Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Sheilbh]

Regardless of their existing feelings they are just correct. It is absolutely no coincidence that the mob was emboldened by the PM validating their toxic wacko beliefs.

I'm less sure - just because of who this group is. There's no doubt Johnson shouldn't have said it, should apologise and retract the statement (and resign). I would answer yes to all of those questions - I don't think Johnson's line actually mattered to this group one little bit.

But this lot I don't know - they were heckling Starmer for not opposing the government as well as the rest. I think they are the extreme anti-vaxxers stuff. They are the people (literally I recognise some of them and Piers Corbyn gave a speech to them) who were protesting St Thomas's Hospital last winter because covid's fake and the Starmer/Savile stuff's been circulating the far left and right for a while now - so I don't think they needed any emboldening or feel validation from Johnson (who is also part of the New World Order/Freemasonry).

There is more of a red-brown element to this in the UK than I think elsewhere. See ToryFibs (150k followers) describe it as "Keir Starmer heckled by a crowd claiming he has abandoned the working class & is part of the elite. Julian Assange prosecution also mentioned as a grievance." Which is a take on what happened.

Edit: Incidentally I made myself angry again just thinking about those protests outside the hospital. Watching people heckle doctors and nurses leaving work or on their breaks, during the second winter wave about how "covid was fake" and that they were "liars" was just so enraging

[Tamas]

Edit: Incidentally I made myself angry again just thinking about those protests outside the hospital. Watching people heckle doctors and nurses leaving work or on their breaks, during the second winter wave about how "covid was fake" and that they were "liars" was just so enraging

Yes. Unfortunately, they were not a women-only group protesting a murder committed by a police officer, so the police was not able to stump their guts out.

[Sheilbh]

Yes. Unfortunately, they were not a women-only group protesting a murder committed by a police officer, so the police was not able to stump their guts out.

Quite. I know there were issues with how they were doing it to literally any demonstration - but I see this mob roaming round Westminster and just wonder if the police have just forgotten how to kettle people. It used to be their specialty.

[Zoupa]

I think the %age of of police that are sympathetic to the crazies is terrifyingly higher than we imagine.

[Sheilbh]

I think that's possible. I'd love some polling on the police given, for example, the recent scandal here of police officers sharing obscenely sexist (also racist, homophobic, ableist - just about every thing) messages with each other. Plus I just think they're fuckec as an institution when they're headed by Cressida Dick - who was gold commander at the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, must have been involved in the attempts at a cover-up and smearking the victim. I don't see how that model can inspire anything good (Sheilbh's unified theory of politics: every issue in the country comes back to building more housing or firing Cressida Dick ).

Here it is just incredibly inconsistent. The only theme I think might be at play in the last few years is that the police response is directly related to how likely it is the police will receive push-back. If you have a lot of angry shouting young men in your crowd then they will treat you with kids goves, if you don't they will assert their authority. I'm not convinced it's the best approach to public order policing

[Sheilbh]

Drawing a line under it, I see. Mirror gets a new photo from one of the events (not referred to the police) - going to see a lot more of this until he goes


Edit: And Cummings teases:

Dominic Cummings
@Dominic2306
there's waaaaay better pics than that floating around, incl in the flat

[Jacob]

Doesn't everyone wear purple... ... what is that thing anyways... at work meetings?

[Razgovory]

Doesn't everyone wear purple... ... what is that thing anyways... at work meetings?

A boa.

[garbon]

It looks like garland

[Sheilbh]

Doesn't everyone wear purple... ... what is that thing anyways... at work meetings?

It was a Christmas quiz (on Zoom in fairness but with some of the people working in Downing Street in person dialling in while sitting together in the office) - it's tinsel (on the right hand side you can see someone in a santa hat). At that time Christmas lunches or Christmas parties even for people working together were not allowed.

Because it's a Christmas quiz, we also have the slightly mortifying quiz team names

Team names included "Professor Quiz Whitty", "Next Slide Please", "We've Been Clear", "The 6 Masketeers" and "Hands, Face, First Place" - a reference to the slogan introduced to encourage social distancing and mask wearing.

It does seem to have caused confusion though - I saw someone in the Spanish press refer to it as a Hawaiian lei

Apparently this one wasn't under police investigation, but now is for some reason.

[Sheilbh]

Interesting FT piece - with a great illustration - this matches what I read from Jen Williams of the Manchester Evening News. Basically it's a good framework (and it's good to have a framework with targets on regional inequality which hasn't been around before), nice to have some targets but the commitment/interest from departments seems to vary wildly (DCMS and BEIS appear to have engaged, Education and Health less so) and it all means not very much without money.

I think this actually also captures the issue with appointing a cabinet "minister for x" when that issue is basically cross-departmental. Without a department they don't have much civil service firepower to deliver anything so you need a very energetic and effective minister (which Gove is), but it also means nothing without buy in from the Treasury or support from a PM with political capital willing to have a fight with the Treasury. The same applies to proposed Minister for Net Zero or Angela Rayner's role as Shadow Secretary of State for the Future of Work:

An unreformed Treasury will thwart Boris Johnson's levelling-up dream
The government's big idea is in hock to fiscal orthodoxy, short-termism and the desire to cut taxes before elections
ROBERT SHRIMSLEY

© Ellie Foreman-Peck
Robert Shrimsley 6 HOURS AGO

It is possible that in the future, politicians will dust down a hefty but neglected document on levelling up the country and wonder how such an bold attempt to restructure the UK's bottom-heavy economy was allowed to languish.

After an elephantine gestation period, Michael Gove's white paper finally landed last week; it weighs in at over 300 pages, wearing the levelling-up secretary's erudition a touch too heavily. But among the references to Florentine dynasties and even a 19th century Hungarian sociologist was a serious critique of the inequalities in Britain's economic and social geography.

For critics it is both too limited and too optimistic. They point to a restatement of old policy, a lack of detailed implementation and a shortage of funding. Even the headline advance in local devolution is broad rather than deep, and carries no meaningful increase in tax or borrowing powers.

For admirers, this is both the template and the first step on a generational mission to address regional inequality and lack of productivity. It promised more devolution for a ludicrously over-centralised England and set sweeping eight-year targets against which departments will be judged each year. There are useful initiatives such as the three innovation clusters to push science spending outside the south.

But while few can doubt the ambition, there are four major reasons for a serious dose of realism. They are the Treasury, the weakness of the prime minister, the costs of the pandemic and the short-termism of politicians and the public.

The biggest issue is the Treasury, which squats like a complacent toad over all policy. Its groupthink, innate fiscal orthodoxy and general resistance to the devolution have long made it a block to progress.

Those around Gove talk about the need to "rewire the blob". So far this mainly means moving civil servants out of London. But Whitehall will never be rewired until the Treasury is reformed. Johnson's former strategist Dominic Cummings saw this when he schemed to make Rishi Sunak chancellor, with a joint policy unit reporting to him in Number 10, and tried to oust the top official. But the department has absorbed the already fiscally conservative chancellor.

The Treasury's reluctance to embrace the mission is obvious. It has been ungenerous on skills, though some also blame a reluctance in the Department for Education to devolve powers. Investment in further education will be lower in 2025 than it was in 2010. Even some infrastructure goals are unambitious: the 2030 nationwide broadband goal is a 4G target.

The Treasury supports investing in cities but is less enthused about towns. It's centralising instincts mean it blocked new tax powers for mayors. Gove lost a fight to win them some control over commercial property taxes. Funding pots remain mostly governed by the centre, while pilot schemes to give extra powers to the Greater Manchester and West Midlands mayors are still "a blank sheet", according to one minister.

Another figure with close knowledge of Sunak's Treasury says the chancellor and his department are still too much "finance directors rather than venture capitalists". Previous efforts to build rival ministries have always failed; the department which controls the money carries the day. The creation of Gove's Department for Levelling Up is itself testimony to the inability of other ministers, notably the business department to drive strategy, says another.

Changing the Treasury requires a chancellor ready to take it on from the inside. Gove is the only minister temperamentally and intellectually suited to the task, but one colleague observes ruefully that "Michael is innumerate".

The second obstacle is the weakness of the prime minister. Johnson is not strong enough to take on the Treasury, even if he had a mind to do so. Nor are ministers feeling the pressure Gove would wish if they are to prioritise a central strategy over their own objectives. Tories are under immediate political pressure, not least over the economy. For all the talk of levelling up, strategists are as obsessed with stopping asylum seekers crossing the Channel. No new leader will abandon levelling up, but a mission of such substance needs more than shallow support.

Third, Covid has wrecked the public finances. Money has been made available, not least for research and development, but anything not covered in last year's public spending round must be funded from existing budgets. And these pressures are not about to ease. Inflation will lead to higher public sector wage demands and calls to ease the financial burdens on voters. These are urgent political priorities.

The final challenge is political short-termism. Levelling up is the work of a generation but both politicians and voters will demand visible progress before the next election. So a disproportionate effort will go into superficial improvements to town centres. This matters, but it will ultimately count for little unless the strategy delivers jobs and money.

Were this white paper followed through, the UK could be transformed. But while some gains are likely, too much is in hock to an orthodox centralising Treasury, short-termism and the desire to cut taxes before elections.

The upshot is that Johnson's big idea is still having to prove itself to the members of his own government. If it helps deliver the next election, then more money and ambition may follow. If not, it will be left to others to pick up the paper and start again.

[Admiral Yi]

Doesn't everyone wear purple... ... what is that thing anyways... at work meetings?

A lei.

[Jacob]

I thought a Lei has flowers; and that a boa longer, open, and is made of something fluffy. That thing looks like it's made of paper. Garland would've been the word I was looking for I think.

In any case, it doesn't look like work meeting personal decoration.

[Tamas]

Boris Johnson's levelling-up dream

as if he gives a damn.

[Syt]

Seriously, on Zoom calls that people here have from home, 90% have the walls painted white, maybe there's something hanging on the wall, but that's it.

It's nice to have a bit of self-expression in your decor - and maximalism. I love grey walls and Scandi-ish mid-century modernism, but it's a bit meh now. So I'm all for the maximalism revival.

This thread from Pulp Librarian is for you.

https://twitter.com/PulpLibrarian/status/1491501383564017666