Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[The Brain]

The gap between productivity increases and worker compensation may have some to do with it.

Is it known what the productivity increase of that category of worker has been?

[Admiral Yi]

They diverge right around the time work became computerized.

[Josquius]

Local government also seems freer and more powerful in Germany, bit that might just be my impression as I have little real understanding of it in Britain.

Outside of the devolved regions its an absolute joke. The UK is probably one of the most centralised nations in the world.
Another glorious politically motivated  achievement of the iron bitch.

They diverge right around the time work became computerized.

A major factor for sure.
Though Incidentally it's also around the same time neoliberalism took over.

[garbon]

They diverge right around the time work became computerized.

With email having taken over so much of my time at work, I wonder what I would have done had I been in the era with a secretary.

[Syt]

Is it known what the productivity increase of that category of worker has been?

Not quite what you asked for, but here's GDP/household versus median household income in the US:

[Admiral Yi]

A major factor for sure.
Though Incidentally it's also around the same time neoliberalism took over.

The causal relationship in the computerization narrative is fairly straightforward: computers massively increased productivity but they did not change the components of the demand or supply of labor, hence the gains accrued to the people purchasing the computers and software, i.e. the shareholders.

The causal relationship between neoliberalism and the divergence of productivity and pay is not quite as clear to me.  Perhaps you could spell it out for me.

[Sheilbh]

The causal relationship between neoliberalism and the divergence of productivity and pay is not quite as clear to me.  Perhaps you could spell it out for me.

One of it's core elements was limiting the power of unions, organised labour or the politically organised working class more generally. With less bargaining power they get less of the pie.

Emulating the German economic model is neither sensible as that model has lots of own issues with the relative decline of globalization, less open markets and Chinese competition,nor feasible as it is based on long grown economic structures.

I'm not sure - but I think the long economic structures point is really important. It's not just economics either. Tories absolutely Germany's education system but you cannot simply transition to that - and it wouldn't work without entirely re-moulding our society and economics.

What might be more interesting if any candidate actually is interested in leveling up is looking at how Germany deliberately spreads some of its federal institutions beyond Berlin and how there is a well-established fiscal mechanism to transfer money from the richer parts to the poorer parts of Germany to achieve a common standard in public services and investments. Local government also seems freer and more powerful in Germany, bit that might just be my impression as I have little real understanding of it in Britain.

Yes-ish.

So there are lots of fiscal transfers in the UK especially around public services. One of the reasons we are so centralised is the press and the public get really angry at "postcode lotteries" - the idea that you receive a different service because you live in a different part of the country is unacceptable to most people, especially with the NHS. There's a London up-lift in pay for the higher cost of living, but other than that public sector pay is basically the same everywhere so there are areas where a public sector management job is comparatively very well paid because there's less private sector money which also creates incentives.

But I totally agree on investments and strong local government/decentralisation.  I think there is real institutional bias in the civil service around investments in London v the rest, but I also think the metrics they use to analyse cost/benefit possibly also structurally favour London. There's also legal issues around public transport in the rest of the country v London and a lack of money for local government to decide to make investments in their own public transport (it doesn't help that the examples of that have been very expensive and very delayed). Plus NIMBYs make everything difficult.

And generally local government is under-powered - and it's a multi-generation cross-party issue. Local government in the UK probably peaked in the inter-war years where you had councils basically running small welfare states, or operating council owned power companies etc. I think the post-war welfare state basically nationalised a lot of what councils did which started the decline, there were loads of re-drawing counties etc which I think probably undermined them. Then, as Jos says, Thatcher hated councils because a lot of the big ones elected uncooperative/actively hostile Labour councils. But also because in our system (since the welfare state was created) they only raise some of the revenue for the services they provide and in Thatcher's it led to fecklessness because it was politicians who aren't accountable for revenue making promises about spending. New Labour also didn't trust councils to deliver competently so they put more money in and they used councils to identify/prioritise needs - but not to deliver or take responsibility. Then Osborne cut their funding throughout the 2010s. It's a long, steady decline and I think it's a big issue.

[Sheilbh]

Incidentally it seems it's Patel's team (and she hasn't launched a campaign yet) that was sharing the memo attacking Sunak. Her campaign advisor seems nice

An ally of Priti Patel has admitted to sharing a "dirty dossier" sent around Tory WhatsApp groups branding Rishi Sunak a liar who cannot be trusted on tax.

Patrick Robertson, a lobbyist who has worked in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, is thought to be helping run Patel's campaign for Tory leadership.

His previous work includes lobbying to prevent the extradition of Augusto Pinochet to Spain to face trial for human rights abuses and acting as an adviser to Imran Khan, the recently ousted prime minister of Pakistan.

Good to know there's someone Patel doesn't want to extradite.

Rees-Mogg also apparently considering a run. I can absolutely see why the right are in a flap that they're going to split their vote.

New 1922 Committee elected today and they should set the rules for the knock-out rules. Rumour is that they want to winnow the field pretty quickly (and in any event by 21 July) so they might have a minimum vote of 20 to get past the first round which will probably be in the next day or two.

[Sheilbh]

Incidentally in on the nose metaphors - there's been lots of reports of the parliamentary estate, with Andrea Leadsom warning it could be our Notre Dame and MPs still putting off decisions - today parliaments had to shut down because there's a "torrent" of water pouring into the Commons from the roof. Apparently it's basically like a power shower in there.

The whole thing really annoys me

[Josquius]

Its bad timing for the commons needing renovations. Shame it can't wait a decade or two until democracy becomes entrenched and we can move away from the confrontational setup.

[Gups]

Incidentally in on the nose metaphors - there's been lots of reports of the parliamentary estate, with Andrea Leadsom warning it could be our Notre Dame and MPs still putting off decisions - today parliaments had to shut down because there's a "torrent" of water pouring into the Commons from the roof. Apparently it's basically like a power shower in there.

The whole thing really annoys me

It's absolutely a disaster waiting to happen. The only hope is that there's a massive leak at the same time a huge fire breaks out and the combination culls the rat population a bit.

[The Brain]

I may have asked this before, if so please ignore, but aren't there non-MPs working in the building? And does the building meet workplace safety standards? If it doesn't, how is this allowed to go on? I could maybe see MPs being outside the protection of the law in this by a kind of top-authority-be-fully-responsible-for-your-own-safety thing, but surely simple employees should be protected? Or is this whole thing governed by the time-honored "the law doesn't apply to toffs" UK legal principle?

[Zanza]

[Sheilbh]

To be honest I think the public polling at the minute is probably not helpful at the minute because name recognition is so low for most of the candidates - basically people don't know a lot of these candidates (especially ones like Tugendhat, Badenoch etc):


The latest (unscientific) ConservativeHome survey has most of the declared candidates. The surprise is still Penny Mordaunt for me - her campaign launch has been pretty tepid and not very convincing and there's now rumours her team are basically hiding their candidate. She's not done much apart from release videos and logos that look like Armando Iannucci bits:


I think there are probably too many candidates who'll be cut down too quickly for it to be anything but really challenging and expensive for pollsters. It'll be interesting to see if any of the papers has paid for a survey but I imagine we won't get anything until this weekend when several candidates will have been eliminated.


Also reports that Lee Cain (close to Dominic Cummings and former Vote Leave and Johnson comms director who went before Cummings) is now working for Sunak. Sunak's had to issue a statement denying he's working with Cummings. It's slightly odd because Sunak's position in the campaign is very much the establishment and safe candidate. But there's been rumours about Sunak and Cummings for ages but I wonder if it's actually being briefed by other campaigns.

Separately I suppose I now think Javid is the least worst option because he said this (and fully against Mordaunt after discovering she's the MP who helped block building an energy interconnector with France because it "ruined" the view from a grade II listed cottage ):

Javid says that 'our housing crisis is a supply-side problem' and promises new towns, street votes and the restoration of the Oxford-Cambridge Arc.
[...]
Javid says: "There is no social mobility, no social justice, without economic growth." Repeats claim that cutting taxes will help to grow the economy and tells supporters/media: "We must build more houses."

Which makes a pleasant change from competitive tax cuts.

Edit: Rules for the contest decided - this should knock out a few quickly:

Tory leadership rules announced

    Nominations will open and close tomorrow
    First ballot Wednesday
    Second ballot Thursday
    20 supporters for each candidate
    On first ballot, any candidate to proceed must win 30 votes from Tory MPs

[Jacob]

How many Tory MPs are there, and how many candidates?