Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Tamas]

I know this is just outting me as a right-wing monster but I just feel like if people want in persona appointments then they should be able to get them, if they want a remote appointment then they should be able to get them and that's not an assault on "professional decision-making processes". The public should be able to demand to see a doctor because the public pay for a health service They definitely need more funding to try and get appointments back to within one week rather than within a fortnight.

Well yeah, exactly. If there are issues with the system lets look at them and try to remedy it, but part of that is ensuring public funds are not being wasted.

Our GP surgery still has their warnings over being overloaded and unable to answer phone calls (in fact, limiting the timeframe they answer phone calls) on their webpage since the Covid heydays of 2020 and the launch of the vaccination program.

[Tamas]

Meanwhile another case for which I am SURE Britain is too Western to be a corruption case despite what it looks like and despite how it could be a translation of any number of Hungarian articles:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/15/uk-ministers-face-questions-firm-linked-suspected-covid-test-errors

Ministers are facing questions about the Covid testing company linked to suspected wrong PCR results, as it emerged its sister company in the UK is being investigated over travel testing failures and a related US firm sent out used DNA test kits filled with other customers' saliva.

Immensa Health Clinic is under scrutiny after the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) found at least 43,000 people may have been wrongly given a negative Covid test result, leading to the suspension of operations at its privately run laboratory in Wolverhampton.

It followed an investigation into reports of people receiving negative PCR test results after previously testing positive on a lateral flow device, many of them in the south-west and Wales.

Immensa was founded in May 2020 by Andrea Riposati, a former management consultant and owner of a DNA testing company, just three months before it was awarded a £119m PCR testing contract by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC). He is the sole listed owner and board director.

Riposati is also the founder of Dante Labs, which is under investigation in the UK by the Competition and Markets Authority over its PCR travel tests.


The watchdog said it would look into concerns that Dante Labs may be treating customers unfairly by not delivering PCR tests or results on time or at all, failing to respond to complaints or provide proper customer service, refusing or delaying refunds when requested and using terms and conditions that may unfairly limit consumers' rights.

In the US, Dante Labs admitted having sent five used DNA test kits to customers containing the saliva of other people. One reported finding the tube where he was meant to deposit his spit was already filled with bubbly liquid and sealed up in a biohazard bag.

After the incident in 2018, Dante Labs issued a statement saying five people received "used kits" as a result of an error by its shipping provider, with Riposati saying he took "full responsibility".

There have been further questions over the management of Immensa. Earlier this year, the DHSC promised to launch an investigation after the Sun on Sunday found that workers appeared to be fighting, sleeping, playing football and drinking on duty while working at Immensa's Wolverhampton lab. The government said at the time it would speak to Immensa as it took "evidence of misconduct extremely seriously".

Despite this, Immensa won a further £50m contract from the DHSC as recently as July. It appears to have opened another PCR testing laboratory at Charnwood, Leicestershire, in September, with the launch attended by the Tory MP for Loughborough, Jane Hunt.

Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, said: "Serious questions have to be asked about how this private firm – who didn't exist before May 2020 – was awarded a lucrative £120m contract to run this lab.

"From duff PPE to failing test kits, ministers have sprayed around tax money like confetti and utterly failed to deliver the service people deserve."

The original £119m PCR testing contract was awarded to Immensa last year without being put out to tender, raising questions about how and why the firm was given the deal.

In an unusual move, the government press release announcing the suspension of the Wolverhampton lab on Friday contained a supportive quote from Riposati, saying: "We are fully collaborating with UKHSA on this matter. Quality is paramount for us. We have proudly analysed more than 2.5m samples for NHS test and trace, working closely with the great teams at the Department of Health and Social Care and UKHSA. We do not wish this matter or anything else to tarnish the amazing work done by the UK in this pandemic."

Immensa has been approached for comment via Dante Labs, and the DHSC has been asked for comment on its due diligence procedures.

NHS test and trace said about 400,000 samples had been processed through the Wolverhampton lab, the vast majority of which will have been negative results, but an estimated 43,000 people may have been given incorrect negative PCR test results between 8 September and 12 October, mostly in south-west England.

Test and trace is contacting the people who could still be infectious to advise them to take another test.

The UKHSA said it was "an isolated incident attributed to one laboratory but all samples are now being redirected to other laboratories".

A spokesperson for Immensa said:"We have been cooperating fully with the UKHSA on this matter and will continue to do so."

The company did not respond to questions about the used tests incident in the US or behaviour of staff at its Wolverhampton lab.

In relation to the CMA inquiry, the spokesperson said it was disappointed about the move but fully cooperating, adding: "Dante Labs has completed over 4m tests in support of families, small businesses and local authorities since the pandemic began. We have a strong track record of providing all major Covid-19 tests, as approved by the Department of Health and Social Care.

"While the overwhelming majority of our customers have received a timely and cost-effective service, we recognise the challenges faced by a small proportion of those who have purchased our tests. We have invested significantly in our customer service operation to improve our overall delivery in the face of huge demand."

Dr Will Welfare, the public health incident director at UKHSA, said: "There is no evidence of any faults with LFD or PCR test kits themselves and the public should remain confident in using them and in other laboratory services currently provided."

However, some scientists are concerned that false results could have been partly responsible for the recent rise in Covid cases, which have topped 45,000 a day.

Dr Kit Yates, a mathematical biologist at the University of Bath and a member of the Independent Sage group of scientists, suggested the suspected testing errors could have had serious consequences.

He said: "We now know 43,000 people are believed to have been given false negatives, but this doesn't even come near to the cost of the mistake.

"Many of these people will have been forced into school or work, potentially infecting others. This could be part of the reason behind some of the recent rises we've seen.

"We need to find out exactly what happened here in order to make sure it doesn't happen again elsewhere."

Speaking on a visit in the West Country, Boris Johnson said officials were still "looking into" what had gone wrong but denied that it was a factor in overall rising case numbers.

[Sheilbh]

Meanwhile another case for which I am SURE Britain is too Western to be a corruption case despite what it looks like and despite how it could be a translation of any number of Hungarian articles:

Any article that opens with a "facing questions" normally doesn't have much - and I think that's the case here. I don't really see anything in that article that looks like corruption - there's been far more damning examples (mainly around PPE).

It looks like they've failed and they're being investigated. But I can't really see what the "facing questions" are about.

[Sheilbh]

Very interesting piece on why the Greens are struggling to rise to the "green moment". I'd note that Brighton which should be their flagship council is having yet another strike by bin collection workers - I think this is the third or fourth time it's happened. There also tend to be a lot of political fights in the council between the "watermelon" (green on the outside red on the inside) and "mango" (green on the outside, Lib Dem orange on the inside) factions.

I have a friend who's very involved in Green politics and has mentioned their "living manifesto" as a disaster waiting to happen. Basically any policy that is approved by a membership conference vote is added to the manifesto and stays there until it is explicitly removed by another conference vote. So there's lots of incredibly weird and wonderful policies lingering around from the 70s and 80s when the Greens were a very niche force - things on population control etc. In her view it's a disaster waiting to happen if the party does well in the polls the media will notice the policies in their "living manifesto"

Why the Greens are missing their moment
In Germany they are heading for power. But England's Green Party is mired in the culture wars.
By Harry Lambert

Why isn't the Green Party one of the most powerful political forces in Britain? Sea levels are rising. Forests are burning. Fires and floods are forcing people out of their homes each year. We have an energy crisis. And only one party has spent three decades propounding the environmental cause, making the Green Party name perhaps the most valuable brand in British politics today.

In August one in three Britons named climate change as one of the most important issues facing Britain, and the world, with the issue ranking second only to the Covid pandemic – ahead of the economy, the NHS and Brexit. And yet, the Greens are a resolutely minor party and often mired in internecine conflict. Far from challenging Labour as the party of the left, they are still struggling to surpass the Liberal Democrats. Meanwhile, the Greens in Germany are likely to form the next government as part of a centre-left coalition.

Why are the Greens missing their moment? Why are they so marginal?

We know parties can surge in popularity in a short time. In the 2010 general election, Ukip won 3.1 per cent of the vote. Three years later, it was polling 18 per cent. By 2013 Ukip's growing popularity had persuaded David Cameron to promise voters the Brexit referendum. At the 2015 general election, Ukip won nearly four million votes. In a brief window in the 2010s, Nigel Farage and Ukip changed British political history.

The Greens appear nowhere near to effecting such change. In the 2019 general election, the party won 2.7 per cent of the vote. Two years later, polls suggest it has doubled its support, to 6 per cent. But support will have to double again before the Greens begin to matter at Westminster. Is that likely? Should it already have happened? And is the party that controls a priceless name sufficiently well-run, led and organised to ride the surge of support for green issues?

"Scientists are running out of language to describe the speed at which we need to act," Caroline Lucas, the Greens' sole MP, tells me. "We face an absolutely existential threat to our existence." The Greens, she says, "sadly will be helped by the accelerating nature of the climate crises". For Jonathan Bartley, who recently stood down as party co-leader, "It is the Greens' moment. The penny is dropping, we have been on the right side of history."

But Lucas describes the party she once led as "deeply old-fashioned" in the way it is run, and this is holding the Greens back. The Greens are not leader-run. In fact, the party scarcely has leaders at all. "Our leaders are just principal spokespeople, relabelled," Bartley says. "We have influence, but very little power. We have no power to set policy, no power to tell the party how to conduct itself, no involvement at all in disciplinary actions."

Green leaders, Lucas says, "don't have any more formal power than anyone else in the party". She has been trying to change that for years, but her and Bartley's plan for a complete overhaul of the way the party works (which would shift power away from its volunteer-run executive committee, on which Green leaders are but one of many members) has been blocked at repeated party conferences. Nothing official can happen in the Green Party unless it is passed at a conference. Every policy must be passed by members before it can be adopted. Leaders simply promote policies decided on by party activists.

The Green Party, in other words, has all the disadvantages of a bureaucratic monolith without any of the advantages of scale. It is small yet it is not mobile. "The party needs to be fit for purpose," Bartley tells me. "Hand on heart, I'm not convinced it is ready to meet the opportunity that is there for it."

British politics is a leader-led culture. In the UK, elections are becoming increasingly presidential in style, with voters often backing the party whose leader they prefer at recent general elections. Yet, the Greens eschew empowered leadership. The party's name may be an invaluable asset, but no enterprising outsider can take control of it and drive through a change in culture, policy or appeal. The Greens will not be modernised by a Margaret Thatcher or a Tony Blair. The charisma of any Green leader will always be checked by their powerlessness.

"The question the Greens should be asking themselves," says Patrick O'Flynn, a key force in Ukip's modernisation in the 2010s, "is why aren't they on 20 per cent? Intuitively they own the biggest issue of the era." O'Flynn thinks that the Greens are failing to learn from Ukip's strategy in the 2010s, when the party's leadership cut anything from its policy programme that "wasn't popular". Most notably, Ukip ditched its ideological libertarianism and swung behind public funding for the NHS. Some of its politics were described as "Red Ukip".

The Green Party is anchored to its historic policy programme, and that programme is not just green but deep red. The party's economic ideas are far to the left of the Labour Party and indeed the German Greens. That's popular: many British voters, according to polls, are economically to the left of Labour. But the Greens are also socially to Labour's left – a far less popular position – with the party's policy on gender rights having caused stark internal divisions, for instance. The party's core policies are many coloured: green and red, and pink and light blue.

The Green Party is not, in short, a party focused on the environment alone. Its internal democracy empowers its members but narrows its appeal. That has its electoral advantages, but in any bid for national popularity, says Rob Ford, co-author of Brexitland, the party is "going to be hamstrung by its own activists".

On 1 October Adrian Ramsay, the former deputy of the Green Party, and Carla Denyer, a councillor in Bristol, were elected as the Green Party's new co-leaders. One of their first issues is to resolve the internal conflict over gender rights exposed by the party's leadership contest. Shahrar Ali, a "gender critical" candidate, who opposed the blanket introduction of gender "self-ID" for access to single-sex spaces, won 21 per cent of the vote in the leadership election's first round, polling third. Self-ID is a Green Party policy, which the party defines as the right to change your legal gender by declaration alone, "without medical or state encumbrance". After the contest, Ali tweeted to his supporters, "You may be considering your continued membership", but encouraged them to remain in the party.

Bartley is regretful that the contest revolved around the vexed issue of gender rights, for which he blames Siân Berry, with whom he served as co-leader. When Berry chose not to stand again as leader after Bartley stood down in July, she publicly challenged Ali's position – that there are times when biological sex takes precedence over self-declared gender – saying that she could not work alongside him.

"I don't think it was wise for Siân to say she wasn't running again over this issue," Bartley tells me. "It made the whole leadership election about the gender split. I think it was a political mistake. Whenever we now go and do an interview, it comes up and it's the story."

The party, Bartley adds, has "some wonderful policies on active peace-making, on reconciliation, on non violence. But the way that it conducts itself internally is a long way from those values. It played a factor in me standing down."

Bartley became wearied by the Green Party's internal conflicts. "We should be the party best at conflict resolution but actually we are very poor at it." He likens his attempts to defang opponents in the gender debate to "wading through treacle".

"There are a whole bunch of people who want this to be a fight, and to win and expel the other people. But the future for the party is to learn to listen, and to instil the values that we say we have. The bigger battle within the party is whether we'll embrace peaceful resolution. If we do, we will survive. If we don't, we will rip ourselves apart."

When I ask Ramsay, 40, the new co-leader, how he hopes to resolve this issue, he is calm, if indirect. Ramsay, who was raised in Norwich and studied there, became a Green councillor in 2003, aged 21. During the leadership campaign, Ramsay's co-leader Denyer, 36, referred to the LGB Alliance – which represents lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) people and argues that there is a conflict between LGB rights and trans rights – as "a hate group" for its exclusion of trans activism. This statement is, perhaps, unlikely to help unite the party or broaden its appeal. Ramsay is less provocative when I ask him whether, at times, it is appropriate for spaces to be exclusively reserved to those born female, a principle laid out in the 2010 Equality Act.

"Under current legislation," he says, after a brief silence, "there are circumstances where service providers can make judgements on a case-by-case basis and prisons is an example of that, where safeguarding decisions are made that way."

Ramsay did not elaborate, but his position is obvious: it may indeed be acceptable to restrict access to a space on the basis of sex, as in current law. That is a more nuanced position than the one held by Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, who recently declared that those born female do not have a right to their own spaces.

Ramsay cannot independently change the Green Party's policy, whether or not he wants to, but he will speak for it. He can emphasise or soften its edges. When I asked Lucas, who backed Ramsay and Denyer's candidacy, if single-sex spaces were appropriate she declined to answer. "It's clearly part of what needs to be discussed," she said, noting that there are "people who are upset" by the party's policy. Lucas thinks the way to deal with that is "to try to find safe spaces to discuss this with respect, and a bit of kindness, rather than people just leaping to the barricades".

How did gender rights become the issue that Green Party leaders spend their time evading? Why is the party preoccupied by anything other than the environmental emergency? For Patrick O'Flynn, the Greens should be "the party of David Attenborough" and little else. But that is not the party that has developed out of Britain's environmental movement.

The Green Party was the party's third name, wisely seized upon in 1985 after the Greens began life as first the People Party (in 1972) and then the Ecology Party. In 1989 the party's Scottish branch detached itself; the Scottish Greens now sustain the SNP in Holyrood under an informal coalition.

After the first Green breakthrough in the 1989 European elections, with the Greens polling 15 per cent, David Icke, a television presenter, joined the party and soon came to be seen as its de facto leader – until he resigned in 1991 to announce he was the son of the Godhead and that the world would end in 1997. The Greens are no longer haunted by such inauspicious beginnings, but the party remains anchored by an evolving text – "Policies for a Sustainable Society" – that dates back to its founding. The Green Party has, for instance, been arguing since 1975 that "continued industrial expansion" is "not sustainable".

Today, the Greens are keen to highlight their success at attracting both Labour and Tory voters in recent local elections, but only the former seem likely to back the party in strength at a national level. Natalie Bennett, the former leader, and Lucas both tell me that the party can be a natural home for "small-c conservatives", especially in rural areas. Yet the party's economic radicalism may deter such conservatives, however environmentally concerned they may be.

The party's red economic vision is captured by a set of long-standing Green ideas: a universal basic income; a four-day working week; a move away from GDP as a measure of economic health; and a spike in wealth taxes to pay for the transformation to a green economy. The Greens have been calling for a basic income for 40 years. Bennett echoes Marx in describing the policy to me: "Everyone has the freedom to choose their own life, the freedom to choose how you want to spend your time, with no boss or state telling you what to do."

The policy itself may not be quite so emancipatory: it guarantees adults just £4,628 per year, about a quarter of the minimum wage. Bennett tells me she is often asked if she's a socialist, to which she replies, "no I'm a Green, and a Green is more radical than a socialist".

I ask Ramsay if the party is a threat to moneyed interests, as those behind the Jeremy Corbyn project claimed they were. He answers diplomatically. "The biggest threat we face is the environmental and ecological emergency. That threatens everybody regardless of their wealth." A mass reinsulation of homes, he says, needs to be government-funded; it should be progressively taxed.

Whatever you may wish the Green Party to be in Britain, it is clear what it is. Its narrowness as a project may disappoint some, but it has an electoral upside. As Labour moves to the right on the economy, it is vacating space to its left. Former Corbyn voters may drift to the Greens. The party may win several new MPs. As Ford puts it to me, "If you, as a party, win under-40 socially liberal graduates, there are seats where there are a lot of them." That is a problem for Labour: the party racks up votes in safe seats, especially in cities where young graduates are clustered. But Labour's problem is the Greens' opportunity. "The young aren't tribal at all," notes Ford, "they're very flighty." Many could be won over.

In its narrow form, the threat the Green Party poses is to Keir Starmer's party, which can little afford to lose the youthful, idealistic wing of Labour's fragile coalition. It is the Tories who will benefit from the over-definition of the Greens. Too many colours other than green run through the party's programme for it to appeal to the broad set of voters that a purely environmental party could win. At the next election, the Greens are more likely to split the parties of the left than to win the votes of the soft right: of market- sceptic conservatives committed to a more harmonious vision of conservation and preservation.

Caroline Lucas is confident enough to predict at least five new Green MPs by 2030. But the perennial problem for the party, aside from its lack of funding – the Conservatives out-raised the Greens by 100 fold in the 2019 election – will be Britain's first-past-the-post electoral system. Support for the party, says Lucas, is continually "suppressed because many can't vote with their hearts". Why vote Green when every election is, in the end, a choice between the green policies of the two major parties?

England's Green Party looks longingly to Germany, where the Greens benefit from a proportional voting system that allows them to enter government after winning 15 per cent of the vote. But there are deeper differences between the parties, ones that the Greens are reluctant or unable to recognise.

The modern German Greens are moderate and pragmatic: they empower their leaders, who are unafraid to shed policies and positions that are likely to alienate the electorate, and they have a realist foreign policy. They want to be a broad church, and at one point earlier this year polled 25 per cent, almost eclipsing the SPD, the historic party of the German centre left. In their present form, England's Greens have little hope of making such an impact. They will likely disrupt British politics over the next decade, but not change it. The Green moment is here. The Greens are missing it.

[Sheilbh]

Also separately - really interesting leak (I suspect by Number 10) showing rows between Johnson, Kwarteng and Gove on one side and Sunak/the Treasury on the other. About the Treasury take you'd expect

Treasury leak reveals rift between Johnson and Sunak over costs of zero-carbon economy
With weeks to go before the Cop26 climate summit, documents show PM being warned about the risks of damage to the UK from green investment
Toby Helm & Fiona Harvey
Sat 16 Oct 2021 19.12 BST

Confidential documents leaked to the Observer reveal an extraordinary rift between Boris Johnson and his chancellor, Rishi Sunak, over the potential economic effects of moving towards a zero-carbon economy, with just weeks to go before the crucial Cop26 climate summit.

As Johnson prepares to position the UK at the head of global efforts to combat climate change and curb greenhouse gas emissions as host of the Glasgow Cop26 meeting, the documents show the Treasury is warning of serious economic damage to the UK economy and future tax rises if the UK overspends on, or misdirects, green investment.

Green experts said the "half-baked" and "one-sided" Treasury net-zero review presented only the costs of action on emissions, rather than the benefits, such as green jobs, lower energy bills and avoiding the disastrous impact of global heating. They said the review could be "weaponised" by climate-change deniers around the world before Cop26, undermining Johnson's attempts at climate leadership on the global stage.

The internal Treasury documents say that while there may be economic benefits to UK companies from swift and appropriate climate action, there is also a danger that economic activity could move abroad if firms found their costs were increasing by more than those of their overseas competitors.

The leaked papers are understood to have been produced to accompany a slide show given confidentially to key groups outside government in the last month. The documents state: "The investment required to decarbonise the UK economy is uncertain but could help to improve the UK's relatively low investment levels and increase productivity.

"However, more green investment is likely to attract diminishing returns, reducing the positive impact of ever more investment on GDP. Some green investments could displace other, more productive, investment opportunities. If more productive investments are made earlier in the transition, this risk may be accentuated later in the transition."

On the risk of additional costs to companies from green initiatives, the documents say: "Climate action in the UK can lead to economic activity moving abroad if it directly leads to costs increasing, and it is more profitable to produce in countries with less stringent climate policies."

On the fiscal implications, the documents say the cost of moving towards net zero could mean tax rises because of "the erosion of tax revenue from fossil fuel-related activity". They say: "The government may need to consider changes to existing taxes and new sources of revenue throughout the transition in order to deliver net zero sustainably, and consistently with the government's fiscal principles."

Ed Matthew, campaign director at the E3G thinktank, said: "To governments looking to Cop26, this looks unprofessional and embarrassing. The UK is standing in front of the world at Cop26 trying to galvanise ambitious action from every country. If the government has not presented the robust economic case in favour of action, that's going to significantly undermine those attempts."

The Treasury's approach is also starkly at odds with that of business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng and the analysis of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) in a report published in July this year.

On the costs of moving towards net zero, the OBR said in its report: "Between now and 2050 the fiscal costs of getting to net zero in the UK could be significant, but they are not exceptional ... While unmitigated climate change would spell disaster, the net fiscal costs of moving to net zero emissions by 2050 could be comparatively modest."

The Committee on Climate Change, the government's statutory adviser, has also repeatedly said the costs of action are small and diminishing, at less than 1% of GDP by 2050, while the costs of inaction are large and rising.

While there are concerns over how the costs could fall on poorer households, the CCC chief executive Chris Stark has made clear that ministers can choose to distribute the costs and benefits fairly, through the design of green policies.

Whitehall sources said there was a belief that Sunak was keen to position himself as something of a climate-change sceptic in order to boost his popularity with Tory party members, and draw comparisons with Johnson's green enthusiasms. "Rishi clearly sees an interest in showing he is not really down with this green stuff. He wants Boris to own the whole agenda."

A source at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy confirmed that the Treasury was "kicking back" against many of the green plans being advanced by No 10 and Kwarteng. "They are not climate change deniers but they are emphasising the short-term risks, rather than long-term needs, which is what we are emphasising."

In contrast to the Treasury's caution, Labour committed at its recent party conference to invest £28bn extra every year until 2030 to secure a "green transition" creating good jobs with decent wages in the process.

The leak comes as the government prepares to publish its long-awaited net zero strategy, and heat and buildings strategy, which will contain policies on cutting emissions and creating green jobs, including a ban on new gas boilers from 2035 and grants for householders to move to green heating.

The government's Cop26 president, former business secretary Alok Sharma, is embarking on a frantic last-ditch round of diplomacy, including with Chinese representatives, amid speculation that President Xi Jinping will not attend the talks. The US and the EU are also talking to key high-emitting countries in the final weeks before Cop26, which opens on 31 October.

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 plan, setting up the UK infrastructure bank to invest in net zero, and committing to raise £15bn for projects like zero-emissions buses, offshore wind and schemes to decarbonise homes."

I might take that line about Sunak trying to position himself as a climate sceptic if it wasn't for the fact that the Treasury position on every issue is the same. Every time they would rather face any level of long-term costs and consequences than aauthorise short-term spending now

[Josquius]

Intetesting if sunak is trying to position himself as a climate skeptic. There's some milage in that with the brexity but poor crowd.... But this even further cements the tories to the hard right and further weakens their standing with moderates.
When evil communist Corbyn is the alternative many would hold their nose and vote for Johnson but when you've got centre left starmer and super nimby lib dems as the other alternatives.... I guess scare stories about Scottish independence are about the only ammo they would have left to keep actual conservatives on side.

Sort of related - I have seen an increasing amount of articles on the Eastern leg of hs2 and other level up projects being cancelled. Really is highlighting the same old penny wise pound foolish tories at work. Fingers crossed if it does go that way people will actually wake up to it.

[Sheilbh]

Intetesting if sunak is trying to position himself as a climate skeptic. There's some milage in that with the brexity but poor crowd.... But this even further cements the tories to the hard right and further weakens their standing with moderates.

I suppose that depends who wins.

I think it's not going to be climate sceptic but I think climate/energy politics is where there will be the next populist surge - and it depends on policy makers developing policies to make the distribution of costs fair (i.e. the opposite of the context around Macron's petrol tax/gilets jaunes). I don't think climate policies are particularly unpopular or susceptible to a populist reaction against them, but I think it they're not cleverly designed with equality in mind we'll end up with a reaction like that.

Sort of related - I have seen an increasing amount of articles on the Eastern leg of hs2 and other level up projects being cancelled. Really is highlighting the same old penny wise pound foolish tories at work. Fingers crossed if it does go that way people will actually wake up to it.

Yeah - I mean I think that's a problem of the Treasury in every government. There's an example in the Blair/Brown documentary where Brown was wanting to increase the health budget incrementally and be cautious because prudence. He was getting into regular fights with Blair who wanted a big splash and a large increase. In the end the fight was resolved by Blair going on breakfast TV with David Frost and announcing they'd be increasing spending on the NHS to the European average in five years - needless to say the Treasury/Brown was furious

But I think that since Thatcher/Major, the Treasury's got out of hand and needs to be put back in its box. It wasn't such an issue in May's government because it was so weak but with Brown, Osborne and now Sunak you have Chancellors who are basically across all domestic politics and I'm not sure it's a good thing.

[garbon]

It was weird this morning watching coverage on BBC breakfast where Jo Cox's widower was talking about how we need to change our response to terrorist attacks as purpose is to divide us and make us feel powerless. And yet, without looking for it, I encountered endless coverage since Friday about how many death threats MPs regularly face, how unsafe they are, journalists asking MPs if they feels safe and what if any steps they plan to take to make themselves safer (including a segment with Chris Bryant right before Brendan Cox came on the television).  I suppose there has been an improvement as far as little headline news with details of the alleged terrorist's life (so less glory) but still feels like a narrative of fear is being pushed (not the less with intro questions like 'how are you feeling after this terrible weekend?').

[Sheilbh]

Yeah. I think there's a few sides to it.

One is that there's an element of fighting the last war to it. I think the immediate understanding of an MP being killed was shaped by the experience of Jo Cox's murder - I was certainly guilty of that. This actually is more close to the attack on Stephen Timms by a violent Islamist or the murder of several MPs in the 70s-90s by Irish Repubicans. Starmer gestured towards this in his comments where he talked about civility mattering but also counter-terrorism and they are very different concerns.

The other side is that I think MPs want to talk about it and do feel increasingly vulnerable and unsafe. You know, Raab mentioned about three cases of threats to him and his family (including of an acid attack) that required an "intervention" - which I assume means police involvement. There have also been the reported convictions and MPs requiring police protection because of "credible" death threats. From everything I've read and heard it seems like the expenses scandal was a turning point. Part of it is also just the ease of abuse through social media - and that's something the media probably understand/share: social media's part of the job and exposes you to constant personal abuse and threats.

[Josquius]

It seems to be dying down now as the police reveal the motivations of the killer, that the guy he chose was just the first he got to, etc...
But in the immediate aftermath I was seeing an almost joyful reaction from the far right, imagining this was left wingers being just as bad and murdering one of theirs thus making the Jo Cox case no longer relevant. And of course stupid left wingers only too happy to oblige saying they don't shed a tear for this guy.
I do wonder whether reacting to this floating about is where a lot of what cox's husband was saying came from.

[Sheilbh]

And why I keep raising the influence/power of the Treasury:

No matter who's prime minister, the Treasury always wins
Boris Johnson's "levelling-up" plans for the north are being stalled once again by a department determined not to spend money.
By Jonn Elledge
Photo by TOLGA AKMEN/AFP via Getty Images

"No matter who you vote for," the old joke and/or song by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band runs, "the government always gets in." You can read this as nothing more than a cynical sneer, a comment on the unbridgeable divide between us and them. But I think there's something more to it: a government isn't just the elected politicians at its head.

Consider the matter of Boris Johnson and the Treasury. For all the adjectives one might use for the UK's much-loathed Prime Minister, no one would ever call him a fiscal conservative: he gives the impression, indeed, that the primary function of public money is for him to spend on pointless boondoggles whose names begin, suspiciously often, with the letter B.

At the same time, now that his government has Got Brexit Done (it hasn't, but let's not worry about that right now), its comms strategy is built around two new slogans: Levelling Up, a hand-wave that implies raising the neglected rest of the country to the level of prosperity enjoyed in the south of England; and Build Back Better, which is basically the same, but in a post-Covid flavour.

Exactly what either of these slogans mean in practical terms is quite hard to pin down: polling commissioned by the Centre for Cities and ITV recently found that barely 40 per cent of the public think they know what levelling up actually means. But since one cause of England's economic divide is the disappointing productivity of many of its major cities, since the difficulty of getting around and between them is generally cited as one of the reasons for that, and since this government has been promising to tackle the former by addressing the latter ever since austerity was but a glint in George Osborne's eye, then one might assume that levelling up and building back better would mean making the infrastructure investments required to sort out the country's wobbling rail network.

Sure enough, this tends to feature heavily in the grand promises that ministers like to waft in the vague direction of the Red Wall. There's the Midlands Hub, a £2bn package of measures intended to create extra rail capacity for both passengers and freight between the East Midlands and south Wales. There's the Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR) scheme – aka High Speed 3, aka Crossrail for the north – a new, faster line between Liverpool and Leeds. And then of course, there's High Speed 2 (HS2), which by creating a new route for high-speed trains will clear more paths for regional and local services.

If you're a train nerd, which luckily I am, then all this is terribly exciting. There's just one minor problem. These schemes all need to get past the Treasury. And the signs are not looking good.

HS2 is already under construction from London to Birmingham, and seems likely to get to Crewe as well. But officials have been briefing that the eastern leg, from Birmingham to Leeds, may be for the chop, and Transport Secretary Grant Shapps recently told the Financial Times that the scheme would need to be reconsidered in light of those other projects.

The thing is, the Treasury doesn't look that keen on those other projects either. The Midlands Hub thus far exists as nothing more than a £20m budget to plan it (these things are expensive). As to NPR, rumours have been flying that the need to reduce costs would force a choice between a route via Bradford (which, despite being a sizeable city in the middle of the country, has terrible rail connections), and a brand new underground station at Manchester Piccadilly (which is still waiting for a bunch of improvements Obsorne promised under the branding "Northern Hub" back in 2014).

Now, though, word is the Treasury is determined to fund neither, leaving Bradford isolated and a capacity bottleneck at Manchester Piccadilly. At every stage this government has made big promises about sorting out the north's rail network. And at every stage, the Treasury has said no – even though doing it cheaply will almost certainly mean worse outcomes, or having to do it again, or both.

Perhaps we can blame this on the long-standing "Treasury view", the assertion that public investment necessarily crowds out private, or the tendency for public accounts to worry more about liabilities than assets. But all that's an attempt to add an intellectual gloss to a more fundamental statement: the Treasury doesn't like spending money, and capital is easier to cut than revenue. That goes double for capital spent a long way from London, where, by a staggering coincidence, the Treasury is based. Perhaps the decision to move a quarter of the department to Darlington will help with that. Or perhaps, if the attempts to move broadcasters to Salford while leaving commissioning decisions in London is anything to go by, it won't.

At any rate, if ever there was a Tory prime minister whose instincts were to turn on the spending taps and to hell with the consequences, it's Boris Johnson. And if ever there were infrastructure schemes that would add some meat to the bones of empty slogans like "levelling up" and "building back better", it's sorting out the rail network in the Midlands and the north.

Yet as things stand, it looks uncomfortably likely that neither of those things are going to happen. Whoever you vote for, the Treasury always gets in.

I've said it before but the way the Treasury has managed to get their tentacles across all departments (because they're spending departments and the Treasury has money and wants "accountablity" for money spent) is not entirely a good thing. And I think the "Treasury view"/reluctance to ever spend money explains a lot of where we are - e.g. from today's net zero strategy document:

[Sheilbh]

Once again - WTF are anti-lockdown protesters protesting?

Number 10 condemns 'intimidation' of Michael Gove by anti-lockdown demonstrators

Video footage that emerged online shows Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, being surrounded by demonstrators as he walks down a Westminster street.

It feels at this stage that they're mainly protesting that everyone else didn't join/doesn't agree with them, because there are no lockdown measures

[The Brain]

Maybe they are stupid?

[Josquius]

From what I gather they're protesting stuff  squarely in conspiracy territory these days. Angry at permanent signs saying to please keep your distance as covid is about and that sort of thing.
Which is clearly part of some freedom grabbing plot.

[Sheilbh]

From what I gather they're protesting stuff  squarely in conspiracy territory these days. Angry at permanent signs saying to please keep your distance as covid is about and that sort of thing.
Which is clearly part of some freedom grabbing plot.

Yeah - that's what I struggle with. This stuff isn't law any more. It's just signs and corporate policies etc. It's like we have a roaming group of nutters protesting "please wash your hands after going to the toilet" signs.