Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Sheilbh]

Watching the 2018 documentary "WW1 - The Final Hours" about the run up to the 1918 armistice, with historians from UK, France, Germany and US. One of the historians? Kwasi Kwarteng.

Oh yeah he's got a PhD in economic history and has written a few (well-reviewed) books. Off the top of my head he's done one on empire and one on monetary policy - and both are apparently quite good.

He's one of the better qualified chancellors we've had on a purely academic level

[Sheilbh]

Interesting and more up to date piece on the rise of the local MP:

MPs are becoming more local — and it's making the Commons harder to control
With today's voters inclined to shop around, candidates have never been more aware of the importance of their constituency
Tom Calver, Data Editor
Sunday November 06 2022, 12.01am, The Sunday Times

When Winston Churchill lost his Manchester seat in a 1908 by-election, he did not spend long searching for another. Within six minutes of his defeat, the president of the Board of Trade was handed a telegram from the Dundee Liberal Association offering him the chance to stand for parliament in the Scottish city.

After his election, Churchill's top hat was rarely seen there except on short, lavish annual visits in which he was known to spend thousands of pounds in today's money, mostly on alcohol. The ultimate "parachute candidate", Churchill, born in Oxfordshire, spent more than 60 years as an MP in five different constituencies.

His kind is rare now. The proportion of MPs born in the same region as the constituency they represent has risen from 45 per cent to 52 per cent in a decade. Of new MPs elected in 2019, some 60 per cent are local.


Of 38 new candidates Labour has announced for the next election, just two have no local ties at all, according to figures compiled by the broadcaster Michael Crick. Why is politics becoming more local – and does it matter?

When Roy Jenkins turned up in Glasgow to successfully fight a by-election in 1982, he remarked that the city's skyline was "as mysterious to me as the minarets of Constantinople". Indeed for most of the 20th century, not being local was no hindrance to electoral success — take Margaret Thatcher (born in Grantham, represented Finchley) and John Major (born in Surrey, represented Huntingdon).

Philip Cowley, professor of politics at Queen Mary, University of London, suggests this was easier in the days of strong party loyalties. "When party identification was so strong, you could just parachute people into constituencies and it wouldn't matter." You could pin a red rosette on a dog, the old saying goes, and working-class people would vote for it.

Much has changed. Data from the British Election Study shows that voter volatility — how likely people are to change their vote between elections — has been at its highest level since the 1930s after the political realignments of the past decade. If current polls are to be believed, many voters will change their mind again at the next election.



As party loyalties fray, local ties have become more pivotal.

Duncan Baker had spent several years as a local councillor before standing for parliament in North Norfolk for the Conservatives when the Liberal Democrat MP Sir Norman Lamb stood down after 18 years.

He said: "At the selection, I said I'm not interested in standing in any part of the country — I'll only stand in North Norfolk. They laughed and said, 'That's not really how it works'. I said, 'Do you want me to win the seat or not?'" North Norfolk turned blue in 2019 with a 17.5 per cent swing.

This should not be surprising. Research by Cowley found that voters think an MP being from the same area as they are is one of the most important characteristics, and is about as significant as their political views. Social class, education and other demographics do not matter nearly as much.



Being local makes the job of a modern MP easier, says Miriam Cates, a beneficiary of the Tories' 2019 march on Labour's red wall. The former science teacher grew up in Sheffield, down the road from the Penistone and Stocksbridge constituency she now represents.

"When your kids go to the local school, use a doctor's surgery, your constituents' concerns are your own concerns because you're part of the community," she says. "If I had to go to a completely different constituency and people wrote to me about this road and that pothole, I'd have to start over completely."

There are downsides, though — particularly when the will of your constituents is at odds with those of your party. Andrew Gwynne is the Labour MP for Denton and Reddish in Manchester. "If I mess up," he says, "I've still got to come home and face my friends, family and neighbours."

His darkest moments were during the Brexit debates: Gwynne's constituency voted to leave, but as a member of the shadow cabinet he was whipped to vote against Theresa May's Brexit deals. He received death threats.

Evidence suggests the role of an MP increasingly revolves around local issues. Use of the phrase "my constituents" in the House of Commons is at its highest level ever this year, according to an analysis of Hansard.



Some fear that this leaves our representatives less time to focus on national government.

"MPs have become disincentivised on becoming 'thought leaders'", says Cates. "It ends up being only MPs in safe seats who have the freedom to think about national issues. But you want people from all walks of life to be contributing to those processes."

She wants to see councillors given more power to handle local issues, freeing up MPs' time.

There is also the spectre of nimbyism. Building 300,000 homes a year is a Tory manifesto pledge but when Robert Jenrick, as housing secretary, tried to tweak the planning algorithms that would have forced more southern seats to build more homes, stiff rebellion forced him to back down.

Past and present cabinet ministers — including Michael Gove, Dominic Raab and Priti Patel — have all lobbied against developments in their constituencies. MPs who prioritise local issues will make it harder for the government to get stuff done.

Local ties are so strong that some MPs are willing to sacrifice their jobs — and even their prime minister — to avoid going against the wishes of their constituents. Last month some 40 Conservative MPs abstained on a motion that could have prevented fracking, many of them from constituencies that would have been directly affected.

Crucially, some suggest that prioritising local candidates artificially shrinks the pool of available talent: if moving seats isn't an option, then bright Tories growing up in strong Labour areas are unlikely to make it to government — and vice versa.

In 2019, 43 per cent of all newly elected Conservative MPs were councillors, up from 9 per cent the election before. For new Labour MPs, it was 52 per cent. This time, according to figures compiled by Crick, 30 out of 38 Labour candidates are councillors.



"You're not just choosing potential MPs — you're choosing potential ministers," he says. "The danger is Starmer ends up with a load of people who just aren't cabinet material."

Despite spending little more than a few days a year there, the residents of Dundee kept Churchill for 14 years until he was defeated by a prohibitionist. In 1943, the prime minister — by then the MP for Epping — was offered the freedom of Dundee. He turned it down.

This also chimes with the record level of rebellions in the last 20 years. MPs are vastly more likely to rebel than they were in the 1950s. It's interesting that in many ways people now have a Commons they want - local MPs who are willing to rebel - and the results aren't great

I also wonder if, in all the talk of the "populist wave" that's a key difference between the US and the UK (and possibly the rest of Europe). In the US it's been about intensifying and hardening political loyalties, while in the UK (and the rest of Europe?) it's about declining loyalty to the old traditional parties and very high levels of volatility in voter choice - again something people, in theory, thought would be a good thing.

[Josquius]

I get the negatives too but I would say that broadly more local MPs is a good thing.
It is a problem in our system however that the government is made up of local MPs thus the most successful will by nature lose touch with their main job of being al local MP- its a surprise more sitting PMs or cabinet members at least don't lose their elections.

I don't like that they point to the job MPs had immediately before becoming an MP here. I would say serving as a councillor before becoming an MP is a very sensible path to follow- and this says nothing about how many decades they might have been working somewhere else before they entered politics.

As a out there solution that will never happen thought of in a few minutes- Lords reform could help here. In the commons you have your local MPs elected on a very local level (a merger of a few current constituencies so we can have some improved democracy, might also weaken nimbyism), and the Lords elected on a much broader level where you have all the specialists gunning for the top jobs.

[Sheilbh]

I get the negatives too but I would say that broadly more local MPs is a good thing.

I was thinking a bit more about this and it struck me as another example where our democracy is really influenced by the legacies of Enoch Powell and Tony Benn. They disagreed on everything (except about membership of the EU), but it's really interesting that they both pushed for a particular vision of democracy which we sort of have now.

They were both very strongly in favour of referendums, they both wanted party memberships to have a huge role in electing party leaders and they both had a view of the MP as a delegate for their constituents and a channel for their constituents' concerns, as opposed to a Burkean view of an MP owing their constituents their judgement.

I feel like there's an Adam Curtis style documentary in it about how while the main narrative of British politics was post-war consensus then neo-liberal consensus, in the background these two extremists were re-wiring the way democracy was envisioned and functioned

It is a problem in our system however that the government is made up of local MPs thus the most successful will by nature lose touch with their main job of being al local MP- its a surprise more sitting PMs or cabinet members at least don't lose their elections.

It's rare for a PM - not sure who the last PM to lose their seat was - but as with cabinet ministers they generally hold safe seats. I think it's just a function of the fact that unusually for a party of government the Tories have increased their number of seats in every election since 2010. There was a wipe out of Lib Dem cabinet ministers (and Labour shadow cabinet ministers) in 2015 and for the Tories in 1997 (plus Chris Patten in 92).

I suspect we're in for a lot of cabinet ministers (and possibly Johnson) losing their seats if the polls hold up and 2024 is a landslide  

I don't like that they point to the job MPs had immediately before becoming an MP here. I would say serving as a councillor before becoming an MP is a very sensible path to follow- and this says nothing about how many decades they might have been working somewhere else before they entered politics.

Yeah although I wonder if councillor background is part of what's shaping the problem of MPs doing so much casework. On the one hand I agree with the point that I think it speaks to the lack of power and prestige for local councils and councillors, which is a big problem in our system that everything is so centralised.

But also I feel like what you want from a local MP is actually someone who is well-versed in the issues in your constituency and has ideas on how to fix them at a national policy level, rather than someone who is just going to be very good at blocking a controversial housing development, getting some extra money for the local leisure centre and helping write letters on local immigration or housing cases.

As a out there solution that will never happen thought of in a few minutes- Lords reform could help here. In the commons you have your local MPs elected on a very local level (a merger of a few current constituencies so we can have some improved democracy, might also weaken nimbyism), and the Lords elected on a much broader level where you have all the specialists gunning for the top jobs.

But that runs into the problem - which is always the case in a two chamber system - of who has precedence. In that system I'd say there's a case that actually the Lords would have a greater democratic mandate on a national level. I'd be inclined to go the other direction with Lords indirectly elected as a Senate or "house" of the nations and regions.

[The Larch]

Yet another "issue" that could be solved by abolishing single member constituencies. 

[Sheilbh]

Although not sure which bit

[mongers]

Sunak administration is likely to notch up it's first policy success on the 14th December....

Outlasting the Liz Truss 'premiership'.

[Tamas]

Sunak administration is likely to notch up it's first policy success on the 14th December....

Outlasting the Liz Truss 'premiership'.

Early days.

[Sheilbh]

Thought this was an interesting piece on Williamson's resignation. I think it will be interesting to see how politics evolves as more "normal" workplace standards become part of Westminster life. My own take on the scandal was that I didn't really see the Morton texts as that bad but thought the comments to civil servants were totally unacceptable - I think because with Morton he was an MP, she's Chief Whip; with the civil servants he was a minister and they're more junior. But I'm not really sure that actually holds up under any analysis:

What the Williamson saga says about the future of British politics
    9 November 2022, 2:59pm

I wonder if the fall of Gavin Williamson is the latest evidence that British political parties are becoming harder to govern. It seems quite possible that his resignation is part of a story that will see Rishi Sunak struggle to command Conservative MPs to accept difficult choices on tax and spending. Any upset could even bother the bond market. Additionally, this story carries a warning for Keir Starmer.

Contrary to some of the media narratives visible today, the end of Williamson is more complicated than 'Bad man who did bad things quits – Hoorah'. Sam Coates of Sky News has written a very good piece about the resignation of Sir Gavin, pointing out that for all the negatives of his public image, there's a reason that four of the last five Conservative PMs considered him a useful and even necessary part of government.

In sum, Williamson is good at getting MPs to do what their leader wants them to do. In Sunak's case, that meant making him leader unopposed. For Theresa May, it meant a confidence and supply deal that kept her and the Conservatives in office after the 2017 election disaster. You can see why leaders value the things that people like Williamson can do. He may not have held the title of chief whip in the Sunak government, but one of his main functions in that government was to do what whips do: make sure MPs do the leader's bidding.

The process of getting MPs to follow instructions is rarely a pleasant one. Everyone knows the quote about making laws and making sausages. Well, Williamson is one of the people who stuffs the meat into the grinder. He enjoyed it too, which helps explain why he has so many enemies, who have now used his past conduct to undo him.

One perspective on this is: about time too. Politics needs to catch up with the modern world. In most workplaces, nasty messages, threats (implied and direct), coercion and fear are not considered acceptable management tools. Instead, most employers now seek to empower, support and care for colleagues, whose wellbeing and happiness is considered an important goal of management. I spend a bit of my time talking to members of the CEO-class and almost all of them name recruitment, retention, morale and development of staff as high priorities. The imperial CEO, barking at fearful underlings, is largely a myth – at least in publicly-owned companies.

So, the argument goes, politics needs to get with the programme, start treating MPs as adults and drop all the 'dark arts' nonsense. Then, maybe, we'll get better people standing for parliament and politics and policy will get better.

I have a lot of time for that argument. I've spent most of my career in places that have a rather anachronistic approach to HR and management: fear and loathing are commonplace in parts of the media and politics, but they're rarely the most effective way to achieve things. And undoubtedly, such a culture is exclusionary: people who can't or won't endure shouting and pressure don't take part. Yes, people who can't stand the heat aren't in the kitchen. But that means a lot of talent goes unused.

The Williamson downfall is another sign that the culture of the outside world is slowly seeping into Westminster, changing political norms for the better. Ten years ago, Williamson's messages to Wendy Morton wouldn't have been news. They would have been seen as routine and unremarkable grumpiness between political colleagues. Twenty years ago, such communication would have been seen as insipid and bland; 'bullying' at that time meant the threat or reality of physical violence, probably involving alcohol.

And a decade or two earlier, such violence was simply part of the business of whipping. Walter Harrison, the Labour whip who kept the Callaghan government in office by keeping Labour MPs in line, famously grabbed a newly-elected Jack Straw by the testicles to explain to him the importance of following the whips' instructions.

No one should lament the passing of such a culture. Nasty behaviour towards parliamentary staff and civil servants in particular has been tolerated for far too long, even at the very highest levels. I've known household-name politicians whose treatment of their staff would have got them sacked from any proper workplace. One in particular continues to enjoy a public reputation for towering moral integrity that is extremely hard to reconcile with his treatment of staff who couldn't answer back.

But importing the norms of normal workplaces to Westminster raises some big questions, not least about how possible it will be for governments to actually govern. MPs are not employees of political parties. Technically, they're not employees at all – they're office-holders. The only people they ultimately answer to are their voters. That means they're under no obligation to follow the party line. This is where whipping comes from: how do you get a large group of independent individuals (some of whom may well think they, rather than you, should be in charge) to do what you tell them to on a routine basis?

For decades, the answer has been a combination of moral suasion, charm, bribery and intimidation: vote the way we tell you to, or something bad will happen. Williamson, even his many enemies would agree, is very good at deploying that combination of tactics.

He's not alone, of course. Really effective whips are always regarded with a measure of fear by colleagues. It is unnecessary (and unwise) for me to name them, but such MPs can be found on both the Tory and Labour benches, politicians who have done things that are at least comparable to the acts now attributed to Williamson.

No doubt members of the whip's guild are looking at the Williamson saga with keen interest, wondering what is now acceptable and unacceptable. If a cabinet minister can fall because he sent nasty messages and said nasty things, just how much pressure can whips reasonably apply to MPs to make them fall into line? Their flocks will also be pondering the same thing.

This is how the end of Gavin Williamson increases political volatility. It says to MPs that they have even less reason to comply with the instructions of the whips and the leadership. This is likely to further accelerate the trend for MPs from newer parliamentary intakes to put their relationship with their constituents ahead of their obedience to the leadership.

Generations of MPs, who know only a political climate shaped by social media are less and likely to behave like 'lobby fodder', a phrase that is increasingly falling into disuse as a result. Instead, they are tribunes of their local area, willing to say no to things that might displease the voters who elected them.

For Rishi Sunak, that's an obvious problem. His primary objective as PM is to hold together a fractious and divided Conservative party until the next general election. The path to that election leads through some very rocky terrain, starting with the Autumn Statement next week. A political environment in which Gavin Williamson is a weapon that cannot be deployed is an environment in which it will be even harder for Sunak and his team to make Tory MPs to accept a fiscal tightening programme that could include raising more money from inheritance tax.

This is why I think Williamson's departure should be seen as a small negative for gilts. It means Sunak's challenge in implementing his fiscal plans will be greater than it might currently appear.

And this is where the warning to Keir Starmer arises. It's a reasonable bet that he'll be PM after the next election, but probably without a huge majority. He will also inherit those same dismal public finances, forcing him too to make some hard choices and then demand his MPs support them. When and if that day comes, he may find himself very privately wishing he could deploy someone like Gavin Williamson, yet be unable to do so because those (healthy, positive) social norms of political conduct make doing so impossible.

The end of the 'dark arts' in politics is nothing to regret, but we should be clear-eyed about what it might mean. And one consequence could be greater political volatility and weaker governments.

Written by
James Kirkup
James Kirkup is director of the Social Market Foundation and a former political editor of the Scotsman and the Daily Telegraph.

In particuar thinking of the local MP point and the fact that MPs are rebelling earlier in their careers and more often than ever before - as counter-intuitive as it is, it feels like there is an issue with fewer MPs just being party hacks/lobby fodder who'll do as their told in the hope of becoming a junior minister. It feels like it will be an issue for Labour too - the only exception is the SNP who have extremely effective party discipline, but also re-appointed a chief whip who sexually harassed an aide who has been driven out of the party.

[Sheilbh]

On party hacks I thought this was interesting on how Starmer is very ruthlessly making sure candidates of the left don't get selected as candidates - so far I think of 40 selections only one has been from the left and she was the candidate at the last election.

Starmer's quiet purge of his would-be MPs
Labour leader is determined not to be surprised, embarrassed or held hostage — whether his majority is one or 100
Patrick Maguire
Monday November 07 2022, 12.01am, The Times

6am, May Day, 1997. New dawn has broken, has it not, over the Royal Festival Hall. Tony Blair, having won a parliamentary majority that might make Kim Il-sung blush, tells the faithful he was elected as New Labour and will govern as New Labour. Cue D:Ream. But some among the throng fear he is writing a cheque his 418 MPs — whoever they are — might fail to cash. "Now we've won," Peter Mandelson told his giddy confrères, "we'd better find out who on Earth these new MPs are before we go home."

And so, rather than hit the tiles, the party's powerbrokers made for Millbank Tower and went back to work. Blindsided by the scale of their victory, New Labour's new model army was full of people the leadership never imagined would win. "We screened candidates," one survivor of that morning-after-the-night-before confesses now, "but we never thought so many would be elected. We tended to ignore people beyond a certain point." Candidates themselves had been similarly complacent. "I didn't expect to get elected," one told a Labour official. "How am I going to tell my wife?"

So who on Earth were those new MPs? As Blair would learn to his cost once the hard grind of government began, not all were true believers. Elected in 1997 were backbenchers who disdained him, like the barrister Bob Marshall-Andrews, left-wingers such as Kelvin Hopkins and John McDonnell and livewire mavericks like Helen Brinton, whose antics shamed him. They did not bring down his new government — how could they? — but they certainly embarrassed a party preoccupied with message discipline and, in time, undermined its agenda.

Sir Keir Starmer defers to a coterie of Blairite greybeards on nearly all things, but this mistake of theirs is one he will not repeat. His parliamentary party will be kind to him, for he intends to fix it. Or, rather, his aides are busy doing so: ruthlessly, shamelessly and, unfortunately for the Corbynite left, competently. They know exactly who their MPs will be. Much more important to the Labour leader's future than either of the parliamentary by-elections this year are the selection battles unfolding in each of the party's longer-than-usual list of target seats for 2024. Mainly because the latter are the sorts of elections you can rig.

Rishi Sunak's modest progress in the polls has not yet changed the fact that the victors of these contests, most of which will be wrapped up by the end of the year, are set to make up the Labour majority of tomorrow. Funnily enough, Starmer is winning every one of them. Of the 39 candidates so far selected by local parties to the seats that must turn red if Labour is to win the next election, none — not one — are what you could call a Corbynite or even of the left. Instead, as the journalist Michael Crick has chronicled in tweets that have shone a light on the skullduggery of Labour high command, they are Starmer people to a man and woman. Progressive professionals, more often than not competent local councillors, they wear their politics lightly and are unlikely to frighten horses of even the weakest disposition.

Each contest follows a familiar pattern. Candidates apply to a seat deemed winnable. Those who are really serious announce their bid with their own documentary film in which they ponderously pace suitably benighted streets, pore over their own baby pictures and pay tribute to the last Labour government. Dennis Potter put this sort of shtick best in Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton, his own misery memoir of a no-hope run with a red rosette: "To be a candidate is to submit to a personally humiliating experience . . . the set smile freezes on your face like a grin on a corpse. Dead ideas. Dead thoughts. Dead slogans. All of them sicked up on your doorstep." But Starmer's team note no shortage of interest in this most undignified of experiences.

Consider the perseverance of the multimillionaire Eddie Izzard, almost certainly set to be rejected by members in Sheffield Central. Once their own Ben Hur goes to pixel, candidates collect endorsements from trade unions and local notables. And then, if you happen to be of the party's left — like Emma Dent Coad, the former MP for Kensington — you almost certainly find yourself excluded from the longlist drawn up in Labour HQ. And members are left with no choice but to select the sort of person the leadership is likely to deem sensible instead.

There are no coincidences in Labour politics. This, it barely needs saying, is all happening by design. Two years ago, Starmer promised to give local members full control over selections. Yet since day one of his leadership he has delegated the important but dirty business of professionalising/preparing for government/purging — it's all the same thing — to a tight circle of flea-bitten faction fighters from the party's old right and New Labour wings, and conscientious objectors who kept the Blairite faith during the Corbyn years. In so far as they vet candidates, insiders insist, it is to stop anyone capable of bringing a Labour government into disrepute getting anywhere near a ballot paper, even in the safest of Tory seats.

Starmer has no intention of being embarrassed by any nasty surprises on his backbenches, whether he has a majority of one or 100. Nobody wants another Jared O'Mara, the Sheffield publican selected in a hurry in 2017, hailed as a hero for unseating Nick Clegg, then unmasked as an online troll. Disrepute and embarrassment, of course, are in the eye of the beholder. You might think it embarrassing to support Arsenal, say, while the Labour leadership is bothered by intemperate tweets and past support for the causes Starmer has disavowed.

Those close to him maintain it is no factional purge and instead a basic test of competence. "We don't just need good MPs. If we end up with a majority of one, we need good ministers. Look at Chris Pincher," one Keir confidant told me, referring to the former Tory deputy chief whip accused of groping. "Bad candidates become bad MPs who can bring down governments all by themselves." These "bad candidates" tend to be of the party's left, but insiders insist they are acting not against factions but "cranks and antisemites". Shadow ministers see the looming selection process in Islington North, home of the suspended Jeremy Corbyn, as the purge's high noon.

Starmer once subscribed to Tony Benn's idealistic view of party unity, that Labour could not fly on one wing alone. No longer. His heavies are reshaping his MPs in his own image. All they need now is something for them to vote for once they get to Westminster.

It's really striking because the big demand of Corbyn and his wing of the party since the 80s has been mandatory re-selectioon of MPs and the left occupying all the committees to basically purge moderates/strengthen the left. Basically creating a sort of permanent party democracy. But they achieved very little in that - there were huge fights over it in the Corbyn years - now Starmer's managed to utterly de-fang the left and is out purging them from candidate lists and even getting the odd re-selection. The left really have a point about Starmer campaigning as "Corbynist but competent" and has broken basically every pledge he made in the leadership election - but he's 20 points ahead in the polls, so no-one cares

It's been a thing in my area. The constituency I'm in is in the top ten safest Labour seats, with Labour winning about 70% of the vote - our local MP, Harriet Harman, is standing down at the next election after 40 years. So it's an incredibly plum seat. And it's been chaos. There were resignations in the local party committees after the HQ removed a left candidate - apparently because of "historic social media activity, including liking a tweet by Green Party MP Caroline Lucas before he became a councillor". 

Then the local constituency nominations produced a shortlist of three. The head of the left-wing New Economics Foundation and former adviser to Brown and Miliband, a former councillor who set up various youth charities and a current councillor and council cabinet member. But the central party suspended the local party and have now added another candidates, a senior advisor to Sadiq Khan and former councillor/council cabinet member. The central party have also announced that they'll run the constituency vote so there'll be no verification by local party people. It's almost like they're trying to run the most obvious fix imaginable

[Tamas]

The Just Stop Oil protests that have disrupted the M25 motorway around London over the past four days are to pause, organisers have said, to give the government time to reconsider issuing fresh licences for oil and gas extraction.

That is some excellent pro-Russia policy they have there.

[Josquius]

The Just Stop Oil protests that have disrupted the M25 motorway around London over the past four days are to pause, organisers have said, to give the government time to reconsider issuing fresh licences for oil and gas extraction.

That is some excellent pro-Russia policy they have there.

Argue if you like that they're doing more harm than good for their cause but pro-Russia? That has nothing to do with what they're doing.

[Tamas]

The Just Stop Oil protests that have disrupted the M25 motorway around London over the past four days are to pause, organisers have said, to give the government time to reconsider issuing fresh licences for oil and gas extraction.

That is some excellent pro-Russia policy they have there.

Argue if you like that they're doing more harm than good for their cause but pro-Russia? That has nothing to do with what they're doing.

If you reduce domestic production but do not reduce domestic consumption, that is good for foreign exports into your country.

[Josquius]

The Just Stop Oil protests that have disrupted the M25 motorway around London over the past four days are to pause, organisers have said, to give the government time to reconsider issuing fresh licences for oil and gas extraction.

That is some excellent pro-Russia policy they have there.

Argue if you like that they're doing more harm than good for their cause but pro-Russia? That has nothing to do with what they're doing.

If you reduce domestic production but do not reduce domestic consumption, that is good for foreign exports into your country.

Or for investing in alternative solutions.

At best you can argue their work is having the side effect of helping foreign imports.

[Tamas]

Alternative solutions are for addressing the demand site. They want to address the supply side.