UK Politics General Discussion

[flyingguitar]

Hyperbole in 2016 - "Well it's the mess that was inherited from Labour, they nearly left this country broke", Common excuse forgiving the Tories for their disastrous handling of the economy. Referring to a party that had been out of power for 6 years, and their response to a global economic crisis that happened just 2 years before they were booted out of power.

Hyperbole in 2025 - "Labour are ruining this country". Easy cliche to reach for when you want to point a finger. Referring to their handling of the economy just 6 months into receiving a broken - well everything- from a party that had been in power for 14 years and actually did leave the country broke and spent all the money.

yeah, I love that people think an economy can be turned round in 5 months, it can't fixing an economy takes time.

They can't do the extreme measures I have seen suggested, in free markets price is set by supply and demand, if there are currently 10 factories making X product, then doubling everyone's salary is only going to double the price of X product as it dosn't increase supply. The problem is COVID set up a quite large inflation crisis and bringing that down isn't easy they can't make a law that says all food bust be halfed in value.


besides this is a very global issue, we are not very different compared to other countries most countries currently are struggling to beat inflation after COVID (edit: and gas prices), it is the reason trump is president most western countries are struggling with inflation and trying to fix it.

Let me put it this way, if the economy was such a problem and it only takes 5 months to fix then why didn't the tories fix the economy in the time they were in power

Wind farms gould only make up part of the energy mix. We have micro nuclear reactors which we should be installing around the country. Putting all your faith in wind and solar is stupid and irresponsible. We have some of the highest energy costs in the world, no other country is going as hard and fast on wind and solar as we are and we only generate 1% of global emissions.

wind is very powerful in the UK, and more reliable compared to solar. it only really stops in very high / low wind.

your point though is flawed though, the cost of our grid isn't from wind but gas, gas prices have shot up due to the war in Ukraine, for reference currently (https://grid.iamkate.com/) throughout the past year ~30% of our grid is fossil fuels (most of this is gas) and ~40% is renewable energy, of that ~30% is wind and ~15% is nuclear.

we have reduced the amount gas is involved in our grid, and that allows us to reduce the impact of gas prices on our grid. we will need nuclear and other scources to ensure the variability is reduced but the dramatic increase in gas prices is the reason the it costs so much.

What is your idea with micro nuclear reactors? put one in each neighbourhood?
for starters read what an orphan source incident is and how much damage it causes (when a source material gets taken by the public, usually from medical devices) protecting all of those nuclear reactors will be quite difficult, not to mention the NIMBYS.
why do you think this will work out cheaper than solar or wind, both have large investment costs but nuclear you have to keep refuling.
I do support nuclear, I just think micro reactors will never work for power grid, and probably cost a fortune to install.

 

[Matt N]

It's like the last 14 years never happened! But those 1970's, core blimey. Is there nothing anything titled 'Labour' won't get blamed for, and anything the Tories won't get forgiven for? 60 years ago is remembered clear as day, 6 months ago, ooh, that's a bit foggy that.

To be fair, is blaming Labour for the 1970s really any different to the sizeable number of people, particularly in areas like South Wales and the North, that will never vote Tory as a result of Thatcher?

 

[flyingguitar]

your point though is flawed though, the cost of our grid isn't from wind but gas, gas prices have shot up due to the war in Ukraine

just to show this, found this nice graph guess when the war in Ukraine started: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fossil-fuel-price-index (it is crude oil, but it matches for most fossil fuels)

 

[GooseOnTheLoose]

To be fair, is blaming Labour for the 1970s really any different to the sizeable number of people, particularly in areas like South Wales and the North, that will never vote Tory as a result of Thatcher?

A little. South Wales has always been a Labour strong hold, long before Thatcher's time as Prime Minister.

Welsh Conservatives - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

If you go back through every General Election and look at the maps, the south of Wales is always a red Labour block. Even as far back as 1922.

 

[Benzin]

We are building nuclear. However due to the general stagnation and the time it takes for any major infrastructure project to even get off the ground time goes on and the demand increases whilst nothing is done.

Even then Sizewell is under ownership of EDF (if I recall), so it's still the same issue that the prices are essentially tied to the amount the shareholders receive every year. And woe betide them not making as much every year.

The additional costs (like the min wage rise) will only be passed onto the consumer by companies making that decision. Some industries have little choice and are affected by external politics (hi Ukraine and steel) to raise prices, but supermarkets and energy/water suppliers? They could take it, but would rather take the piss with prices or fill water with sewage than risk people not having their pockets filled.

 

[Dave]

I think one of the biggest mistakes we made was ending nuclear development but that was a decision made a long time ago.

The biggest issue we have with energy prices in this country is the Grid sells at a national price, which means the south east where there is lower renewable energy sources drive the national price up. I’m hoping the campaign to bring in regional pricing auctions gets some traction as that would drop prices in the north and Scotland dramatically.

As an aside we had growth again in the last month so it doesn’t look like we are in recession territory.

 

[rob666]

Yup, nuclear power became massively unpopular following the long series of accidents, starting with the slight release of moonbeams from Windscale...
Nuclear was a massive vote loser, many politicians saw it as the answer after the early seventies fuel crisis...(I remember petrol vouchers...issued but never used.)
CND was big in my youth, and nuclear power was strongly associated with the bomb...still is in many eyes.

Westinghouse (Springfield!) near Preston has been knocking out small reactors for decades apparently....quick, safe and cheap compared to big stations...but still local vote losers, so they are not easy to site.

 

[Quantum]

Labour is ignoring NIMBYS though. I'm sure people don't want collosal solar and wind farms carpeting the countryside either. It's the lesser of two evils until Fusion power happens, but we are a long way from that.

If we go too hard and fast we are going to wreck our industry. There are already warnings Labours energy strategy risks destroying our chemicals industry and will lead to an over reliance on Chinese tech.

 

[Matt N]

Labour is ignoring NIMBYS though. I'm sure people don't want collosal solar and wind farms carpeting the countryside either. It's the lesser of two evils until Fusion power happens, but we are a long way from that.

If we go too hard and fast we are going to wreck our industry. There are already warnings Labours energy strategy risks destroying our chemicals industry and will lead to an over reliance on Chinese tech.

I’d argue, however, that Labour needs to ignore these voices to an extent, for lack of a better term. Well, maybe not ignore these voices per se, but certainly encourage them to compromise more to allow development to happen.

Of course people should not have to put up with eyesores, and we shouldn’t be desecrating the countryside unduly. I also think that the demonisation of “NIMBYs” is an oversimplification of the issue; many of the concerns raised by these types of people are genuine and reasonable concerns.

With that being said, things often do not happen fast enough in this country due to a small percentage of powerful anti-development voices, and this prevents issues from getting solved.

Take housebuilding as an example; UK house prices are too high, and there’s a broad agreement that the country needs more houses… but no one wants to see more houses built where they live. Ditto with things like renewable energy; many people want to see more renewables… but not where they live. The list goes on… everyone wants infrastructure development and investment in the UK, and the list of things to do in this sense is certainly a long list, but no one wants it where they live.

The problem with this is that this mythical infrastructure that takes up no room and solves all our problems doesn’t exist. This infrastructure people want has to be built somewhere. I’m not saying that we should steamroller over the wishes of communities by any means, but I think there does need to be some level of compromise in the planning system that doesn’t currently exist if we are to attract investment, stimulate economic growth and solve some of the UK’s most pressing problems.

 

[flyingguitar]

Yup, nuclear power became massively unpopular following the long series of accidents, starting with the slight release of moonbeams from Windscale...
Nuclear was a massive vote loser, many politicians saw it as the answer after the early seventies fuel crisis...(I remember petrol vouchers...issued but never used.)
CND was big in my youth, and nuclear power was strongly associated with the bomb...still is in many eyes.

nuclear is extremely safe, only the Chernobyl incident is really a major catastrophe (may have something to do with the lack of a containment building on Russian reactors),
Most of the time when something goes wrong in a non Russian plant it is contained within the plant, Fukushima has been storing all of its water used to cool the plant, only recently it has been allowed to release that water after a very high amount of purification and filtering (the water coming out of Fukushima is very clean and probably cleaner than our rivers!) the problem is NYMBY's, the idiots at green peace, conspiracy idiots, etc spread miss information leading people to thing that it is dangerous but it really isn't. looking into the health impacts gas and coal have injured and killed multiple time the number of people compared to nuclear.
I would happily live closer to a nuclear PowerStation vs other industries or a gas PowerStation

With that being said, things often do not happen fast enough in this country due to a small percentage of powerful anti-development voices, and this prevents issues from getting solved.

yup, it also is expensive but one quote I saw from someone in the us air force (I can't remember who or it specifically) about the cost of new aircraft programs went something like this: "I would prefer to spend £x million more on engineering for an aircraft because we used to spend that with peoples lives" whilst the degree of danger with stuff like building a new road is much less than developing a new aircraft the added cost can ensure we get good quality stuff and don't waste the money on something that causes more problems, for instance there are reports that many of china's high speed rail connections have been losing a tone money for years because and didn't have much of an impact as they just built them but didn't really consider the demand for them as they built them to show the world they can have the largest network.

 

[Matt.GC]

To be fair, is blaming Labour for the 1970s really any different to the sizeable number of people, particularly in areas like South Wales and the North, that will never vote Tory as a result of Thatcher?

Yes.
A. It was more recent, but that is splitting hairs and I appreciate your point that it was still a long time ago and do agree to that extent
B. Many of those communities have never recovered. It was right to blame the Labour and Conservative governments by the way, for the mess of the 1970's. It didn't happen overnight. If the prosperity and life chances of future generations of your family were significantly impacted by the 1980's, and successive governments have done little about it, it's kind of hard to explain to the grandkids why the houses on either side of nans house are either boarded up or crack dens.
C. The post war consensus ran through both parties in the 1970's. Something was clearly wrong, and in came monetarism and Neo-Liberal capitalism. It caused suffering to many and prosperity for others. But notwithstanding that, the pursuit of those policies left the UK exposed to 5 successive quarters of deep recession and very high interest rates in the 1990's, and then everyone remembers the Great Recession of 2008 (only Labour branded ones are dwelled upon remember) where it all came to a head.
Yet the dead horse continued to be flogged. George Osbourne and David Cameron, ideological fixated on the 'glory' of the past, made things worse. Then incompetently removed a huge chunk of one of Thatchers strategic pillars, globalism, by crashing out of the EU before running for the hills. Kwazi Kwarteng and Liz Trus put Lawson and Thatcher masks on, and I hope no one has forgotten what happened there (or seemingly, some have?). As recent as last springs budget Hunt and Sunak were engaging in trickle down economic policies by spending money the country did not have, slicing a few quid off taxes, whilst criminals were being released into the streets due to full prisons and net dept to GDP was at 98.3%.
Labour have scrambled around, often doing absurd things, trying to find themselves and change since the 1970's. Blair's party was practically a new party for most intents and purposes. You won't find much reverence for Harold Wilson or Jim Callaghan in your local Labour club.
But there may be a shrine to Thatcher, the lord saviour, in your local Tory club. There is in my local one.

 

[Poisson]

The UK Govt has been chucking money at nuclear.

Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C being the obvious ones, but also STEP at West Burton and Rolls Royce have been working on Small Modular Reactors.

 

[Tom]

It’s fine until a missile hits it.

Nuclear power stations are a real danger in the era of hypersonic missiles and other modern weaponry.

 

[DiogoJ42]

It doesn't even need that. Nature took care of Fukushima.

 

[flyingguitar]

It’s fine until a missile hits it.

Nuclear power stations are a real danger in the era of hypersonic missiles and other modern weaponry.

not really, the containment building on nuclear power stations is pretty thought, (like feet of concert) any power station is going to be very dangerous if hit by a missile, coal, gas etc.

also the "hypersonic missile" has been around for decades, it isn't a threat that is new a cruse missile which can steer around air defense isn't new, just as a "stealth" fighter with the same radar cross section as a non stealth fighter.


also do you really think anyone would attack a nuclear power station of a country with nukes?
that is just asking to be nuked

 

[DiogoJ42]

The whole "hypersonic rods from god" thing is an interesting idea. But the only confirmed time it has beed used, (by Russia against Ukraine) turned out to be very underwhelming. Turns out that if you split the 6 MIRVs of an ICBM in to six further "sub-MIRVs" each, there's not a lot of mass left to do much damage. Yeah, you get 36 impacts, but each is 1/36 of the energy they could have had. Reccy photos show the impact craters are about what you'd get from a hand granade.

Turns out that the "Oreshnik" missile is an utter waste of time unless you equip it with the thermonuclear warheads it was designed for.

 

[flyingguitar]

"hypersonic rods from god"

I think the hypersonic missiles are a different concept.

Russia clamed to have the Kinsell, supposedly worlds fastest missile being able to reach hyper sonic speeds (above Mach 5), being able to mauver around air defences. it isn't the fastest and this has been done for decades.
Russia clamed it was unable to be shot down and was invincible (Ukraine has visual confirmation on multiple of them being shot down currently)

Russia lies, and lies about their technology, they can't even keep an aircraft carrier running without it needing a tow boat, their new T14 program is no where to be seen, their new fighter has only been seen as a wooden mock up, their thermal vision is previous generation french optics (you can buy drones with better) and they duck tape consumer GPS modules to the dash board of their planes rather than use their own GPS similar system, need I go on.

(this doesn't mean they aren't dangerous as even if 90% of their nukes don't work, it takes one to change a landscape)

 

[DiogoJ42]

True, a hypersonic missile is not necessarily the same thing as a hypersonic impact.

I think the trouble is, that Russia are trying to use weapons designed for "Global-Thermo-Nuclear-War" [a curious game] in a non-nuclear way. Unfortunately, the obvious solution is.... worse.

 

[Matt N]

There have been some interesting developments in politics as of late with regard to the Tories and Labour trying to see off the threat of Reform, more specifically in regard to that good old chestnut immigration.

Towards the end of January, some rather stark migration figures were released by the ONS; they revealed that the UK population is set to grow by five million people in the next 10 years, with the entirety of this growth caused by migration: https://news.sky.com/story/uk-popul...highest-in-europe-for-the-first-time-13298458

This would result in the UK having the highest migration rate in Europe by 2029, making it the first time since at least 1950 that the UK has had the continent’s highest net migration. Most interestingly, the 2023 net migration figure was three times higher than even a “high end estimate” back in 2014, before we left the EU. The other interesting thing is that while the influx of immigration is expected to have a positive effect on the economy in the short term, the UK’s age profile will continue to trend older in the long run, with pensioners continuing to be the fastest growing age demographic in the UK.

Resultantly, these figures and some recent opinion polls starting to put Reform as the most popular party or in strong contention for it, with Reform currently polling at as high as 27% of the vote in some polls, have led to worries within internal Labour circles about Reform’s rise. Immigration policy is both the most popular reason for supporting Reform among its voters and the most popular reason for conversion to Reform following the election. As such, Labour are taking an increasingly tough public stance on immigration, channeling Reform UK in using their turquoise colour and putting out adverts showing the “journey” of an illegal immigrant out of the UK, boasting of Labour’s prowess at deporting illegal migrants (deportations are currently at their highest rate since 2017). The Home Office are also putting out leaflets talking about how “Labour is tackling illegal immigration”, harking back to Theresa May’s infamous “go home” vans: https://news.sky.com/story/uk-popul...highest-in-europe-for-the-first-time-13298458

Kemi Badenoch has also put forward considerably more authoratitive immigration policy from the Tory party, with the Tories now suggesting that the period before migrants can apply for indefinite leave to remain should be extended from 5 years to 10 and that residency status should not be granted to migrants who have criminal records or have claimed benefits or social housing: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c863eywwny2o

Regardless of your thoughts on the issue, it does seem as though immigration is becoming an increasingly contentious issue that won’t go away from our political discourse any time soon. With this in mind, I’d be intrigued to know; what are people’s thoughts on the immigration issue? How do we think the political scene should tackle it?

Personally, I feel that immigration is somewhat overstated as an issue. I think it’s used as a red herring to distract from the real cause of most negative effects, which is endemic underfunding of public services and infrastructure. I don’t see immigration in itself as a big issue.

However, a lot of people clearly disagree, and I think we do need to have a serious national debate about immigration either way. Immigration is not in itself a bad thing, I would argue, but negative effects are arising from the resulting population growth as a result of the fact that our infrastructure and public services have prepared very, very poorly for population growth for a number of years. I think we either need to invest massively more into public services and infrastructure in order to keep up with the population growth, or we need to lower net migration. I don’t think trying to let in more and more people without investing in infrastructure and public services to keep up with the growth in population is at all sustainable.

I am a proponent of immigration, and I think it has many positive effects on the country, with diversity and economic advantages chief among them. I think that the “net zero migration” pledge raised by the likes of Reform is not at all realistic, and we need immigration to thrive (not least because the ONS immigration figures suggest that our birth rate is now outweighed by our death rate, so we need immigration to stop the population from falling). However, I also think we need to be realistic in admitting that we cannot have rapid population growth without rapid investment in public services and infrastructure to match, and we need to have a national conversation about how much we invest in this and/or how many people we let in. I don’t think it should be considered racist to admit that, and I don’t think the left-wing parties trying to shut down any debate on immigration is helpful.

I have concerns about the sort of rhetoric often employed by political parties to discuss immigration policy, however. I think we should be more empathetic to immigrants, who are often very vulnerable people escaping terrible circumstances and risking life and limb to come here, while still being honest and realistic about our capabilities to facilitate high levels of immigration as a country. It’s possible to be both empathetic towards immigrants and honest about our capabilities and limitations as a country, and I wish our political parties were striking that balance better than they are currently.

What do you guys think?

 

[GooseOnTheLoose]

What do you guys think?

I'm not sure what else to expect if you decide to conquer 1/3rd of the world, call them all subjects of the British empire, extol the virtues of England to them and promote British exceptionalism for, give or take, 300 years.

Not that any of us can call ourselves legitimately British, what with being invaded roughly 6 or so times up until 1066... And even then the last buggers to beat us were the French.

Sacrebleu!