Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Duque de Bragança]

Brutalist monstrosities everywhere, concrete the green belt

I would accept far denser city centres in the interim. No idea why the Tories never forced this given that it'd be building, which is unpopular, but in areas that vote Labour - so, from a Tory perspective, who cares.

Edit: Also. Bring back neon.

I take it you have read or possibly own these books:

https://bluecrowmedia.com/pages/brutalist-architecture
 


The almighty algorithm recommended the Brutalist Paris for me, despite no interest in the matter.

https://bluecrowmedia.com/products/brutalist-paris

[viper37]

Tens of thousands more Brits are dying - experts not sure why

In December 2022 the number of excess deaths was 5,900, which is 13.5 per cent above the five-year average


Tens of thousands of more Brits are dying than expected and experts don't know what the cause or reason is. From May to December 2022 there were 32,441 excess deaths in England and Wales.
This figure does not include Covid-related deaths. 'Excess deaths' are defined as the number of people who died above the five-year average.


The death rate count has been worked out excluding 2020, because the pandemic spiked death figures that year. More than 32,000 people would have been expected to be alive but died, according to Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures across this period.

It has raised some questions about what is happening to the nation's population, how it is changing and the reasons behind this. Excess deaths have fluctuated wildly month on month since Covid, either being below the five-year average or well above it.

This could be for a number of reasons, but it is not clear what is behind the spikes and dips. Similarly, earlier in 2022, excess deaths dipped well below average levels, with one expert group speculating to the Mirror that a 'mortality displacement' effect might explain why so many deaths are bunched up in the space of several months, being passed on from the months prior.

[...]

Tamas and Garbon might not have made the greatest life choice of us all...


Seriously. It seems worrying.

[Sheilbh]

It's not just the UK - I believe it's about 10% higher in the UK than pre-pandemic, whch is about the European average.

I feel for the journalists and scientists because there is clearly something that needs to be understood but it is very much a big part of anti-vax discourse that the "excess deaths" are because of the vaccines and are being covered up/not reported. So it's a challenging subject to cover.

It definitely needs looking at but my suspicion is it'll be multiple things going on at once - in particularly (and I could be wrong here) but possibly the impact of the delayed or disrupted medical care in the pandemic years. I belive diabetes charities here have flagged that there's a particular issue there and about half of diabetes patients basically didn't have any in-patient appointments for two years (and you wonder about what diagnoses were missed).

[Tamas]

So the National Conservatism conference... Is it intentional that it kind of refers to National Socialism as in "it's like the nazis just less socialist" or they are just tone deaf?

[Josquius]

So the National Conservatism conference... Is it intentional that it kind of refers to National Socialism as in "it's like the nazis just less socialist" or they are just tone deaf?

Very possible they want to wink to the 10% whilst avoiding being too obvious for wavering sensible centrists.
But then Hanlons Razor...

[Sheilbh]

So the National Conservatism conference... Is it intentional that it kind of refers to National Socialism as in "it's like the nazis just less socialist" or they are just tone deaf?

I think it might be possibly precisely to provoke that type of response.

I think there is also a way in which its name does make sense. Lots of it is about the post-liberalism/end of the end of history stuff and tapping into that particularist side of conservatism. Which I think makes it a bit weird to turn into an international brand the way they have.

It is a movement largely from America (where its keynote speakers have included Tucker Carlson, DeSantis, Rubio etc) and that is certainly wherer the money is coming from. It's not the first conference in the UK (not sure why its being written up like it is) and the last one had Red Tory/Blue Labour style speakers. They've also had European conferences in Brussels, Rome and Budapest - I think they do one American and one European every year.

I thought this take from ConservativeHome (the house blog of the Tory party) and mainstream UK right was interesting - I get the sense from what I've seen of the American conferences that there is more of a coherent national conservative wing of the GOP. It's basically the Trump-y side of the party: Vance, Hawley etc. I'm not sure there is a coherent equivalent in the UK (or who it would be built around - I think the closest is possibly Badenoch?) but is one to watch especially if they lose the next election. But looking at their British attendees (especially the MPs), it is a fairly heterodox mix. Fairly moreso than the US conferences.

Separately it is primarily American, they have a conference there every year and it is the wing of the GOP on the ascendancy, but culturally and politically it feels closer to home. Lots of inspiration from Orban, obviously, but I think the main organiser is Yoram Hazony who is a revisionist Zionist and close to Likud with the particular issues and concerns of the Israeli right:

Can National Conservatism adapt from America to Britain?
May 9, 2023 | Paul Goodman | ToryDiary

Mass immigration, globalisation, culture change: is there more to National Conservatism (note the capital letters) than a response to all of these – and a shift of focus on the right worldwide from economics to culture? We will find out more when NatCon UK, a conference organised by the new movement, opens in London next Monday.

It's American in origin – a product of the Edmund Burke foundation, chaired by Yoram Hazony, author of The Virtue of Nationalism. Its starting-point is the transition taking place from the global "rules-based liberal order" that preceded the rise of China to the "a sharp turn toward nationalism".

The new movement approves of the new "commitment to a world of independent nations" and wants "a protracted effort to recover and reconsolidate the rich tradition of national conservative thought as an intellectually serious alternative to the excesses of purist libertarianism, and in stark opposition to political theories grounded in race".

I pick out from its ten Statements of Principle three extracts which seem especially suggestive.

First, "the disintegration of the family...gravely threatens the wellbeing and sustainability of democratic nations. Among the causes are an unconstrained individualism that regards children as a burden, while encouraging ever more radical forms of sexual license and experimentation as an alternative to the responsibilities of family and congregational life".

Second, "the Bible should be read as the first among the sources of a shared Western civilization in schools and universities, and as the rightful inheritance of believers and non-believers alike. Where a Christian majority exists, public life should be rooted in Christianity and its moral vision, which should be honored by the state and other institutions both public and private".

Finally, "the free market cannot be absolute. Economic policy must serve the general welfare of the nation. Today, globalised markets allow hostile foreign powers to despoil America and other countries of their manufacturing capacity, weakening them economically and dividing them internally".

The question is whether this American product, as transatlantic in flavour as the libertarianism it criticises, can be translated into British politics: indeed, whether this forthcoming conference is really even trying to do so.

For I know conservatives who agree with the economic interventionism that the Statement implies, but would hesitate to say that public life in Britain "should be rooted in Christianity and its moral vision".  I know others who disagree with the economic interventionism, but agree with the nationalism.

And I know others still who believe that "the traditional family...is the foundation of all other achievements of our civilization" but who support, though sometimes with qualification, the liberalising legislation on sex, race and sexuality of the past 50 years.  None of these people are signed up fully, and perhaps even mostly, to the body of ideas in the Statement of Principles.

Indeed, some of these and others, whose thinking overlaps with the National Conservatives, aren't listed as speaking at the conference at all.  I'm thinking of Nick Timothy, the Daily Telegraph columnist, Rachel Wolf, who co-wrote the last Conservative manifesto, David Green of Civitas, Munira Mirza, formerly Head of the Number Ten Policy Unit, and Neil O'Brien.

Others who are listed as speaking don't agree.  For example, our columnist Daniel Hannan is a free trader; Michael Gove is not.  That is no bad thing in itself: a conference with no debate would be a dull one.  But such differences take us back to the question of what will emerge from it.

So on the one hand, Gove has become engaged, post-Covid, with security of food supply, of energy supply – of "just in case" rather than "just in time" supply chains.  That sounds close to the economic interventionism implied by the Statement of Principles, and which Onward's new project on the Future of Conservatism is engaged with.

But on the other, a recent Daily Telegraph article about the conference by Jacob Rees-Mogg and David Frost, who are also speaking at the conference, banged the drum for a "British conservative tradition...characterised by love of freedom: of free markets, free trade and free individuals and families.  That sounds further away.

I can't help wondering of what will emerge from the conference will simply be reheated Thatcherism with a dash of culture war on top.  (Suella Braverman is the most senior Conservative Minister speaking; I gather that Kemi Badenoch will be out of the country in Switzerland.)

You may say that this would be no bad thing.  Perhaps – but it would be very different from "focusing on replacing the idea of individual natural rights with one of national identity fused with Christianity", as a right-wing American critic of the new movement puts it.

Meanwhile, I've three questions for the movement in Britain – the precursor to many more, which would seek to find out its take on, say, localism and Net Zero.  First, what's its view on the size of the state?  I've found in some National Conservative fellow-travellers an appetite for higher state spending and taxes than the post-war Conservative consensus is comfortable with.

Next, does it believe that a Christian majority exists in Britain and, if so, what kind of majority and what follows from it?  Church-goers? Cultural Christians?  Where do Islam and Muslims fit in – or for that matter agnostics and atheists?  Finally, British patriotism is a good thing, but is nationalism everywhere else?

If so, what about Scottish nationalism?  Or Welsh?  If nationalism per se is good, are these manifestations bad, and if so, why?  Does supporting nationalism just mean the forms of it we approve of?  And if national self-determination is the cry, what about the rights of minorities?

Arguably, National Conservatism is nothing new, and literally so: next week's conference is being written up as a new kid on the block, but a forerunner took place in London four years ago.  Furthermore, Theresa May was a kind of National Conservative – at least in her first incarnation, when Timothy and Fiona Hill were her Chiefs of Staff.

She didn't show much interest in protectionism, which some National Conservatives support, but was certainly enthused by intervention: her first government rediscovered industrial strategy, and she won a small batch of Red Wall seats in 2017. Boris Johnson was also a National Conservative – or rather he wasn't, because he won't be tied down to anything.

But there were certain continuities with his predecessor.  National Conservatism is very taken with the working class, and Johnson's levelling-up appeal was pitched at them, or at least those living in towns in provincial England.  Theirs was a gentler, kinder, more Anglican-flavoured national conservatism, if you like, than the U.S version.

Some of those associated with the conference will doubtless argue that this is no time for gentleness and kindness, but for ferocity and, perhaps in some measure, unkindness – what John Hayes calls being "fierce in defence of the gentle". All the same, I'm puzzled by Burke's status as the poster boy of the movement.

Burke was suspicious of a doctrine of natural rights, but not because held one of national identity instead.  Rather, he is best remembered not for championing such a generality but rather a particular: Britain's institutions: the "well compacted structure of our church and state...defended by reverence, defended by power, a fortress at once and a temple".

It's unclear whether or not the National Conservatives are interested in British institutions.  The religion in which they are grounded, yes.  The culture that raises or lowers them, certainly.  But not maybe in replenishing those institutions themselves – at least yet.  Or in how to go about the great work of our time: reducing the demand for government.

[Sheilbh]

Latest on Scotland - it's now come out that the police requested a search warrant of Sturgeon's home a week before the end of the leadership race. They received one from the Crown Office a week after the leadership race finished. Which seems convenient if you wanted to put a finger on the scale.

Meanwhile the Guardian has decided to give Sturgeon a column Today writing about how shocked she is at the polarisation in politics, which for the leader of a nationalist movement that turns everything into a constitutional question is very

Edit: This has been on top of other stories. Sturgeon's column was on Scotland's proposal to pilot juryless trials for rape cases. I believe that now almost all branches of the Scottish Law Society have voted overwhelmingly against the measures and may boycott them. Some of the opposition is to the principle of juryless trials but others are to the idea of piloting a new type of criminal trial which will lead to huge challenges legally (especially if the pilot fails). there's also an objection on basic rule of law grounds that the Scottish government proposes a score card for judges presiding over these trials and have said the explicit aim of the policy is to raise conviction rates - obviously this very much goes against independence of the judiciary for the executive to set a policy goal like that and then be monitoring with public score cards.

One of the big problems in recent years in Scotland is ferries to the Western Isles. Much of the fleet is now dangerously past the point when it should be decommissioned. The contract to build replacement ferries went to a Scottish company (in a swing seat) despite their own CEO saying he didn't think they could deliver and the results of the tender recommending against them - it turns out they can't deliver. This has caused various problems for the Scottish government, including Sturgeon attending an event with the new ferries with painted on windows to make them look more finished than they actually are

The latest scandal from this is the co-leader of the Scottish Greens and Minister for Green Skills, Circular Economy and Biodiversity who decided to charter a private catamaran to visit Rum. This came literally the same day as islanders on Mull and Iona called for emergency action as several major ferries in the (old) fleet need work in the dry dock - which means many Western Isles are running on hugely reduced schedules. And there's actually ended up being similar issues on the ferry to the Orkney Isles which was cancelled for a fortnight because the ferry needed emeregency repairs in dry dock. It strikes me as the sort of scandal that sticks (and the sort I'd expect from the death throes of a Tory government - so interesting to see that's how SNP terms end) given that you've got communities who have had a vital lifeline cut, and then you have a minister chartering a private boat to make a political visit. It seems to me all sorts of toxic

[Tamas]

[Josquius]

 

[Valmy]

See this is why you don't talk politics at family functions.

[Tamas]

This piece: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/may/16/michael-gove-leaves-everyone-feeling-theyve-been-natconned

made me realise the Tories have long been on their way of the same transformation that happened with the GOP with the Tea Party leading the way there - here they probably achieved the same with going Brexit retard to swallow the UKIP voters. Just like there the less-than-lunatics accepted the whackos into the fold thinking they can control them, so fast forward a few years and we have the Home Secretary (an Asian Buddhist of all people) holding a conference speech that could get her a spot in any self-respecting fascist and neo-nazi gathering, and Michael Gove as the voice of moderate reason.

[Sheilbh]

I don't buy it. I think it's a demonstration of vibes based politics and I think a real problem that our discourse on politics is utterly disconnected from reality.

Gove went for a job in the Tory party in the 90s and was rejected because he wasn't conservative enough. He's been pro-gay rights and, I think, supported liberalisation of drugs laws since then too. He always characterised his approach to government as Blairite - public services, plus accountability. He has always been on the reformist side of the Tory party - the one area where he is a bit more rightist is, again, aligned with Blair in he was/is a very full-throated neo-con and a bit Hitchens-y about Islam (Gove basically reminds me of Languish ). He has never been on the right of the Conservative Party - but he is fairly confrontational, he got into big unproductive fights when Education Secretary which made him a hate figure for parts of the left and he backed Brexit. So he gets coded as on the right of the Tories, but that's never been his politics. My understanding is that Gove has always and still describes himself as basically a Tory Blairite and I think that is about right.

I think the same happens with lots of figures in the UK at the minute. Johnson, who is intensely relaxed about spending and the size of the state and socially pretty relaxed/live and let live, has become the tribune of the right on vibes alone. Or with who is, I think Jessica Elgot and Stephen Bush have argued very persuasively, our most socially conservative PM in decades, was a committed Brexiteer as a teenager and is dry as dust economically - but gets coded as centrist/liberal wet (and gives off those vibes). Part of it I think is simply that some combination of Brexit and minority Tories have meant we're far more vibes focused but that is disconnected from actual policies that these politicians care about and are trying to deliver.

I always think the same with international politics. I think a lot of how the media talk about and how people understand politics is basically about the discourse of how politicians' PR is positioning them/their opponents are characterising them/their affect rather than their actual politics. I think it's one of the issues that there is that gap and, I think, it's growing.

[Gups]

Gove is somehow managing to make our planning system even worse than it is already. I used to have some respect for him but now he has no policy agenda beyond survival in high office.

[Sheilbh]

I read it as there's no bigger sign that the Tories are incapable of doing anything positive on planning , or how much they bend to their NIMBY constituents than Gove's u-turn on that.

Also I don't get into really disliking politicians but good lord that Theresa Villiers interview in the time was enraging

Theresa Villiers interview: If we keep building, we'll turn our suburbs into east Berlin
The Tory MP admits there is a housing shortage but wants to 'build the right homes in the right places' rather than more concrete tower blocks
Martina Lees
Sunday May 14 2023, 12.01am, The Sunday Times

To her critics, Theresa Villiers is the Conservative MP making it unimaginably harder for younger people to own a home. Commentators have called her "the patron saint of nimbyism" who is "spitting in the face of a generation". Perhaps unsurprisingly, she hesitates to grant an interview. It takes several phone calls — to "manage political risk", as Villiers puts it — before she agrees.

When the 55-year-old finally opens her yellow front door in suburban north London, it happens to be counting day after the Tories' worst local election results since the advance of Tony Blair in the Nineties. It is a "very bad set of results", Villiers concedes, but she will not accept that her planning policy has anything to do with it.

Late last year Villiers led 60 rebel Tory MPs to bulldoze the government into scrapping housing targets. These targets are the big stick that forces local councils to permit enough new homes in their areas — to the chagrin of the nimby ("not in my back yard") brigade. Faced with a backbench revolt as his flagship levelling-up bill came to parliament, Michael Gove, the housing secretary, promised to water down the targets from mandatory to advisory.

This was a "major mistake", according to Gove's predecessor Simon Clarke, who blames the disastrous local election results on "trying to pander to the public's worst instincts" on new homes. Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, says he would reinstate the targets if his party won the next election.

But Villiers is doubling down: "My big priority is to make sure that Michael Gove's promise, that targets would be advisory rather than mandatory, is fulfilled."

Like her icon, Margaret Thatcher, this lady's not for turning. Villiers resolved to be an MP as "a teenager . . . I've been working towards it ever since. Not something that people usually admit these days," she says. Her earliest memories are of dark nights in the 1972 power cuts, huddled by candles and a "weird little back-up oven" in her parents' terraced house in St John's Wood, north London. "I appeared to be growing up in a country which was falling apart. Then along came Mrs Thatcher and put it back together again. That, I think, was what shaped my political outlook."

After studying law at the University of Bristol and Jesus College, Oxford, Villiers became a barrister; she was briefly married to a fellow barrister. Aged 31, she was elected to the European Parliament. The arch-Brexiteer has been MP for Chipping Barnet, a north London seat that voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU, since 2005. Her majority at the last general election, in 2019, was a slender 1,212.

Villiers's hostility to what she calls "overdevelopment" grew after she moved to the constituency, where resident groups are "notoriously well-organised", as a developer put it to her recently.

She has lived in the same two-up, two-down Victorian terrace for almost 20 years. Bought for £296,500 in 2004, it is on a street where bigger houses sell for well above £1 million. Further down the road is a farmer's field. "There were frequent attempts to build things on it," she says as we drive past it later.

First, we sit down in the book-lined kitchen extension that Villiers built to fit in her grandmother's antique dining table. Her modest home has no second kitchen (ahem, Ed Miliband) nor #fourovens, like the kitchen of the former housing secretary James Brokenshire. The only hint of glam is two cabinet photos above the breadbin, where Villiers's pink blazer stands out from a sea of dark suits around Boris Johnson and David Cameron. "There aren't many advantages of being a woman in politics but being able to display a bit of colour is one of them," she quips. Indeed, a framed felt doll of hers — sewed by her young niece — also depicts her in a pink suit.

Does the housing shortage affect anyone close to Villiers? "Not . . . not really in my family, no," she answers, haltingly. "I've . . . I've certainly discussed this with many constituents . . . I mean, I think I, I, I've had the conversation with both the, sort of, the younger generation and their parents who are sometimes living with their older children in a way that they didn't expect."

But, when asked, she cannot name an example of someone's housing story that touched her.

Villiers argues more smoothly against overdevelopment: "I feel, living in a place like Barnet, it would be a real shame if it became indistinguishable from central London, if we lost our green spaces. The threat of that has felt very significant over recent years." As far back as 2016, she cited fighting to protect local green spaces among her greatest achievements.

But she is not just against building on fields. She also won't entertain a "brownfield free-for-all". Most controversially, Villiers opposed the plan to build 351 new homes on a car park next to Cockfosters Underground station, the last stop on the Piccadilly Line. The loss of the "park and ride facility" would discourage public transport, she argues, while calling the London mayor's proposed 14-storey scheme "massively overbearing". "If we turn [our suburbs] into East Berlin, with a whole load of tower blocks like the ones proposed for Cockfosters station, I don't think that would be positive for the environment or for social cohesion."

Her quest to scrap housing targets began after 1,350 new homes at North London Business Park, in Barnet, were rejected by the town hall but approved on appeal in 2020. Elected councillors were powerless to stop development that, she says, was not right for the neighbourhood, "because the [government] inspector will just come along and say, 'Well, you need this development to meet the targets. [The developer, Comer Homes, is now pushing to build almost 1,100 additional homes.] People feel like they're under siege. It's a new big development seemingly every week."

Then came the "mutant algorithm" of Johnson's sweeping, top-down planning reforms. It would have doubled Barnet's housing targets to about 5,000 new homes every year for 15 years, "which really would turn us into East Berlin," Villiers says. "That really sort of radicalised me." She found the idea of zonal planning that removed local powers to reject development "very alarming".

The algorithm brought together backbench MPs. "It became clear that we were all having difficulties with targets," Villiers recalls. Having swiftly sunk the zonal algorithm, housing targets were next on their hit list. "We created a WhatsApp group and waited for the levelling-up bill to appear."

The day before we meet, some Tory backbenchers express reservations via the group. "Short-termism on housing will cost us dearly," warns Mark Jenkinson (Workington). Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South) adds: "We cannot become the party of nimbyism." Villiers, though, insists it's "hardly a big row" and points out that Clarke was not "entirely consistent", having championed scrapping the targets while serving in Liz Truss's short-lived cabinet.

To those who call Villiers the nimby queen, she says nimby is used as a "term of abuse rather than engaging in a debate about how we deliver the homes we need in a sustainable way". She seeks to "address the issues" rather than "get into name-calling". Does she think there is a housing shortage? Yes, she says. "We certainly need to build more homes." She makes this point again and again: "None of us are saying that we don't need to build more houses. I haven't said that to you today. We just have different views as to who takes the decisions." Neighbourhood planning shows empowered local communities can deliver "significant numbers" of homes, Villiers says. "What I and my group were trying to do, to return control to local communities, isn't inconsistent with building houses." They want "the right homes in the right places".

According to Villiers, the problem with how targets are set is that it "demands more and more and more development in London and the southeast", where the pressure is already greatest. "What it should be doing is spread [homes] more evenly around the country." To make that viable, the government must keep its promise to "level up the country" and spread jobs to the Midlands and the north, she says.

That will take decades, I reply. Until then, what will she tell younger Londoners who spend half their income on rent? "The younger generation is also very concerned about conservation of the natural environment. I don't think they would thank us if we destroy it in the rush for delivering excessively high housing targets."

With 2.2 million homes built since 2010, "it is not the case that we're not building", Villiers adds. Her solution to creating enough truly affordable homes is to increase competition in a market dominated by big housebuilders (ignoring that smaller builders cite planning as their biggest barrier) and use compulsory purchase orders to clamp down on land-banking developers who "sit on" planning permissions.

What development would she accept across her garden fence? In answer, Villiers takes me a mile down her road to Dollis Valley, a 1970s council estate that the developer Countryside is regenerating with 631 new homes for sale and social rent. Handsome terraced streets with clay brick exteriors and pitched roofs are "a thousand times better" than the Soviet-style concrete blocks they are replacing, she says. It shows how terraced streets can deliver "fairly dense" development, but in a way the public prefers to high-rise flats, she says afterwards by email.

I agree, but then check Dollis Valley's net loss of social homes for people on lower incomes: 113, it turns out. Villiers did not mention that.

Although I'm not super hopeful with Labour - there's some suggestions they want to fix things but I worry about the left-NIMBYism you're starting to see more often in the Guardian.

I saw one article that really annoyed me about the opposition to the demolition and rebuilding of a housing estate (with current social tenants being rehoused elsewhere). About two thirds of the way through the article they mentioned that there had been a vote of current residents and 97% supported the plan, the rest of the article focused on local Green councillors and the more organised 3% opposing it

[Jacob]

Seems like British construction companies and developers should get their shit together and astro-turf some "we need to build to fix housing" movements.