BBC4 Analysis: Command and Control?

When Sajid Javid resigned as Chancellor of the Exchequer in February rather than accept Boris Johnson's reported demand that he dismiss his own team of special advisers and accept a new one drawn up in 10 Downing Street, many saw the episode as a crude attempt by the Prime Minister to wrest control of economic policy from the Treasury. But would such a reform necessarily be a bad thing?

Edward Stourton considers the case for economic policy being driven from the very top of government. If decision-making, in arguably the most important government department, took place on the prime minister's terms rather than having to be negotiated with a powerful colleague leading a vast bureaucracy, would that make for quicker and more streamlined decision-making that gave clearer direction to the government overall? And has in any case the time come to clip the wings of the Treasury which too often determines policy on narrowly financial grounds rather than properly allowing for the potential benefits of government spending - and which has recently signed off such alarmingly over-budget projects as HS2 and London's Crossrail?

In seeking answers to those questions, Edward speaks to the former Chancellors, Alistair Darling and Norman Lamont; to former Chief of Staff to Tony Blair in Downing Street, Jonathan Powell; to former Treasury minister, David Gauke; and and to ex-officials, including former top Treasury civil servant, Nic Macpherson.

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TLDR News: Johnson's 'Power Grab': The Cabinet Reshuffle Explained

Yesterday Number 10 announced some pretty major changes to the makeup of Johnson's Cabinet with the most significant change coming in the form of Javid's resignation. The former Chancellor of the Exchequer was replaced by Rishi Sunak, a chancellor some speculate will be more loyal to Johnson and Cumming's plans. Is this a standard reshuffle or an attempt by Johnson the gain greater control over Number 11.

The Guardian: How the right’s radical thinktanks reshaped the Conservative party

Libertarian thinktanks in the US, such as the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) have had this sort of close relationship with incoming Republican administrations for years, furnishing them with staff and readymade policies. Thinktanks – non-governmental organisations that research policies with the aim of shaping government – have long been influential in British politics, too, on both left and right, but the sheer number of connections between Johnson’s cabinet and ultra free market thinktanks was something new. In the period immediately before the Brexit referendum and in the years since, a stream of prominent British politicians and campaigners, including Johnson, Michael Gove, Nigel Farage and Arron Banks, have flown to the US to meet with thinktanks such as the AEI and the Heritage Foundation, often at the expense of those thinktanks, seeking out ideas, support and networking opportunities. Meanwhile, US thinktanks and their affiliates, which are largely funded by rightwing American billionaires and corporate donations, have teamed up with British politicians and London-based counterparts such as the IEA, the Legatum Institute and the Initiative for Free Trade, to help write detailed proposals for what the UK’s departure from the EU, and its future relationships with both the EU and the US, should look like, raising questions about foreign influence on British politics. [...]

One key Atlas strategy involves using the media to shape the political debate. By encouraging the creation of more and more thinktanks – a never-ending production line of new “institutes”, “centres” and “foundations”, whose acronyms blur into each other – the network can generate a “constant river of commentary” from its experts, says Andrew Simms, a veteran of environmental thinktanks who has often debated against members of Atlas-affiliated organisations. A predominantly rightwing British media have been happy to give them space. This gives the impression of widespread support for what may be minority or fringe points of view. The thinktanks’ contribution to the post-referendum Brexit debate was a turbo-charged version of what they have long done on issues such as tax and climate, where they have disputed the scientific consensus, argues Simms. “It’s a belief system. They go very ‘big picture’ to shift the tide of opinion.” [...]

We asked Oliver Letwin, the former Conservative minister who helped lead the Tory backbench rebellion against a no-deal Brexit, how influential he thought the free market thinktanks were. He said that occasionally they had shifted the political terrain, but mostly the dynamic worked the other way round. Earlier in his career, he recalled, he had commissioned some of the UK ones to write pamphlets – but only to justify what he had already decided to do: “One alights magpie-like on these, if they tend to your argument. But 95% of the reports they produce are just junk.” He doubted they had played much role in Brexit policy. Why, then, did he think so many Conservative politicians had made trips to the US thinktanks? He seemed baffled by this. “Do they? I have no idea.” [...]

“The clique that think about Europe and nothing else now dominate every aspect of the party,” said Margot James, the former Conservative digital and culture minister. “It’s just different to the one I joined.” When James entered parliament in 2010, she became a member of the Free Enterprise Group and went to IEA events, but eventually found the thinktank’s views too rigidly ideological. James now feels that a number of MPs have adopted the IEA’s ideas “lock, stock and barrel” and that Johnson had surrounded himself with “dogmatic small-state” conservatives. “Oh, there are people at No 10 who would honestly make your hair stand on end,” she said.

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The Guardian: 'It has got worse': Boris Johnson 'hamstrung' by rift with Sajid Javid

They said No 10 was becoming increasingly annoyed by what it regarded as Javid’s intransigence, and was sidelining him in favour of Rishi Sunak, the chief secretary to the Treasury, with departments being directed to talk to him rather than the chancellor.

Insiders said Javid was still without a chief media adviser after Sonia Khan was sacked by Johnson’s chief of staff, Dominic Cummings, and marched out of the building for maintaining contact with an associate of the previous chancellor Philip Hammond. [...]

The episode underlined simmering tensions over the summer between Downing Street and the Treasury. Javid was ordered by No 10 to scrap a planned speech on the economy, while Downing Street took the lead in announcing spending plans for health, police and prisons.

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The Guardian Longreads: Speed kills: are police chases out of control?

In the 1980s, Alpert was invited by the UK government to consult on the subject. He found “enormous similarities between Britain and America,” he recalled, recently. “Crazy police driving, serious injuries, deaths – and very little interest around the departments in exploring this further. It was seen as the natural thing, same as in the States. Bad guy runs, cop chases.” A sharp spike in fatalities at the end of the 1990s did lead to the IOPC (then under a different name; it has transitioned through several rebrands) bringing in a criminologist, David Best, to investigate accidents resulting from chases. Best came to the conclusion that standards varied wildly from district to district and that, in the main, officers were given a lot of leeway once the sirens were on and the suspects in flight. There seemed to be a received locker-room understanding: most chases turned out fine. “We’ve done a lot of work on this in America,” Alpert said, “where an amazing number of officers don’t wear a seatbelt. It’s called ‘phantom ninja’ [syndrome]. You’re inside the car with lights and sirens blaring and you think you’re immune and nothing bad can happen. But it can. It does.” [...]

Chase lots, or chase little. What mattered most, said Martin Cooper’s solicitor, Michael Oswald, was that police drivers were not only taught but incentivised to keep their heads. The report into the deaths of Rozanne and Makayah, sitting on the conference-room table in front of us, included findings by the IOPC “that two officers may have committed criminal offences both during and following the pursuit”. Martin and his family had been confused, then, to receive a letter from the CPS, agreeing that, yes, there were evidentiary grounds to bring charges against the officers; but there would be no such charges – “not in the public interest”. The phrase jarred with Diana. For the first time, sitting in the conference room, she spoke up, asking softly: “What are we?” [...]

Around this time, I met an off-duty coroner who, discussing the new ramming tactic, raised an eyebrow and asked: why not swear the police in as judge and jury too? “It’s wild west stuff.” Because what if a suspect was thrown off their bike (injured, killed) and later found to be innocent? This happened at least once, to another client of the Cooper family’s solicitor Michael Oswald. The client was under 18. The city did not tend to look fondly on young men on scooters just then. But he was guilty of no criminal offence when, riding around on a London A-road, he was rammed off his bike by a police officer. A barrister called Michael Etienne, a colleague of Oswald’s and a fellow member of an organisation called the Police Action Lawyers Group, told me he is profoundly uneasy about the changing flavour of policing. Etienne acknowledged that running thieves off their scooters probably was effective as a crime suppressor. “But so would be cutting off their hands.”

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TLDR News: What Johnson's Cabinet Reshuffle Mean For Brexit

On Thursday night, Boris Johnson selected his new cabinet in the biggest reshuffle in recent memory. Cabinet selections really indicate what kind of people the Prime Minister wants to surround themselves with, what kind of strategies they will be using. So in this video, we will be discussing who Johnson chose, and what this might indicate about his Brexit plans.

TLDR News: Tactical Voting in the Leadership Election

Throughout the Conservative leadership contest theirs been speculation that candidates have encouraged their supporters to vote tactically. With the final two candidates selected we look back over the process and examine if there really been tactical voting going on.

The Guardian Today in Focus: The Tories and their Islamophobia problem

The Conservative peer Sayeeda Warsi has been an outspoken critic of Islamophobia within her party. Last year the former party chair called on the Conservatives to launch a full independent inquiry into Islamophobia, warning the Tories were pursuing a politically damaging policy of denial about the problem in their own ranks.

The situation does not appear to have improved. Last month, 25 self-identifying party members were found to have posted anti-Muslim comments on Facebook, while a further 14 members were suspended for allegedly making Islamophobic comments after a string of abusive posts were uncovered on social media.

Anushka Asthana talks to Lady Warsi about why she believes the leadership are turning a blind eye to the problem, including their refusal to accept a new definition of Islamophobia agreed by Labour and the Liberal Democrats.

And: the Guardian’s media editor, Jim Waterson, on his discovery that a series of hugely influential Facebook advertising campaigns, appearing to be separate grassroots movements for a no-deal Brexit, are secretly overseen by employees of Sir Lynton Crosby’s lobbying company and a former adviser to Boris Johnson.

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The Guardian: 'Who let this happen?': students rediscover antisemitism on Auschwitz field trip

These were some of the images that 93 UK university students who this week visited the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau took home, along with a new understanding of the horrors of the Holocaust and a fresh commitment to countering antisemitism on campus.

They were on a government-funded day trip, organised by the Holocaust Educational Trust and the Union of Jewish Students, to take student leaders and senior staff from almost 50 universities to Auschwitz. The £144,000 grant was announced earlier this year by Sajid Javid, then communities minister. [...]

Other organisations are also considering taking people to the former death camp. Chelsea Football Club said last month it may send some of its supporters to Auschwitz to educate them about the potential consequences of racism and antisemitism. [...]

The students and staff will reconvene with trust educators next week for a follow-up seminar to discuss what they learned from the visit and its personal impact on them. Participants have agreed to become trust “ambassadors” in their universities to raise awareness of the Holocaust and challenge antisemitism and other forms of racism and prejudice.

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UnHerd: How rival extremisms are firing up Britain

Choudary’s role was much more significant, however, than simply that of a self-appointed provocateur: such was his radicalising influence that Choudary has been linked to 15 terrorist plots since 2000. His followers included Khuram Butt, who was part of the attack on London Bridge that killed eight people last year, and Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, the killers of Fusilier Lee Rigby.[...]

Yet while Choudary has been in prison, Robinson has experienced a fresh rush of celebrity among the alt-right in the US, for whom he has recently become something of a cause celebre. After Robinson was tried and convicted of contempt of court in May (he already had a conviction for the same offence from 2017) Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former advisor, later called him a “solid guy” and “the backbone of this country”. Bannon recently described Robinson “a movement in and of himself now. He represents the working class and channels a lot of the frustration of everyday, blue-collar Britons.” For Robinson’s defenders, his brushes with the law are explained away by an excess of passion in opposition to Islam – although Robinson often shifts his criticism, without apparent distinction, between Islamism, Islam and Muslims in general. [...]

If the intricacies of the UK justice system don’t much concern Robinson, the same goes for his US supporters, who include not just Bannon but Donald Trump Jr. Beyond Robinson and his anti-Islam stunts and rhetoric, too, there is an ominous rise in far Right terrorist activity: Sajid Javid, the Home Secretary, said last July that “the threat from extreme Right-wing terrorism is growing” with four extreme Right-wing plots disrupted since May 2017. The tiny but deeply nasty neo-Nazi organisation National Action has now been proscribed in the UK.  [...]

The tone of public debate is now one of permanent rancour: as it grows fiercer and more vituperative, many reasonable people are shrinking from open participation. It becomes harder, not easier, for British Muslims publicly to criticise aspects of Islamic fundamentalism, or for British Jews to criticise Israeli government policy – although they may do so privately – when those communities increasingly feel under broader attack from the Right or the Left. In such circumstances, voicing reservations about wrongs within the community is often seen as siding with the outsiders who are insulting the community: that is precisely what occurred over so many decades in Northern Ireland, with courageous exceptions.

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openDemocracy: 'Go Home?’ – five years on

It is five years this summer since the Home Office commissioned a poster van reading ‘In the country illegally? Go Home or Face arrest’ to drive through the streets of diverse areas of London, between 22 July and 22 August 2013. The vans episode was part of a wider campaign Operation Vaken. Responding to this as researchers, we kick-started a group research project that culminated in the publication of the book Go Home: The Politics of Immigration Controversies. [...]

Five years later, the vans are back in the news again. But this time, they’re being mentioned in relation to the ongoing Windrush scandal. The vans have become symbols of the cruelty and the whipping up of anti-immigrant sentiment which mark the hostile environment. The newspapers are filling up with the heart-breaking stories of Paulette Wilson, Anthony Bryan, Michael Braithwaite and others. They came to the UK as British citizens many years ago and have now found themselves on the wrong side of a system in which NHS staff, landlords, teachers and others are acting as proxy border agents. The term ‘hostile environment’ itself has now become toxic; the newly appointed Home Secretary Sajid Javid has replaced it with the euphemistic ‘compliant environment’. [...]

This shift happened very quickly; even as the news was breaking, PM Theresa May initially refused to discuss the situation of the Windrush generation with Caribbean diplomats. Is it because the hostile environment now touches a generation which was integral to the building of Britain’s post-war welfare state (and therefore more difficult to scapegoat as scroungers or job-stealers)? Is it because (to a limited extent) the Windrush has become memorialised as part of Britain’s official history – and related to this, Britain’s self-perception as fair and decent? Is it because taking away the rights of British citizens is unacceptable but taking away the rights of migrant workers, international students or refugees is perceived as a necessary evil to keep immigration under control? What is crucial is how much the shift in attitudes will be limited to compensation for the Windrush generation, or how much it will involve a wider critique of the hostile environment.[...]

Finally, the study we conducted revealed re/newed forms of community activism at play. People who had never been political or never marched, took to the streets and protested against the vans, the raids and the profiling being done both in London and throughout the UK. Such community-driven activism was a key element of the action against the Windrush scandal (for example, Wales Solidarity with the Windrush Generation and their Families, Bristol Solidarity with the Windrush Generation and their Families) and a UK Government petition for amnesty for anyone who was a minor that arrived in Britain between 1948 and 1971. The petition garnered 179,952 signatures, and the outcome of the subsequent debate was that “the Government is clear that an amnesty for this group is not required because these people do not require amnesty: they already have the right to remain here”.

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UnHerd: What’s killing the Conservatives?

That’s certainly the case for the UK’s market economy, which just isn’t working properly for a lot of the people in it. If you want to preserve markets, you have to make them work better. Sermons about the evils of socialism and the glories of capitalism are meaningless to most voters, who are more likely to be worried about how far their wages stretch each month and the persistent sense that the businesses which sell them things are out to rip them off. [...]

More than two years on from the EU referendum vote, there are still Conservatives intent on constructing the Leave vote as a demand for deregulation and the dismantlement of social and economic protections. The disconnect between ‘Singapore’ Brexiteers in London and Sunderland Leavers has always been striking, but has never jarred more than in reports that Sajid Javid is arguing in Cabinet that a no-deal Brexit should be followed by the suspension of employment rights and the auto-enrolment rules that have given three million people their first private pension savings. [...]

Some Conservatives insist that their party must reject the option of offering ‘Corbyn Lite’ positions on the economy. Yet that fails to differentiate between diagnosis and prescription. It’s possible to see merit in the Corbyn analysis of markets without endorsing the remedies he proposes. Indeed, I’d argue that enduring support for the Corbyn Labour Party makes it all the more important for Tories to offer their own answers to the questions he asks. [...]

Conservatives, so quick to warn against the problems of state monopoly, should be much keener to tackle the concentration of economic power in private hands: too many British consumer markets are dominated by a handful of big incumbents. Tories should support the challengers who would disrupt that dominance and deliver better for consumers. [...]

Sooner or later, Conservatives must walk back from nativism and accept that the widespread movement of people and demographic change are inevitable parts of modern life and modern Britain. Until the Conservative idea of Britain better matches the reality of Britain, they will always struggle to capture what Disraeli called the “spirit of conservation and optimism” they need to win decisively in this century.

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Financial Times: Sajid Javid: the man who would be prime minister

The FT's politics editor George Parker sketches a profile of Conservative politician Sajid Javid, who seemed set for the sack a year ago but is now thriving as home secretary and has become favourite to succeed Theresa May as UK prime minister.

Independent: Theresa May’s refusal to accept her responsibility for the Windrush scandal is shameful

If you create a hostile environment for illegal immigrants it means a presumption by officials against anyone with gaps in their documentation. It means making it hard for people who “are British”, as Ms May put it, to prove it, and it means preventing them from working or claiming benefits while they try to do so. 

Which is why we are disappointed by the prime minister’s refusal to countenance a change to the hostile environment policy in an interview with The Independent on her trip to the G7 summit in Canada. She refused three times to say it should change, arguing all that was required was it for to be carried out more carefully so people are not “mistakenly caught up”. [...]

Since the outcry over the Windrush cases, the Home Office has made the hostile environment less hostile. People whose attempts to confirm their status had been delayed and disbelieved for years suddenly found themselves issued with papers after short interviews – something a reasonable bureaucracy would have been capable of doing all along. 

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The Atlantic: Theresa May's Incredible Vanishing Government

Rudd didn’t resign over her office’s handling of the Windrush generation, nor did she resign because of the government’s deportation aims. Rather, she resigned because she had “inadvertently misled” lawmakers about the deportation targets—first by claiming they didn’t exist, and then by saying she wasn’t aware of their existence. Both apparently proved to be false—though Rudd claimed she did not see or approve targets for removal, a private letter she wrote to May about the targets in January 2017 refers to such targets directly.

As was the case with previous cabinet resignations, it wasn’t the scandal itself that proved to be the sackable offense—it was lying about it. Priti Patel, the former international development secretary, resigned in November after making false claims that the U.K.’s Foreign Office was aware of her undisclosed visits with Israeli officials, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during a family holiday (they weren’t). A month later, former first secretary of state Damien Green resigned because of “inaccurate and misleading”statements he made about the presence of pornography on his office computer. The remaining ministers to have left May’s cabinet include former Defense Secretary Michael Fallon, who resigned in November over allegations of sexual harassment, and former Northern Ireland Secretary James Brokenshire, who resigned in January for health reasons. [...]

Still, Javid’s appointment marks a major shift in other ways. Not only will he be the first ethnic minority to serve as Home Secretary, but he will also shake up the political balance of May’s cabinet: Though Javid, like his predecessor, voted to remain in the European Union, he is also a self-dubbed Euroskeptic and opposes the U.K. remaining in the EU’s customs union.

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