Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Josquius]

With rich foreigners its worth considering too that it influences what gets built.
If there's a patch of land ripe for development in central London and a company knows they can build a few luxury flats to sell to rich Chinese people and earn a mint, they're likely to outbid a housing association who wants to build a larger number of social houses to rent out to key workers.
Its why we have laws about minimum social provision.

As said this sort of thing isn't in big enough numbers to totally fix even London's local problems. But many a mickle...

[HVC]

I think it depends where you are. I certainly hear land banking a lot more and I suspect in both cases there are specific areas of the market where it has some truth.

The overseas buyer thing I imagine is true in the luxury developments market - which very often have marketing suites in Singapore and Dubai etc. Similarly I'm sure there's areas where land banking is an issue.

But in both cases it strikes me that they're broadly symptoms of the fundamental issue which is about pricing and predictable steady development (plus, with overseas buyers, the other classic stuff which makes property in the UK an attractive asset).

It does have a trickle down effect. If foreignRich by the "best" local rich buy a step down as local supply is tapped out. Raising prices. Which trickles down to the next tier and so on. The level of buying is debatable, though I agree. Though There was a huge uptick here when China starting changing its banking and money move rule a few years ago.

But my bugaboo is Airbnb.

[Gups]

There's definately an issue with overseas buyers and the effect is not limited to luxury flats. Asian buyers are much more willing to buy off plan and that is obviously hugely attractive to developers to the extnet that the development may not even be viable otherwise. Developers otherwise pay a huge amount upfront (buying the site, securing planning, demolition/site clearance, construction) which they have to finance before they get any receipts.

Meanwhile, London property was seen in Asia as an excellent store of savings even with no income

The Chinese property crisis (with lots of buyers losing their money havng bought off plan)  and the flat London market has definately dampended demand but for much of the last 15 years overseas buyers have certainly had a material effect on the market.

 

[Sheilbh]

Not so much overseas buyers but general second home buyers are a big problem in areas like Cornwall, the lakes, west Wales, etc...

This has a local impact for sure. And it does stick in the craw that, say, Sir Simon Jenkins has his home in Kensington (with a garden) but also a holiday home (I assume from this answer)

Do you have more than one home?

I've got one home, which is in London, but we have a family holiday house in Wales.

But this came up on Twitter today and second home ownership in the UK is around 3% which is one of the lowest in Europe (again, about the level of the Dutch). Very jealous of the almost 20% of French with a second home

[HVC]

I have one home, but in multiple locations. Orwell would be proud   

[Sheilbh]

It's an amazing answer

Having a second home would be boastful, gauche. Just like on his education "ended up" in private school then a university release (Oxford, of course):

Public school or state school? University or straight into work?

I started out in the state system and ended up in the public system at Mill Hill School. I enjoyed school when I was younger – I found primary and prep school exhilarating – but I found public school much more inhibiting. Then I found university a release. I went to St John's College, Oxford.

[HVC]

I'm more annoyed someone with the title sir is trying to be humble. Why have nobility if they're not going to be braggarts

*edit* even faux appointed nobility

[garbon]

The King going into hospital for his enlarged prostate and Catherine going for abdominal surgery. At first I was like who the fuck is Catherine?

[Sheilbh]

I get they want to be more transparent than they were under the Queen....but meh

Separately hundredth anniversary of the first Labour government - and I'm looking forward to David Torrance's book and Radio 4 documentary on it. As someone who's always taken (and still does) the classic view of MacDonald as traitor, I thought this was interesting - particularly the impact of that first betrayal on Labour.

I've also always heard that MacDonald is the reason Labour tends not to like charismatic leaders - because of the lesson/risk from him. It prefers predictable committeemen (and it has always been men) who will steer a middle course and keep the party together, and only reaches for charisma in extremis, such as Blair after 15 years in opposition. It is interesting how opposed it is to the Tory party's narrative of itself (and you can see how Johnson was trying to play into this) where some of its greatest heroes have been u-turning, charismatic bounders who would absolutely be willing to sacrifice the party for personal ambition.

Labour is stalked by treachery
Since MacDonald, its leaders have all been labelled traitors
BY Tom McTague

. 'Ramsay MacBlair' (Kirsty O'Connor - WPA Pool/Getty Images)

Tom McTague is UnHerd's Political Editor. He is the author of Betting The House: The Inside Story of the 2017 Election.
January 17, 2024

Ramsay MacDonald should be one of the great figures in Britain's political imagination: the man who rose from nothing through force of personality and circumstance to become the country's first Labour prime minister 100 years ago next week. But he is not. Few in Labour will even want to mark his anniversary. This is partly because, like most pre-Churchillian prime ministers of the 20th century, he has been eclipsed in our national imagination. But mainly it is because today MacDonald is a shunned figure: Labour's Judas, the man who betrayed his party for power, a traitor to his class.

To understand Labour's seething discomfort about its first prime minister is to begin to understand why that great angst-ridden movement seems unable to drag itself into power without cries of treason being raised against its own leaders.

MacDonald is shunned because of his fateful decision in 1931, during his second stint as prime minister, to form a "national government" coalition rather than go into opposition with the rest of his party who wouldn't back the spending cuts he wanted to balance the budget during the Great Depression. MacDonald had offered the King his resignation, but was asked to stay on at the head of a new emergency government. He accepted and when he was expelled from Labour, created his own "'National' Labour Organisation" which he led to the biggest landslide in British electoral history, crushing his old party in the process.

The problem for MacDonald was that the vast bulk of this new national government wasn't his. There were 473 Conservatives to only 13 new "National Labour" MPs and 68 Liberals. MacDonald had, in effect, enabled a Tory landslide, leaving his old party with just 52 seats. No wonder the Labour party felt betrayed by MacDonald. Imagine if something like this had happened after the great financial crisis of 2008, with Gordon Brown creating a national government to impose George Osborne's austerity programme.

To understand just how appalled Labour was — and still is — by MacDonald's behaviour, you need only take a look at its official account of what happened. "The 1924 government lasted only a few months," reads the quickfire history of its first prime minister published on the Labour Party website. "Five years later came the election of the second. Dominated by the world economic crisis, the following two years were focused on action to tackle the unemployment of the Great Depression. It was not an easy Parliament and the 1931 election saw only 52 Labour MPs elected." I suppose "not an easy parliament" is a fair description.

The party's refusal to even mention MacDonald's break reveals far more than it conceals: both how uncomfortable it is about that first failure as a political party, when it proved itself singularly incapable of managing the crisis it faced, and about the dangers of its own kind abandoning the cause once in power. "The fear of the great betrayal starts with MacDonald," one senior Labour figure put it to me. "It starts there and has never left us."

There have only been three other elected Labour prime ministers — Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson and Tony Blair — each of whom faced repeated claims of betrayal, all of which were indelibly shaped by MacDonald's memory. Throughout his premiership, Blair was, rather straightforwardly, accused of being "Ramsay MacBlair". And Clement Attlee, despite loathing MacDonald for his actions, ended up being accused of treachery for introducing prescription charges.

Even Harold Wilson, who had made his name as a Bevanite man of the Left, was tarred, particularly during the depths of the "July crisis" of 1966, when he announced a fresh round of austerity to protect the value of sterling. To fend off such comparisons, Wilson used a centenary lunch that year, intended to mark 100 years since MacDonald's birth, to claim Labour's first prime minister had died in 1931 when he joined the national coalition and not, in fact, five years later when he actually passed away. An appalling assessment by any measure.

For some, the depth of their loathing for MacDonald has a lot to do with class snobbery. He was easily Britain's most working-class prime minister. And as such, he could not win, assailed from both sides for getting above his station — for enjoying the company of the rich and the royal far too much. A century on, Angela Rayner must know how he feels. As ever, class remains the sedimentary rock of British life upon which all else is built. And much as I think this is true, the tragedy of MacDonald is far more profound. MacDonald could have rejected the King's advances and taken Labour into opposition. But he could not have avoided the charge of betrayal forever, for it is the fate of all Labour leaders to campaign as liberals but govern as conservatives.

The conservative philosopher Maurice Cowling wrote that the essence of liberalism was the belief that "there can be a reconciliation of all difficulties and differences" in life (which he said was plainly false). In The Meaning of Conservatism, Roger Scruton argued that this was the liberal faith that lay at the heart of today's "spirit of improvement" — the inclination of the liberal, as he put it, to "change whatever he cannot find better reason to retain". Conservatives like Scruton and Cowling, by contrast, do not believe all difficulties and differences can be reconciled — or, in fact, should be. To govern is to weigh up competing goods and to make least worst choices based on incomplete information.

The fate of all Labour prime ministers, then, is to campaign with the "spirit of improvement" but to be forced, once in power, to choose between options which you previously hoped could be reconciled. Harold Wilson promised to modernise Britain and to protect its global influence, but as prime minister was forced to sacrifice one to save the other — maintaining the value of the pound to protect Britain's overseas commitments at the cost of dousing the flames of his very own "white heat of technology". (In the end, of course, the austerity he chose to protect the pound did not work and he lost both his economic plan and Britain's global influence.)

This Wilsonian attempt to reform Britain at home and conserve the country's influence abroad lies at the heart of many of the Labour Party's difficulties over the years. Tony Blair sought to protect British influence in Europe and the United States, but was forced to choose between the two when George Bush insisted on the invasion of Iraq. Clement Attlee was similarly forced to accept the reality of Britain's financial restrictions after the war, forcing him to betray the Left by chipping away at the NHS's founding principle of "free at the point of use".

There is little reason to believe Keir Starmer can avoid the fate of his predecessors. In one obvious sense, he has already been tried and found guilty of betrayal by the Left for breaking the promises he made to secure the leadership. During the Labour leadership campaign, Starmer pledged to "reverse the Tories' cuts to corporation tax" only to then order his MPs to vote against the Tories' own decision to reverse their own cuts themselves. He also pledged to "defend free movement as we leave the EU", only to then make keeping out of free movement a red line in any future relationship with the EU. But the fundamental challenge for Starmer is that it is impossible for him to reconcile all of the competing promises he has made to the wider electorate and so will, inevitably, betray someone.

In his speech at the Labour Party conference in October, he turned to the party's history to illustrate the scale of his ambition: "If you think our job in 1997 was to rebuild a crumbling public realm, that in 1964 it was to modernise an economy left behind by the pace of technology [and] in 1945 to build a new Britain out of the trauma of collective sacrifice, then in 2024 it will have to be all three." It was a neat formulation, connecting Attlee, Wilson, Blair and himself — and yet, what if these goals cannot be reconciled, but end up in competition with each other, as they did for Attlee, Wilson and Blair? What if, like Wilson, the truth is that Starmer will have to choose between his ambitions? Modernising the economy and rebuilding public services after the trauma of the pandemic might mean dramatically reducing the amount of money spent on sickness or old age benefits, for example. Good luck with that.

Even Starmer's neat account of Labour's record of government is, on closer inspection, as incomplete as the party's account of MacDonald's second spell as prime minister. Did Wilson really modernise an economy left behind by the pace of technology, as he promised? That's certainly not how it looked in 1966, when he abandoned economic planning to protect the pound. "The 1964 Government had been elected with the slogans of 'purposive', and 'scientific' planning held high," writes the author Ben Pimlott in his largely sympathetic biography of Wilson. "Wilson had believed in planning, and built his rhetoric upon it. Now planning... had to be set aside. A hole was created in Labour's raison d'être which, arguably, has never been filled."

Pimlott published this in 1992, five years before Blair became prime minister. But Blair did not seek to return Labour to any sort of Wilsonian economic planning either. Instead, he largely accepted the structure of the economy built by Margaret Thatcher and attempted to fill the hole left in Labour's raison d'etre by using the proceeds of this new economy to improve public services and reduce poverty. The problem for Starmer is that even this option has now gone, blown apart by the financial crash of 2007/08. And so what is left?

Today, Labour's economic plan remains markedly empty. Rachel Reeves's £28 billion a year green investment package has already been scaled back. Labour does not plan to rejoin the EU, its single market or customs union — and nor does it show much appetite for a trade deal with the United States. If anything, Reeves's "securonomics" offers more barriers to growth in order to offer the country more security of supply. Today, it is very hard to see how Labour can fulfil its pledge to make Britain the fastest growing economy in the G7.

The obvious danger for a future Starmer government is that without an economic strategy, there won't be enough money to build a new Britain or fix its crumbling public realm. Instead of doing all three of the missions Starmer set himself, he will not be able to do any. And so difficult choices will follow. Should this happen, it will not be long before the ghost of Ramsay MacDonald once again starts to haunt the Labour party.

Although I am less negative on Starmer's plan or chances - though, obviously, all political careers end in failure so...

[Sheilbh]

Separately point I've made before but I think there's so much to this - and I think it ties to other issues in politics. I don't think imperial nostalgia is anywhere near as much of a thing as some do, but I think industrial nostalgia very much is (and fully aware that one provided the capital for the other so...):

The UK's political class needs to learn to love the economy it actually has
The case of the gaming industry demonstrates a worrying dislike for the country's successes
Stephen Bush

Ewan White illustration of Rishi Sunak driving the car inside a game of Mario Kart
© Ewan White

At the close of the 2016 Olympics in Brazil, Japan's then prime minister appeared, unexpectedly, dressed as Super Mario. I don't know if Shinzo Abe was a gamer, and it is ultimately irrelevant: what it reflected was that he recognised the cultural and economic power of a character who is one of Japan's most successful exports.

As it happens, one of Mario's fans can also be found at the heart of the British government: Rishi Sunak used to play Mario Kart on his Super Nintendo and has described it as one of the best games ever. Although the prime minister now has precious little time to game, he is seemingly still interested — he has just finished reading Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, an excellent beach read about the complicated relationship between two game designers.

Sunak is not the only politician in the UK who games — but curiously, there is not a single member of the country's unelected second chamber whose primary source of income comes from its video gaming or esports industry. It is a striking oversight given that the UK has more professional game developer studios in it than anywhere else in Europe. The industry is worth about £7bn a year and enjoyed by more than half the population.

Part of that curious absence is a surprise knock-on effect of Brexit. When he was prime minister, David Cameron, together with then chancellor George Osborne and Ed Vaizey, a long-serving culture minister and close ally of the two, recognised the economic contribution of the UK's gaming industry. They introduced what was at the time a pioneering tax break (other countries have since sped ahead in terms of generous incentives).

But between Cameron's exit and Sunak's arrival in Downing Street, government interest in the industry as a way to make money rather than simply spend time with was fairly minimal. If Cameron had remained in office until 2020, as he had planned, at least one of the people elevated to the House of Lords might have been a member of the video games industry.

The absence of gaming peers seems trivial but reflects several important flaws common to the broader political class in the UK. A tendency to confuse contempt for the new with sophistication means that Sunak's interest in video games is often cited as an example of his "nerdy" habits, or portrayed as a niche interest or curious preoccupation. Sunak is an unapologetic nerd, but this is also a pastime that more than half the British population enjoys taking part in, and one which, in any case, is part of a wider hobby that is almost as old as numbers (backgammon is at least 5,000 years old).

The UK's lack of pride or interest in its video games industry is part and parcel of a tendency that Sunak often complains about: that the country is not just bad at maths, but proud of it. But it also reflects a problem that his own party is part of: a political class that for one reason or another seems to dislike almost everything the country does well.

Video games are too nerdy. Bankers take too many risks. Universities let in too many immigrants. Lawyers are too litigious. Musicians and actors are too liberal. In any case, far too many of these organisations are full of Remainers who will privately complain that Brexit has made their lives harder. What really connects these sectors is that they are all areas where the UK excels and can and should continue to do so if the country makes the right choices.

The disdain is not always uniform. As far as financial services go, Sunak has appointed ministers who don't struggle to champion the City. But on the Labour side, the government's Edinburgh reforms, a relatively small-scale set of changes to British banking, were reflexively opposed. Sunak has also hammered universities in order to spin his failure to keep his promises on immigration. The Labour party is less instinctively hostile to universities, but both parties seem to prefer imagining a UK of smoke stacks and heavy industry, a UK that has largely now long passed, rather than championing the things it does well in the present day.

The coming election will be one in which both parties talk up the importance of growth but often accompanied by heavy caveats. It needs to be growth from the right people, from industries that aren't too uncool, or too liberal, or too Remain-y, or too concentrated in the wrong places. But what the UK really needs is growth, full stop. Part of how it might get there is a political class which learns to like the things the country does well, rather than the things it feels it "ought" to do well, or wishing that the things it did well were older, more macho or involved more heavy machinery.

[email protected]

Always think this is part of the "well I would simply be Germany" strand in British politics which is present across the political spectrum and is a dead end because we're not

[Josquius]

Well I'm depressed and angry all of a sudden. Literally crying.
Randomly caught bbc news tonight. Mistake.
Second story tonight- 2 year old kid living in a flat with his dad, dad has a heart attack and dies, kid is left to slowly die, social services come by at some point but it's days before anyone enters and finds 2 bodies. One big, one little.
The suffering that kid must have gone through...

Flash to house of commons with a guy in a suit commenting "how could something like this happen in 2024 in Britain?"
At the bottom is the guys name and that he is the local MP for Boston and Skegness. Conservative Party.
Gee I wonder how it happened. Murderous fuckers.

[Tamas]

Well I'm depressed and angry all of a sudden. Literally crying.
Randomly caught bbc news tonight. Mistake.
Second story tonight- 2 year old kid living in a flat with his dad, dad has a heart attack and dies, kid is left to slowly die, social services come by at some point but it's days before anyone enters and finds 2 bodies. One big, one little.
The suffering that kid must have gone through...

Flash to house of commons with a guy in a suit commenting "how could something like this happen in 2024 in Britain?"
At the bottom is the guys name and that he is the local MP for Boston and Skegness. Conservative Party.
Gee I wonder how it happened. Murderous fuckers.

Yeah I saw the article on it, a true horror story, shook me up as well.

In addition to the social services I am also blaming the mother and sister as well who live... somewhere else. Ok maybe not the sister but how can the mother, even if separated, go days upon days of not hearing anything from her two years old kid? I guess the fact that she is a proper POS is also shown by the fact the kid wasn't staying with her, but rather the 60-years old dead with a heart condition.

[Sheilbh]

Whenever it comes this is going to be an excruciating campaign. He is just not good at this
https://x.com/tamcohen/status/1748336239059542376

[Grey Fox]

Well I'm depressed and angry all of a sudden. Literally crying.
Randomly caught bbc news tonight. Mistake.
Second story tonight- 2 year old kid living in a flat with his dad, dad has a heart attack and dies, kid is left to slowly die, social services come by at some point but it's days before anyone enters and finds 2 bodies. One big, one little.
The suffering that kid must have gone through...

Flash to house of commons with a guy in a suit commenting "how could something like this happen in 2024 in Britain?"
At the bottom is the guys name and that he is the local MP for Boston and Skegness. Conservative Party.
Gee I wonder how it happened. Murderous fuckers.

My children are well pass the age that they would be helpless for days on end if I suddenly died. Yet, when I read this late on wednesday night, I went and hugged my sleeping son. What a tragedy.

[Jacob]

Whenever it comes this is going to be an excruciating campaign. He is just not good at this
https://x.com/tamcohen/status/1748336239059542376

Summary for those of us not clicking on Twitter links?