Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Sheilbh]

So the rescue deal for British Volt collapsed, which means the big battery factory near Blyth won't happen. It was supposed to be a big bit of industrial strategy but my understanding is the location was also very good from an environmental perspective (right next to the North Sea so mainly powered by wind) and a helpful bit of "levelling up"/addressing regional inequality.

Perhaps inevitably and frustratingly there is instead announced they'll be building a big battery factory. Only this time in Oxfordshire. So less good environmentally and entrenching rather than helping regional inequality

They're slightly different projects making different types of batteries - but still

[Josquius]

So the rescue deal for British Volt collapsed, which means the big battery factory near Blyth won't happen. It was supposed to be a big bit of industrial strategy but my understanding is the location was also very good from an environmental perspective (right next to the North Sea so mainly powered by wind) and a helpful bit of "levelling up"/addressing regional inequality.

Perhaps inevitably and frustratingly there is instead announced they'll be building a big battery factory. Only this time in Oxfordshire. So less good environmentally and entrenching rather than helping regional inequality

They're slightly different projects making different types of batteries - but still

Or the scam is just moving onto a new target. Monorail style.

[Tamas]

So are they being searched for because the newborn hasn't received medical attention? Or because the blue blooded eloped with the black skinned? The article does not célár it up:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jan/18/missing-constance-marten-mark-gordon-newborn-carrying-cash-police-say

[Josquius]

So are they being searched for because the newborn hasn't received medical attention? Or because the blue blooded eloped with the black skinned? The article does not célár it up:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jan/18/missing-constance-marten-mark-gordon-newborn-carrying-cash-police-say

Mentally ill people with a baby is what I gathered elsewhere?

[mongers]

So the rescue deal for British Volt collapsed, which means the big battery factory near Blyth won't happen. It was supposed to be a big bit of industrial strategy but my understanding is the location was also very good from an environmental perspective (right next to the North Sea so mainly powered by wind) and a helpful bit of "levelling up"/addressing regional inequality.

Perhaps inevitably and frustratingly there is instead announced they'll be building a big battery factory. Only this time in Oxfordshire. So less good environmentally and entrenching rather than helping regional inequality

They're slightly different projects making different types of batteries - but still

Triple As instead of AAs?

[Gups]

So the rescue deal for British Volt collapsed, which means the big battery factory near Blyth won't happen. It was supposed to be a big bit of industrial strategy but my understanding is the location was also very good from an environmental perspective (right next to the North Sea so mainly powered by wind) and a helpful bit of "levelling up"/addressing regional inequality.

Perhaps inevitably and frustratingly there is instead announced they'll be building a big battery factory. Only this time in Oxfordshire. So less good environmentally and entrenching rather than helping regional inequality

They're slightly different projects making different types of batteries - but still

Sorry Shelf. This is a nonsensical post.

Two different companies building two different plants so don't know what you mean by "they". One company went bust. The other had funding and is opening quite soon. Hard to see some kind of conspiracy here.

[Sheilbh]

Sorry Shelf. This is a nonsensical post.

Two different companies building two different plants so don't know what you mean by "they". One company went bust. The other had funding and is opening quite soon. Hard to see some kind of conspiracy here.

Not a conspiracy, just a big policy failure. Which will keep happening.

They make different types of batteries but we've got a commitment in law and backed by all parties to ban the sale of combustion engine new cars by 2030 (British Volt would make batteries for household EVs) and for buses and trucks/big vehicles by 2040 (which is what the Oxfordshire factory will make). Without any capacity to build the batteries the rest of the manufacturing (already under huge pressure because of Brexit) will move to where the batteries are and we'll be reliant on international supply chains - just have to hope the IRA and Macron's "Made in Europe" policies mean that it'll be friendly allies we're dealing with.

Add to that the levelling up angle - especially on a day when the Times has a big splash that allocation of levelling up money has favoured the South-East rather than the red wall areas.

All else being equal, if the state doesn't put its finger on the scale, Oxfordshire will be fine because Oxfordshire's already fine. It's the sort of area where advanced industries will want to be. Battery and EV manufacturing - essential for our net zero goals - will go where it's cheapest, and there is a big Brexit angle there as well.

It's good that the Oxfordshire factories being built because we need those batteries too. But if we want to support meeting net zero, plus looking for industries we can grow post-Brexit and reduce regional inequality I feel like we need something like a British Volt or a strategy supporting it - because, as I say, Oxfordshire'll be fine as we see while a massive factory in Blyth is more rare.

[Gups]

I agree but the two events are completely unconnected. BV looks like it was a fundamentally a business failure, particularly due to not having a car manufacturer on board unlike Sunderland and Oxford. It's a different argument as to whether the state rather than the private sector should be responsible for investment. IMO, arguably but as part of an overall strategy of state investment into a variety of things.

Times splash notwithstanding, the region benefitting most from the levelling up fund is clearly the north west. "red wall" is a party political label and has absolutely no place in funding allocation decisions.

[The Larch]

The Guardian's always wrong columnist chimes in on "Levelling up". What do you guys think?

RIP 'levelling up' – another Johnson catchphrase that failed to deliver
Simon Jenkins

Levelling up is cancelled. It is so yesterday, past its sell-by date, rather Boris Johnson, defunct. Tory MPs have been given orders to drop it as a mere soundbite since "nobody knows what it means". Instead they should use "community enhancing" and something called "gauging up".

There is no limit to the linguistic banality of modern British government. The proof is in this week's presumably final bonanza of levelling up gifts from Rishi Sunak, announced in Blackpool. Out of his sack pops a new seafront for Cleethorpes, a high street for Catterick, an "obesity project" for Farnborough, an "AI campus" for Blackpool (no kidding), a Brexit relief road for Dover, a health centre for Camden, "step-free access" for Colindale tube station, buses for Teesside, a ferry for Shetland – on its goes, like a Lego catalogue.

In any other country these would be routine spending projects decided quietly by local politicians and officials. They would be funded by local taxes and borrowing, or met within a central block grant. Only in Britain do such petty projects have to be taken to London and their proponents queue up, cap in hand, waiting on the generosity and whim of some gracious ruler. The operation is not so much Santa Claus as Louis XIV.

The total sum allocated from this year's so-called "shared prosperity" bounty is £2.1bn, supposedly to "rebalance" the British economy in the north and south. In reality, it does no such thing, since, we are told, grants must be bid for and judged "on their merits". Only one bid in five is successful, even though a principal purpose of the programme is supposedly to atone for the cut of more than 20% in local government spending during a decade of austerity.

The true gulf between local and national investment in infrastructure in Britain is obscene. Levelling up's £2.1bn for 2023 compares with about £5bn a year spent by the Treasury on just one Johnson vanity project, the £100bn HS2 railway. How can Sunak possibly tell nurses and teachers he is short of money? HS2's sole merit is to offer more capacity for home counties commuters into London's Euston station. Yet the desperately needed east-west railway between Leeds and Manchester has been cancelled. Meanwhile Manchester can eat its heart out while London celebrates the opening of Europe's most splendid new underground, the £19bn Elizabeth line.

As if to ram home his exasperation with levelling up, Sunak has cancelled its cruellest gesture, the summary death sentence passed in November on the English National Opera. To prove levelling up meant business, this had been sacrificed by the Arts Council for not being as posh as the Royal Opera. It was fobbed off with a suggestion that it move to Manchester, like a disgraced priest exiled to a heathen outpost of empire. Now the ENO may yet stay in London.

All that said, levelling up should not be dismissed out of hand. Johnson may have been chiefly concerned to favour his former Labour, "red wall" seats in the north. But there is no argument that Britain's north-south divide is appalling, one of the widest gulfs between rich and poor areas of any of the world's developed economies. It is ironic that areas that were most pro-Brexit are its chief victims.

As so often with Johnson, catchphrases could not convert into policy. Ten years of austerity have left all councils in Britain struggling to meet their statutory obligations to policing, social work and community care. There is virtually no money for discretionary local projects. This has led to the growth of the present ad hoc handouts, pioneered more than 30 years ago by Lord Heseltine, when he was environment secretary under John Major. They were awarded on a competitive basis, with London and the south-east tending to win by virtue of their expanding populations and more enterprising councils.

The result is the present parody of Christmas. The big money pours into favoured ministerial projects – motorways, airports, nuclear power stations, universities and hospitals – but local ones depend on Whitehall charity. There would be dribs and drabs for a bus service, a startup business, some brownfield housing or a civic museum. Any marginal seat MP had only to ask. Freeports were invented by Thatcher but discontinued in 2012 as pointless. Now they are strangely being revived.

The geographical imbalance in Britain's economy may well lie at the root of the much-debated decline in its prosperity. It will not be corrected by headline-grabbing ministerial gestures. As was indicated by levelling up's forerunner, Cameron/Osborne's "northern powerhouse", rebalancing will require massive attention to reducing the magnetic appeal of London and the south-east, notably to creative young people. What is clear is that this must start with leadership, with decisions and resources devolved to local electors and their councils, as happens in the booming cities of Germany, France and Scandinavia.

It is laughable that a London official should decide if Cleethorpes needs a new seafront or Shetland a new ferry. Access to central and local tax revenues and discretion over their use must be restored to elected councils. Keir Starmer has got the point. He has pledged to "take back control" for local democracy. But every party leader says that in opposition. None has ever done it. What exactly does Starmer mean by control? Or will he too degenerate into government by handout?

It seems to me that there are at least a couple of good points in there. 

[HVC]

I prefer to pronounce " gauging up" as gagging up. That is, shut up and take it.

[Sheilbh]

The Guardian's always wrong columnist chimes in on "Levelling up". What do you guys think?

It seems to me that there are at least a couple of good points in there. 

Stopped clocks and that

Although I can't imagine a bigger indictment of the London media (posted an article on this) than describing making the English National Opera to move to Manchester is the "cruellest gesture". I mean for God's sake

It was fobbed off with a suggestion that it move to Manchester, like a disgraced priest exiled to a heathen outpost of empire. Now the ENO may yet stay in London.

It's a rather novel approach - devolve power, just not respect

[The Larch]

Although I can't imagine a bigger indictment of the London media (posted an article on this) than describing making the English National Opera to move to Manchester is the "cruellest gesture". I mean for God's sake

Hey, I didn't say it was all brilliant thinking.   

Like the part about the HS2 being all about increasing capacity from the Home Counties to London. 

[Josquius]

In any other country these would be routine spending projects decided quietly by local politicians and officials. They would be funded by local taxes and borrowing, or met within a central block grant. Only in Britain do such petty projects have to be taken to London and their proponents queue up, cap in hand, waiting on the generosity and whim of some gracious ruler. The operation is not so much Santa Claus as Louis XIV.

Yep. Big problem here.
An ongoing saga in Newcastle has been maintainance works on the Tyne bridge. Local government tried for a decade to get funding until finally it was decided to grant it last year.

The sad thing is though, way too many people don't know how government in the UK works. It's fact that cuts disproportionately land on non tory councils... And it really seems that in a lot of these areas it's the councils that get the blame for council tax going up whilst everything gets shitter. It's such a winning tory tactic that nobody is tackling.

The true gulf between local and national investment in infrastructure in Britain is obscene. Levelling up's £2.1bn for 2023 compares with about £5bn a year spent by the Treasury on just one Johnson vanity project, the £100bn HS2 railway. How can Sunak possibly tell nurses and teachers he is short of money? HS2's sole merit is to offer more capacity for home counties commuters into London's Euston station.

Aaaannnd there they go. Just as they were making good points they prove themselves a fuckwit.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah

Also the idea that the reason the South-East did well in previous rounds of funding administered by the Tories in the 90s was because of "more enterprising councils". I suspect it's just that back then he was broadly aligned with the Tories and mainly a Times columnist.

And his approach seems to be to "level down" to nick a phrase. Instead of trying to improve the rest of the country, "rebalancing will require massive attention to reducing the magnetic appeal of London and the south-east, notably to creative young people" - let's make London a bit shitter instead

Of course, Sir Simon Jenkins has a townhouse in Kensington and a holiday home in Snowdonia so he's got his.

Aaaannnd there they go. Just as they were making good points they prove themselves a fuckwit.

I can't remember what but I think he's had some roles with the Campaign to Protect Rural England (I know he was chair of the National Trust for a while) and is extremely against building anything anywhere - again, he's got his.

[Syt]