Best Of

I do think a lot of the political commentary is rather parochial at the moment. Starmer may not be a good PM, bad at politics and the like but that's just a small part of a much bigger picture as demonstrated by the parade of endless former prime ministers at the Cenotaph. We have sacked five prime ministers in less than 10 years. Having gone over the historical record I can't find anything comparable to that since at least the 1760s, if ever. It isn't a matter of whether Starmer can govern, it's a question of whether Britain is governable.

Some complacently took the view that first past the post was the guarantor of political stability. It might be more stable that other systems but it guarantees nothing. We've had the splintering of the vote on the right with irreconcilable positions on Europe, now we have the splintering of the vote on the left with the rise of the Greens and Gaza independents potentially threatening dozens of Labour MPs, including heir presumptive Wes Streeting. As one person put it to me a coalition of culturally conservative minorities alongside people who like to go on naked bike rides.

Reform might be able to win and even govern as the largest minority. But a lot of people really do not like Farage so it's no racing certainty. Maybe splintering into a hundred pieces is better than the US position of two implacable foes - roundheads and cavaliers?

This is a genuinely excellent post.

There's been an incredible fragmentation of political opinion everywhere except the US. And it makes it very difficult for anyone to govern effectively.

I would suggest there are two items of good news:

Firstly, we've had political and economic instability before - say the 1970s when there was the combination of the oil shocks and the end of the old Keynesian consensus. We got through that when governments (almost irrespective of their political leanings) began to implement similar policies - such as the loosening of labour markets, a belief in moneterism, and the break up and sale of state monopolies. I.e. we got through these kind of situations before, and we can do it again.

Secondly, we are about to get a long term massive benefit from falling energy prices. One of the big drags on incomes in developed markets has been the impact of China and other emerging markets in commodity prices. Simply: they wanted oil and steel and the like, and that meant we needed to pay more, increasing the costs of living. The solar plus battery revolution (and it really is a revolution) is going to dramatically cut energy prices in the developing world over the next decade.

Burning carbon has been the bedrock of our prosperity since the industrial revolution. Solar may be relatively useful in tropical places but I haven't seen the evidence that it can be here. Are we going to import electricity from the Sahara? Decarbonising the European economy still looks pretty expensive to me.

If nothing else, fairly basic economic theory suggests that if the places where there is lots of viable solar start using it in place of oil and gas, the demand reduction should reduce the price of oil and gas across the board, including for places (like the UK) where solar isn't very viable (the reality for the UK is that it works fine in for 2/3rds of the year, but is essentially useless in the winter).

It isn’t useless in winter. You just need more panels.

This is why the connector to Morocco etc died.

1) solar panels are very cheap. Cheaper than some grades of plywood. A friend used a couple for a replacement shed roof - because they were the cheap option.
2) the electronics to produce A/C are more expensive, but scale well. That is, the cost doesn’t go up linearly to the amount of power going through.
3) if you are in a low solar flux location, you need *the same amount of power electronics* (the more expensive bit, but more panels (the cheap as chips bit)

For battery backup - the same.

We are at the point where solar+battery is the cheap option for generating capacity.

That's the bit that I don't think anyone really expected- or if they did, they didn't join the dots to realise the implications. It's not quite pour sand into a factory and solar panels come out the other end, but it's pretty close. And whilst they degrade a bit over time, it's a pretty slow process.

When panels are expensive, you can only hope to put them up in pretty optimal locations- they're the only ones with a remotely plausible ROI. Once they are madly, beautifully cheap, you might as well put them everywhere. Even if European solar is twice as expensive as Moroccan solar (and the difference can't be that big, can it?), twice not very much is still not very much.

As for me, I'm wondering what the business world will do once there are regular (but intermittent) large amounts of excess electricity needing to find a use.

If solar plus battery becomes the cheapest (well on the way now surely) then even wind farms, particularly more expensive set ups will become obsolete in time

Yes: wind is a dead end, because its costs are falling at a fraction of the rate of solar.

Maybe, maybe not.

We have a lot more wind in December to February than sunshine.

Our energy demands peak December to February.

Solar does still deliver cloudy days, albeit the days are also short too. I think wind has a place.

Hopefully fusion will be on grid in the next thirty years so all will be fine.

We'll definitely have fusion power within 30 years; one of life's enduring certainties.

She has an impressive back story. Not only the first student from Manchester Polytechnic to become a deputy Prime Minister but possibly the first one to get a decent job. There's a lot to like. She's achieved what she has the hard way and she's not a sleazeball. In a choice between her and Farage only the creepiest would choose Farage.

Thankfully, I think the age of choosing Prime Ministers by back story has probably passed. The daft obsession with optics, vibes, what sort of sofa do they have, belongs to an age of 2000s budget surpluses and feels very anachronistic when we're staring down the barrel of an economic crisis.

C'mon, whether a pol would be a traitor or a faithful appears to be of vital importance currently.
Or at least in the minds of those politicians desperately trying but failing to find the common touch.

Disclaimer: never watched an episode of this programme so no real idea what these terms refer to.

Me neither - thought I was the last person on earth.

Nor me. The only 'reality' I do is Bake Off.

Westminster Voting Intention:
THE LAST EVER IPSOS WITH SKS LAB in 2nd


RFM: 33% (-1)
LAB: 18% (-4)
CON: 16% (+2)
GRN: 15% (+3)
LDM: 12% (=)

Via @Ipsos_in_the_UK, 30 Oct - 5 Nov.
Changes w/ 11-17 Sep.

I don't suppose you would be up for a bet on that?

Yes £20 Charity of our choices.

Terms would be SKS has to be leader at the time of the VI Poll. Which has to be an Ipsos Mori one

Joint 2nd is void

So you win if Lab are clear 2nd during the time SKS is still leader.in an Ipsos Mori Poll

Bet settles in my favour if they have not been in clear 2nd by the time SKS is ousted or resigns.

Is that OK with you

Remember - a Reform government would rapidly lose its majority. MPs quitting - I didn’t know I’d have to go to London. Others thrown out for shockingly being unveiled as massive racists. Others thrown out for squabbling with the boss.

Drawing the (fairly weak) weak analogy about how many Republican Congressmen and Senators have been willing to suck up whatever Trump wanted them to do perhaps implies that whilst there may be ructions in such a Government, there might not be that many expelled from Parliament.

Rupert Lowe and James McMurdock are still there.

Speaking of the Republican Party and Reform UK, what if MAGA does splinter further, or what if Trump becomes completely toxic, how does that affect Reform here? If there is some smoking gun, a photo of Trump with topless underage girls, what happens to #1 Trump fan Nigel Farage?

There was an attempt by Phil Moorhouse on A Different Bias to develop that thesis late last week. I did not find it quite convincing; it felt like a bit of a stretch.

I found Farage's links to Steve Bannon a more convincing narrative.

And also his running away from the questions he was asked in that congressional committee some time ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R313AhDnPAA

Short of anything criminal which I do not expect, I think it depends on how Farage is perceived by the elements of his support coalition (which is different between his base and his supporters). There was recent large scale polling (10k+ sample) by Hope Not Hate exploring that, which is an interesting contrast to the parallel work they did before the 2024 Election.

In my thinking it is important to distinguish between the Reform care and fringe.

Phil Moorhouse also did one exploring the latest HNH assessment of "tribes of Reform supporters".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9K_8BP3_WQo

This is the current version of their "5 tribes of Reform supporters", which is imo a decent set of labels than last time for identifying groups to address. But it needs some commentary to elucidate.


There are decent summaries here from the Welsh TUC:
https://nation.cymru/news/five-groups-of-people-support-reform-uk-but-theyre-not-all-racists/

Interesting, though as with characterising the left categories like 'thoughtless idiots', 'fat bloke in pub', 'simplistic ignoramus', 'seeker of riots' are omitted, perhaps out of politeness. Have 'libertarians' all vanished too?

Helpful would be a list of 10 or so really substantial things Reform would do to make all these groups dance in the streets, bring back happy days and get Reform re-elected.

When a GE gets near the issue of how to be elected is interesting but secondary. The deeper issue is policy and actual realisation and implementation of it. Governments have not found this easy recently. Why do I think Reform might find it hard too?