Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Tamas]

I mean, what is the point of articles like this in a leftist paper?

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/aug/23/members-of-far-right-party-organising-asylum-hotel-protests-across-uk-facebook-posts-show


First a long description that half a dozen racist twats are posting on Facebook trying to get a national racist event organised. Wow, even Languish has more active posters than that.

After several paragraphs detailing their views and their history, there is one brief paragraph of an anti-racist counterpoint.

Then a similarly brief summary of the government's position, committing to close these hotels.

Then the second longest, and closing, section explains Farage's take on the situation and how he says he would just quickly throw everyone out and be done with it.

[garbon]

I do love the people say crazy things and we will report them with a straight face as though that doesn't give it anymore legitimacy.

[HVC]

The point is you read it. Ad views are all that matters. Journalism is a business like any other.

[Tamas]

The point is you read it. Ad views are all that matters. Journalism is a business like any other.

True but the problem is this just adds to the pressure towards populism and constant outrage, which in turn fuels extremism.

[Tamas]

I do love the people say crazy things and we will report them with a straight face as though that doesn't give it anymore legitimacy.

It is annoying. I increasingly think that this "journalistic integrity" is just moral cowardice and compromise. By featuring lunatics like this at the same lenght, exposure and seriousness as, say, the government, or just, you know, sane people, you elevate them. Take a bloody stand.

[Tamas]

Nick Clegg's article about his time at Facebook, well I think it is more about his time entering the closest thing to the real world he has ever been.

It is most apparent here, where he marvels thst people didn't want to just vibe their way to decisions:

And everything – everything – has to be quantified. In an early meeting, I remember being asked by one senior engineer what the percentage likelihood was that government X would pass a law about Y. I laughed. I thought it was a playful joke. The idea that political processes could be boiled down to a sort of faux-science seemed silly to me. He didn't laugh. So I said something like, "Oh, well, 23.67%." He nodded earnestly. I have since come to realise that, in order to persuade people in Silicon Valley, compelling stories are useless without data points for every argument and probabilities for every outcome. And it has rubbed off on me. Approaching problems in a systematic way, however faux the science might be, helps to order your thought process and guide you towards clear decisions.

[Josquius]

I dunno...I sort of agree with him there.
Qualitative knowledge does have value. Trying to quantify qualitative knowledge is often a grave mistake.
Here the guy is accepting the vibe when its a number pulled out of Clegg's arse but not when its a description of the various factors that could make it a bit more likely and the issues with the personalities involved.

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.

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.

Well yes, the reasons why its mostly young men making the dangerous journey are obvious. There's no nasty conspiracy about it. Same reason old people stood out so much in Squid Game.

The point is though just controlling the borders more doesn't work. We've actually tightened up our borders a huge amount...thats exactly why people are coming by sea and avoiding the proper borders. Yet still the cry of "control our borders" and insistence we just have to be tougher goes up. No. We've been trying that for decades. It clearly isn't working.

I've already mentioned how asylum should be handled better, but even that done there'll still be illegal immigration. Controlling the borders isn't going to stop that even if we could magically sink all the boats given most illegal immigrants do originally come to the control legally.
This borders stuff is such a huge distraction, its banging our head against a wall insisting that this time we will finally break through. Instead we should be a lot smarter with controls on doing things in the UK. Get a lot more on the backs of employers to check people's status before they hire them- to please the reform leaning voter in a more sensible way, actually send inspectors around to manual car washes and the like.
Avoid the American ICE approach where you just kidnap people who look a bit foreign and don't have ID in their pocket that second and instead do it in a way where there is the opportunity for illegal immigrants who cooperate on these raids to have a positive outcome...however their illegal employer gets absolutely bollocked.

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.

Ish.
Things definitely need reforming there.
But I do think that on some occasions for employers the significantly less fuss involved in hiring a Romanian would be able to put up a decent fight in some cases against the significantly fewer rights an Indian has and how much more they can be exploited.
I do think it would cut immigration a bit if free movement was just introduced with no other changes (after a few years of backlog clearance).

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

The populists on the left- well, at least their heart is in the right place. Some of what they're saying is correct. But so much naivety and potential unintended disaster.
I've said before when I voted Green (though there it was knowing they wouldn't win and just wanting them to get a good vote share, probably won't vote for them next time as things are), I really think we could do with a few more Green MPs, though I absolutely don't want the ridiculous theoretical of them in power.

The populists on the right- the disaster is intended. They don't actually want to fix most of the problems in the country. They want to turn them up to 11. Its the few shreds of hope we have left that they want to ruthlessly stamp out.

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".

Definitely on the half the price and 90% of the functionality point.

A bit of a problem here though I think is British politics is set up in such an adversarial way and we have the memory of Thatcher.
There's too many assessments. Too much pointless planning. All 100% true....but there's a huge risk, here more than in more sensible countries, that this could flip to the complete opposite and very necessary assessments get cut because they stand in the way of someone's profits.
Of course, what these very necessary parts are, depending on who you ask, is every bit of paper out there....and lets add a few more whilst we're at it.

A civil service bird tells me quite some stories of so much redundancy out there, things developed in silos, not linking up, etc.... There's a big opportunity for a genuine effort at  what "DOGE" promised. Though its clear the smash and grab beasts are at the door.

On the stairs bit in particular- from what I understand this law in the UK only applies for buildings over a certain amount of stories, which seems like just common sense. Whilst in NA its quite the urbanist bugbear because it applies for absolutely everything and makes even basic 2 floor apartment blocks impractical.

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.
[/quote]

[Sheilbh]

I do love the people say crazy things and we will report them with a straight face as though that doesn't give it anymore legitimacy.

I'm not sure.

This is the fringe of the fringe - as Tamas says a smaller group than Languish. But I think there is a difference between the news story out of someone with 200 followers saying something racist on Twitter and a small active, hardcore group trying to organise (and hijack) rallies.

The thing it reminds me of most is the Gaza rallies where there are some very unpleasant groups involved who are basically extreme Islamists and some groups that are anti-semitic. I think there is public interest in exposing when they are involved and how. And the same here. A lot of the protests are hyper-local and organic, but the far-right including the extreme fringes will be at those rallies, probably trying to get them to kick off but also using them for organising.

For example lots of people here before this article have talked about the protests as far-right and we can now say more precisely in what way and how. I also don't think this is at all "legitimising" - if anything I think the opposite. Either you know who you're mixing with or you need to set up a cordon sanitaire on these protests to kick these people out. Again I can't help but think of the anti-semitism issue on the left with the example in that article of Jenrick attending one of these protests and being photographed with a BNP organiser - there's not really any plausible deniability now.

[Sheilbh]

Nick Clegg's article about his time at Facebook, well I think it is more about his time entering the closest thing to the real world he has ever been.

It is most apparent here, where he marvels thst people didn't want to just vibe their way to decisions:

I would also say this is a very engineer way of viewing the world I personally think Nick Clegg should be drummed out of public life and frankly not welcome anywhere. But that's just me

But I do think that on some occasions for employers the significantly less fuss involved in hiring a Romanian would be able to put up a decent fight in some cases against the significantly fewer rights an Indian has and how much more they can be exploited.
I do think it would cut immigration a bit if free movement was just introduced with no other changes (after a few years of backlog clearance).

Legally there is no difference in rights and I am far from convinced by the idea that Indian or Nigerian workers in IT or the public sector are less able to exercise their rights than Romanians or Italians in construction or hospitality.

I think this also underestimates quite how significant Johnson's liberalisation of the immigration rules were. The key changes were the abolition of the "resident labour market test" (which is standard across Europe), lowered the minimum salary to about £25,000 and reduced the skill threshold for a skilled worker visa to effectively A levels. Over 50% of jobs on the labour market would be eligible for a skilled worker visa and there's no resident labour market test (which means showing you have tried to recruit for that role in your home market first, which in the EU is the EU).

It's really difficult to assess different regimes but the combination of a low salary and skill threshold and no resident labour market tests means Britain has probably the most liberal immigration regime in Europe for legal migration. For example the salary threshold for France and Germany is €50,000. The skill threshold for a European Blue Card is a Masters and 5 years of relevant experience. Even in countries that are more relaxed on that, there is a resident labour market test.

The bit that's restrictive in the UK is that visa fees and other charges are high.

So I think given that background (and Sunak and Starmer have narrowed the rules) I think it's very difficult to see how adding free movement to it as well would lead to lower levels of migration.

A bit of a problem here though I think is British politics is set up in such an adversarial way and we have the memory of Thatcher.
There's too many assessments. Too much pointless planning. All 100% true....but there's a huge risk, here more than in more sensible countries, that this could flip to the complete opposite and very necessary assessments get cut because they stand in the way of someone's profits.
Of course, what these very necessary parts are, depending on who you ask, is every bit of paper out there....and lets add a few more whilst we're at it.

I think the adversarial nature of politics is good and actually really important.

I posted this in the other thread but I think a lot of what's driving our problems in European politics is exactly the retreat of politics and particularly adversarial politics of different, competing, contested visions of society. I think it's exactly what is shifting the divide in politics from being left v right to system v anti-system.

A civil service bird tells me quite some stories of so much redundancy out there, things developed in silos, not linking up, etc.... There's a big opportunity for a genuine effort at  what "DOGE" promised. Though its clear the smash and grab beasts are at the door.

Yeah I totally agree - without the memes there is real capacity for something like DOGE. I would add Keir Starmer picking the most institutionalist, Sir Humphrey like candidate to head the civil service was, in this respect, a huge mistake (and one that it seems like Starmer regrets). I know a couple of people in the civil service and whenever I speak to them I just think it sounds incredibly frustrating.

I think there's a bad habit forming of governments getting elected with a big majority and not doing anything with it. Some of that is on them, politically for not preparing or having clear ideas - but a repeated theme that's grown in urgency over the last twenty years from reforming ministers with plans is how difficult it is to get anything done through the system. And I know it's unpopular but this is an area where, again, we need more politicisation. The UK has a very, very low number of political appointees to support ministers. Everyone hates SpAds but most ministers have 2-3, which is incredibly low. There are 130 SpAds across all of Whitehall - there to be the minister's "eyes and ears" but also to help support them and drive their political priorities. By comparison in Australia or Canada, which also have Westminster systems, most ministers have 10-20 aides.

The Institute of Government did a really interesting study focusing on support for the head of government and the UK is an extreme outlier in how little support the PM has - and it goes for other ministers too. The vast majority is the independent departmental civil service who can, I think, just swallow most ministers and their agendas unless they are very, very driven. I started worrying on housing when I read an article with civil servants in Housing saying how much they preferred working for Angela Rayner to Michael Gove (who has been a very effective minister in every department) as she trusted them and didn't want, for example, weekly progress updates on key projects.

On the stairs bit in particular- from what I understand this law in the UK only applies for buildings over a certain amount of stories, which seems like just common sense. Whilst in NA its quite the urbanist bugbear because it applies for absolutely everything and makes even basic 2 floor apartment blocks impractical.

It varies in the US because it's state level but actually they have the same rules. So the requirements in some of the US for a second staircase which they're now abolishing are the ones that the UK is now imposing.

The UK was unusual in having no height limit for a single staircase building (along with South Korea and Switzerland). The new limit will be 18 metres - that is higher than Canada (6 metres or two storeys! :blink). But it is lower than most other countries. So Belgium, Poland, Norway, Australia and New Zealand are at 25 metres, Spain, Portugal and Romania are at 28. Sweden is at 48m, France at 50m and Finland at 52m. Germany, Ireland and Singapore are at 60m and the highest is Austria with 90m. So the UK will be going in at a limit that is, in international comparison, very low.

It wasn't a recommendation in the Grenfell report and government research has basically said it will have a minimal impact on safety. There are actually international studies of fire deaths that found the countries with the fewest were actually ones with the highest limit (Singapore at 60m, Italy at 80m, Austria at 90m and Switzerland with no limit).

The government's initial proposal in their consultation was 30m which would still be low by international comparisons but significantly higher. The reason they moved to 18m is that it aligns with the definition of "higher-risk building" in the Building Safety Act 2022.

I'm not totally sure if it's connected but I've seen that the UK the Building Safety Regulator was established following Grenfell taking over from local planning authorities for building controls of "higher-risk buildings". It is early days but reportedly there are serious problems there and, so far, they have rejected about 70-75% of all applications assessed. Those applications will be really expensive and - to Nick Clegg's point - my suspicion is the reason for a failure rate that high is that the requirements are not clear enough.

Given that those "higher-risk buildings" are over 18m - so denser buildings - I suspect that must be part of the reason housing starts have absolutely collapsed in London where development is more likely to be higher rise:


Affordable housing has really fallen too (again, largely in bigger developments) from starts just over 25,000 the year before the BSR started its work to under 5,000 in 2024-25. In 2025-26 so far (so basically Q1) it's looking even worse. Affordable housing starts are down to 350 across all of London, of those about 65 were buying back existing homes from the private sector. At the minute we're in a run of the three worst years of affordable housing building in London since records start - and private sector, non-affordable starts have also plummeted (because they're often also built in the same big developments). As Gups says London has big targets for housing and zero chance of meeting them right now - because we've increased regulatory complexity and increased costs.

[Sheilbh]

How far off is a possible Labour leadership/PM revolt, or is Starmer going to run the ship into the rocks/holding out for a miracle (or at least a hope for better days over the next ~4 years)?

I just wanted to come back to this as I meant to reply.

It's not clear. Historically Labour does not like challenging or replacing a sitting leader - so they might often have votes (Labour used to have annual or after every election leadership votes but generally the leader ran unopposed). I think the only time they've ever done that was the challenge to Corbyn in 2016. Obviously by contrast in my lifetime the Tories have replaced Thatcher, Iain Duncan Smith, Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss through some form or other of leadership pressure (often not the party constitutional way of removing a leader but it becoming politically untenable).

I think the question of the likelihood of a leadership challenge is also shaped by the leadership rules.

In the Tory party you can remove a leader. So if enough MPs put in letters saying they don't have confidence in the party leader there will be a confidence vote among MPs. If the leader loses or subsequently resigns they are barred from running in the following leadership election. That leadership election functions by MPs whittling the field down to a final two who are then presented to the party members to choose.

By contrast, Labour cannot remove a leader they can only elect a new one. So the process is that enough MPs need to nominate a challenger. The existing leader is automatically on the ballot. Labour's electoral system is preferential voting. So basically the losing candidate is knocked out and their votes redistributed until a candidate has 50%+1.

Like anything, both of those have strengths and weaknesses. But what it means is that it isn't enough for Labour MPs to be really frustrated or want to remove Starmer. They need to coalesce around candidates with enough support to beat him. I think Starmer does not have much of a base of support in parliamentary party or the membership so beating him would be pretty possible in my view. But getting to the point of nominating a challenger I think will be more difficult.

Because of that, I think there's probably a bit of a Mexican standoff going on. So when Labour challenged Corbyn (and 80% of MPs supported his opponent), they nominated one candidate because they thought that was the only chance of winning (as it turns out Corbyn increased is majority among the membership). In this case I think Starmer would be likely to lose, which means if one candidate goes several are likely to join. I suspect that is helpful to Starmer. It's a bit like the situation with Harold Wilson, who was a vastly better politician, most of his cabinet were very talented and thought they'd be better at doing the job - he was leader for over ten years (winning multiple elections) and survived until a shock resignation precisely because all of those crown princes (and princess) were watching each other and not able to move first.

The right of the party would back Wes Streeting (there are some conspiracies that quite a lot of Starmer's team would also basically want Streeting to be leader now - Starmer was supposed to be an interim/bridge leader). The soft left would probably back Angela Rayner. The hard left might not be in the party anymore and might not have the numbers to nominate a candidate.

There is a wild card in all this, which is Andy Burnham. I think he would absolutely sweep a leadership election (and is the only Labour figure who voters think would be a better PM than Starmer - though in all cases there's lots of "don't knows). His term as Mayor of Manchester is up in 2028 and there are rumours that he is planning to get an ally to step down in a safe seat so he can return as an MP. It is also striking that there are at least some signs of briefings against him by Number 10 which suggests he is seen as a risk (unclear to me if that's a risk to Starmer or Streeting). The gamble is whether it's worth waiting until 2028 or if that'll be too late (although if the new left party takes off I could see Burnham doing a Macron and consolidating the liberal centre with the Lib Dems).

It's why I wouldn't bet against neither of the main parties going into the next election with their current leaders - or even current MPs. With Labour, I think you could see Burnham and with the Tories, there's a fair bit of polling showing that a leader who would significantly cut the Reform vote in favour of the Tories is Boris Johnson. Even though neither are in parliament right now.

[Tonitrus]

Much more thorough than I expected...thanks. 

[garbon]

I'm not sure.

This is the fringe of the fringe - as Tamas says a smaller group than Languish. But I think there is a difference between the news story out of someone with 200 followers saying something racist on Twitter and a small active, hardcore group trying to organise (and hijack) rallies.

The thing it reminds me of most is the Gaza rallies where there are some very unpleasant groups involved who are basically extreme Islamists and some groups that are anti-semitic. I think there is public interest in exposing when they are involved and how. And the same here. A lot of the protests are hyper-local and organic, but the far-right including the extreme fringes will be at those rallies, probably trying to get them to kick off but also using them for organising.

For example lots of people here before this article have talked about the protests as far-right and we can now say more precisely in what way and how. I also don't think this is at all "legitimising" - if anything I think the opposite. Either you know who you're mixing with or you need to set up a cordon sanitaire on these protests to kick these people out. Again I can't help but think of the anti-semitism issue on the left with the example in that article of Jenrick attending one of these protests and being photographed with a BNP organiser - there's not really any plausible deniability now.

That's okay, I am sure.

I don't read the Guardian so I don't know exactly what that article says. I can see though across reporting on their website and their tv broadcast, that the BBC has given ample coverage to the protests outside of hotels housing asylum seekers and close ups on the signs and slogans being used by the protesters ('hands off our kids' or bizarrely a couple holding a flag with their own names on it 'Grace and George'). In a similar vein, as Tamas mentioned, this past week, news outlets have been covering Farage's message that if he were in charge he'd solve the migrant crisis by mass deportations (ideally to their original country of origin).

All of that is crazy and I can't help think the first one helps whip people up more into a frenzy and the latter one helps people go 'look reform is saying they'll fix it' despite that being an entirely unworkable solution. By providing the platform, the BBC is helping to spread these views; they are giving them oxygen.

I'm not surprised given the BBC is the organisation that did the below (as one should just spread knowledge of Trump's comments but offer no critique) but I am disappointed that nothing seems to have improved.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naga_Munchetty#Trump_comments

In September 2019, Munchetty was ruled to have breached the BBC's guidelines by criticising US President Donald Trump for perceived racism. That July, while presenting BBC Breakfast with Dan Walker, Munchetty took issue with Trump's comments telling his opponents to "go back" to the "places from which they came". Munchetty said: "Every time I have been told, as a woman of colour, to go back to where I came from, that was embedded in racism. Now I'm not accusing anyone of anything here, but you know what certain phrases mean."

The BBC was criticised for its decision to uphold complaints over Munchetty's comments. Several public figures, including Lenny Henry and Adrian Lester, signed an open letter asking the corporation to reconsider its ruling against her.

On 30 September 2019, it was reported in The Guardian that the complaint was also made against her co-host Dan Walker but his comments were not the focus of the BBC's executive complaints unit (ECU) investigation. Later that day, the Director-General of the BBC Tony Hall overturned the decision after looking into it personally.

[Josquius]

The Brexit Broadcasting Corporation continues to operate as usual.

[Tamas]

I wanted to link the photo from a Guardian article but it seems they have replaced it with close-up to get more dramatic effect, but it was from one of the hotel protests this weekend. The protesters were a handful of people maybe 30,surrounded by a thin circle of police to protect them from the counter protesters who were at least 3 times as many.

So these protests for now ARE being blown out of all proportions but with the kind of heavy lifting the media as a whole are doing they will become significant.

I am not sure if it is a coordinated effort to whip this hotel thing up into something major outside of the nazi circles, but the intention is sure there across the supposed political divides in the media.

[Josquius]

The flag stuff is taking off around here. Been hearing a lot about it.
The councils will need to take them down of course, but that's just what the flag boys want. It let's them play the victim. Fascism for Dummies chapter 1.
I've been wondering what a good response from others would be. I'm leaning towards writing a message on the flags. Something about diversity or so maybe. Or remember Jo Cox.
Or to play them at their own game, NUFC on all the flags in Sunderland and SAFC on the flags in Newcastle and so on.