminder that the other side can hear you.