Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Valmy]

I tell you what though.... that Jenrick eh? What an odious wanker.

Yeah - and especially considering that he was to the left of Badenoch until about two minutes ago. I don't mean to be cruel but I think the switch happened around the same time he discovered Ozempic.

What's the link, the fatter you are the more liberal you are?

If that was true Texas would be a soviet socialist republic.

[HVC]

I tell you what though.... that Jenrick eh? What an odious wanker.

Yeah - and especially considering that he was to the left of Badenoch until about two minutes ago. I don't mean to be cruel but I think the switch happened around the same time he discovered Ozempic.

What's the link, the fatter you are the more liberal you are?

If that was true Texas would be a soviet socialist republic.

Are your liberal city yuppies fatter than your rural conservatives bumpkins?

Maybe it's a relative rather than absolute scale

[Sheilbh]

My particular dislike for him is based on his inauthenticity. I suspect he might even be a liberal. But his desire to be Tory leader and maybe PM trumps all this. I find Badenoch (nutter) and even Farage (authentic right wing arsehole) preferable.

Yeah I think it's really telling with him. When you talk about authenticity I think he is the opposite - which is, I think, why people react against him so much when they actually see him. They can just tell. I think he's good at the two minute guerrilla campaigning stuff on social media but I think it was true during the leadership election that the more people saw him, the less they liked him while they warmed to most of the other candidates (interestingly, not Cleverly and I wonder again if he just comes across as a bit too smooth/inauthentic).

I also think it is an interesting pattern with the Tories now, on their second leader from a minority background who is genuinely quite right-wing and was a Brexit supporter when the party leadership was pro-Remain. And in both cases their main internal opposition was from a white candidate who started on the left of the party, was a Remainer and is now running very much to their right.

FWIW on Badenoch I think she's the best choice for the Tories and I think her strategy is right. But, ultimately, the job of a Tory leader in this parliament and at the next election is simply to keep the party alive and a going concern. That's not a small challenge - as I say, I think of the options she's probably the best to do that and I think her strategy is right. I also thought her challenge in her speech to the emerging "ethno-nationalism" on the online right was effective - a bit like Shabana Mahmood's at Labour conference - if immediately undermined by Jenrick who she has to back because she's not got the capital to fire him (yet).

What's the link, the fatter you are the more liberal you are?

I've no theory, no judgment - just facts And in Jenrick's defence he apparently did a marathon and got very into running so I'm sure there's a lot going on there.

[mongers]

So any actual news happening in the UK worth putting the tv news on for? 

[Tamas]

I just can't understand how the Tories can think they can overtake Farage from the right. They have been trying since the Ukip days.

By the way there is this O'Briab fellow on LBC he had an interesting point: the Tory party has imploded because of their ideological success. In the sense that they were able to enact everything the media supported them was wishing for. We left the EU. They got Johnson, their party's and their media's darling elected. Then, heck, they even had the uber-Thatcher parody Truss to dial thst part of their ideology to 11.

They have succeeded in all their goals and thus their idiocy has been revealed,abd they collapsed.

[Savonarola]

Back when I worked in cellular there were trigger events which would result in everyone using their phone at once.  Stadiums are a good example, everyone had to text after a spectacular play.  This would overwhelm the network and we would always over-dimension the network in known problem areas.  I was reminded of that when I saw this very British technological record in the IEEE Spectrum:

Biggest Teatime Electricity Spike

Brits love their tea. That's why the United Kingdom's National Grid engineers have to manage surges in energy use during popular broadcast events, when many viewers put their kettles on simultaneously. The biggest spike occurred during the 1990 World Cup semifinal. Just after England lost the game-deciding penalty shootout, demand surged by 2,800 megawatts, equivalent to the electricity used by approximately 1.1 million kettles.

There's even an interactive graph on the site which, among other things, compares that power surge to the power needed to power a Delorean from 1955 to 1985.

[Sheilbh]

I just can't understand how the Tories can think they can overtake Farage from the right. They have been trying since the Ukip days.

That's Jenrick's pitch to take over the Tories, but that's internal party fights. It's not what the actual leader of the party is doing.

By the way there is this O'Briab fellow on LBC he had an interesting point

First time for everything

I think there's something to it - to a point. Brexit split the Tory party. Johnson was a darling of the grassroots but not the parliamentary party - he was a calculated risk (as in they knew his flaws but thought he could win, he did and then his flaws destroyed him and them). But I don't necessarily think it's idiocy or wish fulfillment or unique to the Tories because I look at this Labour government with 170 seat majority after fourteen years in opposition hitting exactly the same buffers and spinning their wheels in the sand. And so many of the challenges they're facing are the same problems and issues and syndromes are recurring.

Back when I worked in cellular there were trigger events which would result in everyone using their phone at once.  Stadiums are a good example, everyone had to text after a spectacular play.  This would overwhelm the network and we would always over-dimension the network in known problem areas.  I was reminded of that when I saw this very British technological record in the IEEE Spectrum:

A partner at the law firm I used to work with got to visit the National Grid Control Room, which I was very jealous of:


They have stories of things like the royal wedding and the 2003 Rugby World Cup final (in Australia, so in the morning here) and needing to make sure they've got supply on stream for those surges

[Savonarola]

Back when I worked in cellular there were trigger events which would result in everyone using their phone at once.  Stadiums are a good example, everyone had to text after a spectacular play.  This would overwhelm the network and we would always over-dimension the network in known problem areas.  I was reminded of that when I saw this very British technological record in the IEEE Spectrum:

A partner at the law firm I used to work with got to visit the National Grid Control Room, which I was very jealous of:


They have stories of things like the royal wedding and the 2003 Rugby World Cup final (in Australia, so in the morning here) and needing to make sure they've got supply on stream for those surges

That's cool, we have the big board in rail too.  Here's the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) one:

[Sheilbh]

I am very jealous of jobs that involve big boards - especially if analogue

[Tamas]

Badenoch wants to leave the ECHR among other things, it's not like she is far removed from this Jenrick character.

[Sheilbh]

It's not a hill I'd die on - but I'm fully aware that I currently work in media and I think ECHR jurisprudence has been an absolute disaster for press freedom. I'm also very strongly opposed to some of the emerging cases in Europe - there were a couple from Switzerland and Portugal which I think are really bad (and, interestingly, the British judge on the court strongly dissented from as being massive judicial overreach). Also it's not binding at a European level yet but there's been a couple of decisions that wealth taxes are against human rights from national supreme courts - so highly persuasive authorities if not yet at the European level. I am, at best, very ambivalent on the ECHR (as incorporated into UK law) - ironically for many of the reasons that Labour opposed the ECHR when it was being written (I find it interesting how these issues which are particularly divisive now: Israel/Palestine, ECHR, Europe all ones where left and right have flipped positions).

I wouldn't be surprised if Labour end up there before the next election - we've already got two former Labour Home Secretaries and a Lib Dem Lord and a leading human rights KC talking about it needing "reform" or "temporary suspension". They're right although I actually think the main issue is how domestic courts have interpreted it and the way it's been incorporated into domestic law under the Human Rights Act but that's less exciting. I think that's definitely the case in the press freedom cases where it's not actually the European Court but domestic courts interpreting European case

There's also criticism by that Lib Dem peer (and, indeed, Tony Blair) of the Refugee Convention - I wouldn't be surprised if there's a challenge to that before long either. Plus Reeves apparently looking at leaving the Aarhus Convention (on environmental decision making).

[Tonitrus]

I am very jealous of jobs that involve big boards - especially if analogue

I had once had a chance to visit/see the Alaskan NORAD Region big board (which also had a stuffed polar bear next to it).  Twas' pretty cool. 

[Sheilbh]

I see where you're coming from there. Trouble is with this path the working class get left out which means we head down the far right death spiral.
We need more of a balance. We need to support this higher education side of things, whilst also opening up opportunities for working people.

I don't disagree from a political perspective.

But I think path dependency matters and we can't just re-imagine our economy's strengths and it happens. I think, ultimately, the sort of lever we probably need to pull are industrial strategy, nationalisation, British preference in procurement etc - for political purpose. Not because it's necessary for national security or even necessarily good for the British economy as a whole but because it is good for the body politic. Obviously that is in breach of lots of international trade law, including the TCA with the EU which would be challenging.

Going into the mystic dark arts that area way beyond what I can grasp a bit here, but I do wonder if this is related to the talk of introducing a UK-ISA. More stock market than bond market focussed, but it could be turned that way too.
But yes. Another part of Japan's incestuousness here.

I'm surprised at this. Not education. But public works seems to be something where Japan spends a tonne.
I wonder whether their system of privatised-but-not-really is masking the numbers here with all that infrastructure officially being private sector spending.

So on this, the yield on Japanese 20 year bonds:


At the highest level since August 1999 - just months after the BoJ started its zero interest rate policy for the first time. And a lot of countries' debt yields (including ours) look like that with rates back at what they were in the late 90s.

There are structural drivers for this and real fiscal challenges for the UK. This is where I think the influence of American discourse is really unhelpful because the idea that we could get out of this via MMT or a one off wealth tax on billionaires/"the 1%" is for the birds. That stuff might work for America - the world's most important economy, the richest, the most important currency etc.

But I think the fundamentals here are really worrying. Household consumption is low (in part because households are actually still reducing their debt from the 2000s - as a share of GDP). We've got one of the largest goods trade deficits in history (and one of our major manufacturers - with hundreds of thousands of jobs in its supply chain - has had to stop production because of a cyber attack). We've got a deficit to cover current spending which is making capital spending more expensive as rates reach their highest levels in decades (and consistently above the rest of the G7 for the first time since Truss). At the same time the private investment story is deteriorating over a variety of issues: lack of Treasury support, planning issues, the life sciences industry looking like they're going on strike over NHS pricing (we pay about 25% less for drugs than other countries because the NHS uses its purchasing power ruthlessly). Weak consumption, weak exports, weak investment and increasingly expensive public spending. We're not America on this.

Yeah this solar power in the desert thing is something we really need to see happen on a much bigger scale.
Though given recent lessons with the Iberian grid....

To be clear I think it's a bad idea - not so much the Iberian rid as Russian subs and a big wire from Morocco to Devon is a lot to protect. I think we're in a world that is less and less tolerant of the very efficient, the thin stretched networks whether that's supply chains or just-in-time or power infrastructure. We need to be thinking far more about resilience (which in my view also means, largely domestically and democratically controlled) and spare capacity..

Would be nice. Maybe this RR micro-reactor stuff will lead somewhere.

I agree although even that feels like a classic story - British tech developed by a company here. It can't be deployed here because it's drowning in red tape, but going ahead in Czechia and Poland already

Potential for sure.
Though with the current wave, I could be wrong, though I really hope I'm not, I do think it has been oversold.
We're kind of at a .com bubble sort of stage where all these grand ideas are firing off but the technology and state of development just isn't there for them yet.
I also think there is a risk for the government in being very gung ho about AI while simultaneously increasing the cost of employing people.
I do think we're going to see a bit of a reversal on the cuts in the short term as more and more companies realise AI isn't delivering the miracles they expected.

Maybe but I think the way grad recruitment/entry level recruitment works that may not be enough for the cohort that have come up in recent years.

My basic view on AI is perhaps a little pessimistic. I think it's either going to be transformative technology that will boost productivity, to the benefit of capital and at the expense of labour. It'll do to white collar jobs what the cotton mills did to the skilled working class of that era - or automation to some jobs in the last few decades. That'll have huge social and economic consequences that will need to be managed politically.

Or it's a massive misallocation of capital that could have been more productively used elsewhere. Markets will eventually realise that and we'll face a crash I think closer to 2008 than the dotcom bubble. Which will have huge social and economic consequences that will need to be managed politically

Yes, probably so.
Even assuming a Harris win I do think we were drifting this way as we have been since the end of the cold war- the resurgence of Russia the past decade or two being a bit of a blip that halted things. Though longer term with Russia thrashing itself on the rocks in Ukraine and eating up the last of its power, along with the middle east declining in importance, US interest was firmly heading away.
With Trump though things have sped up and it has become a far more acrimonious split.  Less of the idea that there's a collaboration here.

I'm not so optimistic on any of this

[Tamas]

Is your support for leaving the ECHR a part of your shift to the far left, Sheilbh? :p

The Tories want to leave because they are blaming it for having to take "refugees" in. Of course just like brexit it wouldnt solve a thing.

[Sheilbh]

Is your support for leaving the ECHR a part of your shift to the far left, Sheilbh? :p

On this I have very much been radicalised by being aware of the sort of stories that get spiked because it's likely to be judged a breach of someone's "right to private and family life". That's the big problem in press freedom in the UK now, not defamation - and unlike defamation the defences are far more limited. If it's a breach of the human rights (of the rich and famous and powerful) then it doesn't matter whether it's true or honest opinion.

But having said that I am also very opposed to the right to property as it is in the convention and the case law (which is why Labour opposed the ECHR and the Tories supported it). And I've moved to the left, not become more of a liberal I've a huge amount of time for the liberal tradition but I don't really agree with the whole dispersing and diffusing power and counter-majoritarian institutions. I think that's part of the problem we face - we need the opposite in democratic societies, to "dare more democracy". We need to be building up and consolidating power (in democratic not technocratic institutions) because the power of the rich has become far, far more concentrated.

The Tories want to leave because they are blaming it for having to take "refugees" in. Of course just like brexit it wouldnt solve a thing.

From everything I've read it would have a big impact on some parts of immigration - particularly family reunion and deportations where the "right to private and family life" has been interpreted very broadly. It is something Mahmood and Cooper before her flagged that what were supposed to be "exceptions" to the rules now apply in over a third of cases.

Also deportations of criminals and suspected criminals. See the alleged murderer and rapist in Brazil who cannot be extradited (despite an extradition treaty with Brazil) because Brazilian jails do not meet the human rights standards of British jails.

On the other hand I actually have a fair bit of sympathy for the obstacles (not exclusively from the ECHR) in the 15 year effort to extradite Abu Qatada (formerly of al-Qaeda) for a terrorism trial in Jordan which ended up with a specific UK-Jordan treaty to prevent torture. I think that case frustrated a lot of people, including every Home Secretary from David Blunkett to Theresa May - but I think that was a good outcome.