uk-news-talking-politics

[uk-news-talking-politics]

Anti-protest bill: Freedom dies in silence

By Ian Dunt

The truly frightening thing was that they didn't even argue for it. Over two days of debate and dozens of speeches, not one government minister actually defended the anti-protest powers in the new policing bill. Only one MP did.

These are the most draconian restrictions we have seen on protests for decades, but those defending them on the government benches would not even mention them.  They simply pretended they did not exist. And then they passed them for second reading, by 359 votes to 263.

The bill gives police the power to impose severe restrictions on protests if they suspect they "may result in serious disruption to the activities of an organisation" or could cause "serious unease, alarm or distress" to a passer-by. This applies to every single protest outside parliament and indeed to any protest anywhere. There has never been a protest which you could prove would not alarm someone. They make noise. That is what they do. The bill puts the power as to whether a protest can be held entirely in the hands of the police.

And yet even this benchmark was considered too high. So the bill also gave the home secretary the power to change the legal meaning of the term "serious disruption" by statutory instrument - effectively sidestepping parliament. In future, if Priti Patel or one of her successors decides that a protest was legal but they still wanted rid of it, they could simply unilaterally change the law.

Yesterday afternoon, when Patel opened up the debate, she said it would give "police the power to take a more proactive approach" but that the "threshold at which police can impose restrictions on the use of noise at a protest is rightfully high". It's not high at all, of course. It is so low it includes every protest one can imagine.

We didn't know it yet, but that would be the only time anyone on the government benches defending the measures made any reference to them at all.

Several Tory MPs stood up to say that the concerns about the right to protest were exaggerated. But they never once referred to the powers over noise. Instead, they read out a list of arguments handed to them by the party, saying that the new provisions were needed to tackle excessively disruptive protests. These examples included an ambulance that couldn't get to a hospital, the Extinction Rebellion sabotage of a printing press and people handcuffing themselves to public transport.

But of course, these kinds of actions were already against the law. That's why the people who did them were arrested. In fact, they were against the exact law which the current bill aimed to amend: the Public Order Act 1986. None of them were about noise. None of them were about the home secretary having the power to unilaterally rewrite legislation. None of them were remotely pertinent to the powers contained in the bill.

It's astonishing that only two Tory MPs spoke out in detail about the provisions. One was Fiona Bruce, who said they would "significantly lower the legal test for the police to issue conditions on protest".

The other - remarkably - was Theresa May, who had acted as a hardliner when she served as home secretary. But even she was taken aback by what was being proposed here. "It's tempting when home secretary," she said to Patel from the benches above her, "to think that giving powers to the home secretary is very reasonable, because we all think we're reasonable. But actually future home secretaries may not be so reasonable." It was a mark of how far the country has fallen that May is now the voice of liberal conscience on the government benches.

Only one other Tory MP made any reference to the noise provisions. It was David Amess, who spoke out in favour of them. "My office looks onto Parliament Square and I have long complained about the endless demonstrations that take place," he said. "It is very difficult to work because of the noise, with drums, horns and loudspeakers. Parliament being the seat of democracy, our work should not be disrupted."

He is evidently an out-and-out authoritarian who wants to end all protests in Parliament Square and therefore completely unfit for living in a free society. But at very least he had the courage to state these legislative measures for what they were. He was an honest authoritarian, and in the context of this debate that was evidently the most we could hope for: someone who would admit what they were doing.

Over the last year, we have heard a great deal from Conservative MPs on civil liberties and free speech. They have railed against the lockdown provisions to handle the pandemic. They have warned of a cancel culture in university campuses and demanded intervention by the state to prohibit it. They have said that conservative voices are not allowed on broadcast studios because of a woke takeover.

And now, here, the silencing had finally begun. Protestors were being told that they could not raise their voice. It was as clear-cut an attack on free speech as you could possibly imagine. But to that, they had nothing to say. The great champions of liberty did not even offer a murmur of criticism. Philip Davies, David Davies, Steve Baker: not a whisper of dissent. In fact, Baker stood up at the end to say that Labour was "refusing to engage" with "legitimate limits on freedoms".

We've been here before, of course. During the New Labour period, some truly disturbing attacks were made on civil liberties and free speech. But back then, ministers at least had the decency to argue for them. Some of those arguments were terrible. But they at least had the basic decency to offer them.

Today, the government did not even try to justify what it was doing. Tory MPs barely pretended to have read the bill, let alone understand its contents, let alone challenge them. The great champions of English liberties didn't say a word.

It was a silence. A silence as deep and wide and profound as that which they intend to impose on protestors. And that was the most frightening thing of all.

#right to protest

[uk-news-talking-politics]

Why a foie gras ban is long overdue

By Elisa Allen

The late Sir Roger Moore referred to it as “torture in a tin”. Kate Winslet calls its production “terrifying”. Twiggy says it’s “barbaric”. They’re talking about foie gras – fatty goose or duck liver – which, according to government ministers, may soon be banned in the UK.

Why? Because the process of making foie gras is the stuff of nightmares. Inside a warehouse, in France, for example, ducks and geese as little as 12 weeks old wait in terror. Several times a day, a worker grabs the birds by the neck, forces open their mouths, and rams a pipe down their delicate throats as other birds watch in fear, knowing they’ll be next. Some are so badly injured by this constant force-feeding that they have gaping holes in their necks.

The worker pumps huge amounts of grain into their stomachs – the equivalent of 2 kilograms of food every day for a human. The birds’ feathers are often caked with their own vomit. This agony lasts for weeks as the birds’ livers become diseased and swell to up to 10 times their normal size, or about the size of a rugby ball. If you have any idea of the size of a duck’s abdomen, you can imagine what a rugby ball–size liver does to the other internal organs – which is to say, they are compressed for lack of space, including the lungs, making it hard to breathe. And then, when their livers are engorged enough to fetch a high market price, workers hang them upside-down and slit their throats.

The process is so disturbing that it is rightly illegal in the UK and most of Europe. But EU freedom of movement rules made a sales or import ban on foie gras difficult. Now, Brexit has given us the opportunity to introduce such a ban. Ministers are drafting legislation to close the loophole and close our border to this cruelty – a move that would be welcomed by British citizens, the overwhelming majority of whom – 79%, to be exact – want a foie gras import ban. After all, if it’s too inhumane to produce here, it makes no sense to allow it to be sold here.

Ending the trade in foie gras won’t be difficult, as demand for this un-British pâté has plummeted in recent years – and most chefs refuse to serve it. It is already banned from the BAFTAs, the BRIT Awards, The All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club – which hosts the Wimbledon tennis championship – Lord’s Cricket Ground, Selfridges, Harvey Nichols, Fortnum & Mason, countless hotels and restaurants, and all royal menus, by order of Prince Charles. Both houses of parliament have introduced policies against serving it, as have two of the UK’s largest catering companies, Compass Group and Brakes.

The UK has the distinct honour of being the first nation in the world to have introduced legislation protecting animals. The law, passed in the summer of 1822, made it illegal to “wantonly and cruelly beat, abuse, or ill-treat … [any] horse, mare, gelding, mule, ass, ox, cow, heifer, steer, [or] sheep.” As the bicentennial of that landmark decision approaches, one affirmative and decidedly British way to mark it would be to enact another law, one sparing ducks and geese a most miserable of fates.

#animal welfare

[uk-news-talking-politics]

Fix 'local government crisis' for post-covid recovery

By Ingrid Koehler

The covid pandemic has felt like a time apart. The before-times have become a blur and between ‘building back better’ and ‘getting back to normal’ it has been hard to remember that local government was in crisis before all this started.

Local government has huge responsibility for the fabric of much of our daily lives. From our streets and parks, the safety of the food we eat, local jobs and public health - the council has been working hard during the pandemic to keep things ticking over. Local government will be, if possible, even more important as we emerge from the pandemic and begin recovery as local public services make it possible for communities to connect, convene and re-construct. But we can’t build back better on shaky foundations. The crisis in local government has been caused, in part, by a failure of successive governments to address public policy which impacts the freedom and ability of local government to do the job it’s meant to do: serve local people.

At the Local Government Information Unit (LGIU), we have explored some of these key, neglected policy areas: the ‘unfinished business’ of the last decade. These include the ‘big three’ foundational issues such as how to fund and deliver social care and its relation with health; the basic mechanics of how to fund local government; and the distribution of power between national, sub-regional and local authorities. In all of these areas, the government has trailed half-formed or incomplete reforms and councils have been left to pick up the pieces, all while operating in conditions of deep uncertainty.

Local government has been at the mercy of austerity. Having cut back and then cut again such that councils were left with £15 billion less in core funding, local government not only had no money, but no funding certainty.  Promised policy reviews and medium-term financial settlements have failed to materialise year after year. Councils literally cannot plan beyond the next financial year as promises of rates reform have failed to materialise while the Treasury steadfastly refuses to consider tax alternatives used widely by local government around the world.

The pandemic has been costly - the National Audit Office says that councils are facing a nearly £10 billion shortfall, due to cost pressures and loss of income. Combined with already low reserves from a decade of penny-pinching, some council’s finances are in danger of collapse. Councils were promised that pandemic spending would be covered only for a ‘cost-sharing’ approach to be announced followed by short term sums when the political price became too high. The government’s refusal to cough up for covid safe elections only ended after the majority of councils holding elections this year called for a delay, in part because of cost.

For many councils, the pandemic is just the latest in a series of financial problems. Councils are constrained by outdated and regressive mechanisms of taxation which fall unfairly within and between communities and businesses, and unnecessary interference from central government dictating how they spend their money. At LGIU, we have long argued for a sustainable funding settlement for local government; one which fully recognises the cost of high quality and democratic local services, and which gives councils the flexibility to raise money locally, and the freedom to spend it according to the needs of their residents. Without funding certainty, councils are left scrounging for resources to deal with the pressures at hand or invest in long term recovery.

Adult social care has, of course, been ‘unfinished business’ for what now seems forever. Since the 1990s, successive UK governments have committed to reforming the system, particularly the funding of care, but nothing radical has changed, despite commissions, reviews, green papers, white papers, and numerous expert reports. The UK government’s proposed green paper has been delayed now for several years. Adult social care suffers from chronic underfunding and is now more than ever in need of a new sustainable funding mechanism. The system serves no one well. The needs of individuals are not being addressed in many cases and, for the one-in-four of us who will end up needing care, the personal cost can be catastrophic. The lack of a coherent policy framework means that broader objectives around the health and care of vulnerable adult populations are given short shrift and leaves little room for innovation. Private sector providers were already finding it more difficult to stay afloat and their workers - frontline pandemic heroes - have mean wages and little prospect of advancement.

Without fundamental reform that focuses on dignity, wellness and prevention, including sustainable funding of adult social care, we continue to place unnecessary burdens on our health system. Health and social care are creaking under the pressure and will be dealing with the health and economic fallout of covid for a long time to come.

Perhaps the most important, but less often articulated, piece of unfinished business is the relationship between central and local government. Countless prospective governments have promised radical devolution, but have failed to loosen the grip on power once the ballots were counted. This threatens effective rebuilding of communities and economies, as each place faces a series of complex problems that cannot be solved by one-size-fits-all solutions. Yet, during the pandemic, we’ve seen how important local government is to community and, where local government is organising, supporting and galvanising community efforts, we have seen some of the best pandemic responses. Without strong localism, councils are hamstrung. Councils, despite having public health responsibility, have had to beg for data or have been left out of vital pandemic response planning and implementation. Globally, we have seen that where different tiers of government have acted as partners rather than rivals, trust and public compliance with public health measures are improved.

Of course, these are merely the three core issues. Other areas of both policy and priority have remained unresolved for too long. Sustainable development, housing, public health, democratic engagement and better futures for our children all need to be addressed if we want to emerge from this crisis without irreparable damage. At LGIU, we have been looking at these critical pieces of unfinished business as well as looking at what the future holds for post-covid councils. Putting communities at the heart of public policy is the only way for us to build back better. We can only do that with strong, sustainably-funded local government.

#local government

[uk-news-talking-politics]

Week in Review: Switzerland turns its back on freedom of religion

By Ian Dunt

Switzerland passed a burka ban on Sunday. They didn't call it that, of course. The referendum never mentioned the words 'niqab' or 'burka', but everyone understood. Campaign ads popped up across the country showing a woman wearing a niqab and sunglasses with the slogan: "Stop extremism. Yes to the veil ban."

Face coverings will now be banned on the street, in shops and in restaurants. Switzerland is not alone following this route. There are already similar restrictions in France, Belgium and Austria.

People get into a terrible muddle when discussing this issue. They instinctively feel uncomfortable with the state telling people what to wear, or banning expressions of religious faith in public. But they also feel uncomfortable about the full face veil, the separation of women from natural societal interaction, and the suspicion that in many cases they'll have been coerced into wearing it due to pressure from men in their family.

But in fact the core moral dynamic of the veil is quite simple.: Who do we care about? Is it the women? Or is it our need for social conformity?

If it's the latter, then the ban is perfectly fine. There's nothing you can't do to people who look different. We're engaged in the forced obliteration of cultural and religious distinction in society. But of course no-one admits that. The bans in countries like France and Switzerland are instead justified by pretending they care about Muslim women being forced into wearing the veil.

If it's the former, things become more complicated. Two distinct problems present themselves: the oppression of women by male relatives if they force them to wear the veil and the oppression of women by the state if it forces them to remove it.

Many women choose of their own free will to wear the veil. And that is their choice to make. We might not like it. We may feel it is a decision which robs them of core freedoms, namely the ability to participate equally and naturally in society. But people are free to enter into unfree relations. What is it to be a soldier? You give yourself over to the state to impose restrictions on your behaviour which no free citizen would tolerate. And yet tellingly there are no referendums in Switzerland on that issue.

For these women, the state is now forcing them to unveil or live their lives trapped at home. That is a degree of state control over the individual which is unacceptable in any society which claims to call itself liberal or civilised. It is tyranny, a form of control over how you dress, how you self-identify and over your personal religious conviction. And on this question it doesn't matter whether the veil is required by Islam or not. What matters is that it is the conviction of the person wearing it that it is.

Even on its own terms, the argument for this measure makes no sense. Many proponents of a ban act as if every single woman wearing a veil has been coerced into doing so. Let's assume for a moment that is true. They are therefore a victim. But what does the police officer do when they issue a fine for wearing the veil? They penalise the victim. There is no other part of law which operates in this way. It is morally wrong, on its own terms, by virtue of its own reasoning.

This is not just a moral issue, but a practical one. We've now had years of the French ban to conduct studies on its effect. And the results are depressingly predictable.

In London, where there is no ban, anti-Muslim acts happen mostly in public areas and public transport. Victims are more likely to be passers-by and shoppers. In France, this study by Kawtar Najib found that an incredible 58% take place in a public institution - in schools, universities, training centres, hospitals and town halls.

In other words: they have institutionalised Islamophobia. People feel confident insulting or assaulting Muslim women in the places they should feel safest. That has a striking practical effect. It means that these measures do not usher Muslim women into mainstream life. Instead, it turns the institutions of society into hostile territory. They are now less likely to go there.

The state ban provides no solutions, infringes on the most basic of all possible liberal standards in public life, and worsens the situation of the women it claims to want to help. But what do we do if we oppose the ban and yet still feel uncomfortable about the veil? What do we do if we recognise that some women will freely choose to wear it, but that we need protections for those women who are coerced into it?

There are no easy answers here. But there are some tough answers that require sensible long-term planning and an embrace of complexity.

It starts with education. We have a chance in schools to educate children about the most important of all attributes in a free society: their autonomy. The need for them to make their choices freely, without regard for social convention, or familial disapproval. To be themselves and find the life that suits them.

We also have control over the state's relationship with religion. We can remove tax-exempt status, or the right to run faith schools, from religious organisations which do not commit to equality. That applies to Muslim organisations, certainly, but it also applies more widely to Protestant and Catholic ones too. As a society, we can accept that organisations do not run on full equality and that people may want to enter into them anyway, even to their own detriment. But we do not have to pay them to do it. We do not need to help them do it.

We can insert assistance to women within social services and put the support of women's needs at their centre. The ban in France made women who wore the veil scared of these places. But instead we can make them welcoming and reach out to women when they use them. This is particularly true in healthcare, which has a framework of confidentiality and of being concerned with general wellbeing. It provides the perfect place to make sure a woman is alone, with another woman, and check whether she is being coerced in any way, including by being made to wear the veil. And we can maintain, with very significant consequences, an offence of coercing someone to wear a veil.

But the most important thing we can do is support those women's groups who are talking to and helping Muslim women. In Switzerland, the Purple Scarfs, a Muslim feminist collective, are doing the kind of hard work which the proponents of a ban would never dream of. They fight oppression within their religion and oppression from the state outside it at the same time. Their latest workshop gives a good indication of their instincts. It's called: "Don't free me, I'll take care of it."

They've been contacted by women throughout the referendum campaign who feel uncomfortable with their own situation but also disqualified by the terms of the debate from their position in society. But with the Purple Scarfs, they are understood. They have a space to explore what they want and who they are. They are not forced to fit one box. They are put at the centre of deciding what to do with their own bodies. They are not talked about, or talked at, but talked to.

These aren't easy answers. They can't be reduced to one-step laws. But they offer the possibilities of real change, grounded in a respect for women, rather than a further oppression of them.

#freedom of expression #religious freedom

[uk-news-talking-politics]

Silencing Black Lives Matter: Priti Patel's anti-protest law

By Ian Dunt

We knew this was coming. Priti Patel has been extremely clear about what she thinks of Black Lives Matter. "Those protests were dreadful," she said last month. She's also been clear about what she thinks of Extinction Rebellion. At a police conference last year she branded its activists "eco-crusaders turned criminals". Now we see what she plans to do about it.

On Tuesday, the Home Office published the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill. It covers a wide range of areas, from sentencing to digital information. But it has a specific section on the policing of protests. And the function of this section is simple: It aims to silence them. It is cancel culture on a statutory footing, directed against the left.

This is not a metaphor. It is the literal and explicit function of the legislation.

The policing bill does this by amending an old piece of legislation called the Public Order Act 1986. This older Act gave police officers powers which they have used against protestors ever since. If they believe that a demonstration risked "serious public disorder, serious damage to property or serious disruption to the life of the community", they could impose restrictions on it - for instance on where it went, whether it moved or how many people could be present.

This week’s policing bill adds a further justification for the restrictions: noise. If the noise of the protest “may result in serious disruption to the activities of an organisation” – for instance by distracting employees in a nearby office, then the police can impose restrictions. It goes without saying that this applies to almost any protest at all around parliament, the whole purpose of which is to get the attention of politicians. It can therefore cause “serious disruption” of an organisation.

It also applies to passers-by. If the noise of the protest could have "a relevant impact on persons in the vicinity of the procession", the police  can impose restrictions. The standard for this threshold is very low indeed: If the police believe that just one person nearby could be caused "serious unease, alarm or distress", they can impose restrictions.

Wherever you look in the legislation, it works to lower the point at which the police can intervene. The old legislation, for instance, said they could do so to prevent "disorder, damage, disruption or intimidation". That old formulation remains, but the Home Office has added a new criteria: "impact".

Look closely at those words. The ones in the old legislation were all negative. But the new one is entirely neutral. Legally, it seems very broad. But if you look closer it is actually quite specific. It aims its sights at the entire purpose of protest.

The point of a demonstration is to be heard, to make an argument, to encourage others - whether they are people passing by, or workers in a company, or MPs in parliament - to hear the protestors' point of view. In other words, to have an "impact". This is why we call them 'demonstrations'. It is a demonstration of a political view, expressed so that it can convince others. That is what makes it a vital part of free speech.

Demonstrations are not just any kind of free speech. They are the free speech of the unheard. They are the last medium of communication and influence available to people who are frozen out of the formal political system, either in the media or in parliament. And those are the people Patel is trying to silence.

The government is effectively sticking duct tape over the mouths of protestors. They are requiring, quite literally, that they do not make noise. They are silencing them. The inability to be heard is now a precondition for being able to protest.

"Protesting in the way that people did last summer was not the right way at all," Patel said of Black Lives Matter. Well now we know what the right way is: a way in which no-one can hear you.

She then opens up a new front against demonstrators. She increases the number of them who can be prosecuted for failing to abide by the police restrictions.

These restrictions are usually announced to protestors by police on loudspeakers and on social media. But when those who broke the restrictions ended up in court, they could always say they were unaware of them. And that was entirely reasonable. Protests are chaotic events, often involving large areas, many people and - yes - a lot of noise. It's very likely a protestor won't have seen a tweet from the police or been in a position to hear their announcements on a loudspeaker.

This defence was open to them because the 86 Act said they had to have "knowingly" failed to comply. But the new legislation makes a very significant change. It applies if they "ought to know" of the restriction.

This is an astonishing move. It means that even if a demonstrator hasn't seen the tweet sent by police, or heard the announcements on a loudspeaker, they can still be prosecuted.

Patel is also making the definition of a protest much wider. Previously "assemblies" and "processions", which are the legal categories of these types of events, had to involve more than one person. But MPs have spent the last few years getting increasingly irritated by Steve Bray, the Remainer campaigner who stood outside parliament during the Brexit crisis. And the Home Office is keen to clamp down on Extinction Rebellion's plan for a "Rebellion Of One" campaign which would see people take action on their own. The bill seeks to undermine these events by giving police the powers they would have over normal demonstrations even for "one-person protests''.

It then takes aim at the statue debate which blew up around Black Lives Matter. The government seems intent on raising the maximum penalty for criminal damage of a memorial from three months to an astonishing and completely disproportionate ten years. A memorial is defined extremely broadly indeed, as "a building or other structure, or any other thing" which has "a commemorative purpose".

And then Patel does something really quite extraordinary, which should not be possible in a properly-functioning liberal democracy. She gives herself the power to fundamentally change the meaning of the law at any time without any real parliamentary scrutiny.

The 86 Act hinges on the phrase "serious disruption". It's police suspicion of that eventuality which authorises the powers they have over protestors. But the new legislation allows the secretary of state to "make provision about the meaning" of the phrase. She can do this using something called statutory instruments.

Statutory instruments are powers given to ministers allowing them to change or update law with no real parliamentary scrutiny. They're supposed to be used to implement something that is in an Act of parliament - for instance by changing the type of speed cameras that are used in road safety legislation. It's uncontroversial, unfussy stuff that parliament doesn't really need to be consulted on. But Patel isn't using them for anything like that. She is using them to unilaterally change the meaning of an Act of parliament.

She could, of course, have put what her definition of "serious disruption" is in this new bill. That means it would have got all the scrutiny you'd normally get for legislation - committee stage, impact assessments, press attention, full parliamentary votes. But she hasn't done that. Instead, she has given herself the power to make it whatever she wants, whenever she wants, with only a slim scrap of scrutiny available. The criteria for whether a protest can go ahead and how is now effectively in the hands of the home secretary.

Just a few weeks ago, education secretary Gavin Williamson insisted that "free speech underpins our democratic society". He did so because he was ostensibly concerned about left-wing students no-platforming conservatives in universities.

But this legislation shows just how shallow those sentiments were. This government isn't interested in free speech. It is interested in culture war. Those on the government's side of the culture war have their speech legally protected. Those on the other side are silenced.

#right to protest #priti patel

[uk-news-talking-politics]

Why we should preserve anonymity on social media

By Aaron Drapkin

The argument for anonymity on social media is important because it is this that allows individuals to freely express themselves without fear of repercussion.

Yet this is also precisely the reason it has become a cloak from under which to send a barrage of hateful messages on social media, and why some have suggested putting a stop to it.

Calls to prohibit ‘anonymous’ social media accounts have intensified during the pandemic throughout which period online abuse has increased. From death threats to racism, our online spaces have turned into toxic cesspits of hate.

The sheer volume of abuse some people receive from anonymous accounts is enough to make even the most privacy-conscious question their commitment to anonymity on social media.

Yet it’s unclear whether ending anonymity on social media is the best action to take.

It’s hard to ignore, for instance, the importance of preserving anonymity on social media for users living under oppressive regimes.

Back in 2011 a Facebook group that played a significant role in inspiring protestors to march on Tahir Square was initially administered by a pseudonymous account, something which helped the creator avoid the considerable risks associated with acting under his real name.

Attempts by social networks to crack down on the use of pseudonyms, or implement new ‘real name’ policies, have previously silenced bloggers reporting from dangerous locations and have historically been met with resistance from rights groups, who have long argued that it protects people from harm across the globe.

Whistleblowers also rely on anonymity to voice their concerns while ensuring they won’t lose their jobs or, depending on the government, be subject to criminal punishment or even death. Such accounts exist in authoritarian regimes, but British accounts such as The Secret Barrister are a reminder that hiding one’s identity can enhance a person's ability to speak truth to power even in the West.

I remain unconvinced ending anonymity on social media will have the desired effects people think it will. Enforcing a ‘real names’ rule worldwide on a site like Twitter would potentially gag accounts in places where freedom of speech is a genuine and pressing concern and not just armchair politicking.

Domestic legislation won’t impact foreign accounts, meaning comments from all other countries - as well as those using location-spoofing technology like VPNs - won’t be affected. Labour MP Jess Phillips illustrated this point in an exchange  on the subject three years ago when she revealed that her quest to take legal action against a troll led her to a server in Colombia.

Although anonymous accounts seem to encourage uncivil, abusive behaviour in and of themselves, ending their presence on social media would not end the culture of incivility now pervasive in most online settings. It’s not surprising that this status quo has arisen, since many crucial social cues, like eye contact, cannot be found in digital settings.

Social media users will continue to follow the rules of the game, anonymous or not, unless we make attempts to positively modify our online spaces by introducing frameworks that promote civil discussion.

The case for preserving anonymity rests partly in the promise this sort of solution offers. Twitter’s decision to road test a ‘read before you tweet’ pop-up last year to combat disinformation led to the proportion of people reading articles before sharing them increasing by 33 per cent. A similar warning regarding rude replies has recently been relaunched.

Any remedy to the problem of online abuse - including ending anonymity on social media - involves some fundamental alterations to how social networks currently operate. It’s just a question of what sacrifices we want to make.

Take platform moderation, for example. Pushing this concept to its logical extreme, we would see every single post and comment on a given social network going through a moderation procedure before posting. This would seemingly reduce abuse in a much more effective way, targeting not just anonymous accounts for being anonymous, but also abusive individuals for being abusive.

The sacrifice here would be the instantaneous nature of communication - but personally, I would rather see social networks reimagine their approach to moderation than lose anonymity.

The very fact that an end to anonymity on social media is being seriously entertained, considering its merits, is a sobering reflection of the scale of the abuse people now suffer online. However, ending it would be rife with practical difficulties and human rights concerns, and would not necessarily create sustained change.

If we really do want to get to the root of the problem, then social networks need to be held accountable; and content moderation, as well as technical modifications to promote civil discussion, need to be more seriously explored.

#social media #anonymity

[uk-news-talking-politics]

AirPods outcry: It's time to grow up

By Eliot Wilson

Scandals over MPs’ expenses are like Tube trains. Depending on where you stand, they may be frequent or less common, but you know that one will come along soon enough, before you get bored. The latest offender (or victim, depending on your perspective) is the deputy leader of the Labour Party, Angela Rayner, once the great hope of the Corbynite Left, now somewhat marooned without a portfolio to exploit.

It was The Sun which paraded its civic thriftiness by highlighting that Rayner had spent £249 of public money on a pair of “personalised” AirPod wireless earphones in April 2020. These were but one purchase among many, as she had spent over £2,000 on office equipment and technology, including an iPad Pro, a smart keyboard and a “velvet” chair. The earphones, however, were deemed to be particularly egregious, and The Sun noted sniffily that “other Bluetooth headphones are available on Amazon for £8”.

There will be some people who think this is prima facie appalling largesse, elected representatives making free with taxpayers’ money to avail themselves of luxuries they should properly pay for themselves. A spokesman for the increasingly splenetic Taxpayers’ Alliance noted that this “will no doubt be… ‘within the rules’”, but added that “MPs should be asking themselves if it was necessary when millions of Brits may face unemployment”.

At this point it might help to recall some facts. The basic salary of a backbench member of parliament is £81,932. This is set by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA). In addition, MPs may reclaim expenses related to their parliamentary duties, particularly office costs, in a scheme administered by IPSA. Last year, in response to the new working practices imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic, IPSA authorised MPs to claim an additional sum of up to £10,000.

We can conclude various things from this. Firstly, Rayner was within - well within - the additional spending limit when she purchased an array of computer equipment to help her work remotely. This may well reflect that she already owned much of the kit necessary: most MPs work from iPads already, especially those who sit on select committees, the paperwork for which is distributed electronically.

Secondly, there is no suggestion that this spending was in any way improper: it was claimed in accordance with an IPSA-authorised scheme and the reimbursement was approved by IPSA. Again, it is worth saying that IPSA is, as its name suggests, an independent organisation. It is a statutory body led by an independent chair, chief executive and board, and is not part of the House of Commons.

Why did the spending generate headlines, then? Journalists know that, nearly 15 years after the expenses scandal which was uncovered by The Daily Telegraph, the simple phrase “MPs’ expenses” is enough to attract attention and either clicks or purchases of a physical newspaper. Sleaze sells. So does the suggestion of sleaze. Rayner is also a relatively high-profile scalp to claim, as Labour deputy leader, and she had been unwise enough to criticise the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, for his use of an expensive Ember 2 travel mug (RRP £180), a gift from his wife, from which to drink his coffee. Clearly, Nemesis, the dark-faced goddess, was watching Rayner’s embrace of hubris, and struck.

I worked in the House of Commons for more than ten years, and the expenses scandal is burned into my memory. It was a reckoning for greedy and careless MPs, and the Commons’ authorities, from Speaker Martin down, handled it badly. Responses to the media were defensive, reluctant and occasionally drenched in victimhood. In the end, however, the result was the right one: salaries and expenses were removed from the control of the house, and policed instead by an independent body.

Yet here we are, arguing about a £249 pair of earphones. There seems to me only one valid argument against what Rayner did, which is that some items of technology should be paid for by MPs themselves from their reasonable salary of £80,000. I say “reasonable” deliberately: it is more than a nurse, a firefighter or all but a senior police officer earns; but then it is less than a senior GP or headteacher. In major private sector professions, it would unremarkable.

If an MP should pay for some of his or her office equipment from salary, how much? Remember that MPs are effectively 650 small businesses, with staff employed across (usually) two offices. It would seem unreasonable to expect them to foot the bill for every office expense, as £80,000 would disappear rather quickly, so there should, surely, be some public money involved. How much? Where is the line drawn?

The critical issue exposed here, though, is that we are unrealistic and adolescent in our approach to what we pay our legislators. £80,000 is a comfortable salary, but we expect MPs to govern the country, or else hold those who do to account. That is an important job, and just as it has grave consequences so it should attract an appropriate salary. Senators and representatives in the US, who have fewer functions and sit far less than MPs, earn $174,000 (roughly £126,000) and have much larger staffs. German, Italian and Austrian legislators all command higher salaries.

Parliament should attract the best and brightest. We want accomplished, talented, learned, experienced and empathetic representatives. As things stand, anyone successful in a private sector career would likely take a considerable reduction in salary to become an MP, as would some senior public sector workers. Is that what we want? Or should we, perhaps, be grown-up, apply a sense of proportion and realise that, on a national scale, the remuneration of MPs is a very small amount of money, but one which, if increased slightly, might attract better Members?

We want the best, but we want the cheapest. We begrudge spending of a few hundred pounds, yet we criticise the people we elect when they are, as many are, patently out of their depth. We want the best of all possible worlds, and that’s something we usually leave behind in childhood. Let’s grow up, raise our focus from the minutiae, and pay good people well.

#mps expenses #mp pay

[uk-news-talking-politics]

Labour’s terrible tax muddle

By Ian Dunt

It's like waves eroding the base of a cliff. Labour had established a solid, principled, literate position on economic policy which had the potential to pay a long-term political dividend. But the waves keep coming - opinion polls, left-wing criticism, a bit of sneaky meddling by Rishi Sunak - and now each one rolling in does more damage.

Labour started with a good position. In January, shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds gave a speech outlining Labour's position on tax and spend. It was smart stuff, which opened up a space for public spending while maintaining an overall framework to ensure fiscal responsibility and attract business support. The speech was technical, long and thoughtful. It wasn't really directed at the public, but instead at those paying attention to the thinking behind the party's economic direction. And yet it offered the tantalising possibility of the party opposing austerity while forming an alliance with business. All it needed was some decent easily-summarisable messaging to press it home.

Last month, Keir Starmer made his own speech  planting himself firmly against austerity. Again, this was the right call. This is not the time to be raising taxes or tightening belts. We are in a recession. The chief issue is to stimulate demand in the economy, not worry about paying back national debt.

So far, so good. But then Sunak prioritised a corporation tax rise in the Budget. This lost the left of the party in a snap. They were lured into support for austerity because it started by targeting one of their enemies. But they didn't see the trap. Once you accept the belt-tightening narrative, you are now in an austerity discussion. Austerity isn't, as some believe, just about spending cuts. It's about spending cuts and/or tax rises to reduce budget deficits in a time of weak or non-existent growth.

At first Labour held firm. But then, in the face of vocal left-wing criticism, it began to crumble slightly. Dodds told the Guardian  she would be open to future corporation tax rises. In terms of policy, this is perfectly reasonable. There may soon be a period of stronger growth in which tax rises would make sense. But in terms of messaging, it served to muddy what had until then been a clear position. The message needed to be simple: no talk of tax rises during a recession. Now it became a question of trying to parse the policy proposals from a series of increasingly nuanced statements.

Sunak's Budget then introduced two major tax rises, but crucially he pushed them into the future. Corporation tax would go up in 2023. Income tax thresholds would be frozen after April this year. At the top rate, that would see many more middle earners enter the top rate of tax. But at the bottom it would freeze the tax-free personal allowance at £12,570, which hits low-paid workers.

What flummoxed Labour here was the date. By pushing it out into the future, Sunak dodged the charge that he was sucking demand from the economy during the recession. But that's not as reassuring as it sounds. We have no idea how the recession is going to play out. New variants of coronavirus could mean we need future lockdowns. Pent-up spending after lockdown may not be as high as expected, or it may be so high that prices go up, making the personal allowance decision even more damaging to low earners. Many people could become unemployed during the gradual removal of furlough this summer. We just don't know what's going to happen, so we shouldn't be making the decisions now. It's an irrelevant debate when we need to be supporting the economy.

Polling then did the rest of the damage. Sunak's Budget was the most popular in a decade, with 55% of people describing it as "fair" in a YouGov poll.

The combination of internal left-wing criticism, Sunak's future implementation and polling support seems to have shifted Labour's position. The party is now clearly planning on supporting the corporation tax rise. Worse, it's going to support the changes to personal allowance. This is entirely the wrong call. This is no time to make set decisions on tax for a future that is extremely chaotic and unpredictable. Doing so accepts the overall narrative of belt-tightening and debt prioritisation.

What we're left with, after a week of gradually shifting rhetoric, is a situation where it really must be impossible for a normal member of the public to ascertain Labour's position. It's genuinely quite difficult even when following these things closely.

This morning the newspapers are full of a hard deal for carers. NHS workers are being given a one per cent hike - below the 1.5% rate of inflation expected by the Office of Budget Responsibility this year. It's completely against good economic or moral sense. It's hard to come up with a policy which contradicts the public's sense of fairness more forcefully, given the year we just had. But this, of course, is the remorseless logic of austerity. "Pay rises in the rest of the public sector will be paused this year due to the challenging economic environment," a government spokesperson said last night.

Labour is opposing it. Of course it is: pay for NHS workers is its bread and butter. And there will be other austerity areas where the same is true - where its instincts, agenda and public opinion align. But focusing only on those makes the party look cynical and without principles, blowing whichever way the wind goes. It needs a firm intellectual foundation underneath the individual political attacks.

These questions are going to define the next period of politics. For Labour to oppose effectively, and get the electoral reward for it, it needs a solid and consistent position, which can be encapsulated in a sentence and which it pursues mercilessly. It had the start of that programme after the Dodds and Starmer speeches. Now it is starting to confuse and obscure it. Just as the foundation was built, they seem to be shattering it.

It's not too late to fix that, but the party really does need to hurry up and do so. This week's equivocation and policy confusion was precisely the wrong way to proceed.

#tax #corporation tax #Labour Party

[uk-news-talking-politics]

Lockdown hangover: Threat to the right to protest

By Sam Grant

Since the prime minster announced his roadmap out of lockdown, the national mood has changed. After a year of home-haircuts and no pub, any sign of an end to these restrictions would be greeted with joy and jubilation. But buried under this wave of optimism there are signs that those in power are seeking to retain some of these restrictions – and erode our ability to hold them to account in the process.

The right to protest is the lifeblood of a democracy. Yet it is under threat and the pandemic has super-charged the attack currently underway by the home secretary, who has made clear her disdain for public displays of dissent. Protest is an important way in which we can change and fight for a fairer, more just society. For many – particularly those who can’t be heard because they’re not allowed a voice (or a vote if this government has its way with Voter ID) – it might be the only way to stand up to power and demand change.

Since the first lockdown Liberty has warned that radical State powers ushered in during emergencies create the opportunity for our rights to be permanently undermined. Parliament must see this danger for the reality it is.

This also isn’t random opportunism or a direct response to an emerging threat. In fact, this move fits neatly into a long-term campaign to undermine the right to protest. The Metropolitan Police unlawfully banned protest in the capital for a month in 2019, and climate activists have faced injunctions obtained by companies to prevent them from protesting. The Stansted 15 activists were charged under counter-terrorism laws – the Court of Appeal found they had no case to answer, but the purpose of the charges were clearly intended to stifle dissent.

For all that this government talks about free speech, when it comes to protesting on the streets it is very keen on muffling the noise.

While criminalising protest should be concerning enough, it’s more worrying when understood to be only a small part of the story when it comes to this government’s approach to accountability.

While the pandemic has raged, this government has been quietly making plans to weaken the ways people can challenge government decisions and remove vital safeguards on accountability, whether through the overseas operations bill or via its bid to limit access to judicial review and the Human Rights Act, the consultation on which closed this week (Wednesday 3 March).

Those who are unconcerned by such plans should take another look at how this pandemic has panned out in England.

When the virus hit, the government drafted and passed the Coronavirus Act in days – the biggest limitation on civil liberties in a generation. The act gave the police sweeping new powers which saw a spike in discriminatory policing. It lowered care standards and made it easier for the government to spy on us; it enabled the postponement of elections. It also typified how this government acts. It prioritises criminal justice, punishment and control, while failing to support those most at risk.

This approach has already caused untold damage.

Under the lockdown regulations that accompanied the act, hundreds of people have been threatened, arrested and fined for exercising their right to protest, and many of the most marginalised have had to cancel protests for fear of being arrested or fined.

State power is currently at an all-time high. The ability to keep this power in check has never been more important. Yet in the much-trumpeted announcement of the road out of lockdown, no mention was made of what is happening with regards to protest. It remains under threat – certainly if the Coronavirus Act remains on the statute books. In the coming weeks, MPs must vote on whether to renew this law.

We’re all well aware that we’re not in the same place we were a year ago, but it’s not good enough for parliament to renew the act because they haven’t thought of an alternative. The government has had 11 months to learn from its mistakes and create something better. With no sign they intend to do so, we’ve done it for them.

The protect-everyone bill, which Liberty has drafted in partnership with dozens of charities and front-line organisations, as well as lawyers and academics, is a blueprint for building a pandemic strategy we can trust and that keeps us all safe.

If parliament votes through the Coronavirus Act again, they are doing so knowing the damage it has caused. Yet there is clear reluctance by some in the cabinet to let some of these powers go.

Over the coming months, protest is no doubt going to be an important part of how the public voices its concerns on everything to Brexit to the impact of lockdown and Black Lives Matter. Whatever those concerns are, they deserve the right to be heard. How able people are to take to the streets now hangs in the balance, and if the Coronavirus Act is passed for a third time, that balance very much tips in the favour of government.

#Protest #right to protest #coronavirus

[uk-news-talking-politics]

The real motive behind today's Budget

By Ian Dunt

Budgets make your brain bleed. They're an impossible juggernaut of numbers and impenetrable sentences, rampaging forward so quickly you've no way to make sense of them. And this year's was particularly baffling, because it arrived camouflaged in weird party political divisions on tax and borrowing.

But the reality of today's Budget was simple. It was not about economics. It was about politics. Rishi Sunak was carving out an agenda which is intended to see the Conservative party into the next election. And that agenda is cloaked in spin and fictitious gibberish.

At the heart of it all is covid. The pandemic effectively shut down the economy. That required the government to pump money into it through a range of schemes, such as furlough. And in order to do that, it is borrowing money. Sunak is keeping that support going, but he has now sounded the alarm over borrowing and unveiled plans to start paying it back.

There were two big initiatives on this today. One was a freeze on income tax thresholds - the tax people pay directly on what they earn. And the other was a rise in corporation tax - the tax that companies pay when they make a profit. The first means that more people will end up entering the top rate of tax when they earn over £50,000 - probably about 1.6 million of them. And they'll end up paying a lot more tax. The Office of Budget Responsibility estimates it'll raise £19.3 billion by 2025. The second will kick in in 2023 and is due to raise £20 billion by 2025.

All of that looks quite left wing. After all, you're taxing the well off and corporations. But in economic terms, that's a bit of a façade. Because this money is not being taken to reduce inequality. It's being taken to pay back the national debt.

The key figure in discussions of debt and spending is John Maynard Keynes. Many people on the left claim to admire him, but they rarely understand him. He argued that during a recession governments should borrow money and intervene in the economy very dramatically. But this was not strictly because they were compassionate or cared about the poor, although that was also true. It was because of economics.

The problem in a recession, Keynes said, was that there was too little demand in the economy. Not enough people were buying things and not enough companies were investing. That meant the state had to take that role.

It could do this in a few ways. One way was to cut taxes, so people and companies had more money and would spend more. Another was to carry out public works, for instance building homes or cinemas. That would employ people, who'd have more money to spend and thereby create even more jobs. These initiatives are called a fiscal stimulus.

In modern political debate, tax cuts are seen as right wing and public spending as left wing. And indeed Keynes did place more emphasis on the latter. But ultimately both these tools could be used to protect against the damage of a recession and get the economy moving again. Tax rises on the well-off might be left-wing if they are used in normal economic times to make society more equal. But they're not particularly left wing if they're used during a recession to pay back the national debt.

This is because Keynes believed that you had to pay for the stimulus by national borrowing. If it was paid for by tax, you would be taking demand from the economy. People and businesses would have less money, they'd spend less, and you'd be aggravating the original problem. So instead, the money needed to come from outside.

The argument of right-wingers that national debts were like household debts and had to be paid back were wrong. The truth was much more counter-intuitive. In bad times, you had to increase the national debt.  Then when your intervention got the economy back on track, it would be easier to shrink the debt anyway.

Sunak today established the standard right-wing narrative of debt reduction. But then he did something interesting. He pushed those tax rises forward so they wouldn't hit for a few years. He also introduced a 'super-deduction' mechanism allowing firms to write off 130% of the cost of investment, which would encourage demand. It seems to fit a Keynesian timetable.

But there's a nagging doubt here. It's about uncertainty. How exactly do we know that the economy will be in a good enough position in 2023 to raise taxes to shrink the debt?

The covid recession isn't like normal recessions. It's a shock from outside. This makes projecting what happens afterwards really quite weird and difficult.

For a start, we don't know what's going to happen with the virus. Will there be vaccine-resistant variants which mean we have to lockdown again later this year, or in the years which follow? Even if there aren't, how exactly are people going to act? Many people have lost their jobs, or fallen further into debt. We don't know how quickly employment rates will bounce back. And we don't know the long term effects on productivity from lockdown. Plus this is all going to take place while Britain fundamentally alters its trading regime because of Brexit, which is already leading many companies to shut up shop.

This is why it's so foolish to be talking about tax rises now, even if they're pushed out a bit in the future. Maybe Sunak is right, and 2023 will be a good year for that. In that case, he can make the case then - not now. Announcing it today is like asking a surgeon to conduct an operation in a room with no lights.

There is no economic basis for it. But there is a political one. Sunak knows that the Conservatives are trusted more with the economy than Labour. The deceptive metaphor of a country being like a household has a very firm grip on the public mind. So by encouraging this narrative he can establish a clear reputation for financial responsibility.

The government is at the same time repealing the Fixed-Term Parliament Act, which allows it to choose when to hold the next election. There may or may not be a grand plan here, but the timetables match up quite nicely. An election in 2024, say, would be quite attractive. You can go to the country when the public approves of your message of financial responsibility, but before they have felt any of the pain from implementing it.

That's the key to the document we saw today and the rhetoric which surrounded it. It's not to do with economics. It's to do with politics.

This is a far less damaging conclusion than we might have expected today. We should thank our lucky stars Sunak isn't raising taxes immediately. But it is still deeply pernicious. Chancellors should be working to help the economy, so that it improves the material well-being of the country. Instead, we have a chancellor planning to tinker with the economy so it improves the electoral well-being of the government.

#budget 2021 #corporation tax #income tax

[uk-news-talking-politics]

Bullsh*t and the Budget

By Sam Fowles

What’s the best way to drive an economist crazy? Tell them the government needs to “pay back” it’s “debts”. As Jonathan Portes put it, the idea is “complete nonsense”.

Yet this is exactly what Andrew Marr, a supposedly reputable broadcaster with a national platform, did on Sunday ahead of this week's  Budget, insisting “at some point we’re going to have to pay that [pandemic spending] money back.” Marr’s economic illiteracy, however, is symptomatic of a much deeper malaise: the widening gap between our national debate and reality.

Princeton’s Harry Frankfurt argues in his book, “On Bullshit”, that public debate is increasingly dominated by “bullshit” statements. A “bullshit” statement is one made to convince without regard for the truth.

Frankfurt attributes the rise of bullshit to increased opportunities to broadcast our opinions: With so many chances to share our thoughts, we feel under pressure to do so. We have, therefore, both more opportunity and more social pressure to promote “takes” that can be entirely specious.

On the flip side, our social media driven communications culture offers no real disincentive for dishonesty. It was almost inevitable that bullshit culture would be weaponised by politicians. Donald Trump epitomised this, achieving huge political success by ignoring reality and persuading his supporters to do the same.

Yet one of the most influential and established bullshit tropes is just as well established in the UK as it is in the US: That the economy is analogous to a household budget. We still believe that, like a household, any money borrowed by the government must be paid back in the short to medium term or else lenders might stop advancing credit to the UK or “call in” their loans.

The consensus amongst economists is that this is entirely wrong. Indeed, some of the country’s most eminent economists have written to the BBC pleading with it to stop promoting the trope.

One does not need to be an economist to see the problem: the state isn’t a household. It has far greater powers and an entirely different purpose. Unlike a household or business, it is almost impossible for the UK to go bankrupt because the UK controls its own currency. It can increase the amount of money in circulation to fund its own debt repayments.

It can even borrow money from itself (a substantial percentage of UK government “debt” is held by the Bank of England). In theory, the UK’s money supply is not unlimited because “printing money” can ultimately lead to inflation. Governments, however, can and do create huge amounts of money without triggering an inflationary reaction.

In 2020, for example, the Bank of England created £100 billion of new money, yet inflation remained at 0.8%. For this reason, investors are keen to buy government bonds even when state borrowing is high. In 2009, for example, the UK “deficit” (the difference between state debt and tax revenue) rocketed form 3% of GDP to around 10%. Investors, however, were so keen to “lend” the government more money that the interest rate on bonds dropped from 5% to 3.6%.

The modern version of the “household” trope came from a 2010 paper by Harvard’s Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. They argued that state debt above a certain level creates a drag on economic growth. This was seized on by politicians at the time. The Cameron government based its “austerity” policies substantially on Reinhart and Rogoff’s conclusions.

Just three years later, however, it emerged that Reinhart and Rogoff had made an error in their data. The International Monetary Fund has since rejected their findings and, to their credit, Reinhart and Rogoff have distanced themselves from policies based on their paper.

UK governments and media, however, have singularly ignored the fact that the “household” model has been debunked and abandoned. There are, of course, rational political reasons for wanting to limit government borrowing. But these are based on ideological preference, not financial necessity.

In the UK, however, we continue to conduct our public debate on the assumption that the government could run out of money (or ,at least, credit) at any moment. In May 2020 it emerged that Treasury officials (who one might expect to be relatively up to date on the consensus amongst economists) were already identifying spending cuts and tax increases to “pay for” the pandemic borrowing.

In November the BBC’s political editor, Laura Kuenssberg, warned that the “national credit card” had been “maxed out”. In his autumn statement, the chancellor cut overseas aid in the name of “fiscal prudence”. Even opposition politicians accept the trope.

The result is that our national economic debate increasingly takes place in a sort of parallel reality. Bullshit like this is dangerous for our democracy. Truth is an inherently democratic concept. If our debate is based on truth, then anyone can use facts and rational analysis to convince others.

Bullshit, however, is inherently undemocratic. When truth is sidelined, the influence of those with the most dominant platforms (like newspaper owners, those most able to fund big PR campaigns, or the state itself) is increased.

Unconstrained by the need to justify their arguments by reference to reality, those with the biggest platforms can convince us of anything. The Capitol riots, based on bullshit allegations of voter fraud spread from the presidential “bully pulpit”, show just how dangerous bullshit can become. While the UK is not there yet, our own form of economic bullshit sets us on a dangerous road.

#budget 2021 #national debt

[uk-news-talking-politics]

Social media: Publishers, platforms or something else?

By Josh Hamilton

Are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit platforms or publishers? This is one of the defining questions of our time. Are these companies the digital equivalent of a newspaper, a TV station, a community message board, or a town square? This may seem like an unimportant distinction, but it is crucial to understanding how we adapt our democratic rights and freedom of speech for the modern age.

So what if we consider social media to be a town hall or square? This is where the free exchange of ideas took place without censorship, the need to provide sources, or the idea that you had to be an expert in order to comment on something.

In places like this we have always been free to hold our own thoughts and views, and mostly that was a right that was respected. We were allowed to disagree without trying to ban each other from entering the town square.

If we are to consider social media firms as the digital equivalent of our town square then, theoretically at least, we should have the right to use the platform, just as everyone has the right to stand and express their opinions in the town square. (I can already hear your complaints about how it is not the same, we’ll get to the problems of misinformation in due course.)

On the other hand, if we are to consider these companies as publishers, like a newspaper or a TV network, they should be held to certain standards of proof and quality for their content. We regulate what TV and radio are allowed to broadcast and what newspapers can print, so why not social media posts?

This is where it becomes problematic. Which of us really has the ability (or the time) to fact check our posts and opinions in the way print or TV journalists would, or regulate our video content the way a TV producer would?

Which social media platform has the resources to fact check as a traditional editor would have done for the daily papers. Can we expect platforms that allow us, in the words of Alex Turner, to share “every whimsical thought that enters my mind”, to have any control over what is posted?

The amount of video that is uploaded to YouTube, for example, is truly unfathomable. By 2019 there were 500 hours of video being uploaded every minute. This equates to approximately 30,000 hours of newly uploaded content per hour. And we expect them to regulate the content of every minute of video as if they were a standard publisher.

It’s not really a tenable categorisation and puts an incredible amount of power in the hands of a few Silicon Valley billionaires. This is something the left in Britain has been rallying against for years; establishment control of our press.

So we’re left with one option. We have to put these firms in a brand new category, one that upholds the values of freedom of expression (a founding principle of Western democracy) whilst attempting to prevent widespread disinformation or the organisation of illegal activity, the manipulation and information/cyber warfare perpetrated by rogue states like Russia (or by our own Western governments).

Allowing these companies to have total control over what speech is okay and what is not is an incredibly dangerous path to go down. Allowing them to ban anyone whose speech goes counter to their narrative is not the way forward and essentially amounts to a form of digital segregation, one that will only further enhance the deep societal cleavages and polarisation that their platforms have already severely worsened.

We need to have a serious public debate about digital rights, which, after more than 20 years, has still not taken place. It’s probably not a good idea to let people spew hateful rhetoric on a platform where they can reach thousands, if not millions.

But that does not mean it is a good idea to allow a handful of billionaires in Silicon Valley to become the arbiters of what we can and cannot see or who can or cannot speak online. Especially when these companies are perfectly comfortable with selling your personal data to advertisers, reading your personal messages, using your images, and handing over whatever MI5 or the NSA ask them for.

Forget Trump for a minute, who I am almost certain is in your mind right now. Bret Weinstein’s Articles of Unity campaign, which was promoting the idea of rejecting the two party system in America, was banned from Twitter with no explanation.

Weinstein tweeted at the time: “Twitter suspended #Unity2020’s account for amplifying #JustSayNoToDonaldAndJoe as President Trump was accepting the Republican Party’s nomination. Pull back the curtain and see how we got here: vague rules and selective enforcement are the duopoly’s best defense. Heads up, @jack.”

This is the issue here, we cannot allow these platforms to become their own police.

Another issue with censorship is the condemnation of what they believe to be fringe theories. This was also highlighted when Weinstein and a number of others were suggesting back in June 2020 that covid may have escaped from a lab. They were heavily derided and Dr. Li-Meng Yan was banned from Twitter for suggesting that the virus had been altered in a Wuhan lab – a theory that has gained wider credence and hasn’t been ruled out by the team investigating origin of the virus.

We have to find a way to prevent social media companies from becoming outlets for bad actors or to spread pure misinformation, whilst balancing the rights of individuals to challenge conventional wisdom and official narratives. We only learn and improve by challenging conventional orthodoxy, and the diversity of thoughts and ideas that has long been the reason for the development and success of democracy cannot be undermined by Big Tech.

#social media

[uk-news-talking-politics]

Week in Review: Labour right to resist a rise in corporation tax

By Ian Dunt

It feels like the world turned upside down. The Conservatives are reported to be preparing for an increase in corporation tax and Labour is opposing it. It's a sentence that shouldn't make sense.

But if you peer a little closer, this isn't as strange as it seems. What we are really seeing is possible preemptive strike for an austerity agenda distorted by mischievous party political strategies.

On the face of it, a rise in corporation tax makes sense. Inequality in the UK was already at disastrous levels. The pandemic has made it worse. Many people - predominantly white collar workers - have continued working as normal, but without any of the expenditure they would usually engage in - no holidays, or restaurant meals, or commuting costs, or days out for the family. Their wealth has increased.

Others have lost their jobs, or been put on furlough with reduced pay, or been self-employed and forced into hardship. They'll have often taken out loans, or run down their savings, or gone into arrears on rent, or maxed out a credit card.

We need to address this and corporation tax offers a tempting way to do it. It is applied on profits, so we know that anyone paying it can afford to. We know that some big companies, like Amazon, have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams as a result of the pandemic, while others relying on footfall have collapsed. It makes sense to increase the taxation they face so we can redistribute money, for instance with credit for utility bills for those in need or tax cuts for those on low pay.

We shouldn't pretend that will be painless. Massive companies like Amazon are adept at hiding profits offshore to reduce their tax while many small businesses have managed to survive the pandemic through the skin of their teeth. Clobbering them with increased taxes is the last thing they need. Nevertheless, there's nothing wrong in principle in thinking of ways to claw back some of the savings made by wealthy people and businesses and using them to help those who are struggling.

But there's a problem. The corporation tax rise is not being proposed as part of an effort to reduce inequality. It is being proposed as a way of balancing the budget. When the government briefed the Sun newspaper on the plan, a source said: "Action needs to be taken now, not in November and not next year, but now. The Budget will make a start on that stabilisation. It can't go the whole way in one fiscal event but it will make a start."

In other words: If a corporation tax rise does figure in the Budget, it'll be the beginning of the austerity programme. We've known it was coming. The Treasury has been clear that it wanted to start balancing the budget for some time. Many Tories yearn to make financial responsibility a dividing line with Labour - an issue polling shows the public still don't trust the opposition on. In all likelihood, some of this will come through spending cuts. And some of it will come through tax rises.

The economic case for reining in spending and ratcheting up taxes at the moment is basically non-existent. The government can borrow at very low interest rates. It needs to keep pumping money into the economy to maintain demand and protect jobs.

The real danger point will come when the pandemic is over. We need to prevent the damage we've seen turn into permanent scars: people out of work for years, each day becoming less likely to ever work again, businesses closing and taking down the jobs of those who serviced them. The right time to pay back the debt is later, when the economy is thrumming away under its own power - not before it has had a chance to recover. We made this mistake once after the financial crash. We musn't make it all over again now.

But that seems to be Rishi Sunak's intention. Focus group research suggests many members of the public - including in Red Wall seats - are already starting to murmur the killer words that all this spending will have to be paid back sometime. This messaging worked for the Tories in two elections and it can do so again.

The decision to start this agenda with a rise in corporation tax is a politically savvy one. There is much more public support for tax rises than spending cuts. Sunak is using it as the thin end of the wedge. If opposition parties agree to it, they will have tacitly acknowledged that the government needs to start balancing the books. They will be accepting the broad outlines of the austerity narrative, with the only debate as to how to parcel out the pain.

Incredibly, the Labour left have fallen for this obvious trap. Corbyn loyalists online yesterday were outraged that Starmer opposed the rise, branding him more right wing than the Conservatives. What they are in fact doing is accepting an economic logic which runs completely contrary to their principles.

It's an astonishing sight. If they were to peer for a moment at Sunak they would surely spot what he is doing. But they apply instead a far more critical gaze to Starmer. Their growing hatred of him seems increasingly to be the way they define themselves. And yet on austerity he is pursuing precisely the principle which they have raged about for over a decade. And that, by the way, is in no small part because of them. They succeeded in shifting the Labour party to the left. But they are too consumed by tribal indignation to realise the extent of their own accomplishments.

There will come a time, maybe even not so long from now, when the economy is sufficiently strong that Britain can and should pay down its debts. When it does so, it should be through progressive tax rather than spending cuts. Corporation tax and capital gains should be part of it.

But that time isn't now. The government can spend without needing to tax. And it must do, in order to prop up demand amid an unprecedented economic crisis.

Starmer is being genuinely radical and principled by refusing to countenance a return of austerity. The left of his party should ignore the twinkling baubles Sunak is leaving for them, covered with razors on the inside. The Labour leader, for all their attacks on him, is fighting for the principles they hold.

#corporation tax #budget 2021

[uk-news-talking-politics]

Fix 'shocking' energy performance of UK housing

By Phoebe MacDonald

In view of the past twelve months, we can be fairly sure next week’s Budget will focus on financial measures to support businesses and individuals through the covid pandemic, but it’s our hope that the Budget also reflects the government’s commitment to rebuild our economy in a more sustainable way.

Our latest report at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) – Greener Homes –  focusses on the shocking energy performance of the UK’s housing stock and how the government can tackle the problem. This will not only help the UK reach its climate goals – but will simultaneously drive a ‘green economic recovery’ from Covid-19.

The need for a National Retrofit Strategy – a long term policy and investment programme to upgrade the energy efficiency of our housing stock – is clear. It’s estimated that 85% of our homes will still be in use by 2050 and, of those homes, around 19 million require retrofitting to reach the government’s target.

But the government’s historical ad hoc approach to energy efficiency funding and policies will not bring about this change. We need substantial and sustained up-front funding, this means bringing the £9.2 billion pledged in the Conservative manifesto forward, to be spent over the next five years.

We also need the government to classify improving the energy efficiency of our building stock as a national infrastructure priority. To date, buildings were not seen as part of the nation’s infrastructure and have fallen victim to less funding as a result. Evidence shows that investing in energy efficiency improvements offers equivalent returns on investment as other big infrastructure projects such as HS2 and Crossrail.

A National Retrofit Strategy must also be backed by adequate green financing options. The Green Deal of 2013, the government’s flagship policy for stimulating demand in the able to pay sector, was largely ineffective due to its high interest rates and the fact homeowners were not convinced they could improve the energy efficiency of their homes based on savings from bills alone. When green finance schemes are delivered correctly – such as that in Germany – they can have a huge impact. In 2016 alone, the German system that combined public subsidies and low interest loans led to 276,000 energy renovations, dwarfing the 14,000 cumulative total driven by the UK’s Green Deal.

But government and private sector finance can (and will) only form part of the strategy.  If we want to unlock a home retrofitting revolution, we must encourage those in the ‘able to pay’ market to take their own initiative. This is where tax levers may be helpful.

Our Greener Homes report puts forward the idea that Stamp Duty Land Tax could be altered to help embed energy efficiency in the housing market. If the government introduced a sliding scale of stamp duty payments, where the most efficient homes pay much less tax than the least, it could encourage buyers to think twice about where and how they invest their money. The revised tax could be capped at £25,000 to avoid large and potentially punitive increases on expensive homes and could also have a time-limited rebate period, to encourage homeowners to make their own energy efficient improvements post-sale.

Evidence shows that policies that embed energy efficiency within the housing market are more likely to be successful, and those that link to ‘trigger points’ – such as renovating or purchasing a home – are particularly impactful, since homeowners are already prepared for disruption.

Linking property values and transaction costs more explicitly to energy performance would increase the likelihood of homeowners pursuing energy efficiency alongside other upgrades during their occupancy. In 2017-18, there were 1.1 million residential transactions; if these were linked to energy efficiency this could result in significant number of urgently needed retrofits.

Tax reforms should not be limited to stamp duty. Council Tax, Inheritance Tax and Capital Gains Tax could and should also be revised to incentivise energy efficiency. But given the number of homes subject to Inheritance and Capital Gains Tax is much smaller than stamp duty, amending these taxes will not be as effective as stamp duty reform. If the government made these changes, however, they would show serious commitment to tackling the energy inefficiency of UK homes and reaching net zero.

A National Retrofit Strategy will not only help the environment by improving the energy efficiency of existing homes, it will support economic growth by reducing household energy reduces energy bills and increasing disposable income. It will create skilled employment opportunities, especially in places like the north east and west midlands, where there are high levels of both unemployment and poorly insulated housing.

A retrofitting programme of this scale is unprecedented, but doing so will not only help the environment, but will help a green economic recovery from covid. Next week’s Budget provides an opportunity to tackle the shocking energy inefficiency of UK homes while supporting economic growth and creating new jobs.

#stamp duty #budget 2021 #energy efficiency

[uk-news-talking-politics]

UK should 'set example' by helping Uighurs

By Jason Reed and Jaya Pathak

The Chinese Communist Party is committing an appalling genocide against the Uighur Muslims. A recent report from the BBC revealed the nature of the systematic rape and torture that residents of Xinjiang are subject to. This is more than just a human rights violation – this is an attempted ethnic cleansing, accompanied by the most heinous violence.

As we speak, more than 3 million Uighurs are being detained in concentration camps, with many subject to rape, forced labour, organ harvesting, torture, starvation and mass incarceration. The Chinese Communist Party is implementing a campaign of forced sterilisation, targeting at least 80% of Uighur women of childbearing age. It is also carrying out the removal of nearly 1 million children from their families. The children are being forcibly moved to state-controlled boarding schools where they are taught never to use their mother tongue and to abandon their religion.

The Chinese government shows no hint of repentance and no intention of stopping what it is doing any time soon.

While the nature of what the Chinese government is doing is clear-cut, the politics of how to respond is more complicated. Campaigners are currently on their third attempt to push through the so-called ‘genocide amendment’ to the trade bill, against sustained opposition  from the government. The result of this back-and-forth is that, in the government’s view, executive power over trade matters is safeguarded – but the Uighurs are no closer to safety.

Regardless of whether the government is opposed to the legislative route of confronting the Chinese Communist Party, it must take the humanitarian step of allowing victims of appalling violence and persecution to seek refuge in Britain by granting refugee status to the Uighurs.

Such a move would not be unprecedented. There is a strong patriotic tradition of Britain offering refuge to oppressed peoples throughout history. Take, for instance, the Kindertransport – a government mission to rescue thousands of endangered children from Nazi Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland shortly before the start of the Second World War.

More recently, Britain created  a new visa scheme for British National Overseas (BNO) passport holders in Hong Kong, who have also been on the receiving end of some of the worst instincts of the dictatorial regime in Beijing. That system is now up and running  – it has already enjoyed considerable success, with Hong Kong residents signing up to it en masse. There is no compassionate reason why we should not now do the same – or more – for the Uighur Muslims.

Remarkably, no country has yet taken the step of offering a safe haven for Uighurs, apparently cowed into submission by Beijing’s soft power. Alongside its heinous domestic policy, the Chinese government is engaged in a concerted effort to expand its influence across Asia and Africa using, among other things, its homegrown covid vaccine. In the particularly disturbing case of Turkey, Chinese dissidents are reportedly being deported in exchange for extra vaccine doses.

Sentiment around extending an arm of friendship to the oppressed Uighur population is beginning to brew in some countries, but it remains in the very early stages and campaigners are having to push against the tide. In the US, president Biden has named the Uighurs as one of the groups set to be admitted under his new refugee program – but his recent comments, in which he appeared to dismiss China’s actions as ‘different cultural norms’, don’t exactly inspire hope.

We don’t have forever to pontificate over if and how we should act to help the Uighurs. The clock is ticking. With every day that passes without government action, more and more Uighurs are being detained, assaulted and oppressed.

There is a vacancy to lead an international coalition on this. The US is moving at a snail’s pace and the EU is too enthralled by trade relations with China to take any action. The British government should move to fill that gap, dispelling its newfound reputation for Beijing apologism and setting a humanitarian example for the rest of the world to follow by offering oppressed Uighurs a home in the UK.

Having traded with China for decades and contributed to its enormous wealth and power, we owe a debt to the victims of the Chinese government’s atrocities. We must offer them aid in their time of need.

#uigharmuslims #uighur #china

[uk-news-talking-politics]

'Why are you out?' - Disabled people and the pandemic

By Liz Sayce

“People were looking at me in an accusatory way. "Why are you out? You should be shielding.” Yet, I still don't fit into the vulnerable group where I can get a spot to have my groceries delivered.”

This is just one disabled person’s experience of living through the pandemic. It highlights a multitude of issues disabled people have faced; longstanding discriminatory attitudes coupled with a whole new set of barriers introduced during the pandemic.

Earlier in the pandemic, as lockdowns began and supermarkets prioritised the ‘clinically extremely vulnerable’ for delivery slots and exclusive shopping hours, access to food was compromised for many disabled people who didn’t fit into this narrow category. One of these groups were blind people, who were often refused online slots even though they found it impossible to navigate shopping in person without getting too close to other shoppers and breaching distancing rules. In many instances, it seemed that the legal requirement to make reasonable adjustments was replaced by a medical definition of ‘vulnerable’ which excluded many people.

Disabled people have campaigned for years for a legislative framework to remove disabling barriers and promote greater equality. We have moved away from the days of defining disability purely by a medical diagnosis. We have come to understand that people are disabled at least as much by the barriers around them. Once supermarkets started to respond to disabled people’s concerns, and the Equality and Human Rights Commission published guidance reminding retailers of their legal duties, more people could shop and so became a little less ‘disabled’.

This story illustrates how, by categorising people as ‘vulnerable’ purely from a pre-defined list of conditions which heighten the risk of covid, the pandemic risked eroding years of progress. It replaced disability as an equality issue with a narrow medical definition.

Last week, almost a year after the pandemic began, the government announced an expansion of the criteria defining those who are ‘clinically extremely vulnerable’, informed by an algorithm considering factors such as BMI, level of deprivation and ethnicity. Thousands more people have been put on the shielding list, and many have had their COVID-19 vaccination moved forwards. This is indeed a welcome turn of events; however, this comes late in the course of the pandemic, many disabled people have been shielding without support until now. And this is likely to continue for many not identified by the new algorithm.

The category of ‘underlying health conditions’ has been used prominently during the pandemic, including in press briefings and analysis, in preference to ‘disability’. Of course, there is a case for identifying those health conditions that place people at higher clinical risk from covid and targeting support and vaccinations. But this categorisation has pushed other major disability-related risk factors into the shadows.

Disabled people may need multiple home visits from a number of different care workers, thereby increasing risk of infection; may live in more crowded settings, including care homes and other institutions, and - for those in work - are more likely to be in lower paid, front line (higher risk) jobs. Yet Health Foundation analysis found disabled people were less likely than non-disabled people to say health care for their ongoing conditions continued as normal; it was more likely to be cancelled. And studies by Shakespeare et al., the Greater Manchester Big Disability Survey and others show major impacts on people’s lives from reduced social care support during the pandemic.

The Office for National Statistics recently published shocking findings that confirmed almost 6 in 10 covid deaths have been among disabled people. Simply attributing these deaths to those with ‘underlying health conditions’ ignores the wider inequalities putting disabled people at higher risk. Some people with learning disabilities, for example, should now be more likely to be considered as clinically extremely vulnerable, but not all. Yet Public Health England’s data suggests they are still 4-6 times more likely to die from covid than the general population.

Whether or not we have underlying conditions that place us at increased risk of covid, disabled people have access requirements which lockdowns and other measures have too often taken away. Many have become ‘more disabled’, even if their impairments have been unaffected. Support with shielding is only one part of the story; our recovery from covid needs to go much further to reduce inequalities that intensified during the pandemic relating to access to employment, education, social care and healthcare.

To build back fairer after this pandemic, it is essential that we understand the deep-rooted inequalities that are putting disabled people at increased risk – not just the medical diagnoses. Disabled people’s leadership and involvement is essential to find the solutions, both in the immediate and longer term, which is why the Health Foundation recently brought together disabled people, academics and policy experts to explore a range of perspectives to inform its COVID-19 impact inquiry. The inquiry, which examines the impact of the pandemic on health and health inequalities in the UK, will report its findings in the summer.

Pandemic or not, covid has shone a much-needed light on the underlying inequalities disabled people encounter each day. Looking to the future, we must focus not only on reducing clinical risk, but on solutions that simultaneously tackle the major inequalities linked to socio-economic status, age, ethnicity – and disability. Only then can we achieve greater equality for disabled people and ensure we create a fairer, more resilient society for all.

#covid #disabled people

[uk-news-talking-politics]

Ignore the noise

By Ian Dunt

There is a weird vacuum-war of nothingness in the Labour party, concentrated mostly on Keir Starmer's leadership. Apparently he's dull, he's uninspiring, he's drifting, the Tories are sailing ahead.

It's a tough period for him - the first big wobble of his leadership. Boris Johnson is enjoying a poll bounce from the vaccines. The pandemic means the PM has near unchallenged access to the airwaves. Starmer meanwhile is robbed of any pulpit at all, except for speaking to empty rooms, or on Zoom, or to an empty Commons Chamber.

He has no local election results he can point to to show progress, because they were cancelled. It's hard to wrestle the news agenda from the government because covid is the only game in town. He can't invite critics inside the party for a chat.

That void of activity makes the whirling criticism reach a crescendo despite the lack of any real content to substantiate it. His speech this week outlining Labour's economic policy was treated like a damp squib. The policies were dismissed. He was branded uncharismatic. It was all apparently a bit of a let down. And two things are certainly true: Labour HQ overhyped it. And you'd struggle to imagine many families talking about it around the dinner table last night.

But there is another way of looking at it, which is about positioning. And that paints a very different picture. It is not about where we are now, but where we will be in two or three years.

Here is one way in which it could play out. The pandemic ends and then the Tory debate about austerity begins. There's barely an economist on the face of the Earth who thinks austerity is the right thing to do in the short term. Most believe the government should take advantage of low interest rates to borrow now and heal the scars of the last few months, before paying back in the medium-to-long term, when times are better.

But the Treasury is already making noises about cutting spending. Chancellor Rishi Sunak is plainly keen. Downing Street will be tempted to make financial responsibility a key dividing line with Labour. After all, it's worked for them very well in the past, not least during the aftermath of the financial crisis in 2008-2010. Johnson could start reining in public spending this year and then perhaps be in a position to offer tax cuts before the next election. Economically it's a nonsense, but politically it's an attractive timescale.

The trouble for the Conservative party is that things have changed since 2008. The rise of right-wing populism served to undermine Conservatism's fiscal principles. Suddenly, it was OK to damage business - or even "fuck" it, in Johnson's words - if it fulfilled a political agenda. The state could get involved in the market again. In fact, debates over EU state aid rules, which limit government subsidies, nearly derailed the Brexit talks. Johnson himself was desperate to announce an end to austerity. The pandemic opened a floodgate of public spending. And crucially, Johnson won the election with a pledge to former Labour voters, not least in the Red Wall, to "level up" the country.

This amounts to a historic change in the possibilities for progressive politics, created almost exclusively by the right. It is why Joe Biden is currently trying to get a $1.9 trillion stimulus through when Barack Obama could barely manage $787 billion.

And yet the Tories are split on it, between their instincts and their promises. This is the strange spot they've found themselves in by putting their tanks on Labour's lawn. Their MPs presume the need for belt-tightening. And so does their chancellor. But that's not an attractive prospect to many of the people who lent them their vote.

For now, that debate takes place in abstract terms. But occasionally, as with free school meals, it will burst into very vivid and immediate news stories. That's when you see the Tory division play out - Conservative MPs banging on about personal responsibility and market-knows-best when the political winds no longer favour it.

This amounts to a reversal of the political dynamic we've seen in recent years, where cultural values overtook political and economic ones. It's therefore a dangerous spot for the Tories. It reveals that they and the former Labour voters they have tempted over are no longer aligned.

Starmer's speech, on the other hand, rejected austerity in a way that Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling and Ed Miliband were unable to. That's of pivotal importance. One of the events that put rocket boosters on Jeremy Corbyn's leadership bid was his refusal, unlike all other candidates, to back the welfare bill. But Starmer's position removes that Labour division between its activist base and its leadership class.

Doing so does not put him outside mainstream economic opinion, as it would have in 2008. It puts him in the centre of it. The international bodies like the IMF, which once supported the Tory austerity programme, are now singing from a different hymn sheet. The work of shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds, combined with the damage wrought by Brexit, allows Starmer the chance to maintain this position while simultaneously offering the olive branch of friendship to business.

Maybe it won't play out like this. Maybe the Tories will find a way to dampen the inner division they have on this issue. Perhaps the right-leaning press and some clever government sloganeering will succeed in pushing Labour into a more contorted position. But this is a believable - and indeed likely - series of events. It sets up a divided Tory party and a more united Labour party.

Starmer's speech may not have set off the fireworks. But in terms of the long game, it put the party in an ideal position for the debate which will dominate the next election. When you get past the noise, he continues to make the right calls at the right time.

#keir starmer #Labour Party