Roger Greer

Director @PLMRHealthcomms & Group Head NI @PLMRLtd | was Director Gov Affairs @UK_ABHI, prev @NHSDigital, formerly policy, even more formerly politico

[𒊓𒅂𒁓𒐗𒐕𒐗 Steve the skeptic @sib313]

Yusuf proving that no amount of scientific evidence matters when a stupid populist political point can be extracted from a decision.

[Roger Greer @RogerGreerRG1]

@northumbriana The best AI can come up with in 10 seconds.

[Count Mysterioso🎗️ @MysteriosoX]

@rorysutherland @markchristie "Revealed preferences" got the economics Nobel, I think. What people *say* they'll do when there are brownie points in it and what they *actually* do when money's at stake are two very different things

[Roger Greer @RogerGreerRG1]

@_CallumAnderson 100% correct. #crosspartyconsensus

[Joshi Herrmann @joshi]

On the FT’s politics podcast, Stephen Bush nicely frames the question that every interviewer should ask Burnham and Streeting until we have an answer.

[Roger Greer @RogerGreerRG1]

@LeonEmirali @thedavidseaman Emiralinho.

[Roger Greer @RogerGreerRG1]

This whole thread is a perfect example of my favourite saying, @rorysutherland.

‘There are two things the NHS hates: the way things are, and change.’

[Rory Sutherland @rorysutherland]

@timricketts_ @DrLKVaughan I did caveat it heavily!

[Tom Calver @TomHCalver]

Amid all the talk of freezing the price of groceries, I looked at what goes into the cost of a pint of milk.

Two things jump out...

1/3

[Ross Mackinnon @RossMackinnonWB]

Reform in Local Government folks. Be warned

[Charlotte Pickles @ce_pickles]

& if you want to read about how to do these things, me, @jo3hill and Sean Eke covered it in 'Making the grade'

https://t.co/SSFhRxvdNP

[Charlotte Pickles @ce_pickles]

"I am proud to announce that for the first time ever, we are introducing performance-based pay progression for the senior civil service"

@darrenpjones has just laid a written ministerial statement announcing changes to SCS pay.

This is v good...🧵

[Rory Sutherland @rorysutherland]

Also the percentage of income people spend on food has been falling constantly for years. Housing, energy (and higher education) are the problem areas, not effing milk.

[Steven Swinford @Steven_Swinford]

Breaking:

Andrew Bailey, the governor of the Bank of England, suggests that price caps on essential goods in supermarkets are unsustainable

'The question you have to think through is are you doing it for some well grounded, temporary reason? If you start doing it as a matter of course you are artificially moving prices relative to costs. That's not a sustainable thing in the long run. It does need to be thought through'

Dr Swati Dhingra, a member of the Monetary Policy Committee, says lots of countries have tried price controls but they have not worked. 'The biggest problem is you're dampening the price signal, precisely what you want people to react to. As a market economy you can do that for a little bit but how long can you let it go on?

'I grew up with price controls on food all my life. That story to some degree was very successful in being able to cure famine and poverty. But at the same time it has ended up creating a highly distorted agricultural sector in India. Do it with a lot of caution and a lot of thinking behind what it is trying to target.'

[Alex Wickham @alexwickham]

EXCLUSIVE: Andy Burnham won’t commit to keeping Labour’s manifesto promises on tax and has opened the door to new tax rises if he becomes PM.

His decision to back the current fiscal rules wins him a reprieve from markets, but it limits his options to fund policies like council house-building. It raises the prospect of tax hikes.

Asked by Bloomberg if he is committed to Labour’s election manifesto pledges not to raise income tax, national insurance, VAT or corporation tax, his campaign declined to say so.

They also didn’t rule out new taxes on wealth.

Burnham’s spokesperson says he doesn’t want talk about tax policy during this by-election:

“Andy is fully focused on working hard for every vote in Makerfield so he can represent them in Parliament. Andy is not standing on a national manifesto at this election; he is standing to make a difference for the people of Makerfield and to bring the change he has delivered in Greater Manchester to the national stage.”

Burnham has recently called for the top rate of tax to be hiked to 50p and a council tax reevaluation to target the wealthy. “We have overtaxed labour and undertaxed wealth,” he said last year.

But former Jeremy Hunt SpAd Adam Smith says wealth taxes don’t raise sufficient revenue and it is inevitable Burnham will have to look at the big taxes if he is going to implement bolder policies.

[Rosie Beacon @BeaconRosie]

In the eternal absence of meritocracy in politics - if you were writing a job description for the most important policy jobs in government what would you include in it?

I would say essential technical knowledge (not skills) should include an advanced understanding of... 🧵

[Rosie Beacon @BeaconRosie]

Policy is a technical discipline - combining values economics evidence and delivery - we need to stop treating it as the slightly nerdy sibling of politics. Of course political instincts matter but tenure in a political party is not a substitute for expertise.

[Roger Greer @RogerGreerRG1]

Really proud to support this event and bring together so many colleagues and friends from the vascular sector.

[Vascular and Venous All-Party Parliamentary Group @VAPPG]

What’s happening in the Vascular Sector?

Well, quite a lot actually.

Today was the latest step in the journey to reforming the sector: our Annual Parliamentary Drop In.

Friends and colleagues from across the sector met with MPs and Peers to chat all things vascular.

[James Heale @JAHeale]

Makerfield CLP has the chance to do the funniest thing

[Roger Greer @RogerGreerRG1]

Wwwhhhattt? Wes? Legitimately doing politics in a leadership contest?

[Steven Swinford @Steven_Swinford]

EXCLUSIVE from @MaxKendix

Andy Burnham’s allies have accused Wes Streeting of trying to derail the mayor’s campaign for No 10 by reopening Labour’s Brexit battles and playing into the hands of Reform UK

After resigning as health secretary last week, this weekend Streeting called for Britain to rejoin the European Union, describing Brexit as a “catastrophic mistake”. He said: “Britain’s future lies with Europe, and one day back in the European Union.”

His intervention prompted a furious response from Burnham’s supporters, who said it was a deliberate attempt to elevate Brexit as an issue in the Leave-voting seat of Makerfield, which the mayor of Greater Manchester must win to contest the party leadership

One Burnham ally said: “Wes’s only hope at becoming the next leader is for Andy to lose the by-election. [Streeting’s] comments … are counterproductive to Labour winning this by-election. It’s very transparent.”

An MP close to Burnham said it was a “a roll of the dice” by Streeting because “he can see the writing is on the wall”. A friend of Burnham said Streeting was “clearly trying to create a dividing line.”

Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, said: “Open borders Burnham wants to give 500million people the right to move here without any thought on how this would affect schools, doctors and dentists

“It’s quite clear that this by-election is now a choice between Reform who want to stay outside the EU, control immigration and deport all illegals and Labour who want to rejoin the EU and open borders.”

A source close to Streeting defended his stance, saying that it was uncontroversial because Burnham had also backed rejoining the EU. “I thought they agreed on this,” the source said. “The problem is that we’re so worried that there might be people who disagree with us if we do something that we end up doing nothing.”

[James Yucel @JLYucel]

New substack on The Welfare Class: How the Next Government Can Sell Radical Welfare Reform.

- Twenty years of failed welfare reform. Every SW1 think tank has produced the same diagnosis. No one's bothered to attempt to sell it to the public.
- The left's most effective political manoeuvre of the last generation has been smuggling people who don't work into a category called 'the working class'. Every attempt at reform then gets prosecuted as a war on workers. Nothing changes. Everyone goes home.
- The blog argues this conflation should be broken. A new category is needed for what is currently hidden inside the working class label. The piece makes the case for what that category should be called and how to deploy it.
- The numbers underneath are now indefensible. A jobless household of five is doing materially better than the working family next door. The gap runs into tens of thousands.
- Two forces are making it worse simultaneously: a benefits system that outpays work, and a migration regime that hollows out the bottom of the labour market. Both have to be addressed. Neither can be addressed without the language to do so.
- Half the essay is a comms toolkit. How to coin the term. How to repeat it. How to pre-empt the rebuttals from the SW1 commentariat that have killed every previous attempt.
- Written for whoever runs the country next. Reform, Conservatives, Wes etc.
- Blog linked below