UK Politics

Unwalled archive link: https://archive.is/0hDcx

> “Now is not the time for blame”, the Conservative activist and journalist Annunziata Rees-Mogg suggested to her colleagues at the start of the ‘Popular Conservatism’ conference on Tuesday. > >It was not a suggestion which any of them seemed willing to countenance. > >Instead, over the course of more than three hours, a series of unelected and recently de-elected Conservative politicians revealed a long list people and institutions they blamed for the fact that their own brand of ‘Popular Conservatism’ had inexplicably proved to be quite so unpopular. > >For the former Conservative minister and current peer, Lord Frost, the answer was quite simple. His party had been compromised by radical leftists pushing a “flabby mishmash of sub-socialist ideas”. > >“On virtually every issue we have followed the collectivist Zeitgeist leftwards”, Frost told the room. > >His former colleague and surviving Conservative MP Suella Braverman wholeheartedly agreed, insisting via video link from another hard right political conference in Washington, that her party had made the fatal error of trying to “mimic the Labour party”, while refusing to ever mention real Conservative ideals. > >“We didn’t mention immigration,” said Braverman, who had mentioned next to nothing else during her time as Home Secretary.” > >“We didn’t want to talk about it, we didn’t want to look at it.” > >Later, an audience member suggested that this leftist infiltration had extended right into the heart of the Conservative party’s own campaigning machine, warning that Lib Dem sleeper agents must now be expelled from the party’s headquarters.

> How could the UK government’s new digital policy affect the Fediverse? As one of the Fediverse’s leading UK based projects, we thought we’d take a look. > >Data on the Fediverse shows that the network is primarily a North American and European project, with a healthy Japanese annex. On server count the UK languishes below Finland and Russia with just 44 servers, compared to 754 in France. > >Political instability in France and the recent EU elections will probably matter more to the Fediverse than the ones in the UK. The Netherlands is leading state interest in the Fediverse and funding for many projects comes ultimately from Horizon Europe, Europe’s massive state backed R&D fund. > >But, a new, stable government in the UK may create opportunities for change as priorities are reassessed, as opposed to the continuities and chaos in Europe. > >The Labour Party’s policy is structured around five core missions that cut across government departments. This means technology & digital policy emerges in support of the missions, rather than as an end in itself. > >With massive economic and social issues facing the new government, it is unsurprisingly light on specific tech policy. “AI” is mentioned a few times as an opportunity, but “social media” just once and “internet” is completely absent. > >Pulling the threads together, here’s what it means in practice: > > ... > > Taken together, the government vibe is a mix of optimism for the economic potential of the tech sector but an awareness of the negative impacts it can bring if unrestrained. > >The mission frameworks indicate a holistically minded approach to government, rather than a set of policy silos. Other priorities such as tackling violence against women & girls, which has a high profile champion in the Home Office, cyber security and democratic reform could end up having big impacts on the shape of cyberspace in the UK. > >This moment of change offers a new opportunity. The Fediverse could find an open ear if it can tap into the new government’s more sceptical view of Big Tech and social media, and present itself as a possible alternative. Getting into the conversation early and initiating dialogue about the open social web as the Regulatory Innovation Office is being built ought to be a key objective of public advocacy in the UK.

Disclaimer: Article is by Workers For a Free Palestine, the ones doing the blockade

> Over 1,000 workers and trade unionists shut down access to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office headquarters in central London this Wednesday morning, demanding that the new Labour Government immediately halt all arms exports to Israel. To try to break the blockade, police dragged protesters across the floor at the Whitehall entrance and arrested six people. > > The action comes as Israeli forces launched an assault on, and ordered the evacuation of, parts of a designated humanitarian zone in Khan Younis, killing nearly 100 people in one day, wounding several hundred more and forcing over 150,000 people to flee since Monday. It also follows one of the deadliest weeks in aerial attacks on Gaza since the onslaught started nine months ago and a damning new International Court of Justice ruling about Israel’s occupation clearly violating international law. > > After Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Alicia Kearns accused the Foreign Office of hiding legal advice that Israel is breaching International Humanitarian Law in Gaza in March, David Lammy – now Foreign Secretary – demanded the UK Government publish the advice and “suspend the sale of those arms” if the advice shows there is a “clear risk that UK arms might be used in a serious breach of international humanitarian law.” > > Today trade unionists are calling on the Foreign Secretary “to practice what he preached in opposition” and “meet his own demands” by immediately publishing the advice and suspending the sale of arms. They are also calling on the Foreign Secretary to withdraw the UK’s legal bid to block the International Criminal Court issuing an arrest warrant for Netanyahu. In Opposition, David Lammy called on David Cameron to drop this, accusing the Conservatives in May 2024 of “U-turning on one of Britain’s most fundamental principles: respect for the rule of law.” > […] > The ICJ has ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories – the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem – is a clear violation of international law. It ruled earlier this year that Israel’s actions in Gaza plausibly amounted to genocide and ordered Israel to comply with provisional measures, which it has failed to do. Even before the latest ICJ ruling, some 600 lawyers, legal academics, and former judges, including former Supreme Court justices and the Court’s former president Lady Hale, warned that the UK government is breaching international law by continuing to arm Israel. > > Today’s blockade has been organised by Workers for a Free Palestine in support of civil servants and members of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) . The Foreign Office and the Department for Business and Trade are involved in granting arms export licences, thus playing a fundamental role in the continued sale of UK weapons used by the Israeli army. Civil servants have requested to “cease work immediately” on arms export licences to Israel over fears they could be complicit in war crimes in Gaza, and their union PCS is considering bringing legal action to prevent their members from being forced to carry out unlawful acts.

I imagine some of these agencies didn't exist before 2010, meaning they got staffed under the Tories. I know viewing the Tories as purely bad is a very simplistic way of looking at things, but when Boris was partying in Downing street and clearly resigning on his duties to protect the public, how come this level of resignation didn't seep into these govt. agencies? From the articles below it seems that even after 14 years fhey still have teeth. Are they independent enough to escape influence from the Cabinet?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/20/the-big-tech-firms-want-an-ai-monopoly-but-the-uk-watchdog-can-bring-them-to-heel https://www.wiltsglosstandard.co.uk/news/national/24470785.data-watchdog-reprimands-school-facial-recognition-canteen-payments/

Okay, something the younger ones amongst you might not he conscious of. For wonkish political nerds in the UK of a certain age (I think roughly ranging from older millennials in their late-30s to the Cameron/Osborne/Clegg/Miliband generation in their mid-50s) and regardless of their political party affiliation (I've found this equally true of Labour, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats), probably the piece of popular culture that has most influenced how they think about the 'romance' of politics is Aaron Sorkin's The West Wing, which aired in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It's brilliant TV and anyone who hasn't seen it should watch it.

Sunak is a very wonkish political nerd in that age bracket. He's also someone with a particular relationship and affiliation with the United States. I would guess he is almost certainly a West Wing fan.

I've been thinking about The West Wing lately because of an article Sorkin wrote for the NYT, comparing the scenario around Biden and the 'will he/won't he' be the Democratic presidential candidate to his season two finale when President Bartlet - who has been concealing from the public that he suffered from multiple scelerosis - disclosed his illness and then, under huge political pressure not to stand for re-election due to his condition, dramatically changed his mind at the last minute and revealed he would.

The ending scene of Bartlet heading to the press conference to the soundtrack of Dire Straits is a top 5 moment for any fan of the series. It's tipping it down with rain and Bartlet shows up, drenched, walks out in front of the world's media like a heroic figure battling the very elements themselves, and commences his re-election campaign.

I hadn't made the link before but, now that I think about, I am certain that is exactly how Sunak and his advisors thought he was going to look on the TV news that night! We all spent all that time joking about how this man who claimed to have 'a plan' couldn't even rustle up an umbrella in a rainstorm - but the lack of an umbrella was deliberate! Oh dear god, the poor man thought that was his Jed Bartlet moment!

Seriously, did they just go down the Westminster Jobcentre?

> A fortnight after the election, I cannot remember a time in my life when a sense of hope was so inextricably entwined with a sense of trepidation, even doom. We live in 2024; we are grateful for the downfall of a Tory administration so little imbued with imaginative empathy about the daily lives of the people it governed; but our thoughts are already tuned, fearfully and obsessively, to 2029 and beyond. Almost everywhere abroad we see the rise of the populist, authoritarian right. Is it really plausible to think Britain can stay immune? > > Perhaps – just perhaps – we can. There is a decent argument that with the Brexit vote in 2016 we have already had our populist, boil-lancing moment – a moment that was ultimately, in my view, a cry of impotent despair (especially from older people) against modernity and the bewildering forces of change. Maybe that was enough; and it is notable how, on the issue itself, a long static period post-2016 of entrenched views on both sides has in the last year or so given way to a significant majority seeing that vote as a mistake. > > I also take comfort in that most methodologically fraught of concepts, our national character. A strong attachment to the local, the practical, the empirical; a deeply engrained suspicion of the abstract, of ideas, of intellectuals; above all, an instinctive preference for the moderate over the extreme. These are stereotypes, I know, but that does not mean they are false. And from my experience of researching and writing about postwar Britain, they are stereotypes that I largely recognise. So much, especially in our increasingly quasi-presidential system, hinges on Keir Starmer, and again I take a degree of comfort. I remember how, when he became Labour’s leader in 2020, I was struck forcibly by how he seemed his party’s most Attlee-like leader since Clement Attlee himself. Understated, no great charisma or oratorical fluency, a deep commitment to public service – the reassuring similarities were obvious enough. And it was those qualities, combined with a doggedly determined execution of policies – sometimes bold, sometimes incremental – designed to improve life as a whole for working people and their families, that made Attlee our greatest peacetime prime minister of the 20th century. He was also, crucially, an English patriot: not flag-waving, not a xenophobe, but deep in his bones. The public knew it; and it is hardly conceivable that in 1945 they would have given him a landslide victory over the war hero Winston Churchill if they had not. > > ... > > Who, though, would now confidently bet against that recovered red wall going Faragist next time round? It is surely smell-the-coffee time for progressives. We as a country have made such extraordinary strides in race relations since the 1960s (think Smethwick, think rivers of blood) that it would be foolish to jeopardise them because of inadequate control over immigration. Likewise with social liberalism more broadly – who, even at the height of flower power, could have imagined the legalisation of gay marriage? – we can afford to bank our gains and not endanger them, with the Roe v Wade analogy all too obvious. And a quiet, modest patriotism, especially a patriotism rooted in a sense of place, as the necessary antidote to abhorrent and dangerous nationalism: for myself, I have no problem with that, and it gave me particular pleasure that Starmer during the election stopped off at some half-dozen smaller football grounds, very deliberately not the big-city grounds, including that of my own team, Aldershot Town. Five days later, the home of the British army went Labour for the first time ever.

> Well, you can call off the search parties now. This is turning out to be a very political government led by a very political prime minister accompanied by a very political cabinet. Sir Keir is still confusing people somewhat by declaring that he leads “a government unburdened by doctrine”, but the ideological contours of the new order are already coming into focus. > >If you want to get a handle on Starmerism, don’t spend too much time listening to what ministers say and concentrate on what they want to do. Take a look at the first Labour king’s speech since it was led by Clement Attlee. Just because this was a highly public affair doesn’t mean it wasn’t also a revealing one. With 40 servings of intended legislation, one of the chunkiest menus presented by a government in modern times, it ran the risk of being a themeless mess. Yet it heralded several striking and radical departures from what came before. > >.First, it conveyed a view of capitalism that accepts the free market but not the free-for-all version of it. The prime minister and his chancellor are heavily relying on what Keynes called “the animal spirits” of enterprise to help them drive up economic growth, without which they are going to find it hard to achieve their other ambitions. What Starmerism recoils from, and seeks to correct, is market failure. Interventions in areas where capitalist models haven’t worked is evident both in the nationalisation of the rail network as operator franchises expire and the most serious challenge to the filthy practices of the water companies since their privatisation in 1989. A belief that the market does not provide all the answers explains using state funds to capitalise GB Energy, Ed Miliband’s pride and joy, and the national wealth fund, one of Rachel Reeves’s shop-window items. The idea is that they will pump-prime private sector investment in renewable energy, decarbonisation and other large infrastructure projects. This isn’t socialism. It is using the power of the state to try to galvanise a more productive capitalism. > > Laws to create a football regulator and protect tenants tell us that Starmerism is interventionist. It is also unabashedly “workerist”. After a long period when employment rights have been eroded and restraints on trade union activities tightened in the name of ultra-flexible labour markets, that trend will be significantly reversed. The “new deal for working people” represents the biggest enhancement of employment protections in a generation. The rightwing media is frothy about this, but it is notable that business has been relatively muted. > >Planning is good. This is an article of faith of Starmerism and one of its starkest ruptures with the belief systems of the Tory years. Industrial strategy was a dirty phrase, even a forbidden one, under Conservative prime ministers. This one will have an Industrial Strategy Council along with a clutch of delivery boards charged with driving the government’s key objectives. Whether you think this a recipe for success or doomed to fail, it is unarguably a decisive break with the recent past. There is also what seems to be a genuine commitment to try to spread the benefits of prosperity across the whole country, rather than just provide a sugar rush to London and the south of England. These aspects of Starmerism have antecedents in previous iterations of British social democracy with rather more in common with what Harold Wilson attempted in the 1960s than with the governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. New Labour discovered industrial strategy too late to make much of a difference.

She's written exclusively in The Sun, which I've left out the URL field because it's The Sun. Here's what she wrote:

> We cannot pretend everything is OK. Not when criminal gangs are making millions out of dangerous small boat crossings that undermine our border security and put lives at risk. > > We have directed Immigration Enforcement to intensify their operations over the summer, with a focus on employers who are fuelling the trade of criminal gangs by exploiting and facilitating illegal working here in the UK – including in car washes and in the beauty sector. > > And we are drawing up new plans for fast track decisions and returns for safe countries. > > Most people in this country want to see a properly controlled and managed asylum system, where Britain does its bit to help those fleeing conflict and persecution, but where those who have no right to be in the country are swiftly removed.

> Conservative MP Suella Braverman is expected to quit the the party and join Nigel Farage’s Reform UK later this year, according to sources in both parties. > >The right-wing former home secretary is struggling to command enough support to run for the Tory leadership when the race officially kicks off next week, after key allies abandoned her fledgling campaign. > >She may even face the ignominy of failing to secure the numbers to get on the ballot paper as support within the parliamentary party leeches away to other right-wing candidates. > >“We expect her to take a tilt at the Tory leadership and then come over to us, perhaps in the autumn around conference time,” a Reform source said. “She’ll fit in well.” > >A senior Tory source told i: “There’s now so much antagonism towards Suella Braverman among MPs that there is now a generally held view that she will defect. > >“If she does, it will be a clear admission that she could not win the leadership and does not have the support of any MPs in the party.” Ms Braverman, MP for Fareham and Waterlooville, denied the claim. A spokesman said: “Suella has only recently been elected as a Conservative MP and has been a Conservative Party member for three decades.” > > Previously she has argued the Conservatives “need to” find a way of working with Reform, saying she would “welcome” Farage into the party, a stance other Tories view with disdain.

Archive

I dug a bit, and this seemed the most appropriate place to post this, as it’s a bit of an odd ask.

American here, recovering from surgery and so with time on my hands - your Commons presents quite a cast of characters to the world, some of them come across more effectively as caricatures than actual serious politicians. Not that our Congress is better, but at least yours have some general courtesy and a little self deprecating humor.

During the Brexit debate, a number of folks stood out to me, and it’s now been long enough there are some decent books on the same. Is it too soon to “book club” something like Bercow’s autobiography, Seldon on May(not) at 10, or the like?

Johnson feels very much too soon, given the parallels to our own former President, but I’d also like to tackle Ashcroft’s Jacob’s Ladder - speaking of people who are more effective as caricatures!

If there’s a better place to put this, or an existing group I’ve somehow missed, please let me know.

To me, trading thoughts on the outsized characters from different perspectives sounds like fun, and possibly fun that will stretch my brain back into shape a bit while I’m stuck recovering.

Rob Hutton, on the leadership campaign underway in the Conservative Party,

> David Lammy told MPs he had received reassurances about its neutrality in the wake of a review of alleged links between its staff and terror groups. > > The UK was among several countries to suspend donations in January, after Israel alleged 12 UNRWA staff were involved in the October 2023 attacks by Hamas. > […] > Speaking in the Commons, Mr Lammy said "no other agency" was able to deliver aid at the scale required to alleviate the “desperate" humanitarian situation in Gaza. > > He added UNRWA was feeding more than half the territory's two-million population and would be "vital for future reconstruction". > > He said he had been "appalled" by Israel's allegations, but the claims had been taken "seriously” by the United Nations. > > He had been reassured the agency "is ensuring they meet the highest standards of neutrality" in the wake of the April review, he added. > > This included "strengthening its procedures, including on vetting," Mr Lammy said. > > He told MPs a resumption of the UK's £21m annual funding would include money put towards “management reforms” recommended by the UN review. > > The Foreign Office said £6m would be given to UNRWA's flash appeal for Gaza, and £15m to the agency's budget to provide services in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories and wider region.

Anyone else so used to being gaslit by the government they started to read this thinking ‘Great! Let’s find out how I’m a “failed citizen”, who had rubbish plans during the pandemic’

I’m finding this transition a little difficult, I’m hopeful but I’m still half expecting the Home Secretary to announce concrete shoes at low tide for all immigrants or something.

> […] Following Labour’s victory, the share prices of the major housebuilders rose, and the new Chancellor bragged about meetings with asset managers like BlackRock who were just waiting to invest in UK housing. > > This enthusiasm from major real estate investors is for Labour’s housing and planning policies. Last week, Bloomberg described Labour’s proposals as a ‘revolution in planning’, while Rachel Reeves called planning ‘the single greatest obstacle to our economic success’. Planning, an area of the state which had received little attention from Labour or the Left, is now the central and defining area for reform in the incoming government’s programme. For Labour, planning reform is the key to unlocking growth, drawing upon a set of supply-side planning and housing policies developed by organisations that now tend to self-refer as part of a ‘YIMBY [Yes In My Backyard] movement’. Unfortunately, their proposals draw more from right-wing think tanks, astroturf campaigns and asset managers than they do the demands of workers, tenants and the labour movement. > […] > The YIMBY view, which several leading UK politicians apparently endorse, is not simply that more homes need to be built, which is a fairly banal view. The YIMBY position, long held by right-wing think tanks, advocates for liberalising planning regulations to address the (largely imagined) problem of the NIMBY [Not In My Backyard], thereby stimulating mass private sector housebuilding and alleviating the housing crisis by reducing sale and rental prices. > > There are three problems with their basic proposition. First, it is by no means clear that even a large-scale private house-building programme, such as building over 300,000 houses a year, would significantly decrease prices. The best that high rates of building could do is help slow the rate of price increases. However, since the early 2000s, the average house price to average income ratio has doubled its historical norm, rising from 4:1 to around 9:1. Based on recent annual average wage growth, it would take around 25 years of zero price growth to return back to something like affordability. Private housebuilding, which with a fair wind usually settles at around 170,000 a year, could easily be bolstered with a social housing programme that would reduce the rents paid by those currently in private rental housing more directly and more swiftly whilst hitting the 300,000 a year target. The impacts would be felt within years, not decades, as well as reducing the substantial housing benefit bill (a staggering £23.4 billion in 2022) > > Second, it is also not clear that the various proposals to reform planning, ranging from zoning systems to Labour’s vague promise to ‘bulldoze’ regulations, would even lead to such a housing boom. Private housebuilders build at rates that ensure their profitability — it’s not in their interests to ramp up house-building rates beyond a certain point without some form of state subsidy. While it is true that planning is a source of delay and uncertainty for development, this is because it has been decimated as a public service through austerity and various policy ‘streamlining’ exercises. A strong public planning system linked with an actual industrial strategy can help us find a way through the pressures and trade-offs inherent in land-use decisions rather than creating folk devils out of groups of pensioners with a WordPress site. > > Third, the YIMBY proposition is one that elides the problem of what constitutes demand for land and housing. The affordability problem began in the early 2000s, as demand for land and housing in major cities was increasingly driven by those with significantly higher spending power than individual households. Institutional investors, buy-to-let landlords, and a variety of international investors seeking ‘safe havens’ all bought up huge amounts of property in major cities. Added to this, the reduced capacity of local authorities to lead housing development and provide social housing has meant that demand for land is increasingly driven by those who have greater access to credit and can outcompete households, increasing rents and sale prices. > […] > Rejecting YIMBYism does not mean rejecting housebuilding. What we want to see is houses as homes, not new opportunities for upward wealth redistribution. Indeed, the reason the YIMBY ‘movement’ exists is to divert focus from the real, egalitarian solutions for the housing crisis the Left has put back on the table in recent years, such as rent controls, major social housing programmes, and reversing austerity — solutions which require a shift in power against the rentiers that dominate the UK economy and a government with the courage to take that on.