Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[The Larch]

In democratic countries young MPs, PMs even (ah Finland) are far more common.
The enhanced democracy provides more opportunities for a variety of people to stand a chance.
In the UK spots on the ballot for the major parties are limited and its rare to see someone under 40 getting anywhere near them. It usually requires years of work at lower levels to be given that nod.
Thus I am suspicious when you do get 20-something candidates. It smells a bit off.

You and your massive prejudices should take a look at the numbers. There are lots of under 40 MPs in the UK, around 20% of the ones elected in 2019, for instance. 21 of them are under 30, the most ever.

The only European countries that seem to have a remarkably young membership in their parliaments seems to be restricted to the Nordics (Norway has the most under 30 MPs of any country in the world, with 13%, with Denmark and Sweden around 905%).

[Josquius]

In democratic countries young MPs, PMs even (ah Finland) are far more common.
The enhanced democracy provides more opportunities for a variety of people to stand a chance.
In the UK spots on the ballot for the major parties are limited and its rare to see someone under 40 getting anywhere near them. It usually requires years of work at lower levels to be given that nod.
Thus I am suspicious when you do get 20-something candidates. It smells a bit off.

You and your massive prejudices should take a look at the numbers. There are lots of under 40 MPs in the UK, around 20% of the ones elected in 2019, for instance. 21 of them are under 30, the most ever.

The only European countries that seem to have a remarkably young membership in their parliaments seems to be restricted to the Nordics (Norway has the most under 30 MPs of any country in the world, with 13%, with Denmark and Sweden around 905%).

That's a very recent phenomena; likely in large part spurred on by increased awareness the gap was becoming obvious, much like the recent conservative push for minority MPs.
The UK remains towards the lower end of the scale even with this big change.
And it still leaves behind the question of who these people are to be getting the nomination so young given the inorganic nature of party selections.

[The Minsky Moment]

Given the recent leadership election I'm not convinced there was any other choice. I don't think Truss could appoint Sunak or his strongest supporters when they were saying her ideas are shit, she's incompetent and, frankly, her plan was "immoral" - and vice versa, if Sunak won, I don't think there'd be much space for Truss or her top supporters. It was not, to nick the Labour leadership phrase, a very "comradely competition".

I disagree - doesn't anyone watch Godfather 2 anymore?  To bring them in shows strength, confidence and a commitment to reconciliation.  And more practically it mutes their criticism going forward.  Keeping them out means having dangerous adversaries out as free agents, ready willing and able to take advantage of inevitable slip ups. 

[Tamas]

Seems like Truss has a high confidence in her government's energy crisis plan. Not.

Liz Truss is to present her plans for cutting energy bills as a general debate on the subject, rather than the normal ministerial statement, with Labour saying this could allow her to evade proper scrutiny.

Making a brief statement on business for Thursday, Penny Mordaunt, the new leader of the Commons, outlined the plan.

Thangam Debbonaire, her Labour shadow, questioned the choice, noting that the format of a ministerial or prime ministerial statement means that the person presenting it, in this case Truss, would have to answer repeated questions from MPs. A debate means she will most likely only speak once, at the start.

Debbonaire also noted that unlike with a statement, there is no need for the government to provide any details of the policy to the opposition or MPs in advance.

[Sheilbh]

I disagree - doesn't anyone watch Godfather 2 anymore?  To bring them in shows strength, confidence and a commitment to reconciliation.  And more practically it mutes their criticism going forward.  Keeping them out means having dangerous adversaries out as free agents, ready willing and able to take advantage of inevitable slip ups. 

Yeah - that's the argument for. But this was an unusually brutal leadership contest. The other side is that of the 8 original candidates who got enough nominations, 6 of them are in the cabinet (including Truss).

The other point is that this was a very well-planned cabinet formation - probably the smoothest since Brown's takeover from Blair - so there's been plenty of talks around this before yesterday. There was talk that Sunak was offered various briefs but turned them down and that may go for some of his supporters too.

Part of that may be ego, because if you've almost been elected PM and were Chancellor, there aren't many places to go that aren't a demotion and some sounded like a poisoned chalice (this also seems to have been an issue with Lord Frost who would only proffer a government with his aid if he was made Foreign Secretary - deluded ). There's a bit that could be cynical calculation as there are already Tory MPs (including former cabinet ministers) wondering in the press if Truss will survive six months - one saying he thinks she'll be gone in two years - so staying out of cabinet now keeps your powder dry if you think she won't survive and also helps keep you away from any responsibility for this mess. There is also the possibility that Sunak and some of his backers were telling the truth. There is still, in theory, collective responsibility - if they genuinely think it'd be wrong and a really bad decision to have deficit funded tax cuts, then I can't see how they could sit in a cabinet that is doing that.

I know I rag on the Guardian a lot (and I love the Guardian) but interesting that the journalist/pundit response to PMQs was actually that it was good and far better than Johnson. Truss answered questions and there's a real argument between the two leaders. But I saw this summary from the Guardian on their liveblog and it just seems achingly complacent for a paper of the side that normally loses elections I really hope Labour are smarter than this:

PMQs - snap verdict

Every former prime minister says that taking PMQs is the most scary ordeal of the week and, even after 10 years in post, people like Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair regarded it as one of the ultimate challenges of the job – an encounter when a few wrong words could spell disaster. For any new prime minister, the first question is, are they up to it? And Liz Truss clearly is. She looked like a prime minister, she performed reasonably well, and she even managed a decent joke (on Labour leaders and north London – see 12.20pm.) It was not a triumph, but it was not a catastrophe either, and on day one that is a bonus.

Truss also marks a very welcome change from Boris Johnson, in that (for the most part) she was willing to answer questions, and engage in an argument about policy and ideas. This, of course, is what is meant to happen. But for the last three years we have been governed by a prime minister much more interested in politics as performance and entertainment, and so it is refreshing to tilt back to ideas.

But that is where the whole encounter was less positive for Truss. She won the Conservative leadership contest on a low-tax, small-state agenda that put her well to the right of any Tory leader for a generation. Truss has always been a libertarian (it's why she joined the Liberal Democrats at university), but during the summer it was never entirely clear to what extent she was just pandering to her party's cruder, Thatcherite instincts. But now we know; it's worse than that (to quote an old Westminster joke) – she really does believe it.

Starmer exposed this clearly with questions that illuminated what may become the key dividing line in British politics. Truss has already shifted on to Labour territory by conceding the need for a price cap of some sort on energy bills. But while Labour is proposing to fund this through a windfall tax, Truss is resisting this and today she dug in firmly on this point, declaring categorically that a windfall tax would be wrong. Starmer said this was prioritising the interests of an industry making £170bn in profits and that as a result she was going for "more borrowing than is needed", with taxpayers paying the price for years to come.

Maybe you can win a general election on this sort of purist, ideological Laffer curve worship? But it seems extremely unlikely. Tories like Rishi Sunak believe the claim that tax cuts alone will always promote growth is nonsense, and even figures in the energy industry are finding it hard to justify their excessive profits. Starmer did not put on a particularly flashy performance, but he sounded much closer to where the public opinion is on these issues and ultimately that is what matters.

Truss also had no convincing answer to the question posed to her by several MPs: how could people trust her to sort out the nation's problems when she had been in government for the past 10 years? (Boris Johnson did not have this problem, because he was out of parliament for most of the David Cameron era, and he resigned from Theresa May's government.) Starmer summed this all up in his final question. He told Truss:

    The prime minister claims to be breaking orthodoxy but the reality is she's reheating George Osborne's failed corporation tax plans - protecting oil and gas profits and forcing working people to pay the bill.

    She's the fourth Tory prime minister in six years - the face at the top may change but the story remains the same.

    There's nothing new about the Tory fantasy of trickle-down economics, nothing new about this Tory prime minister who nodded through every decision that got us into this mess and now says how terrible it is, and can't she see there's nothing new about a Tory prime minister who when asked: who pays? says: 'It's you, the working people of Britain'?"

In response Truss said there was "nothing new about a Labour leader who is calling for more tax rises" and that Starmer was just offering "the same old tax and spend". It demonstrated that she can think on her feet, but that won't help much if voters conclude that what Starmer is saying makes more sense.

I just don't know how a left-liberal paper can basically go "it seems really unlikely that a right-wing party could win a general election being right-wing in this country that generally elects right-wing governments" As I say I really hope campaigners, activists, Labour MPs and people around Starmer are nowhere near as complacent.

[Sheilbh]

Incidentally it is really interesting that both parties have honed in on growth (at last ) as the big issue. It's been the Labour line for a while that the Tories need to raise taxes because growth is so low/that we're becoming a high tax, low growth economy.

The dilemma for Labour has been that when Starmer's pushed on how he'd get growth he doesn't really have much of an answer. It relies a lot on their (very good) policy of borrowing £30 billion a year for capital spending on energy transition - but beyond that and he's talking about "certainty" and "respect for business" which is basically the competence pitch. I think they need to sharpen their answers and thinking on this.

The Tories with Truss have also opted for growth as their core message and their answer is deregulation and tax cutting (plus help for business on energy prices - which hasn't been discussed by Labour or the Lib Dems). They'll need more and they'll need to do it in the next couple of years - but politically and on the face of it I'm not sure that's a worse answer than Starmer's.

[Tamas]

Yeah that seems an odd thing now that you mention it, how the left considers it a given that a right wing agenda makes a party unelectable even though that party gets re-elected multiple times on the same agenda - must be something around echochambers and bubbles and all that

[Sheilbh]

Separately really interesting and, I think, positive story that Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern have been working behind the scenes with all the parties on the Northern Ireland Protocol:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/sep/07/tony-blair-bertie-ahern-thanked-for-help-in-uk-eu-brexit-deadlock

Both Ahern and Blair basically agree with the Protocol in principle but think it causes problems for the Good Friday Agreement that need to be fixed. I think Blair's think tank have proposed some solutions. It feels like all sides (including in Northern Ireland) could do with some external honest brokers - and while Ahern and Blair might be more or less loathed domestically, I think they still have huge credibility in Northern Ireland and internationally when discussing Northern Ireland. But I'm just slightly re-assured to hear that people with a feel for the place are involved again - I've said before I think a US envoy could help but this may well do.

Edit:

Yeah that seems an odd thing now that you mention it, how the left considers it a given that a right wing agenda makes a party unelectable even though that party gets re-elected multiple times on the same agenda - must be something around echochambers and bubbles and all that

Yeah - but I think the two are linked. In this country I think the left just really struggle with understanding how anyone could vote Tory ever, which leads them to thinking that they don't actually have to do anything to win because this time the scales will fall away from people's eyes and they'll obviously vote Labour as any right-thinking person would.

I think it's striking that Labour's election-winning leaders tend not to come from strong Labour backgrounds - Attlee's family were Liberals (and I think his wife voted Liberal), Wilson's were also Liberals - his dad was even a local activist - and I think Tony Blair's dad was a Tory councillor. I think they had a bit more understanding that not voting Labour isn't the result of a mental or moral defect which maybe made them a bit less complacent and a bit more able to reach beyond the choir?

[Josquius]

Yeah that seems an odd thing now that you mention it, how the left considers it a given that a right wing agenda makes a party unelectable even though that party gets re-elected multiple times on the same agenda - must be something around echochambers and bubbles and all that

The left target slow thinking. Under slow thinking you do have to be an absolute self serving cunt or an idiot to vote for the tories (I exaggerate slightly but not by much)

The modern right know this. Hence they target fast thinking. Under fast thinking none of this matters. They've successfully tapped into your cognitive biasses and made your decision. It's not a decision any right thinking individual would make because that's not the frame of mind they are tapping into.

The left basically need to invest in more psychologists and develop ways to defeat populism.
They either need a way to blunt fast thinking and switch people onto slow thinking, or perhaps easier, become good at using the same cheap tricks to tap into fast thinking.

A problem here is the policies of the right are inherently better suited to fast thinking than the policies of the left; short term, single cause and effect, etc...

[Sheilbh]

That's a very recent phenomena; likely in large part spurred on by increased awareness the gap was becoming obvious, much like the recent conservative push for minority MPs.
The UK remains towards the lower end of the scale even with this big change.
And it still leaves behind the question of who these people are to be getting the nomination so young given the inorganic nature of party selections.

The number of under 30s is higher in recent elections but otherwise age looks relatively stable across elections both in terms of the average age of a new MP and the cohorts:
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/house-of-commons-trends-the-age-of-mps/


As it points out the age generally falls if the government loses an election which is probably because there's normally a swing with incumbents losing their seats.

To be honest I do find it slightly mad that the youngest MP was 23 at the time she was elected

Meanwhile in Oxbridge discourse:

Guardian Universities
@GdnUniversities
Thérèse Coffey had to leave Oxford University – but made it to deputy PM

The story notes the "surprise" from her Oxford contemporaries that she has been appointed to Health for her "grasp of detail", despite failing her exams. It goes on to note that she was asked to "withdraw on academic grounds" because she wasn't managing academically and adds that at no point has she ever described herself as an Oxford graduate.

Eight paragraphs in it mentions that she did actually do her BSc and PhD in Chemistry at UCL which is not exactly a bad place academically. I can't imagine a more Oxford way of framing it or why it's a story - also the Oxford "contemporaries" who are "surprised" she's achieved anything despite failing some exams in 1991

Edit: Separately and linked to the misogynist shit women get in politics - totally agree with this on the sneering posts about Coffey:
https://twitter.com/PickardJE/status/1567263742039040000?s=20&t=-Ax6yiGmz6tN5XUvQw65Mw

[Tamas]

I do not get Miliband's complaint on this one:

According to the BBC, the government is considering a plan to change the way energy companies are paid for electricity generated from sources other than gas. At the moment prices are pegged to the price of gas, which has led to producers generating energy from nuclear, or renewables, making soaring profits on the back of rising international gas prices.

The idea is backed by the industry body Energy UK, which explains it in a briefing here. My colleague Alex Lawson explains what is proposed in a story here.

In his interview on the Today programme, Ed Miliband, the shadow secretary for climate change and net zero, claimed this would be "terrible" for consumers. He explained:

This is a proposal from Energy UK, and let's be clear about this proposal: This would lock in massive windfall profits for these electricity generators.

Let me explain why: what Energy UK have said is we'll accept slightly lower prices now, so we can have much higher prices over the following 15 years.

This would be a terrible deal for the British people, a terrible deal for billpayers.

It is much better - if there are these unexpected windfalls, and there are - the right thing to do, the fair thing to do, is not to do some dodgy deal with these companies, but to do a windfall tax.

Is he saying that eventually gas prices will go down and become cheaper than nuclear and wind, so people signing up for non-gas electricity will be shafted? Is this not something we should not be caring about what with the climate change and all?

[Josquius]

I haven't seen the interview and just going off what you've quoted here....but I think the problem here is not that things are being reformed but that its just a surface reform that does the bare minimum to look like change whilst locking in profits for energy companies and keeping prices high for consumers?

[Sheilbh]

It's a bit like his comments on fracking. I think fracking will be of very limited use, but Miliband's point against it was prices are detemined by the international/European market the UK is part of so fracking would not reduce costs for UK consumers. Which is a bit like saying because the housing market is broken of supply, we shouldn't build new houses.

I know that Miliband is seen as a bit of an older statesman in Labour circles and redeemed himself by (of course) doing a podcast - but I think all of the weaknesses he had as leader are still present which is unfortunate as he's apparently a very big figure in Starmer's economic policy-making. It always seems to me that half of his views are basically "we can simply pretend supply and demand don't exist".

On this I think his point is that a lot of early renewable developments were given long-term contracts that tied the price of electricity to the highest unit cost of electricity. It was an incentive for companies to develop renewables. My understanding is those contracts generally still have 15 years on them to go. The UK could remove the link (I think the EU are looking at it or have done it too) legally, but these contracts would still exist and apply. The briefing so far is that any renegotiated contract with those suppliers would need to provide a long-time guaranteed price (I think in line with later renewables) which would be lower than prices now but likely to be higher than prices in the future. I think that trade-off probably makes sense it seems to me that the alternatives are that you stuff their mouths with gold now to let you tear up the contract, or government legislates to tear up the contracts which is not an attractive option.

But there's a lot of kabuki theatre going on - see the big row over windfall taxes. The government is levying a windfall tax (a legacy Sunak measure) that will raise about £5 billion; they are refusing to implement Labour's proposed windfall tax which would raise about £8 billion. The overall cost of the governments plan is basically 20 times that - and even the cost of Labour's plan is 4-5 times that. I think the parties are and will fight over small details like windfall taxes or fracking or contracts for difference - because on the fundamental big issue they both support an energy price cap with government meeting the margin.

[Sheilbh]

Via Bloomberg:


Apparently the Speaker is just about to announce it - and there was a bit of movement in parlliament with Zahawi (cabinet office minister) entering to confer with Truss, which was probably about this.

Edit: Oh one of Starmer's team also informed him. Speaker had to address it as MPs were getting pings from breaking news apps, PM and leader of the opposition told.

[Richard Hakluyt]

yeah, after seeing Johnson and Truss she was advised to rest for 24 hours and not take a zoom meeting with the privy council. I know they are irritating folks but even so.

Not long now I fear