By-election BS: open thread

The 'first draft of history' on this one is quite difficult to essay: the number of variables in play has been quite remarkable, and continues in the same manner.  4-D chess?  Try 5 or 6.  The consequences for Labour, in particular, are complex and highly contingent on many things.  (Could have been even more amusing if Your Party had been at the races - and in future it might just be.)

But we'll all have some early thoughts.  Here are a couple of mine:

• WTF was Reform doing, fielding a prize prat like Goodwin?  Just about the worst candidate imaginable for fighting a working-class / Muslim seat.  And Farage a man with his finger on the pulse?  I have heard only two 'excuses': (1) this was always a big stretch for Reform - something like no. 440 on their list of potential targets, IIRC;  (2) "Farage wanted to slap down a potential leadership rival" (yes, I've seen that surmised on the airwaves - but possibly a hypothesis born of the same bewilderment as my own).
• Obviously this is a Big Test for them / him, but right now I'd say Team Starmer is determined to tough it out.  (No guarantee of success, of course.)
• Polanski will now be striving to get his lovable piss-artist act together properly - which may in turn piss off some of his "support" as he seeks to ditch the "our policy is dictated by Conference and the leadership is only allowed to parrot it" doctrine of the Greens: which can't possibly survive if he's to capitalise on this.

I could go on ... but I said I wouldn't - so over to t'readership.

ND

Would he, wouldn't he? Yes, "Burnham Would"

Sorry, but the Macbeth idiom is irresistible.  Presumably, after a full week of letting it be understood that any move by Burnham would be stopped dead in its tracks by the NEC, the Mcsweeney coven was hoping that he is

... not without ambition, but without / The illness should attend it

But no: whichever witches our Andy encountered on Newton Heath knew their man better: 

When you durst do it, then you were a man

The Mcsweeney bluff was in truth a really easy one to call.  So they block Burnham tomorrow: what chance then, for whatever hapless stooge Labour puts up in the by-election?  "I know you all really wanted Andy ... but I'm hoping you'll support me now ..."  A great rallying cry indeed, with only the thin chance of a haphazard but possibly lucky 3-way split to save Gorton & Denton for Labour.  

Shakespeare again: let's imagine Mcsweeney's day-dream.  The scene is some darkened Labour office in Manchester: Mcsweeney has Burnham marched in, sits him down, offers him a cup of instant coffee and says

Yeah, right, in his dreams.  For, (at dearieme's suggestion BTL) Burnham replies:

                      That's all you've got?  Thou knave, thou dunce inane

                      Starmer will rue the day he gave you rein! 

Great spectator sport.  Amusing, too, to see Miliband's response for the cameras yesterday, impishly saying Burnham would be "a massive asset" in Parliament and that he hoped Gorton and Denton party members would have "the option" of selecting him as a candidate.   He also hopes, of course, that Burnham would make him Chancellor.

More popcorn!

ND

© Nick Drew 2026

Mayor Burnham! - may I deign to call you Andy?

We all do have the high'st regard for you 

Mahmood, fairness, and blunt speaking

Has any politician from any parliamentary party - I include Reform - spoken so plainly and indeed bluntly in Parliament on the topic of illegal immigration and "asylum" as Shabana Mahmood?

The Tories, in particular, must be wondering why they didn't come up with a package of measures along the lines of hers, several years ago.

If Polanski wants to carve out a metro-bedsit-space on this issue for the Greens, well, he'll find it isn't as big in electoral terms as he imagines.  

[Gotta feel a bit sorry for "Your Party": they'd love to be all over this and use it as a recruiting sergeant - but they can't prise their own fingers away from the throats of their comrades long enough to write a press release.] 

Let's see how Labour splits when it comes to a vote.  Plenty of abstentions, but not so many outright 'noes', I'm guessing.  They know what their own constituents are saying: they just hope the matter doesn't get raised in Parliament and polite society.

Both sides claim to be guardians of the British Sense of Fairness.  My very early experience as a junior officer in the Army is that what the middle classes think of as 'fair' can be starkly different to what the workers think.  You can  stub your toe badly on that.

ND

Enter the Commissars

I return from a hol to find ... the Commissars Commissioners that are to run Croydon have been installed, and already started calling the shots.  Some background.

In the late 2010s Croydon, a marginal borough that has yo-yo'd between Tory and Labour since the 1960s, fell into the hands of a baleful Labour regime.  At the time we had the "Cabinet" system in place and the Leader of the Council, a paradigm case of the 'four-letter man' as my father would have termed him, ran both his cabinet and indeed the whole borough as a personal fiefdom.  Well, when you have a dictator, you'd better hope his judgement is good.  This man's judgement was appalling (for present purposes we needn't get into the cronyism and third-world-style corruption that went with it) and he duly bankrupted the borough - literally.  (Total incompetence married to property speculation, you won't be surprised to learn.)

In order to clean this out politically, residents petitioned successfully for a switch to the "Mayoral" system: the resulting referendum was a resounding win for the new system and in due course a Tory was elected Executive Mayor.  I've recounted some of this story before, and this chap  & his regime turned out to be more diligent and dynamic than I'd feared might be the case when I wrote about it last.

But his task was always gargantuan, since most of the (remaining) council services are required to be provided by statute, so where can seriously big cuts be found, and debt repaid?  The brough remains technically bankrupt, though "essential services" are being maintained, as the law requires.

Anyhow, whether for procedural or narrowly political** reasons, Starmer's government has decided to send in the commissioners.  This is a baleful development.  We live in an age where democracy seems to be falling out of favour, but experience of the alternatives might cause some to revisit that argument.  If not elected governance, what do you get?  Dictatorship, or commissioners at every level.  The priesthood.  Unelected; unaccountable; un-ejectable.  

More from South London in due course.

ND

________________

**Several leading Croydon Labour movers and shakers currently hold positions in Starmer's coterie, and the suspicion must be that they plan this as a maneouvre to get a Labour mayor elected in the borough next year. 

Ed Miliband, Starmer & energy policy: a curious political tale

15 years ago now: could do with updating

We've recently looked at the fairly extensive list of energy policies Labour brings into office: deeply implausible at best, outright impossible at worst.  We know it's Ed Miliband's doing, Starmer having invited him to pick up where he left off in 2010 when his fairly pivotal Energy Act 2008 didn't save Labour at the polls.  Mili is of course an ex leader of the Labour Party, losing fairly ignominiously in 2015 (- though it's hard to see who could have done much better).

It's somewhat unusual, but by no means unprecedented, for former party leaders to row in behind a successor with sufficient humility and unthreatening purpose that they are invited to bring their experience to the table & take up office again at a subordinate level.  Of course, other ex leaders are not wanted at all, and variously just piss off to make money and/or snipe from the sidelines.  (We may need to write about Tony Blair in this context quite soon.) 

To get the obvious out of the way: overall, I have little time for his politics and in particular his lazy, slapdash energy policy.  But over the past 2 years I have been very impressed with his loyalty, which is the point of this post. 

Mili put together his fairly detailed energy strategy for release at Conference in '22, at which time the numbers presented were at least arguable, even if they're now hopelessly wrong.  The plan came complete with a costing: he needed £28bn a year.  This number, too, could be defended, given that it didn't mean "total cost of plan" (which would be much more), it meant "incremental Treasury cash", a very different thing.  The balance would be made up mostly by subsidies levied on all our energy bills, and private capital.

Labour ran with this for more than a year, to some acclaim from Green quarters (and Red) - which is far from being any kind of ratification but it is germane for what followed.  Reeves then abruptly pulled the rug out, leaving him with perhaps £7bn, perhaps £10bn - barely enough even for the Warm Homes bit of the plan.   Cue outrage on the Green/Red flank: and many people would say Mili had every reason to chuck in the towel (& maybe even become a heavyweight totem for that wing of politics, which is his natural positioning anyway).  But he didn't, and has loyally stuck with Team Starmer, not breathing a word of dismay; indeed, making a very brave and positive face of it all.

I am strongly inclined to find this admirable.  There are too many egos in politics who stomp off in disgust in such circumstances, disloyally briefing to any journo they can nobble on the outrage they've just suffered and the stupidity of the decision.  The temptations are great: & what has Mili got to lose?  But that's not how he's behaved.  

But surely, he can't be expected to front for a policy when he's not going to get the resources he knows are required?   I don't see it that way.  I'm a soldier at heart, and the rule is:  loyalty downwards before a decision; loyalty upwards after a decision.  Show me the commander who went in to battle having been granted all the resources he believed necessary.  Not unheard of, but very rare.  That's life: soldier on & make the best of it.

Only "inclined" to find this admirable?  Well, there are one or two other factors in play.  I'm told by Labour insiders that Mili is not at all in the Starmer inner circle, and stands the risk of being axed at any time.  (We've just seen what happened to Thornberry.)  Right now, for choice, anyone in Labour would want to retain a seat nearish to the top table - with the chance of being a hero to the Green/Reds if he just hangs in there (they know he's not to blame for Reeves' strictures).   The 2008 Act is unfinished business for him.  He must now surely see Net Zero as his life's work & legacy - nobody would want to be remembered in terms of the Graun piece Anon gave us the link for, or ignominious bacon-buttie embarrassment - and really, really wants to be on board in what he must imagine to be the crucial years.  So there's a degree of self-interest at work, albeit measured in prestige rather than career considerations per se.

Overall, an interesting little political drama.  I shall unfailing strive to illuminate the nonsenses in his plans, at the same time as holding him in at least some degree of regard.

ND

Cut-out-and-keep: Labour's fantasy energy programme

As much for my own future reference as anything, here is the list of nonsense in Labour's energy plan.  Since they intend to deliver the bulk of it by 2030, DV we shall be able to tick off the items as they do not come to pass.

>  "By 2030, the UK will be the first major country in the world to run on 100 per cent clean and cheap power".   Can't be done.  Not clear anyone really thinks it can be, incidentally, even though Miliband pretends to.  Not even the '100% clean' bit is possible, since (as is admitted elsewhere in the manifesto) gas will continue to be needed - so by inference, they really are depending on the carbon capture & storage they also commit to - another very long shot indeed; assumption upon assumption).  As for "cheap" ... 

>  "Cut energy bills for good ... cheap power for all ... not just in the short term, but for good ... Labour’s plan for a cheaper, zero carbon electricity system by 2030 will lower bills because renewables are far cheaper than gas. Last summer the price of gas was nine times higher than that of renewables and it remains significantly higher. Based on gas futures price projections, our mission has been estimated as saving UK households £93 billion over the rest of this decade ... take £1,400 off the annual household bill."  Outright rubbish from beginning to end.  (The consultancy that crunched the numbers for them - 18 months ago! - has quietly disowned them.)  Most renewables are more expensive than gas, some of them much more.  And all the other system costs arising from use of renewables are then piled on top (see 'infrastructure' below, and a host of other things).  The period of "gas nine times higher" was the height of the Putin spike; it was only the spot price; and it lasted for all of a couple of days.

>  "By 2030 ... quadruple offshore wind with an ambition of 55 GW by 2030 / More than triple solar power to 50 GW / More than double our onshore wind capacity to 35 GW".    The only question is how far short of this 'ambition' they will fall.  Incidentally, with knowledge of the German practice of building renewables (and getting paid) but not connecting them to the grid, we'd better hold them to a definition of 'GW' that means, not just capacity but 'connected and functioning capacity'.

>  "Double the government's target on green hydrogen, with 10 GW of production".  An interesting one, this.  What, pray, will be the load factor on this 10 GW of capacity?  Very, very low, I'd guess.  And why would anyone build that?  Unless, of course, it'll be paid for (via subsidy) irrespective of LF - which I suppose we can't rule out.

>  "Unleash marine and tidal power".  Sounds exciting!  No details, however, so hard to comment further, save to say that the extensive track record of tidal power experimentation is very unencouraging indeed.

>  "Four times as much grid infrastructure to be built in the next seven years as has been built in the last 30 ... We are confident the transmission operators can do it."  Really?  What in the recent history of UK civil engineering leads to this conclusion?  Oh yeah, the A14 upgrade came in on budget and under schedule.  Anything else we can point to?  HS2?  Hinkley Point?

>  "De-link the price of renewables from gas, to ensure their low prices are passed on to households and businesses".  There are some potential subtleties here, but I doubt this was written by someone who actually understands how markets work.  (Incidentally, the same is true about some rather convoluted stuff they've got on local community energy schemes, but space does not permit.) 

>  "Mandating UK-regulated financial institutions – including banks, asset managers, pension funds, and insurers – and FTSE 100 companies to develop and implement credible transition plans that align with the 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement across their portfolios".  Too late!  We've already passed the 1.5 point of no return.  Even more seriously: what the Hell does this 'mandating' mean?  This could spell Big Trouble.

In fact, all of it could!  Finally ...

>  "Our plan will create 650,000 jobs across the country by 2030".  Some would say: cost 650,000 jobs, more like!  Well, job-creation schemes are job-creation schemes.  If even half of the above plans were to be embarked upon seriously, it probably would require hundreds of thousands of new jobs.  But where ya gonna find the Brits to fill them, eh?

So: a watching brief on all this guff.  Five or six years of popcorn is a lot of popcorn ...

ND

UK Election: what kind of disillusion is brewing?

Maybe none at all.  Maybe the electorate views all politicians as liars, and has merely formed the view that the Tories just have to go, simple as that.  These things happen: ask Callaghan / Thatcher / Major / Brown / Johnson / Truss.

But here's the thing.  Needing to say very little at all, Starmer lies freely in all directions: a liar in a league of his own. Blair and BJ aren't even in the running, bad as they are.  Does Starmer feel he's in lawyer-in-courtroom territory, where the whole court knows the barrister will say anything to get his client off, and that's just fine & dandy?**   

Energy being my thing, I focus on what Miliband has been saying.  It's almost as bad.  We'll have 100% zero carbon electricity by 2030 AND it will cost us all less.  Seriously.  Oh, and 650,000 new Green Jobs will be created in the process (though to be fair, he doesn't say which country they'll be created in).  The Graun even writes that, as regards the oil & gas sector which is to be phased out, Labour have declared that "not a single job will be lost" in the transition, though fairness again prompts me to say that I can't source that anywhere in Labour's output.  

It's hard to guess how, in 2030, they'll explain why this has all come to grief, as indubitably it will: they won't get within spitting distance of any of zero-carbon electricity, cheaper electricity, or the 650k new green jobs.  The usual trick is: "we didn't know how bad things were until we saw the books" - but that doesn't wash with electricity generation because the entire sector is comprised of very big units that can't be hidden: every analyst modelling the UK power sector has a complete list of them all.  (Likewise, the roll-out of the small stuff like heat pumps, solar panels, electric vehicles etc is pretty exactly monitored - not least because policy-makers are so keen to.)  And "bills going up, not down" is pretty easy to track, too.  

"Didn't realise the extent of inflation in raw materials"?  That's pretty well known.  "Didn't know there was a skills shortage"?  Ditto.  "Didn't realise CCUS / hydrogen / new nukes wouild be so badly delayed / wouldn't work as advertised"?  Not that either: we've recently had a judge rule that it's "irrational" to assume anything else.  

Nope: I can't quite see how they are going to hide.  The question is: will it be held against them?

ND

_______________________

** I was once on the jury for a high-profile murder trial, and the case made on behalf of one of the perps - whom we'd watched carrying out the murder on CCTV from several angles - was essentially that a Man from Mars came down, swapped clothes with the perp a couple of minutes beforehand, did the deed, and then swapped back & flew off again.  All this under the coded formulation: "The suggestion is ...".  The judge didn't seem to feel the need to reprimand this line of argumentation.

Election blues, election reds: new compo question

I have just read the election manifestos published so far[1], and mighty depressing reading they make.  Realistically, only the Labour document has the slightest bearing on anything: and given its complete divorce from reality, even that only exists to make fun of Starmer in later years when he fails to deliver on any but the most trivial items from it.  In large part it adopts the old Blairite formula of sentences without verbs, or purely descriptive sentences[2], so that no promise whatever is contained within.

Readers will not be surprised to learn I focus most closely on the Energy sections.  Labour's is remarkable for proclaiming 650,000 new "Green Prosperity" jobs across the country by 2030.  Oh, and these will be "good" jobs - presumably of a technical nature?   Y'know, building all that truly epic amount of new stuff on their shopping list, that will deliver a zero carbon electricity system by 2030?  Right, so where is the skill base that would enable 650,000 new technical staff to spring to attention when required?  Not home-grown, that's for sure.  More work visas all round!  Or, in the alternative (as lawyers say), if 650,000 skilled personnel are required, yet another among the dozens of reasons why it ain't gonna happen.

The other phenomenon, which almost deserves some kind of psychological analysis, is that all the manifestos cheerfully state that more renewable energy will bring down energy bills forever.  Why do politicians feel able to write this utterly nonsensical stuff down in black and white?  Why do notionally intelligent people seem to believe it?  

But enough: there's no point.  Moving to more light-hearted matters:  will anyone bother to vote?  Many traditionally ultra-loyal Tories are heartily pissed off by Sunak's D-Day faux pas.  Many people assume Labour will win so comfortably, they won't need anyone actually to get off their arses and go to the poll.  Da yoof is pretty pissed off all round, and they know voting Green gets you nowhere.  So ...

2024 predictions compo: Midsummer supplementary question - what will be the voter turnout at the GE?

ND

__________________

[1]  Nothing yet from SNP or Reform.  But we know what they think.

[2]  E.g. from the 'Make Britain a Clean Energy Superpower' chapter:

Without action, flooding and coastal erosion will pose greater risks to lives, livelihoods and people’s wellbeing

OK - so then, errr ..?   But we wait in vain, because no concrete actions are promised.

Reforming the NHS and the laws of politics

Many years ago as a young local councillor, I discovered that politics is bedevilled by the sheer irrationality of our electors.  London Transport (as it then was) proposed to make some perfectly sensible changes to the bus network in my area, and held a public consultation.  A woman rose and made an impassioned speech in two parts: 

(A)  the current bus service was shit;  and 

(B)  it mustn't on any account be changed, in any particular.

I was very glad it wasn't me in the chair, because I find it really difficult dealing with stuff like that ( - the same motive that caused me to recoil from being foreman of the jury on which I sat recently; and was heartily grateful someone else accepted that solemn duty).

The public's attitude to the NHS is the same, only on a truly monstrous scale.  Here's an extract from a piece in LabourList last week: 

Normal people are very capable of holding contradictory views in their heads, especially in subjects about which they know little but feel strongly ... paradoxes, which have regularly been witnessed in opinion research ... are of profound importance as Labour thinks about how to frame its NHS offer running into the next election. They are:

- Everyone loves the NHS and yet in focus groups it quickly becomes apparent that absolutely everybody has a personal horror story about waiting lists or botched admin. These stories flow from them like a public policy fever dream.

- Everybody knows that the NHS is in desperate need of reform – and yet in focus groups almost nobody believes such reform will work. Getting people to imagine a high-performing NHS is very, very hard.

- Everybody knows that the NHS is in desperate need of investment – they see it with their own eyes every time they visit a hospital. And yet nobody believes it will make any difference to the service they are experiencing.

The piece goes onto say that "[Wes] Streeting’s speech at [Labour party] conference seemed to try to reflect these paradoxes and even solve some of them."  He's also recently told the Royal College of GPs that Labour "won’t entertain requests for blank cheques", which is rather what they have in mind.

Assuming he & the rest of Labour are seriously preparing for power (as well they might), I very much hope this all means they have taken heed of Drew's Laws of Politics #1:  Never buy off anyone at a higher price than absolutely necessary.  Virtually no voter will change their allegiance based on the precise nature of Labour's NHS policy next year.  But Labour could get itself into needless trouble by promising the earth, tempting though that must be.  Now one might say: Satrmer is such an accomplished liar and shameless U-turner, he can say whatever he will and then renege on it as PM, just as quickly as he always has with any other pledge or promise he made to the Labour faithful since 2019. 

Still, he'd probably rather not.  Might Labour then be the first party to come to power with a bit of a free hand on the NHS?  We do all really know it can't go on like it is.

ND 

Croydon Goes Bankrupt: The Sequel

The story so far:  in a series of stunning scandals and maladministration, a curiously non-ideological one-man Labour dictatorship in Croydon reduced the largest London borough to bankruptcy.  Considerable opprobrium lighted upon this individual, his crazy schemes and disgraceful neglect of residents; but Croydon looks demographically fairly safe for Labour, not least because Tory voters are fairly widely spread across the vast borough, whereas Labour votes are nicely concentrated geographically, sufficient to hold the council and 2 of the 3 parliamentary constituencies.

Meanwhile in Croydon South, the only constituency held by the Tories, the hyperactive and "creative" MP Chris Philp came up with a wizard wheeze to solve his perennial local problem.  The Labour council was forever approving planning applications his core voters hate.  So, reckoning that a borough-wide elected-mayoral system would be a lot less wasteful of Tory votes, and might conceivably come up with a Tory majority, he organised a campaign + referendum to switch to the executive mayoral system (the same system just cancelled by Bristol voters: these enthusiasms come and go).   Philp's Croydon referendum campaign, bitterly opposed by Labour - despite official Labour policy being in favour of elected mayors -  succeeded by a huge majority.  Hardly surprising: the Borough was by then bankrupt and the scandals had achieved unusually wide currency, local and national.

However.

The Tories then selected their current leader - i.e. leader of the Minority on the council - as Mayoral candidate, simply on Buggin's Turn.  He's a nice enough chap (always the most damning thing you can say about a person) but has the charisma of a potato, and no more than the usual local profile enjoyed by a councillor, i.e. virtually zero outside his own patch.

Labour, having recovered their wits after the crushing referendum result, suddenly discovered they were, after all, in favour of elected mayors, and pulled a serious stroke by selecting a genuinely well-known and genuinely local candidate: career politician Valerie Shawcross.  She'd been Leader of the Council many years ago; a Deputy Mayor in the GLA for many subsequent years; has a superb grasp of London politics; is fairly moderate and well liked, as these things go; and has completely clean hands as regards the recent Croydon Labour scandals.  Her campaign (notable for a complete absence of the colour red!) was excellent and of course Boris is a gigantic ball-and-chain just now.  What made her prospects even better was that Mr Potato and the Tories ran a very poor campaign, with truly lame leaflets etc.

But she lost!  In an election-night count that went on for 36 hours(!), with recounts, the Tory won by less than 2%.  As they say around here, inability to count is what got Croydon in this mess in the first place ...

Philp's gamble, which must have seemed like a slam-dunk only a year ago, will have cost him some sleep over the past three weeks.  But it's come off.  Couldn't happen to a nicer chancer.

(Sorry, that's, errrr, chap )

ND 

The Tory Insurgents March On!

"the push for a mayoral putsch, which has aroused passions amongst those in favour but barely any other reaction at all, seems quite exciting and, well, insurgent. I can easily see it succeeding: probably a low turnout with 80% in favour of a mayor, or something bizarre like that."

Well, that was my prediction ten days ago for the Croydon Mayoral referendum, and lo!   

• Turnout: 21%
• In favour: 80.4%

Every single ward voted in favour of switching to the elected-mayoral system, which gives the Left pause for thought: they thought their client minorities (who are in fact the majority in the north of the borough) could be persuaded otherwise.  Now the serious politicking starts, in particular within the People's Party, which having inevitably campaigned for the status quo (hence the original blog post) now have to scramble together a position for May's election.  They are posting tweets asking for forgiveness for things they said in the anti campaign (e.g. it was white middle-class men who wanted to switch to the mayoral system).  I won't bore you with the Toytown minutiae, but there are several amusing aspects:

• the Croydon North MP Steve Reed (Lab) was prominent in the anti-campaign: but he's Starmer's Shadow SoS for Communities and Local Government and his official policy for the nation as a whole is, ahem, pro elected mayors!
• he and the rest of his crew campaigned on the slogan "No Fat-Cat Mayor".  The lefties are now attacking, errr, themselves - for "fattist sloganeering" (sic) (!)  You couldn't make it up, and indeed I haven't.
• the famous local turncoat Andrew Pelling, once Tory MP for Croydon Central, deprived of the whip over allegations of wife beating, whereupon he switched first to run again (unsuccessfully) as an Independent, then as Labour (for whom he now holds a Council seat) ... having campaigned for the anti-mayor cause, now proclaims that this was only because the nasty folks in his new-chosen Party twisted his arm, and of course he's really very keen on elected mayors, particularly ones whose first name is Andrew and second name is Pelling.

And people wonder why Labour languishes in the polls, even in today's dire circumstances.  Well actually, no, they don't.

ND

Insurgency in British Politics

A while ago in Parliament, when Corbyn was still leader, he accused Boris of being a "phoney outsider" - an odd, Westminster-bubble insult as we noted at the time.  Goes to show, though, how much of an advantage being an insurgent is nowadays deemed to be.   Corbs, of course, had been told that being a genuine outsider was his USP, and he wanted to see off any pretenders to this crown.

This was brought to mind as I found myself pondering how to vote in next week's local referendum on whether Croydon should switch from the Leader/Cabinet system of local government to the Elected Mayor variant instead.  (Sadly, the old Committee System is no longer on offer.)

How does this referendum arise?  Well, enough people signed a petition: but why?

Because the local Conservatives, who always used to hold the borough council (and, at one time, all 4 parliamentary seats, as we had in them days**).  But demographics have worked against us and it's been Labour for nearly 8 years (and they also have two out of three MPs now).  But the popular vote is still majority Conservative across the borough as a whole, the ward boundary arrangements not favouring us at all.  So the Elected Mayor wheeze is designed to keep Labour out of power, because they may still command a majority of council seats after the next elections in 2022.    

Given that in their 8 years of control Labour have literally bankrupted the town with their self-aggrandising Toytown politics, you might might think that's a bit pessimistic about the good sense of the Croydon electorate; and maybe it is - though fewer people seem to care about the bankruptcy, the blatant corruption++ and even the squalor of the council properties than you'd imagine.

But equally there's huge, sluggish apathy in all directions.  So the push for a mayoral putsch, which has aroused passions amongst those in favour but barely any other reaction at all, seems quite exciting and, well, insurgent.  I can easily see it succeeding: probably a low turnout with 80% in favour of a mayor, or something bizarre like that.

This is what the left hates about the Tories: endless flexibility when it comes to policies & ways & means.   They hate Boris, too, but seem unable to do anything about him.  They wish they were the populist revolutionaries but in many senses the permanent revolution is on the right.  

More Croydon Referendum news in due course.

ND

__________

** To be fair, it was a bit aberrational: Croydon Central has been a genuine marginal for 60 years, and the two northern constituencies were natural Labour territory, more akin to neighbouring Lambeth and Lewisham.  But they were held by strong Tory personalities: a much loved local worthy (a hanger-and-flogger); and the saintly Bernard Weatherill (who, as an old India hand, could converse with his electorate in their own tongues).  It was never going to last - and it didn't.

++ Space doesn't permit me to recount the stories, but the redoubtable Inside Croydon is chock full of them, as is Private Eye.

What About the Workers? - weekend reading

An interesting development in leftie thinking about the Labour Party is that it has moved on from the Corbynite framing "we are the 99%, against the 1%",  to a new formulation:  "we are the progressive, 'values-based' urban coalition and we rather hope we might muster 50.1%".

Who gets sidelined in this switcheroo?  Why, the white working class, that's who.  There's many an old-school workerist-marxist who doesn't like the sound of that, and here's a good essay along those lines.  Exerpt (my emphasis): 

... any political platform based on a shared set of “values” rather than a shared economic interest risks turning the actually existing working class into a problematic minority partner in a coalition of do-gooders.  We have already seen the dangers of this kind of liberal condescension, handing the Conservatives endless opportunities to ideologically consolidate their grip on previously Labour voting strongholds with a heady brew of right-wing culture war and strategically targeted public spending.

ND

Footnote[1]:  BTL, decnine & Elby mused on the new 'values' orientation.  On that theme, there's another good article here:

"Labour’s preoccupation with ‘values’ is a basic political error ..."

[2]  Rulings on the bot-naming compo appear at the foot of the previous post.

Getting Forensic on Starmer

Well, it's what he supposed to be famous for ...

So last week there was some self-serving Stamer-stuff shared with the Beeb, and our man had his line, and by heck he'd learned it well.

“I could see tonight what people wanted to know was: ‘That sounds good. It sounds like what I want to hear. But can you earn my trust over the next few months and years into the next general election in order to make me vote for you?’ And that is what I will do. I will sweat blood over those months and years to earn that respect.”

.... "trust must be earned. And what I heard tonight was that people weren’t saying, ‘I’ll never trust you.’ What I heard them say is ‘I’ve lost confidence in Labour, but I could, I could have confidence in the future, but it’s up to you to win it.’ And that’s what I’ll do, you know, sweating blood for the next few days, weeks, months, and years in the next general election."

Now whose fingerprints are all over that form of words?  I have a long memory for these things.  Way back in 1997 after the GE, Peter Mandelson craved respectability on the Left beyond the confines of his nasty little den on Millbank, and decided to stand for the Labour Party NEC.  He did the rounds of the studios in his unctuous way, saying (this is from memory**, but fairly verbatim for all that): 

"What I hear people in the Labour Party saying is: 'We know this chap has had a lot to do with the Election victory, we like that, but we think he should be more accountable, we think he should be on the NEC'."

Let's stick our necks out here and suggest that Mr M never heard a single person say that: he made it up.  (Certainly, he got somewhere close to nul points in the NEC election that year.)  I'm not alone in thinking suspicious things like this: the good lefty folks at Novara media have the same view on a 2021 Mandelson "citation", concerning something he was "told on the doorstep" -  while pounding the streets at the recent Hartlepool by-election, no less (yeah, right - mushy peas in hand, shoe-leather almost worn through, dusk falling) that goes as follows:

“One person said to me ‘Sort yourselves out, sort yourselves out. You picked the wrong brother and you ended up with Corbyn so that’s goodbye to you. When you’ve sorted yourselves out, we’ll look at you again’. That is what the Labour Party has got to do.”

Yup, pretty implausible again.  And I think we may forensically discern the modus operandi.  You come up with a fairly subtle, oblique line that serves your purpose (Trust is a wonderful motherhood-&-apple-pie thing: nobody can object to me wanting some of that.  I'm going to win back people's trust, starting with this: 'I'm so honest and humble that I admit the Labour Party - that is to say, the previous guy - blew it'.)  Next, you ventriloquise it into the mouth of Someone you conveniently met.  Then you report it as your having rightfully been given your marching orders: you've listened carefully, you humbly realise they're right: and by golly, that's what you're going to do!

In short: this is Mandelson-playbook format, with Mandelson known to be very much on the case right now; you, KS with your carefully learned and self-serving lines, are Peter Mandelson's stooge; and and I claim my Boy Scout Political Forensics badge.

ND

____________

** After drafting this I googled on the offchance of finding something corroborative from 1997.  And lo! - this, from the Graun ... 

"people have seen me at the centre of things, doing this, doing that, apparently calling the shots, giving the orders. 'But, accountable to whom?' they ask ... 'Who elected him? Who put him there?' They by and large see me as a force for good in the party and the Government, but they would like to see me be more accountable, and I think they're right". 

Oh, it's so perfectly crafted, you gotta love it!  "Who elected him? ... so I suppose, well, we'd better, errrr, elect him!"

The spectacle of Batley & Spen, pt 1

Oh this is interesting, with many facets.  Today I'm just picking up on the Labour leadership thing.  Occasioned by Hartlepool, a few weeks ago we mused over how Starmer's Red Wall travails play with Khan, Burnham and (as a bit of an afterthought) Rayner.  

Within hours of posting I ran across some indications that Rayner's personal ambitions were every bit the equal of the others, and her manoeuverings much the more active - she, unlike the two quite hardworking mayors, has no other serious responsibilities (despite her risible list of "official" appointments in the wake of her botched demotion by Starmer) and seems to be on the leadership trail 24/7, with the surreptitious funding to match.

So, two by-elections and a heap of bad-news-for-Starmer later, we come to the next bear trap for the People's Party:  courtesy of George "Spoiler" Galloway, there appears to be every chance the Tories take the seat.  That's what he hopes, anyway.  Anticipating a big opportunity for change within the party hierarchy, knives are out in every corner and neither Rayner nor Burnham are particularly shy of reminding people they exist as alternatives.

You can trawl this stuff all over the place (indeed, troll it too if the mood takes you) but for those who don't choose to sully their browers, as a service to readers let me summarise how many on the left see this falling:

• there's a very good chance of humiliation for Labour at the poll
• Starmer has taken some rather lame preemptive measures to bolster his position, but will find the consequent crescendo of hostility hard to manage
• the Blairite Right, having installed him and propped him up, will tell him at gunpoint he must on no account resign, for a very technical reason: only 20 nominations are required for a leadership bid if the incumbent resigns (the Parliamentary Left can muster that), but it'd be 40 if he's challenged while in post (which they probably can't)
• having thus strapped Ed Cid to his horse, they will send him out of the castle gates for one last battle - to change the leadership election rules to turn it back into a parliament-only electoral college, thus slamming the door on the Left forever
• in the meantime, it's no-holds-barred infighting all the way, blood everywhere and serious collateral damage done, all the while trying to figure out a plausible candidate for whatever faction you support - which ain't easy, see the Left's turmoil over selecting a candidate to replace McCluskey ...
  
• ... and how to promote them into the Top Job because (as it's reckoned Rayner knows only too well), (s)he who wields the knife ...  At this rate, they'll get Miliband E back.  (Well, it won't be a women - will it?)
  

This student-politics stuff is the very essence of Labour and they are welcome to it.  Live by the sword, die by the sword - and great spectator sport it is, too.  For Part 1 of my armchair analysis, I conclude by taking the story-so-far full circle, and musing once more upon Sadiq Khan's approach to all this.  He has absolutely no locus that I can see - far less, anyhow, than Burnham - and it all comes far, far too early for him.  What does he do?  I am guessing there's only one solid strategy: work for (or even just hope for) as messy an outcome as possible, so that it can only possibly be an interim state of affairs, with the can bouncing far enough down the road that he'll be able to pick it up in due course.  

Part 2 before polling day itself.  Have a great weekend!  The soccer is a much healthier pastime ...

ND

Croydon is Bankrupt: The Excuse is Revealing

Newman: Toytown oaf 

No, not a statement of moral or aesthetic judgement on the borough - just financial.  As has been on the cards for months (see several recent posts), Croydon has run up the white flag of a Section 114 Notice, replacing the Red Flag under which this nonsense has occurred over a 6-year period of relentless Labour misrule.  All led by this Toytown oaf, who inherited healthy financial reserves from his Tory predecessor but has pissed them all up the wall on a variety of pet projects and ill-conceived schemes of various kinds, plus unapologetic gross mismanagement and outright waste.   His Labour Group on the council has been bollocked collectively at a meeting, harangued by senior Labour worthies from other London boroughs who told them they are a disgrace to the Party!  So you can guess, it's pretty bad.

Funnily enough, although some of their schemes have been a bit ideological, mostly it has been just the result of a bunch of utter incompetents left in charge of the sweet-shop and determined to have a good time for themselves and their client-groups.  This is not some Momentum-contrived confrontation with central government, Red-Ted style.  They've tried to hint it's the fault of Austerity and Covid, but they daren't push this line too much because many other authorities have suffered worse from both causes, as well they know.

Tony Newman is a droll cove but totally autocratic, and has brooked no challenge from anyone, be they politician, public or council officer; nor even gentle enquiry by councillors in his own party.  The 'cabinet' model of local government very much facilitates this nonsense (more, I think, than the mayoral model - and much more than the committee model) and he duly packed his cabinet with place(wo)men non-entities, and picked a totally supine and ridiculously over-promoted chief executive who fled earlier this year with a £440,000 (sic) payoff, courtesy of Newman's personal intervention.  I won't bore you with a list of the nonsenses this calamitous crew has perpetrated.

What I find really interesting is the generic excuse, which strongly echoes what is coming from Nottingham Council with their own outrage to lament, the financial debacle that was "Robin Hood Energy".  What you do is blub a bit (quite literally in the case of one Nottingham woman councillor, live on youtube), say you meant well - the old Tony Blair excuse - AND ... I didn't have the training. 

You can see how this goes.  In the name of loyalty to the leader, or diversity or whatever it may be, all manner of people find themselves holding Cabinet posts that are wildly beyond their capabilities.  But: all have won, and all must have prizes: as we know, literally everyone is equal - provided they've Had the Training.  And when their incompetence catches up with them, well, it can't possibly be their fault, or any personal shortcoming, so - if only I'd had the proper training!  Simples.  A couple of days' "workshop" at the hands of some costly consultant (with lots of plump pastries on the table, and lengthy lunch-breaks), and they'd have been just fine - but somehow, they all missed the class.  What else could possibly explain their abject failure?

I look forward to the Liverpool FC 1st Eleven being selected on the same basis, and trying the same excuse upon being thrashed.  Meanwhile: will my wheeliebin be emptied next week?

ND

End Game time for UK electorate - a limp effort it is too

As I have posted before, I really have despaired at the quality of this election.

The Tories have one strategic plan and that has a big hole in it. Get Brexit done they say. But we know they don't really mean it. There is no way Brexit is over and next year could well see a big panic as No Deal rears its head again after we manage to not agree a Free trade Deal in twelve months flat. OK, so I don't really care if we end up on EEA type terms, however given this is their only real policy it is a poor effort that it is not even good or likely deliverable,.

Then we have Labour, where to start, their pure fantasy of massive economic spending and free treats for all is beyond the pale in terms of the damage it would do to the Country. The outrageous weaponising of the NHS has come to a peak just in time for the end of the election - clever in one way, but so tragic in another as again they have no answer to the real problems. We can but hope for a heavy defeat to see the communists ousted from our main opposition party.

Then the Lib Dems - only two policies have cut through. One being to revoke the referendum which has gone down like a cup of cold sick. The second, to deny there is a biological sex difference between men and women, has had a similar effect on anyone who has paid attention. As ever, get woke, go broke. A shame though as a sensible party would have had a real chance at replacing Labour, but there we go they invested their capital in Jo Swinson who had literally not a clue.

So there we are, what will Jo Public do come Thursday. I personally am keen on a big Tory majority to make politics go away for a few years and we can get back to sorting out the economy..but they don't deserve it and if it happens it is purely because the opposition are so weak. I think in th event it will be a very close thing as to whether Johnson gets his Government - a late swing to Labour of a couple of percentage points could send us back to a re-run of the May nightmare!

Labour to nationalise itself make the Labour party 'free to all'

As the election gets tight for Labour they have been busily offering 'free' goodies to all potential voters in a desperate calculated bid to try and get nearer to 40% of the vote and deny the Tories a majority in Government.

Hot off the phone line from the Millbank Kremlin to me comes the news that the last and best retail offer Labour has saved for the end of the election Campaign. The Labour party intends to rally make it for the may and not the jew few.

In an announcement to be made at Roker Park in Sunderland, Jeremy Corbyn will announce that the Labour party will be nationalised. Everyone will automatically become a member of the labour party from birth. A free signed picture of Jeremy Corbyn will accompany every NHS baby pack and to start school all kids will receive a Diane Abbot signed calculator.

Labour believe that this fantastic offer, fully paid for by a travel tax on the Gnomes of Zurich, will be the clincher. With everyone a member of labour then everyone can vote for Labour at the election. I understand Richard Burgon is the brains behind this cunning plan and argued for it voicerferously over a recent meeting of the shadow cabinet in Jeremy's kitchen.

As a Capitalist I can only marvel at the logic and audacity of the Labour party during this election. their sensational and well-thought through political plays have amazed me.

What will be more amazing is if they really do get more than 1 in 3 of the votes next week...

Tree hugging nonsense, election special

The election falls even further into farce today. It truly is an election special.

Labour announce they are going to plant 2 billion trees, the Lib Dems 30 million and Tories 20 million.

What is the point of all this and why have none of them thought anything through, I see Guido already had a stab at this but has got a few bits wrong, so here we go:

A) You need 45 trees to store one ton of carbon dioxide, of course this is only store so you can't go cutting them down again.

B) The UK carbon output is is 367,000,000 tons per year according to the UK Government estimates (down 38% in 10 years, which is rather impressive, almost entirely down to swtiching coal for gas power stations).

C) So you would needs 16,515,000,000 trees to make the UK carbon neutral.

So two billion trees will balance off about 12.5% of our current carbon output, at the usual density for tree planting of 2000 trees per hectare, that gives us about 1 million hectares needed - about 5 times the size of greater London or half of Wales.

The Government, including all property and building, only owns about 6 times the size of London in property.In addition, tree don't grow all over the mountains of Wales or Scotland so vast areas of wilderness you can't turn to forest. 

So for Labour, they would have to buy huge amounts of private land and return it to forest. As well as the army that would be needed to do all this planting - tens of thousands of full time people for decades. .

If you actually wanted to make the UK carbon neutral, the simpler and more realistic plan would be to buy Ireland which is quite flat, at 8.5 million hectares, and turn it all into a forest. This would make the UK carbon neutral.

For crying out loud this is so stupid. Esepcially when thanks to climate change and more CO2 more trees are going to grow anyway. Also there are actually some quite good ideas like planting billions of trees across Africa to stop the spread of the Sahara - trees are needed unlike the UK where we need arable land to feed oursleves and live in.

They're fleeing already

So went Boris Johnson's first commons address, to much merriment and memes.

However, in these unsettling times, this is now also true of our UK utility companies. Even the BBC has had to pick up on what the Energy and Utility companies are up to.

Having viewed with some displeasure the Labour decision to nationalise their entire sector and not being entirely trusting of the goodwill that will be shown towards their shareholders, they have acted.

National Grid has chosen to open a holding company in the EU. No mistaking here that the EU will not allow such government theft as is planned by Labour so the Grid is hoping EU law will still trump UK law (which of course, under Labour it will, when they remain - odd how events work out).

SS&E have chosen Switzerland where there is an Energy law they think they can take to International Arbitration in Geneva now that they have a Swiss Holding company.

Of course, Labour have reacted with some nonsense about billionaires and evil offshore folk. All very serious as ever. 

Very sensible corporate planning by the Utilities though, much as companies nervous about Brexit have set-up already in the EU.

What it shows yet again is how hot air from Politicians have real world impacts. I have some sympathy with those saying our politics is no good when both sides lie. here is a good example of how real costs - that ultimately will be passed to consumers - are incurred by rash statement from politicians.