Conservative announcement on the "return" of National Service. At first glance this is a lot smaller, but also a lot more significant, than it first appears. Short thread...
The insignificance: it's billed as a choice of military service or volunteering. Yet the forces element is capped at 30,000 places (5% of all 18yos) in trades such as cyber, procurement and logistics. Perhaps worthy - but not the 50s-style mandatory infantry that voters may hope
The imv very signif bit: its funded by closing the Shared Prosperity Fund, which was the UK replacement for EU structural funds, in 2028 after only six years. UKSPF is a "central pillar" of "levelling up" (source: HMG).
UKSPF was also an element of the 2019 manifesto.. and retaining like-for-like EU funding was a key Vote Leave commitment.
Observation: option to shutter the UKSPF in favour of national service is an interesting glimpse into the party's thinking as to whether its core vote (and with it the 2019 coalition) is motivated by cultural or economic concerns.
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Thatcher and the supermarket. A short thread.
This week I visited a branch of Sainsbury’s in Finchley. It was typically depressing of the store these days: pretty scruffy, large gaps in the vegetable aisle and banners for discounts and low prices everywhere.
What makes it slightly historically notable is it was opened by Margaret Thatcher in 1987, as part of a new generation of supermarkets that flourished in her tenure: bigger, more opulent, with banks and restaurants, better quality and bigger ranges.
Whereupon she made this characteristically stiff, ideological speech to the staff: “The market economy isn't some theory.” Which points to an unwritten story: that all of Thatcherism can be told in the supermarket.
Looking forward to this. It's a fascinating book and a crystal clear distillation of the Team Barnier view for anyone reconstructing those years. A few highlights...
De Rynck is pretty open that the Frost deal was a rolling for the U.K. negotiators on several fronts and landed broadly where the EU side had wanted.
NB however - all bits underlined in red are areas Labour has promised to revisit and bag. Terms and conditions TBC.
News to me, at least. There was a full deal text done on Erasmus, and personally nixed “at the very last minute” by Johnson. A case of his personal decision to build a politically much narrower Brexit than could easily have been the case.
In a big new set of releases from the National Archives covering 1997-98 out today, there’s a particularly interesting “strategy” file from the early New Labour era — mostly memos between Blair, Powell, Mandelson and D Miliband.
What’s interesting for a young and outwardly optimistic govt, the overriding vibe is an itchiness and anxiety — about drift, decay, bad press, unpopularity. They feared falling down the gap of what Powell called the transition phase “post-euphoria, pre-delivery.”
A memo from Mandelson from Oct 97 sets the scene. Are they building a new Britain? will it “excite/bore/alarm mainstream voters”?
As this week's acting-provisional Bagehot, I wrote about the new Foreign Secretary and the Chatham House speech. It has been written off as vapid, and her as an empty vessel. I think that misses its significance in UK policy, and her ideological sincerity. economist.com/britain/2021/1…
Few thoughts. The speech didn't get great reviews: too facile, too boosterish. Yet many in the room also were struck by FSec's decent grip on questions (Iran, Balkans, etc). Better than Johnson or Raab. On panel appearances she is cautious and precise. Which is the real Truss?
The Thatcher trope is well-worn (the hair, the tank, the furs) - but she is, essentially, a Thatcherite, and once you look you spot the thumbprints everywhere. Struck by these little passages (Truss at CH, Thatcher at Guildhall in 89). Coincidence I'm told.
Raphael Marshall, an FCO fast streamer with three years experience, describes disarray as a skeleton staff of him and other junior staff were tasked with picking out Afghans for evacuation from a flood of 100k+ requests. Whole thing requires reading but esp his criticism of Raab
Marshall says the Prime Minister instructed the evacuation of the Nowzad pets, despite FCO deciding they were ineligible. Doing so endangered British troops and took up capacity that had been denied to Afghan evacuees nominated by cabinet ministers.
@IpsosMORI Such figures might sound incredible. This is the land of John Bull, bulldogs, beef and liberty.
Yet in March 2020, we know govt behavioural experts doubted Britons would tolerate a China-style lockdown. Sixteen months on, the public have stuck with it remarkably dutifully.
That has upended all sorts of assumptions about who Britons (or if you prefer, the English) are, and what they are prepared to do in a crisis. Or as one insider says: