Best Of

Sky

Clive Lewis affirms he would give up his seat for Andy Burnham

Really

Has he asked his constituents if they mind?

That comes after he steps down.
Inevitably.

In a by election that would be an easy Green gain.

Not sure about that, Burnham has a +22% rating with Green voters, Starmer is on -52% with Greens by contrast. Labour, LD and Green voters all give Burnham a net positive rating, only Tories and Reform voters give him a net negative rating but still not as bad a negative rating as they give Sir Keir
https://ygo-assets-websites-editorial-emea.yougov.net/documents/Internal_Favourability_250929_w.pdf

Greens strong locally. Got loads of cash. SKS won’t be keen on him winning. I’d put money on a green win if it happened. Don’t think it will.

Tory and LD voters might also tactically vote Burnham if the Greens were his main challengers

Possibly not; the Greens are a problem for the next election. Voting for the Greens in a by-election today would be a ‘fun’ way of bloodying the nose of a currently hated government and insuring that government finds it harder to recover by blocking the introduction of someone who might be more competent.

I'm not really sure anyone in the UK is advocating the Scandi model. Maybe Greens. We'd need much more trust in government to hand over sufficient money!

Interestingly the Scandi countries do not have much government debt, by some distance the lowest in Europe. They have always believed in paying for their welfare systems from tax not debt. Germany comes close too.

A cynic may notice that it hasn't generated a great deal of growth, even if not a debt crisis.

Switzerland meanwhile has lower taxes than the UK and Scandi nations, lower spending and still well run public services and no debt

The Swiss do also have compulsory private health insurance, so kinda like a tax but not called a tax, which somewhat flatters their tax picture. But, sure, there’s plenty we can learn from Switzerland. Which features would you copy? Close integration into the EU, a focus on high tech industries, or a much higher proportion of immigrants?

Switzerland not in the EU or even the EEA or a customs union though, only EFTA.

Switzerland also bans the face covering burka so is not that liberal on immigration issues

Switzeraland has the closest relationship to the EU of any country not in the EEA, and a much closer relationship than us.

I think over a quarter of the Swiss population are immigrants, much higher than in the UK.

Not a good argument. Family member worked in Switzerland for 30 years. When he couldn't work anymore and had run out of benefits, he was 'encouraged' to leave. Unfortunately this was before he could access his Swiss pension. The Swiss (Cantons) don't take any prisoners.

You have to make the difference between refugee immigrants, visa immigrants, EU work immigrants and unlawful immigrants. A catchall immigrant doesn't shed any light on discussions unless qualified. Work and Visa immigrants would be net contributors.

I’d love to see a more nuanced discussion around immigration, but it’s pretty clear that neither Reform or Labour are going to deliver that. Reform want people to think that all immigrants are scroungers and most of them are illegal. Labour seem to be along for the ride rather than pushing back on that.

The Lib Dem’s idea of a nuanced debate around migration is ‘we like it, let’s have loads more, and if you complain you’re a racist’

The reason we cannot have a nuanced debate is exactly that.

People see their communities changing and people coming in in rather large number. Raise concerns and get slapped down.

Its pretty much the direct opposite. Suggest even timidly that there are economic and other benefits to immigration and you get shouted down, even on here. That is what is stopping any nuanced debate.

There’s massive economic benefits to immigration.

It just needs to be managed properly, without feeding a pyramid scheme, and the existing British population needs to be convinced of the benefits of it.

And being convinced is not the preferred option of the left by telling anyone raising it they are ‘racist’

Skilled inward migration is not only desirable, I’d say it was essential. Plug gaps we don’t have.

I agree on the value of skilled inward migration. I think most people in the UK are, when they get into it, happy with skilled inward migration. And most UK immigration is skilled. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/immigration-system-statistics-year-ending-december-2024/summary-of-latest-statistics has numbers. The people coming in are mainly students or on skilled worker visas of one type of another.

Yet Reform want lower immigration; they want net zero immigration. That could only happen by substantially cutting skilled inward migration.

This is why I say nuance is missing. Most UK immigration is skilled, but Reform and fellow travellers still seek to cast all immigrants as, at best, scroungers, or worse.

They also conflate immigration in total, which has been historically high in recent years, with asylum and irregular arrivals which have also been historically high but are a fraction of the total. Not just Reform, pretty much everyone including the current Home Secretary. Reducing immigration <> stopping the boats.

I don't think anyone with any sort of human feelings doesn't want the boats stopped. Not because they oppose immigration but because it's an extremely dangerous way of getting to UK.
We know how many of these inflatables we've seen landing. We don't know, no-one does, how many have left France. Therefore we don't know how many people have tried to cross and failed to complete the journey.

This is probably one of the most interesting and revealing industrial stories of the year.

This car 👇, the 2026 version of France's Renault Twingo, is the first Western car engineered in China and made in Europe - a complete reversal of what used to be.

The challenge that Renault wanted to tackle is how to compete with Chinese EVs, which are best-in-class in affordability and speed-to-market.

Specifically, they wanted to develop an EV car from scratch in less than 2 years (when it normally takes 4 years to develop a new car for European auto makers) and be able to sell the car profitably for less than €20,000 while building it in Europe. Which is all insanely ambitious if you know about the European auto industry...

To do so, Renault opened a Shanghai R&D center (which they called "ACDC" in reference to both the band and the electrical current) where 160 engineers - 150 Chinese and 10 French (https://usinenouvelle.com/article/c-est-ici-que-tout-se-passe-ce-que-renault-a-appris-et-copie-en-chine.N2239820) - essentially tried to make Chinese development method work for Renault, in the heart of China's EV ecosystem to understand what was possible.

As the lead engineer on the project, Jérémie Coiffier, put it (https://frandroid.com/marques/renault/2859237_on-a-encore-un-coup-davance-pourquoi-la-renault-twingo-electrique-est-en-partie-chinoise): "We humbly came to learn to go fast. And learning to go fast isn't simply learning to do the same thing faster. It's doing things differently. It's a transformation."

And it worked: they had a first prototype in an insanely fast 4 weeks (https://journalauto.com/constructeurs/renault-acdc-fend-la-muraille-en-chine/)!!! The entire development process took just 21 months.

The end product is priced under €20,000 - after subsidies, around €15,000 - making it one of Europe's cheapest EVs and competitive against Chinese EVs.

46% of the car is made of Chinese parts..
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1990958738476569006

I won't even start on where the UK is.

I spent most of my career in that industry, from 82 - 14, that’s staggering. Speed to market is amazing.

I fully expect Europe to respond with punitive protective tariffs.

Someone here, Francis Urquhart IIRC, posted some YouTube’s on Chinese auto makers. Advanced isn’t the word. It’s staggering how advanced they are.

It’s a bit like

The list of “but that’s not how we do it” is always long.

It's not even like that, though. SpaceX surprised a lot of people.

We knew the change to EVs was coming; it's been government policy here and in Europe for decades.
But our governments (and most of the industry, which was enjoying the tail end of legacy manufacturing profits) just sat back doing almost nothing, while China planned their future economy around it, with the investment to back it.

And a significant part of their manufacturing is built around technology developed in Europe and the US, which they then continued to develop.

It is like that, I think.

The biggest barrier to innovation is often “we don’t do it like that” - the accreted socio-economic structures of the existing organisation.

After WWII the Koreans built a modern ship building industry. Which didn’t have all the old “proper way” of doing things. The ideas they used - modular construction etc - were invented in the West, but never became widespread because “that’s not proper ship building”. Kaiser used early forms of that for the Victory Ships, but post war, US yards rapidly went back to the “proper way”. In the U.K., Beardmores did modular construction - but went out of business in the 1920s….

In the European car industry, changing to EVs was nicked by the huge investment in engines and gearboxes. Whole divisions would become obsolete. *Board members* power bases would be destroyed. So they delayed. And delayed.

I disagree (though you are right about the Innovators Dilemma style conservatism).
The only way a car industry making (then) record profits was going to cannibalise its own business, was if it was forced to do so.
If government had mandated, and assisted with steady investment over the last decade and a half, we might be somewhere close to where China is now.

As it is, European industry is now forced to make the transition just for its own survival, and had ceded any kind of leadership for the next decade in all likelihood.

That, and Brexit, have left us in what is probably a worse position still.

They knew change was coming.

They were told.

It was legislated.

They could have invested some of those record profits.

But no - culturally they had to wait. For a handout. For someone else to do something. For the horse to learn to sing….

Half the reason that Merkel fit the Tesla factory was to shout WAKE! UP! at the German car industry.

This is probably one of the most interesting and revealing industrial stories of the year.

This car 👇, the 2026 version of France's Renault Twingo, is the first Western car engineered in China and made in Europe - a complete reversal of what used to be.

The challenge that Renault wanted to tackle is how to compete with Chinese EVs, which are best-in-class in affordability and speed-to-market.

Specifically, they wanted to develop an EV car from scratch in less than 2 years (when it normally takes 4 years to develop a new car for European auto makers) and be able to sell the car profitably for less than €20,000 while building it in Europe. Which is all insanely ambitious if you know about the European auto industry...

To do so, Renault opened a Shanghai R&D center (which they called "ACDC" in reference to both the band and the electrical current) where 160 engineers - 150 Chinese and 10 French (https://usinenouvelle.com/article/c-est-ici-que-tout-se-passe-ce-que-renault-a-appris-et-copie-en-chine.N2239820) - essentially tried to make Chinese development method work for Renault, in the heart of China's EV ecosystem to understand what was possible.

As the lead engineer on the project, Jérémie Coiffier, put it (https://frandroid.com/marques/renault/2859237_on-a-encore-un-coup-davance-pourquoi-la-renault-twingo-electrique-est-en-partie-chinoise): "We humbly came to learn to go fast. And learning to go fast isn't simply learning to do the same thing faster. It's doing things differently. It's a transformation."

And it worked: they had a first prototype in an insanely fast 4 weeks (https://journalauto.com/constructeurs/renault-acdc-fend-la-muraille-en-chine/)!!! The entire development process took just 21 months.

The end product is priced under €20,000 - after subsidies, around €15,000 - making it one of Europe's cheapest EVs and competitive against Chinese EVs.

46% of the car is made of Chinese parts..
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1990958738476569006

I won't even start on where the UK is.

I spent most of my career in that industry, from 82 - 14, that’s staggering. Speed to market is amazing.

I fully expect Europe to respond with punitive protective tariffs.

Someone here, Francis Urquhart IIRC, posted some YouTube’s on Chinese auto makers. Advanced isn’t the word. It’s staggering how advanced they are.

It’s a bit like

The list of “but that’s not how we do it” is always long.

It's not even like that, though. SpaceX surprised a lot of people.

We knew the change to EVs was coming; it's been government policy here and in Europe for decades.
But our governments (and most of the industry, which was enjoying the tail end of legacy manufacturing profits) just sat back doing almost nothing, while China planned their future economy around it, with the investment to back it.

And a significant part of their manufacturing is built around technology developed in Europe and the US, which they then continued to develop.

It is like that, I think.

The biggest barrier to innovation is often “we don’t do it like that” - the accreted socio-economic structures of the existing organisation.

After WWII the Koreans built a modern ship building industry. Which didn’t have all the old “proper way” of doing things. The ideas they used - modular construction etc - were invented in the West, but never became widespread because “that’s not proper ship building”. Kaiser used early forms of that for the Victory Ships, but post war, US yards rapidly went back to the “proper way”. In the U.K., Beardmores did modular construction - but went out of business in the 1920s….

In the European car industry, changing to EVs was nicked by the huge investment in engines and gearboxes. Whole divisions would become obsolete. *Board members* power bases would be destroyed. So they delayed. And delayed.

The question then is where are the new companies in Europe that could have done things differently? Why aren't we getting people starting new companies, or why can't they find investment, failing to scale, etc?

For example, I wouldn't necessarily expect BAe to be best-placed to develop drones for the British military, so we'd want to see British startups that were developing the new technology with new ideas. Is that happening? If not, why not?

Capitalism relies on new companies to outcompete existing companies. You can't expect existing companies to compete against themselves.

Invest in Ukranian companies, for some clearly unknown reason they’re developing drone tech faster than anyone else right now.

Future wars will be fought with $500 drones, not $5m drones.

Well, that depends. If the $5m drone can wade through $500 drones as easily as a Conquistador through Aztec warriors then it will come out on top. I don't pretend to be able to predict the future, but I do know that we're more likely to find the best answer if we have more people looking for it, and given a fair chance of succeeding.

This is probably one of the most interesting and revealing industrial stories of the year.

This car 👇, the 2026 version of France's Renault Twingo, is the first Western car engineered in China and made in Europe - a complete reversal of what used to be.

The challenge that Renault wanted to tackle is how to compete with Chinese EVs, which are best-in-class in affordability and speed-to-market.

Specifically, they wanted to develop an EV car from scratch in less than 2 years (when it normally takes 4 years to develop a new car for European auto makers) and be able to sell the car profitably for less than €20,000 while building it in Europe. Which is all insanely ambitious if you know about the European auto industry...

To do so, Renault opened a Shanghai R&D center (which they called "ACDC" in reference to both the band and the electrical current) where 160 engineers - 150 Chinese and 10 French (https://usinenouvelle.com/article/c-est-ici-que-tout-se-passe-ce-que-renault-a-appris-et-copie-en-chine.N2239820) - essentially tried to make Chinese development method work for Renault, in the heart of China's EV ecosystem to understand what was possible.

As the lead engineer on the project, Jérémie Coiffier, put it (https://frandroid.com/marques/renault/2859237_on-a-encore-un-coup-davance-pourquoi-la-renault-twingo-electrique-est-en-partie-chinoise): "We humbly came to learn to go fast. And learning to go fast isn't simply learning to do the same thing faster. It's doing things differently. It's a transformation."

And it worked: they had a first prototype in an insanely fast 4 weeks (https://journalauto.com/constructeurs/renault-acdc-fend-la-muraille-en-chine/)!!! The entire development process took just 21 months.

The end product is priced under €20,000 - after subsidies, around €15,000 - making it one of Europe's cheapest EVs and competitive against Chinese EVs.

46% of the car is made of Chinese parts..
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1990958738476569006

I won't even start on where the UK is.

I spent most of my career in that industry, from 82 - 14, that’s staggering. Speed to market is amazing.

I fully expect Europe to respond with punitive protective tariffs.

Someone here, Francis Urquhart IIRC, posted some YouTube’s on Chinese auto makers. Advanced isn’t the word. It’s staggering how advanced they are.

It’s a bit like

The list of “but that’s not how we do it” is always long.

It's not even like that, though. SpaceX surprised a lot of people.

We knew the change to EVs was coming; it's been government policy here and in Europe for decades.
But our governments (and most of the industry, which was enjoying the tail end of legacy manufacturing profits) just sat back doing almost nothing, while China planned their future economy around it, with the investment to back it.

And a significant part of their manufacturing is built around technology developed in Europe and the US, which they then continued to develop.

It is like that, I think.

The biggest barrier to innovation is often “we don’t do it like that” - the accreted socio-economic structures of the existing organisation.

After WWII the Koreans built a modern ship building industry. Which didn’t have all the old “proper way” of doing things. The ideas they used - modular construction etc - were invented in the West, but never became widespread because “that’s not proper ship building”. Kaiser used early forms of that for the Victory Ships, but post war, US yards rapidly went back to the “proper way”. In the U.K., Beardmores did modular construction - but went out of business in the 1920s….

In the European car industry, changing to EVs was nicked by the huge investment in engines and gearboxes. Whole divisions would become obsolete. *Board members* power bases would be destroyed. So they delayed. And delayed.

The question then is where are the new companies in Europe that could have done things differently? Why aren't we getting people starting new companies, or why can't they find investment, failing to scale, etc?

For example, I wouldn't necessarily expect BAe to be best-placed to develop drones for the British military, so we'd want to see British startups that were developing the new technology with new ideas. Is that happening? If not, why not?

Capitalism relies on new companies to outcompete existing companies. You can't expect existing companies to compete against themselves.

Invest in Ukranian companies, for some clearly unknown reason they’re developing drone tech faster than anyone else right now.

Future wars will be fought with $500 drones, not $5m drones.

I do wonder if Swiss reservists will find themselves required to keep a couple of drones next to their service weapon. And to train on both.

This is probably one of the most interesting and revealing industrial stories of the year.

This car 👇, the 2026 version of France's Renault Twingo, is the first Western car engineered in China and made in Europe - a complete reversal of what used to be.

The challenge that Renault wanted to tackle is how to compete with Chinese EVs, which are best-in-class in affordability and speed-to-market.

Specifically, they wanted to develop an EV car from scratch in less than 2 years (when it normally takes 4 years to develop a new car for European auto makers) and be able to sell the car profitably for less than €20,000 while building it in Europe. Which is all insanely ambitious if you know about the European auto industry...

To do so, Renault opened a Shanghai R&D center (which they called "ACDC" in reference to both the band and the electrical current) where 160 engineers - 150 Chinese and 10 French (https://usinenouvelle.com/article/c-est-ici-que-tout-se-passe-ce-que-renault-a-appris-et-copie-en-chine.N2239820) - essentially tried to make Chinese development method work for Renault, in the heart of China's EV ecosystem to understand what was possible.

As the lead engineer on the project, Jérémie Coiffier, put it (https://frandroid.com/marques/renault/2859237_on-a-encore-un-coup-davance-pourquoi-la-renault-twingo-electrique-est-en-partie-chinoise): "We humbly came to learn to go fast. And learning to go fast isn't simply learning to do the same thing faster. It's doing things differently. It's a transformation."

And it worked: they had a first prototype in an insanely fast 4 weeks (https://journalauto.com/constructeurs/renault-acdc-fend-la-muraille-en-chine/)!!! The entire development process took just 21 months.

The end product is priced under €20,000 - after subsidies, around €15,000 - making it one of Europe's cheapest EVs and competitive against Chinese EVs.

46% of the car is made of Chinese parts..
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1990958738476569006

I won't even start on where the UK is.

I spent most of my career in that industry, from 82 - 14, that’s staggering. Speed to market is amazing.

I fully expect Europe to respond with punitive protective tariffs.

Someone here, Francis Urquhart IIRC, posted some YouTube’s on Chinese auto makers. Advanced isn’t the word. It’s staggering how advanced they are.

It’s a bit like

The list of “but that’s not how we do it” is always long.

It's not even like that, though. SpaceX surprised a lot of people.

We knew the change to EVs was coming; it's been government policy here and in Europe for decades.
But our governments (and most of the industry, which was enjoying the tail end of legacy manufacturing profits) just sat back doing almost nothing, while China planned their future economy around it, with the investment to back it.

And a significant part of their manufacturing is built around technology developed in Europe and the US, which they then continued to develop.

It is like that, I think.

The biggest barrier to innovation is often “we don’t do it like that” - the accreted socio-economic structures of the existing organisation.

After WWII the Koreans built a modern ship building industry. Which didn’t have all the old “proper way” of doing things. The ideas they used - modular construction etc - were invented in the West, but never became widespread because “that’s not proper ship building”. Kaiser used early forms of that for the Victory Ships, but post war, US yards rapidly went back to the “proper way”. In the U.K., Beardmores did modular construction - but went out of business in the 1920s….

In the European car industry, changing to EVs was nicked by the huge investment in engines and gearboxes. Whole divisions would become obsolete. *Board members* power bases would be destroyed. So they delayed. And delayed.

The question then is where are the new companies in Europe that could have done things differently? Why aren't we getting people starting new companies, or why can't they find investment, failing to scale, etc?

For example, I wouldn't necessarily expect BAe to be best-placed to develop drones for the British military, so we'd want to see British startups that were developing the new technology with new ideas. Is that happening? If not, why not?

Capitalism relies on new companies to outcompete existing companies. You can't expect existing companies to compete against themselves.

Invest in Ukranian companies, for some clearly unknown reason they’re developing drone tech faster than anyone else right now.

Future wars will be fought with $500 drones, not $5m drones.

I'm not really sure anyone in the UK is advocating the Scandi model. Maybe Greens. We'd need much more trust in government to hand over sufficient money!

Interestingly the Scandi countries do not have much government debt, by some distance the lowest in Europe. They have always believed in paying for their welfare systems from tax not debt. Germany comes close too.

A cynic may notice that it hasn't generated a great deal of growth, even if not a debt crisis.

Switzerland meanwhile has lower taxes than the UK and Scandi nations, lower spending and still well run public services and no debt

The Swiss do also have compulsory private health insurance, so kinda like a tax but not called a tax, which somewhat flatters their tax picture. But, sure, there’s plenty we can learn from Switzerland. Which features would you copy? Close integration into the EU, a focus on high tech industries, or a much higher proportion of immigrants?

Switzerland not in the EU or even the EEA or a customs union though, only EFTA.

Switzerland also bans the face covering burka so is not that liberal on immigration issues

Switzeraland has the closest relationship to the EU of any country not in the EEA, and a much closer relationship than us.

I think over a quarter of the Swiss population are immigrants, much higher than in the UK.

Not a good argument. Family member worked in Switzerland for 30 years. When he couldn't work anymore and had run out of benefits, he was 'encouraged' to leave. Unfortunately this was before he could access his Swiss pension. The Swiss (Cantons) don't take any prisoners.

You have to make the difference between refugee immigrants, visa immigrants, EU work immigrants and unlawful immigrants. A catchall immigrant doesn't shed any light on discussions unless qualified. Work and Visa immigrants would be net contributors.

I’d love to see a more nuanced discussion around immigration, but it’s pretty clear that neither Reform or Labour are going to deliver that. Reform want people to think that all immigrants are scroungers and most of them are illegal. Labour seem to be along for the ride rather than pushing back on that.

The Lib Dem’s idea of a nuanced debate around migration is ‘we like it, let’s have loads more, and if you complain you’re a racist’

The reason we cannot have a nuanced debate is exactly that.

People see their communities changing and people coming in in rather large number. Raise concerns and get slapped down.

Its pretty much the direct opposite. Suggest even timidly that there are economic and other benefits to immigration and you get shouted down, even on here. That is what is stopping any nuanced debate.

There’s massive economic benefits to immigration.

It just needs to be managed properly, without feeding a pyramid scheme, and the existing British population needs to be convinced of the benefits of it.

And being convinced is not the preferred option of the left by telling anyone raising it they are ‘racist’

Skilled inward migration is not only desirable, I’d say it was essential. Plug gaps we don’t have.

I agree on the value of skilled inward migration. I think most people in the UK are, when they get into it, happy with skilled inward migration. And most UK immigration is skilled. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/immigration-system-statistics-year-ending-december-2024/summary-of-latest-statistics has numbers. The people coming in are mainly students or on skilled worker visas of one type of another.

Yet Reform want lower immigration; they want net zero immigration. That could only happen by substantially cutting skilled inward migration.

This is why I say nuance is missing. Most UK immigration is skilled, but Reform and fellow travellers still seek to cast all immigrants as, at best, scroungers, or worse.

Note neither Ukraine, nor Europe are part of these negotiations.

Scoop: U.S. secretly drafting new plan to end Ukraine war
https://www.axios.com/2025/11/19/ukraine-peace-plan-trump-russia-witkoff
The Trump administration has been secretly working in consultation with Russia to draft a new plan to end the war in Ukraine, U.S. and Russian officials tell Axios...

Phillips P O'Brien has just put out a rather pessimistic substack suggesting that the Europeans will be told the US will pull out of NATO if they don't agree to the peace plan, whatever it is. We are about to see the maximum leverage available to the US President applied to Ukraine and Europe - when we've all been hoping it might be applied to Russia.

Europe had nearly four years to get its act together, and we're now going to suffer the consequences of failing to do so.

I guess there's still theoretically a possibility that Putin has folded - reportedly the latest budget statistics from Russia are very ugly - but I don't have high hopes.

There's also the theoretical possibility of calling Trump's bluff, which if the terms are as bad as I expect they will be, we should do.
The idea of our future security being negotiated between a mass murdering autocrat, and a semi-senile grifter, with us excluded, is not an appealing one.

This is probably one of the most interesting and revealing industrial stories of the year.

This car 👇, the 2026 version of France's Renault Twingo, is the first Western car engineered in China and made in Europe - a complete reversal of what used to be.

The challenge that Renault wanted to tackle is how to compete with Chinese EVs, which are best-in-class in affordability and speed-to-market.

Specifically, they wanted to develop an EV car from scratch in less than 2 years (when it normally takes 4 years to develop a new car for European auto makers) and be able to sell the car profitably for less than €20,000 while building it in Europe. Which is all insanely ambitious if you know about the European auto industry...

To do so, Renault opened a Shanghai R&D center (which they called "ACDC" in reference to both the band and the electrical current) where 160 engineers - 150 Chinese and 10 French (https://usinenouvelle.com/article/c-est-ici-que-tout-se-passe-ce-que-renault-a-appris-et-copie-en-chine.N2239820) - essentially tried to make Chinese development method work for Renault, in the heart of China's EV ecosystem to understand what was possible.

As the lead engineer on the project, Jérémie Coiffier, put it (https://frandroid.com/marques/renault/2859237_on-a-encore-un-coup-davance-pourquoi-la-renault-twingo-electrique-est-en-partie-chinoise): "We humbly came to learn to go fast. And learning to go fast isn't simply learning to do the same thing faster. It's doing things differently. It's a transformation."

And it worked: they had a first prototype in an insanely fast 4 weeks (https://journalauto.com/constructeurs/renault-acdc-fend-la-muraille-en-chine/)!!! The entire development process took just 21 months.

The end product is priced under €20,000 - after subsidies, around €15,000 - making it one of Europe's cheapest EVs and competitive against Chinese EVs.

46% of the car is made of Chinese parts..
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1990958738476569006

I won't even start on where the UK is.

I spent most of my career in that industry, from 82 - 14, that’s staggering. Speed to market is amazing.

I fully expect Europe to respond with punitive protective tariffs.

Someone here, Francis Urquhart IIRC, posted some YouTube’s on Chinese auto makers. Advanced isn’t the word. It’s staggering how advanced they are.

It’s a bit like

The list of “but that’s not how we do it” is always long.

It's not even like that, though. SpaceX surprised a lot of people.

We knew the change to EVs was coming; it's been government policy here and in Europe for decades.
But our governments (and most of the industry, which was enjoying the tail end of legacy manufacturing profits) just sat back doing almost nothing, while China planned their future economy around it, with the investment to back it.

And a significant part of their manufacturing is built around technology developed in Europe and the US, which they then continued to develop.

It is like that, I think.

The biggest barrier to innovation is often “we don’t do it like that” - the accreted socio-economic structures of the existing organisation.

After WWII the Koreans built a modern ship building industry. Which didn’t have all the old “proper way” of doing things. The ideas they used - modular construction etc - were invented in the West, but never became widespread because “that’s not proper ship building”. Kaiser used early forms of that for the Victory Ships, but post war, US yards rapidly went back to the “proper way”. In the U.K., Beardmores did modular construction - but went out of business in the 1920s….

In the European car industry, changing to EVs was nicked by the huge investment in engines and gearboxes. Whole divisions would become obsolete. *Board members* power bases would be destroyed. So they delayed. And delayed.

The question then is where are the new companies in Europe that could have done things differently? Why aren't we getting people starting new companies, or why can't they find investment, failing to scale, etc?

For example, I wouldn't necessarily expect BAe to be best-placed to develop drones for the British military, so we'd want to see British startups that were developing the new technology with new ideas. Is that happening? If not, why not?

Capitalism relies on new companies to outcompete existing companies. You can't expect existing companies to compete against themselves.

And European governments spend enormous amounts of time and effort supporting the existing players and making sure they don’t get challenged.

Similar very often in the US - see the endless propping up of legacy auto.

I'm not really sure anyone in the UK is advocating the Scandi model. Maybe Greens. We'd need much more trust in government to hand over sufficient money!

Interestingly the Scandi countries do not have much government debt, by some distance the lowest in Europe. They have always believed in paying for their welfare systems from tax not debt. Germany comes close too.

A cynic may notice that it hasn't generated a great deal of growth, even if not a debt crisis.

Switzerland meanwhile has lower taxes than the UK and Scandi nations, lower spending and still well run public services and no debt

The Swiss do also have compulsory private health insurance, so kinda like a tax but not called a tax, which somewhat flatters their tax picture. But, sure, there’s plenty we can learn from Switzerland. Which features would you copy? Close integration into the EU, a focus on high tech industries, or a much higher proportion of immigrants?

Switzerland not in the EU or even the EEA or a customs union though, only EFTA.

Switzerland also bans the face covering burka so is not that liberal on immigration issues

Switzeraland has the closest relationship to the EU of any country not in the EEA, and a much closer relationship than us.

I think over a quarter of the Swiss population are immigrants, much higher than in the UK.

Not a good argument. Family member worked in Switzerland for 30 years. When he couldn't work anymore and had run out of benefits, he was 'encouraged' to leave. Unfortunately this was before he could access his Swiss pension. The Swiss (Cantons) don't take any prisoners.

You have to make the difference between refugee immigrants, visa immigrants, EU work immigrants and unlawful immigrants. A catchall immigrant doesn't shed any light on discussions unless qualified. Work and Visa immigrants would be net contributors.

I’d love to see a more nuanced discussion around immigration, but it’s pretty clear that neither Reform or Labour are going to deliver that. Reform want people to think that all immigrants are scroungers and most of them are illegal. Labour seem to be along for the ride rather than pushing back on that.

The Lib Dem’s idea of a nuanced debate around migration is ‘we like it, let’s have loads more, and if you complain you’re a racist’

The reason we cannot have a nuanced debate is exactly that.

People see their communities changing and people coming in in rather large number. Raise concerns and get slapped down.

Its pretty much the direct opposite. Suggest even timidly that there are economic and other benefits to immigration and you get shouted down, even on here. That is what is stopping any nuanced debate.

There’s massive economic benefits to immigration.

It just needs to be managed properly, without feeding a pyramid scheme, and the existing British population needs to be convinced of the benefits of it.

And being convinced is not the preferred option of the left by telling anyone raising it they are ‘racist’

Skilled inward migration is not only desirable, I’d say it was essential. Plug gaps we don’t have.

I agree on the value of skilled inward migration. I think most people in the UK are, when they get into it, happy with skilled inward migration. And most UK immigration is skilled. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/immigration-system-statistics-year-ending-december-2024/summary-of-latest-statistics has numbers. The people coming in are mainly students or on skilled worker visas of one type of another.

Yet Reform want lower immigration; they want net zero immigration. That could only happen by substantially cutting skilled inward migration.

This is why I say nuance is missing. Most UK immigration is skilled, but Reform and fellow travellers still seek to cast all immigrants as, at best, scroungers, or worse.

They also conflate immigration in total, which has been historically high in recent years, with asylum and irregular arrivals which have also been historically high but are a fraction of the total. Not just Reform, pretty much everyone including the current Home Secretary. Reducing immigration <> stopping the boats.