UK Politics Thread

[Montmorency]

I notice the baseline support for Scottish independence has steadily increased over time, but especially over the past two years.

The Scottish government recently published a report with the thesis that the UK economy consistently underperforms its neighbors' and is socially moribund; securing sovereignty from Buckingham will be painful in the short term but divergence will allow Scotland to reorient and flourish in the long term. Sounds familiar...

But the point is this: in an independent Scotland, crucial decision-making power will rest with the people who live here – not with Westminster governments that do not command the support of people in Scotland, and which pursue policies, for example, Brexit, that are deeply damaging to Scotland's interests. As well as setting out the Scottish Government's view of the opportunities of independence and how the greater powers that it entails could be used to make Scotland wealthier, happier and fairer...

Unhappy nationalists are all alike (there are no happy nationalists). But at least they have actual grievances, if in part self-fulfilled by the SNP.

[rory_20_uk]

If there is a vote on Independence everyone should have a say. I'd vote for them to leave. Like Australia, New Zealand and Canada perhaps more (political) distance would foster a more cordial relationship.

[Furunculus]

If there is a vote on Independence everyone should have a say. I'd vote for them to leave. Like Australia, New Zealand and Canada perhaps more (political) distance would foster a more cordial relationship.

Agreed - would like an advisory pre-referendum in other parts of the union to inform Scotland's subsequent decision making.
I'd vote for them to stay - as I consider them family.

But totally on board with the principle that the endless whining is boring, and they should make up their mind one way or another in order that a better relationship can ensue (whatever that might be).

[Pannonian]

Back in the distant past, when we had a Labour government, we had a united kingdom, membership of a larger union and all the closest international institutions, a prosperous economy, functioning services, a belief in democracy. Now all of that is gone or going.

Back in 2015, the Tories campaigned against Labour, accusing them of being part of a coalition of chaos, implying that a Labour government relying on the SNP to prop it up would lead to the end of the union. We're 12 years into a Tory government.

[Furunculus]

Back in the distant past, when we had a Labour government, we had a united kingdom, membership of a larger union and all the closest international institutions, a prosperous economy, functioning services, a belief in democracy. Now all of that is gone or going.

Back in 2015, the Tories campaigned against Labour, accusing them of being part of a coalition of chaos, implying that a Labour government relying on the SNP to prop it up would lead to the end of the union. We're 12 years into a Tory government.

Back in the distant past it was a labour gov't that crafted the abysmal devolution settlement that created the modern monstrosity of the SNP.

A unionist party campaigning against an opposition that intended to include a sessionist party as part of a coalition does not seem controversial.

[Pannonian]

Back in the distant past it was a labour gov't that crafted the abysmal devolution settlement that created the modern monstrosity of the SNP.

A unionist party campaigning against an opposition that intended to include a sessionist party as part of a coalition does not seem controversial.

Scottish devolution (under Labour): 1998.

2001 (Labour government): 5 SNP MPs elected.
2005 (Labour): 4 SNP MPs.
2010 (Labour): 6 SNP MPs.
2015 (Tory + Lib Dem): 58 SNP MPs.
2017 (Tory): 35 SNP MPs.
2019 (Tory): 48 SNP MPs.

You've written a tract, but the above are bare facts.

[Montmorency]

Back in the distant past it was a labour gov't that crafted the abysmal devolution settlement that created the modern monstrosity of the SNP.

A unionist party campaigning against an opposition that intended to include a sessionist party as part of a coalition does not seem controversial.

Nah, if you look at the election results going back to WW2 the Conservative Party was rather competitive in Scotland. The situation deteriorated for them under Thatcher, whom I gather was particularly disliked by Scots. Then, from 1997 - inaugurating, not under, the Blair argument - through 2015 the Cons always drew well under 20% of the vote in Scotland.

2017 and 2019 were anomalous in that Cons drew Thatcherite numbers in Scotland. In both 2017 and 2019 Labour actually won fewer votes than the Cons. At the risk of being wrong, my first hypothesis would be that a polarization is blossoming between Caledonewithit and Union, directed through the perceived champion-parties of each. That is, Conservative voting is becoming a proxy for unionism above all, thus attracting ardent unionist votes across the spectrum. The obvious confirmation would be an increase in the two-party vote share in the next election. The (top) two-party vote share in Scottish elections has tended to converge around 65%, but in 2019 it was in fact at its highest (70%) since 1979 (73%).

By the by it further undermines the theory that Blair Labour instigated or accelerated Scottish separatism when in 1974 the SNP drew 30% of votes in Scotland and a devolution referendum took a Brexity majority in 1979 (it was invalidated according to turnout rules).

From what I've seen, the majority of Scots are animated more by a deep disgust for the totality of Conservative governance since 2010 rather than nationalism per se. (The confirmation for that hypothesis would be a steep decline in Leave sentiment and SNP vote share following a successful unilateral Labour government taking power nationally.) So if most Scottish unionists happen to consolidate in the Conservative Party, and the recent wave of separatist sentiment is mostly a reaction against Tory rule, this should only reinforce the impulse toward independence among the general public.

[Furunculus]

Two fun developments this week:

Economists modelling the effect of brexit begin to realise the consequence of the core assumption of their models: if the future damage was to be caused by reduced immigration and instead the gov't creates the most liberal immigration scheme the UK has seen in 50 years... Even the sainted Portes has rebuilt his models to show a mild positive effect:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business...nomics-brexit/

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

As of next week, Britain will have the most ethnically-diverse cabinet of any major country in the OECD bloc. That will be apparent to the world.

Less understood is that the new Prime Minister will also preside over one of the most liberal and open immigration systems among the developed economies, and considerably more open in key respects than the large EU states.

This is so far removed from the catechism of the global intelligentsia – let us call it the New York Times view – that many will simply refuse to acknowledge the facts.

Whatever may have been said by certain people during the Referendum, and whatever Theresa May thought Brexit was supposed to mean, the actual regime established by Boris Johnson for work visas and the resettlement of legal refugees is strikingly expansionary. Furthermore, it has been obvious for some time that this is the direction of travel.

“I am delighted to say that I have been proved wrong. When it comes to work visas, we have one of the most liberal immigration systems in the world,” said Professor Jonathan Portes from the London School of Economics. A fierce critic of Brexit in the past, he is arguably this country’s leading expert on the economic effects of immigration.

The open-door policy has sweeping implications for the growth rate of GDP and for the long-term sustainability of British public finances. It demolishes a core assumption of Project Fear models. It falsifies a succession of economic forecasts by global bodies and think tanks that invariably understate the UK’s relative performance and future prospects.

Professor Portes has revised his model in a paper for the Centre for Economic Policy Research and the UK in a Changing Europe. It has ruffled academic circles, and caused some fury in the pro-Brussels camp. He previously calculated that the immigration effects of Brexit would lower the UK’s growth rate and cost 2pc of GDP. He now thinks there will be a slight net gain from this component over time – though there will still be trade losses.

The EU has free movement within its closed system, but it has aspects of a white fortress against the rest of the world, a point that Left-leaning enthusiasts for all things European tend to overlook. They are also strangely forgiving of the EU’s Right-wing corporatist power structure.

The detailed provisions of Britain’s new immigration strategy make this country significantly more open to legal work migrants from Africa, South Asia, and the Far East. The UK has offered a new home to three million exiles from Xi Jinping’s Hong Kong should they wish to come. Furthermore, a total of 6.1m EU/EEA nationals have applied for settled status, more than the 3.5 - 4.1m originally expected.

The latest UK Immigration Statistics in the year to June show that a record 1.1 million people were issued visas to live in this country, a 70pc rise on pre-Brexit levels. Educated Indians lead the way. The Rwanda camp for illegal migrants, if it ever happens, is an odd distraction within the greater picture.

I make no judgement on whether this open-door regime is good or bad, or whether this is what people thought they were voting for in 2016. These are matters for democratic politics and cultural anthropology. My focus is macroeconomic.

The post-Brexit system stops one particular category: uncontrolled flows of cheap labour from the EU. But it is welcoming for another category: skilled migrants from any part of the world, so long as they meet wage and education thresholds. This may ultimately have a higher economic return.

Worker visas require a salary of at least ?25,600, or ?20,480 for some jobs on the shortage list. Special regimes for care workers and seasonal farm labour are a messy work in progress.

The latest figures show that there were 331,000 work visas issued, led by India (111,000) with a 99pc approval rate, Philippines (22,000), Nigeria (18,000), Ukraine (15,000), US (11,000), Zimbabwe (9,000, South Africa and Australia (8,000), Pakistan (7,000), and Russia (5,000).

No EU country is in the top ten any more but that is distorted by the rush to get settled status before the deadline. The flow of workers from Poland and the Baltics has been drying up anyway because wages have been rocketing at home and there is a structural labour shortage.

The UK’s earnings barrier has left gaps. Most waiters, hotel cleaners, or baggage handlers cannot get visas. This is a headache for employers, and it is something that we all notice, but it is not a big macroeconomic issue.

There were 492,000 study visas, topped by: India (117,000), China (115,000), Nigeria (66,000), and Pakistan (23,000). Some will stay after their courses end, further enlarging the pool of immigrant talent. There were 230,000 resettlement visas, chiefly for migrants from Ukraine, Afghanistan, and Hong Kong. A percentage will ultimately join the workforce.

Add it all together and you are looking at 400,000 migrants joining the labour force each year, and possibly more. This is at least four times the assumption in The Economic Consequences of Brexit, published by the OECD just before the Referendum. It is a name-play on Keynes’s brilliant (but glib and erroneous) hatchet-job on the Versailles Treaty.

This report is indicative of most studies written by the academic/policy fraternity, all arguing from the same premise. In a nutshell, the lion’s share of the alleged Brexit damage comes from lower immigration and therefore also from lower productivity, since their models assume a mechanical linkage between the two - a questionable premise even in academic theory. Take those two away and the argument disintegrates.

The OECD said immigration accounted for half of the UK’s total economic growth from 2005 to 2015. It argued that curbs on free movement and a weaker economy would lead to “a smaller pool of skills”. It would reduce “managerial quality and technical progress.” From these assumptions it predicted a Brexit loss of 5pc of GDP, or 7.7pc in its pessimistic scenario.

If this is the reasoning, then presumably the OECD should be revising up its forecasts dramatically in light of the actual migrant policy and incoming data. Its own model must surely infer blistering economic growth over the 2020s and great improvements in “skills and technical progress”, unless it deems Indians and the Hong Kong Chinese less capable than Europeans.

Immigration has of course been running hotter since 2016 than 100,000 a year – outside the pandemic – and that explains why OECD forecasts (like others) have so consistently erred in predicting that the UK would vastly underperform the major eurozone economies.

In fact, the UK’s aggregate economic growth since the Brexit vote has been roughly equal to that of France, and higher than in Germany, Italy, and Spain. The recent surge in legal migration may explain why the UK’s output surveys this year keep catching forecasters by surprise. The PMI indexes since January have been more resilient than in Europe or the US.

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) still assumes in its reports that net immigration will be 100,000 even though this has long been implausible. The error shapes its analysis of what the public finances can carry.

The OBR argued in one report that a fall of 140,000 in the rate of net migration would push up the national debt by 40 percentage points of GDP in the long-run. Following this logic, might one conclude that if the actual rate is 300,000 higher than supposed, the debt ratio will come down rapidly through organic economic growth?

The new visa figures have large implications. The worst combination we can have in this country is a restrictive fiscal watchdog at a time when we need ample public spending on infrastructure to cope with a larger population. This investment has a high fiscal multiplier, if spent and timed correctly, and more than pays for itself via stronger growth.

In my view, the OBR has had a contractionary bias ever since its creation in 2010. It played a large role in the austerity overkill of the post-Lehman era, and has fostered a malign pattern of thinking. It has led the political class to think that we cannot afford the sort of public investment that we most assuredly can afford and urgently need, and that is the hallmark of growth stars over the last quarter century such as Korea and the Nordics.

Furthermore, the OBR mimics EU machinery demanded by Germany to prevent fiscal free-loading by Club Med states within the monetary union. It is unclear why such an institution should exist in a full democracy with fiscal and monetary sovereignty.

The widely-believed narrative of a Britain turning its back on the world and retreating into Trumpian tribalism has been a giant canard. The economic models built upon this false architecture have been abject. The policy prescriptions that follow from the errors have been toxic.

I look forward to the OECD’s next report on the Economic Consequences of Brexit with eager curiosity. The OBR might wish to chuck its last report in the dustbin and rush through an emergency revision in light of reality. If these bodies persist with a false model, their own political integrity comes into question.

and the Financial Times is being shown to be systematically useless if what you want is balanced and accurate reporting of the economics of brexit:

https://thecritic.co.uk/lunching-on-the-ft/

[Pannonian]

Modelling? Has any attempt been made yet to actually get concrete data, as opposed to extrapolating from assumptions and building on said assumptions? Minford, he who wants rid of the agricultural and fishing industries en route to Singaporising the UK, is favoured by the next presumptive PM. The minister who was supposed to be identifying Brexit opportunities vocally opposes getting the above actual concrete data on the effects of Brexit.

Going by the promises made in the Leave.eu campaign video (who've just wound up, writing off several millions in debt), every one of those promises has not materialised as pledged, and have become the opposite. That's actual RL data, not theoretical modelling. And the best that Leavers have come up with is to blame other factors for why Brexit has delivered the opposite of what it has promised.

In other news, I've actually seen people claim that Liz Truss, she who's been a Parliamentary secretary or minister continuously since 2013, is the candidate for change, unlike Keir Starmer who first entered politics in 2015 and who has never been in any government. 12 years of Tory government, and Tory supporters continue to claim the opposite of reality is actually true. And thanks to our wonderful democracy, that argument will probably fly too. Claims don't need to be based on evidence and reality. If you win the vote, whatever you say is the truth.

[Furunculus]

Modelling? Has any attempt been made yet to actually get concrete data, as opposed to extrapolating from assumptions and building on said assumptions? Minford, he who wants rid of the agricultural and fishing industries en route to Singaporising the UK, is favoured by the next presumptive PM.

it's almost like we discussed this very thing but a month a ago but someone remains strangely impervious to challenging views - again:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...post2053835809

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

A lot of the above is measurable using objective metrics (cost before and after, investment before and after, etc.). Are we allowed to measure them and compare what has become with what was promised? Or does your approval override objective assessment?

Sure, fill your boots.

A few interesting indicators with comparable EU nations:
Manufacturing PMI
GDP growth since 2016
Unemployment
Investment in tech and fin-tech sectors
Inflation
% non-performing debts in the banking sector
climate change goals - inc coal use**

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...post2053835815

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Why are we comparing with the EU again, when the promises were made about how we would improve our prospects, ie. comparing with ourselves? We're out of the EU now. Why are you still obsessed with our relationship with the EU?

because it helps account for the effects of externalities.
small things like covid, ukraine, etc.

how would you like to do it?
perhaps via CER modelling of putative uk doppler economy absent brexit - using the US as the basis (during a time when the worlds reserve currency doubled its balance sheet with money printing)...

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...post2053835839

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I wouldn't mind an assessment done by a respected organisation either. However, isn't it a tad concerning that the government, who are the people with the power to decide these things, are fundamentally against any kind of trustworthy assessment?

Drugs are still banned in this country. Evidence for years has demonstrated that this is poor policy.
Prostitution is still poorly defined, with brothels illegal although have been shown to protect women.
An annual assessment of the budget - if done, it doesn't seem to make politicians change course.

Yet no calls for a review or assessment (not that one is really required since the evidence is so strong). And these have some pretty simple variables to take into account.

To decide whether Brexit was "good" / "bad" you'd first need to define what these two things are and then disentangle such things as COVID and the Ukrainian war. How many Civil Servants would you like working on this undertaking? How many million is it worth to know - sorry, guess?

I wouldn't mind an assessment done by a respected organisation either.

Is Jonathan Portes writing for the Centre for Economic Policy Research and the UK in a Changing Europe a respected organisation?

https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/...a5db6a06).html

[Pannonian]

2021: Government video on export declarations post-Brexit
Virginia from Old Dairy Brewery explains her 5 years of export experience.

2022: Old Dairy Brewery says exports have dropped by 95% since Brexit.
"The Old Dairy Brewery in Tenterden says extra paperwork, customs checks and transport rules are to blame."

[Montmorency]

So can we all finally agree that a global regime of free labor movement, at least, would be one of the greatest inducements to economic growth and prosperity ever?

The worst combination we can have in this country is a restrictive fiscal watchdog at a time when we need ample public spending on infrastructure to cope with a larger population. This investment has a high fiscal multiplier, if spent and timed correctly, and more than pays for itself via stronger growth.

In my view, the OBR has had a contractionary bias ever since its creation in 2010. It played a large role in the austerity overkill of the post-Lehman era, and has fostered a malign pattern of thinking. It has led the political class to think that we cannot afford the sort of public investment that we most assuredly can afford and urgently need, and that is the hallmark of growth stars over the last quarter century such as Korea and the Nordics.

BUT INFLATION

What is the status of the current government's "infrastructure revolution?"

[Pannonian]

So can we all finally agree that a global regime of free labor movement, at least, would be one of the greatest inducements to economic growth and prosperity ever?



BUT INFLATION

What is the status of the current government's "infrastructure revolution?"

There's been a lot of talk of grand plans and promised investment: the theoretical modelling that theorists love to talk about. Whilst drawing down funding in reality. A lot of government money has been spent, but directed towards individuals, with the better off in particular getting the benefits of tax cuts and government contracts (eg. currently planned tax cuts would save the worse off maybe a couple of dozen pounds per year, whilst saving the top line thousands, at a time when bills are going up by hundreds).

The Tories and their affiliated movements (eg. Brexit, climate change deniers, covid deniers) are good at promising things and pretending that things are as they'd promised and winning votes that way, rather than things are as they've turned out to be.

[Furunculus]

So can we all finally agree that a global regime of free labor movement, at least, would be one of the greatest inducements to economic growth and prosperity ever?



BUT INFLATION

What is the status of the current government's "infrastructure revolution?"

Sure, but two points:

1. you have to maintain the consent of the electorate - whether that be in raw numbers that might affect infrastructure provision, or in cultural accomodation expected, a.k.a. multiculturalism

2. this benefit might principally be seem in nominal GDP figures, and less so at the per capita level - that people actually feel. So useful geopolitically more than electorally.

[Hooahguy]

RIP Queen Elizabeth II

[spmetla]

RIP HM Queen Elizabeth II. Talking with my dad, it brought tears to his eyes as he remembers being a kid in Wisconsin listening to her coronation on the radio as his dad told him it's a historic thing to pay attention to.

Best of luck to the new King.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

QE2 had, at least by modern expectations, one heck of a run. Good wishes to her wherever her soul has flown.


The ironist in me notes that she began her reign with Winston Churchill as PM and concluded it with Boris Johnson. Not sure what that says about English politics. We will all get a view of Charles as he takes up the mantle, as well as what the near future holds for the monarchy in the UK.

[Furunculus]

Always been a monarchist rather than a royalist, but by god was Liz a great Royal.
Will be a hard act to follow. RIP.

[Hooahguy]

I find it fascinating that the UK has had a queen for our entire lives, however there wont be a British queen again in our lifetime (probably).

[Montmorency]

Has the moment passed yet?

https://twitter.com/i/status/1568582387126124544 [VIDEO]

The British monarchy is a valuable and respectable institution. God save the King.

[Montmorency]

Good summation of recent UK politics.

'Despicable' amateur football teams in Sheffield face punishment for playing after Queen's death
Two football teams who played the weekend after the Queen died are being investigated and will be "dealt with in the strongest possible terms".

Belfast:

[Montmorency]

A Chill Over the United Kingdom
The absurd—and sometimes sinister—spectacle of mourning Queen Elizabeth.

What is going on in the United Kingdom? It’s a question with a simple, four-word answer: the queen is dead. That is almost literally everything that is happening here at the moment.

Since the queen died last Thursday, the country has ground to a halt. The queen is dead for breakfast, the queen is dead for lunch, and you’ll want to leave room for a nice hearty portion of the queen is dead for dinner, too. People are still going to work, sure, but there is no press except press about the queen being dead. Every business in the country—from chicken shops to pork jerky brads, chemists to cobblers—have felt the need to issue a public statement of grief about the queen dying. Supermarkets have turned down the beeps on their self-checkout machines to mark their depth of feeling for the queen. Our weather forecaster, the Met Office, has cut back the number of weather reports it is issuing “as a mark of respect during this time of national mourning.” An amusement park company, Center Parcs, announced its intention to kick all vacationers staying in their parks out for one day, the queen’s funeral, before realizing just how deranged that would be and making a U-turn.

Insufficiently serious cinematic releases like Ticket to Paradise, the new George Clooney and Julia Roberts vehicle, are being delayed. You can go to the cinema to watch the queen’s funeral, but you may only drink water and eat nothing, in case your hot dog meets with the displeasure of the dead queen.

So there’s a weird confluence of feelings: on the one hand, all of this is mental and stupid and therefore funny, but on the other hand everything being shut down or in a holding pattern until the “mourning period” is over is boring. The country is in limbo at the moment, or maybe existing out of time. The news feels like it’s from 1630, with headlines like “Public gather to kiss the rings of King Charles.”

This could hardly come at a worse time for the country.
But there is also something more sinister brewing here. Hospital appointments on the day of the queen’s funeral are cancelled. Food banks are closed. Normal people’s funerals are also cancelled. On the day the queen died, Liz Truss, our new prime minister, quietly lifted the ban on fracking in this country and also announced a plan to relieve Britons of crippling energy bills this winter without explaining where that money is going to come from. I’m not suggesting that anybody offed the queen early for political expediency, but parliament will now be closed for a month: again, to respect the dead queen.

This could hardly come at a worse time for the country. The cost-of-living crisis in the U.K. needs urgent political attention, and the cost of energy is going to become more and more pressing as the weather gets colder.

These are interesting times to have a new prime minister and a new monarch in the same week. Things really suck here at the moment. People are frustrated. Everything is expensive, the post-pandemic mental health crisis is about to hit us like a freight train, and our seas and rivers are full of sewage that Tory MPs voted to have dumped there. And a lot of people who loved the queen in a grandmotherly kind of way but would count themselves as republicans are now faced with King Charles, who has already been filmed snarling at an aide to remove something from a table. Looking ahead, it seems likely that we are going to witness a vast, gaudy display of elite wealth, King Charles’ coronation, just as the rest of the country drags itself through one of the worst recessions in history.

There have also been the small incidents of anti-royal protest all over the country that have been met by the law with a ludicrously heavy hand. A young woman was arrested in Edinburgh for holding up a sign saying “fuck imperialism, abolish monarchy.” A man in Oxford was arrested for shouting “who elected him?” when King Charles was being proclaimed as the king on Sunday.

The severity of this reaction from the police, and from the crown by extension, suggests an unease. Some people have wondered whether this uncertain time is going to provide an opportunity to interrogate whether we want a monarchy: whether there isn’t another way forward than simply accepting another unelected head of state, another round of our “purely symbolic” monarchy that is made up of real people who receive our real tax money and that we’re not allowed to criticize publicly or we’ll get thrown in real jail.

Perhaps it will. But I’m not convinced. I spent some time at Buckingham Palace this past weekend, reporting something else about the queen, because again: there is no room for other news here. People did not seem ready to revolt. The British people and the monarchy is the ultimate case of Stockholm syndrome, and I don’t see that there’s any real hope for a cure.

This is really worse than I imagined. Somehow I just assumed she would be afforded two or three times the rigmarole of a dead President in the US.

The monarchy is more of a drag on British sovereignty than the EU ever was. At least be decent, and keep out of the way like the Dutch or Norwegian royals.

[Furunculus]

I have to say i think the argument presented is bunk.

I'm as big a monarchist as they come - and the death of the queen has had zero impact on my life beyond the additional bank holiday on Monday.

The article looks at the razmataz of the event and the royalist response and presumes to conflate the two (monarchist and royalist), and you as the reader are arriving at the erroneous conclusion that majority support for constitutional monarchy equates to a majority of people agonising in a mawkish self-absorbed lassitude. It's just not true.

It's the kind of drivel i'd expect to see printed in the New York Times.

If you want a far better description of what is going on and why it matters i'd read this:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/a...rtrays-as.html

If you want the simplest answer to the argument presented it is to turn the whole chicken-little disaster-porn 'expose' on its head by pointing out the UK has just gone through two huge changes in governance in the space of a week and nothing exciting happened. Nothing.

"There have also been the small incidents of anti-royal protest all over the country that have been met by the law with a ludicrously heavy hand...The severity of this reaction from the police, and from the crown by extension..."

It is absurd, and it shouldn't happen. But it is also the mechanical and predetermined outcome that arises from spending the last twenty years hedging free speech around with a multitude of nebulous caveats in the form of protected characteristics and hate speech 'incidents'. Where police response is conditioned not to objective criteria of abuse given but rather to subjective criteria of offence perceived - yes, even offence perceived by a third party on behalf of another. People are suddenly discovering it doesn't just apply when used against the bad guys, but also to them when they get a little 'exuberant' in their morally elevated crusade.

[Montmorency]

I have to say i think the argument presented is bunk.

I'm as big a monarchist as they come - and the death of the queen has had zero impact on my life beyond the additional bank holiday on Monday.

The article looks at the razmataz of the event and the royalist response and presumes to conflate the two (monarchist and royalist), and you as the reader are arriving at the erroneous conclusion that majority support for constitutional monarchy equates to a majority of people agonising in a mawkish self-absorbed lassitude. It's just not true.

It's the kind of drivel i'd expect to see printed in the New York Times.

If you want a far better description of what is going on and why it matters i'd read this:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/a...rtrays-as.html

If you want the simplest answer to the argument presented it is to turn the whole chicken-little disaster-porn 'expose' on its head by pointing out the UK has just gone through two huge changes in governance in the space of a week and nothing exciting happened. Nothing.

You might have misunderstood me and the article. The English people can grieve as they see fit; they just don't need concertive insistence or the state's 'assistance' in it.

Contrary to the miserabilist musings of much of the establishment commentariat and its social media echo chambers, whose default position is always to run Britain down, the condition of the country is actually rather good. For a start, it turns out that we still matter on the international stage, otherwise why would the Queen’s death be an event of such global mourning, with the world’s leaders flocking to London for her funeral on Monday?

Our precious 300-year-old Union would also still seem to have life in it yet. As thousands of Scots who lined the roads from Balmoral to Edinburgh to pay their respects to the passing cortege of their Queen of Scots — and many thousands more who lined the Royal Mile of the Scottish capital in silence and respect as it moved from Holyrood Palace to St Giles’ Cathedral — illustrated beyond argument.

The death of the Queen likely signifies the evaporation of this very influence, defeating the premise of the essay that people liking the Queen supports Britain's relevance, but go off. Whether Britain can stand on its merits, reverence for the Queen is no longer there as a crutch. As the author notes, the Queen almost singlehandedly asserted the Crown's contemporary reputation (Princess Diana probably helped). All the same delegations will arrive for King Charles's funeral, but it's quite plausible the viewership won't break far into the hundreds of millions.

It is absurd, and it shouldn't happen. But it is also the mechanical and predetermined outcome that arises from spending the last twenty years hedging free speech around with a multitude of nebulous caveats in the form of protected characteristics and hate speech 'incidents'. Where police response is conditioned not to objective criteria of abuse given but rather to subjective criteria of offence perceived - yes, even offence perceived by a third party on behalf of another.

I don't know what relevance this rant bears on anything, but "abuse" and "objective" are oxymoronic concepts in the realm of speech. A speech act itself might be an objective event, pending interpretation, but the societal imposition of criminal, civil, or other liability against particular kinds of speech as abusive enough to regulate is an inherently subjective choice.

People are suddenly discovering it doesn't just apply when used against the bad guys, but also to them when they get a little 'exuberant' in their morally elevated crusade.

So does British law count "royal family" as a category protected against kinds of speech? Is lese majeste still a violation? Are you willing to imply that the concept of hate speech, or whatever, militates for the renewed enforcement of the Treason Felony Act of 1848? Don't set out non-sequiturs in the expression of your pet peeves.

3. Offences herein mentioned declared to be felonies

If any person whatsoever shall, within the United Kingdom or without, compass, imagine, invent, devise, or intend to deprive or depose our Most Gracious Lady the Queen, from the style, honour, or royal name of the imperial crown of the United Kingdom, or of any other of her Majesty’s dominions and countries, or to levy war against her Majesty, within any part of the United Kingdom, in order by force or constraint to compel her to change her measures or counsels, or in order to put any force or constraint upon or in order to intimidate or overawe both Houses or either House of Parliament, or to move or stir any foreigner or stranger with force to invade the United Kingdom or any other of her Majesty's dominions or countries under the obeisance of her Majesty, and such compassings, imaginations, inventions, devices, or intentions, or any of them, shall express, utter, or declare, by publishing any printing or writing ... or by any overt act or deed, every person so offending shall be guilty of felony, and being convicted thereof shall be liable ... to be transported beyond the seas for the term of his or her natural life.

If we stop and compare American and English legal regimes we can refresh our memories on the greater emphasis on regulatory control of speech that the UK has almost always placed over the US, and how this was the case before anyone had dreamed up any of the bugaboos of your umbrage.

[Montmorency]

Can someone explain this? @Pannonian
https://twitter.com/iammightor/statu...66085804007425 [VIDEO]

The conversation was contemporaneously recorded with two-way consent in 2016.

All of this clamor about Westerman's claim being a lie, including the recording, was already reported as of 2019; it was still a live issue in 2020, as this piece exhibits. The result of 5 minutes' searching.

Why is the recording returning to the discourse now, in 2022? Was there no response within Labour?

[Montmorency]

Seems like the UK is suffering from more economic mismanagement than usual.

Something that might help:

Power to the People - The Case for a Publicly Owned Generation Company

The policy to freeze energy bills for the next two years is poorly designed and inadequate to the scale of crisis: while welcome as a temporary measure, over the proposed time period the measure will do little to improve energy efficiency, disproportionately benefits the better off at great public expense, and will leaves millions of people in acute financial difficulty this winter. However, it “buys time” to address the underlying driver of the cost of living crisis: our over-reliance on costly, volatile, imported fossil fuels to heat and power our homes and businesses.

Unfortunately, the new government appears set on encouraging fracking and further North Sea extraction as the solution to spiralling bills, despite clear warnings from the Committee on Climate Change that this would negligibly impact energy prices while putting existing net zero targets out of reach. Moreover, because increased domestic extraction will take decades to come on stream, if at all given the dubious business case, this approach is unlikely to significantly reduce the UK’s exposure to fossil fuel-driven import shocks; the doubling down on fossil fuels risks further weakening our macroeconomic position.

The logical and durable solution to the crisis points in the opposite direction: an accelerated and rapid decarbonisation of the UK’s energy system through a decade-long sprint to 100 per cent clean power, matched with an ambitious green retrofit of the housing stock to improve energy efficiency and help eliminate fuel poverty.

This briefing explores the potential for a new institution to support the first of these vital tasks: a publicly-owned power generation company — Public Power Britain, or PPB [1] — whose mission would be to accelerate the shift to a 100 per cent green, low-cost and secure energy system within a decade by generating between 40-50GW of renewable power by 2030. In doing so, it would help create a clean energy system faster, fairer and more affordably than leaving development of renewable generation purely to the foreign state-owned entities, private equity actors, and multinationals that currently dominate the renewable sector, while ensuring the public directly benefits from the UK’s common resources.

PPB would not nationalise existing clean generation nor would it play a passive and minority investor role. Instead, PPB would invest in, build, operate and maintain a range of new clean energy infrastructures, including both proven and frontier technologies: offshore and onshore wind, tidal stream and lagoon power, zero carbon hydrogen, and solar, among others. It would generate and sell electricity to households and businesses through an integrated public supply company, using a Power Purchasing Agreement between the public generator and supplier. This would bypass the wholesale private market and its marginal pricing system, which artificially inflates the cost of renewable energy by hooking it to the price of fossil fuels, thereby allowing clean, abundant energy to be sold at low cost.

Unlike the present approach, in which private financing, market-based governance and profit-focused goals guide the development, generation and pricing of clean power, PPB would build out a renewable future based on public financing, social governance and democratic planning to meet urgent climate and energy needs.

Our renewable riches are already substantially in public ownership, they are, however, held by other governments. Currently 82.2 per cent of all current and pending UK offshore wind capacity is foreign-owned. This includes a striking 44.2 per cent of current offshore wind generation owned by public foreign ownership, including through state-owned and controlled enterprises, and 38 per cent of pending capacity; meaning 42.2 per cent of the UK’s current and pending offshore wind capacity is in foreign public ownership in some form (see Figure 1). By contrast, just 0.03 per cent is owned by UK public entities, less than the Malaysian government (0.1 per cent) or the city of Munich (0.85 per cent). [2] Public ownership of renewables is already widespread, but the benefits are mainly reaped beyond our shores. Last year alone, for example, our energy bills combined with Contracts for Difference payments contributed to ?2.56 billion in payments to offshore wind generators owned by foreign state-owned entities.

The bold is of particular interest to me, though I can't really say that having one's energy capacity being owned/operated by Nordics is such a terrible circumstance for a country.

Public Power Britain can correct this imbalance, ensuring that the power of the sun, wind and the waves are harnessed for all of us. In the process, a national energy champion delivering green domestically-produced power would act as a powerful tool to deliver:

A lower cost of capital for developing clean energy infrastructure. The energy transition will be capital-intensive; a public company could borrow to invest at lower rates than competitors, helping lower the overall cost of investment.

Cheaper energy bills for households and businesses. A public company would enjoy cheaper development costs, reduce or eliminate dividend payments, and can bypass the private energy market's marginal pricing system, all of which can help reduce bills relative to the status quo. The TUC estimate that if the UK today had a public energy champion like EDF (France), EnBW (Germany), or Vattenfall (Sweden), the UK government could use the excess profits made - equivalent to between ?2,250 and ?4,400 per UK household - to reduce bills and accelerate home insulation roll-out. [4] Moreover, Ember estimates a 100 per cent clean energy system would save households ?93 billion over the rest of this decade.

Reduced emissions by accelerating to 100 per cent clean power within the decade. Despite progress, 44.3 per cent of electrical power in Britain in the past year came from fossil fuels, [5] and the energy supply sector is the second largest emitting sector, accounting for an estimated 23.6 per cent of UK CO2 emissions in 2021. By accelerating the transition, with a goal of investing to create 40-50GW of clean energy within a decade, a public company can deliver a major emissions reduction in the power sector. [6] This would be ambitious, but on a similar scale to the roll-out of renewables by public energy companies in France, Baden- W?rttemberg (Germany), and Sweden. [7]

Support for an active green industrial strategy and the creation of good unionised jobs. While the renewables sector has played an important role in decarbonising electricity generation in the UK, working conditions could be better. A public company can help give weight to a market-shaping industrial strategy, onshore vital supply chains, set high employment standards including strong union recognition, institute sectoral collective bargaining, and improve coordination of the transition.

Ensure the public benefit directly from the development of common resources. The largest public owner of UK wind energy is ?rsted. Alone, ?rsted owns 29.1 per cent of existing capacity and 19.6 per cent of aggregated UK offshore wind capacity, both operational and under construction. Privatising the future of clean energy cedes significant control over and the shared riches of the wind, sun and tide to publicly owned entities, multinationals, and private equity firms, that enrich the citizenry of other mostly European countries, or wealthy investors. Indeed, the TUC has found that due to past decisions to privatise the UK's power plants and the lack of public ownership of electricity generation means the government will miss out on ?63 billion - ?122 billion of direct income over the coming two years. [8]

Boost energy security and provide macroeconomic stability. Exposure to imported fossil fuels has proven a source of acute vulnerability for the UK, underpinning the cost of living crisis while providing a source of income to authoritarian petro-states we import oil and gas from. By accelerating our shift towards domestic energy production, a public company would increase clean energy exports from the UK, reduce the geopolitical leverage of petro-states, and, by decreasing our exposure to imported energy costs, it would help tame imported inflationary pressures that are now compelling policymakers to manufacture deliberate recessions.

Taken together, the case for a public green energy champion is clear: reduced bills, ambitious climate action, good jobs. In the process, if the nature of a country's energy system inevitably structure its economic and political systems, Public Power Britain can lay the foundations for a post-carbon future of inclusive and sustainable prosperity.

[Furunculus]

Just not sure it is necessary.

Once gov't makes a policy choice, provided it sticks to it, commits to it, and see it through, the only problem we'll have is energy storage as the UK will have significant over-capacity of generation in 10-15 years.

The reason we have a problem now is that gov't of all stripes have vacillated over energy policy for 25 years.

Build nuclear - to cover baseload.
Ensure the greatest possible percentage of fossil fuels are domestically sourced - to aid balance of payments if nothing else.
Trial, deploy, and scale storage solutions to solve the intermitency problem - companies like RheEnergise.

Making a British EDF that is effectively bankrupt and sueing the Fr Gov't doesn't seem like it will move the dial.

[Montmorency]

Build nuclear - to cover baseload.

I don't think countries will be managing that without fairly significant public ownership or management of the projects anyway, even if it's one of those lower-rent experimental designs.

Making a British EDF that is effectively bankrupt and sueing the Fr Gov't doesn't seem like it will move the dial.

So - should EDF, ?rsted, Vattenfall, etc. be encouraged to build and maintain a larger share of UK energy production than they do now? I don't rule it out, but maybe you'd like more nominal sovereignty in management (moreover to capture the revenue). Also provides another vector to invest in other countries, as we see is already common practice, boosting that balance of payments.

[Furunculus]

Certainly the focus in the UK is to roll out Rolls Royces small modular reactors as swifty as possibly, alongside the existing new build approvals of larger legacy reactors.

[Montmorency]

lmao what

Maybe British political culture is salvageable after all if such responsiveness to conditions (however temporary) is still possible.