Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Sheilbh]

I love some Bond - others I am not a fan. This one got five stars in the Guardian so I will go and watch it

Plus Phoebe Waller-Bridge wrote some of it so I'm hoping there's some Fleabag crossover.

Edit: Although one particular reason I have a soft spot for Bond as a franchise is that N64 Goldeneye was a huge part of my childhood

[Barrister]

It is the time of year for me to announce: I am utterly puzzled by the fascination with James Bond.

It's nostalgia.  I saw all the movies as a kid.  They were practically the superhero movies of their day.

All of that being said I think the last bond movie I've seen was Quantum of Solace, and I had no idea what was going on in that movie.  I have no plans to see this one (or the other two that came out inbetween).

[Sheilbh]

In other news - pretty impressed with Starmer's speech and as someone who always thinks blood on the carpet is the way to go in terms of intra-party fights I think the hecklers probably helped him. It was a very clear division, the conference clearly was backing him (huge applause when he listed New Labour's achievements) - and gave him probably his best line: "shouting slogans, or changing lives".

I also think "he's not a bad man. He's a trivial man" is a terrific attack line on Johnson and plays into Starmer's strengths. And obviously I am easily on over by any politician who tips the hat this much to Harold Wilson

Keir Starmer attacks 'trivial' Boris Johnson in conference speech
Labour leader calls PM 'a showman with nothing left to show' and brushes off hecklers in Brighton
Heather Stewart and Peter Walker
Wed 29 Sep 2021 19.24 BST

Keir Starmer condemned Boris Johnson as "trivial" and a "showman" as he brushed off hecklers to deliver a highly personal conference speech aimed at convincing voters Labour is ready for government.

The Labour leader received a string of standing ovations as he delivered his 90-minute speech to a packed hall in Brighton, closing a five-day conference in which his party's divisions had been on stark display.

He repeatedly pressed home the message that Labour's priority was now to win the next general election – and was applauded as he listed the achievements of the Blair and Brown governments.

Labour strategists believe the botched exit from Afghanistan and the chaos of this week's fuel crisis have sparked fresh doubt in voters' minds about Johnson's competence.

Starmer accused the government of "ignoring the problem, blaming someone else, then coming up with a half-baked solution". He ridiculed Johnson's "levelling up" slogan, saying: "Level up? You can't even fill up!"

"We have a fuel crisis, a pay crisis, a goods crisis and a cost of living crisis – all at the same time," Starmer said, urging the prime minister to "either get a grip or get out of the way and let us clear up this mess".

Starmer was introduced by Lady Lawrence, the mother of the murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence. He was joined in the audience by the parents of Jane Clough, who was killed by her former partner, and contrasted his legal career campaigning against injustice in situations such as theirs to Johnson's past as a columnist and occasional TV guest.

In stark contrast to Angela Rayner's controversial branding of Johnson as "scum", Starmer sought to dismiss the prime minister as "a showman with nothing left to show" and "a trickster who has performed his one trick".

"It's easy to comfort yourself that your opponents are bad people. But I don't think Boris Johnson is a bad man. I think he is a trivial man," he said.

Starmer was repeatedly heckled by a small number of individuals, some of whom shouted "£15!" in reference to calls for a £15-an-hour minimum wage. He tackled them with a series of prepared putdowns, prompting applause from the majority of the audience in the hall.

Labour divisions were exposed afresh in Brighton after Starmer pushed through changes to the way the party elects its leaders and reselects sitting MPs at the weekend.

Grassroots members also passed a series of radical policy motions, including a demand for a "socialist green new deal" and a £15 minimum wage, which Starmer has said he would not support.

He did use the phrase "green new deal" in his speech, however, as part of a lengthy passage with echoes of Harold Wilson's "white heat of technology" speech in which he highlighted the potential for transformative new technologies.

Starmer announced what he called a "national mission" to ensure every home in the country was better insulated and cheaper to heat within a decade. Labour calculates the £6bn-a-year plan would enable it to fund grants and low-cost loans to enable 19m homes to be insulated, helping consumers to cut their bills.

The speech was peppered with personal anecdotes about what Starmer called his "two rocks" – family and work – and he embraced high and low culture, from walking onstage to a track by the Brighton DJ Fatboy Slim – with whom Starmer had music lessons as a child – to quoting the poet WH Auden.

"You need not see what someone is doing to know if it is his vocation, you have only to watch his eyes. How beautiful it is, that eye-on-the-object look," Starmer said, adding that he had seen that look in his toolmaker father.

He repeatedly portrayed Labour as on the side of working people, underlining the values of "work, care, equality and security".

Starmer's team believe the fluidity of public opinion means they have a chance of winning the next general election, though they acknowledge they face an uphill struggle against the Tories' 80-seat majority.

With Labour keen to make gains in Scotland, where it was all but wiped out in the wake of the 2014 independence referendum and has struggled to recover, Starmer attacked Nicola Sturgeon's record in office and promised Labour would offer a robust defence of the union. "We are more progressive together. We are more secure together. We are a bigger presence in the world together. We are greater as Britain than we would be apart."

Without naming his predecessor, Starmer firmly distanced himself from the era of Jeremy Corbyn, promising never again to go to the electorate with "a manifesto that is not a serious plan for government" – prompting a heckler to shout: "It was your Brexit policy."

Some of Starmer's former shadow cabinet colleagues, including Jon Trickett and Diane Abbott, subsequently pointed out that Starmer had signed off on the manifesto for the 2019 general election, in which the party plunged to its worst defeat since 1935. Asked about this afterwards, Starmer's spokesperson said: "There is a principle of collective responsibility."

In a further striking contrast with the Corbyn years, Starmer stressed Labour's patriotism and led the crowd in a standing ovation for Britain's armed forces – though not all of those present joined in.

"Here in this conference hall we are patriots," he said. "When we discuss the fine young men and women who represent all our nations we don't boo. We get to our feet and cheer."

Starmer's team believe the perception that Labour was unpatriotic, or sympathetic to anti-western forces, was an important factor in the loss of scores of former heartlands seats in the last general election.

The Conservatives will gather for their own conference in Manchester this weekend, against the backdrop of petrol shortages, soaring energy bills and fears about the supply of key goods in the run-up to Christmas.

The longest speech? How Starmer compared
Starmer's conference speech was the longest in recent memory, clocking in at about 90 minutes. His word count was just short of Ed Miliband's 2014 speech: 8000 words compared with Starmer's 7,300. A Labour spokesperson claimed Wednesday's speech took longer to deliver because they had not anticipated the amount of clapping. Here are some of the other longest political speeches:

Ed Miliband, 2014
The former Labour leader gave one of the most memorable party conference speeches as he talked for over an hour without notes. He did miss out a long passage about the economy, for which he was heavily criticised.

Hugh Gaitskell, 1962
The then leader of the opposition gave a very long speech about his aversion to joining the common market. It had more than 10,000 words, but was delivered more quickly, in 83 minutes.

Fidel Castro, 1960
One of the longest ever speeches on the international stage was the Cuban leader's speech to the United Nations on imperialism and colonialism. It ran to four hours and 29 minutes.

Henry Brougham, 1828
The prize for the longest continuous speech in UK parliament goes to this Whig MP, who spoke for more than six hours on law reform.

Two other points - the bit about "find young men and women who represent all our nations we don't boo" was in a section calling out Patel for her support for people booing the England team taking the knee - and he did seem to link that section to call a liberal Englishness (after all Labour are an overwhelmingly English party now) which is something Gordon Brown's been talking about.

Separately the snap polling on this from showing people clips was very good - far better than equivalent polling for Johnson or Corbyn. Obviously there'll be the usual debate of whether it cuts through - I suspect it might because the footage of him being heckled is the sort of drama that makes for good evening news. But also if it does it probably helps with the "what does he stand for.

Edit: But again on the weird influence of American politics "Green New Deal" is a shibboleth on the left here - which I find really weird because the New Deal isn't FDR and a transformative set of policies to fight the Depression; it was a New Labour re-training scheme for the unemployed. I think for people on the very online left they know the context and they know the AOC/progressive Dems connection - but I don't know if it means anything to normal people here. It's why I preferred Labour's old description of a Green Industrial Revolution because it taps into something that everyone knows in the UK and that has a connection to everywhere here.

[viper37]

It is the time of year for me to announce: I am utterly puzzled by the fascination with James Bond.

Hmm.  Tons of money, fast cars with cool gadgets, pretty women falling for him without having to engage in an elaborate seduction, nearly invincible...  Nope, don't see why so many men would want to identify with that character!

[viper37]

and I had no idea what was going on in that movie.  I have no plans to see this one (or the other two that came out inbetween).

James Bond goes against all odds to face a terrible new/old ennemy, drives a cool car, uses gadtets and get the girl.

Same plot for the other two.  Not terribly hard to follow.

[Syt]

[Syt]

[Tamas]

 

On Tuesday I was once again driving around. No queues because there was no fuel to be queuing for  The 3-4 petrol stations I drove past all had either all their pumps marked with the big striped yellow "sorry it ain't working" sign, or the station's whole refueling area cordoned off with tape to show its out of commission.

[Tamas]

Coronavirus has caused a global shortage in HGV drivers globally. Here are the 24 interventions delivered to tackle the lorry driver shortage and improve fuel supply with more petrol delivered than dispensed yesterday.

5 years from now it'll still be Corona not Brexit which will cause all problems on this merry island of sovereignty.

[Tamas]

Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab has suggested offenders who have been given community sentences could be used to address the country's lack of HGV drivers, amid the ongoing fuel shortages.

Mr Raab, who was made Justice Secretary in Prime Minister Boris Johnson's recent ministerial reshuffle, has dismissed Labour's call for 100,000 migrant visas to be issued to provide sufficient drivers.

The former Foreign Secretary said the move would leave the country reliant in the long term on labour coming from abroad, and instead suggested the gap could be filled in another way.

"We've been getting prisoners and offenders to do volunteering and unpaid work," Mr Raab told The Spectator, in comments carried by The Times.

"Why not if there are shortages encourage them to do paid work where there's a benefit for the economy, benefit for society?

"If you give people skin in the game, give them something to lose, if you give them some hope, they're much less likely to re-offend."

This just keeps becoming better and better. 

[The Brain]

Ah yes. Having the country depend on a steady supply of crime is much better than Johnny Foreigner driving around on upstanding British roads.

[Sheilbh]

Is that a bad idea though? We are generally pretty bad at rehabilitation - though there are schemes to have companies bring in ex-prisoners or people on community sentences. Timpson's is particularly prominent for hiring a lot of ex-prisoners and they have a far higher rate of success at rehabilitation than a lot of other schemes.

Maybe not as a crisis measure but I feel like being able to train for an HGV licence might be worth looking at in the context of rehabilitation given that it's likely to be a sector with higher demand/lower supply for a while. Maybe do all the theory sections in prison and then have the practical course and qualification as part of the community service/probation period?

Semi-relatedly I've no doubt it'll be spun as linked to the HGV crisis but there's a campaign from the Spectator and a few Tory and Labour MPs (which Raab has indicated he supports) of lifting the 20 year ban on refugees from working which I think would be a very good idea.

Interesting piece by David Edgerton on Labour's conference - he was less keen on Starmer's speech than I was, but highlights just how interesting Rachel Reeves' ideas were (also a lot of those are, as Cummings would point out, about public procurement). It's a shame it was overshadowed by rows but I think it's exactly what Labour should be thinking about - and I think the £28billion pa is in line with estimates of what we need to spend on energy transition if we want to move quickly on that:

RENEWING LABOUR
September 29, 2021

The line from the briefers on the eve of Starmer's speech to the Labour Party conference is that Labour is now looking outward, to the future and is determined to win.  The bleak reality is that it looks inward ever more, finding fault with itself, is obsessed with the recent past of the party, and is judging by the lack of political action, determined to lose.   

Worst still its analysis of its own past is faulty. Far from the worst electoral result in eighty years, the 2019 election was bad but not the worst (take a bow Michael Foot, Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband). In 2017 Labour deprived the Tories of their majority, a rare occurrence, and pushed vote share to 40% (take a bow Tony Blair and Jeremy Corbyn). Labour looked outward and brought people and ideas into party from the outside. 

While it gets its own history wrong, Starmer's programme has nothing to say about what has happened to the country and what is happening now. It dares not look outward.  Indeed, Starmer's recent pamphlet is eloquent in only one respect. Every line speaks to a failure to comprehend what has happened to the country.  It is silent when it comes to serious analysis of everything important, whether the impact of Thatcher, the nature of New Labour, the nature of economy or society, Brexit or Covid.  It looks only to its own fantasy Labour past, and to its own Red Wall concoction, and myths of wartime solidarity. It is trapped in its own headlights. Not surprisingly it has no ambition for the future other than to purge the left.

There are perhaps two glimmers of hope for Labour.  The first is that as a party Labour insists on telling different stories.  The other is that Rachel Reeves has found a new way of thinking about the economy.

This is perhaps not obvious, precisely because of its novelty.   Aspiring Chancellors of the Labour right have usually been stuck in macro-economic I-will-do-this-and-that in the budget as well as a lot of fiscal self-flagellation.   Reeves did some of the latter, but did much more. She made one spectacular announcement - £28bn per annum for ten years in Green capital investment. This is the scale of green programme proposed by John McDonnell.

There was also another echo of the novelties of the Corbyn era – a focus on buying from firms operating in the UK, and on a radical (but not specified quantitatively) programme of insourcing.   

In both these cases there seemed to be an underlying argument that the state needed to achieve not short-term efficiencies by driving down costs, but long-term efficacy as well as efficiency.  This is a significant return to the core claims of historic social democracy, to conceptualising a national economy and a state which acts for all, increasing equality, efficacy and efficiency simultaneously.

Even more significant is the conceptualisation of the economy in a new way. Instead of an implicit division between manufacturing and the rest, between globally traded high tech sectors and the rest, so prominent in Labour thinking, old and New Labour, she offered the concept of the everyday economy.  This matters – the greening of the economy is the greening of the everyday economy – of housing, transport, public services, and very obviously infrastructure too.  It points also to interconnection, rather than to atomised enterprises competing in a market.   Especially striking was the formulation that the UK needed an industrial strategy not just for high tech manufacturing (the enduring fantasy of the Tories and Labour) but for the whole economy, specifically including social care. This was allied to the correct understanding that much of the UK economy is low productivity and low-wage and this needs to change.  It echoes the forgotten argument of Harold Wilson that the UK out to scale back on pointless high tech beloved of nationalist Tories (and too many Labour people too) and look to improve the bread-and-butter industries and services which affect all our lives.

Unlike the zombie Blairism and stiff nationalism that Starmer offers, Reeves has mined Labour thinking to plant a seed of renewal.  Will it grow?

[Tamas]

If I am given a choice on whether the country's fuel supplies should depend on sentenced criminals, I am opting for "no".

This is independent of the topic of rehabilitation. If your economy ends up relying on sentenced criminals cooperating with the state, you have big, big troubles entirely unrelated on what's the best way to ensure those criminals don't return to crime.

[The Brain]

Is that a bad idea though?

Yes.

[Tamas]

Also: if we are entertaining the idea of state-sponsored HGV (and other certificates for fuel transport) training, perhaps non-criminal unemployed should get preferential treatment over criminals.

On the topic of licences to get to ease the fuel crisis, a Guardian comment:

In order to drive a fuel tanker driver must have three things in additional to their car license requirements.

Firstly they must have an HGV class 2 Cat C license, which takes months and costs a bell of a lot of money - and there's a queue of 40,000 waiting to take the test.

Secondly they must have a valid CPC card showing that they have done enough driver training over recent time. Also expensive and it takes you out of work for a week every year or so.

Thirdly you must have an ADR licence enabling you to transport hazardous materials limericks fuel. Again an expensive and time-consuming suite of training.