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Dr Phillip Lee Profile picture
Dr Phillip Lee
@DrPhillipLee
Former MP & Justice Minister. GP. Husband. Father to two beautiful daughters. For evidence-based policymaking. Support UK joining EU #PowerofSport #ActOnClimate
5 subscribers
May 7, 2022 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
This is right and has good advice for @UKLabour. It won’t be enough to get rid of this awful Government though and get the UK back on track. Here’s why…and what needs to happen next theguardian.com/commentisfree/… The #LocalElections2022 confirmed a permanent shift. Labour isn’t going to win back all of the ‘Red Wall’. London is increasingly politically & economically separate from the rest of the UK. Scotland is still SNP dominated. Opposition parties haven’t caught up & must change more
Feb 27, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
In 2010 I stood for the Energy & Climate Change Select Ctte. My contemporaries (many of whom are now in Cabinet) questioned why I wasn’t going for “something more important”. It said much about their ignorance of the strategic need for a UK energy policy independent of autocracy Prior to joining the committee, I knew very little about energy policy, but I thought it essential to try and get a basic understanding. Quite simply, energy = GDP. To confront and overcome Putin and his type, will require a reduction in our GDP. It did not need to be this way
Feb 5, 2022 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
We need to set the record straight. Theresa May and you made a historical contribution to the mess we’re living through now because you misjudged the politics. We won’t get anywhere with excuses & lies. Those who care about our country’s future must confront reality together I’m not saying anything new in this thread - just putting on record what I told you and May in 2018, including at the ministerial briefing you organised at No10 in April that year. A meeting to which you invited all junior ministers but only Guto Bebb & I turned up
Jan 23, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
One thing we can *all* start working on now is creating a better, genuine choice for us all at the next election and beyond…. The political parties have all started to select candidates. Take a look at them. If your local parties have done the usual thing of choosing candidates for blind loyalty, not competence, then find a way to create an alternative….
Jan 23, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Unsurprising. Williamson, Spencer etc are all part of the same mediocre, bullying, inept clique that no rational system or person would allow anywhere near public service. The fact that anyone was persuaded to elect them underscores the urgent need to change our party system This particular dysfunctional pit of the Tory Circus started at the Pimlico Tandoori in 2010. I know because I went a couple of times until I couldn’t take their narrow-minded, manipulative, selfish games any more. But that’s what got them promoted. Not ability or public service
Jan 23, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
This is dangerous myopia. Our security structures - collective and national - aren’t fit-for-purpose. They haven’t been for a long time. Our problem in the UK and other democracies is that not enough people engage until it’s too late. This needs to change to avoid future conflict For a more objective, rational appraisal of the situation, try @FrencLindley lindleyfrench.blogspot.com/2022/01/vsf-20…
Jan 13, 2022 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
Zac, where do I start? On COVID19:
1. Our death rate is a disgrace. Mainly caused by too many Govt decisions being made too late & a refusal to properly control the virus at our borders by introducing effective quarantine procedures (cf Japan). 1000s of Brits have died needlessly 2. Our vaccine uptake is comparable to similar countries. But we’ve paid more for many of our vaccines, mainly because of a Brexit-driven political decision to not participate in a European procurement programme. More cost & no ‘vaccine dividend’ as erroneously claimed by your PM
Aug 23, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
This @FT article quotes one of my singularly pointless former Tory colleagues. I do wish we’d stop electing and then bothering with these people who don’t follow their words through with actions. Our media can easily do better It’s not that I disagree with him. We do need European capability to act on our own in our own interests. It’s just that he didn’t do anything effective about it in 2018-19 when he had the chance and there’s nothing to suggest that he’s become any more worth listening to since
Aug 18, 2021 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
This political posturing makes me sad. The realities have been plain for years - I lost count of the conversations I had with parliamentary colleagues about geopolitics before the referendum in 2016. But those we put in power didn’t even try to see, understand, or act on them Let me give a couple of examples. Very few MPs grasped that US foreign policy interests had pivoted to the Pacific and the implications for relying solely on NATO/ US to guarantee our national security interests. Yet this change happened in Obama’s first term (when Biden was VP)
Jun 18, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
The #CheshamAndAmersham result is more than just a mid-term protest vote or one simply about local issues (HS2, planning). It’s a clear rejection of the insular nationalist policies & corrupt incompetence of the Tory Govt. Similar results are possible across the south of England This great result for @SarahGreenLD is part of a trend we detected in Wokingham in the 2019 GE. The scale of yesterday’s by-election win indicates the ‘fear of Corbyn’ factor was significant. It also confirms that to change the Govt at the next GE we’ll need an electoral alliance
May 26, 2021 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
In advance of Cummings select ctte appearance today it’s worth considering the following: 1) his protracted Twitter thread appears to be a “not me guv” defence. If he’s not partly responsible for the inept and deadly initial UK Govt response to the #COVID19 response, then who is? 2) A pandemic is classified as a Tier 1 national security risk. National security is a Cabinet Office area of responsibility. Hence Gove is the responsible senior minister. This may explain his current ‘submarine approach’ to media appearances on #COVID19. He needs questioning
Apr 12, 2021 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Thanks for getting back to me. That is a big question and I don’t have all the answers, but I’ll have a go at explaining a bit about where I stand....
The first thing to say is that I think our governance system is fundamentally unfit for the 21st century and needs a major reset This isn’t an issue for which there are quick fixes because that system (including politics, government, the Civil Service and the unwritten contract with the people) grows out of our society. That’s the beauty of our democracy and means it ought to self-correct. In theory.
Mar 30, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
A year on, it is so good to hear of global action to be more prepared for the next pandemic. International collaboration is key. I want Far East governments in the lead (Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, etc). They have shown us how it’s done.... A year on we have lost over 129,000 of our loved ones to #COVID19. Most of these deaths could have been avoided if we’d had competent Government. Japan (whose population is around double ours) lost around 9000 and Taiwan *just 10 people* TEN PEOPLE
Feb 7, 2021 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
How long will it take for the anger directed at those who warned of the impact of a hard Brexit to be directed instead at those who conned people into voting for it in the first place? No amount of “believing more in Britain” is going to change the future economic reality. What will change that reality is for those of us who once argued for a rethink on Brexit now to provide an actual option people can vote for.
Dec 27, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
This is a bad #Brexit deal done by bad people in a bad way. It doesn’t have the public’s explicit informed consent. It bears little relation to Vote Leave’s promises in 2016. I couldn’t vote for it Of course we must now move forward as a country and, like many, I am fed up with the Brexit process. But that makes it all the more important to call out what has happened: Britons have been misled by bad people into making the greatest strategic error in our modern history
Dec 6, 2020 • 25 tweets • 5 min read
This is pure revisionism, untrue and a dangerous, divisive reinvention of recent history that will stop our country from recovering. I was intimately involved in these events and will try to explain.... Let’s put aside for a moment the rights and wrongs of a ‘soft’ Brexit. (Wrong mainly because no one voted for it in the 2016 referendum; it literally wasn’t on the ballot paper.)
Nov 9, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
POST-BREXIT: Kupchan (Biden Foreign Policy Adviser) - “The bottom line is that Brexit is an act of self-isolation. Britain (is) no longer the bridge to Europe it (has) been. The UK is going to have to figure out how to make itself relevant at a time when it is inwardly focussed”. POST-SUEZ: Acheson (US Sec of State) - Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role. The attempt to play a separate power role — that is, a role apart from Europe, a role based on a ‘special relationship’ with the United States, a role based on being head of a...
May 10, 2020 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
This Govt is appallingly, consistently inept. By not taking obvious decisions in Jan/Feb it has already unnecessarily killed tens of thousands & is destroying our economy...now we’ve got this idiotic #StayAlert message. It is hard to stress enough: IT DIDN’T HAVE TO BE LIKE THIS No one with half a brain could read about #ExerciseCygnus (based on a relatively mild ‘flu for which a vaccine would have been available quickly) & *not* conclude that we were hideously unprepared for the more virulent and not-yet-treatable #COVID19 theguardian.com/world/2020/may…
Apr 16, 2020 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
This isn’t accurate. In January, what were our ventilator and testing capacities? When did @MattHancock first read the Exercise Cygnus report from 2016? How can he claim we were one of the best prepared? Compared to who? We knew of #COVID19 threat in January. Why decision delays? And here are a few other questions which should be asked at the #COVID19 briefing this afternoon - and repeatedly until we get honest and satisfactory answers.....
Mar 30, 2020 • 14 tweets • 6 min read
We could have been ready for #COVID19. That’s what makes me so angry about this Government’s mishandling of this pandemic....1/ In late 2016, I took part in a government exercise to test how we’d deal with a pandemic when I was at @MoJGovUK. It was called Ex Cygnus. @cabinetofficeuk was in charge of running it and acting on the conclusions @NickFerrariLBC lbc.co.uk/radio/presente… ...2/
May 27, 2019 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
On #Brexit, these #EUelections2019 show that, if a political party stands in the middle of the road, it gets squashed. That‘s what I predicted when I resigned from Government last year. And it’s what has happened to @Conservatives and @UKLabour So what next? If the purpose of government is to follow the will of the people (at any cost), the only politically viable Brexit is a hard one (WTO etc). But neither major political party will get a Westminster majority by delivering Hard Brexit without explicit public consent