Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Legbiter]

Reform has picked up Suella. Good luck with that?

Like, what's the point?

I dunno. Care home for failed Tories? 

[Jacob]

It reminds me a bit of the first act of the BC Conservative Party in BC. I don't know if it'll follow the same trajectory though.

[Sheilbh]

Reform has picked up Suella. Good luck with that?

*Pikachu surprised face*

On the one hand the party that is losing MPs is probably not doing well - on the other hand I'm really not sure that losing some of the least popular and most divisive figures of the last few governments hurts them and I'm not really sure that helps Reform.

I'd also note that Farage has never really been very good at working with a wider party - and Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick have a history of being spectacularly disloyal. So that may be an interesting dynamic.

Separately Badenoch's personal approval ratings and the Tories ratings have improved (since party conference when she did well and Jenrick flopped, ending the leadership speculation). I think she has the right strategy and it is showing. It's only one poll but one out today that showed them just one point behind Reform - and I'd add that Reform having plateaued at about 30% have now fallen back to about 25%.

Struck again at just how strident and personal Tory comms are on this. I fully get that politics is a contact sport - but a little uncomfortable with the line about her "mental health" and being "clearly very happy". I think they have now retracted - but not nice:


Meanwhile in Labour think there's a lot to this piece in the Times:

Keir Starmer can block Andy Burnham but can't save his premiership
The prime minister's move lays bare a leadership increasingly at odds with its party, fearful of voters and running out of time
Patrick Maguire, Chief Political Commentator
Sunday January 25 2026, 7.45pm, The Times

It looks weak because he is weak and the choice was between different expressions of weakness. There was no good option for Sir Keir Starmer on Sunday because good options ceased to present themselves to his government a long time ago. He did what he could do, what he wanted to do, and used the remnants of his power over the Labour Party to block Andy Burnham from returning to Westminster as MP for Gorton & Denton.

He was strong enough to do that and only that. The prime minister and Morgan McSweeney, his chief of staff, remain in control of Labour's internal bureaucracy. Their steamroller veto of Burnham's candidacy by eight votes to Lucy Powell's desultory one proves that much. They are increasingly at odds with its prevailing culture, inspire resentment among many of its people and have shrunk its electorate in the country — and so it is doubtful that they are strong enough to weather the consequences.

That this experimental era in Labour politics probably wasn't going to end well was already obvious. If Burnham had been allowed to stand, he might have hastened that end with a challenge to Starmer's leadership within a short few months. They have stopped him from doing that — for now, at least — but in doing so have started another debate they lack either the political vocabulary or authority to win. Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary and chairwoman of Labour's ruling national executive committee, saw this coming. Uneasy, she made sure to shield herself from what is to come by exercising her right to abstain and lavishing Burnham with praise on the BBC.
Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham speaking at the Labour Party conference.

Her colleagues will not be so lucky. Latent but deep resentment over the Starmer-McSweeney school of political management is what unites every faction of the Labour Party beyond that which is employed by Downing Street or the microscopic one whose members count the prime minister as a personal friend. The Burnham veto is the purest, pithiest expression of everything the party hates about its leadership: autocratic, unilateral, narrowly self-interested. You don't have to want Burnham to be prime minister to think that. Starmer's critics will say that Downing Street has thrown Nigel Farage an eighth MP to buy themselves another few months in charge. Those critics are right.

The prime minister was also right, in his impassioned speech to the officers of the Labour NEC, to highlight the risk of the mayoral by-election in Greater Manchester that would have followed Burnham's election to parliament. Starmer said it would cost his party money it does not have at a time it can ill afford to be outspent "ten-to-one" by Reform UK, whose return on that investment would be one of the most powerful offices in England.

If you want a more elevated explanation than self-preservation, there is no shame in going along with that, but what, exactly, does it amount to? Under my leadership, Starmer was admitting, this party is too broke and too unpopular to risk asking the voters of Greater Manchester — Greater Manchester! — for a mandate. The other half of the No 10 defence is the accurate observation that the public hate political psychodrama and punish those who create it. What is most striking is that they have conceded, albeit indirectly, that the same public hates the prime minister most of all.

That much will be revealed when the Gorton by-election comes. Only Burnham could have won it for Labour. Starmer's critics now fear the party will not only lose it, but forfeit their claim to challenge Reform entirely, as was the case in Caerphilly last October when Plaid Cymru galvanised progressive opposition to both the government and Farage. This time it is Zack Polanski's insurgent Greens who stand to benefit. "A Reform win would be terrible," said a sometime adviser to the leadership. "But a Green win would be existential." Already imperilled by one unwinnable test of his electoral appeal in May, Starmer has chosen to contrive another in February.

It will deplete the dwindling reserves of goodwill in a parliamentary party with no appetite to take political pain on behalf of its leader: just listen to what they're saying about reforms to special educational needs provision. It puts Starmer at odds with the deputy leader of the Labour Party, dozens of his MPs, several trade unions, Ed Miliband, Sir Sadiq Khan, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting, whose own criticisms of the leadership's imperious style now sound a little more resonant.

It radicalises MPs who neither know nor like Burnham but know they do not like Starmer's style of leadership. It vindicates those already inclined to think the worst of the prime minister and alienates at least some of those who, against their better judgement, had elected to give him the benefit of the doubt for a little while longer. It makes a martyr of Burnham, rather than the nuisance he might have been. It surely shortens Labour's wait for this premiership to end.

And apropos of nothing (I think the three comparisons from the 1979-83 parliament are quite interesting.)


But the main thing is the correct faction of the Labour Party are maintaining control of the party bureaucracy.

Edit: I'd add two points - one made by Dan Hodges who I often disagree with but think is correct on this: 'The strategic problem Reform now have is this. Are they genuinely going to convince people a party led by Kemi Badenoch are a group of wet, effete, liberals. Or are people going to think "if this lot are even further Right than Kemi, then there's something a bit odd about them".'

The other is that even Polly Toynbee is calling for Starmer to go which is a real ravens leaving the tower. She wrote the article I think Tamas posted earlier this year about how the government's actually done lots of good stuff and just need to talk about it more.

[Richard Hakluyt]

That picture of Braverman snuggling up to Farage though 

They clearly couldn't care less about the nation's mental health 

[Richard Hakluyt]

Another incremental improvement by the current government :

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2026/jan/27/leaseholders-england-wales-ground-rent-cap-250-a-year

Not sure how many leaseholders were being ripped off by the old system; but this is a worthwhile improvement which will help them a lot at no cost to the public purse.

[Sheilbh]

Gorton might get a bit more messy. Reform have picked Matt Goodwin () who I think is very much the wrong type of candidate. The Muslim Vote group have endorsed the Greens - not sure the sway they'll have but they were very involved in the campaigns of several of the Gaza independents. And the Muslim community in the constituency is apparently too small to win the seat on their own but could swing it, so if that endorsement helps it might well go Green. (Can't help but feel that would be a tactical defeat for Reform/the right but a strategic win as I think it would increase concerns about some forms of light sectarianism/communitarianism in some areas.)

Separately there are apparently two separate letters doing the rounds (both with 50+ people signing up to them) in Labour expressing no confidence in Starmer. And apparently Rayner is up for a run as the candidate of the soft left - I could be wrong but I slightly suspect that people in the Labour Party who really like Rayner possibly underestimate the extent to which "having to resign for dodgy tax affairs" has hurt her with the wider public.

There's an interesting technical detail which I think helps explain how Starmer is still hanging on (and may yet survive), which is that Labour and the Tories have very different rules on leadership - and we've got used to Tory psychodrama and leadership spills. (I'm not fully sure it's even appreciated within Labour.)

Basically in the Tories 30% of MPs is enough to get a no confidence vote. A leader who resigns or loses a no confidence vote cannot run in the subsequent leadership election. That leadership election has a fairly low threshold of MP nominations and MPs then vote over several days until they're whittled down to a final two candidates. The members choose the leader from the final two.

There is no vote of confidence mechanism in the Labour Party (which is why 80% of his MPs saying they had no confidence in Corbyn after the Brexit referendum did not remove him). The leader can only be removed by a successful challenge - so an alternative candidate needs to get (I think) nominated by 20% of Labour MPs. The sitting leader is automatically entered into the leadership election, unless they choose not to stand. There are no knock-out rounds for MPs to narrow the list to two favoured candidates, instead all candidates go to the full electorate which is one man one vote of all Labour members (and affiliated supporters).

In short - letters of no confidence don't really matter for Labour no matter how many MPs sign them

[Valmy]

Are the Green going to supplant Labour as the party of the Left like Labour once supplanted the Liberals? Are we going to see the Lib-Lab-Dem party fighting for third place soon?

[Sheilbh]

I think it's possible but that's more a function of how far Labour collapse. I think the Greens have a ceiling - I think it's about 15-20% - like Reform (I think probably around 30%). But they also know that and are not trying to build a broad coalition party but appeal to that 15-20%.

For example, as Tamas has pointed, I think their official policy is still to leave NATO as well as unilateral disarmament. This is very in line with the Corbyn-left view. As they rise in the polls this will be more of an issue* - see recent interview of their Deputy Leader with Lewis Goodall (apologies for Twitter link but they didn't put this on their BlueSky account):
https://x.com/LBC/status/2015397649696841795?s=20

How all of that works with a FPTP system which is designed to produce big tent parties is a bit unknown. My own view is that voters are very sophisticated in tactical voting and knowing who to vote for from a "negative" mandate perspective. A really good example is in 2024, the Lib Dems gained over 60 seats - they also doubled the number of seats where they lost their deposit (which I think is getting less than 5%). That's becuse it was an anti-Tory vote. So all the anti-Tory votes consolidated behind the Lib Dems where they could win and the Lib Dem vote collapsed where the best placed anti-Tory vote was someone else. So whether the next election is an anti-Labour/Starmer one or a "stop Farage" one matters - or the people may hate both in which case we'll get messy results as you'd get just putting the polling numbers into an electoral calculator.

*Another very technical point on this - I know someone who is involved in Green politics. They go to conference, they've successfully had policy proposals adopted by the party. They think the Greens are going to have a huge problem if they get any traction because of what's in their manifesto and how that manifesto works. So the Greens are very democratic and have a "living tree" manifesto. That means any policy adopted by party conference since the founding of the Greens is still party policy until a subsequent party conference votes to remove it. There is a lot of weird stuff in there about defence but also some slightly dodgy, slightly Malthusian 1970s Green policies about population control etc. If they are doing well, in an election campaign, a journalist is going to notice what's in their "living tree" manifesto.

[Valmy]

For example, as Tamas has pointed, I think their official policy is still to leave NATO as well as unilateral disarmament.

Oh I didn't realize they were so weird on this one topic.

Leaving NATO would require massive re-armament. Do they think in the era of Trump, Xi, and Putin anybody can just run around saying "All You Need Is Love" and have a few bed-ins for peace?

It is one thing to withdraw from foreign alliances but if you do that...well then you will have no allies. And will have to keep the bullies and vultures at bay yourself.

[Sheilbh]

I've said before that I'm an enormous admirer of the German Greens. That is, in large part, because I know about the British Greens

But also it's all fairly standard for the British hard left. I think in American terms left of Labour is a little bit Henry Wallace-ish - just a naive wilful blindness on some issues.

[Legbiter]

Britain should be all about cheap electricity like we are. I pay pocket change for utilities, don't even notice it. Just build more stuff, fuck the boomers, build several nuclear power plants, build modern coal plants, build more nuclear weapons, spend more on children than boomers in their last years. Rejoin the EU so you're not picked off by either the burgers or chinks.


 

[mongers]

Britain should be all about cheap electricity like we are. I pay pocket change for utilities, don't even notice it. Just build more stuff, fuck the boomers, build several nuclear power plants, build modern coal plants, build more nuclear weapons, spend more on children than boomers in their last years. Rejoin the EU so you're not picked off by either the burgers or chinks.

 

I approve of some of your message, curate's eggish.   

[Tamas]

The truth is, the UK is still a very comfortable place to live for most people. There are obvious storm clouds gathering around housing and other infrastructure, but these are not nearly bad enough to prompt people to take a risk at potentially disturbing the comfort they have accustomed to.

[Sheilbh]

I thought this story was interesting - and I hope the government hold the line:

England planning proposals fail to mention safety of women and girls, say critics
Draft proposals likely to 'embed risk and inequality', campaigners and urban planners say
Alexandra Topping Political correspondent
Wed 28 Jan 2026 13.00 GMT

Government proposals to overhaul England's planning system fail to mention women or girls and ignore official recommendations to keep women safe made after the death of Sarah Everard, experts have told the Guardian.

Draft planning proposals – published two days before the government's strategy to tackle violence against women and girls (VAWG) – are likely to "embed risk and inequality" despite the strategy's insistence that "design and planning are critical tools" in keeping women safe, MPs campaigners and urban planners have said.

The VAWG strategy and part 2 of the Angiolini inquiry, commissioned after the murder of Everard – both published in the same month as the planning proposals – call for women's safety to be embedded into the planning of public spaces.

But the draft National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), which sets out the government's intent to massively increase housebuilding, has "no references whatsoever to women, girls, gendered safety, or violence against women in the built environment", the Liberal Democrat MPs Anna Sabine and Gideon Amos said.

In a letter to the housing minister Matthew Pennycook and the safeguarding minister Jess Phillips, as first reported in the Planner, they wrote: "Planning policy is one of the most powerful structural tools the state has to prevent harm before it occurs. If the NPPF is silent on gendered safety, we embed risk and inequality into the fabric of every new development."

When contacted by the Guardian about the letter, a Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) spokesperson said: "The NPPF is a planning document. It sets out guidelines for housebuilding and planning in England. The VAWG strategy is about protecting women and girls from violence and misogyny."

They said it was "unclear as to why anyone would expect the two things to be combined" and therefore it was difficult to respond to the criticism. It is understood the ministers have not yet formally responded.

It was, said Sabine, an "incredibly arrogant" response. "If you don't understand how women's safety ties in with how we design new spaces, you shouldn't be working at MHCLG," she said.

Susannah Walker, a gender planning consultant who noticed the omission, said the proposals ignored the VAWG strategy and the second part of the report by Dame Elish Angiolini, commissioned after the murder of Everard four years ago. Everard was murdered by a serving police officer, Wayne Couzens, in March 2021 after being abducted off a London street while walking home.

Angiolini said promises of sweeping changes to make women safer as they walk the streets had been hampered by a "paralysis", and officers tasked with "designing out" crime, which exist in every police force, were sometimes ignored and had not all "been tasked with focusing on preventing violence against women and girls".

The VAWG strategy states that: "Women and girls must both feel safe and be safe in every aspect of public life [...] Well-lit streets, accessible transport, and thoughtful urban design can deter violence, reduce opportunities for harm, and send a clear message that public spaces belong to everyone."

Phillips has long-argued that in order to achieve the government's stated ambition of halving VAWG in a decade, all government departments had to play a part.

If councils were not specifically instructed to consider women and girls' safety, they would not do so, said Walker. "Councils are underfunded, so if it doesn't go in the NPPF, then it just gets left out because it's not mandatory," she said. "Coming after two high-level government reports which both talk about designing space to keep women safe, this is the most extraordinary omission."

Sabine told the Guardian she did not doubt Phillips's commitment to get cross-departmental buy-in on ending violence against women and girls, and asked her to "march into" Pennycook's office to change the draft framework.

"We have a world that's largely designed by and for men," she said. "But if you take into account women and girls' safety, you can make very practical decisions that will really benefit women and girls' lives."

Thought it showed a few things that I think are problems in British politics and why everything is quite sclerotic. First was just the ease of going from campaign to MP to an article in the Guardian (and it is always the Guardian citing "experts" ).

Another is that it reminds me of a paper done by a think tank recently that Rory Stewart picked up on. It basically said that the problem with the British state is "everythingism". They basically argued that basically every policy the government pursues is a means of promoting every national objective/addressing every issue at the same time (also often framed around being holistic or joined up or engaging all stakeholders). So housing policy is not about housing but also biodiersity net gain and nitrogen imbalances in rivers and violence against women and girls etc.

Rory Stewart's example was that he was Secretary of State for International Development during the Syrian refugee crisis - obviously a very big issue for his department. He went to meetings at the MoD, Intelligence Services, FCO and basically discovered that all of the relevant DfID team were dialling in from East Kilbride in Clydeside. He said this is a really important issue and there'd be side meetings and he needed civil service support in London. He was told by the Permanent Secretary that the relevant team were based in East Kilbride which was a core part of DfID's role in helping regeneration projects there. So he agreed but asked if they could come to London for these weekly all department Syria meetings - which was agreed. He gets to the next meeting and his team are dialling in again. He says the Permanent Secretary told him that they'd have to fly for it to be a one day trip and that would go against DfID's role in achieving net zero. Stewart found it incredibly frustrating but used it as an example of this every policy has to address every issue at once (I'd add from my devolution perspective that it's a classic civil service approach to devolution and regeneration as well: put part of what's now the Foreign Office in East Kilbride, or the Treasury in Darlington - because they'll never challenge London in the way that, say, Glasgow or Newcastle might).

The other thing is the alarming number of people in public life who don't seem to understand that the solution to council underfunding is not to just keep on adding new mandatory things that it needs to consider. That will just increase the pressure on already underfunded councils to review more impact assessments and consultants' reports (and give them more reasons to reject planning proposals). Developments need to deliver x number of houses (y% of which should be affordable), should also have commercial space delivering z thousand jobs, produce a biodiversity net game, have a neutral impact on nutrients in nearby ground and water, protect any possible species nearby, have new public amenities, "design out" crime, help us meet our statutory duty to reach net zero by 2050, preserve local heritage assets etc - but you've still only got one underpaid planning officer to assess all of this (and introduced about ten different bases which NIMBYs could challenge in the courts).

I don't necessarily think this is a bad idea on its own terms - but on top of everything else involved in planning and with no extra resources for councils to actually do it I don't think it's helpful.

[Tamas]

I have noticed that often what the Guardian call an "expert" is just a person committed enough to an idea or course of action to join/form a lobbying group for it.


Also I have read that one of the handful useful things the government has embarked upon, namely reforming regulation on rented properties, lifting it to about 1960s levels of civilisation, well they have delayed making the new rules mandatory until 2035 which is as good as cancelling them.