The big question is how many generations before the electorate forgive the Tories for taking us down the rabbit hole of Brexit? I suspect a long time. Though Brexit wasn't mentioned as an issue it's effects in many ways has destabilised the electorate and subliminally made us see our position in the world differently
52% of voters voted for Brexit despite the Tory leader at the time opposing it, indeed Brexit voters leaking to Reform and even Labour having voted for Boris is making the Tory situation worse.
How a Labour government handles the economy will be far more significant for the future Tory prospects than Brexit
Brexit is a stench that wont go away. Every time Rishi goes abroad he seems to get smaller. Do you think he's actually shrinking or that the country he represents is?
I waited in the longest airport queue I can remember being in at an airport a couple of weeks ago. Do you think everyone in the queue wasn't joining the dots and asking what caused this new phenomena?
That people voted for it is irrelevant. Do you think human nature allows them to blame themselves?
Parties on all sides (with the notable exception of the SNP) voted for the referendum.
Him and the Chesham guy are textbook by-election tools.
How hard is it to warmly congratulate the winner, thank your campaign team, say, "Well, by-elections is as by-elections does to the media" and go on holiday for a few days?
Still, champagne corks popping at Eddie Hughes's house.
The late, great comedian Peter Cook used to do a sketch where the defeated Parliamentary candidate, instead of spouting gracious platitudes about the successful candidate, lambasted the winning candidate and the voters for not electing him. It was funny at the time - 60s IIRC - because it went against the ethos of the time in being maganimus in defeat. Now it would just be seen as the norm.
Completely off thread - but my wife and I have been discussing Blue Peter viewing figures, which when we were kids were about 6 million and are now about 30,000; indeed there was an episode a few years back which got no viewers at all (though I have my doubts about the accuracy of these figures). Anyway, we were interrupted by our 8 year old daughter: "what even is Blue Peter?". Which kind of illustrates the point. Kids don't watch live telly any more. (This has come about quite suddenly; my older two, 13 and 12, don't watch live telly either, but do at least remember doing so; my youngest never really has).
This makes me very sad. My kids don't watch it either. I do think my kids are much less well informed about the world than I was at their age - I picked a lot of stuff up without trying just by watching whatever was on TV. It's hard to have a vibrant well informed democracy when people know SFA about the world around them and get their information from sources that are vulnerable to disinformation campaigns.
There's good stuff still being made- both by the BBC and others. That includes online- it was good to see Map Men get a plug in the Sunday Times this weekend.
What's been lost has been the shared institutions that everyone knew about and most people watched. That atomisation isn't great for society or shared conversations, but somehow it's worse for children. The loss of general interest programmes as the only kids thing on means that some improve themselves a lot and others watch utter trash and nothing else.
In education, it's the Matthew Principle- to he who has shall be given more but to get who has not, what they have shall be taken away.
Indeed. things have really changed. The social assumptions underpinning the UK between 1945 and (say) 2015 are disappearing before our eyes. The belief in Britain as a communal experience underpinned by shared institutions has gone and it makes me sad.
How ironic that an underpinning of Brexit was a retreat into Britishness. Admittedly it was Faragian, UJ shoes Britishness which contains the huge, bulging seeds of its own failure.
But I don't think it's any different for France, or Germany, or Spain, or the USA. It's driven by technology. Indeed, this website is a prime example. 30 years ago none of us would have been online discussing politics and other matters with like minded people; we'd have been interacting with the people real life gave us. Our cultural consumption would have been much more mainstream, because the niches wouldn't have existed. Our kids would have watched Blue Peter because they wouldn't have had any choice of entertainment (personally, I don't think I've watched more than two BP episodes in my life - never really to my tastes - but still). I don't think this is any different in the UK to anywhere else.
Thirty years ago, kids were watching Teletubbies before graduating to Blue Peter but the crucial point you and others have made is that both were on mainstream BBC television.
But if they were still on mainstream BBC television it wouldn't matter. The number of kids prepared to watch BBC1 but not CBBC is almost nil. The point is the only people who still watch linear television are those doing it out of force of habit - i.e. older adults. Kids simply don't engage with linear TV any more.
It's possible the Tories might just have held Tamworth with Boris Johnson as leader, but they probably would have lost Mid Beds by even more than they did.
Can someone help? Here's a question I've been pondering of late. King Charles III got the III bit because, obviously, there were two kings called Charles before him. But who or what gets to decide who officially counts as a historical monarch or not? For example, it's surely debatable whether Edward V should count as a genuine king, but it's been decided that he was, and there must be other borderline cases throughout history. So what's the official criteria?
It's up to the next monarch of the same name. Edward VI (or more probably his protectors) decided that he was the sixth of that name so, proclaimed Edward VI he was.
In some ways you would also compare them to 87-92, although there (for example in Richmond) the splits worked in the Tories’ favour.
But you could also compare them to 2005-10. We know how that played out.
I’ve always been sceptical about Starmer winning an overall majority because of the enormous number of seats he needs to gain. Swings like this mean it’s plausible. However, I still wouldn’t be betting on a majority of over 30.
however much Heathener wishcasts, but it's definitely within the realms of possibility.
I don't think it is wishcasting. I'm going on the current facts. I bet regardless of preference, often making money on Republicans and Conservatives. And I did well financially from the Brexit vote.
We need to look at the present facts especially the opinion polls. They're not wrong. More anecdotally I've not heard such anger against a prevailing party since 1997, and it's even more pronounced this time because the economic climate is so much worse (it was good in '97).
I think the difference in 1997 was people were fed up with Tory priorities rather than management per se (though the sleaze and black Wednesday did come into it somewhat).
This time people are fed up of both. Just thoroughly fed up with the party and its myriad failings. I think more so than 1997.
But again - Starmer is no Blair and he starts from a lot further back.
It's not a rerun of 97. Politics and the state of the country are both fundamentally quite different. I understand that as a landslide win for Labour it is a point of comparison, but this will not be 'another 97' or 'another 92'. It'll be 2024.
While a lot of the change is a series of unforced errors by the Conservatives (I still can scarcely believe the stupidity of announcing the cancellation of the Manchester leg of HS2... in Manchester, not a killer point in itself but beautifully illustrative of the state of the Tory party at the moment.), nonetheless SKS has unquestionably done a politically astute move into the centre ground and banished Corbyn's ghost. If Mid Beds can be overturned (in a three horse race, no less), anything is possible.
I don't know if this has been surmised elsewhere, but maybe the third horse drew enough votes from the first horse to let the second horse squeak though? The LibDem intervention could have been helpful to Labour's victory. And would it be rude to suggest that somewhere in deepest central Bedfordshire there remains a core of socially-conservative, semi-rural voters who aren't quite yet ready for an MP called Festus?
I'm not sure that comes into it to be honest. Those people exist but are probably already either DNV or Ref/RecUK.
Good point on the LDs winnowing the Tories to Labour's advantage though.
In some ways you would also compare them to 87-92, although there (for example in Richmond) the splits worked in the Tories’ favour.
But you could also compare them to 2005-10. We know how that played out.
I’ve always been sceptical about Starmer winning an overall majority because of the enormous number of seats he needs to gain. Swings like this mean it’s plausible. However, I still wouldn’t be betting on a majority of over 30.
however much Heathener wishcasts, but it's definitely within the realms of possibility.
I don't think it is wishcasting. I'm going on the current facts. I bet regardless of preference, often making money on Republicans and Conservatives. And I did well financially from the Brexit vote.
We need to look at the present facts especially the opinion polls. They're not wrong. More anecdotally I've not heard such anger against a prevailing party since 1997, and it's even more pronounced this time because the economic climate is so much worse (it was good in '97).
I think the difference in 1997 was people were fed up with Tory priorities rather than management per se (though the sleaze and black Wednesday did come into it somewhat).
This time people are fed up of both. Just thoroughly fed up with the party and its myriad failings. I think more so than 1997.
But again - Starmer is no Blair and he starts from a lot further back.
It's not a rerun of 97. Politics and the state of the country are both fundamentally quite different. I understand that as a landslide win for Labour it is a point of comparison, but this will not be 'another 97' or 'another 92'. It'll be 2024.
While a lot of the change is a series of unforced errors by the Conservatives (I still can scarcely believe the stupidity of announcing the cancellation of the Manchester leg of HS2... in Manchester, not a killer point in itself but beautifully illustrative of the state of the Tory party at the moment.), nonetheless SKS has unquestionably done a politically astute move into the centre ground and banished Corbyn's ghost. If Mid Beds can be overturned (in a three horse race, no less), anything is possible.
I don't know if this has been surmised elsewhere, but maybe the third horse drew enough votes from the first horse to let the second horse squeak though? The LibDem intervention could have been helpful to Labour's victory. And would it be rude to suggest that somewhere in deepest central Bedfordshire there remains a core of socially-conservative, semi-rural voters who aren't quite yet ready for an MP called Festus?
They were ready enough to elect a Police & Crime Commissioner called Festus pretty comfortably in 2021.
Did that not include other more 'urban' constituencies?
What idiot thought selling of social housing for peanuts was a good idea?
The idea of selling council stock was a good one.
Central government nicking most of the proceeds, and legislating to prevent councils building more to replace it was utter idiocy - motivated purely by Thatcher's dislike of local government. But then left unchanged by her successors.
It's possible the Tories might just have held Tamworth with Boris Johnson as leader, but they probably would have lost Mid Beds by even more than they did.
I think 1997 redux is coming. I don’t think it will be worse (albeit from a worse start point for Labour and better for the Tories. I think a lot of people attribute too much to swings in bye elections with pitiful turnouts. If I were an ambitious young Tory right now I’d be thinking about how to change what the party is offering the nation. The old reputation for economic competence, if it was ever deserved or real, is gone. So what then is the point of a conservative government?
I hope there are also ambitious young Tories who are willing to honestly reflect on their failures in government.
Take housing, for example. Osborne introduced Help to Buy in 2013. It was billed as the largest intervention in the housing market since Right to Buy. So why is there still a housing crisis? What went wrong?
Help To Buy did. It was wrong from day 1. All it did was increase the price of houses and the amount of debt. It was stupid and everybody loved it. If you look at the house price curve you'll see that after about four years of static house prices HTB sent them back up again. A genuinely stupid policy.
Unpopular opinion but I disagree. Help to Buy only applied to New Build properties, not existing properties. After years of declining house building levels, and home ownership rates, the decline was reversed and house building rates started to rebound as did home ownership rates. Price to income ratios stabilised too, rather than increasing.
The problem was it was too little, too late, not that it was counterproductive.
We need much, much more building both to cope with rising population levels and to reverse decades of shortages. That is going to need concrete (pun intended) reforms to planning etc not minor tinkering like Help to Buy.
I understand the point, (and wholeheartedly agree with your last sentence) but reluctance to build could have been dealt with by tax cuts for builders in 2013, not debt/grant/subsidies for buyers. A supply-side change not a demand side one.
It's possible the Tories might just have held Tamworth with Boris Johnson as leader, but they probably would have lost Mid Beds by even more than they did.
There would not have been a Mid Beds by-election. Nadine Dorries would have been the Foreign Secretary dealing with the Gaza crisis.
Can someone help? Here's a question I've been pondering of late. King Charles III got the III bit because, obviously, there were two kings called Charles before him. But who or what gets to decide who officially counts as a historical monarch or not? For example, it's surely debatable whether Edward V should count as a genuine king, but it's been decided that he was, and there must be other borderline cases throughout history. So what's the official criteria?
It's up to the next monarch of the same name. Edward VI (or more probably his protectors) decided that he was the sixth of that name so, proclaimed Edward VI he was.
That's really interesting. Especially with the Edward bit - because of course there was at least one King Edward of England prior to Edward I - i.e. Edward the Confessor.
It must be really chastening for Rishi Sunak, who by any odds has had a remarkably successful and lucrative career, to realise he just isn’t any good at this. Oxford. Fulbright Scholar. Goldman Sachs. Chancellor. First Asian-extraction British PM.
And he just can’t do it. Whatever he tries doesn’t work. How do you get up every morning and start work knowing you’re not going to succeed?
I've been harsh on Sunak in the past and I once said he was a man who had never failed at anything or had known defeat. If you go into politics there's a fair chance that will change.
It could be a positive and character building experience for him and remember he's only 43 (Blair's age in 1997). In twenty years time opinions of him could be very different and he might be the respected elder statesman.
The truth is there may be nothing as ex as an ex-MP (as someone once said) but there's really nothing as ex as an ex-PM. Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Truss, Johnson - all still with us, all still able to contribute to the national debte but do they? If they do, does anyone listen or are their past sins thrown back at them and used as an excuse to ignore them?
Nope in 20 years time his screwing round with HS2 will be regarded as a sign of utter incompetency highlighting the reduction of the UK's status as it's seen as incompetent...
One of the very first things I was taught in my economics degree was that knowledge is everything so if a skill set is required retaining that knowledge is very important.
Which means that you should have a continual set of projects going (rail electrification. nuclear power station developments, roads....) so that you aren't starting afresh all the time needing to import foreign expertise because no-one in the UK has done this in x0 years
That works fine when the projects you want to build are both economially viable and necessary. There were lots of programmes that could apply to. HS2 was not one of them and indeed it sucked money away from other more important and useful projects.
It’s possible (reasonable even) to argue that HS2 itself was misconceived from the start. But the fact remains that rail transport in this country, both passenger & freight, would benefit greatly from a N<->S high speed passenger rail line. The other routes are full to capacity - the demand is clearly there.
The underlying problem seems to be that we are completely unable to build projects that are of clear economic benefit at all thanks to a Treasury that cannot see beyond the next budget & a planning system that drives up the cost beyond all reasonable measure. The only way to get HS2 through parliament at all was to turn it into some gold-plated national monument to Britain. It’s no way to run a railway, or an economy for that matter.
A high speed rail project like HS2 should cost something like a third the HS2 budget: the HS2 costs are a symptom of wider problems in the UK economy. Every major infrastructure project spends interminable years trapped in a planning system that not only imposes insane costs all by itself, it drives up the cost of the final project by $billions.
The problem being that we need East/West and intra-region capacity a lot more than we need North/South (which actually just means London to the rest of the country). We could find far more useful and viable projects for every penny of that which was going to be spent on HS2 - whether it was the original £37.5 billion or the pre-abandonment £180 billion.
HS2 was the infrastructure equivalent of that old problem that plagues politics.
We must do something This is something We must do it.
Shouldn't have been an either/or! If the UK properly cracked down on the benefit scrounging pensioners (if you want to be voluntarily unemployed fine, but the state shouldn't pay for it) and put the state pension back to 19/20 levels we'd be able to build a new Crossrail every year with the savings.
Just shows where the Tories have gone wrong this parliament - prioritised benefits for the bone idle boomers over capital spending.
Even if it wasn't an either/or it was/is still an unecessary white elephant finding yesterday's solutions for the last century's problems.
"finding yesterday's solutions for the last century's problems"
LOL. You keep on saying that, and it gives me a good laugh. Thanks.
If high-speed rail is "finding yesterday's solutions for the last century's problems", then why are most major economies in the world (aside from the USA) investing heavily in it? What do you know that they don't?
The pandemic hurt railway usage; but the rebound has been quite staggering. And working from home or telecommuting has not hurt it as much as I feared either. AIUI, long-distance travel is actually up since the end of the pandemic.
Because they are much larger countries where it makes a difference. I am all in favour of a huge expansion in railcapacity but it should not be the High Speed white elephant and it should not be all focused on London. Build more lines going where people want and need to go - more cross country and intra-region. Build more lines suitable for frieght and get stuff off the roads.
That's a different argument, and one I think is also wrong. But it has zero bearing on stupid phrases like "finding yesterday's solutions for the last century's problems", that you are so attached to. HSR is not yesterday's solution, and it is very much trying to help this century's problems in every country where it is built.
"Build more lines going where people want and need to go"
The capacity problem on the southern WCML show that's exactly where people want and need to go. Now, that does not mean I'm against other projects such as NPR or EWR - quite the opposite. We should build them all as part of an integrated network.
"Your desperate attachment to HS2 is illogical and damaging to the economy. "
As if my belief that HS2 is a good idea has any influence! But if you extend that honour to me, I shall do the same to you: your irrational dislike of the project is irrational and hurts the country.
And as for your utter devotion to Brexit over decades - that's hurt the country, financially, politically and economically, orders of magnitude more than any infrastructure project.
It's possible the Tories might just have held Tamworth with Boris Johnson as leader, but they probably would have lost Mid Beds by even more than they did.
If Bozo was still PM Nadine wouldn't have resigned in a huff..
The big question is how many generations before the electorate forgive the Tories for taking us down the rabbit hole of Brexit? I suspect a long time. Though Brexit wasn't mentioned as an issue it's effects in many ways has destabilised the electorate and subliminally made us see our position in the world differently
52% of voters voted for Brexit despite the Tory leader at the time opposing it, indeed Brexit voters leaking to Reform and even Labour having voted for Boris is making the Tory situation worse.
How a Labour government handles the economy will be far more significant for the future Tory prospects than Brexit
Brexit is a stench that wont go away. Every time Rishi goes abroad he seems to get smaller. Do you think he's actually shrinking or that the country he represents is?
I waited in the longest airport queue I can remember being in at an airport a couple of weeks ago. Do you think everyone in the queue wasn't joining the dots and asking what caused this new phenomena?
That people voted for it is irrelevant. Do you think human nature allows them to blame themselves?
Alternatively, Remaoners are a stench on the nostrils of democracy that won't go away....
At some point they will have to go cap in hand and beg to get back into Europe, being the sad lonely outsider will ensure that.
Can someone help? Here's a question I've been pondering of late. King Charles III got the III bit because, obviously, there were two kings called Charles before him. But who or what gets to decide who officially counts as a historical monarch or not? For example, it's surely debatable whether Edward V should count as a genuine king, but it's been decided that he was, and there must be other borderline cases throughout history. So what's the official criteria?
There's no official criteria other than winners write the history they want, and kings can style themselves largely as they see fit, within the confines of contemporary acceptability and practicality (it'd be very difficult to un-king Edward V now as that would mean changing the numbers of the three later Edwards).
The Swedish king, Carl XVI Gustaf is only the tenth of that name but several Swedish kings' names have exaggerated numbering due to Erik 'XIV' adopting a fictitious history of Sweden and retroactively giving these imaginary kings numbers.
There is a current convention, adopted when Elizabeth II became queen, that future UK monarchs would take the higher number from pre-Union English or Scottish series - so a future King James would be James VIII, for example - but it's not legally binding and could be changed if thought appropriate at the time.
Can someone help? Here's a question I've been pondering of late. King Charles III got the III bit because, obviously, there were two kings called Charles before him. But who or what gets to decide who officially counts as a historical monarch or not? For example, it's surely debatable whether Edward V should count as a genuine king, but it's been decided that he was, and there must be other borderline cases throughout history. So what's the official criteria?
It's up to the next monarch of the same name. Edward VI (or more probably his protectors) decided that he was the sixth of that name so, proclaimed Edward VI he was.
That's really interesting. Especially with the Edward bit - because of course there was at least one King Edward of England prior to Edward I - i.e. Edward the Confessor.
Also add the variois kings of Wales, Ireland and Scotland, such as James I-VI (and the lack of Elizabeth 1 in Scvotland). Rather illogical to speak of James III (the one married to Mary of Modena) rather than VII, but Elizabeth II.
Completely off thread - but my wife and I have been discussing Blue Peter viewing figures, which when we were kids were about 6 million and are now about 30,000; indeed there was an episode a few years back which got no viewers at all (though I have my doubts about the accuracy of these figures). Anyway, we were interrupted by our 8 year old daughter: "what even is Blue Peter?". Which kind of illustrates the point. Kids don't watch live telly any more. (This has come about quite suddenly; my older two, 13 and 12, don't watch live telly either, but do at least remember doing so; my youngest never really has).
This makes me very sad. My kids don't watch it either. I do think my kids are much less well informed about the world than I was at their age - I picked a lot of stuff up without trying just by watching whatever was on TV. It's hard to have a vibrant well informed democracy when people know SFA about the world around them and get their information from sources that are vulnerable to disinformation campaigns.
There's good stuff still being made- both by the BBC and others. That includes online- it was good to see Map Men get a plug in the Sunday Times this weekend.
What's been lost has been the shared institutions that everyone knew about and most people watched. That atomisation isn't great for society or shared conversations, but somehow it's worse for children. The loss of general interest programmes as the only kids thing on means that some improve themselves a lot and others watch utter trash and nothing else.
In education, it's the Matthew Principle- to he who has shall be given more but to get who has not, what they have shall be taken away.
Indeed. things have really changed. The social assumptions underpinning the UK between 1945 and (say) 2015 are disappearing before our eyes. The belief in Britain as a communal experience underpinned by shared institutions has gone and it makes me sad.
How ironic that an underpinning of Brexit was a retreat into Britishness. Admittedly it was Faragian, UJ shoes Britishness which contains the huge, bulging seeds of its own failure.
But I don't think it's any different for France, or Germany, or Spain, or the USA. It's driven by technology. Indeed, this website is a prime example. 30 years ago none of us would have been online discussing politics and other matters with like minded people; we'd have been interacting with the people real life gave us. Our cultural consumption would have been much more mainstream, because the niches wouldn't have existed. Our kids would have watched Blue Peter because they wouldn't have had any choice of entertainment (personally, I don't think I've watched more than two BP episodes in my life - never really to my tastes - but still). I don't think this is any different in the UK to anywhere else.
Thirty years ago, kids were watching Teletubbies before graduating to Blue Peter but the crucial point you and others have made is that both were on mainstream BBC television.
But if they were still on mainstream BBC television it wouldn't matter. The number of kids prepared to watch BBC1 but not CBBC is almost nil. The point is the only people who still watch linear television are those doing it out of force of habit - i.e. older adults. Kids simply don't engage with linear TV any more.
We agree. CBBC and CBeebies are part of the splintering.
The big question is how many generations before the electorate forgive the Tories for taking us down the rabbit hole of Brexit? I suspect a long time. Though Brexit wasn't mentioned as an issue it's effects in many ways has destabilised the electorate and subliminally made us see our position in the world differently
52% of voters voted for Brexit despite the Tory leader at the time opposing it, indeed Brexit voters leaking to Reform and even Labour having voted for Boris is making the Tory situation worse.
How a Labour government handles the economy will be far more significant for the future Tory prospects than Brexit
Brexit is a stench that wont go away. Every time Rishi goes abroad he seems to get smaller. Do you think he's actually shrinking or that the country he represents is?
I waited in the longest airport queue I can remember being in at an airport a couple of weeks ago. Do you think everyone in the queue wasn't joining the dots and asking what caused this new phenomena?
That people voted for it is irrelevant. Do you think human nature allows them to blame themselves?
They probably don't blame themselves, nor should they. They correctly blame the cavalcade of crooks and incompetents who sold them a pack of lies and then cocked up the implementation.
It must be really chastening for Rishi Sunak, who by any odds has had a remarkably successful and lucrative career, to realise he just isn’t any good at this. Oxford. Fulbright Scholar. Goldman Sachs. Chancellor. First Asian-extraction British PM.
And he just can’t do it. Whatever he tries doesn’t work. How do you get up every morning and start work knowing you’re not going to succeed?
I've been harsh on Sunak in the past and I once said he was a man who had never failed at anything or had known defeat. If you go into politics there's a fair chance that will change.
It could be a positive and character building experience for him and remember he's only 43 (Blair's age in 1997). In twenty years time opinions of him could be very different and he might be the respected elder statesman.
The truth is there may be nothing as ex as an ex-MP (as someone once said) but there's really nothing as ex as an ex-PM. Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Truss, Johnson - all still with us, all still able to contribute to the national debte but do they? If they do, does anyone listen or are their past sins thrown back at them and used as an excuse to ignore them?
Nope in 20 years time his screwing round with HS2 will be regarded as a sign of utter incompetency highlighting the reduction of the UK's status as it's seen as incompetent...
One of the very first things I was taught in my economics degree was that knowledge is everything so if a skill set is required retaining that knowledge is very important.
Which means that you should have a continual set of projects going (rail electrification. nuclear power station developments, roads....) so that you aren't starting afresh all the time needing to import foreign expertise because no-one in the UK has done this in x0 years
That works fine when the projects you want to build are both economially viable and necessary. There were lots of programmes that could apply to. HS2 was not one of them and indeed it sucked money away from other more important and useful projects.
It’s possible (reasonable even) to argue that HS2 itself was misconceived from the start. But the fact remains that rail transport in this country, both passenger & freight, would benefit greatly from a N<->S high speed passenger rail line. The other routes are full to capacity - the demand is clearly there.
The underlying problem seems to be that we are completely unable to build projects that are of clear economic benefit at all thanks to a Treasury that cannot see beyond the next budget & a planning system that drives up the cost beyond all reasonable measure. The only way to get HS2 through parliament at all was to turn it into some gold-plated national monument to Britain. It’s no way to run a railway, or an economy for that matter.
A high speed rail project like HS2 should cost something like a third the HS2 budget: the HS2 costs are a symptom of wider problems in the UK economy. Every major infrastructure project spends interminable years trapped in a planning system that not only imposes insane costs all by itself, it drives up the cost of the final project by $billions.
The problem being that we need East/West and intra-region capacity a lot more than we need North/South (which actually just means London to the rest of the country). We could find far more useful and viable projects for every penny of that which was going to be spent on HS2 - whether it was the original £37.5 billion or the pre-abandonment £180 billion.
HS2 was the infrastructure equivalent of that old problem that plagues politics.
We must do something This is something We must do it.
Shouldn't have been an either/or! If the UK properly cracked down on the benefit scrounging pensioners (if you want to be voluntarily unemployed fine, but the state shouldn't pay for it) and put the state pension back to 19/20 levels we'd be able to build a new Crossrail every year with the savings.
Just shows where the Tories have gone wrong this parliament - prioritised benefits for the bone idle boomers over capital spending.
Even if it wasn't an either/or it was/is still an unecessary white elephant finding yesterday's solutions for the last century's problems.
"finding yesterday's solutions for the last century's problems"
LOL. You keep on saying that, and it gives me a good laugh. Thanks.
If high-speed rail is "finding yesterday's solutions for the last century's problems", then why are most major economies in the world (aside from the USA) investing heavily in it? What do you know that they don't?
The pandemic hurt railway usage; but the rebound has been quite staggering. And working from home or telecommuting has not hurt it as much as I feared either. AIUI, long-distance travel is actually up since the end of the pandemic.
Because they are much larger countries where it makes a difference. I am all in favour of a huge expansion in railcapacity but it should not be the High Speed white elephant and it should not be all focused on London. Build more lines going where people want and need to go - more cross country and intra-region. Build more lines suitable for frieght and get stuff off the roads.
Your desperate attachtment to HS2 is illogical and damaging to the economy.
South Korea is smaller, and has built plenty of high speed (but not ridiculously high speed) rail. They completed a 50km tunnel in three years, back in 2015.
And despite having nearly half their population in the metropolitan area around Seoul.
Can someone help? Here's a question I've been pondering of late. King Charles III got the III bit because, obviously, there were two kings called Charles before him. But who or what gets to decide who officially counts as a historical monarch or not? For example, it's surely debatable whether Edward V should count as a genuine king, but it's been decided that he was, and there must be other borderline cases throughout history. So what's the official criteria?
It's up to the next monarch of the same name. Edward VI (or more probably his protectors) decided that he was the sixth of that name so, proclaimed Edward VI he was.
Interesting, thanks. So if Edward VI hadn't recognized Edward V (for whatever reason) and decided to be call himself Edward V instead, does that mean that the original Edward V would have been wiped from the (Kings and Queens of England) history books?
I’m surprised people haven’t discussed what would have happened if MPs hadn’t tried to wriggle out of respecting the referendum result by voting down every deal while Theresa May was PM.
Quite likely that Boris would never have been PM, we would have been better prepared for the pandemic & able to see the real cost/benefit of leaving the EU rather than it being obscured by the effects of lockdown.
It must be really chastening for Rishi Sunak, who by any odds has had a remarkably successful and lucrative career, to realise he just isn’t any good at this. Oxford. Fulbright Scholar. Goldman Sachs. Chancellor. First Asian-extraction British PM.
And he just can’t do it. Whatever he tries doesn’t work. How do you get up every morning and start work knowing you’re not going to succeed?
I've been harsh on Sunak in the past and I once said he was a man who had never failed at anything or had known defeat. If you go into politics there's a fair chance that will change.
It could be a positive and character building experience for him and remember he's only 43 (Blair's age in 1997). In twenty years time opinions of him could be very different and he might be the respected elder statesman.
The truth is there may be nothing as ex as an ex-MP (as someone once said) but there's really nothing as ex as an ex-PM. Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Truss, Johnson - all still with us, all still able to contribute to the national debte but do they? If they do, does anyone listen or are their past sins thrown back at them and used as an excuse to ignore them?
Nope in 20 years time his screwing round with HS2 will be regarded as a sign of utter incompetency highlighting the reduction of the UK's status as it's seen as incompetent...
One of the very first things I was taught in my economics degree was that knowledge is everything so if a skill set is required retaining that knowledge is very important.
Which means that you should have a continual set of projects going (rail electrification. nuclear power station developments, roads....) so that you aren't starting afresh all the time needing to import foreign expertise because no-one in the UK has done this in x0 years
That works fine when the projects you want to build are both economially viable and necessary. There were lots of programmes that could apply to. HS2 was not one of them and indeed it sucked money away from other more important and useful projects.
It’s possible (reasonable even) to argue that HS2 itself was misconceived from the start. But the fact remains that rail transport in this country, both passenger & freight, would benefit greatly from a N<->S high speed passenger rail line. The other routes are full to capacity - the demand is clearly there.
The underlying problem seems to be that we are completely unable to build projects that are of clear economic benefit at all thanks to a Treasury that cannot see beyond the next budget & a planning system that drives up the cost beyond all reasonable measure. The only way to get HS2 through parliament at all was to turn it into some gold-plated national monument to Britain. It’s no way to run a railway, or an economy for that matter.
A high speed rail project like HS2 should cost something like a third the HS2 budget: the HS2 costs are a symptom of wider problems in the UK economy. Every major infrastructure project spends interminable years trapped in a planning system that not only imposes insane costs all by itself, it drives up the cost of the final project by $billions.
The problem being that we need East/West and intra-region capacity a lot more than we need North/South (which actually just means London to the rest of the country). We could find far more useful and viable projects for every penny of that which was going to be spent on HS2 - whether it was the original £37.5 billion or the pre-abandonment £180 billion.
HS2 was the infrastructure equivalent of that old problem that plagues politics.
We must do something This is something We must do it.
Shouldn't have been an either/or! If the UK properly cracked down on the benefit scrounging pensioners (if you want to be voluntarily unemployed fine, but the state shouldn't pay for it) and put the state pension back to 19/20 levels we'd be able to build a new Crossrail every year with the savings.
Just shows where the Tories have gone wrong this parliament - prioritised benefits for the bone idle boomers over capital spending.
Even if it wasn't an either/or it was/is still an unecessary white elephant finding yesterday's solutions for the last century's problems.
"finding yesterday's solutions for the last century's problems"
LOL. You keep on saying that, and it gives me a good laugh. Thanks.
If high-speed rail is "finding yesterday's solutions for the last century's problems", then why are most major economies in the world (aside from the USA) investing heavily in it? What do you know that they don't?
The pandemic hurt railway usage; but the rebound has been quite staggering. And working from home or telecommuting has not hurt it as much as I feared either. AIUI, long-distance travel is actually up since the end of the pandemic.
Because they are much larger countries where it makes a difference. I am all in favour of a huge expansion in railcapacity but it should not be the High Speed white elephant and it should not be all focused on London. Build more lines going where people want and need to go - more cross country and intra-region. Build more lines suitable for frieght and get stuff off the roads.
That's a different argument, and one I think is also wrong. But it has zero bearing on stupid phrases like "finding yesterday's solutions for the last century's problems", that you are so attached to. HSR is not yesterday's solution, and it is very much trying to help this century's problems in every country where it is built.
"Build more lines going where people want and need to go"
The capacity problem on the southern WCML show that's exactly where people want and need to go. Now, that does not mean I'm against other projects such as NPR or EWR - quite the opposite. We should build them all as part of an integrated network.
"Your desperate attachment to HS2 is illogical and damaging to the economy. "
As if my belief that HS2 is a good idea has any influence! But if you extend that honour to me, I shall do the same to you: your irrational dislike of the project is irrational and hurts the country.
And as for your utter devotion to Brexit over decades - that's hurt the country, financially, politically and economically, orders of magnitude more than any infrastructure project.
Yes, I agree with Josias here. It can't be said often enough, HS2 is a capacity project. By taking fast trains off the main lines, you allow much more capacity for local trains and freight. A railway has much more capacity if everything going along it is of roughly the same speed - mixtures of fast and slow trains kills capacity.
It's time for a leadership challenge, with Penny Mordaunt and Kemi Badenoch being the main candidates.
Why on Earth would they want it now? Do they want to tick a box or have a career? If the Tories switch, they need an elder statesman to fight a short, sharp campaign and win a few seats. A Michael Howard type. I'm not sure who they have left in the Commons who can do that.
Gove???
I did think Gove was the only choice, then read his latest piece praising the 'active state' on Conhome. How anyone, let alone a Tory, thinks an ode to the state is appropriate at the moment, is beyond me. Totally captured by the blob he once condemned, utterly useless.
It must be really chastening for Rishi Sunak, who by any odds has had a remarkably successful and lucrative career, to realise he just isn’t any good at this. Oxford. Fulbright Scholar. Goldman Sachs. Chancellor. First Asian-extraction British PM.
And he just can’t do it. Whatever he tries doesn’t work. How do you get up every morning and start work knowing you’re not going to succeed?
I've been harsh on Sunak in the past and I once said he was a man who had never failed at anything or had known defeat. If you go into politics there's a fair chance that will change.
It could be a positive and character building experience for him and remember he's only 43 (Blair's age in 1997). In twenty years time opinions of him could be very different and he might be the respected elder statesman.
The truth is there may be nothing as ex as an ex-MP (as someone once said) but there's really nothing as ex as an ex-PM. Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Truss, Johnson - all still with us, all still able to contribute to the national debte but do they? If they do, does anyone listen or are their past sins thrown back at them and used as an excuse to ignore them?
Nope in 20 years time his screwing round with HS2 will be regarded as a sign of utter incompetency highlighting the reduction of the UK's status as it's seen as incompetent...
One of the very first things I was taught in my economics degree was that knowledge is everything so if a skill set is required retaining that knowledge is very important.
Which means that you should have a continual set of projects going (rail electrification. nuclear power station developments, roads....) so that you aren't starting afresh all the time needing to import foreign expertise because no-one in the UK has done this in x0 years
That works fine when the projects you want to build are both economially viable and necessary. There were lots of programmes that could apply to. HS2 was not one of them and indeed it sucked money away from other more important and useful projects.
It’s possible (reasonable even) to argue that HS2 itself was misconceived from the start. But the fact remains that rail transport in this country, both passenger & freight, would benefit greatly from a N<->S high speed passenger rail line. The other routes are full to capacity - the demand is clearly there.
The underlying problem seems to be that we are completely unable to build projects that are of clear economic benefit at all thanks to a Treasury that cannot see beyond the next budget & a planning system that drives up the cost beyond all reasonable measure. The only way to get HS2 through parliament at all was to turn it into some gold-plated national monument to Britain. It’s no way to run a railway, or an economy for that matter.
A high speed rail project like HS2 should cost something like a third the HS2 budget: the HS2 costs are a symptom of wider problems in the UK economy. Every major infrastructure project spends interminable years trapped in a planning system that not only imposes insane costs all by itself, it drives up the cost of the final project by $billions.
The problem being that we need East/West and intra-region capacity a lot more than we need North/South (which actually just means London to the rest of the country). We could find far more useful and viable projects for every penny of that which was going to be spent on HS2 - whether it was the original £37.5 billion or the pre-abandonment £180 billion.
HS2 was the infrastructure equivalent of that old problem that plagues politics.
We must do something This is something We must do it.
Shouldn't have been an either/or! If the UK properly cracked down on the benefit scrounging pensioners (if you want to be voluntarily unemployed fine, but the state shouldn't pay for it) and put the state pension back to 19/20 levels we'd be able to build a new Crossrail every year with the savings.
Just shows where the Tories have gone wrong this parliament - prioritised benefits for the bone idle boomers over capital spending.
Even if it wasn't an either/or it was/is still an unecessary white elephant finding yesterday's solutions for the last century's problems.
"finding yesterday's solutions for the last century's problems"
LOL. You keep on saying that, and it gives me a good laugh. Thanks.
If high-speed rail is "finding yesterday's solutions for the last century's problems", then why are most major economies in the world (aside from the USA) investing heavily in it? What do you know that they don't?
The pandemic hurt railway usage; but the rebound has been quite staggering. And working from home or telecommuting has not hurt it as much as I feared either. AIUI, long-distance travel is actually up since the end of the pandemic.
Because they are much larger countries where it makes a difference. I am all in favour of a huge expansion in railcapacity but it should not be the High Speed white elephant and it should not be all focused on London. Build more lines going where people want and need to go - more cross country and intra-region. Build more lines suitable for frieght and get stuff off the roads.
That's a different argument, and one I think is also wrong. But it has zero bearing on stupid phrases like "finding yesterday's solutions for the last century's problems", that you are so attached to. HSR is not yesterday's solution, and it is very much trying to help this century's problems in every country where it is built.
"Build more lines going where people want and need to go"
The capacity problem on the southern WCML show that's exactly where people want and need to go. Now, that does not mean I'm against other projects such as NPR or EWR - quite the opposite. We should build them all as part of an integrated network.
"Your desperate attachment to HS2 is illogical and damaging to the economy. "
As if my belief that HS2 is a good idea has any influence! But if you extend that honour to me, I shall do the same to you: your irrational dislike of the project is irrational and hurts the country.
And as for your utter devotion to Brexit over decades - that's hurt the country, financially, politically and economically, orders of magnitude more than any infrastructure project.
Yeah, you just keep believing that. You have consistently ignored the arguments against the economic benefits of HS rail because they don't fit your pre-conceived ideas so I certainly don't expect you to change now. Just like you never changed when you kept denying the massive projected cost increases even when it becaume obvious that they themselves were huge underestinates. I well remember you scorning the idea that costs for it could get anywhere near £85 billion. That seems positively cheap now compared to the final projected costs for the whole thing.
The only good thing out of all of this is that we have finally broken the narrative which was forcing us down the road of a ridiculously expensive waste of money. One thing (perhaps the only one) that I can praise Sunak for. It is just a shame he didn't do it sooner and cancel the whole thing.
Can someone help? Here's a question I've been pondering of late. King Charles III got the III bit because, obviously, there were two kings called Charles before him. But who or what gets to decide who officially counts as a historical monarch or not? For example, it's surely debatable whether Edward V should count as a genuine king, but it's been decided that he was, and there must be other borderline cases throughout history. So what's the official criteria?
It's up to the next monarch of the same name. Edward VI (or more probably his protectors) decided that he was the sixth of that name so, proclaimed Edward VI he was.
That's really interesting. Especially with the Edward bit - because of course there was at least one King Edward of England prior to Edward I - i.e. Edward the Confessor.
At least two: Edward the Martyr (975-978) as well. There was another Edward of Wessex (the Elder, but that was before the unification of England.
Can someone help? Here's a question I've been pondering of late. King Charles III got the III bit because, obviously, there were two kings called Charles before him. But who or what gets to decide who officially counts as a historical monarch or not? For example, it's surely debatable whether Edward V should count as a genuine king, but it's been decided that he was, and there must be other borderline cases throughout history. So what's the official criteria?
It's up to the next monarch of the same name. Edward VI (or more probably his protectors) decided that he was the sixth of that name so, proclaimed Edward VI he was.
That's really interesting. Especially with the Edward bit - because of course there was at least one King Edward of England prior to Edward I - i.e. Edward the Confessor.
What idiot thought selling of social housing for peanuts was a good idea?
The idea of selling council stock was a good one.
Central government nicking most of the proceeds, and legislating to prevent councils building more to replace it was utter idiocy - motivated purely by Thatcher's dislike of local government. But then left unchanged by her successors.
The problem is not so much the lack of social housing as the lack of housing overall. Had much more been built, to meet demand, prices would never have soared as they have in both rental and purchase sectors.
The big question is how many generations before the electorate forgive the Tories for taking us down the rabbit hole of Brexit? I suspect a long time. Though Brexit wasn't mentioned as an issue it's effects in many ways has destabilised the electorate and subliminally made us see our position in the world differently
52% of voters voted for Brexit despite the Tory leader at the time opposing it, indeed Brexit voters leaking to Reform and even Labour having voted for Boris is making the Tory situation worse.
How a Labour government handles the economy will be far more significant for the future Tory prospects than Brexit
Brexit is a stench that wont go away. Every time Rishi goes abroad he seems to get smaller. Do you think he's actually shrinking or that the country he represents is?
I waited in the longest airport queue I can remember being in at an airport a couple of weeks ago. Do you think everyone in the queue wasn't joining the dots and asking what caused this new phenomena?
That people voted for it is irrelevant. Do you think human nature allows them to blame themselves?
People who use airports probably voted Remain by a considerable margin.
I’m surprised people haven’t discussed what would have happened if MPs hadn’t tried to wriggle out of respecting the referendum result by voting down every deal while Theresa May was PM.
Quite likely that Boris would never have been PM, we would have been better prepared for the pandemic & able to see the real cost/benefit of leaving the EU rather than it being obscured by the effects of lockdown.
Plenty of MPs on the ERG wing voted against Theresa May's deals. Remember vassal states!
What idiot thought selling of social housing for peanuts was a good idea?
The idea of selling council stock was a good one.
Central government nicking most of the proceeds, and legislating to prevent councils building more to replace it was utter idiocy - motivated purely by Thatcher's dislike of local government. But then left unchanged by her successors.
The problem is not so much the lack of social housing as the lack of housing overall. Had much more been built, to meet demand, prices would never have soared as they have in both rental and purchase sectors.
Oh, I don't disagree. But the policy instituted by Mrs T is a significant contributor to the current problem.
Above inflation rises in house prices has been a political positive for the Conservatives ever since. But it's a political wheeze they have tested to destruction.
I’m surprised people haven’t discussed what would have happened if MPs hadn’t tried to wriggle out of respecting the referendum result by voting down every deal while Theresa May was PM.
Quite likely that Boris would never have been PM, we would have been better prepared for the pandemic & able to see the real cost/benefit of leaving the EU rather than it being obscured by the effects of lockdown.
An interesting thought. Another one:
'Which or Who diminished the credibility of the UK more;
It must be really chastening for Rishi Sunak, who by any odds has had a remarkably successful and lucrative career, to realise he just isn’t any good at this. Oxford. Fulbright Scholar. Goldman Sachs. Chancellor. First Asian-extraction British PM.
And he just can’t do it. Whatever he tries doesn’t work. How do you get up every morning and start work knowing you’re not going to succeed?
I've been harsh on Sunak in the past and I once said he was a man who had never failed at anything or had known defeat. If you go into politics there's a fair chance that will change.
It could be a positive and character building experience for him and remember he's only 43 (Blair's age in 1997). In twenty years time opinions of him could be very different and he might be the respected elder statesman.
The truth is there may be nothing as ex as an ex-MP (as someone once said) but there's really nothing as ex as an ex-PM. Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Truss, Johnson - all still with us, all still able to contribute to the national debte but do they? If they do, does anyone listen or are their past sins thrown back at them and used as an excuse to ignore them?
Nope in 20 years time his screwing round with HS2 will be regarded as a sign of utter incompetency highlighting the reduction of the UK's status as it's seen as incompetent...
One of the very first things I was taught in my economics degree was that knowledge is everything so if a skill set is required retaining that knowledge is very important.
Which means that you should have a continual set of projects going (rail electrification. nuclear power station developments, roads....) so that you aren't starting afresh all the time needing to import foreign expertise because no-one in the UK has done this in x0 years
That works fine when the projects you want to build are both economially viable and necessary. There were lots of programmes that could apply to. HS2 was not one of them and indeed it sucked money away from other more important and useful projects.
It’s possible (reasonable even) to argue that HS2 itself was misconceived from the start. But the fact remains that rail transport in this country, both passenger & freight, would benefit greatly from a N<->S high speed passenger rail line. The other routes are full to capacity - the demand is clearly there.
The underlying problem seems to be that we are completely unable to build projects that are of clear economic benefit at all thanks to a Treasury that cannot see beyond the next budget & a planning system that drives up the cost beyond all reasonable measure. The only way to get HS2 through parliament at all was to turn it into some gold-plated national monument to Britain. It’s no way to run a railway, or an economy for that matter.
A high speed rail project like HS2 should cost something like a third the HS2 budget: the HS2 costs are a symptom of wider problems in the UK economy. Every major infrastructure project spends interminable years trapped in a planning system that not only imposes insane costs all by itself, it drives up the cost of the final project by $billions.
The problem being that we need East/West and intra-region capacity a lot more than we need North/South (which actually just means London to the rest of the country). We could find far more useful and viable projects for every penny of that which was going to be spent on HS2 - whether it was the original £37.5 billion or the pre-abandonment £180 billion.
HS2 was the infrastructure equivalent of that old problem that plagues politics.
We must do something This is something We must do it.
The question you should be asking is not: why HS2? But rather: why is it apparently impossible to build these other projects?
I note in passing that a country which had built these other projects would probably be one that would happily build another north-south train line as the economic advantages would be obvious & unarguable & we would have an economy which could more easily afford the interest costs.
I think the answer to that one is obvius although sad. WHatever they might say, the London-centric politicians simply don't care about the North and don't want to waste money on it. That applied to Labour for years because they thought the North would vote for them anyway and to the Tories because they knew the North would never vote for them. (The Brexit effect being the exception).
The other thing is the absurd costs.
Once a project gets “unique mega project” status, it inevitably gets turned into a football.
HS2 should have been the “National rail investment plan, section 16, project 4”
Can someone help? Here's a question I've been pondering of late. King Charles III got the III bit because, obviously, there were two kings called Charles before him. But who or what gets to decide who officially counts as a historical monarch or not? For example, it's surely debatable whether Edward V should count as a genuine king, but it's been decided that he was, and there must be other borderline cases throughout history. So what's the official criteria?
We already had a Charles III north of the wall...
And south, certainly in Derby.
There's a surprisingly kind cairn near Swarkestone Bridge / Causeway (itself very special) in memory of Charles Edward Stuart's about turn.
Piccies:
Local Schoolchildren are less kind. No idea about why the actual decision was made:
"Bonnie Prince Charlie came this way And ran away on washing day."
A colleague used to work for a Derby operation - I used to see him at conferences and rib him over a beer on how so unspeakably awful Derby was that CES at the head of an all-conquering blitzkrieg could only take one look and turn back.
I'd call Derby a Curate's Egg - good parts and bad parts. Some truly awful roads, but also Rolls-Royce (1200 new jobs from Aukus, if dodgy Rishi doesn't burn that down as well) and the Peak District corridor.
But they have just put *this* in the middle one of their key strategic cycling and walking routes, so totally in hock to motor-normativity.
A numpty at the Derbyshire County Council Planning Department conditioned the mast with a pathway extension to make it a bit less dangerous, but then accepted a drawing with no dimensions on it so can do bugger all to enforce anything, and something was built that is massively below national standards. Attention to detail totally missing.
Situated on the key Pentagon Island active travel route, Derby’s newest sculptural installation “Middle Finger” provides deep & emotional insight into the true feelings of the council’s planning department towards all those walking, wheeling & cycling in the city. https://twitter.com/tandemkate/status/1710701505064354227
Can someone help? Here's a question I've been pondering of late. King Charles III got the III bit because, obviously, there were two kings called Charles before him. But who or what gets to decide who officially counts as a historical monarch or not? For example, it's surely debatable whether Edward V should count as a genuine king, but it's been decided that he was, and there must be other borderline cases throughout history. So what's the official criteria?
It's up to the next monarch of the same name. Edward VI (or more probably his protectors) decided that he was the sixth of that name so, proclaimed Edward VI he was.
That's really interesting. Especially with the Edward bit - because of course there was at least one King Edward of England prior to Edward I - i.e. Edward the Confessor.
The Norman's reset the clock when they took over.
There is the whole question of whether England even existed as a unified political construct before the Norman Conquest. Edward the Confessor started as King of Wessex. Was he also the first King of England?
These losses that Ukraine claims Russia suffered yesterday are massive. They can probably take the loss of men but how can 120 IFVs and 55 tanks be sustainable? I have a small hope that Russia is making one last throw of the dice in their recent offensives, like the Battle of the Bulge in WW2, but so far they have not achieved anything.
It’s only 300k men and 5,000 tanks, did they think war would be easy?
The discussions of the past few weeks have been that the Russians have been bringing forward an awful lot of men and kit, to either defend existing lines or to push them forward, and that they’re going to keep doing this until winter bogs everything down and they can resupply. The risk is that they end up with nothing behind the front line, and suffer a total collapse of dozens of kilometres of ground in very short order, if the defenders can get past a few strategic minefields and trenches.
I’m surprised people haven’t discussed what would have happened if MPs hadn’t tried to wriggle out of respecting the referendum result by voting down every deal while Theresa May was PM.
Quite likely that Boris would never have been PM, we would have been better prepared for the pandemic & able to see the real cost/benefit of leaving the EU rather than it being obscured by the effects of lockdown.
Thats why Boris et al were the MPs rebelling against the deal....
It must be really chastening for Rishi Sunak, who by any odds has had a remarkably successful and lucrative career, to realise he just isn’t any good at this. Oxford. Fulbright Scholar. Goldman Sachs. Chancellor. First Asian-extraction British PM.
And he just can’t do it. Whatever he tries doesn’t work. How do you get up every morning and start work knowing you’re not going to succeed?
I've been harsh on Sunak in the past and I once said he was a man who had never failed at anything or had known defeat. If you go into politics there's a fair chance that will change.
It could be a positive and character building experience for him and remember he's only 43 (Blair's age in 1997). In twenty years time opinions of him could be very different and he might be the respected elder statesman.
The truth is there may be nothing as ex as an ex-MP (as someone once said) but there's really nothing as ex as an ex-PM. Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Truss, Johnson - all still with us, all still able to contribute to the national debte but do they? If they do, does anyone listen or are their past sins thrown back at them and used as an excuse to ignore them?
Nope in 20 years time his screwing round with HS2 will be regarded as a sign of utter incompetency highlighting the reduction of the UK's status as it's seen as incompetent...
One of the very first things I was taught in my economics degree was that knowledge is everything so if a skill set is required retaining that knowledge is very important.
Which means that you should have a continual set of projects going (rail electrification. nuclear power station developments, roads....) so that you aren't starting afresh all the time needing to import foreign expertise because no-one in the UK has done this in x0 years
That works fine when the projects you want to build are both economially viable and necessary. There were lots of programmes that could apply to. HS2 was not one of them and indeed it sucked money away from other more important and useful projects.
It’s possible (reasonable even) to argue that HS2 itself was misconceived from the start. But the fact remains that rail transport in this country, both passenger & freight, would benefit greatly from a N<->S high speed passenger rail line. The other routes are full to capacity - the demand is clearly there.
The underlying problem seems to be that we are completely unable to build projects that are of clear economic benefit at all thanks to a Treasury that cannot see beyond the next budget & a planning system that drives up the cost beyond all reasonable measure. The only way to get HS2 through parliament at all was to turn it into some gold-plated national monument to Britain. It’s no way to run a railway, or an economy for that matter.
A high speed rail project like HS2 should cost something like a third the HS2 budget: the HS2 costs are a symptom of wider problems in the UK economy. Every major infrastructure project spends interminable years trapped in a planning system that not only imposes insane costs all by itself, it drives up the cost of the final project by $billions.
The problem being that we need East/West and intra-region capacity a lot more than we need North/South (which actually just means London to the rest of the country). We could find far more useful and viable projects for every penny of that which was going to be spent on HS2 - whether it was the original £37.5 billion or the pre-abandonment £180 billion.
HS2 was the infrastructure equivalent of that old problem that plagues politics.
We must do something This is something We must do it.
Shouldn't have been an either/or! If the UK properly cracked down on the benefit scrounging pensioners (if you want to be voluntarily unemployed fine, but the state shouldn't pay for it) and put the state pension back to 19/20 levels we'd be able to build a new Crossrail every year with the savings.
Just shows where the Tories have gone wrong this parliament - prioritised benefits for the bone idle boomers over capital spending.
Even if it wasn't an either/or it was/is still an unecessary white elephant finding yesterday's solutions for the last century's problems.
"finding yesterday's solutions for the last century's problems"
LOL. You keep on saying that, and it gives me a good laugh. Thanks.
If high-speed rail is "finding yesterday's solutions for the last century's problems", then why are most major economies in the world (aside from the USA) investing heavily in it? What do you know that they don't?
The pandemic hurt railway usage; but the rebound has been quite staggering. And working from home or telecommuting has not hurt it as much as I feared either. AIUI, long-distance travel is actually up since the end of the pandemic.
Because they are much larger countries where it makes a difference. I am all in favour of a huge expansion in railcapacity but it should not be the High Speed white elephant and it should not be all focused on London. Build more lines going where people want and need to go - more cross country and intra-region. Build more lines suitable for frieght and get stuff off the roads.
That's a different argument, and one I think is also wrong. But it has zero bearing on stupid phrases like "finding yesterday's solutions for the last century's problems", that you are so attached to. HSR is not yesterday's solution, and it is very much trying to help this century's problems in every country where it is built.
"Build more lines going where people want and need to go"
The capacity problem on the southern WCML show that's exactly where people want and need to go. Now, that does not mean I'm against other projects such as NPR or EWR - quite the opposite. We should build them all as part of an integrated network.
"Your desperate attachment to HS2 is illogical and damaging to the economy. "
As if my belief that HS2 is a good idea has any influence! But if you extend that honour to me, I shall do the same to you: your irrational dislike of the project is irrational and hurts the country.
And as for your utter devotion to Brexit over decades - that's hurt the country, financially, politically and economically, orders of magnitude more than any infrastructure project.
Yes, I agree with Josias here. It can't be said often enough, HS2 is a capacity project. By taking fast trains off the main lines, you allow much more capacity for local trains and freight. A railway has much more capacity if everything going along it is of roughly the same speed - mixtures of fast and slow trains kills capacity.
The northern section of HS2 was expected to take half a million lorry journeys off the road per year.
Rail freight is a big difference between us and the German economy.
The big question is how many generations before the electorate forgive the Tories for taking us down the rabbit hole of Brexit? I suspect a long time. Though Brexit wasn't mentioned as an issue it's effects in many ways has destabilised the electorate and subliminally made us see our position in the world differently
52% of voters voted for Brexit despite the Tory leader at the time opposing it, indeed Brexit voters leaking to Reform and even Labour having voted for Boris is making the Tory situation worse.
How a Labour government handles the economy will be far more significant for the future Tory prospects than Brexit
Brexit is a stench that wont go away. Every time Rishi goes abroad he seems to get smaller. Do you think he's actually shrinking or that the country he represents is?
I waited in the longest airport queue I can remember being in at an airport a couple of weeks ago. Do you think everyone in the queue wasn't joining the dots and asking what caused this new phenomena?
That people voted for it is irrelevant. Do you think human nature allows them to blame themselves?
People who use airports probably voted Remain by a considerable margin.
I wouldn't be so sure. Some people are incredibly stupid. I mentioned before a friend of mine who was completely screwed by Brexit because he sold up to tour Europe in a campervan and ended up having to park it on his son's drive. He reported meeting a number of people on campsites who voted Brexit who just didn't think the 90 day rule would apply to them.
Christopher Hope📝 @christopherhope · 35m 👀 Letters of no confidence can be submitted in Tory leader Rishi Sunak from Wednesday, 12 months after he was appointed leader by MPs, under 1922 rules.
Yes well there is no alternative and changing the leader again won't make any difference.
Getting the deficit and inflation down further and allowing room for tax cuts will
You can't cut taxes whilst the country is broken and expect to win favour. You need to be spending money, not giving it to the PM's billionaire wife
You can put tax cuts as an election manifesto commitment as a reward if voters re elect the Conservatives.
If your main priority is spending more you will vote Labour anyway
Tory voters are affected by the collapse in public services and local government. It is YOUR voters demanding these things as well.
No Tory voters do not want higher tax and higher spend, they want a choice not an echo
Tory voters do want road surfaces to be in a good condition and the dustbins to be emprtied.
It's possible the Tories might just have held Tamworth with Boris Johnson as leader, but they probably would have lost Mid Beds by even more than they did.
There would not have been a Mid Beds by-election. Nadine Dorries would have been the Foreign Secretary dealing with the Gaza crisis.
Her solution would have been to suggest they pick Bellingham instead.
I wonder how long Tory support for Ukraine will last. They did a U-turn on Net Zero and ULEZ. Where Trump leads, the Tories seem to follow.
Not sure there are any current leading Tories who could pull off a Putin fan boy act. Future leading Tories, well there is a certain Nigel who would have this "talent".
Well done, Labour: two excellent wins in very different seats. The people have decided, ('the bastards'), and there'll be a Labour government after the next election. The only question will be how much of a majority they get. I expect more playing it safe from Starmer - don't scare the horses.
A qualified well done to the LibDems: no one expected anything in Tamworth, so it means nothing, despite the best efforts of some to label it a poor showing, and in Mid Beds they didn't win or come second, but they got a significant vote increase, almost as much in percentage terms as Labour, despite both of them fighting it hard. Reinforces my belief that there is a significant pool of disaffected Tories who won't go Labour under any circumstances. Some constituencies will have any more of those, plus where Labour don't fight a big chunk of the vote that went Labour here will go LibDem. It's going to be a good election for the LibDems.
Disastrous for the Cons: Labour majorities in both seats were smaller than the RefUk vote, That doesn't mean they'd have got all those votes if RefUK didn't stand, but it doesn't bode well that they could do that well. as mentoned above, they're going to be fighting a GE on two fronts, requiring completely different campaign messaging. Even a locally prominent and apparently favoured candidate didn't save the, in Mid Beds. Do they have people with the skills to walk that fine line? Do they have people with skills? For any Con supporters look for straws to clutch at - don't bother, they've all gone.
So Greg Hands says he 'doesn't see any great enthusiasm for Labour' - in which case, Greg, how much do people hate the Tories?
Well done the LDs? ".... my belief that there is a significant pool of disaffected Tories who won't go Labour under any circumstances....."?? Get a grip on reality.
The fall in the Conservative vote share was much the same in both constituencies, 28% in Mid Beds and 25% in Tamworth. Your idea that the LDs somehow aided Labour in mid Beds by causing a collapse in the Conservative vote that otherwise wouldn't have happened doesn't hold water.
What the LDs did do was to badly split the anti-Conservative vote by spending much of the campaign trying to talk down Labour's chances, with blatantly false claims about being set to win and the usual false bar charts even in the face of polling that pointed to the opposite, and highly personal attacks on the Labour candidate. They were desperate to come out ahead of Labour. Some people fell for it but overall the LDs still failed badly. The idea that the LDs somehow helped Labour to win is risible. Labour won in spite of their best efforts.
Breathe! We have stress-tested the theory that Lab & LD vying for votes delivers a Tory victory. Lets assume for a minute that some of the LD votes added may have been winnable for Labour - that is almost certainly true. At the same time some - and likely many more - of the LD votes added were not winnable by Labour.
Labour have 2 tasks - convert people to directly switch Con > Lab. Or if they won't do that to switch Con > not Con. The former is a 2 vote swing to Labour, the latter a 1 vote swing.
Lets say that 60% of the new LD voters weren't winnable by Labour. The safest path is have them vote for someone not Con. Riskier is hope that they don't vote at all - might they change their mind? Riskiest is just not bother with Con voters because Never Kissed A Tory.
Tamworth is nor Mid Beds. Your form of Labour absolutism is a risk to your majority. There are scores of seats where you Cannot Win - even in a landslide. Do you want the Con tally reduced by 1 or not?
While it's obviously true that SOME Tories won't switch to Labour and will switch to LibDem, my impression - IMO reniforced by the results - is that it's now quite rare. What is more common is that Tories don't switch to either of us, but accept a potential PM Starmer as an OK result (so a "stop Starmer!" campaign by the Tories won't pay off as the "stop Corbyn" campaign did).
I do think that the result discredits the kind of scorched-earth LibDem tactical campaigning that they tried in mid-Beds. It's demonstrably untrue that "Labour can't win here" in this sort of seat, but the LD negative tactics and dodgy bar charts came close to misleading the voters and handing the seat to the Tories. I remember that you suggested that your party should ease off in mid-Beds once the polls showed the position.
What seems to me perfeclty fair is Verulamus's comment on the lsst thread that the LibDems should concentrate resources on say 40 seats. There are certaibly 40 seats in Britain (discretion prevents me from naming them) where they can perfectly reasonably say that only they can beat the Tories, and gaining 40 seats would be a damn good result, without trying to go for the seats where Labour were second even in the poor 2019 election.
The 40 seat strategy is absolutely the plan. There won't be resources to go after even 100 seats. But again again, Labour are very unlikely to win scores of seats where we could. Do you want those seats to stay Tory or not?
If the LDs gained +45-50 from the Tories and Labour gained Zero, remaining on 202, Labour would, barring black swans, lead the next parliament, though not gloriously and not for long.
If the LDs gain 45 MPs there is no possibility that labour would have no gains.
Can someone help? Here's a question I've been pondering of late. King Charles III got the III bit because, obviously, there were two kings called Charles before him. But who or what gets to decide who officially counts as a historical monarch or not? For example, it's surely debatable whether Edward V should count as a genuine king, but it's been decided that he was, and there must be other borderline cases throughout history. So what's the official criteria?
It's up to the next monarch of the same name. Edward VI (or more probably his protectors) decided that he was the sixth of that name so, proclaimed Edward VI he was.
I've always wondered why Edward the Elder and Edward the Confessor weren't Edwards 1 and II. Especially the latter as England was one single Kingdom by then.
These losses that Ukraine claims Russia suffered yesterday are massive. They can probably take the loss of men but how can 120 IFVs and 55 tanks be sustainable? I have a small hope that Russia is making one last throw of the dice in their recent offensives, like the Battle of the Bulge in WW2, but so far they have not achieved anything.
It’s only 300k men and 5,000 tanks, did they think war would be easy?
The discussions of the past few weeks have been that the Russians have been bringing forward an awful lot of men and kit, to either defend existing lines or to push them forward, and that they’re going to keep doing this until winter bogs everything down and they can resupply. The risk is that they end up with nothing behind the front line, and suffer a total collapse of dozens of kilometres of ground in very short order, if the defenders can get past a few strategic minefields and trenches.
Putin's spin on ATACMS sounded pretty desperate. I wouldn't be surprised if they have to make another tactical retreat soon.
Completely off thread - but my wife and I have been discussing Blue Peter viewing figures, which when we were kids were about 6 million and are now about 30,000; indeed there was an episode a few years back which got no viewers at all (though I have my doubts about the accuracy of these figures). Anyway, we were interrupted by our 8 year old daughter: "what even is Blue Peter?". Which kind of illustrates the point. Kids don't watch live telly any more. (This has come about quite suddenly; my older two, 13 and 12, don't watch live telly either, but do at least remember doing so; my youngest never really has).
This makes me very sad. My kids don't watch it either. I do think my kids are much less well informed about the world than I was at their age - I picked a lot of stuff up without trying just by watching whatever was on TV. It's hard to have a vibrant well informed democracy when people know SFA about the world around them and get their information from sources that are vulnerable to disinformation campaigns.
There's good stuff still being made- both by the BBC and others. That includes online- it was good to see Map Men get a plug in the Sunday Times this weekend.
What's been lost has been the shared institutions that everyone knew about and most people watched. That atomisation isn't great for society or shared conversations, but somehow it's worse for children. The loss of general interest programmes as the only kids thing on means that some improve themselves a lot and others watch utter trash and nothing else.
In education, it's the Matthew Principle- to he who has shall be given more but to get who has not, what they have shall be taken away.
Indeed. things have really changed. The social assumptions underpinning the UK between 1945 and (say) 2015 are disappearing before our eyes. The belief in Britain as a communal experience underpinned by shared institutions has gone and it makes me sad.
How ironic that an underpinning of Brexit was a retreat into Britishness. Admittedly it was Faragian, UJ shoes Britishness which contains the huge, bulging seeds of its own failure.
But I don't think it's any different for France, or Germany, or Spain, or the USA. It's driven by technology. Indeed, this website is a prime example. 30 years ago none of us would have been online discussing politics and other matters with like minded people; we'd have been interacting with the people real life gave us. Our cultural consumption would have been much more mainstream, because the niches wouldn't have existed. Our kids would have watched Blue Peter because they wouldn't have had any choice of entertainment (personally, I don't think I've watched more than two BP episodes in my life - never really to my tastes - but still). I don't think this is any different in the UK to anywhere else.
Thirty years ago, kids were watching Teletubbies before graduating to Blue Peter but the crucial point you and others have made is that both were on mainstream BBC television.
But if they were still on mainstream BBC television it wouldn't matter. The number of kids prepared to watch BBC1 but not CBBC is almost nil. The point is the only people who still watch linear television are those doing it out of force of habit - i.e. older adults. Kids simply don't engage with linear TV any more.
Not even all older adults. I can't remember, live sport aside, when I watched something on live TV. 2 years ago maybe?
So it appears that Selby was the byelection to notice, not Uxbridge. Both results clearly in line with Selby.
Yep. I do still fear outer London may be Labour's GE Achilles heel. Saddiq Khan has damaged Labour.
Cameron was right that the country is not Twitter, not that the media notices.
That can be extended though, the country is not London either, not that the media notices.
If you want to run a country that suits the North, or anywhere outside London, it takes more than taking a picture of you pretending to fill up a tank of petrol. It takes more than saying you are on the side of motorists, while increasing taxes on the cars of the future and failing to invest in roads, charging networks, or any other general infrastructure.
Yes, the reason the Conservatives lost Tamworth was because of a lack of investment in roads. It was not because of the cost of living, decay of the NHS, Partygate, Chris Pincher’s behaviour and Peter Bone’s behaviour, Brexit, delays in the court system, cuts in local government services, Liz Truss, the mishandling of the pandemic, failures on immigration, higher taxes, and flip-flopping on HS2.
Well done for completely missing the point.
It's interesting that you see those as alternatives, rather than a failure to invest in the roads being one of the multiple other failures as well.
Especially since you incorporated HS2 in your second list and as we've established that affects far fewer voters.
A failure to invest in roads, or charging infrastructure, while jacking up taxes, is just another in the litany of failures to add to your list. If you can get over your pathological hatred of investing in transportation.
Where have I shown a pathological hatred of investing in transportation? I am for investing in transportation. Bring on more charging points!
I am making fun of your personal obsession, and your belief that doing something about your personal obsession will fix everything else. You want to be a politician: you are convinced that your policies are right, you’d fit right in. This website is about political betting, which requires an understanding of psephology. Whether or not we need more investment in roads, that’s not why the Tories lost 2 by-elections.
It is not a personal obsession and I don't remotely think that doing something about it will fix everything else. I never once suggested otherwise.
Indeed I've repeatedly said it's not either or, it's multiple things.
Our long neglected roads that haven't kept pace with population growth, and our lack of charging infrastructure is just one of the many things that need fixing in this country.
Other capex infrastructure investment that hasn't kept up with population growth needs addressing too.
Sunak went full driving-gloves gammonbait and got trounced in two by-elections.
HERE ENDETH THE LESSON
No he didn't. He made some vague attempt to appeal to that demographic. Badly. It looked as phoney as it was and most of it fell apart in 5 mins flat from the point of being announced.
Completely off thread - but my wife and I have been discussing Blue Peter viewing figures, which when we were kids were about 6 million and are now about 30,000; indeed there was an episode a few years back which got no viewers at all (though I have my doubts about the accuracy of these figures). Anyway, we were interrupted by our 8 year old daughter: "what even is Blue Peter?". Which kind of illustrates the point. Kids don't watch live telly any more. (This has come about quite suddenly; my older two, 13 and 12, don't watch live telly either, but do at least remember doing so; my youngest never really has).
This makes me very sad. My kids don't watch it either. I do think my kids are much less well informed about the world than I was at their age - I picked a lot of stuff up without trying just by watching whatever was on TV. It's hard to have a vibrant well informed democracy when people know SFA about the world around them and get their information from sources that are vulnerable to disinformation campaigns.
There's good stuff still being made- both by the BBC and others. That includes online- it was good to see Map Men get a plug in the Sunday Times this weekend.
What's been lost has been the shared institutions that everyone knew about and most people watched. That atomisation isn't great for society or shared conversations, but somehow it's worse for children. The loss of general interest programmes as the only kids thing on means that some improve themselves a lot and others watch utter trash and nothing else.
In education, it's the Matthew Principle- to he who has shall be given more but to get who has not, what they have shall be taken away.
Indeed. things have really changed. The social assumptions underpinning the UK between 1945 and (say) 2015 are disappearing before our eyes. The belief in Britain as a communal experience underpinned by shared institutions has gone and it makes me sad.
How ironic that an underpinning of Brexit was a retreat into Britishness. Admittedly it was Faragian, UJ shoes Britishness which contains the huge, bulging seeds of its own failure.
But I don't think it's any different for France, or Germany, or Spain, or the USA. It's driven by technology. Indeed, this website is a prime example. 30 years ago none of us would have been online discussing politics and other matters with like minded people; we'd have been interacting with the people real life gave us. Our cultural consumption would have been much more mainstream, because the niches wouldn't have existed. Our kids would have watched Blue Peter because they wouldn't have had any choice of entertainment (personally, I don't think I've watched more than two BP episodes in my life - never really to my tastes - but still). I don't think this is any different in the UK to anywhere else.
Thirty years ago, kids were watching Teletubbies before graduating to Blue Peter but the crucial point you and others have made is that both were on mainstream BBC television.
But if they were still on mainstream BBC television it wouldn't matter. The number of kids prepared to watch BBC1 but not CBBC is almost nil. The point is the only people who still watch linear television are those doing it out of force of habit - i.e. older adults. Kids simply don't engage with linear TV any more.
Not even all older adults. I can't remember, live sport aside, when I watched something on live TV. 2 years ago maybe?
It must be really chastening for Rishi Sunak, who by any odds has had a remarkably successful and lucrative career, to realise he just isn’t any good at this. Oxford. Fulbright Scholar. Goldman Sachs. Chancellor. First Asian-extraction British PM.
And he just can’t do it. Whatever he tries doesn’t work. How do you get up every morning and start work knowing you’re not going to succeed?
I've been harsh on Sunak in the past and I once said he was a man who had never failed at anything or had known defeat. If you go into politics there's a fair chance that will change.
It could be a positive and character building experience for him and remember he's only 43 (Blair's age in 1997). In twenty years time opinions of him could be very different and he might be the respected elder statesman.
The truth is there may be nothing as ex as an ex-MP (as someone once said) but there's really nothing as ex as an ex-PM. Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Truss, Johnson - all still with us, all still able to contribute to the national debte but do they? If they do, does anyone listen or are their past sins thrown back at them and used as an excuse to ignore them?
Nope in 20 years time his screwing round with HS2 will be regarded as a sign of utter incompetency highlighting the reduction of the UK's status as it's seen as incompetent...
One of the very first things I was taught in my economics degree was that knowledge is everything so if a skill set is required retaining that knowledge is very important.
Which means that you should have a continual set of projects going (rail electrification. nuclear power station developments, roads....) so that you aren't starting afresh all the time needing to import foreign expertise because no-one in the UK has done this in x0 years
That works fine when the projects you want to build are both economially viable and necessary. There were lots of programmes that could apply to. HS2 was not one of them and indeed it sucked money away from other more important and useful projects.
It’s possible (reasonable even) to argue that HS2 itself was misconceived from the start. But the fact remains that rail transport in this country, both passenger & freight, would benefit greatly from a N<->S high speed passenger rail line. The other routes are full to capacity - the demand is clearly there.
The underlying problem seems to be that we are completely unable to build projects that are of clear economic benefit at all thanks to a Treasury that cannot see beyond the next budget & a planning system that drives up the cost beyond all reasonable measure. The only way to get HS2 through parliament at all was to turn it into some gold-plated national monument to Britain. It’s no way to run a railway, or an economy for that matter.
A high speed rail project like HS2 should cost something like a third the HS2 budget: the HS2 costs are a symptom of wider problems in the UK economy. Every major infrastructure project spends interminable years trapped in a planning system that not only imposes insane costs all by itself, it drives up the cost of the final project by $billions.
The problem being that we need East/West and intra-region capacity a lot more than we need North/South (which actually just means London to the rest of the country). We could find far more useful and viable projects for every penny of that which was going to be spent on HS2 - whether it was the original £37.5 billion or the pre-abandonment £180 billion.
HS2 was the infrastructure equivalent of that old problem that plagues politics.
We must do something This is something We must do it.
The question you should be asking is not: why HS2? But rather: why is it apparently impossible to build these other projects?
I note in passing that a country which had built these other projects would probably be one that would happily build another north-south train line as the economic advantages would be obvious & unarguable & we would have an economy which could more easily afford the interest costs.
I think the answer to that one is obvius although sad. WHatever they might say, the London-centric politicians simply don't care about the North and don't want to waste money on it. That applied to Labour for years because they thought the North would vote for them anyway and to the Tories because they knew the North would never vote for them. (The Brexit effect being the exception).
The other thing is the absurd costs.
Once a project gets “unique mega project” status, it inevitably gets turned into a football.
HS2 should have been the “National rail investment plan, section 16, project 4”
Absolutely. Korea's rail plan had the concept of a 'half day country' - which means being able to get from any one place to another in half a day - and worked from there.
The construction of their national road network, which started back in the 70s, was similarly consistent.
Of course they make mistakes, encounter problems, and have corruption like everywhere else. But having a consistent, and persistent plan works.
I’m surprised people haven’t discussed what would have happened if MPs hadn’t tried to wriggle out of respecting the referendum result by voting down every deal while Theresa May was PM.
Quite likely that Boris would never have been PM, we would have been better prepared for the pandemic & able to see the real cost/benefit of leaving the EU rather than it being obscured by the effects of lockdown.
That should have been Corbyn’s masterstroke, to force an abstention that saw May’s deal pass and split the Tories in half. He could have been PM now, if he’d done that, but his MPs, led by their shadow Brexit secretary Starmer, thought they could steamroller the voice of the country instead.
I’m surprised people haven’t discussed what would have happened if MPs hadn’t tried to wriggle out of respecting the referendum result by voting down every deal while Theresa May was PM.
Quite likely that Boris would never have been PM, we would have been better prepared for the pandemic & able to see the real cost/benefit of leaving the EU rather than it being obscured by the effects of lockdown.
Plenty of MPs on the ERG wing voted against Theresa May's deals. Remember vassal states!
I said at the time, on quite a few occasions, the MPs should never have got a vote on it - the PM agreed a deal with the EU & that’s that. Once it was the case that MPs had to have a vote, it should have just been a walkover.
These losses that Ukraine claims Russia suffered yesterday are massive. They can probably take the loss of men but how can 120 IFVs and 55 tanks be sustainable? I have a small hope that Russia is making one last throw of the dice in their recent offensives, like the Battle of the Bulge in WW2, but so far they have not achieved anything.
It’s only 300k men and 5,000 tanks, did they think war would be easy?
The discussions of the past few weeks have been that the Russians have been bringing forward an awful lot of men and kit, to either defend existing lines or to push them forward, and that they’re going to keep doing this until winter bogs everything down and they can resupply. The risk is that they end up with nothing behind the front line, and suffer a total collapse of dozens of kilometres of ground in very short order, if the defenders can get past a few strategic minefields and trenches.
Putin's spin on ATACMS sounded pretty desperate. I wouldn't be surprised if they have to make another tactical retreat soon.
Does Putin need an off-ramp? Winter starts soon, and he is up for re-election in March.
In some ways you would also compare them to 87-92, although there (for example in Richmond) the splits worked in the Tories’ favour.
But you could also compare them to 2005-10. We know how that played out.
I’ve always been sceptical about Starmer winning an overall majority because of the enormous number of seats he needs to gain. Swings like this mean it’s plausible. However, I still wouldn’t be betting on a majority of over 30.
however much Heathener wishcasts, but it's definitely within the realms of possibility.
I don't think it is wishcasting. I'm going on the current facts. I bet regardless of preference, often making money on Republicans and Conservatives. And I did well financially from the Brexit vote.
We need to look at the present facts especially the opinion polls. They're not wrong. More anecdotally I've not heard such anger against a prevailing party since 1997, and it's even more pronounced this time because the economic climate is so much worse (it was good in '97).
I think the difference in 1997 was people were fed up with Tory priorities rather than management per se (though the sleaze and black Wednesday did come into it somewhat).
This time people are fed up of both. Just thoroughly fed up with the party and its myriad failings. I think more so than 1997.
But again - Starmer is no Blair and he starts from a lot further back.
It's not a rerun of 97. Politics and the state of the country are both fundamentally quite different. I understand that as a landslide win for Labour it is a point of comparison, but this will not be 'another 97' or 'another 92'. It'll be 2024.
While a lot of the change is a series of unforced errors by the Conservatives (I still can scarcely believe the stupidity of announcing the cancellation of the Manchester leg of HS2... in Manchester, not a killer point in itself but beautifully illustrative of the state of the Tory party at the moment.), nonetheless SKS has unquestionably done a politically astute move into the centre ground and banished Corbyn's ghost. If Mid Beds can be overturned (in a three horse race, no less), anything is possible.
For me 'another 97' is about the result. If GE24 deals out a massive Labour majority coming from Opposition and the Cons after a long time in power are roundly rejected and reduced to under 200 seats then, yep, that's another 97. How much closer to 97 do we need an election to be for it to deserve the moniker?
But of course the mood, the issues, the leaders, the state of the parties and the country, none of this is at all like 1997. Just to cite some of the obvious, we're not long past 2 traumas (Brexit and the pandemic), the fiscal and debt position is truly dire, inflation is back, the cheap money era is over, the housing bubble has burst, and WW3 is seriously thinking about it.
So although I'm rooting for and predicting 'another 97' next October, and I'm so looking forward to having a Labour government again, which will help me sleep better, and I'm cautiously optimistic about what it will achieve, this is not (imo) a time for bouncing around at the Royal Festival Hall and the like. Hence why the trope 'SKS is no Tony Blair' should be met by the response, 'no, thank god'.
These losses that Ukraine claims Russia suffered yesterday are massive. They can probably take the loss of men but how can 120 IFVs and 55 tanks be sustainable? I have a small hope that Russia is making one last throw of the dice in their recent offensives, like the Battle of the Bulge in WW2, but so far they have not achieved anything.
It’s only 300k men and 5,000 tanks, did they think war would be easy?
The discussions of the past few weeks have been that the Russians have been bringing forward an awful lot of men and kit, to either defend existing lines or to push them forward, and that they’re going to keep doing this until winter bogs everything down and they can resupply. The risk is that they end up with nothing behind the front line, and suffer a total collapse of dozens of kilometres of ground in very short order, if the defenders can get past a few strategic minefields and trenches.
Putin's spin on ATACMS sounded pretty desperate. I wouldn't be surprised if they have to make another tactical retreat soon.
I think the Tories might just get rid of Rishi after next years local elections. Yes it will be their fourth leader in this Parliament but given the seats they're losing what have they got to lose?
Can someone help? Here's a question I've been pondering of late. King Charles III got the III bit because, obviously, there were two kings called Charles before him. But who or what gets to decide who officially counts as a historical monarch or not? For example, it's surely debatable whether Edward V should count as a genuine king, but it's been decided that he was, and there must be other borderline cases throughout history. So what's the official criteria?
It's up to the next monarch of the same name. Edward VI (or more probably his protectors) decided that he was the sixth of that name so, proclaimed Edward VI he was.
That's really interesting. Especially with the Edward bit - because of course there was at least one King Edward of England prior to Edward I - i.e. Edward the Confessor.
By convention the numbering starts at 1066. There were two (three?) Anglo Saxon Edwards.
These losses that Ukraine claims Russia suffered yesterday are massive. They can probably take the loss of men but how can 120 IFVs and 55 tanks be sustainable? I have a small hope that Russia is making one last throw of the dice in their recent offensives, like the Battle of the Bulge in WW2, but so far they have not achieved anything.
It’s only 300k men and 5,000 tanks, did they think war would be easy?
The discussions of the past few weeks have been that the Russians have been bringing forward an awful lot of men and kit, to either defend existing lines or to push them forward, and that they’re going to keep doing this until winter bogs everything down and they can resupply. The risk is that they end up with nothing behind the front line, and suffer a total collapse of dozens of kilometres of ground in very short order, if the defenders can get past a few strategic minefields and trenches.
Putin's spin on ATACMS sounded pretty desperate. I wouldn't be surprised if they have to make another tactical retreat soon.
ATACMS is a proper game-changer. There’s nowhere in occupied Ukraine that’s safe from them, so ammo dumps and command posts need to be moved back all the way to Russia if they don’t want to get blown up.
There’s good reason that Zelensky was asking for it 18 months ago.
I think the Tories might just get rid of Rishi after next years local elections. Yes it will be their fourth leader in this Parliament but given the seats they're losing what have they got to lose?
If they think Sunak is the main problem then they haven't a clue.
It's time for a leadership challenge, with Penny Mordaunt and Kemi Badenoch being the main candidates.
I've been thinking about the implications of a leadership challenge since the Party conference. After Graham Brady's suggestion that the Party membership should be excluded from selecting the leader (when in government) and Christopher Hope's tweet this morning (about the 1992 Committee accepting letters of no confidence in the PM from Wednesday onwards) I have some thoughts.
Would the country (and inevitably the markets) accept another leader/change in PM without seeking the consent of the public? The answer must surely be no. I cannot see any circumstances under which a leadership contest could take place and a new PM be allowed to "steady the ship" for a period of 6 months before going to the country.
So what if Brady calls upon the PM and informs him that the threshold has been reached? Would it be acceptable for the PM to call the Party's bluff and say "It's time for a General Election"? The country would accept it but would the Party?
These losses that Ukraine claims Russia suffered yesterday are massive. They can probably take the loss of men but how can 120 IFVs and 55 tanks be sustainable? I have a small hope that Russia is making one last throw of the dice in their recent offensives, like the Battle of the Bulge in WW2, but so far they have not achieved anything.
It’s only 300k men and 5,000 tanks, did they think war would be easy?
The discussions of the past few weeks have been that the Russians have been bringing forward an awful lot of men and kit, to either defend existing lines or to push them forward, and that they’re going to keep doing this until winter bogs everything down and they can resupply. The risk is that they end up with nothing behind the front line, and suffer a total collapse of dozens of kilometres of ground in very short order, if the defenders can get past a few strategic minefields and trenches.
Putin's spin on ATACMS sounded pretty desperate. I wouldn't be surprised if they have to make another tactical retreat soon.
I would agree; he sounded defeated.
I look forward to his speech informing the Russian people that “the war situation has developed not necessarily to Russia's advantage”.
I think the Tories might just get rid of Rishi after next years local elections. Yes it will be their fourth leader in this Parliament but given the seats they're losing what have they got to lose?
If they think Sunak is the main problem then they haven't a clue.
He's not, but he's bed blocking any form of solution. Trouble from the Tory perspective is that he's also wasted a year doing so.
It's time for a leadership challenge, with Penny Mordaunt and Kemi Badenoch being the main candidates.
I've been thinking about the implications of a leadership challenge since the Party conference. After Graham Brady's suggestion that the Party membership should be excluded from selecting the leader (when in government) and Christopher Hope's tweet this morning (about the 1992 Committee accepting letters of no confidence in the PM from Wednesday onwards) I have some thoughts.
Would the country (and inevitably the markets) accept another leader/change in PM without seeking the consent of the public? The answer must surely be no. I cannot see any circumstances under which a leadership contest could take place and a new PM be allowed to "steady the ship" for a period of 6 months before going to the country.
So what if Brady calls upon the PM and informs him that the threshold has been reached? Would it be acceptable for the PM to call the Party's bluff and say "It's time for a General Election"? The country would accept it but would the Party?
What is there to accept? It is the law and we have to wait for the GE to kick them out, even if they go through a leader a week.
The big question is how many generations before the electorate forgive the Tories for taking us down the rabbit hole of Brexit? I suspect a long time. Though Brexit wasn't mentioned as an issue it's effects in many ways has destabilised the electorate and subliminally made us see our position in the world differently
52% of voters voted for Brexit despite the Tory leader at the time opposing it, indeed Brexit voters leaking to Reform and even Labour having voted for Boris is making the Tory situation worse.
How a Labour government handles the economy will be far more significant for the future Tory prospects than Brexit
Brexit is a stench that wont go away. Every time Rishi goes abroad he seems to get smaller. Do you think he's actually shrinking or that the country he represents is?
I waited in the longest airport queue I can remember being in at an airport a couple of weeks ago. Do you think everyone in the queue wasn't joining the dots and asking what caused this new phenomena?
That people voted for it is irrelevant. Do you think human nature allows them to blame themselves?
People who use airports probably voted Remain by a considerable margin.
"People who use airports" probably provide 90% of the government's revenue.
I love the way Tory spokesmen keep saying no enthusiasm for SKS on the doorstep. Whereas they were greeted with a hug and a bunch of flowers I suppose.
Mike always points out that the number of don't knows who voted Tory in 2019 is too high to take the Lab lead in the polls seriously. By elections are not general elections, but the resuts yesterday increases the likelihood that many previous Tory voters will stay at home for the next GE, not being prepared to support Con, Lab or LD.
What idiot thought selling of social housing for peanuts was a good idea?
The idea of selling council stock was a good one.
Central government nicking most of the proceeds, and legislating to prevent councils building more to replace it was utter idiocy - motivated purely by Thatcher's dislike of local government. But then left unchanged by her successors.
Nigel, It was crap, all it did was ensure future poverty. It would have been slightly better had proceeds been used to build more houses but it was guaranteed that in future we woudl eb beggared having to pay private rents. Something will need to give as the private rents cannot be afforded.
These losses that Ukraine claims Russia suffered yesterday are massive. They can probably take the loss of men but how can 120 IFVs and 55 tanks be sustainable? I have a small hope that Russia is making one last throw of the dice in their recent offensives, like the Battle of the Bulge in WW2, but so far they have not achieved anything.
It’s only 300k men and 5,000 tanks, did they think war would be easy?
The discussions of the past few weeks have been that the Russians have been bringing forward an awful lot of men and kit, to either defend existing lines or to push them forward, and that they’re going to keep doing this until winter bogs everything down and they can resupply. The risk is that they end up with nothing behind the front line, and suffer a total collapse of dozens of kilometres of ground in very short order, if the defenders can get past a few strategic minefields and trenches.
Putin's spin on ATACMS sounded pretty desperate. I wouldn't be surprised if they have to make another tactical retreat soon.
Does Putin need an off-ramp? Winter starts soon, and he is up for re-election in March.
I think the Tories might just get rid of Rishi after next years local elections. Yes it will be their fourth leader in this Parliament but given the seats they're losing what have they got to lose?
If they think Sunak is the main problem then they haven't a clue.
He's not, but he's bed blocking any form of solution. Trouble from the Tory perspective is that he's also wasted a year doing so.
Compared to his two predecessors, "Bed-Blocking" is the better option.
Completely off thread - but my wife and I have been discussing Blue Peter viewing figures, which when we were kids were about 6 million and are now about 30,000; indeed there was an episode a few years back which got no viewers at all (though I have my doubts about the accuracy of these figures). Anyway, we were interrupted by our 8 year old daughter: "what even is Blue Peter?". Which kind of illustrates the point. Kids don't watch live telly any more. (This has come about quite suddenly; my older two, 13 and 12, don't watch live telly either, but do at least remember doing so; my youngest never really has).
This makes me very sad. My kids don't watch it either. I do think my kids are much less well informed about the world than I was at their age - I picked a lot of stuff up without trying just by watching whatever was on TV. It's hard to have a vibrant well informed democracy when people know SFA about the world around them and get their information from sources that are vulnerable to disinformation campaigns.
There's good stuff still being made- both by the BBC and others. That includes online- it was good to see Map Men get a plug in the Sunday Times this weekend.
What's been lost has been the shared institutions that everyone knew about and most people watched. That atomisation isn't great for society or shared conversations, but somehow it's worse for children. The loss of general interest programmes as the only kids thing on means that some improve themselves a lot and others watch utter trash and nothing else.
In education, it's the Matthew Principle- to he who has shall be given more but to get who has not, what they have shall be taken away.
Indeed. things have really changed. The social assumptions underpinning the UK between 1945 and (say) 2015 are disappearing before our eyes. The belief in Britain as a communal experience underpinned by shared institutions has gone and it makes me sad.
How ironic that an underpinning of Brexit was a retreat into Britishness. Admittedly it was Faragian, UJ shoes Britishness which contains the huge, bulging seeds of its own failure.
But I don't think it's any different for France, or Germany, or Spain, or the USA. It's driven by technology. Indeed, this website is a prime example. 30 years ago none of us would have been online discussing politics and other matters with like minded people; we'd have been interacting with the people real life gave us. Our cultural consumption would have been much more mainstream, because the niches wouldn't have existed. Our kids would have watched Blue Peter because they wouldn't have had any choice of entertainment (personally, I don't think I've watched more than two BP episodes in my life - never really to my tastes - but still). I don't think this is any different in the UK to anywhere else.
Thirty years ago, kids were watching Teletubbies before graduating to Blue Peter but the crucial point you and others have made is that both were on mainstream BBC television.
But if they were still on mainstream BBC television it wouldn't matter. The number of kids prepared to watch BBC1 but not CBBC is almost nil. The point is the only people who still watch linear television are those doing it out of force of habit - i.e. older adults. Kids simply don't engage with linear TV any more.
Not even all older adults. I can't remember, live sport aside, when I watched something on live TV. 2 years ago maybe?
It's time for a leadership challenge, with Penny Mordaunt and Kemi Badenoch being the main candidates.
I've been thinking about the implications of a leadership challenge since the Party conference. After Graham Brady's suggestion that the Party membership should be excluded from selecting the leader (when in government) and Christopher Hope's tweet this morning (about the 1992 Committee accepting letters of no confidence in the PM from Wednesday onwards) I have some thoughts.
Would the country (and inevitably the markets) accept another leader/change in PM without seeking the consent of the public? The answer must surely be no. I cannot see any circumstances under which a leadership contest could take place and a new PM be allowed to "steady the ship" for a period of 6 months before going to the country.
So what if Brady calls upon the PM and informs him that the threshold has been reached? Would it be acceptable for the PM to call the Party's bluff and say "It's time for a General Election"? The country would accept it but would the Party?
If Sunak called a GE Brady would have to call off the leadership challenge. It would be absurd for both campaigns to run simultaneously, and Brady would have no way to stop Sunak "going to the King"
The big question is how many generations before the electorate forgive the Tories for taking us down the rabbit hole of Brexit? I suspect a long time. Though Brexit wasn't mentioned as an issue it's effects in many ways has destabilised the electorate and subliminally made us see our position in the world differently
52% of voters voted for Brexit despite the Tory leader at the time opposing it, indeed Brexit voters leaking to Reform and even Labour having voted for Boris is making the Tory situation worse.
How a Labour government handles the economy will be far more significant for the future Tory prospects than Brexit
Brexit is a stench that wont go away. Every time Rishi goes abroad he seems to get smaller. Do you think he's actually shrinking or that the country he represents is?
I waited in the longest airport queue I can remember being in at an airport a couple of weeks ago. Do you think everyone in the queue wasn't joining the dots and asking what caused this new phenomena?
That people voted for it is irrelevant. Do you think human nature allows them to blame themselves?
They probably don't blame themselves, nor should they. They correctly blame the cavalcade of crooks and incompetents who sold them a pack of lies and then cocked up the implementation.
Exactly! Now seen by the vast majority of the population as the current Tory government. Which comes back to my original point. Their brand which gave us Brexit has now been comprehensively trashed and is seen as you describe above. They might not make the direct connection-it was 6 years ago-but brexit and the Tory Party are now synonymous
Can I congratulate Labour on their overnight wins which I did predict
There are those in the conservative party who should hang their heads in shame beginning with Nadine Dorries and her hero Johnson, but also Truss and the ERG
I am no longer a member and expect it to go into opposition, at which point it has a choice of turning right towards the dreadful Farage, JRM, Braverman grouping or regaining it's sanity and moving back to the one nation conservative I can vote for, though right now I am grateful just to live a day at a time after the week I have just had
I would also say that of course Starmer is fit to be PM and whilst I am not a fan, to suggest otherwise is just politics
It's time for a leadership challenge, with Penny Mordaunt and Kemi Badenoch being the main candidates.
I've been thinking about the implications of a leadership challenge since the Party conference. After Graham Brady's suggestion that the Party membership should be excluded from selecting the leader (when in government) and Christopher Hope's tweet this morning (about the 1992 Committee accepting letters of no confidence in the PM from Wednesday onwards) I have some thoughts.
Would the country (and inevitably the markets) accept another leader/change in PM without seeking the consent of the public? The answer must surely be no. I cannot see any circumstances under which a leadership contest could take place and a new PM be allowed to "steady the ship" for a period of 6 months before going to the country.
So what if Brady calls upon the PM and informs him that the threshold has been reached? Would it be acceptable for the PM to call the Party's bluff and say "It's time for a General Election"? The country would accept it but would the Party?
That would be a proper constitutional crisis, and the King would refuse to meet with the PM until the party vote, which usually happens at 24h notice. In case you haven’t noticed, the Tory MPs can be pretty ruthless in such situations.
Can someone help? Here's a question I've been pondering of late. King Charles III got the III bit because, obviously, there were two kings called Charles before him. But who or what gets to decide who officially counts as a historical monarch or not? For example, it's surely debatable whether Edward V should count as a genuine king, but it's been decided that he was, and there must be other borderline cases throughout history. So what's the official criteria?
It's up to the next monarch of the same name. Edward VI (or more probably his protectors) decided that he was the sixth of that name so, proclaimed Edward VI he was.
That's really interesting. Especially with the Edward bit - because of course there was at least one King Edward of England prior to Edward I - i.e. Edward the Confessor.
By convention the numbering starts at 1066. There were two (three?) Anglo Saxon Edwards.
Should we be calling them Edward the Zeroth and Edward the Minus First?
Mike always points out that the number of don't knows who voted Tory in 2019 is too high to take the Lab lead in the polls seriously. By elections are not general elections, but the resuts yesterday increases the likelihood that many previous Tory voters will stay at home for the next GE, not being prepared to support Con, Lab or LD.
Turnout under over level may be worth keeping an eye on in the betting - the turnout will surely be down on 2019
Looking at previous GE turnout, 1997 was down 7% on 92, and 2001 was down 11% on 97, just 59%. I assume that was because it was so obvious Labour would win? 2005 was similar to 2001, but it’s been pretty high since
Residents just hold on in Surrey from a Lib Dem surge.
Still in the States but my ward and heavily involved early on (I interviewed the candidate) and following closely with the campaign. LDs worked their socks off for this one. Particularly important as ward has moved into Guildford with the boundary changes. Used to be rock solid Tory. Residents gained as it was the most impacted area by the Tory local plan cockups. Excellent residents councillor stood down causing by election. Note for those Lab supporters critical of the LDs in Mid Beds the no hope Lab candidate here just got enough votes to stop the LDs winning. Even put a leaflet out to get a pitiful 99 votes. Whether it would have been enough to turn the result around who knows.
Can someone help? Here's a question I've been pondering of late. King Charles III got the III bit because, obviously, there were two kings called Charles before him. But who or what gets to decide who officially counts as a historical monarch or not? For example, it's surely debatable whether Edward V should count as a genuine king, but it's been decided that he was, and there must be other borderline cases throughout history. So what's the official criteria?
We already had a Charles III north of the wall...
And south, certainly in Derby.
There's a surprisingly kind cairn near Swarkestone Bridge / Causeway (itself very special) in memory of Charles Edward Stuart's about turn.
Piccies:
Local Schoolchildren are less kind. No idea about why the actual decision was made:
"Bonnie Prince Charlie came this way And ran away on washing day."
A colleague used to work for a Derby operation - I used to see him at conferences and rib him over a beer on how so unspeakably awful Derby was that CES at the head of an all-conquering blitzkrieg could only take one look and turn back.
I'd call Derby a Curate's Egg - good parts and bad parts. Some truly awful roads, but also Rolls-Royce (1200 new jobs from Aukus, if dodgy Rishi doesn't burn that down as well) and the Peak District corridor.
But they have just put *this* in the middle one of their key strategic cycling and walking routes, so totally in hock to motor-normativity.
A numpty at the Derbyshire County Council Planning Department conditioned the mast with a pathway extension to make it a bit less dangerous, but then accepted a drawing with no dimensions on it so can do bugger all to enforce anything, and something was built that is massively below national standards. Attention to detail totally missing.
Situated on the key Pentagon Island active travel route, Derby’s newest sculptural installation “Middle Finger” provides deep & emotional insight into the true feelings of the council’s planning department towards all those walking, wheeling & cycling in the city. https://twitter.com/tandemkate/status/1710701505064354227
Went there c 10 years back to see the industrial museum in the old silk mill. Fascinating stuff inclouding not least the RR engines, including a huge modern turbofan (but not a hint of a mention of carbon fibre fan blades, or perhaps I am showing my age ...).
PS And that bridge is really something. Right up there with the Wansford bridge carrying the Great North Road over the Nene.
A massive landslide in line with these results will leave Labour in the same position as The SNP in 2015, with lots of MPs elected in seats they would normally not expect to win. In Scotland that meant a lot of numpties and the occasional rouge elected, dependent on slavishly following the leadership line to preserve their lucrative positions and career progression. It will be interesting to see the calibre and performance of Labour's equivalent.
That prospect is one reason Labour has been so ruthless with its selection processes I think. No doubt they'll get some wrong, but I doubt we'll see any Jared O'Maras or the bizarrely inappropriate people chosen in historically safe Red Wall seats in 2019 because Len and Unite were fans. No doubt we'll start hearing criticism that they are boring drones, but I'd take loads of dull, earnest councillor types over the eccentric firebrands who inevitably seem to end their careers in some form of disgrace.
It must be really chastening for Rishi Sunak, who by any odds has had a remarkably successful and lucrative career, to realise he just isn’t any good at this. Oxford. Fulbright Scholar. Goldman Sachs. Chancellor. First Asian-extraction British PM.
And he just can’t do it. Whatever he tries doesn’t work. How do you get up every morning and start work knowing you’re not going to succeed?
I've been harsh on Sunak in the past and I once said he was a man who had never failed at anything or had known defeat. If you go into politics there's a fair chance that will change.
It could be a positive and character building experience for him and remember he's only 43 (Blair's age in 1997). In twenty years time opinions of him could be very different and he might be the respected elder statesman.
The truth is there may be nothing as ex as an ex-MP (as someone once said) but there's really nothing as ex as an ex-PM. Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Truss, Johnson - all still with us, all still able to contribute to the national debte but do they? If they do, does anyone listen or are their past sins thrown back at them and used as an excuse to ignore them?
Nope in 20 years time his screwing round with HS2 will be regarded as a sign of utter incompetency highlighting the reduction of the UK's status as it's seen as incompetent...
One of the very first things I was taught in my economics degree was that knowledge is everything so if a skill set is required retaining that knowledge is very important.
Which means that you should have a continual set of projects going (rail electrification. nuclear power station developments, roads....) so that you aren't starting afresh all the time needing to import foreign expertise because no-one in the UK has done this in x0 years
That works fine when the projects you want to build are both economially viable and necessary. There were lots of programmes that could apply to. HS2 was not one of them and indeed it sucked money away from other more important and useful projects.
It’s possible (reasonable even) to argue that HS2 itself was misconceived from the start. But the fact remains that rail transport in this country, both passenger & freight, would benefit greatly from a N<->S high speed passenger rail line. The other routes are full to capacity - the demand is clearly there.
The underlying problem seems to be that we are completely unable to build projects that are of clear economic benefit at all thanks to a Treasury that cannot see beyond the next budget & a planning system that drives up the cost beyond all reasonable measure. The only way to get HS2 through parliament at all was to turn it into some gold-plated national monument to Britain. It’s no way to run a railway, or an economy for that matter.
A high speed rail project like HS2 should cost something like a third the HS2 budget: the HS2 costs are a symptom of wider problems in the UK economy. Every major infrastructure project spends interminable years trapped in a planning system that not only imposes insane costs all by itself, it drives up the cost of the final project by $billions.
The problem being that we need East/West and intra-region capacity a lot more than we need North/South (which actually just means London to the rest of the country). We could find far more useful and viable projects for every penny of that which was going to be spent on HS2 - whether it was the original £37.5 billion or the pre-abandonment £180 billion.
HS2 was the infrastructure equivalent of that old problem that plagues politics.
We must do something This is something We must do it.
The question you should be asking is not: why HS2? But rather: why is it apparently impossible to build these other projects?
I note in passing that a country which had built these other projects would probably be one that would happily build another north-south train line as the economic advantages would be obvious & unarguable & we would have an economy which could more easily afford the interest costs.
I think the answer to that one is obvius although sad. WHatever they might say, the London-centric politicians simply don't care about the North and don't want to waste money on it. That applied to Labour for years because they thought the North would vote for them anyway and to the Tories because they knew the North would never vote for them. (The Brexit effect being the exception).
The other thing is the absurd costs.
Once a project gets “unique mega project” status, it inevitably gets turned into a football.
HS2 should have been the “National rail investment plan, section 16, project 4”
Absolutely. Korea's rail plan had the concept of a 'half day country' - which means being able to get from any one place to another in half a day - and worked from there.
The construction of their national road network, which started back in the 70s, was similarly consistent.
Of course they make mistakes, encounter problems, and have corruption like everywhere else. But having a consistent, and persistent plan works.
I talked with a councillor a couple of days ago, at a Police-meets-the-locals event.
His reaction to my point about needing continual development to go with a continually growing population was interesting.
He seemed to be trying to call me racist. Because in his mind, there should be no development - some re-development of sites (this is London). But nothing new. So he (at first) assumed I was arguing for zero immigration. Because no-one wants development.
These losses that Ukraine claims Russia suffered yesterday are massive. They can probably take the loss of men but how can 120 IFVs and 55 tanks be sustainable? I have a small hope that Russia is making one last throw of the dice in their recent offensives, like the Battle of the Bulge in WW2, but so far they have not achieved anything.
It’s only 300k men and 5,000 tanks, did they think war would be easy?
The discussions of the past few weeks have been that the Russians have been bringing forward an awful lot of men and kit, to either defend existing lines or to push them forward, and that they’re going to keep doing this until winter bogs everything down and they can resupply. The risk is that they end up with nothing behind the front line, and suffer a total collapse of dozens of kilometres of ground in very short order, if the defenders can get past a few strategic minefields and trenches.
Putin's spin on ATACMS sounded pretty desperate. I wouldn't be surprised if they have to make another tactical retreat soon.
Does Putin need an off-ramp? Winter starts soon, and he is up for re-election in March.
"re-election"? LOL.
Like there's any doubt.
I can remember when Noriega lost an election. Despite, as the immortal PJ O'Rourke put it, cheating like a professional wrestling villain.
What idiot thought selling of social housing for peanuts was a good idea?
The idea of selling council stock was a good one.
Central government nicking most of the proceeds, and legislating to prevent councils building more to replace it was utter idiocy - motivated purely by Thatcher's dislike of local government. But then left unchanged by her successors.
Nigel, It was crap, all it did was ensure future poverty. It would have been slightly better had proceeds been used to build more houses but it was guaranteed that in future we woudl eb beggared having to pay private rents. Something will need to give as the private rents cannot be afforded.
That's why they sent the army to Glasgow in 1919 - they were terrified of revolution prompted by ripoff private renters combined with inflation, and the effect of a middle finger (Iike that thing in the Derby photo MattW has just posted) from a grateful elite.
These losses that Ukraine claims Russia suffered yesterday are massive. They can probably take the loss of men but how can 120 IFVs and 55 tanks be sustainable? I have a small hope that Russia is making one last throw of the dice in their recent offensives, like the Battle of the Bulge in WW2, but so far they have not achieved anything.
It’s only 300k men and 5,000 tanks, did they think war would be easy?
The discussions of the past few weeks have been that the Russians have been bringing forward an awful lot of men and kit, to either defend existing lines or to push them forward, and that they’re going to keep doing this until winter bogs everything down and they can resupply. The risk is that they end up with nothing behind the front line, and suffer a total collapse of dozens of kilometres of ground in very short order, if the defenders can get past a few strategic minefields and trenches.
Putin's spin on ATACMS sounded pretty desperate. I wouldn't be surprised if they have to make another tactical retreat soon.
I would agree; he sounded defeated.
I look forward to his speech informing the Russian people that “the war situation has developed not necessarily to Russia's advantage”.
"They think Mikhail Gorbachev is a visionary? Yeah, he’s a visionary. Like Hirohito was after Nagasaki."
In some ways you would also compare them to 87-92, although there (for example in Richmond) the splits worked in the Tories’ favour.
But you could also compare them to 2005-10. We know how that played out.
I’ve always been sceptical about Starmer winning an overall majority because of the enormous number of seats he needs to gain. Swings like this mean it’s plausible. However, I still wouldn’t be betting on a majority of over 30.
however much Heathener wishcasts, but it's definitely within the realms of possibility.
I don't think it is wishcasting. I'm going on the current facts. I bet regardless of preference, often making money on Republicans and Conservatives. And I did well financially from the Brexit vote.
We need to look at the present facts especially the opinion polls. They're not wrong. More anecdotally I've not heard such anger against a prevailing party since 1997, and it's even more pronounced this time because the economic climate is so much worse (it was good in '97).
I think the difference in 1997 was people were fed up with Tory priorities rather than management per se (though the sleaze and black Wednesday did come into it somewhat).
This time people are fed up of both. Just thoroughly fed up with the party and its myriad failings. I think more so than 1997.
But again - Starmer is no Blair and he starts from a lot further back.
It's not a rerun of 97. Politics and the state of the country are both fundamentally quite different. I understand that as a landslide win for Labour it is a point of comparison, but this will not be 'another 97' or 'another 92'. It'll be 2024.
While a lot of the change is a series of unforced errors by the Conservatives (I still can scarcely believe the stupidity of announcing the cancellation of the Manchester leg of HS2... in Manchester, not a killer point in itself but beautifully illustrative of the state of the Tory party at the moment.), nonetheless SKS has unquestionably done a politically astute move into the centre ground and banished Corbyn's ghost. If Mid Beds can be overturned (in a three horse race, no less), anything is possible.
I don't know if this has been surmised elsewhere, but maybe the third horse drew enough votes from the first horse to let the second horse squeak though? The LibDem intervention could have been helpful to Labour's victory. And would it be rude to suggest that somewhere in deepest central Bedfordshire there remains a core of socially-conservative, semi-rural voters who aren't quite yet ready for an MP called Festus?
They were ready enough to elect a Police & Crime Commissioner called Festus pretty comfortably in 2021.
Did that not include other more 'urban' constituencies?
Sure, but it seems incredibly unlikely that the Tory candidate won the PCC election in Bedfordshire because of Luton as opposed to despite it. In other words, it's practically certain he piled up big votes in more rural areas.
Small compared to the Big Two, but there were four council by elections last night. Three Con defences and 1 Residents: 2 Green GAINS from Con 1 LibDem GAIN from Con 1 Residents HOLD, but with a big collapse in the Con vote and a surge in the LibDem vote
The Cons' terrible, no good, awful day included the council by elections.
It's time for a leadership challenge, with Penny Mordaunt and Kemi Badenoch being the main candidates.
I've been thinking about the implications of a leadership challenge since the Party conference. After Graham Brady's suggestion that the Party membership should be excluded from selecting the leader (when in government) and Christopher Hope's tweet this morning (about the 1992 Committee accepting letters of no confidence in the PM from Wednesday onwards) I have some thoughts.
Would the country (and inevitably the markets) accept another leader/change in PM without seeking the consent of the public? The answer must surely be no. I cannot see any circumstances under which a leadership contest could take place and a new PM be allowed to "steady the ship" for a period of 6 months before going to the country.
So what if Brady calls upon the PM and informs him that the threshold has been reached? Would it be acceptable for the PM to call the Party's bluff and say "It's time for a General Election"? The country would accept it but would the Party?
The Tory party would never act in such a way as to potentially cause the monarch to appear as if they had got involved in low politics would they? Oh wait a minute.....
The more serious point is that only a lunatic would want to take the leadership now when they can wait until after the deluge and blame all the predecessors. Oh, wait a minute.....
What idiot thought selling of social housing for peanuts was a good idea?
The idea of selling council stock was a good one.
Central government nicking most of the proceeds, and legislating to prevent councils building more to replace it was utter idiocy - motivated purely by Thatcher's dislike of local government. But then left unchanged by her successors.
The problem is not so much the lack of social housing as the lack of housing overall. Had much more been built, to meet demand, prices would never have soared as they have in both rental and purchase sectors.
You do need lots of properly funded social housing. If the residential property space is nearly all private sector you're too much in the hands of developers, financiers and landlords whose priorities are not aligned to what should be our national objective: a decent affordable place to live for everybody, homes as homes not money making instruments.
A massive landslide in line with these results will leave Labour in the same position as The SNP in 2015, with lots of MPs elected in seats they would normally not expect to win. In Scotland that meant a lot of numpties and the occasional rouge elected, dependent on slavishly following the leadership line to preserve their lucrative positions and career progression. It will be interesting to see the calibre and performance of Labour's equivalent.
That prospect is one reason Labour has been so ruthless with its selection processes I think. No doubt they'll get some wrong, but I doubt we'll see any Jared O'Maras or the bizarrely inappropriate people chosen in historically safe Red Wall seats in 2019 because Len and Unite were fans. No doubt we'll start hearing criticism that they are boring drones, but I'd take loads of dull, earnest councillor types over the eccentric firebrands who inevitably seem to end their careers in some form of disgrace.
I’m still amazed, as an IT consultant, how poor the main political parties are at vettting MP candidates for online behaviour. There’s only a couple of hundred new ones each election, it’s really not difficult if you have £1m budget, to weed out the Jared O’Maras before they become a massive problem.
Completely off thread - but my wife and I have been discussing Blue Peter viewing figures, which when we were kids were about 6 million and are now about 30,000; indeed there was an episode a few years back which got no viewers at all (though I have my doubts about the accuracy of these figures). Anyway, we were interrupted by our 8 year old daughter: "what even is Blue Peter?". Which kind of illustrates the point. Kids don't watch live telly any more. (This has come about quite suddenly; my older two, 13 and 12, don't watch live telly either, but do at least remember doing so; my youngest never really has).
This makes me very sad. My kids don't watch it either. I do think my kids are much less well informed about the world than I was at their age - I picked a lot of stuff up without trying just by watching whatever was on TV. It's hard to have a vibrant well informed democracy when people know SFA about the world around them and get their information from sources that are vulnerable to disinformation campaigns.
There's good stuff still being made- both by the BBC and others. That includes online- it was good to see Map Men get a plug in the Sunday Times this weekend.
What's been lost has been the shared institutions that everyone knew about and most people watched. That atomisation isn't great for society or shared conversations, but somehow it's worse for children. The loss of general interest programmes as the only kids thing on means that some improve themselves a lot and others watch utter trash and nothing else.
In education, it's the Matthew Principle- to he who has shall be given more but to get who has not, what they have shall be taken away.
Indeed. things have really changed. The social assumptions underpinning the UK between 1945 and (say) 2015 are disappearing before our eyes. The belief in Britain as a communal experience underpinned by shared institutions has gone and it makes me sad.
How ironic that an underpinning of Brexit was a retreat into Britishness. Admittedly it was Faragian, UJ shoes Britishness which contains the huge, bulging seeds of its own failure.
But I don't think it's any different for France, or Germany, or Spain, or the USA. It's driven by technology. Indeed, this website is a prime example. 30 years ago none of us would have been online discussing politics and other matters with like minded people; we'd have been interacting with the people real life gave us. Our cultural consumption would have been much more mainstream, because the niches wouldn't have existed. Our kids would have watched Blue Peter because they wouldn't have had any choice of entertainment (personally, I don't think I've watched more than two BP episodes in my life - never really to my tastes - but still). I don't think this is any different in the UK to anywhere else.
Thirty years ago, kids were watching Teletubbies before graduating to Blue Peter but the crucial point you and others have made is that both were on mainstream BBC television.
But if they were still on mainstream BBC television it wouldn't matter. The number of kids prepared to watch BBC1 but not CBBC is almost nil. The point is the only people who still watch linear television are those doing it out of force of habit - i.e. older adults. Kids simply don't engage with linear TV any more.
Not even all older adults. I can't remember, live sport aside, when I watched something on live TV. 2 years ago maybe?
On the other hand we always sit down as a family to watch Strictly live, and then my ten year old son has a thing for Antiques Roadshow, which me and him always watch together come 8 o'clock on a Sunday.
Live linear viewing is declining, yes. But from a high base. And it is sustained by live events, sport obviously but also event TV like Love Island, Bake-Off et al.
A lot more people watch linear live TV than you might think. Worth looking at Ofcom's annual reports on media consumption; they're a good antidote for our internal biases.
A massive landslide in line with these results will leave Labour in the same position as The SNP in 2015, with lots of MPs elected in seats they would normally not expect to win. In Scotland that meant a lot of numpties and the occasional rouge elected, dependent on slavishly following the leadership line to preserve their lucrative positions and career progression. It will be interesting to see the calibre and performance of Labour's equivalent.
That prospect is one reason Labour has been so ruthless with its selection processes I think. No doubt they'll get some wrong, but I doubt we'll see any Jared O'Maras or the bizarrely inappropriate people chosen in historically safe Red Wall seats in 2019 because Len and Unite were fans. No doubt we'll start hearing criticism that they are boring drones, but I'd take loads of dull, earnest councillor types over the eccentric firebrands who inevitably seem to end their careers in some form of disgrace.
I’m still amazed, as an IT consultant, how poor the main political parties are at vettting MP candidates for online behaviour. There’s only a couple of hundred new ones each election, it’s really not difficult if you have £1m budget, to weed out the Jared O’Maras before they become a massive problem.
Sadly too often it ain't what you know, it's who you know. Take Boris. He got through the net and he's a famous shit.
It must be really chastening for Rishi Sunak, who by any odds has had a remarkably successful and lucrative career, to realise he just isn’t any good at this. Oxford. Fulbright Scholar. Goldman Sachs. Chancellor. First Asian-extraction British PM.
And he just can’t do it. Whatever he tries doesn’t work. How do you get up every morning and start work knowing you’re not going to succeed?
I've been harsh on Sunak in the past and I once said he was a man who had never failed at anything or had known defeat. If you go into politics there's a fair chance that will change.
It could be a positive and character building experience for him and remember he's only 43 (Blair's age in 1997). In twenty years time opinions of him could be very different and he might be the respected elder statesman.
The truth is there may be nothing as ex as an ex-MP (as someone once said) but there's really nothing as ex as an ex-PM. Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Truss, Johnson - all still with us, all still able to contribute to the national debte but do they? If they do, does anyone listen or are their past sins thrown back at them and used as an excuse to ignore them?
Nope in 20 years time his screwing round with HS2 will be regarded as a sign of utter incompetency highlighting the reduction of the UK's status as it's seen as incompetent...
One of the very first things I was taught in my economics degree was that knowledge is everything so if a skill set is required retaining that knowledge is very important.
Which means that you should have a continual set of projects going (rail electrification. nuclear power station developments, roads....) so that you aren't starting afresh all the time needing to import foreign expertise because no-one in the UK has done this in x0 years
That works fine when the projects you want to build are both economially viable and necessary. There were lots of programmes that could apply to. HS2 was not one of them and indeed it sucked money away from other more important and useful projects.
It’s possible (reasonable even) to argue that HS2 itself was misconceived from the start. But the fact remains that rail transport in this country, both passenger & freight, would benefit greatly from a N<->S high speed passenger rail line. The other routes are full to capacity - the demand is clearly there.
The underlying problem seems to be that we are completely unable to build projects that are of clear economic benefit at all thanks to a Treasury that cannot see beyond the next budget & a planning system that drives up the cost beyond all reasonable measure. The only way to get HS2 through parliament at all was to turn it into some gold-plated national monument to Britain. It’s no way to run a railway, or an economy for that matter.
A high speed rail project like HS2 should cost something like a third the HS2 budget: the HS2 costs are a symptom of wider problems in the UK economy. Every major infrastructure project spends interminable years trapped in a planning system that not only imposes insane costs all by itself, it drives up the cost of the final project by $billions.
The problem being that we need East/West and intra-region capacity a lot more than we need North/South (which actually just means London to the rest of the country). We could find far more useful and viable projects for every penny of that which was going to be spent on HS2 - whether it was the original £37.5 billion or the pre-abandonment £180 billion.
HS2 was the infrastructure equivalent of that old problem that plagues politics.
We must do something This is something We must do it.
The question you should be asking is not: why HS2? But rather: why is it apparently impossible to build these other projects?
I note in passing that a country which had built these other projects would probably be one that would happily build another north-south train line as the economic advantages would be obvious & unarguable & we would have an economy which could more easily afford the interest costs.
I think the answer to that one is obvius although sad. WHatever they might say, the London-centric politicians simply don't care about the North and don't want to waste money on it. That applied to Labour for years because they thought the North would vote for them anyway and to the Tories because they knew the North would never vote for them. (The Brexit effect being the exception).
The other thing is the absurd costs.
Once a project gets “unique mega project” status, it inevitably gets turned into a football.
HS2 should have been the “National rail investment plan, section 16, project 4”
Absolutely. Korea's rail plan had the concept of a 'half day country' - which means being able to get from any one place to another in half a day - and worked from there.
The construction of their national road network, which started back in the 70s, was similarly consistent.
Of course they make mistakes, encounter problems, and have corruption like everywhere else. But having a consistent, and persistent plan works.
I talked with a councillor a couple of days ago, at a Police-meets-the-locals event.
His reaction to my point about needing continual development to go with a continually growing population was interesting.
He seemed to be trying to call me racist. Because in his mind, there should be no development - some re-development of sites (this is London). But nothing new. So he (at first) assumed I was arguing for zero immigration. Because no-one wants development.
What a depressing anecdote. Depressing due to the mindset of the councillor, and a common one it would seem
You are absolutely right. We also need to build where homes are needed. Not throwing them up in parts of the North East, including areas that have had slight population declines.
It must be really chastening for Rishi Sunak, who by any odds has had a remarkably successful and lucrative career, to realise he just isn’t any good at this. Oxford. Fulbright Scholar. Goldman Sachs. Chancellor. First Asian-extraction British PM.
And he just can’t do it. Whatever he tries doesn’t work. How do you get up every morning and start work knowing you’re not going to succeed?
I've been harsh on Sunak in the past and I once said he was a man who had never failed at anything or had known defeat. If you go into politics there's a fair chance that will change.
It could be a positive and character building experience for him and remember he's only 43 (Blair's age in 1997). In twenty years time opinions of him could be very different and he might be the respected elder statesman.
The truth is there may be nothing as ex as an ex-MP (as someone once said) but there's really nothing as ex as an ex-PM. Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Truss, Johnson - all still with us, all still able to contribute to the national debte but do they? If they do, does anyone listen or are their past sins thrown back at them and used as an excuse to ignore them?
Nope in 20 years time his screwing round with HS2 will be regarded as a sign of utter incompetency highlighting the reduction of the UK's status as it's seen as incompetent...
One of the very first things I was taught in my economics degree was that knowledge is everything so if a skill set is required retaining that knowledge is very important.
Which means that you should have a continual set of projects going (rail electrification. nuclear power station developments, roads....) so that you aren't starting afresh all the time needing to import foreign expertise because no-one in the UK has done this in x0 years
That works fine when the projects you want to build are both economially viable and necessary. There were lots of programmes that could apply to. HS2 was not one of them and indeed it sucked money away from other more important and useful projects.
It’s possible (reasonable even) to argue that HS2 itself was misconceived from the start. But the fact remains that rail transport in this country, both passenger & freight, would benefit greatly from a N<->S high speed passenger rail line. The other routes are full to capacity - the demand is clearly there.
The underlying problem seems to be that we are completely unable to build projects that are of clear economic benefit at all thanks to a Treasury that cannot see beyond the next budget & a planning system that drives up the cost beyond all reasonable measure. The only way to get HS2 through parliament at all was to turn it into some gold-plated national monument to Britain. It’s no way to run a railway, or an economy for that matter.
A high speed rail project like HS2 should cost something like a third the HS2 budget: the HS2 costs are a symptom of wider problems in the UK economy. Every major infrastructure project spends interminable years trapped in a planning system that not only imposes insane costs all by itself, it drives up the cost of the final project by $billions.
The problem being that we need East/West and intra-region capacity a lot more than we need North/South (which actually just means London to the rest of the country). We could find far more useful and viable projects for every penny of that which was going to be spent on HS2 - whether it was the original £37.5 billion or the pre-abandonment £180 billion.
HS2 was the infrastructure equivalent of that old problem that plagues politics.
We must do something This is something We must do it.
The question you should be asking is not: why HS2? But rather: why is it apparently impossible to build these other projects?
I note in passing that a country which had built these other projects would probably be one that would happily build another north-south train line as the economic advantages would be obvious & unarguable & we would have an economy which could more easily afford the interest costs.
I think the answer to that one is obvius although sad. WHatever they might say, the London-centric politicians simply don't care about the North and don't want to waste money on it. That applied to Labour for years because they thought the North would vote for them anyway and to the Tories because they knew the North would never vote for them. (The Brexit effect being the exception).
The other thing is the absurd costs.
Once a project gets “unique mega project” status, it inevitably gets turned into a football.
HS2 should have been the “National rail investment plan, section 16, project 4”
Absolutely. Korea's rail plan had the concept of a 'half day country' - which means being able to get from any one place to another in half a day - and worked from there.
The construction of their national road network, which started back in the 70s, was similarly consistent.
Of course they make mistakes, encounter problems, and have corruption like everywhere else. But having a consistent, and persistent plan works.
I talked with a councillor a couple of days ago, at a Police-meets-the-locals event.
His reaction to my point about needing continual development to go with a continually growing population was interesting.
He seemed to be trying to call me racist. Because in his mind, there should be no development - some re-development of sites (this is London). But nothing new. So he (at first) assumed I was arguing for zero immigration. Because no-one wants development.
It’s not difficult to understand. If you increase the population by 10% in a decade, then you also need to increase the housing stock by at least 10% as well.
A massive landslide in line with these results will leave Labour in the same position as The SNP in 2015, with lots of MPs elected in seats they would normally not expect to win. In Scotland that meant a lot of numpties and the occasional rouge elected, dependent on slavishly following the leadership line to preserve their lucrative positions and career progression. It will be interesting to see the calibre and performance of Labour's equivalent.
That prospect is one reason Labour has been so ruthless with its selection processes I think. No doubt they'll get some wrong, but I doubt we'll see any Jared O'Maras or the bizarrely inappropriate people chosen in historically safe Red Wall seats in 2019 because Len and Unite were fans. No doubt we'll start hearing criticism that they are boring drones, but I'd take loads of dull, earnest councillor types over the eccentric firebrands who inevitably seem to end their careers in some form of disgrace.
I’m still amazed, as an IT consultant, how poor the main political parties are at vettting MP candidates for online behaviour. There’s only a couple of hundred new ones each election, it’s really not difficult if you have £1m budget, to weed out the Jared O’Maras before they become a massive problem.
You don't need a big budget. You hire external outfits to do this for x a head. The X depends on how thoroughly they dig.
Comments
https://www.heraldica.org/topics/britain/brit-proclamations.htm#Edward6
Good point on the LDs winnowing the Tories to Labour's advantage though.
Central government nicking most of the proceeds, and legislating to prevent councils building more to replace it was utter idiocy - motivated purely by Thatcher's dislike of local government. But then left unchanged by her successors.
"Build more lines going where people want and need to go"
The capacity problem on the southern WCML show that's exactly where people want and need to go. Now, that does not mean I'm against other projects such as NPR or EWR - quite the opposite. We should build them all as part of an integrated network.
"Your desperate attachment to HS2 is illogical and damaging to the economy. "
As if my belief that HS2 is a good idea has any influence! But if you extend that honour to me, I shall do the same to you: your irrational dislike of the project is irrational and hurts the country.
And as for your utter devotion to Brexit over decades - that's hurt the country, financially, politically and economically, orders of magnitude more than any infrastructure project.
The Swedish king, Carl XVI Gustaf is only the tenth of that name but several Swedish kings' names have exaggerated numbering due to Erik 'XIV' adopting a fictitious history of Sweden and retroactively giving these imaginary kings numbers.
There is a current convention, adopted when Elizabeth II became queen, that future UK monarchs would take the higher number from pre-Union English or Scottish series - so a future King James would be James VIII, for example - but it's not legally binding and could be changed if thought appropriate at the time.
They completed a 50km tunnel in three years, back in 2015.
And despite having nearly half their population in the metropolitan area around Seoul.
So it can be done.
Quite likely that Boris would never have been PM, we would have been better prepared for the pandemic & able to see the real cost/benefit of leaving the EU rather than it being obscured by the effects of lockdown.
We are now apparently 30th of 38 countries assessed for tax competitiveness: https://order-order.com/2023/10/20/uk-now-30th-out-of-38-for-tax-competitiveness/
The only good thing out of all of this is that we have finally broken the narrative which was forcing us down the road of a ridiculously expensive waste of money. One thing (perhaps the only one) that I can praise Sunak for. It is just a shame he didn't do it sooner and cancel the whole thing.
But the policy instituted by Mrs T is a significant contributor to the current problem.
Above inflation rises in house prices has been a political positive for the Conservatives ever since. But it's a political wheeze they have tested to destruction.
'Which or Who diminished the credibility of the UK more;
Boris Johnson or Brexit'?
Once a project gets “unique mega project” status, it inevitably gets turned into a football.
HS2 should have been the “National rail investment plan, section 16, project 4”
But they have just put *this* in the middle one of their key strategic cycling and walking routes, so totally in hock to motor-normativity.
A numpty at the Derbyshire County Council Planning Department conditioned the mast with a pathway extension to make it a bit less dangerous, but then accepted a drawing with no dimensions on it so can do bugger all to enforce anything, and something was built that is massively below national standards. Attention to detail totally missing.
Situated on the key Pentagon Island active travel route, Derby’s newest sculptural installation “Middle Finger” provides deep & emotional insight into the true feelings of the council’s planning department towards all those walking, wheeling & cycling in the city.
https://twitter.com/tandemkate/status/1710701505064354227
The discussions of the past few weeks have been that the Russians have been bringing forward an awful lot of men and kit, to either defend existing lines or to push them forward, and that they’re going to keep doing this until winter bogs everything down and they can resupply. The risk is that they end up with nothing behind the front line, and suffer a total collapse of dozens of kilometres of ground in very short order, if the defenders can get past a few strategic minefields and trenches.
Rail freight is a big difference between us and the German economy.
Forschungsgruppe Wahlen
CDU/CSU 30% (+4)
AfD 21% (nc)
SPD 15% (-2)
Green 14% (-2)
FDP 5% (-1)
Left 5% (nc)
FW 3% (nc)
Oth 7% (+1)
https://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/
Korea's rail plan had the concept of a 'half day country' - which means being able to get from any one place to another in half a day - and worked from there.
The construction of their national road network, which started back in the 70s, was similarly consistent.
Of course they make mistakes, encounter problems, and have corruption like everywhere else. But having a consistent, and persistent plan works.
But of course the mood, the issues, the leaders, the state of the parties and the country, none of this is at all like 1997. Just to cite some of the obvious, we're not long past 2 traumas (Brexit and the pandemic), the fiscal and debt position is truly dire, inflation is back, the cheap money era is over, the housing bubble has burst, and WW3 is seriously thinking about it.
So although I'm rooting for and predicting 'another 97' next October, and I'm so looking forward to having a Labour government again, which will help me sleep better, and I'm cautiously optimistic about what it will achieve, this is not (imo) a time for bouncing around at the Royal Festival Hall and the like. Hence why the trope 'SKS is no Tony Blair' should be met by the response, 'no, thank god'.
There’s good reason that Zelensky was asking for it 18 months ago.
Would the country (and inevitably the markets) accept another leader/change in PM without seeking the consent of the public? The answer must surely be no. I cannot see any circumstances under which a leadership contest could take place and a new PM be allowed to "steady the ship" for a period of 6 months before going to the country.
So what if Brady calls upon the PM and informs him that the threshold has been reached? Would it be acceptable for the PM to call the Party's bluff and say "It's time for a General Election"? The country would accept it but would the Party?
Whereas they were greeted with a hug and a bunch of flowers I suppose.
Like there's any doubt.
Looking at previous GE turnout, 1997 was down 7% on 92, and 2001 was down 11% on 97, just 59%. I assume that was because it was so obvious Labour would win? 2005 was similar to 2001, but it’s been pretty high since
What would be the likely 50/50 level? 63.5? 64.5?
PS And that bridge is really something. Right up there with the Wansford bridge carrying the Great North Road over the Nene.
His reaction to my point about needing continual development to go with a continually growing population was interesting.
He seemed to be trying to call me racist. Because in his mind, there should be no development - some re-development of sites (this is London). But nothing new. So he (at first) assumed I was arguing for zero immigration. Because no-one wants development.
BJO fans please explain!
Small compared to the Big Two, but there were four council by elections last night. Three Con defences and 1 Residents:
2 Green GAINS from Con
1 LibDem GAIN from Con
1 Residents HOLD, but with a big collapse in the Con vote and a surge in the LibDem vote
The Cons' terrible, no good, awful day included the council by elections.
The more serious point is that only a lunatic would want to take the leadership now when they can wait until after the deluge and blame all the predecessors. Oh, wait a minute.....
Live linear viewing is declining, yes. But from a high base. And it is sustained by live events, sport obviously but also event TV like Love Island, Bake-Off et al.
A lot more people watch linear live TV than you might think. Worth looking at Ofcom's annual reports on media consumption; they're a good antidote for our internal biases.
You are absolutely right. We also need to build where homes are needed. Not throwing them up in parts of the North East, including areas that have had slight population declines.