Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Tamas]

Am I justified in feeling that every sane, remotely respectable Tory have either left the party or deliberately retreated to the background to avoid having to deal with the mess we are in post-Brexit?

Or the front runners we have been seeing are genuinely the brightest and best their party has to offer?

In either case, what the hell is keeping them afloat in the polls?

[Sheilbh]

Am I justified in feeling that every sane, remotely respectable Tory have either left the party or deliberately retreated to the background to avoid having to deal with the mess we are in post-Brexit?

Or the front runners we have been seeing are genuinely the brightest and best their party has to offer?

They're not and they both got unusually low numbers of support from MPs for leaders which reflects that (neither had support of more than 40% of MPs). But I think there's a wider symptom of who wants to be in politics and who wants to be at the top. I don't think we're getting the best.

The final candidates we've in recent years for leader are for the Tories, Johnson, Hunt, Sunak and Truss, and for Labour, Yvette Cooper, Ed Balls, the Milibands, Andy Burnham (pre-Manchester), Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott, I'm not sure all is well. There's a few that, if you squint enough, you can see doing a half-decent job but it's not a great list.

In either case, what the hell is keeping them afloat in the polls?

Their floor is probably about 30% - so is Labour's - and they've got rid of Johnson who was a big drag. At the minute I think they're basically polling as "generic Tory" and that will shift with whoever wins. I'd expect a bounce and then the 20-30% of people who don't really have an opinion on Sunak or Truss will form one. It's key that Labour get their attack across at that time so they shape first impressions as PM - and I hope they have an attack line ready for both.

It is more likely than not that Labour win the next election - but I keep having 1992 fears, not least because I'm still not convinced by Starmer even if I think he's done better than I expected but also because Labour have a big majority to overturn which is difficult to do in one term.

Weirdly Janan Ganesh wrote about this today and I think he's probably broadly right:

Don't rule out a fifth term for the Tories
Labour thinks it is enough to purge the hard left, but the soft left need to go too
Janan Ganesh 7 HOURS AGO

We have to entertain the notion that Keir Starmer is good at politics. He has scrubbed Labour of the worst of the left. He has turned extinction-level opinion polls for his party into almost fine ones. He has — mark this — the eternal trait of the political winner: he unhinges his critics.

Why, then, vice and boredom aside, do I trawl betting markets for the odds on a fifth Conservative term? Why does such an undeserved thing seem also underpriced?

First, don't assume that either Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak will lead the Tories into the next election. Each laboured to get more parliamentary support than a former contestant on Splash! Each is too small for the crises that are sealing Britain's role as a poor rich nation with an alpha city attached. Somewhere, we must conclude, a first-rate school is missing its head girl and head boy.

Second, a recession need never be fatal for a government of the right. The reflex case against the left — how will it fund its Jerusalem? — becomes more potent, not less, when revenue dries up. The Tories were re-elected after recessions in 1983 and 1992 but not amid a boom in 1997. Yes, unmet demand for public services makes the present moment exceptional. But so does the high tax burden. Labour cannot pledge to fix the first problem without arousing fears that it will worsen the second. That cost, which feels abstract to voters today, will daunt them as the election nears. Forgive me if I have seen this cycle too often to believe politics is "different now".

But fine, let us stipulate, against recent history, that a government is only as buoyant as the economy. And that prime minister Truss, say, is the best the Tories can do in 2024. Labour is still overvalued.

Starmer believes it is enough to purge the hard left. This grossly overrates the appeal of the soft left. Tony Blair is the only person born in the last 105 years to have won a general election for Labour. This doesn't prove that Britain will never abide anyone who is noticeably to his left. But it does put in doubt the viability of a party that, from leader to grassroots, contains little else. The problem now isn't the few and dispossessed Leninists. It is the MPs who voted, under no psychotropic influence, for Ed Miliband as leader in 2010. It is the "campaigners" for things. It is the bit of Labour that enabled extremism while never espousing it.

Starmer asked Britain to make Jeremy Corbyn prime minister in that remote antiquity we call December 2019. Miliband, who enfranchised the hard left in the first place, is still around. "I disliked the cults around Blair and Corbyn: one man doesn't change things," said Lisa Nandy, another shadow cabinet member, to the New Statesman last month. The bogus equivalence actually reads worse in context. Voters haven't even begun to chew on this stuff.

Letting in Corbyn was a unique dishonour in the history of the major parties in the UK. It will take a unique amount of grovelling to live down. And here the old verities of triangulation still apply. If you are seen as left wing and want to be seen as moderate, it is not enough to behave moderately. You must, in vivid ways, go to the right. You must oversteer to end up somewhere in the middle. Nothing less reassures the electorate, or even registers with it.

Consider the industrial strife of the day. Polls suggest that voters side with striking rail workers. But that doesn't mean they will trust a party of the left that sides with them (or that even equivocates). The same is true of ending the charitable tax status for private schools. It is a question of permission and bona fides. It is a question of what the cops in Britain call your "previous". Blair understood politics in those lateral terms. Starmer is a literalist. If he is to fulfil Labour's historic role of giving the Tories a breather after a long stint in office, he has to upset the soft left. He has to upset himself.

For an opposition, the passage from mid-parliament to election time is as exposing as the step from a sombre room to a strip lit one. Each blemish, each laugh line and burst capillary, stands disclosed. What voters will see in 2024 is a reformed Labour, yes, but one about as soft left as the various non-Blair offerings they have rejected in the past. This is the worst government since the war. But we know all about it.

Edit: And I think the next Tory leader is likely to be Kemi Badenoch either before or after the next election and I think she's a very real threat to Labour - not least because I get the sense she has an idea of what she wants to do with power and an ideology which is rare among Tories.

[The Brain]

Am I justified in feeling that every sane, remotely respectable Tory have either left the party or deliberately retreated to the background to avoid having to deal with the mess we are in post-Brexit?

Or the front runners we have been seeing are genuinely the brightest and best their party has to offer?

In either case, what the hell is keeping them afloat in the polls?

A wise man once said:

The people, deceived by a false kind of good, often desire their own ruin

[Richard Hakluyt]

There are a hell of a lot of people who can't afford to pay £400 per month for their household energy. Many of them the rather stupid low-to-middle income people who vote Tory for reasons that I cannot comprehend. The misery might be expressed via social disorder, preferably the opposition parties will find it easy to eradicate that 80-majority and get the UK onto an improvement track.

[Sheilbh]

Yep. So weird that Truss keeps doubling down on the "no handouts" line - especially because it seems like she's already won (although she has softened it to not writing the budget now).

Sunak's absolutely right that it's not connected to reality to say "no handouts". I've no doubt there'll be a massive u-turn.

I can only see any government facing this winter ending up doing something like either freezing the price cap and nationalising a bunch of energy providers to cover their wholesale costs, or Davey's suggestion of an energy bill furlough. And possibly rationing/scheduled blackouts for industry to keep the lights and heating on for people.

[Josquius]

Edit: And I think the next Tory leader is likely to be Kemi Badenoch either before or after the next election and I think she's a very real threat to Labour - not least because I get the sense she has an idea of what she wants to do with power and an ideology which is rare among Tories

Transgendered people are the cause of all our problems and must be eradicated?

There are a hell of a lot of people who can't afford to pay £400 per month for their household energy. Many of them the rather stupid low-to-middle income people who vote Tory for reasons that I cannot comprehend. The misery might be expressed via social disorder, preferably the opposition parties will find it easy to eradicate that 80-majority and get the UK onto an improvement track.

"It's all cos of Ukraine which is nowt to do with the Conservatives. With labour it'd be worse!"

They found a way to do gymnastics to defend the covid handling, they will twist and turn here too.

[Zanza]

but I'm just not convinced we can do without that bridge power. I think it needs to be something that we can build at scale now - which, for example, hydrogen isn't yet - because we'll need it in 2030. But we're already facing energy challenges because of policy failures in the past.

The only country that currently builds nuclear power plants at scale is China. No Western country currently has that ability. Britain seems to have no domestic capability at all. Not sure why this would change until 2030. What's happening until then that we can build nuclear plants at scale? I guess it is possible to invest massive funds into building that capability.
Or we could also consider investing those funds into industrializing the green hydrogen hydrolysis process. I would rather invest into the future instead of a bridge technology that comes with lots of issues.

[Sheilbh]

I mean it's not wrong to say that energy prices are spiking all over Europe because Russia invaded Ukraine (and that the UK has helped Ukraine).

The issue is how to respond to that and mitigate the impact on the general public, especially the poorest.

And it is similar on covid - on early estimates of excess deaths over the pandemic and the UK is average and around where you'd expect (a little bit worse than France and Germany): https://www.thelancet.com/article/S0140-6736(21)02796-3/fulltext

[Richard Hakluyt]

@Jos - unless the government helps out people on low incomes will literally freeze. Pensioners who only receive the basic pension for example, a £300 per month increase is not possible for people with £900 a month total.

Interesting times

[Richard Hakluyt]

Putin will be praying for a cold winter.

[Sheilbh]

The only country that currently builds nuclear power plants at scale is China. No Western country currently has that ability. Britain seems to have no domestic capability at all. Not sure why this would change until 2030. What's happening until then that we can build nuclear plants at scale? I guess it is possible to invest massive funds into building that capability.

Yeah I think it's worth it. Bluntly I don't think there's any part of getting to net zero that isn't about investing massive funds at this point. We've done the easy stuff like getting rid of coal (more or less) and increasing energy efficiency. What we need to do now is re-orient everything to the grid and massively increase electricity production. Worst case scenario we've increased our electricity generation capacity and it's been a bit too expensive.

Estimates are that over the next thirty years it's likely to require investment of about £6-10 trillion (for the UK) which is a lot. But it's less than 1% of GDP a year (which is why Labour's proposing to spend that much every year on energy transition, especially on the capex side of things). I think it's fine if some of that goes to nuclear. In the context of getting to net zero in less than 30 years I'm not sure cost is necessarily that important - I actually think we probably need to waste money because not everything we bet on is going to work out and at that level of spending there will be waste.

Or we could also consider investing those funds into industrializing the green hydrogen hydrolysis process. I would rather invest into the future instead of a bridge technology that comes with lots of issues.

I think we need to do both, now. We need a medium term solution coming online in the next decade - as well as lots more renewables - to move society away from fossil fuels and onto the grid. And I think blue hydrogen could also be part of that.

But green hydrogen also requires a lot of renewable eectricity. I think it's part of the future but it's not currently a solution (if anything it will increase the amount of energy we need in the short term). I might be a little biased because while I think technology is absolutely key to this - I don't think we can get to net zero without some serious breakthroughs. But I think if the solution is technology that we practically don't have at scale to implement now v things we can do now then it's really just going to delay the issue. We need to be working on the good now rather than investing in the perfect and hoping it all works as we plan.

@Jos - unless the government helps out people on low incomes will literally freeze. Pensioners who only receive the basic pension for example, a £300 per month increase is not possible for people with £900 a month total.

Yeah - I can't see how we can get through this winter without something like covid level spending of another £20-30 billion for several months.

I also think we need politicians to talk about this and actually ask for support - like in covid - it's a national and a European crisis. I saw someone on Twitter suggest it as something like a "twenty's plenty" campaign for people who are young and healthy.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Green Hydrogen has serious questions about its viability and scaling; nuclear has scale problems in the West in that we've spent a generation retiring nuclear plants instead of building them, and consequently we have also seen a generation of trained nuclear engineers and experts age out and retire, without nearly as many coming through to replace them. But on the flipside, nuclear at scale is not even new technology, and is well demonstrated to be feasible, something we can't say for unproven tech.

[Tamas]

I think it should be acknowledged (it kind of already is) that high energy prices are the cost of resisting Russia, a sort of economic war that is going to save a lot of lives and even more money o the long run, not to mention that it's the right thing to do.

But then people shouldn't be left to deal with that cost on their own. Yeah it's not going to help with fighting inflation but, again, we are in a form of war, why only the poorest should pay the price.

[Admiral Yi]

Europe should frack.

[Tamas]

Europe should frack.

In general we don't do anything that could undermine our feeling of moral superiority. Instead we buy stuff from backward auticrscies who have no such environmental qualms, thereby preserving moral superiority without sacrificing any comforts. Until it bites us in the face of course, as evidenced.