Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[garbon]

Of course not but I don't think that's ever really been a concern of liberalism or liberal movements. Perhaps especially in Europe where the other wing of the liberal project was often nationalism and nation building - and with it defining the nation so who, precisely, had equality before law. They might extend rights (in theory) to, say, Jews of that nation, but it might not work if you spoke another language or belonged to a different "nation". It was, I think, about a formal and legal conception of inequality/equality rather than a social or economic one, or one that looks at actual ability in practice to access those rights.

It was about formal equality before law - so sweeping away archaic, traditional or customary laws that apply to diferent groups or the availability of different courts in a sort of patchwork of jurisdictions. Instead you have a single code of law that applies to all and a single court system available to all, even if that means some groups have lost old protections and have no experience in dealing with the new court. From a left-wing perspective you would probably say that's exactly the point as liberalism is sort of the revolutionary force of the middle class and the people who were often people who could benefit from others losing the loss of special rights or protections, or the ability to plead at a special court.

Personally, formal equality before the law is a nice first step but not an end state - even if not shared with those originally in liberal movements.

However, your thesis is that now the battles are largely over which is why those parties find themselves as zombie parties. I don't see how with things like how the gig economy currently works or the widening wealth inequalities, wider gap in life expentancies between poor and rich, disparities in justice for different ethnic groups that the work of liberal/social democratic parties is over.

[Sheilbh]

Personally, formal equality before the law is a nice first step but not an end state - even if not shared with those originally in liberal movements.

No - it's not quite my thesis, I think it's interesting. I also think the zombie party point is different - I'm just slightly mixing them up. In the UK context I think the zombie party point is that the Labour Party is shaped by its history as a party of 20th century industrial labour which is a culture and world that no longer really exists - voting patterns no longer break down clearly on income or on identified class (which were the cleavages that shaped social democracy in Europe) but on education and age. If you were founding a left-wing party in the UK now to win a majority - it would not look like Labour and it wouldn't have Labour's geography. But Labour is propped up because of FPTP - they are the non-Tory option. So instead of a recalibration of the party system or a new challenger that reflects our society better, the Labour Party lumbers on. I think there is something to that across Europe.

One other possible reason is that the battles of 20th century labour were won: universal education, universal healthcare, working hours limits, holiday entitlement, right to unionise, legal aid or some mechanism to allow individuals to actually use their formal equality.

However, your thesis is that now the battles are largely over which is why those parties find themselves as zombie parties. I don't see how with things like how the gig economy currently works or the widening wealth inequalities, wider gap in life expentancies between poor and rich, disparities in justice for different ethnic groups that the work of liberal/social democratic parties is over.

I totally agree on your other point. But I think the argument is the original movement ran its course and achieved its goals and wasn't not facing further resistance about them, it then lingered for 20-30 years before being replaced by a movement that was actually addressing a new set of issues. It's almost thinking in class terms of liberalism as a long middle class revolution, followed by social democracy as a long working class one.

I think the point on disparity for different ethnic groups is important - but I think that is a more Anglo-American perspective than one universally shared in Europe even on the left. Collecting those statistics is unlawful in parts of Europe, John Burn-Murdoch mentioned that we know in the UK about racial disparity in covid because there are statistics on it - but across Europe those statistics are only available in the UK and a couple of German states. I think in Europe there is a more common view that formal, legal equality is key - not looking at results or how that works in practice. In their argument I think that is precisely because to do so goes against the liberal inheritance of universal citizenship and equality by dividing people up.

The question isn't are there still battles or issues to fight from a liberal () or left perspective - there clearly are. It's more whether the liberal and social democratic parties/movements we've inherited are the ones to do it? Are they enervated by the victory in the battles they were set up to fight? Does their geographic strength - based on that historical fight - actually hurt in dealing with issues of th gig economy or disparities among racial groups?

And as I say I think this is a clear difference between Europe and, at least, the US (almost certainly other places too). Liberalism here was, I think, the movement that fought and beat the ancien regime, the power of the church and created Europe's nations; social democracy here was derived either from the Internationals or local labour traditions - and Europe was more and unusually industrialised compared with the rest of the world the world (as a proportion of workers - and, obviously, colonialism is a large part of that). In the US the social democratic moment didn't deliver durable victories and is still being fought over (of that list I think the US is definitely  missing universal healthcare and holiday entitlement) - and the Democratic Party is the route now but that's always been a coalition party rather than a social democratic party.

Separately - and more frothily - interesting polling from the Mail:

[crazy canuck]

But again you're conflating liberal democracy with liberalism as a political movement in Europe and they're not the same.

No, I am pretty clear about liberal democracy not yet being fully achieved in Europe or elsewhere.   Rather I think it is you who are assigning a special meaning to fit the premise that its work has been done.

[crazy canuck]

One other possible reason is that the battles of 20th century labour were won: universal education, universal healthcare, working hours limits, holiday entitlement, right to unionise, legal aid or some mechanism to allow individuals to actually use their formal equality.

There is no such thing as these battles being "won".  There is always the conservatives trying to claw back to the good old days.  Labour unions are always under threat of conservative governments passing unfriendly labour codes.  Universal health care is always under threat of conservative governments underfunding and making room for private actors etc etc etc.

[Sheilbh]

No, I am pretty clear about liberal democracy not yet being fully achieved in Europe or elsewhere.   Rather I think it is you who are assigning a special meaning to fit the premise that its work has been done.

I don't think I am - I think it's pretty limited:

Duncan Weldon
@DuncanWeldon
Fancy a mega-hot take?
The problem facing 21st century European Social Democrats is the same problem that faced late 20th century Western European Liberals: they won.
Issues that were hugely contentious dividing lines are now simply cross-party consensus.
I mean, just look at the extent of state provision of services and benefits and redistribution in 2021 *after* the austerity of the 2010s or the market turn of the 1980s and compare it to the 1920/1930s. A different world.

I don't think he's talking about liberal democracy in general, but about Western European Liberals (I'd argue in the 20th century, not late 20th century). So I think what's relevant is not some abstract concept of what liberals want (Mel Gibson dating Gladstone) or liberal democracy in general but what the aims of Western European Liberals were.

There is no such thing as these battles being "won".  There is always the conservatives trying to claw back to the good old days.  Labour unions are always under threat of conservative governments passing unfriendly labour codes.  Universal health care is always under threat of conservative governments underfunding and making room for private actors etc etc etc.

Sure - but after neo-liberalism, after the austerity of the 2010s, after the market turn of Thatcher universal healthcare still exists and has not been privatised (and Labour have run on "the last election to save the NHS" in every election in my lifetime). No-one's disputing that unions have been weakened but they are still a world away from before the social democrats took over.

We've had forty years of moving to the right and these core achievements of social democracy are still there because they are now part of cross-party consensus. There is no serious party that proposes unpicking those accomplishments and, as I say, the most effective European politician of the market turn, Thatcher, didn't do it. I think things are now swinging back to the state but it'll be on different issues - primarily of climate and energy transition.

But I think it's "won" once it becomes consensus - once the existence of a set of rights or a public service or whatever else ceases to be political and instead it's how to administer/best deliver that then the battle is won.

The US is different - I'm not sure it applies anywhere outside of Western Europe (for example even to CEE states that have had the development of their political systems and cultures interrupted by occupation and a Soviet system) - but I think it's possibly part of the reason that across Western Europe social democratic parties are in, what seems like possibly terminal decline (just as happened to the great liberal parties - the Liberal Party, the Radicals, Giotti).

Having said all of that I fully look forward to welcoming the re-birth of European social democracy in six weeks time led by the new Chancellor Scholz - and being utterly, utterly wrong

[garbon]

Personally, formal equality before the law is a nice first step but not an end state - even if not shared with those originally in liberal movements.

No - it's not quite my thesis, I think it's interesting. I also think the zombie party point is different - I'm just slightly mixing them up. In the UK context I think the zombie party point is that the Labour Party is shaped by its history as a party of 20th century industrial labour which is a culture and world that no longer really exists - voting patterns no longer break down clearly on income or on identified class (which were the cleavages that shaped social democracy in Europe) but on education and age. If you were founding a left-wing party in the UK now to win a majority - it would not look like Labour and it wouldn't have Labour's geography. But Labour is propped up because of FPTP - they are the non-Tory option. So instead of a recalibration of the party system or a new challenger that reflects our society better, the Labour Party lumbers on. I think there is something to that across Europe.

One other possible reason is that the battles of 20th century labour were won: universal education, universal healthcare, working hours limits, holiday entitlement, right to unionise, legal aid or some mechanism to allow individuals to actually use their formal equality.

However, your thesis is that now the battles are largely over which is why those parties find themselves as zombie parties. I don't see how with things like how the gig economy currently works or the widening wealth inequalities, wider gap in life expentancies between poor and rich, disparities in justice for different ethnic groups that the work of liberal/social democratic parties is over.

I totally agree on your other point. But I think the argument is the original movement ran its course and achieved its goals and wasn't not facing further resistance about them, it then lingered for 20-30 years before being replaced by a movement that was actually addressing a new set of issues. It's almost thinking in class terms of liberalism as a long middle class revolution, followed by social democracy as a long working class one.

I think the point on disparity for different ethnic groups is important - but I think that is a more Anglo-American perspective than one universally shared in Europe even on the left. Collecting those statistics is unlawful in parts of Europe, John Burn-Murdoch mentioned that we know in the UK about racial disparity in covid because there are statistics on it - but across Europe those statistics are only available in the UK and a couple of German states. I think in Europe there is a more common view that formal, legal equality is key - not looking at results or how that works in practice. In their argument I think that is precisely because to do so goes against the liberal inheritance of universal citizenship and equality by dividing people up.

The question isn't are there still battles or issues to fight from a liberal () or left perspective - there clearly are. It's more whether the liberal and social democratic parties/movements we've inherited are the ones to do it? Are they enervated by the victory in the battles they were set up to fight? Does their geographic strength - based on that historical fight - actually hurt in dealing with issues of th gig economy or disparities among racial groups?

And as I say I think this is a clear difference between Europe and, at least, the US (almost certainly other places too). Liberalism here was, I think, the movement that fought and beat the ancien regime, the power of the church and created Europe's nations; social democracy here was derived either from the Internationals or local labour traditions - and Europe was more and unusually industrialised compared with the rest of the world the world (as a proportion of workers - and, obviously, colonialism is a large part of that). In the US the social democratic moment didn't deliver durable victories and is still being fought over (of that list I think the US is definitely  missing universal healthcare and holiday entitlement) - and the Democratic Party is the route now but that's always been a coalition party rather than a social democratic party.

Got it. I guess it feels to me a bit pie in the sky as systems don't seem setup for parties to materialise and dominate out of nowhere - so politicians are going to mostly stick with sure beats. Seems like we need to figure out how to get those parties to then change to meet the work that needs doing. 

[crazy canuck]

There are kinds of red flags which go up for me when I see your analysis Shielbh.  Just because something called the NHS still exists does not mean it is properly funded, properly administered, and not being set up for failure to increase the chances of introducing private options.  We have seen all those things here with right leaning governments.  And you cannot say with a straight face that you think the current conservatives in your country are completely committed to the NHS.

[Sheilbh]

Got it. I guess it feels to me a bit pie in the sky as systems don't seem setup for parties to materialise and dominate out of nowhere - so politicians are going to mostly stick with sure beats. Seems like we need to figure out how to get those parties to then change to meet the work that needs doing.

I get that - but it's why I think the comparison with the liberals is interesting because I think they went from being a dominant political force to nothing and were utterly replaced by social democratic parties within 2-3 electoral cycles. I'm not an expert on it at all but my impression is it was like Hemingway's line about how the rich go bankrupt: very slowly and then very fast. And I wonder if the Greens will replace the social democrats in the same way as the main progressive party/force over the next, say, ten years.

And we have sort of seen a similar replacement in Scotland. So in three Scottish elections from 2003-11, the SNP went from 27 seats to 69 and from 2010-15 in Westminster they went from 6 to 56 (and Labour collapsed an equivalent amount). FPTP makes change difficult, but when it happens it tends to be decisive, in one direction and quick.

There are kinds of red flags which go up for me when I see your analysis Shielbh.  Just because something called the NHS still exists does not mean it is properly funded, properly administered, and not being set up for failure to increase the chances of introducing private options.  We have seen all those things here with right leaning governments.  And you cannot say with a straight face that you think the current conservatives in your country are completely committed to the NHS.

I think the current conservatives are committed to the NHS in it's core principle: universal healthcare that's free at the point of need. I genuinely don't think any party or political force in the UK realistically wants to change that - they might talk about introducing European style social insurance when they've had a few with buddies from the Institute of Economic Affairs, but it's politically impossible especially after the last 18 months.

That doesn't mean it'll be properly funded or run - or funded or run as I'd like. And until recently there's been cross-party support for introducing internal market forces. But I don't think there's any more desire to move to private healthcare than there is to move to private education.

And from Private Eye there's a bit of boy who cried wolf about it - it is a trope that it is always in imminent danger:


Edit: Separately rumours that Gavin Williamson will finally be fired from the Education brief - when Number 10 are briefing that you've been a "terrible" minister it feels like only a matter of time. Of course this has been pretty clear since the start of the pandemic and he's been allowed to fuck up two school years

Apparently Kemi Badenoch is in line to replace him (I could be wrong but I think she might be a future Tory leader).

[Sheilbh]

FT and Telegraph have a story about Theresa May's Chancellor lobbying for his new employer now he's left politics, a new SME/property focused bank Oaknorth. He was apparently sending emails about their products to Treasury civil servants during the early days of covid.

He says he wasn't lobbying - he sits on their advisory committee (which also includes figures from the Bank of England and the FCA) - and as his role doesn't involve lobbying he couldn't have been lobbying

Having expressed that doubt - I must say if I was paying someone to lobby and this was all he did I would be furious

In an email sent during the first few months of the Covid crisis, the Sunday Telegraph said Hammond contacted Charles Roxburgh – the Treasury's second most senior civil servant – to tell him of a "toolkit" OakNorth had developed to assess possible borrowers.

An attachment to the message contained OakNorth's pitch, and Hammond asked Roxburgh to "pass it on to anyone else who might be appropriate", the newspaper said.

But ministers aren't allowed to use government or ministerial contacts to influence policy or get business for any of the businesses they're working with for two years after they leave the front bench. OakNorth have said the "toolkit" he was promoting was being offered pro bono and there was no price in the presentation and no intended price. It's not clear if the Treasury actually took him up.

It's less clear cut than Cameron - and as I say if I'd hired a former Chancellor and the best they could do was an email asking someone to "pass it on", I'd be pretty underwhelmed. But it looks, unlike Cameron's lobbying, like a breach of the rules to me

[Sheilbh]

I don't think I've ever agreed with Starmer so much

i newspaper
@theipaper
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer says Geronimo the alpaca must die

Edit: Initial semi-final stats from the EU Settlement Scheme:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/eu-settlement-scheme-statistics-table-total-applications-by-nationality-up-to-30-june-2021

Over 6 million applications were received. Obviously that number only covers people who were eligible - so broadly speaking people who were living in the UK in 2020 (so several years after the Brexit vote and after the pandemic had really hit us). Even after the Brexit vote and the pandemic that is still double the number of EU citizens that were thought to be living in the UK - as I say the campaign group for the rights of EU citizens is called "The Three Million".

So about 10% of the UK population are European citizens and my expectation is that in the early 2010s - pre-Brexit vote, during the Eurozone crisis - it was probably significantly higher than that. It has made me re-evaluate my guess on why immigration mattered so much in the campaign because I thought actual numbers were probably quite low (about three million) but it was pace of change and it impacting areas that had no meaningful experience of immigration. I think it probably still was those factors, but actually scale was probably relevant too. I don't know the stats in other countries but from memory the UK was quite low on them based on estimates - it now looks like we were actually the "big" country with the highest level of EU migration.

The top 5 nationalities are Polish, Romanian (both over 1 million), Italy (over 500k), Portugal and Spain. I've mentioned it before but the impact on some of those countries is actually probably not insignificant (especially as the applications are, overwhelmingly, working age). So about 3% of the Polish population, 4% of the Portuguese population, 5% of the Romanian population and almost 10% of the Lithuanian population have settled status - so were probably resident in the UK in 2020. Which is pretty astonishing.

Obviously very good news that so many people applied and the system generally didn't seem to collapse and had a very low rate of rejections (they're still working through applications). It'll be really interesting to see how those communities develop in the UK and if we see new identities emerging - I think we probably will. But for context within the UK's demographics the British Romanian/Polish populations are about as large as the British Pakistani population. So they're going to be really important parts/communities in this country and probably quite quickly too.

[Sheilbh]

Treasury brain Treasurying energy transition just as much as they did with dealing with the pandemic

Treasury blocking green policies key to UK net zero target
Experts say chancellor refusing to commit spending needed to shift economy to low-carbon footing
Fiona Harvey Environment correspondent
Fri 13 Aug 2021 11.15 BST

Last modified on Fri 13 Aug 2021 18.57 BST

The Treasury is blocking green policies essential to put the UK on track to net zero emissions, imperilling the UK's own targets and the success of vital UN climate talks, experts have told the Guardian.

A string of policies, from home insulation to new infrastructure spending, have been scrapped, watered down or delayed. Rows about short term costs have dominated over longer term warnings that putting off green spending now will lead to much higher costs in future.

The UK's credibility as host of the Cop26 climate talks this November in Glasgow rests on a clear net zero strategy – but publication has been postponed until near the eve of the summit, giving the UK little leverage to bring other countries to the negotiating table with the tougher carbon targets needed. Meanwhile, steep cuts to overseas aid have severely damaged the UK's standing internationally, experts on the UN talks said.

Jamie Peters, director of campaigning impact at Friends of the Earth, said: "The Treasury has been helping to fuel the climate emergency for far too long. The reality is that a rapid transition to a zero carbon future would be far less expensive than delaying the green measures we so urgently need, and that will create significant economic opportunities and new jobs."

Civil society groups, thinktanks and political insiders said the Treasury had refused to commit to the spending needed to shift the UK's economy to a low-carbon footing. Complaints about the potential short-term costs of net zero policies have been one flashpoint during weeks of high tension between the prime minister, Boris Johnson, and the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, the Guardian understands.

Kate Blagojevic, head of climate at Greenpeace UK, said: "There are strong reports that Rishi Sunak is intent on blocking climate spending at exactly the moment we need it most, and that his fingerprints sit heavily on moves to delay or block crucial investment to cut emissions from buildings or gas boilers."

The lengthy charge sheet against the Treasury includes: scrapping the green homes grant insulation scheme; freezing fuel duty while slashing electric car incentives; mulling cuts to air passenger duty on domestic flights, while making above-inflation train fare increases; failing to cut VAT on green home refurbishment; underfunding the new infrastructure bank; and delaying the phasing out of gas boilers.

There have also been glaring omissions and delays. For instance, the transport strategy failed to back road pricing, which many believe will be essential to reducing emissions, which have remained stubbornly high as more people buy SUVs. Both the hydrogen strategy and heat and buildings strategy have been delayed until autumn, as has the overarching net zero strategy.

Not all of these policies were under direct Treasury control, but the Treasury holds the purse strings and can effectively veto plans by other departments that require government investment or might raise costs for consumers. "The Treasury is at the root of this," said Ed Matthew, campaign director at E3G, a green thinktank. "They are completely obsessed with short-term costs. It's bonkers."

Chris Venables, head of politics at the Green Alliance thinktank, said: "The Treasury has this huge institutional resistance to medium term economic benefits [that entail short term costs]. They have to be dragged kicking and screaming to consider it."

Ministers and advisers are understood to be anxious that costs such as switching to heat pumps from gas boilers, estimated from £5,000 to £20,000 for some households, or the higher purchase price of electric cars, will hurt consumers' pockets. But the independent committee on climate change has said the costs of net zero are affordable and falling, at about 1% of GDP by 2050, while green investment will generate new jobs, and policies can be devised that shift the costs from lower-income households and distribute them fairly.

Moreover, as this week's report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change spelled out, extreme weather is already here and will get worse. As recent flooding has demonstrated, the costs of inaction will far outweigh the costs of action.

Even observers normally sympathetic to the government find the Treasury's reluctance concerning. Josh Buckland, author of a report for the liberal conservative thinktank Bright Blue, said: "The Treasury is absolutely crucial to net zero. It has taken some welcome steps thus far to drive green finance and investment, but the jury is still out on how far it is willing to go given wider pressures on the public finances."

Buckland, a former environmental adviser to Johnson, believes that Sunak, known to be a fiscal "hawk" and free-marketeer, is not ideologically opposed to climate action. He said that while the Treasury was traditionally reluctant to commit spending on any issue, Sunak "also has a lot of priorities as we recover from the pandemic".

Ed Miliband, the shadow business secretary, disagrees. "Their ideology is standing in the way – they think that it can be done by the market and it can't. They are held back by thinking this can all be done by the private sector, when all the evidence is that this has to be done by the public and private sectors."

Recent calls by Conservative MPs including Steve Baker and Craig Mackinlay to halt the race to net zero, which have received a warm welcome in sections of the press, have suggested that some MPs may also sniff electoral advantage in being seen to be anti-green.

Blagojevic said: "The chancellor's position may be politically expedient for him in trying to court the small number of Tory MPs intent on delaying climate action. Ultimately, though, history will not look kindly if he is the chancellor who tried to hobble our chances of reaching a low-carbon future, with all the growth, good jobs and stable better future it offers."

If the UK is to meet its net zero targets, ministers will have to face down backbench critics. E3G's Matthew said: "It's becoming understood [by the government] that you can't just leave it to the market to deliver net zero, as that isn't going to happen. For a Conservative government, that's an inconvenient reality."

Last year, as the world was plunged into recession after the first lockdowns, Johnson appeared to grasp this when he promised to "build back greener". Since then, however, few spending plans to reduce emissions have been brought forward, other than the green homes grant. Johnson also produced a 10-point plan setting out areas of focus, including nuclear power and offshore wind, but this was dismissed by many experts as a wishlist rather than a strategy.

The Treasury said: "The government is committed to tackling climate change and the prime minister has set out an ambitious 10-point plan to help us achieve that. The Treasury is playing a crucial role in this effort, by allocating £12bn to fund the 10-point plan, setting up the UK infrastructure bank to invest in net zero, and announcing plans to issue £15bn in green bonds over the next year."

As the UK prepares to host Cop26, the government will be trying to persuade other countries to set out clear policies on emissions cuts for the next decade, a task much harder if ministers have no policies of their own. Ultimately, says Venables, only one person can sort this out: "The prime minister needs to get stuck in, to make the difficult decisions, and soon."

The gilt yield is under 1% out to 30 years - if ever there's a time to borrow for this type of spending it's now

[Sheilbh]

Behind a paywall on the Times but MoD growing more and more frustrated at Home Office unwillingness to even consider offering asylum for people working with the British in Aghanistan (with the military or embassy). Lots of grim reporting on this but this detail is just

Senior military sources say the Home Office is reluctant to give many of these people asylum because of the message it will send to other refugees.

We really do need to abolish the Home Office, burn it to the ground and salt the earth

[Zanza]

@Sheilbh: On the medical regulation topic some posts back, the UK government will now cut the MHRA budget by a quarter.

[Sheilbh]

@Sheilbh: On the medical regulation topic some posts back, the UK government will now cut the MHRA budget by a quarter.

It's plans at the minute - and I think this might cause a bit of a row, so we'll see what happens. But there's two sides that I think are indicative/interesting.

The MHRA was a really well-respected European regulator. The way the EMA works generally is that they put out for tender the various assessments etc that need to be done for authorisation. The MHRA, on average, won a third of those tenders. There's a reason why the EMA was HQed in London and the MHRA is a big part of that. It also meant that it was basically self-funding because of payments for its work from the EMA - and that is the preferred approach in the UK that regulators either charge fees to industry or are in some other way financially self-sufficient rather than funded by the state. I've thought the whole debate around vaccine authorisations kind of distilled a lot of Brexit into one moment: the MHRA was able to act more nimbly on its own for this particular crisis, but has lost a big chunk of its income. So the question is are the once in a generation crises when that matters more likely, or more important than the regular stream of income?

On this - if they go through with it, I think it's a really bad decision in particular because most things governments do can be reversed or altered by other governments. I think a cut like that will lose regulatory capacity and experience and institutional knowledge in a way that will be irreversible. Even if you were to reverse it and fund them heavily it would take years I think to recover as a regulator.

From what I've read there are probably some cuts that will need to be made - for example re-structuring to stop the dual stream medicines/devices system (not least because "devices" are increasingly things like algorithmic diagnosis tools, not a hip replacement) and apparently there is work on strealining clinical trials already underway. But this goes way beyond that.

The other interesting point is I think this might cause a bit of a fight - not least because the MHRA is one of the few regulators the public knows. But Iain Duncan-Smith and his "Taskforce on Innovation, Growth and Regulatory Reform" explicitly called out the MHRA, said its role should be expanded and basically the stuff I thought about using it to help take advantage of the UK's advantages in life sciences (good research universities, NHS database and regular clinical trials, plus some industry). Cutting them like this goes against that - probably for very little money saved - but it makes me wonder if Javid (who is very dry on public services) basically wants to cut back, rely on EU and US authorisations and the use of generics.

But I think this gets to the heart of the tension in government between the various rather ambitious policy slogans ("build back better", "levelling up", transition to net zero, even policing reform) v the fact that all of thoe policy goals require spending money. This feels indicative of quite a lot in the government generally - there are policy reforms you can make without necessarily increasing spending (Michael Gove has an excellent record on delivering that type of reform - but he's not in charge of a real department right now). But the government need to choose - either they want to make structural not very expensive reforms in which case they need ministers who know the detail of their brief and can win bureaucratic fights (not, say, Gavin Williamnson); or they can at least try to meet their policy objectives which means public spending; or they will fail.

My suspicion is that it'll be failure but I think this is why the coming re-shuffle matters - if Johnson moves Sunak then there might be more money, if Johnson chooses engaged ministers for the big domestic departments there might be more successful reform. If he does neither then they won't achieve anything.

[Duque de Bragança]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/aug/14/director-ken-loach-expelled-labour-party

Waiting on Tyr's perspective  on that, though all other Brits are welcome to give their input.

Director Ken Loach says he has been expelled from Labour
Leftwing film-maker claims move by party is because he would 'not disown those already expelled'
Ken Loach
Loach's films are regarded as landmarks of social realism.

The veteran leftwing film-maker Ken Loach has said he has been expelled from the Labour party.

Loach, whose films are regarded as landmarks of social realism, claimed the move by the party was because he would "not disown those already expelled", and he hit out at an alleged "witch-hunt".

It follows reports last month that the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, was preparing to support a purge of factions vocally supportive of his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn's leadership.

Supporters of the former leader have claimed Starmer has rolled back moves to democratise the party and that he has fought some of his own members with more gusto than the Tories.

Starmer is expected to support a proposal before the party's governing body on Tuesday to proscribe four named groups.
Keir Starmer expected to back purge of far-left Labour factions

On Twitter, 85-year-old Loach, a winner of the Palme d'Or for I, Daniel Blake, said: "Labour HQ finally decided I'm not fit to be a member of their party, as I will not disown those already expelled. Well ... I am proud to stand with the good friends and comrades victimised by the purge. There is indeed a witch-hunt ... Starmer and his clique will never lead a party of the people. We are many, they are few. Solidarity."

Loach previously left the Labour party in the 1990s, reportedly in disgust at Tony Blair, after three decades as a member. He has also been active in political parties such as Respect and Left Unity that have presented themselves as a radical alternative to Labour. He rejoined the party following Corbyn's election to the leadership.

The former shadow chancellor John McDonnell tweeted: "To expel such a fine socialist who has done so much to further the cause of socialism is a disgrace. Ken's films have exposed the inequalities in our society, have given us hope for change & inspired us to fight back. I send my solidarity to my friend and comrade."

Corbyn was suspended from the party in October last year for saying the problem of antisemitism within Labour was "dramatically overstated for political reasons" by opponents and the media. A disciplinary panel of the NEC lifted the suspension the following month after he issued a conciliatory statement but Starmer refused to restore the whip to Corbyn.

Howard Beckett, a member of the NEC, was suspended from the party in May after he called for the home secretary, Priti Patel, to be deported on Twitter.

A Labour spokesperson said: "We are not going to comment on individual cases. As previously reported, the NEC took the decision to proscribe a number of organisations at its last meeting."