Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Sheilbh]

From the Green Party web site.  Sure does sound like everyone is welcome.

This was Polanksi's leadership video that Jos mentioned. He is running on an "eco-populist" pitch:

I think it's a really smart bit of content. I think he's absolutely the right choice for the Greens. But I'm also with Gups I think it's mainly, as he'd say, bullshit. It also plays into a couple of things the British left always, always does (which I think is part of why they tend to lose). One is that they have a really bad habit of basically saying to voters "when you complain about this, what you actually mean/what the real problem is [insert something we're comfortable talking about, normally the NHS]", which I think at least show they really believe it when they emphasise discourse. The other is that they fight the enemy they wish they were facing (in recent years, mainly Trump) not the one who's actually in front of them. I think that leads to hem being bamboozled when the Tories don't rip off a mask and announce they're going to privatise the NHS and reintroduce child labour.

I think this is coming with Farage incidentally. He has been on manoeuvres recently: praising Arthur Scargill, talking about nationalising steel, letting the water companies go bust and nationalise them rather than bail out private equity owners who've asset stripped them. And you can see how he can easily ties those together because it won't be about blaming migrants it will be "we've lost control of our borders and don't know who's coming in, we've lost control of key industries and utilities while spivs take the cream - take back control". Despite it happening repeatedly over the last 15 years I think a lot of the left still struggle to even comprehend that the populist right are stealing their lines.

But - as a total aside - the Greens have a "living" manifesto. What this means is that all policy commitments in the manifesto have been voted on by party conferences AND until they are removed by a party conference vote, they remain in the manifesto. I have a friend who is very involved in Green politics (and the "Lawyers are Responsible" campaign on climate), she has successfully written and proposed policies in the Green manifesto. She's said that manifesto is a disaster waiting to happen the second they reach say 15% in the polls and the media take a look. There is some very weird quite unsettling stuff in there from earlier generations and preoccupations of the Green conferences in the 70s on things like population control (particularly in the developing world) as an essential environmental policy. Her view was there's a lot of things that no-one has ever paid any attention to because the Greens don't really matter - if they reach a point were they do lots of people are going to read this 50+ year old, activist led living document and find some concerning things for a mainstream 21st century party's manifesto.

[Sheilbh]

I am sorry but this feels ridiculous: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/aug/21/woman-with-adhd-who-slept-in-sauna-on-team-building-trip-wins-uk-case

Out of interest what do you think on the equal pay/equal work supermarket case?

There's some very odd tribunal decisions. I posted one about constructive dismissal because of the hierarchy of seating - but they don't always get it wrong. I enjoyed this one a couple of days ago:
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/aug/19/young-chatty-workers-disturbing-older-ones-not-age-harassment-tribunal-rules

(Although I entirely sympathise with the claimant. I'm not even old but due to a hot desking disaster I spent today surrounded by a sales team and was murderous by lunch )

In a weird way I actually think this interacts with immigration because the judicial process there is also largely a tribunal at first instance and there's been odd decisions and statistics coming from them as well as reports of specific cases. I can guarantee there are some very odd decisions in the Information Tribunal too. It's the least reported piece of our justice system (both in terms of press reports, but also judicial reports) and I think there are some odd trends going on there - I actually think a lot has to do with inexperienced judges being given precedents from areas they're not used to (especially human rights) and applying them quite broadly.

[HVC]

I sometimes wonder if youth unemployment is so high in Europe because of the perception it's impossible to fire someone. And that was during the good times. I don't know if it's gotten worse.  If I was hiring there I'd only hire the bare minimum of people so I don't get stuck with a dud. And I sure as hell wouldn't hire someone inexperienced I'd be stuck with if it didn't work out. 

Even in the tribunal case old cranky lady didn't win because she want fired if she put up a bigger fuss and was fired im sure whe would have won.

[Sheilbh]

It's very mixed across Europe. Not particularly high in the UK (basically same as Canada). There's a big north-south divide in Europe on this so it's still over 25% in Spain bu about 6% in Germany (in the UK normally bouncing 10-15%).

[Josquius]

I think it's a really smart bit of content. I think he's absolutely the right choice for the Greens. But I'm also with Gups I think it's mainly, as he'd say, bullshit.

Refugees are to blame for polluted waterways?

It also plays into a couple of things the British left always, always does (which I think is part of why they tend to lose). One is that they have a really bad habit of basically saying to voters "when you complain about this, what you actually mean/what the real problem is [insert something we're comfortable talking about, normally the NHS]", which I think at least show they really believe it when they emphasise discourse.

Can't say I've ever noticed anyone doing this. It would definitely be a mistake to frame it like that in messaging but this is the sensible way to approach any problem. You don't just ask people outright what they want and automatically take that as what needs to be done. The world is complicated and very often the solution to a problem is not in directly tackling it.

Politics is a thing of course. Especially in politics.  Doing the surface ask a bit too is usually pretty unavoidable. But very often just bashing your head against a brick wall isn't going to get you far.

For your example here if we did sort out the cost of living mess in the country, especially around housing, then support for the fascists would drop off a cliff. There's the true believers for whom everything is always about the foreigners. But then an awful lot of people just look for the easy answers, and a scapegoat is a tried and tested method there.

[Sheilbh]

Well FWIW, committing my own crime I don't really think small boats is about immigration

But isn't that last point acknowledging there is a connection. If we sorted out cost of living, especially around housing, then it would all be fine (I do sort of buy the housing theory of everything and think it would solve a lot). But in this country, to nick Gino d'Acampa's line, if my grandmother had wheels she would have been a bike.

I think the current situation is unsustainable - would be my argument and we have relatively high levels of immigration. That works if you've got a relatively permissive environment for building to make sure infrastructure and housing keep pace. Or you can restrict that and you need to reduce immigration. I think we've got high immigration and low levels of (very expensive) infrastructure and housing which, repetitively I think, is unsustainable.

So on the immigration front, post-covid (and Johnson's liberalisation of immigration rules) we've had the two highest levels of net migration on record (at about 750,000 and 900,000 - in gross terms about 1.25 million and 1.4 million respectively). This is falling because of changes introduced by Sunak and likely to fall further with changes from Starmer.

With the small boats (though I don't think this is really about immigration), they are also estimated to be at a record high of 50,000 people in the first half of this year. Similarly with immigration levels, the numbers of people with asylum claims pending are at the highest level since 2002 - and in 2002 Blair made it difficult for asylum seekers to work until their claims were assessed so they have to be provided for and housed by the state (this is where a lot of the problems in our system started). In other European countries they use sites like former barracks or purpose built reception camps to house people waiting for decisions, in some countries they don't and there are informal camps. In the UK it's ended up being temporary housing and hotels. I saw Starmer at the oversight committee talk about councils using spare housing for this to incredulity from MPs noting that as far as the councils are telling them there is no spare housing. And I think things could really kick off in a very dangerous way if we're housing people with pending asylum claims in council housing.

On the economics side of that, record years of immigration have coincided with indifferent growth (and indifferent productivity growth). Obviously that's not in line with the projections you'd expect (this is why the Treasury is pro-immigration) - which is causing a re-evaluation from various statistical bodies which sounds a lot like what CC posted about Canada. So the Office of Budget Responsibility and Office of National Statistics have both been talking about new models because it looks we have relatively low productivity migration - at the same time the National Institute for Economic and Social Research which is a broadly pro-immigration research body has found similar, but it's very sector specific. I also think this slightly interacts with austerity Britain. So there's been a problem in UK medical training of NHS trusts preferring to hire overseas graduates, because it's cheaper - which means UK-trained doctors have not been able to complete their training here. This is something Wes Streeting is now explicitly banning so there's an actual pipeline of training into the NHS. Because it might make sense from a spreadsheet but it makes no sense from a health system perspective to not complete the training for doctors you've paid through medical school.

On infrastructure, we know. Housing completions in recent years are below 200,000. Obviously that's reflecting projects that started a while ago - housing starts (which need to be 300,000+ per year 2024-29 to meet the government's target of 1.5 million new homes over the life of this parliament) are currently at less than 150,000.

I've mentioned it many times because it is insane for this country but we are putting measures in place around water preservation and shortages because we've not built a reservoir in thirty years (while population has grown 20%). We under-invest in all sorts of other physical infrastructure too (in part because it's really expensive - the cheapest road, rail and tram projects in the UK normally cost more per km than, say, in France and the most expensive British ones can cost up to eight times the European average).

I agree with you that if we fix all that then high immigration is sustainable. But I think that's a really big if in British politics. I also, frankly, think it's ripe for a Green candidate, because they are very strongly opposed to any planning reform. And I think this is where the language of "blame" helps move things onto territory Greens and the left are comfortable with - are refugees to blame for this? Obviously not. But that's not the challenging bit for them. The challenging bit would be to say we support high levels of immigration including refugees, that means we need to ditch our opposition to building new reservoirs and public transport infrastructure and roads and we need to consider taking steps (like reducing the burden of environmental regulation) to make it easier and cheaper for everyone (including councils) to build the housing we need (which is where I am - but I think the two are connected and we can't have one without the other). So he's not making the point you are but trying to do politics on easy mode: the divide is whether or not you blame migrants; the alternative is simply taxing someone else.

[Razgovory]

Can't say I've ever noticed anyone doing this. It would definitely be a mistake to frame it like that in messaging but this is the sensible way to approach any problem. You don't just ask people outright what they want and automatically take that as what needs to be done. The world is complicated and very often the solution to a problem is not in directly tackling it.

Politics is a thing of course. Especially in politics.  Doing the surface ask a bit too is usually pretty unavoidable. But very often just bashing your head against a brick wall isn't going to get you far.

For your example here if we did sort out the cost of living mess in the country, especially around housing, then support for the fascists would drop off a cliff. There's the true believers for whom everything is always about the foreigners. But then an awful lot of people just look for the easy answers, and a scapegoat is a tried and tested method there.

Hmm, so maybe those people shouting "death to the IDF" are just concerned about housing?

[Josquius]

Hmm, so maybe those people shouting "death to the IDF" are just concerned about housing?

You're just trolling. But yes. The Palestinians don't hate Israelis just because they're Jews. It is all about having somewhere to live.

Well FWIW, committing my own crime I don't really think small boats is about immigration

But isn't that last point acknowledging there is a connection. If we sorted out cost of living, especially around housing, then it would all be fine (I do sort of buy the housing theory of everything and think it would solve a lot). But in this country, to nick Gino d'Acampa's line, if my grandmother had wheels she would have been a bike.

I think the current situation is unsustainable - would be my argument and we have relatively high levels of immigration. That works if you've got a relatively permissive environment for building to make sure infrastructure and housing keep pace. Or you can restrict that and you need to reduce immigration. I think we've got high immigration and low levels of (very expensive) infrastructure and housing which, repetitively I think, is unsustainable.

So on the immigration front, post-covid (and Johnson's liberalisation of immigration rules) we've had the two highest levels of net migration on record (at about 750,000 and 900,000 - in gross terms about 1.25 million and 1.4 million respectively). This is falling because of changes introduced by Sunak and likely to fall further with changes from Starmer.

With the small boats (though I don't think this is really about immigration), they are also estimated to be at a record high of 50,000 people in the first half of this year. Similarly with immigration levels, the numbers of people with asylum claims pending are at the highest level since 2002 - and in 2002 Blair made it difficult for asylum seekers to work until their claims were assessed so they have to be provided for and housed by the state (this is where a lot of the problems in our system started). In other European countries they use sites like former barracks or purpose built reception camps to house people waiting for decisions, in some countries they don't and there are informal camps. In the UK it's ended up being temporary housing and hotels. I saw Starmer at the oversight committee talk about councils using spare housing for this to incredulity from MPs noting that as far as the councils are telling them there is no spare housing. And I think things could really kick off in a very dangerous way if we're housing people with pending asylum claims in council housing.

On the economics side of that, record years of immigration have coincided with indifferent growth (and indifferent productivity growth). Obviously that's not in line with the projections you'd expect (this is why the Treasury is pro-immigration) - which is causing a re-evaluation from various statistical bodies which sounds a lot like what CC posted about Canada. So the Office of Budget Responsibility and Office of National Statistics have both been talking about new models because it looks we have relatively low productivity migration - at the same time the National Institute for Economic and Social Research which is a broadly pro-immigration research body has found similar, but it's very sector specific. I also think this slightly interacts with austerity Britain. So there's been a problem in UK medical training of NHS trusts preferring to hire overseas graduates, because it's cheaper - which means UK-trained doctors have not been able to complete their training here. This is something Wes Streeting is now explicitly banning so there's an actual pipeline of training into the NHS. Because it might make sense from a spreadsheet but it makes no sense from a health system perspective to not complete the training for doctors you've paid through medical school.

On infrastructure, we know. Housing completions in recent years are below 200,000. Obviously that's reflecting projects that started a while ago - housing starts (which need to be 300,000+ per year 2024-29 to meet the government's target of 1.5 million new homes over the life of this parliament) are currently at less than 150,000.

I've mentioned it many times because it is insane for this country but we are putting measures in place around water preservation and shortages because we've not built a reservoir in thirty years (while population has grown 20%). We under-invest in all sorts of other physical infrastructure too (in part because it's really expensive - the cheapest road, rail and tram projects in the UK normally cost more per km than, say, in France and the most expensive British ones can cost up to eight times the European average).

I agree with you that if we fix all that then high immigration is sustainable. But I think that's a really big if in British politics. I also, frankly, think it's ripe for a Green candidate, because they are very strongly opposed to any planning reform. And I think this is where the language of "blame" helps move things onto territory Greens and the left are comfortable with - are refugees to blame for this? Obviously not. But that's not the challenging bit for them. The challenging bit would be to say we support high levels of immigration including refugees, that means we need to ditch our opposition to building new reservoirs and public transport infrastructure and roads and we need to consider taking steps (like reducing the burden of environmental regulation) to make it easier and cheaper for everyone (including councils) to build the housing we need (which is where I am - but I think the two are connected and we can't have one without the other). So he's not making the point you are but trying to do politics on easy mode: the divide is whether or not you blame migrants; the alternative is simply taxing someone else.

Factually, "The boats" and immigration are of course completely different issues.
But people do tend to conflate the two and the media and right are only too keen to use this.
e.g. this quite painful bit of polling on what percentage of illegal immigration is on the boats.

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2023/09/14/15a11/2?utm_source=chatgpt.com

The boats are extra 'funny' when you realise before 2017 there were zero documented cases of illegal crossings in small boats. It was actually due to brexit and the tightened border controls at lorry crossings that this problem was created.
But its just such perfect imagery for the far right that taps into their masturbation over the war, see the language they keep throwing around about "invasions" and "fighting age men".

To kind of go back on myself this is where sorting the boats issue could be said to have an increased importance. "Stop the boats" then even if immigration figures remain the same, this key perception problem is broken.
Though the way to stop them isn't in tightened border controls, guy on the beach with a gun sort of thing, but rather in opening up applications from other countries.
I've said it before but the Rwanda thing was completely backwards. It could have been a viable policy done properly and allowing people to apply from there without first having to step foot on British soil. More realistically in the short term allowing this from France would work, cooperation with France is key.

Coming onto actual immigration....as you say its a different problem to 'the boats'. 1 million is definitely too high though of course that was a pretty abnormal year. Changes need to be made to the system there. Though these need to be done fairly.  Its not going to fly for the nonce but restoring free movement would help a lot in reducing immigration numbers- rather than shipping over people with families from the global south, get back to the young single people from southern and eastern Europe.

As much as these numbers are too high, I do still think it comes ultimately back to housing. Not now, but go back a few years when we were bringing in several hundred thousand a year, and the % by which the population was growing every year was comparable to back in the mid 20th century when we actually were managing to build enough.
A permissive building environment is one solution, but then there's also the solution of using our planning laws they're meant to be used with the government actually getting involved in building.
Most likely both. Something needs to change there for sure. Its the key, not stopping the boats.

And yep. As you say the infrastructure problems too.
Is it planning?
Is it something integral to common vs civil law? (all anglo countries have this issue)
Lots of theories out there but something needs to be done for sure. And Labour so far....don't seem to be doing it. I do increasingly worry the simple answers to complex problems fascists are really going to be doing a smash and grab next election.

The Greens on this....there's the issue. As I've been saying for a while the  Greens are really due for a reckoning between their Village Green Preservation Society wing, and their European Social Democratic Green wing. The Tory Greens need crushing.
There definitely are sensible voices in the party that are all for building.

[Razgovory]

Hmm, so maybe those people shouting "death to the IDF" are just concerned about housing?

You're just trolling. But yes. The Palestinians don't hate Israelis just because they're Jews. It is all about having somewhere to live.

  That's funny.

No, at Glastonbury.  Those people were just worried about housing?

[Tamas]

Go back to your playground you two.

[Josquius]

https://bylinetimes.com/2025/08/21/ofcom-refuses-to-investigate-gb-news-over-call-to-shoot-disabled-benefit-claimants/?utm_source=threads&utm_medium=jetpack_social

The watchdog also refused to investigate a complaint about a presenter's use of an anti-trans slur, saying the comments were "in line with audience expectations for this channel"

....is that how this works?
So I could launch a "Hitler was right" channel which is nothing but hate and because its in line with expectations I only get in trouble if I say something nice?

[Richard Hakluyt]

I guess we could send the c.30% of the population who are xenophobes to the camps 

[HVC]

I guess we could send the c.30% of the population who are xenophobes to the camps 

They call those camps Tory Conventions. I hear they're fun.

[Sheilbh]

Factually, "The boats" and immigration are of course completely different issues.
But people do tend to conflate the two and the media and right are only too keen to use this.
e.g. this quite painful bit of polling on what percentage of illegal immigration is on the boats.

Yeah - I mane this has always been the case. You go back to the 2000s and people vastly overestimated the number of asylum seekers. But I don't think politically it is really about immigration.

The boats are extra 'funny' when you realise before 2017 there were zero documented cases of illegal crossings in small boats. It was actually due to brexit and the tightened border controls at lorry crossings that this problem was created.

It's not really to do with Brexit. The tightened controls on lorry crossings were the result of a decade of investment by the French and British government to close that route into the UK (as, the decade before the focus was on Sangatte and the Channel Tunnel). That work was effectively complete and operational in 2017. And as closing the Channel Tunnel route led to more people smuggling in lorries, closing that moved to sea crossings.

But its just such perfect imagery for the far right that taps into their masturbation over the war, see the language they keep throwing around about "invasions" and "fighting age men".

Well also 75% of people arriving on small boats are men over 18. This is part of the reason why I think it's a failure of an asylum policy too - as I say this is repeated at the Med, at the Green Line in Poland but in Europe we have the worst imaginable situation. There are few open asylum channels for people outside of Europe. It is very dangerous and getting more dangerous to get into Europe. But if you get to Europe you're very unlikely to be deported.

It's almost like we've designed a system to annoy everyone. For liberals it is cruel, lethal and immoral. For people who care about asylum I think it fails to actually give asylum to people most likely to need it (who can't afford to get smuggled or are unable to make the journey for whatever reason, including gender). And then for people who don't want immigration, it is basically very lax and deportation is very unlikely if you get through the Squid Games we set up on the way here.

Coming onto actual immigration....as you say its a different problem to 'the boats'. 1 million is definitely too high though of course that was a pretty abnormal year. Changes need to be made to the system there. Though these need to be done fairly.  Its not going to fly for the nonce but restoring free movement would help a lot in reducing immigration numbers- rather than shipping over people with families from the global south, get back to the young single people from southern and eastern Europe.

Implicit in "restoring free movement" is also making it more difficult to move here for the rest of the world. If we had free movement plus the current regime we'd just have a few hundred thousand more people arriving each year.

And yep. As you say the infrastructure problems too.
Is it planning?
Is it something integral to common vs civil law? (all anglo countries have this issue)

Yeah I am absolutely furious about this to be honest. The Labour party has been out of power for 14 years. Admittedly it was a tumultuous time for them but I find it very frustrating that they won the fourth biggest majority in British history and apparently have no idea what to do with it.

Housing was a key issue with the promise to build 1.5 million new homes over this Parliament. They were "laser-focused on growth" and I think the two are linked. It took about nine months to get their planning reform bill into Parliament and it's still working its way through the Lords. You know in the first year of the 1945 government they'd massively reformed the welfare state and passed the legislation to establish the NHS. For a less thrilling comparison in the first year of the Coalition they'd passed huge education (establishing free schools and academisation) and welfare reform (universal credit especially) as well as stopping kids from being detained in immigration centres. In the first year of Blair's government we had BofE independence, the Good Friday Agreement, devolution referendums in Scotland and Wales, the minimum wage. The really key thing is they had incoming Secretaries of State who had very clear ideas of what they wanted to do so, having won power, could use it. I find it very frustrating how unprepared Labour were and how in most policy areas, including ones that are central to their agenda, they appear to still be working out what they want to do.

Lots of theories out there but something needs to be done for sure. And Labour so far....don't seem to be doing it. I do increasingly worry the simple answers to complex problems fascists are really going to be doing a smash and grab next election.

This is where I'm with the populists right and left

I think Britain absolutely abounds with civil servants who would push you down the stairs to get to a minister and explain how complex an issue is. We do huge numbers of assessments (many statutorily required) to flush out complexity and many, many rounds of consultations and stakeholder engagement events and it is very often an excuse to do another round of consultations etc. An example recently flagged in the FT, re-opening a 3.3 mile train line from Bristol to Portishead involved nearly 80,000 pages of planning documents and took 16 years. Or, for example, the Edinburgh Tram system which was hugely overbudget and delayed - and followed by a public inquiry which was hugely overbudget and took longer to complete than the actual tram system. This was followed by calls for an inquiry into the inquiry. I think we are drowning in complexity.

I also think this affects policy and procurement especially where we have a very, very bad habit of developing incredibly complicated, bespoke systems that often don't actually function very well - as opposed to, say, modelling a policy or buying an off the shelf solution used in, for example, France. We never go for the option that's half the price but only 90% of the functionality. Examples here would be the nuclear design in Sizewell which have required thousands of design changes and millions of extra costs (and delay) to designs that are already up, running and safe in France. Or childcare where we have an incredibly expensive scheme in part because we have made regulatory decisions that are way more strict than anywhere else in Europe. In both cases I'd suggest the benefit is actually pretty marginal but the cost is huge. Or the new dual staircase rule introduced by the last government which the government assessed would have a cost of over £2.5 billion and a benefit of £9 million - and it was not clear it would materially improve safety (in fact in true British style we are introducing this requirement as the rest of the world abolishes it, having discovered it produces shitty urbanism and isn't necessary for safety ).

I think we have a lot of complexity-acknowledging. What we don't have is an institutional willingness to accept trade offs or political leaders who are willing to make choices. I think there's a lot to the line "to govern is to choose".

The Greens on this....there's the issue. As I've been saying for a while the  Greens are really due for a reckoning between their Village Green Preservation Society wing, and their European Social Democratic Green wing. The Tory Greens need crushing.
There definitely are sensible voices in the party that are all for building.

I think they're very often the same and those opinions are also very widespread among a lot of the soft left and sort of Guardian commentary/reading. I think in part this is why Starmer struggles is because he is basically a default Guardian/soft left kind of guy. Plus the lack of a clear political identity makes it tougher.

[Sheilbh]

Total aside - but I dunk on the courts a lot for their press freedom decisions in recent years. So only fair to acknowledge I think they've got this one absolutely right and good on the Guardian for publishing:
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/aug/22/noel-clarke-loses-libel-case-against-guardian-over-sexual-misconduct-investigation

(I've heard on the grapevine it's been one of the most complex media cases in London in years because Clarke basically threw everything at them.)