A Labour and Tory MP along with the former head of Homes England are heading up a new campaign to encourage housebuilding. The wonks are pushing hard on planning as Labour begins to falter…
The Representative Planning Group (RPG) is launching today and is chaired by Simon Dudley – former chairman of Homes England – and Labour MP for Northampton South Mike Reader. Prominent Tory backbencher Jack Rankin is also involved…
The project is attempting to convince councillors that more people are supportive of new building than is reflected in proposal responses by advocating “or new tools like representative surveys, citizens’ panels, and digital polling to inform decision-making — especially on contentious developments.” MPs themselves are often the first defence of NIMBYism…
See the well-padded advisory board below:
Continue reading “Labour and Tory MPs Launch Joint Housebuilding Campaign”
Wonk world shook up this week with the launch of newcomer Fix Britain, an initiative launched by former No10 Policy Unit chief Munira Mirza. Existing think tanks are watching closely…
The nerd transfer window is open with Matthew Patten hired from CSJ and Stephen Webb from Policy Exchange. Patten, a third sector heavyweight who was once a Brexit Party MEP, will be Chief Executive and Webb, a civil service veteran regarded as a leading expert in the failings of the immigration system, will be Director of Programmes. Timely given the salience of immigration policy…
Another eye-catching hire to the Fix Britain Advisory Board is Ben Southwood, the Adam Smith Institute alumnus who runs Works in Progress with Sam Bowman. Southwood is known to many on X as one of the brightest sparks among the tech-oriented wonks of the progress studies movement. Fix Britain joins the likes of Looking For Growth and Crush Crime in the race to be the highest impact new political project…
Reactions from Westminster’s wonks on the spending review are in, and the message is clear: huge tax hikes are coming in the Autumn Budget. Reeves confirmed that public spending will end up at 44.6% of GDP in 2028/29 – the biggest spending spree since World War Two. Labour is preparing to come back for more to pay for it…
The Jobs Foundation’s CEO Georgiana Bristol highlights the lack of action to alleviate the jobs crisis: “With 109,000 job losses announced in just the last month, there is the need for drastic action to make sure that we don’t enter a period of stagflation. The measures announced today must be paired with a raft of pro-business policies in the Autumn Budget, starting with a reversal of the Employer NICs increase and reform of the Employment Rights Bill.” Rayner’s union bill will further stifle any growth…
The Centre for Social Justice’s Joe Shalam blasted the government for “acting on borrowed time and money” warning that without radical action, Reeves “will not reunite our deeply divided nation” or prevent “the next big political earthquake.”
Brace for Autumn…
Multimillionaire Derek Webb has given Labour £1.3 million since the start of 2023 and he’s given £160,000 to the Social Market Foundation (SMF) – which describes itself as “independent”. Theo Bertram, an ex-spinner SpAd for Gordon Brown, now heads the SMF and advocates excise duty on gambling be doubled to 42%. Gordon Brown – yes, Gordon’s alive – wants to establish a new “poverty fund”. Which he hopes will take in another £9 billion from taxing us, banks, and gamblers even more…
Gordon’s policy paper was unsurprisingly backed enthusiastically by the Social Market Foundation. Do not be deceived into thinking that there is a genuine groundswell of approval for taxing punters, this is an anti-gambling campaign…
The SMF are leading the charge on taxing gambling, in fact they embrace nanny statism openly, advocating for taxes on any small joy which they see as a vice. Unfortunately as Rachel Reeves starts to run out of other people’s money to spend, she will be eagerly looking for new taxes…
Aveek Bhattachayra, formerly the SMF’s economist, transferred to the Treasury in March as Head of Excise. Coincidentally the Treasury has now begun a “consultation” on remote gambling. Labour is coming for your racing and online bingo…
Westminster’s wonks have weighed in on Starmer’s Immigration White Paper – and the reviews aren’t glowing. Free-market think tanks dismiss it as “light on solutions” and “too weak, too slow”, while left-leaning voices blast the cut to foreign care workers. Hardly a standing ovation…
Meanwhile the rate of small boat arrivals has doubled so far this year so, and as Guido’s analysis revealed earlier, Starmer’s EU deal will open up the UK to between three and four million extra EU citizens. ‘Island of strangers‘, anyone?
The media hive mind has seized on a report from the Tony Blair Institute this morning, which amusingly says net zero policies are “doomed to fail.” The paper has sent Labour, the Greens and the wider left into complete meltdown and Sir Tony has since rowed back under pressure from No 10…
What does Sir Tony suggest as an alternative to fossil fuel phase out? Basically a word salad outlining a wide array of exotic measures such as “underwater drones/robots for seagrass and mangrove seeding, with autonomous vehicles capable of planting thousands of seedlings per day” and “digital tools such as geospatial mapping, IoT-enabled monitoring and predictive analytics.” Righto…
You can tell that no journalists have actually read the report because they have missed the bit where it promotes a bonkers plan to reflect sunlight back into space:
“In the most extreme case, in which we fail to make significant progress on decarbonisation, the world may need to seriously consider solar radiation management (SRM), a technology generally considered a last resort for addressing global warming. One of the most radical and controversial forms of disruption, SRM involves the direct manipulation of the Earth’s climate system to counteract global warming through techniques aiming to reflect sunlight away or limit the radiation that reaches the Earth. While highly controversial, such technologies may become necessary if mitigation efforts fail to prevent catastrophic climate shifts.”
One method of ‘SRM’ proposed by some scientists is indeed putting giant mirrors into space. Tone has managed to make Ed Miliband look sane…
Former leader of the SNP in Westminster Ian Blackford told Times Radio why he believes Nicola Sturgeon’s claim that she spent no time in the kitchen and therefore didn’t see any of her husband’s purchases:
“She doesn’t have a passion for cooking.”