Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Josquius]

Just to say, currently in Switzerland.
Supermarkets are full and normal.
Those blaming covid for this in the UK are talking from their arse.

[Sheilbh]

Just a point from someone on Twitter - Johnson's announced that his wife is pregnant again (and she's done an interview as she had a miscarriage in January). Nothing against that (or indeed Johnson's personal life in general). It's been a thing in recent years: Blair, Brown and Cameron all had kids while they were PM (notably May and Thatcher didn't).

But I think that point and Johnson's life in general does point to a misogynist double standard on this. Johnson's on his third marriage with multiple affairs, Wiki says he has "at least 6" children and this is his second child since winning office. I feel like the reaction to a woman with that private life in politics would be very dfferent (though she could rely on the devoted support of the gay community - just like Emily Thornberry ).

Edit: Especially when you combine with the snide remarks that have been thrown at women who don't have kids in public life - like Theresa May and Nicola Sturgeon. Or some of the frankly disgusting and homophobic attacks on Ruth Davidson (former Scottish Tory leader) when her wife got IVF.

Edit: Incidentally lots of rumours around Johnson's position - apparently Tory MPs are very unhappy about the strict travel rules/border restrictions. And Sunak is making it known that he supports a more relaxed approach - and met with Lynton Crosby the Australian political strategist who ran the Tory campaigns in 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2017 (plus Johnson's Mayoral runs in 2008 and 2012), his (also Aussie) protege ran the 2019 campaign.

His background was as John Howard's strategist in the late 90s/early 00s. It make me wonder if, while we're all wondering about whether we're now just living in America's culture wars if we're actually in Australia's? They saw off the rise of Pauline Hanson's far-right/right-populist One Nation Party, decimated Labour and basically ran the board on marginal seats through the use of dog-whistle politics/wedge issues.

[The Larch]

Wasn't Boris on record saying he can't really afford his lifestlyle on a PM's salary? I thought Tories were not keen on people having tons of kids without the means to support them.

[Tamas]

Wasn't Boris on record saying he can't really afford his lifestlyle on a PM's salary? I thought Tories were not keen on people having tons of kids without the means to support them.

Living above your means is a time-honoured upper class lifestyle choice.

[Sheilbh]

Wasn't Boris on record saying he can't really afford his lifestlyle on a PM's salary? I thought Tories were not keen on people having tons of kids without the means to support them.

Oh it's absolutely true. I mean he makes a lot of money but I thnk two ex-wives and an indeterminate amount of children (at least 6) would be expensive for anyone.

And yes - some of the most perverse and cruel parts of our benefit systems follow from George Osborne's limits of payments for only two children.

Edit: And to be clear I have no issue with him having multiple kids or multiple wives (I do think the multiple affairs is a bit of a character indicator) - I just think there is a huge double-standard for women politicians.

Edit: Or, for that matter, I suspect, for gay politicians.

Living above your means is a time-honoured upper class lifestyle choice.

To an extent - household debt to GDP in the UK normally floats about 100% so I think living above our means is more universal than just the upper classes (he says, hiding the credit card statements)

[Tamas]

To an extent - household debt to GDP in the UK normally floats about 100% so I think living above our means is more universal than just the upper classes (he says, hiding the credit card statements)

Yeah that's pretty messed up.

[Sheilbh]

To an extent - household debt to GDP in the UK normally floats about 100% so I think living above our means is more universal than just the upper classes (he says, hiding the credit card statements)

Yeah that's pretty messed up.

It's also reason #357 why, despite my opinion at the time, I'm very glad Gordon Brown stopped us from joining the Euro - because we would have blown that up after the financial crisis

Edit: Incidentally - Cummings had a couple of threadlets about procurement. This basically continues his theme that the "global Britain" trade is just nonsense for idiots who like maps with arrows - the real benefit, in his argument, is ability to reform procurement and accountability.

I'm seeing lots of liberal-left-Remainer types saying this description of entropy and just getting stuck in process gelled with their experience as a civil servant. Personally I'd 100% agree as someone who worked on some big government procurement projects. And it is worth noting that most of the people behind the vaccine procurement have now left government (their project is done) and future procurement is now back in the hands of the Ministry of Health who helped run the rest of the response to the pandemic. I imagine Whitehall - and especially the Treasury - will try to move everything back to the status quo after the pandemic, while the government is only focused on whether the National Trust is too woke

Dominic Cummings
@Dominic2306
During PMQs I ran Project Speed mtngs in Cabinet room. This sort of thing is why. UK plans to take 20 years to dualcarriage ~19 miles of A66. INSANE. But almost every force in politics except Vote Leave *reinforces the insanity*. Lawyers get very rich from destroying progress...
Officials gain 0 from accelerating only from delaying. Telegraph & Guardian are united in opposing progress. Tory & Labour MPs are united in opposing progress. Productivity/GDP per capita/SPEED ought to be a central focus of SW1 but they prefer to babble nonsense re statues etc
Ironically we discovered a network of officials who DID want to make progress & enthusiastically supported Project Speed. But with No10 now just Media Entertainment Service, entropy has done its work...
[...]
A lot of Westminster seems happy that *hire people to do urgent job X INSTANTLY in a pandemic x2 each 2-3 days* was borderline illegal 3/20 & very keen we keep the system/approach that killed >100k unnecessarily so next time there's a deadly crisis we kill even more
If we'd listened to this conventional wisdom spring 2020, we'd have done the conventional vaccine procurement instead of ripping it up & saying we'll ignore all normal rules/EU laws & *we don't care* if a court later says 'that was unlawful'
In the legal shitshow of spring 2020 we cd prioritise either A) 'don't lose a JR in a year' or B) 'solve problems killing 10000s'. Vote Leave chose B. Jolyon's legal cases are reinforcing the SW1 power structure & conventional wisdom back to A...
What's needed? A/ Better overall procurement system outside EU law, as VL said 2016. B/ a proper emergency protocol so Gvt can act fast *and* legally in genuine emergency like covid, & there's clarity re legal boundaries & radical transparency for lessons learned exercise after
Those saying 'stick to the rules' don't understand how they work: often nobody can tell No10 clearly what's 'lawful', & what gvt lawyers say is lawful is then defined as unlawful a year later. E.g proroguing. E.g procuring polls/focus groups. On both No10 was told it IS 'lawful'
[...]
a/ I warned 2016-19 our EU-based procurement system wd blow up in big crisis
b/ Procurement system collapse 2020 only partly blameable on EU rules. MPs/Whitehall made it worse
c/ Pro-Brexit can't reasonably blame EU for whole fiasco
Pro-Remain can't reasonably ignore core problem
An advantage of Brexit is now it's clear who has responsibility for fixing it, our democratically elected MPs.

If they don't fix it, & we continue with broken system & without a serious emergency system, it's a data point for 'Brexit hasn't worked as intended'

If it improves...

I think this is probably important for all sorts of issues - not least planning/house-building or, say, energy transition and infrastructure. I looked up the A66 example and it's right - John Spellar announced the dualling in 20002. It was supposed to be finished by 2011. Then there was no funding until at least 2016 - the DfT then launched a £500,000 study of dualling the A66 and/or the A69, and decided only to do the A66. There's only twenty miles left but the budget is £500 million and the plans are currently out for public consultation as part of the planning process

At some point the government's rhetoric on "levelling up" or investing in science and R&D is going to hit the immovable object of the planning system. My suspicion is the rhetoric will immediately evaporate into nothing (from what I can tell the only actual "levelling up" policy is spending more on football pitches/sports grounds - which is cheap but also probably doesn't need planning permission ). But I think wherever you are politically it is worth grasping that this is an actual issue that needs addressing whether your goal is levelling up, a green industrial revolution or even just a bit of remaking the country in the white heat of technology.

[Tamas]

The reason for your fascination with this self-declared unrecognised genius former PM Cummings continues to elude me. :p

[The Larch]

What does Brexit have to do with procurement?

[Sheilbh]

The reason for your fascination with this self-declared unrecognised genius former PM Cummings continues to elude me. :p

Because I think he's right on this. It's the same point I've always made - I think his analysis of the problems with state are acute and accurate, but his solution isn't.

He identifies all of these structural issues and his solution (which is a common conservative impulse) is "have better people in the room" rather than actually fixing the structural issues.

Edit: And I think the process focus of critics of this is mind-numbing - as I say I've worked a little bit in this area but I'm really not sure the process adds anything except frustration for everyone.

Edit: I'd also add that my experience is that the only companies who can compete for these public procurement tenders - the only companies who can jump through all of the hoops and deal with the legals are the big companies who already win the procurements (and there's a revolving door between the civil service, including government lawyers) and those companies. I think the system as it currently works favours a few big, established companies who already have lots of government contracts over policy outcomes and public spending. Plus most public sector contracts are so big for a lot of companies (and government pays it's bills on time so it's great for cash-flow) that it is often worth challenging a decision that goes against you in the courts, which means you can normally add litigation onto the legal costs.

The funniest are the re-tenders were it's basically all been agreed beforehand for commercial reasons to keep the incumbent running the service, or for technical reasons it's more or less impossible to change them (because what they're doing is so heavily speacialised/adapted) but there has to be a full re-tender process and you'll run through all the stages - and a few hundred grands worth of legal fees - before announcing what had already been decided on day one

What does Brexit have to do with procurement?

Procurement law and rules are hugely driven by European regulations.

But I think his point at the end applies to things beyond procurement/actual areas where European law has a big sway. It's basically that: 1 - it's a shock to the system so it forces new thinking/behaviour; 2 - it removes comfort blankets of civil servants/government referring something to a European discussion rather than thinking about what to do/acting (there was a strong "that would be an ecumenical matter" approach - this is most visible in foreign policy); 3 - pro-Brexit MPs can't blame the EU for these problems because it's now within their control as lawmakers; 4 - if it continues to be a problem then that's the fault/responsibility of our elected MPs and no-one else.

And I think the sort of Brexit as shock therapy theory is probably the best case for it - and is one that I think the left can use.

I think in 5-10 years there is going to be a big fight on the left about this - possibly earlier because it may be an issue when Labour are starting to think about their manifesto. Do you go for policies that might be appealing but will increase divergence or basically stay aligned with the EU even if that does basically mean broadly centrist/less differentiated policies (see, for example, most of the EPP parties and S&D parties - even when they're not actively in coalition they are pretty similar)? For the Tories it'll be easy because they have zero interest in ever considering re-joining (which is one of many reasons I don't think it'll ever happen) but I think the ideologically European are a constituency on the left and there'll be a fight. If I was working policy for Labour I'd be looking very closely at the possible policy options around state aid and public procurement especially.

[Josquius]

Lately I'm seeing a lot of stuff about the mess the haulage industry is in. So much lexiter nonsense being spread around. It does stink of something being organised from somewhere.

Basically they're arguing that the reason there's a shortage of drivers isn't due to the pingdemic (duh) but due to brexit meaning employers have to pay more since they can't exploit Eastern Europeans anymore.

This just doesn't add up though.
There are 320k hgv drivers in the UK. 15k from Europe have left due to brexit.... But the shortfall is estimated at 60-90k.

This really seems to be trying to hijack those pushing back against the corona blaming by saying its brexit to twist brexit into something good.

In actual fact the reasons for this massive shortfall are the huge inefficiencies brexit has brought.
Huge amounts of time are being spent by drivers waiting for goods to clear customs - very often they're only paid for driving time as well so in essence their per hour pay has plumetted.
Additionally before hand things tended to work in a fairly sensible manner with a truck carrying Dutch cheese up to Scotland going back to Holland full of salmon.... Brexit has meant this use of spare space on the return journey is no longer so easy. There's a huge number of trucks going home empty.

So yes. There is a "positive" effect of brexit. Creating more truck driving jobs. And who cares about global warming.

I've seen this myth of Eastern Europeans bringing down wages loads of times before. It just refuses to die despite all evidence to the contrary. Its amazing how absolutely ignorant people are about foreigners. They seem to really believe if you're Polish you're willing to work for half what your British colleagues are even if you've been in the UK a while. Its like they're incapable of learning the going rate.

[garbon]

The reason for your fascination with this self-declared unrecognised genius former PM Cummings continues to elude me. :p

Yes, it strikes me as odd to regularly read what he has to say.

[Josquius]

He's a horrible person who is a key contributer to the death of the UK.
But he did have to understand a thing or two about the state of things in order to do this.

[Tamas]

He's a horrible person who is a key contributer to the death of the UK.
But he did have to understand a thing or two about the state of things in order to do this.

Often people mistake self-assuredly delivered opinions with expertise, I think it's one of the chief way how conman operate.

Luckily for us, this particular person had a period of great influence on government policy and we can take stock of his ability to shape policy and the positive impact of this influence.

Oh wait, there was none.

[Josquius]

It's nothing to do with his confidence. More that despitd all logic and people's best interest he was able to get not just brexit but an extreme ultra stupid version of it over the line.
You can't do that without understanding a bit of how to push people's buttons.