Maybe we’re worried that opposing NPR would look anti-North. But though it’s understandably beloved of the profit-scenting construction lobby, and the Labour mayors it has captured – it is in fact a huge obstacle to giving the North the better transport it badly needs.
British government and politics have stopped working properly. But to run a place, you need to look as if you like it. The “everything is broken” view carries a risk of nihilism: if crapness is inevitable, why even try?
Draw up a proper plan which directly explains what we (and Labour) got wrong and what we will do differently to fix it. This will mean making difficult and unpopular changes. We have to find some way mitigating the deep antipathy towards us.
As with other stupid policies – such as the Islamophobia definition, lately rebranded “anti-Muslim hostility” – the government has embraced activist demands without thinking them through. The Hillsborough bill risks making most of Whitehall ungovernable.
London is, I think, a successful city. But it is less successful because of Khan. And the Tories have to accept that we, too, are partly to blame for this depressing state of affairs.
Even Labour has now realised, giving strikers everything they want constitutes an incitement, not a strategy. Here are some better ideas to handle the inevitable pushback.
What if a new leader – Wes Streeting, say – wins the premiership, then goes to the country in 2029, on a promise to rejoin the EU customs union, maybe even the single market? Doesn’t that give most of the left a cause they can get fired up about?
In the middle of East Falkland, thirty miles from the nearest tree, in a bleak moor where the wind never stops blowing, is a big RAF airbase with a runway for large jets, a hospital and a school, surrounded by thousands of acres of empty, undeveloped land.
My own experience of a BBC crisis makes me fairly sure the left is wrong to claim this latest one as a right-wing “coup.” The slowness and inadequacy of the BBC’s response to internal criticisms and the leak of the memo about them – was what caused Davie’s exit.
For many who would be great in government, pinning themselves to the political dartboard will never be attractive. If you developed spadding as a proper career path, it might tempt them.
The non-white residents are socially conservative, entrepreneurial, upwardly mobile grafters with strong families. Any sensible right-wing party should be trying to woo them, not make them feel like they’re not wanted. If integration matters this is one way to achieve it.
It’s that the most underrated ability in public life is the ability to think. Politicians have got to stop proposing things without thinking about them.
The thing with Andy Burnham is: I liked him as a person. I found him straightforward to deal with. Unlike, say, Sadiq Khan, he respected confidences and kept promises. But he’s not your guy for even slightly difficult decisions.
Put absolute effort into getting big policies right. Be clear about your objectives and how you will meet them. Work out its strengths and weaknesses. Predict and pre-empt lines of attack. Test messages, stroke stakeholders, refine the offer.
Jean-Claude Juncker, of all people, summed up the current state of politics: “We all know what to do. But we don’t know how to get reelected once we have done it.”