My old friend Alan Simpson, who was a Labour MP when we first met, sent me this over the weekend. I thought it worth sharing, so I do so, with his permission:
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Very interesting – I was watching the docu-film ‘The Age of Stupid’ last night (2009) and I’ve it helped to support my conclusion that we are facing the doom of our time as things were bad enough then, let alone now.
Maybe this is what is driving the ‘dash for cash’ of the rentier society that we are in now – a last hoorah to squeeze as much money out of a busted flush as possible by the rich so that they can buy themselves out of trouble (all the new executive homes I see in Derbyshire are on high pieces of land).
Politics lost? I couldn’t agree more.
‘Carbon capture’ has nothing to do with controlling carbon – it’s all about controlling the politics to sort it out.
Alan hits the nail on the head with many of his comments.The Tories will take any opportunist position if they believe it will be a short term vote winner irrespective of the medium and long term consequences.Labour is frightened of its own shadow and the US ceased being a leader on anything a long time ago. Like the UK a country in long term and chronic decline with a broken political system. There is a lot of evidence that shows that previously there has been a rapid cooling and heating of the Earth after a tipping point is reached. Life as we know it will cease but will most likely re-emerge without us after millions of years.
A very good article,thanks.
The whole thing reminds me of why Fermentation stops.
The alcohol level gets so high the yeast goes dormant or dies.
They will kill us off, including themselves.
I suspect that Nuclear power in the short term and medium term will be a necessary evil in the battle to decarbonise our energy supply.
The great mystery is, why does it now take decades and cost so much to build the damn things.
In the 1950s, in a much poorer country and with no previous experience of such constructions, they were built within a few years.
The construction of Hinkley point, even if we discount the planning period, has been under construction for over a decade with still no reliable completion date available.
It would be nice to think that Tory incompetents like Osborne, Cameron and the rest of the Tory offshore gang would have at least learnt the lesson that when building infrastructure necessary for the country’s safety and security we do it ourselves and in particular do not rely on Communist dictatorships whose history means they have good reasons to hate us.
But given their class and education, as Orwell pointed out, they are incapable of learning anything.
The problem with nuclear power production costs is that their costs are very uncertain. Construction and regulatory delays are the biggest cost center.
The reality is that there is not enough nuclear power plant projects to conclusively say what the costs should be. Let alone enough experience in constructing then to insure that delays do not happen. Even with experienced construction companies like EDF, there can be many delays that cant be foreseen.
Not enough experience? It’s 60 years since the opening of Calder Hall. If that’s not enough time to get it right I don’t know what would be. It gives me little pleasure to say that its a dead end but that’s what it is.
Alan Simpson’s biography shows him the be the Shadow Chancellor’s Advisor on Sustainable Economics. Brave chap. Can’t help thinking he’ll be up for the chop any time now.
I agree with most of it, particularly the section on de-centralised energy. If this was implemented at scale, it would obviate the need for a large-scale build-out of transmission infrastructure (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/accelerating-electricity-transmission-network-deployment-electricity-network-commissioners-recommendations) and would be quicker.
However, the centalising tendancies of both vile-tory and vile-liebore predicate against such an approach.
Hats off to Mr Simpson for a fine article.
This is really interesting. 100+ years ago cities like Glasgow had great power; they were run through elected Corporations that ran their own water, gas and city transport services, very effectively; and had the power effectively to initiate legislation to further their capacity to run services. Two world wars (and an imperial mindset traumatised by the loss of empire), left Parliament and Parties with an obsession with over-centralisation, that inevitably fails badly to execute policy, save at eye-watering cost and bad outcomes: but when challenged, Government seeks to destroy outright the devolution it had to initiate (Holyrood), even though the road to decentralisation (or disunion) is inevitable. This is the definition of stupidity.
They could also raise capital
The Centre for Policy Studies wants to return to a regulatory energy regime that has a competitive market at its heart: in short an oxymoron. They want a market that protects the producer enough to squeeze the consumer dry. For their information, since CPS is clearly slow-witted, precisely what we have had, and it bust the market and ruined the consumer: while the monopoly producers clean up at everyone’s expense. When is this idiocy from phony right-wing think tanks going to stop being treated by media and politicians as if it was impartial academic research?
How good to find someone in the Labour Party actually having an intelligent view on this incredibly important issue. My only caveat is that like Paul Langston above I think the country lacks a full analysis of what the transition to zero carbon will require – it is possible it will need some nuclear for decades to come and if so it needs to be planned for, and there will clearly be some decreasing need for fossil fuels which needs assessing. The scary thing is that no such analysis exists, and politicians invoke science fiction solutions like carbon capture and cheap “green” hydrogen.
But the most important insight is that if Labour are to gain support and achieve anything the message they need to give the public is “hope not hate”. That should underly all their policies.
Actually Jonathan there is a full analysis of what the transition to zero carbon will require. It covers energy, emissions and costs not to mention miles travelled, diet, retrofit, planning reform, etc. It’s been developed in the Green Party and underlies the party’s climate policies. It’s taken ten years and is, inevitably, work in progress.
The Committee on Climate Change has done even more but its less ambitious.
In full Christmas Carol mode, there speaks the Ghost of Labour Past, alas, deriving from the Party that was the source of just about everything that was good post WW2.
The Ghost of Labour Present is a rabbit fixed in the headlights of Neofeudalism and Neofascism, blinking in confusion and uncertainty, having completely lost its way, and forgotten why it exists (supporting retention of the asylum-seekets barge, mass privatisation of the NHS, and punishment for strikes and strikers, ffs!!)
As to the Ghost Of Labour Future, that’s the rabbit of Labour Present now roadkill that was run over by the Neofascism and Neofeudalism of the 1%, and fastened to a vermin warning fence by Neofeudalism’s gamekeeper, as a warning to the serfs not to try anything.
Sir Keep Samer a Trojan horse for Market Fundamentalism/Neoliberalism! How many times has Labour done this in the past starting in the 1920’s yet gullible voters keep falling for it meanwhile the country continues to get weaker. Effectively there really is only one party in the UK the Great British Gullibility Party and Labour are part of it!
https://spartacus-educational.com/Gold_Standard.htm
British Gullibility Party – oh, I like that. There’s a wonderful meme displaying that, but adding memes to this site isn’t, alas possible. Pity. Perhaps Richard may be able to.
Sorry Andrew….I failed
An excellent summary of the dark and dismal state of UK politics.
However, there are a couple of faint chinks of light in the news today.
There’s this interview with Jamie Driscoll published today by Open Democracy:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/jamie-driscoll-labour-interview-keir-starmer-mayor-north-tyne-green-climate-ulez/
Both Alan Simpson and Driscoll make observations about Treasury rules/fiscal rules:
Simpson: “Both main parties are hamstrung by an obsession with existing Treasury rules.”
“Driscoll characterised the Labour position as: ‘We might put £28bn into tackling the climate emergency at some point in the future if the fiscal rule allows it – a fiscal rule which we decided on, which is not real and has no legal basis in anything, on the basis that we just think it makes us look a bit more credible to some people.'”
Then we have, from today’s Independent: “Scrap ‘petty and arbitrary’ fiscal rules and invest, top economist who advised Labour urges” (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-fiscal-rules-investment-jim-oneill-b2388449.html)
Looks like the penny is beginning to drop. How can we help dislodge it further?
I’ll keep on blogging
It is an pouting Labourites on Twitter, but I don’t care.
I’ve had a few back and forth’s with Jamie Driscoll on social media and he definitely “gets” MMT.
Unfortunately for him he has been a successful metro mayor, he is popular, he engages at street level with his electorate and he is unashamedly left wing. All of which made him anathema to Sir Kid Starver and his right wing apparatchicks in the Labour party bureaucracy
I have discussed MMT with him
O’Neill wants to give the OBR more power to oversee multiplier effect decisions on infrastructure projects. I wish he was joking: the OBR! How many times must it be said? Don’t let economists anywhere near concrete investment decision making. They are not adequately equipped to do it.
One of the factors I wanted to draw attention to was the Treasury itself.
To this day I am unsure – indeed very untrusting – of many of the institutions of Whitehall whom I suspect are the source of a lot of the economic and policy madness we see today.
To what extent is neo-liberalism embedded in the civil service? Is it six of one and half a dozen of the other? Is the civil service the continuity – holding the neo-liberal austerity line between governments?
Reading Matteis ‘ The Capital Order’ (2022), and Ralph G Hawtrey’s (1879 – 1975) ‘ treasury view’ that should be free from political democratic control or interference (see Chapter 6: Austerity, a British Story, pp 161- 204).
According to Hawtrey, the BoE was free to inflict austerity and god knows what else ‘without ever having to “explain”, “regret” or “apologise” ‘ (p. 204).
It feels for sure that we are being taken backwards but has the Hawtreyian view ever been exorcized in the Treasury and its stupid rules? It certainly seems that some old and bad ideas have endured.
Remember Thatcher’s first question whenever a senior appointment was being made in the civil service or wider public sector – “Is he (sic) one of us?”
As Chomsky explained to a befuddled Andrew Marr – if you didn’t believe in what you velieve you wouldn’t be sitting here now
Hawtrey is one of the often overlooked economists that Mehrling has brought back to the fore. It is a reminder of the desolation and waste wrought by Hayek and the Neoliberal economists that we have to rediscover the history of economics and wrest it from the claws of the barbarians.
I had not heard till recently about the successful Stop de Kindermoord (Stop the child murder) movement in the Netherlands. Richard could put his accountant’s hat on and work out how many votes Conservatives or Labour consider an acceptable return for killing a child. Hopefully Labour at least set their target number of votes higher. This is just the short term electoral gain from blocking schemes like ULEZ and LTNs. If climate catastrophe could lead to 1 billion deaths, a Conservative vote might kill two children, but a Labour vote only one.
Seriously, this is a question I would have loved someone to ask Andrew Bailey. How much death, ill-health, hunger and suffering is an acceptable price for achieving a 2% inflation target?
The Hawtreyian view Michael G would be that the BoE never apologises or regrets anything.
It is an outdated view about absolute power that still exists today backed by another stupid idea that people must suffer when they’ve had some good times apparently.
Perpetual good times are only worthy of the rich for some reason or other.
I first encountered Alan in the late 70s when he was in community work in Nottingham and I was volunteering at the Peoples Centre advice shop. Although he switched constituency to get elected (upsetting my lot in Broxtowe), I always thought his values wouldn’t fit with Blair’s. Its great to see he’s still influencing, from a green socialist position. One of those MPs who should’ve been a central figure in real politics for the citizens of UK, a chance Blair squandered despite a massive mandate.
He’s also one of those very rare people who’s been an MP and stayed a really nice person.
Caroline Lucas is another