Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Sheilbh]

Just in time for the increase in defence spending from 2.4% to 3.5% by 2035. Really just precautionary rearmament we can take a decade to do, given how still and peaceful everything is

[Sheilbh]

I have noticed that often what the Guardian call an "expert" is just a person committed enough to an idea or course of action to join/form a lobbying group for it.

And also a fair bit of bias in how they are covered. The way the Guardian frames someone speaking from a right wing think tank or pressure group v a left wing is very blatant

Incidentally this always rminds me of law school because my equity lecturer used to rage against the 2006 Charities Act In part because he was an elderly reactionary Cambridge don (he was so old he'd been a tutor for John Cleese ), but his argument was largely because it broadened the definition of a "charitable purpose" that charities could be set up to advance. I think it has basically become a bit of a middle-class graduate make-work scheme (and route into politics). So he moaned a lot about I think a homelessness charity that was basically raising lots of money on its reputation for helping the homelessness but was spending most of that money on public policy - so coming up with and lobbying for policy ideas on how to address homelessness.

I get the argument for why that might be more effective on a large scale (I'm not sure it actually has been though in many areas of policy) - but his point was it basically totally elided the world of charities v the world of pressure groups which used to be separate (eg Oxfam was a charity while Amnesty was a pressure group).

[Legbiter]

Thought it showed a few things that I think are problems in British politics and why everything is quite sclerotic. First was just the ease of going from campaign to MP to an article in the Guardian (and it is always the Guardian citing "experts" ).

Another is that it reminds me of a paper done by a think tank recently that Rory Stewart picked up on. It basically said that the problem with the British state is "everythingism". They basically argued that basically every policy the government pursues is a means of promoting every national objective/addressing every issue at the same time (also often framed around being holistic or joined up or engaging all stakeholders). So housing policy is not about housing but also biodiersity net gain and nitrogen imbalances in rivers and violence against women and girls etc.

Rory Stewart's example was that he was Secretary of State for International Development during the Syrian refugee crisis - obviously a very big issue for his department. He went to meetings at the MoD, Intelligence Services, FCO and basically discovered that all of the relevant DfID team were dialling in from East Kilbride in Clydeside. He said this is a really important issue and there'd be side meetings and he needed civil service support in London. He was told by the Permanent Secretary that the relevant team were based in East Kilbride which was a core part of DfID's role in helping regeneration projects there. So he agreed but asked if they could come to London for these weekly all department Syria meetings - which was agreed. He gets to the next meeting and his team are dialling in again. He says the Permanent Secretary told him that they'd have to fly for it to be a one day trip and that would go against DfID's role in achieving net zero. Stewart found it incredibly frustrating but used it as an example of this every policy has to address every issue at once (I'd add from my devolution perspective that it's a classic civil service approach to devolution and regeneration as well: put part of what's now the Foreign Office in East Kilbride, or the Treasury in Darlington - because they'll never challenge London in the way that, say, Glasgow or Newcastle might).

The other thing is the alarming number of people in public life who don't seem to understand that the solution to council underfunding is not to just keep on adding new mandatory things that it needs to consider. That will just increase the pressure on already underfunded councils to review more impact assessments and consultants' reports (and give them more reasons to reject planning proposals). Developments need to deliver x number of houses (y% of which should be affordable), should also have commercial space delivering z thousand jobs, produce a biodiversity net game, have a neutral impact on nutrients in nearby ground and water, protect any possible species nearby, have new public amenities, "design out" crime, help us meet our statutory duty to reach net zero by 2050, preserve local heritage assets etc - but you've still only got one underpaid planning officer to assess all of this (and introduced about ten different bases which NIMBYs could challenge in the courts).

I don't necessarily think this is a bad idea on its own terms - but on top of everything else involved in planning and with no extra resources for councils to actually do it I don't think it's helpful.

Reminds me of how Iceland was before 2008. That (reluctantly being dragged, crying, pissing and shitting itself) forced the elite to grow up.

[Sheilbh]

Oh RIP Jim Wallace
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd115dxrr63o

Not many of that generation of very impressive Scottish politicians left now (and one the few things I regret about devolution is that our national politics has become less Scottish). I think maybe Gordon Brown, Lord Robertson and, on the Tory side, Malcolm Rifkind and Lord Forsyth.

People often look back at the prominent politicians of the 70s when looking at the rather dismal crop around now. But I don't think you even have to go that far back, as well as those politicians and Jim Wallace you had Donald Dewar, Robin Cook, Charles Kennedy, Alistair Darling and Alex Salmond. All around the same age, all very impressive in thir own ways