Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Richard Hakluyt]

Jenrick would sell his soul to the devil for sixpence.

Re the anti-semitism, the recent census recorded 277,000 Jews living in the UK, so quite a small demographic. Proportionally the anti-semitic attacks are far worse than many realise.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah I'd go slightly further with the point that was made by Ben Judah. About 100,000 of the British Jewish community live in a fairly small area of North-West London which has Golders Green kind of at its heart.

There's lots of connections because it is a small community in a small area. So it's like repeated targeted  and attempted arson attacks, stabbing etc in a couple of months in, say, Bedford. It's very concentrated.

[Sheilbh]

Kemi Badenoch accuses Keir Starmer of buying 'dirty Russian oil'
The government's decision to soften sanctions on jet fuel and diesel derived from Russian oil has blindsided 'livid' ministers
Steven Swinford, Political Editor, and Larisa Brown, Defence Editor
Wednesday May 20 2026, 8.30pm, The Times

Britain has been warned by Ukraine that it risks funding "Russia's war machine" after the government softened new sanctions on jet fuel and diesel derived from Russian oil.

Ministers are easing the sanctions on Russian oil that is processed in third countries amid concern about the impact of the Iran war on supplies of jet fuel and the cost of living.

The Department for Business and Trade slipped out a statement late on Tuesday stating that it will allow imports of "relevant processed oil products" from Wednesday.

The government announced the new sanctions in October in an effort to put further pressure on Russia. However, it has now decided to pare them back on a temporary basis in a bid to limit the impact on households.

Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, said the move was "insane" and accused Sir Keir Starmer of buying "dirty Russian oil" at prime minister's questions. "That money will be used to fund the killing of Ukrainian soldiers," she said. "Isn't he ashamed?"

Starmer insisted that the government was not lifting sanctions "in any way whatsoever". He said: "What we announced yesterday was a strong new package of new sanctions going well beyond existing sanctions, so it is a new package. We also issued two targeted short-term licenses to phase the new sanctions in and to protect UK consumers. That is standard practice."

Ministers were left blindsided by the announcement and were said to be "livid" about the handling of it. Sir Chris Bryant, a trade minister, apologised in the Commons for the "clumsy" nature of the announcement.

Starmer spoke to Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, on Wednesday evening and assured him that Britain was doing "everything possible to debilitate and degrade Putin's war machine".

He said that the sanctions meant that there would be "less Russian oil on the market, with Russia weaker as a result".

Vladyslav Vlasiuk, the Ukrainian presidential commissioner for sanctions policy, initially issued a strong rebuke of the plans. "We understand the rationale behind the UK's decision to ease some restrictions on Russian energy exports, but disagree with the approach," he said. "Pressure on Russia should only increase, while market stability should be ensured by addressing root causes — [the Strait of] Hormuz."

He subsequently clarified that Britain had not lifted existing sanctions but said: "Our concern relates specifically to temporary exemptions that may still generate additional revenues for Russia's war machine."

John Foreman, a former defence attaché who served in Moscow and Kyiv, said: "I think this shows again the gap between rhetoric and reality.

"The government likes to say it is supporting Ukraine as long as it takes and we stand shoulder to shoulder, and that it is getting tough on Russia. The UK has led the tightening of sanctions and taken economic cost.

"This easement — however temporary — goes against this principled position and could lead to further backsliding by the UK and European nations. Russia will gloat and assess that this step reinforces their position that the West is ultimately frit."

Bryant told MPs: "I think we've ended up giving the wrong impression of what we're trying to do. We're trying to strengthen the regime, not weaken it. We're not waiving any sanctions."

Dame Emily Thornberry, a Labour MP and chairwoman of the foreign affairs select committee, accused Starmer of "letting down" the Ukrainian people.

She told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I have heard from people in Ukraine overnight and I know that they are very disappointed and are asking me why it is Britain is doing this. People feel very let down ... Just because other countries are behaving in the wrong way does not mean that we should join them. It really doesn't. We are Britain, one of Ukraine's strongest allies, and we have led the fight against Russia."

Two thirds of Britain's jet fuel was supplied by refineries in the Gulf before the war, with the fuel travelling through the Strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway in the Middle East. Since the conflict started jet fuel prices have doubled.

Willie Walsh, the head of the International Air Transport Association which represents airlines, has warned that higher prices for air travel in Europe were "inevitable".

I would just flag that the line that these are temporary is a little bit disingenuous. That may well be the intent (and, beccause of the criticism of them end up being the reality too) - however the relevant license is actually indefinite but subject to periodic review. As I say my suspicion is that if they'd got away with issuing this without anyone noticing it would be less temporary.

I think it's a really interesting story because it highlights the problems of our energy policy, but also the degree to which the British State is not living in the real world any more and is not serious.

Fundamentally we've not cared about industrial policy so we allowed a refinery that manufactured jet fuel and diesel to shut down (our chemical industry is also basically closing down right now). Also we have a net zero policy on electricity which has issues/questions (but I think is broadly the right direction) - but that's only 20% of our energy mix and the rest (housing, transport, industry, agriculture) relies on fossil fuels in one way or another. In relation to fossil fuels (which even on DESNZ's own projections we'll be relying on for decades) the basic view seems to be that domestic productions, manufacturing and storage don't matter because the market will provide. That maybe worked 20 years ago (when the Treasury were very proud that they were very "good" at energy) - but I don't think it does in the world we're in now. There's three main sources. The Middle East which is constrained and controlled now. Russia who we are confronting because they're invading Ukraine. Or America who has become hugely more important for our (and Europe's) energy supply since 2022 - but is not a country you'd want to increase your dependency on (we're already now adding energy dependency to security dependency).

Domestic supply could help - the King's Speech committed to banning new oil and gas exploration in the North Sea and winding down existing assets. I'd just point out that cross Europe other countries facing similar dilemmas like Norway, Poland, Germany and Denmark are currently looking at extending the lives of existing assets, new exploration and some are even reconsidering the ban on fracking. The UK is going in the opposite direction. When the Treasury thought they were good at energy it was based on diversity of supply, with multiple options and contract lengths and basically relying on the market. I think in the current world that model, plus the lack of industrial policy (including energy storage) and closing off any change on domestic production is not a good policy mix. It's a very British policy mix of constraining supply, not investing, going for the "efficient"/"lean" model with support for demand through energy price caps - but I think the world we're in now it's not efficient or lean or wise but just increasing our vulnerability and dependencies. It's a policy mix from a different world, from the end of history when everything was about marginal gains and optimisation not external supply shocks and great power competition.

I also think politically we're still stuck a decade or two ago in that very often it's just framed as almost a bit culture war-y: do you believe in net zero/climate change or not. When that's really not the issue. I have questions about other bits of our energy policy. But DESNZ's core projection is even if we do all we're trying to do on renewables and nuclear we will still need a lot of fossil fuels for decades. And I don't think we can be so blase about where it's extracted from, where it's procssed and where it's stored.

None of it seems serious or engaging with the actual world we're in now. It just all feels a bit phoney war.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

The damage green ideology does is insane.
Sure, build out renewables but only do so because it is advantageous economically,  not because you want to reach the ideological goal that is net zero. Because the only thing that will be zero is your economy.

[Josquius]

Kemi Badenoch accuses Keir Starmer of buying 'dirty Russian oil'
The government's decision to soften sanctions on jet fuel and diesel derived from Russian oil has blindsided 'livid' ministers
Steven Swinford, Political Editor, and Larisa Brown, Defence Editor
Wednesday May 20 2026, 8.30pm, The Times

It confused me when I read the story but apparently this has been a huge comms fuck up and they've actually introduced controls where there were none before.

Domestic supply could help - the King's Speech committed to banning new oil and gas exploration in the North Sea and winding down existing assets. I'd just point out that cross Europe other countries facing similar dilemmas like Norway, Poland, Germany and Denmark are currently looking at extending the lives of existing assets,

With their industries being state owned don't they have more ability to pass on the savings domestically.
The arguments against more north Sea exploration seem to add up most to me.
We really need to be pushing harder to break free of gas - gradually fazing out the gas and electric price connection for instance.

The damage green ideology does is insane.
Sure, buikd out renewables but only do so because it is advantageous economically,  not because you want to rzch the ideological goal that is net zero. Because the only thing that will be zero is your economy.

So if your motivation is net zero building renewables is bad for your economy.
If your motivation is just about the economy then building those same renewables is good for your economy?

[Richard Hakluyt]

I think the root of the problem is that the commons is full of politicians and no statesmen or stateswomen.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Hmmm....imagine Gladstone's despair if he could view the current shower 

[Crazy_Ivan80]

The motivation should be doing things that is advantageous for the economy and strategic position of the nation.
Reaching net zero is not a concern. It's ideological nonsense.
Which doesn't mean we can't reach it but it'll be as a side effect of decisions and policies that strengthen the economy rather than burn it to the ground.
So no need to be more catholic than the pope. No one else is and our competition is the US and China. Just saying.

How many times do we in europe pay more for a kwh of energy compared to the US for example? Fix that, improve our competitive position. Make the needed decisions with that as the primary focus and not because you want to reach net zero as a primary goal.

[garbon]

The motivation should be doing things that is advantageous for the economy and strategic position of the nation.

Who determines that and how?

[Crazy_Ivan80]

The motivation should be doing things that is advantageous for the economy and strategic position of the nation.

Who determines that and how?

Ideally not the greens.

[Josquius]

The motivation should be doing things that is advantageous for the economy and strategic position of the nation.
Reaching net zero is not a concern. It's ideological nonsense.
Which doesn't mean we can't reach it but it'll be as a side effect of decisions and policies that strengthen the economy rather than burn it to the ground.
So no need to be more catholic than the pope. No one else is and our competition is the US and China. Just saying.

Increasingly security agencies are highlighting climate change as the biggest threat to our way of life.
This was fairly big news not too long ago.
https://theconversation.com/a-uk-climate-security-report-backed-by-the-intelligence-services-was-quietly-buried-a-pattern-weve-seen-many-times-before-274325

Fighting climate change is 100% in the national interest.

But even ignoring that. The motivation for green energy doesn't matter. It makes sense for financial and national security reasons no matter whether you're doing it for grim short term hard nosed financial reasons or because you're thinking longer term and want to save the planet.
It's the same solar panels either way.

How many times do we in europe pay more for a kwh of energy compared to the US for example?

Ironically it's reactionary refusal to invest in green technologies and blind trust in fossil fuels which got us into this situation.

Fix that, improve our competitive position. Make the needed decisions with that as the primary focus and not because you want to reach net zero as a primary goal.

Decisions aren't made for single reasons.
Net zero, national security, short term energy bills.... All these things go together

[Sheilbh]

The damage green ideology does is insane.
Sure, build out renewables but only do so because it is advantageous economically,  not because you want to reach the ideological goal that is net zero. Because the only thing that will be zero is your economy.

To be honest I think that is the flipside of the culture war I was talking about. Renewables are being installed everywhere at scale not because the state is overriding what is economically advantageous but because the economics of renewables is really good (at least or especially for solar - which is another challenge for the UK and maybe some other parts of Northern Europe). Whether you're in the US where renewables are the largest and fastest growing share of new generation being installed and in terms of new generation actually being connected in the US renewables account for 90-95%. Last year, again, China added renewables that generate as much power as the entire German grid. Europe's adoption is also driven by solid economics - it's a really cheap form of power to add (again, particularly solar).

Europe as a relatively early adopter but also a developed Western economy is instead facing the second layer of questions around the adoption of renewables. So in particularly around issues of intermittency and the need for baseload generation (as Macron was recently saying was flagged by the Spanish blackouts). There are some lucky countries who may be able to have hydro but for the rest of us the low carbon option is nuclear (which is expensive) or, from what I understand, gas (which is geopolitically exposed) or coal (which is dirty). At this point with storage technology where it is there's no route to a purely renewable grid and all of the base generation have problms/trade-offs.

The other bit we're seeing is the grid which struggles with the nature of intermittent renewable energy and also I think its decentralisation, because Europe has 20th century grids. Even leaving aside the need to massively expand the grid as we shift other energy consumption from fossil fuels to electricity (EVs, heating, AC etc) the grids we have need quite significant upgrading. In the UK one of the big costs of renewables is that we actually pay them not to generate a lot of the time because there isn't enough demand for high production periods, there's not enough storage (and the tech's not there for that scale) and the grid can't take it. I think in the Netherlands they've had to ask people to adjust when they use electricity for the same reason.

Baseload power and grid infrastructure are now the more important issues on getting to net zero because renewables will take care of themselves. Though it does increase our dependency on China so (to adapt some very trendy phrases, which aren't totally accurate) we'd be replacing one form of petro-dependency for another form of electro-dependency. The other challenge is what we do about the other 66-80% of energy consumption (housing, transport, industry and agriculture). We kind of know the answer on the vast majority of energy in the first two bucket - electrification of heating controls, cooking etc and adopting EVs (again a trade-off: for net zero the right option is 100% to buy cheap Chinese EVs; for European industry...?) - obviously still other areas like air or shipping but in the scheme of emissions they're relatively small. Industry is difficult and I think the solution there will come from China because that's the industrial and increasingly innovation centre of the world. I think if there's a place that's going to develop genuinely green steel, green chemical manufacturing it will be China. Agriculture I just don't know - from everything I've read there this is the most difficult to fix.

It confused me when I read the story but apparently this has been a huge comms fuck up and they've actually introduced controls where there were none before.

That's the government's line - I'm afraid I think it's spin.

They made a big splashy announcement of imposing these sanctions in October and it was reported at the time of the UK sanctioning third party refined oil. The controls they've "introduced" are basically the technical documentation of how those sanctions apply. So broadly speaking you don't really get credit for announcing a policy and then for doing the paperwork. This is a bit like Starmer's reset speech where a lot of his proposed changes were things the government had already announced.

On the other hand in October they didn't say excluding jet fuel and diesel - so that detail in the technical documentation is new. And the obvious reason is that in October they didn't anticipate a Gulf crisis with Hormuz closed.

The slightly better argument from the government in my view is that the UK doesn't have this refining capacity, our refineries are also operating at capacity right now and actually India, in particular, has a lot of refineries (including the biggest in the world) that can make jet fuel and diesel. But that just returns the question to the wisdom of allowing Britain's biggest refinery that could make these products to shut down. Again the counter is even at capacity, Grangemouth could only meet 10% of domestic demand for these sectors - which is true, but that is still 10% and it is domestically controlled and I'd guess(?) that it would be easier to expand existing capacity than starting from zero.

With their industries being state owned don't they have more ability to pass on the savings domestically.
The arguments against more north Sea exploration seem to add up most to me.
We really need to be pushing harder to break free of gas - gradually fazing out the gas and electric price connection for instance.

But again that's just focusing on the 20% of our energy usage that is about generating electricity. Gas is really important in he other 80% too - for home usage, for chemicals, for agriculture, for industry. I think the first of thsoe we can address (if we also have a strategy to: increase electricity generation and distribution to meet increased demand - I'm not sure we really do yet). I don't think there is a way to break free of gas on the other three any time soon.

This is the point about DESNZ - even if you use their projections (which many think are quite optimistic) about the energy transition in generating electricity, their own documentation still says that oil and gas will be key in our overall energy mix for decades because of the other 80%. An example is oil - oil is still the single largest source of energy in the UK at about 40% - it is not used at all in electricity generation. I'd add that the government is required to issue regular Statutory Security of Supply Reports - the statutory requirements for that report do not even include oil despite it being the largest source of energy, in my view because it reflects the dogged liberal/end of history view in the British state that there's diverse supply so the market will provide. As I say I don't think any of this would necessarily matter if that was the world we lived in - but it isn't. So I think the idea that we can continue to ignore where energy (or other materials) is extracted, processed and stored is at best profoundly negative.

I'd add that the lights almost went out in the UK in the winter of 2022. Apparently it was either last winter or 2024 we were again very, very close to crisis. Despite these repeated and increasingly regular near misses there does not seem to be any sense in Whitehall that we need to change our approach and have a more expensive, thicker, inefficient but more resilient supply chain (also the lesson from covid - learned, in part, in that case). There's total unwillingness to look at domestic supply or storage or really contingency plans - I think in part for the culture war reason that it is perceived as giving in to climate change deniers/people who oppose net zero rather than the state preparing for predictable, predicted risks. I'm slightly worried that we won't change until that winter crisis hits and the lights go out during a cold snap.

I think the root of the problem is that the commons is full of politicians and no statesmen or stateswomen.
[...]
Hmmm....imagine Gladstone's despair if he could view the current shower 

There were some FT graphs on this recently that I thought were quite interesting. So on the background of MPs which I think is unhelpfully concentrated in politics and the third sector (again I think the NGO-ification of state functions and politics is broadly speaking bad). I'd add that I suspect the professional services group is overwhelmingly lawyers and again I think from politics through civil service and third sector to lawyers I think there is a bit of a common culture and I'm not sure it's great for our politics:


Although I suppose to your point Gladstone was actually a career politician who entered parliament to defend his fathers interests in the slave trade...He evolved - and I think as well as background actually the lack of seasoning is an issue. It's one of the reasons I quite like Burnham. He's failed, he's tried something new, he's coming back etc. I think we've moved to quite a merciless approach in our politics. There's been a lot about the calibre of politicians in the 70s and 80s for example and one thing that's striking is that they have very long careers with ups and downs, peaks and troughs. I think we're now far quicker to write politicians off as yesterday's man/woman - and, perhaps, politicians are too quick to step down after a re-shuffle and move to earning money as lobbyists/in the private sector (it's why I quite rate, say, Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt continuing to be MPs and Hunt hinting that he might be open to a shadow cabinet role in the future). I loathe him but by all accounts Lord Cameron was very, very good as Foreign Secretary and I respect and quite admire that willingness to come back and serve in a different function.

Also of interest from those FT charts (especially as the government considers price controls on food) is how different public estimations of profit margins are from reality. I don't really now what to do about people who think the NHS turns a profit But also I slightly wonder if this is where the energy on the left being about other people paying for a welfare state comes from - as opposed to what we had before 2010 and what is the norm in Northern Europe which is broad, universal taxation to pay for a broad, well-funded welfare state. We generally vastly overestimate profits so think there is this other source of money that's easily accessible if we just increase taxes that other people pay while continuing to freeze and/or cut our own (or it's just a function of the whole "rip-off Britain" idea):

[Sheilbh]

The motivation should be doing things that is advantageous for the economy and strategic position of the nation.

Who determines that and how?

In my view that's the purpose of democratic politics.

[Sheilbh]

Ironically it's reactionary refusal to invest in green technologies and blind trust in fossil fuels which got us into this situation.

Again I think this is slightly conflating elecctricity generation with energy consumption (and why the electro/petro divide doesn't quite work). The UK is unusual in using gas to generate electricity. Germany doesn't and probably has cheaper electricity because it's using renewables plus coal which is worse from a carbon emissions perspective but less exposed to supply shocks. France uses renewables plus nuclear (which is what the UK strategy is in the long run).

However European industrial energy costs are still 2-4 times higher than for China or America. That's not just to do with electricity but, in particular, household uses of gas (heating), industrial uses (chemicals particularly) and agriculture. There is broadly a solution on household uses of gas but it will cost money. There isn't an alternative (yet) on industrial and agricultural uses. Europe's chemicals industry is really really struggling right now - and I think that's really important because I can't think of a serious industrial power that does not have a domestic chemicals industry. It's sort of a base layer. It's partly why it may have been privatised under Thatcher and Major but they both blocked takeover attempts by foreign companies - they had no issue with it being run by private capital, as long as it was private British capital. Under Blair and Brown it was largely sold to foreign companies and in the current energy crisis is now broadly being shut down because of high costs.

It's not about blind or otherwise trust. There is no level of renewables that replaces gas as an input into industry and agriculture. I think there will be a technological solution to what green versions of those sectors look like but it's going to emerge in China.

[Valmy]

I think there is a difference between making a serious effort to limit exposure to the constant fossil fuel cost shocks and achieving some kind of pure glowing ball of light state.