Sunak may be our new PM but it won’t solve our problems

It may be Sunak’s coronation as Tory Leader & PM tomorrow but doing the job Cameron, May, Johnson & Truss have all failed at remains difficult if not impossible.

This is because many Tory MPs (& voters for that matter) still believe in Cakism, that we can have left the EU & still have a market to export too, that we can slash taxes & still pay for a decent welfare state, NHS & education system, that we can be a sovereign country & ignore the international money markets.

The swivelled eyed loons & spivs of the EGG/ UKIP wing of the Parliamentary Conservative Party are still there and still a big enough group to make Sunak’s life as PM difficult.

He may be a better media performer than Truss (not very hard) & have a better grasp of financial reality than Johnson (also not hard) but many of Sunak’s now disaffected Johnson supporting backbenchers will still want him to cut taxes, still beleive in deregulation, still believe that Government is there to help them not us out here in the real world.

Political life will remain interesting & dramatic in the next view months as we continue to lurch from crisis to crisis. Only a General Election can lance the boil and allow a new Government to come in and begin to clean the mess of Augean Stables proportions that Brexit & Tory misrule have created.

Brexit has failed

It must by now be obvious to all but the most myopic of Leavers that Brexit has failed and that the UK is now a poorer, less influential country than it was before the 2016 Referendum.  Indeed, some are now using Brexit as slang for a self-inflicted disaster for which you take no ownership.

The “wonderful” trade deals with other countries that Johnson, Frost & others promised have failed to materialise and Brexit has made exporting to our neighbours cumbersome & bureaucratic so we need to remove these barriers. 

Also, one of the biggest barriers to growing the UK economy is that we lack people to work.  UK unemployment is at an historic low, so we need to bring immigrants in.  One of the biggest lies of the Brexit campaign was that Eastern Europeans (and many extended this to immigrants from further afield) were taking “British” jobs that should go to British people.  The lack of workers to fill vacancies in the care homes, in agriculture, in industry has shown that this claim simply wasn’t true and that in a country with a population getting older, we need immigrants to keep many parts of the country working and to contribute to the Exchequer through taxes.

Even worse, Brexit has polluted our politics.  The last 4 Conservative Leaders have lost office because of it.  Even though most of the country are now in favour of closer ties, even Rejoining, with the EU, the toxic effects of Brexit mean neither the Conservatives nor indeed Labour can admit that Brexit has failed.

The question now is how to deal with repairing the situation now. 

Obviously, Rejoining the EU would be the best way to start unpicking the damage but that is no longer in our control.  Yes, we could apply but until the EU is convinced that there will be no Brexit II, i.e., all our major Parties are for re-joining & that groups like ERG/Farage’s latest party/ the oligarchs who poisoned many against the EU no longer have any influence, they will not start negotiating seriously with us. This is before we start dealing with issues like adopting the Euro, joining Schengen, agreeing with Spain a solution for Gibraltar & many other issues.  Put simply, Rejoining won’t be easy, simple, or quick.

For now, we need to concentrate on getting back into the Single Market/Customs Union (SM/CU), including the free movement of workers, and rebuilding our relationship with the EU as a first step towards re-joining in the future.  Getting back into the SM/CU is vital to revitalise our domestic economy.   

I hope at the next General Election, there will be Parties who will stand up and say it as it is, Brexit has failed & we must integrate back into the Single Market.  This is the only way we can begin to repair the damage done to tour country by Brexit.

ERG – the toxic side of UK politics

Cameron failed as Prime Minister because he tried to appease the ERG/UKIP wing of his Conservative Party.

Theresa May failed because the ERG/UKIP wing of the Conservatives conspired against her and stopped her finding a sensible Brexit agreement.

Boris Johnson failed because he was personally immoral and needed the support of the ERG/UKIP wing of the Conservatives who deserted him when his lack of integrity (which they already knew about) became apparent to voters.

Liz Truss has surpassed all three in her failure (in just 4 weeks) because she has aligned herself with the ERG/UKIP wing of the Conservatives to the exclusion of others in her Party and followed them down the neo-liberal economic rabbit hole.

There is a common theme to the failures of the Conservatives in the last 7 years. The ERG/UKIP wing of the Conservatives is toxic not just to Conservative Prime Ministers & the Conservative Party but to the United Kingdom as a whole.

It is the ERG/UKIP Conservatives that are the “Coalition of Chaos”, it is their MPs that has worked against “Strong & Stable” government, they failed to deliver a “Oven Ready Brexit Agreement” (mainly because it wasn’t ready nor was it agreed) and now show they lack any kind of clear vision.

It is time for the the ERG/UKIP Conservative Party to go and for their MPs to realise that they have taken our proud country on a path to economic suicide.

A STEP in the right direction but not the answer to our current energy crisis

There has been much talk locally and nationally about the plans to build the experimental Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) plant here in Bassetlaw at the West Burton Power Stations site in investigate the possibility of developing a commercial Fusion Reactor to produce cheap sustainable electricity.

As someone who has followed the development of Fusion over the years, it has always held out the promise of being a safer alternative to Fission (the process used in our current Nuclear Power stations) and possible cheaper.  The problem is that up to now, the energy input need to create to conditions for Fusion has been far greater than the amounts of energy created.  For a long time we have been told that Fusion is the power source of the future and hopefully STEP will help us get there.

A word of caution though, even the Government’s own announcement about building STEP at West Burton says “STEP is expected to pave the way to the commercialisation of fusion and the potential development of a fleet of future plants around the world. UKAEA [UK Atomic Energy Authority], which carries out fusion energy research on behalf of the UK Government, is targeting first operations in the early 2040s.”.  So while the development is welcome, it will not help us deal with our current energy crisis and that need urgent action now, action that this Government is refusing to take.

While STEP was being given the go-ahead, another energy project at West Burton, one that could have seen cheap, clean electricity flowing into the grid within a couple of years was being blocked by this Government. 

While I am no great fan of covering fields with solar panels, there are many better places we can and should be putting them (factory roofs, over car parks, on public buildings as well as all new homes being built) but at a time when we need to get new energy sources online as quickly as possible, it seems perverse to block the West Burton solar project on what appears to be spurious grounds. 

There is no evidence that Solar Farms put high grade agricultural land out of use.  A report published earlier this year from Carbon Brief states “A wide range of crops, including tomatoes, basil and pasture grass, have been experimentally shown to have comparable yields in agrivoltaic systems as in conventional farming. On grazing lands, solar arrays increase the forage quality, the water and nutrient content of plant matter and reduce water demand, [Dr Seeta] Sistla says.”

We need to develop Fusion for the future but there is an urgent need to decrease our carbon footprint and produce cheaper energy as soon as possible both the deal with the immediate energy crisis we are facing and to counter the Climate Crisis that threatens to engulf us.  To put a possible long term solution ahead of a dealing with our current needs strikes me as being one of the most crazy decisions by this inept Government (and there is plenty of competition for that title).