Pete North

Editor of The Manifesto Project. Disliker of bullet points. Irredeemable plane spotter. Politically homeless.

[Mars Flexx @marsbros7]

Happiest bloke in the uk

[Collingwood 🇬🇧 @admcollingwood]

"83% of Britons think that wealthy donors use their money to influence government in their own interest." In that case, then, 83% of Briton are correct. But whose fault is that? Once upon a time, the Conservatives had nearly 3 million members. At the same time, Labour had half that plus all the union members, who got to vote through the union block, and some of whose union dues funded Labour. And these numbers were at a time when Britain's population was much smaller than it is now. Politics was a genuine mass participation process -- participation meaning more than showing up to vote once every five years and grumbling on Twitter in the intervening years.

The two main parties could therefore pretty much pay their way without needing greasy wideboys and shady oligarchs to fund wages, rents and campaigning. It also meant that the parties represented a broad spectrum of society. You'd have Labour members complaining about 'the left wing' in the party, for example, because it also had a large, Christian conservative wing. Now, the parties serve the interests of the few thousand fanatics who are still members and, most of all, the serve the interests of the people who keep them solvent.

Want to get big money out of politics? It's easy! You just need 4 million people paying 50 pence a week each to be a member of the Conservatives and 3 million to pay 50 pence a month to be a member of Labour.

(This is also, by the way, the best argument in favour of some form of PR: the party memberships are no longer large enough to serve as pre-election coalitions. We may therefore have to bite the bullet and move to a European system of post-election coalitions, much as I loathe and fear the very idea, and much as I fear the wrath of Peter Hitchens for suggesting such.)

There is a solution to this problem of party funding, the grip of the global hyper rich on British politics and the saprocratic rule of the two-party duopoly. A silver bullet if you will. I don't have time now, but will share if enough people suggest they're interested.

[Pete North @FUDdaily]

I'm trying to discern what Reform's actual plan is. I mainly have to go off what Danny Kruger has written because there nothing much else to go on. We know that the party intends to leave the ECHR. We've seen mixed messages as to what we are transitioning to and how that will work. We know that the party intends to walk away from the withdrawal agreement so that probably means collapsing the GFA and the TCA.

They say they will attempt to renegotiate but that won't happen, and where the GFA is concerned, the parties will not agree to anything because it's Northern Ireland where the parties would collapse the GFA is they were tasked with deciding what colour to paint bus stops.

That then raises the question of the Northern Irish boarder. Kruger thinks there are magical trusted trader schemes and "mutual recognition agreements", and that everyone's making a fuss over nothing. He's wrong. It probably forces the EU to cut Ireland out of the single market in goods and restore mainland checks. The EU will not be happy about this. Ireland will not be happy about this.

The net effect of all this is the collapse of all formal relations with the EU, and if we are to believe Danny Kruger, we'll be trading on WTO terms. This is the Brexit he always wanted. Random Reform supporting anon accounts will say this is absolutely fine and there's no problem, but I rather think this will bring a lot of serious technical problems, and will open up a low level trade war with the EU.

We do not know if Reform's plan is to revert to the original Brexiter plan of dropping all tariffs, and deleting any protections for the British farming sector, and there's no updated models about what would happen in this eventuality.

We know from @RobertJenrick's attempts at policy that the party will scrap all housing and welfare entitlements for non-Brits, along with a raft of regulatory reforms, but there's been no modelling of the real world political consequences. Suffice to say the autistic screeching in the media will be off the charts.

The main mitigation comes in the form of energy policy, where there are questions around how Reform would transition away from renewables. Regardless, it's going to take at least ten years to turn brown field sites into operational power stations, so we need to see some sort of interim plan.

In fact, just about every Reform proposal has seismic second order consequences, for which you need a credible and coherent plan that takes all of the technical and political fallout into account. That's a major problem for Reform because that kind of detail is far beyond their capabilities. To me, it looks a lot like they are biting off way more than they can chew, and will not be able to withstand the political and economic fallout. Arguably these are all very necessary measures, but knowing how you execute it is paramount.

This is where you need serious policy brains with an intimate understanding of the treaties and laws in play, and a realistic assessment of Britain's room for manoeuvre. To my knowledge, the British right tends not to produce such people. The technical ability has largely stayed with the Tory party (not that their plans are much more robust). In the words of Mike Ehrmantraut, "You know, I can foresee a lot of possible outcomes to this thing, and not a single one of them involves Miller time."

What it probably means is a government that walks into every ambush, has no real idea of what it is doing, and very rapidly finds itself far out of its technical depth, and no plan to cope with the political and legal fallout. To me it suggests a lame duck government within eighteen months, where the PM is forced to resign, only to be replaced by someone even less politically capable.

Not forgetting the full spectrum of opposition from academia, the civil service, local authorities, the devolved assemblies, Ireland, the EU, the media, the left, parts of the right, and dissenters from within their own party. Essentially, you can't look me in the eye and tell me with a straight face that this is a serious party with capable people.

The sad part is, to a very large extent, I want what they want. I am part of Reform's natural constituency even if I wouldn't vote for them. I just need to be convinced that this is a party that knows what it's doing - not least because the price of getting it wrong is incalculable. Losing after one term, having made a monumental pig's ear of it, means the right never takes power again. Can any of us afford that?

[Pete North @FUDdaily]

@vickanddave72 You will be the first to moan when the party you vote for crashes and burns because they couldn't be arsed to research their policies.

[Pete North @FUDdaily]

This is why I'm not voting. The message from all the parties on the right is "We know our policies are shit, but this is all we can be arsed with and you have no choice anyway so suck it up".

[CazB @CazB52]

@FUDdaily Well those who keep repeating they don’t trust Tories
Now have a choice
Labour
Or
The mess called Reform
Don’t trust Kemi to get things done
Your choice
But don’t moan about results it will be your fault

[ペガ @soyuyo1]

#可愛い飛行機でTLを染めよう

[Andrew Montford @aDissentient]

Here we go again...

[Skies-of-Glory @violetpilot1]

AC-47 tracer fire Vietnam 1966

[BlotterMonkey🐒 @BlotterMonkey]

Oh no

[Pete North @FUDdaily]

Having a deeper read of the Conservative welfare policy. As a piece of policy work, it's pretty good. It's better than Reform's effort because it stands on a better research base and isn't about performative cruelty. But the Tory capacity to produce decent policy isn't really in question. Their will to deliver, however, very much is.

Welfare is one of the most urgent are for reform, not least because that's where most of the spending is going, and there isn't much room to cut anything else. There is a clear economic and moral case for reform. But it is also one of the most politically difficult areas of policy. Any attempt at even minor revision is greeted with floods of sob stories, and the general rule when it comes to welfare reform is that the bolder the policy the bigger the u-turn.

This is especially problematic with the Tories in that there are too many wets in the ranks who will oppose their own party's reforms. They enter parliament with good intentions then quietly drop their more ambitious ideas and kick the problem into the long grass.

Then they say things that I simply do not believe. Their policy states "Our plans to remove non-EU foreign nationals from social housing will free up 230,000 homes for British citizens. This will reduce the pressure to build new social housing, and so the case for large surpluses is reduced. Our savings also account for offsetting the lost revenues to councils".

I think this is an essential policy that must be done, and it would be wildly popular with the right. But who honestly believes the Tories will do it? I haven't seen any real plan as to how they will do this. It will have grey areas and complications they haven't properly considered, and will probably drop the policy at the first hurdle.

The policy does not set out the precise legal mechanism or primary legislation that would terminate existing tenancies, how mixed households (e.g. one UK/EU partner, children, or people with refugee/humanitarian status) would be treated, timelines, notice periods, or eviction processes, or what happens to the people who lose the tenancy. There's a lot that can and will go wrong. Does anyone seriously think the Tories will send the bailiffs to drag foreigners out of their homes?

This is the sort of detail I want to see before I am convinced they're electable. I want to see that parties have actually through their proposal through so they do not encounter surprise problems that derail the whole agenda - which is what usually happens. Time and again the Tory party gets elected on the back of bold promises they have neither the technical ability or the will power to see through. Remember Dominic Raab's British Bill of Rights.

This is just as true of Reform too. Jenrick has authored his own welfare reform paper that raises more questions than it answers, and would cause a cascade of consequences for which they have no plan, or the technical knowledge to anticipate. The right is very easily impressed with the slop policies we get from the Tories and Reform, but they seldom withstand any serious probing, and if you ask a serious question you never get a serious answer. I'm not falling for it again.

[Elliot Eastwick’s World Famous Hot Sauce @WorldFamousHot1]

Wait till you see Peter Sutcliffe reverse park an 18 wheeler.

[THE TRUTH SCOPE @scopethetruth]

My dog 😍

[The Prodigy @the_prodigy]

Breathe - Released 30 years ago today

The Prodigy HQ

[David Turver @7Kiwi]

Energy security you say? There was close to zero wind generation from Friday to Sunday.

[Pete North @FUDdaily]

It's been interesting how the zoomer nationalists fell for it hook, line and sinker. Anyone who's been on this earth a bit longer knows that the Palestine cause is bullshit and that everything they say is fake. Just a shame Restore Britain made such utter cunts of themselves by sucking up to them.

[Eylon Levy @EylonALevy]

This is extraordinary.

Nick Fuentes on how becoming anti-Israel became a lucrative grift during the war.

People ask why we lost the information war.

We never stood a chance against this industry.

[David Turver @7Kiwi]

Now the wind has picked up we're back to low frequency alerts on the grid.

[National Crime Agency (NCA) @NCA_UK]

Every UK police force took part in #OpMachinize this October.

🏘️ 3,029 premises visited or raided
🚓 349 arrests
💸 £2.2 million cash seized

Criminals thought they could hide in plain sight on our high streets. Not anymore.

Read the full story ➡️ https://t.co/nWJU0gZIZu

[David Turver @7Kiwi]

If you enjoyed this thread, please like and share. You can sign up for free to read the full article on the link below (6/6):
https://t.co/BDzBliUGlM

[Joe Robertson MP @JoePJRobertson]

The Prime Minister's mask slipped on welfare benefits. He thinks PIP should serve as an income supplement during Labour’s cost of living crisis.

PIP is not means tested. It is supposed to be there to help people with disabilities meet genuine additional costs of living with that disability.

PIP has strayed well beyond that original purpose and the PM's income support claim at PMQs lays that bare.