I’ve always said I’m not very into poetry.

I’m sure that’s true, compared to some people. I don’t ‘get’ a lot of poetry and have always found it hard to memorise, compared to songs.1 I rarely pick up a book of poems to read.

But when I had children, it turned out there were a surprising number of poems I realised wanted to introduce them to. And that process, it turned out, made me read them with greater appreciation, revisiting old friends and sometimes discovering others, unknown, by familiar authors.

Below are twenty poems I return to, that for various reasons send a tingle down my spine.2 A short extract of each - from the beginning, middle or end - are included. I hope you enjoy.

In alphabetical order.

1. The Destruction of Sennacherib - Lord Byron

This was in the post that prompted mine - but how could I leave it out? One where the sheer beauty of the language causes shivers.3

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,

And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;

And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,

When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

…

And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,

And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;

And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,

Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

2. Duck’s Ditty - Kenneth Grahame

One of the rare ones I know by heart, I would recite to my children as babes, to get them to sleep. Its words conjure the world of the River Bank, with Mole, Rat, Otter, Badger and, of course, Toad.

Ducks’ tails, drakes’ tails,

Yellow feet a-quiver,

Yellow bills all out of sight

Busy in the river!

3. Excelsior - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I have a beautiful picture-book copy of Hiawatha’s Childhood which I love, and my children have also.4 Yet it is that ‘banner with that strange device’ which with its mystery has wormed itself into my brain and stuck there.

The shades of night were falling fast,

As through an Alpine village passed

A youth, who bore, ‘mid snow and ice,

A banner with the strange device,

Excelsior!

His brow was sad; his eye beneath,

Flashed like a falchion from its sheath,

And like a silver clarion rung

The accents of that unknown tongue,

Excelsior!

4. The Gods of the Copybook Headings - Rudyard Kipling

If is the classic choice, and it is indeed glorious. The Female of the Species is the funniest. Now Chil the Kite, Buddha at Kamakura and Recessional all have their case to make. But as I make my way through middle age, and look at the state of the world, it is increasingly The Gods of the Copybook Headings that return again and again.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man

There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.

That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,

And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins

When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,

As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,

The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

5. Jabberwocky - Lewis Carroll

The quintessential nonsense poem - and another I know by heart. As an aside, excellent French and German translations can be found in Hofstadter’s Le Ton Beau de Marot.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

6. The Jumblies - Edward Lear

How pleasant to know Mr Lear! His longer poems have always had greater appeal to me than his limericks - and again, aided perhaps by a gloriously illustrated compendium that both I and my children have enjoyed.5

Far and few, far and few,

Are the lands where the Jumblies live;

Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,

And they went to sea in a Sieve.

7. The King’s Breakfast - A. A. Milne

Beloved volume, packed full of beloved poems. How could I choose just one? But choose one I must, and there is really no other contender.

The Dairymaid
She curtsied,
And went and told
The Alderney:
"Don't forget the butter for
The Royal slice of bread."
The Alderney
Said sleepily:
"You'd better tell
His Majesty
That many people nowadays
Like marmalade
Instead."

8. The Lady of Shalott - Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Between this and The Charge of the Light Brigade it was a close thing, but ultimately this won out.6 Very long, and very beautiful.

Out flew the web and floated wide;

The mirror crack’d from side to side;

‘The curse is come upon me,’ cried

The Lady of Shalott.

9. Lepanto - G. K. Chesterton

I discovered Chesterton as an adult rather than a child - which was a glorious thing to discover! The Donkey packs a tremendous punch in its 16 lines, but there is something particularly wonderful about an epic poem about something that took place in (relatively) modern history, rather than ancient myth.7

Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard,

Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred,

Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall,

The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall,

The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung,

That once went singing southward when all the world was young,

In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid,

Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.

Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far,

Don John of Austria is going to the war,

10. The Listeners - Walter de la Mare

I can remember reading this as a young child and desperately wanting to know more than the few, haunting, lines of the poem reveal.

‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,

That I kept my word,’ he said.

Never the least stir made the listeners,

Though every word he spake

Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house

From the one man left awake:

Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,

And the sound of iron on stone,

And how the silence surged softly backward,

When the plunging hoofs were gone.

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These are not very useful numbers to know in daily life. But thanks to having done a physics degree, so embedded are they in my brain that I still remember them 20 years later, long after I’ve forgotten how to do a contour integral.

When reading the news - or doing policy work, or journalism - one will, however, frequently come across a bunch of numbers, often very large, that one has to put in context. Is £20 million a lot? How about £20 billion? How many schools are there, anyway?

What follows is a list of 50 basic facts to have at your finger tips that, if you know them2, will help you to make sense of the news and of public policy more broadly.

All figures have - deliberately - been rounded for ease of committing to memory. They are accurate enough to get a handle on something or - with the addition of an ‘about’ - to say on the radio, not to plug into precise calculations.

Population

1. The population of the UK is 70 million.

2. The population of England is 60 million.3

3. The population of the United States is 350 million.

4. The population of India is 1.5 billion

5. The population of the world is 8 billion.

6. London > Scotland > Wales > Northern Ireland.

Demography

7. Life expectancy is about 80 years.

8. Total Fertility Rate (children born per woman) is 1.4.

9. 1 in 6 of the population belongs to an ethnic minority – or 1 in 3 of children under 18.4

10. 1 in 5 of the population is aged 65 or over.

11. Net migration last year was 170,000.5

Economy

12. The GDP of the UK is £3 trillion.

13. 0.1% of GDP is £3 billion.6

14. National debt is 95% of GDP.

15. The deficit is 5% of GDP.

16. Tax as a share of GDP is 35% – 40%.7

17. Spending as a share of GDP is 40 – 45%.8

18. Median salary for a full time employee is £39,000.

19. Minimum wage is £12.71.

20. The state pension is £12,500 a year.

21. 35 million people are in employment – 80% of them in the private sector.

22. Unemployment stands at 5%.9

23. Prices have roughly doubled since 2000.

24. The richest 1% pay 25% of income tax; the richest 10% pay over half.

Public services

25. There are about 25,000 schools in England – with about five times as many primary schools as secondary schools.

26. There are 9 million pupils in school.

27. A quarter of these are eligible for Free School Meals.

28. About 6% of children are in private school; about 2% are home educated.10

29. About 1/3 of 18 year olds go straight to higher education – with over 40% going by aged 21.

30. There are around 200 hospitals with an A&E department in England.

31. The NHS waiting list has 7 million cases on it.11

32. The median time to wait for an elective treatment is 3 months.

33. Around 10 million crimes are committed each year.

34. There are approximately 100,000 people in prison.

35. On average, it takes a year between an offence being committed and a case concluding in the Crown Court.

Housing

36. There are 30 million households in the UK.

37. About 2/3 own their own home.

38. About 1 in 6 live in social housing.

39. The average house price in the UK is £250k - £350k.12

40. 200,000 – 300,000 houses are built each year.

Energy

41. Peak electricity demand is 45GW.

42. We get about:

· 30% from wind

· 25% from gas

· 10% from nuclear

· 15% imported

43. The energy bill for a typical household is £1500 - £2000 a year.

Public Spending

Of the £1,400 billion (£1.4 trillion) spent by Government each year, we spend:

44. £200 billion a year on the NHS.

45. £175 billion on pensions and pensioner benefits

46. £150 billion on working age benefits

47. £60 billion on schools

48. £40 billion on defence

49. £0.1 billion on MP salaries…

50. …and £110 billion on debt interest

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Simple to explain, it clearly communicated their values: what they stood for and who they were against.1 It was also massively popular, with even 2024 Tory voters being almost evenly split on the policy.2

Even better, the policy was absolute catnip for right-wing commentators, who simply couldn’t stop talking about it. These ranged from the comically unsympathetic Telegraph case studies, on the lines of, ‘Oh no, if this goes through we might have to give up one of our three annual ski holidays and trade in the second Ferrari for a Porsche’ to earnest analytical studies arguing that Labour had slightly overestimated the money it would raise.3

Whatever the genre of criticism, it served no purpose but to raise the salience of one of Labour’s most popular policies - plus the fact that every minute that Bridget Phillipson spent being asked about VAT on private schools was one in which she wasn’t being asked about her (non-existent) policy on tuition fees.

I deliberately avoided talking about this subject until it had happened - I had no wish to do Labour’s campaign work for them, and there was clearly no chance of averting it. But with the policy now in effect, it’s time to have a clear-eyed look at how the independent sector created an open goal for Labour - and how they could regain their lost support.

But how did it get that way?

On a purely personal basis, it’s notable that I, as a middle-class professional in the Home Counties, with a household income in the top 10% of the country and plenty of friends and acquaintances in similar situations, can think of just three families I know who are sending their children to private schools.4 Indeed, while I oppose the VAT policy, it’s out of principle - those parents are already paying twice for their education - rather than from any personal stake in the decision.

For that matter, while Phillipson’s VAT raid has now caused a rally round the flag effect, when I was a Tory SpAd, the interest in private schools amongst Conservative MPs was surprisingly low - certainly lower than it was in grammar schools, or faith schools. I’m not saying any of them were opposed to them, they just weren’t a big deal.5

So how did private schools so comprehensively lose the middle classes?

There are three principal reasons:

1. Fee inflation

2. Phasing out of full scholarships

3. Failure to combat university discrimination

1. Fee inflation

The IfS finds that average school fees have gone up, in real terms, 20% since 2010 and 55% since 2003. Longer term studies suggest that fees have gone up in nominal terms by 5% a year since the earlier ‘90s, meaning they’ve almost doubled in real terms since then.

This isn’t pure greed.6 Private schools are in competition with each other, which creates a natural arms race. And the large injection of state-school funding under New Labour, followed by the improvements in quality under the Conservatives, have meant stiffer competition from the (free) competition.

But to keep fees rising above inflation year-on-year, through weak growth and a cost of living crisis, was abject folly. With average fees standing at over £15,000 per pupil - plus extras7 - the days in which a mid-ranking civil servant, a good journalist, a clergyman or an MP could consider sending their children private are long gone - unless they have private means or a high-earning spouse.

Of course, it’s not that in the past all people in these would have sent their children private.8 But the fact that they could made all the difference: people in these roles would have seen private schools as a valuable component of their options, even if they never took it up - and, as such, valued them.9

Similarly, by raising their prices so high, private schools have made themselves irrelevant to the segment of people who might not quite be able to afford it - but hope they might be able to, some day. People can be optimistic about their future earning potential - but only up to a point.

By narrowing their clientele to bankers, city lawyers and accountants, private schools may have increased their revenue - but it turns out that broad-based support for an institution can’t be built on such a narrow base.

2. Phasing out full scholarships

Very few private schools these days offer full academic scholarships on a non-mean-tested basis. An informal survey of a dozen or so private schools found few offering more than a 25% fee remission. Full fee remission is now overwhelmingly confined to bursaries for pupils from low-income families.

Private schools made the shift from means-blind scholarships to means-tested bursaries at the behest of social mobility charities and campaigners. Regardless of the merits of the two options, what private schools failed to recognise is that there was no amount of bursaries they could offer that would appease these campaigners, or persuade them to stand by them against attacks.10

But by removing full scholarships for the middle classes, private schools made themselves irrelevant to a huge chunk of their potential customers. Particularly with the aforesaid increase in fees, a 25% reduction still leaves them unaffordable to most in the top half of the income spectrum. But the chance to win a full scholarship, if your child is bright enough? Ah, suddenly the school enters your landscape.11

A private school wouldn’t have to offer many scholarships to have a big impact on middle class awareness. We used to (just) live in the catchment area for Dame Alice Owen, a semi-selective state school that’s regularly ranked one of the best in the country. There was endless talk about people wondering if they should apply, if their children would get in, studying for the exam, tutoring for the exam - and this for a school that offered 65 academic places in a catchment area containing upwards of half a million people. The vast majority of people who talked about Dame Alice Owen never had children who went - but they felt they might, so it was part of their landscape.12

A few means-blind scholarships from a private school would have the same effect.13

There’s a section in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe after Aslan has offered his life in exchange for Edmund’s, where the White Witch says:

“Fool, did you think that by all this you would save the human traitor? Now I will kill you instead of him…but when you are dead, what will prevent me from killing him as well? And who will take him out of my hand then? Understand that you have given me Narnia forever, you have lost your own life and you have not saved his.”

Her Imperial Majesty Jadis, Queen of Narnia, Chatelaine of Cair Paravel, Empress of the Lone Islands, etc.

By switching out scholarships for bursaries, private schools lost those who might have supported them - but did not gain new friends.

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It is, of course, correct to say that the Ancient Greeks did not envisage her to look precisely like this. Homer describes her as ‘white-armed’, with other ancient writers similarly suggesting lighter colouring. But for anyone looking to precisely determine Helen of Troy’s ‘correct’ ethnicity, her semi-divine egg-born status should be a clue that they may be asking the wrong question.1

The Aegean of Greek mythology was far from an ethnically homogeneous arena, with the troops in defence of Troy coming from as far afield as Africa and the shores of the Black Sea - and other Greek adventurers ranging far afield, from Colchis to the Pillars of Hercules.

And while Helen was not black, there is at least one well-known Greek heroine who was canonically, explicitly, unambiguously black: Andromeda, daughter of Cassiopeia, bride of Perseus and Princess of Ethiopia.

Here’s how she was depicted in the 1981 film, Clash of the Titans.

And here’s how she was portrayed in the 2010 remake:

None of these casting choices matter - any more than it matters whether, when you go to see a production of Hamlet, he looks like an authentic Mediaeval Dane, or that Macbeth looks like an ethnically pure 11th century Scotsman.2 When it comes to Shakespeare or the great myths and epics, we’re not watching them for the realism, but for the archetypal stories and legends that have shaped our culture over the centuries.3

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If you want the canon to survive and thrive, you have to reckon with the fact that the UK and the US today are multiracial societies. A third of the children in the UK are non-white. Do you think Shakespeare and Homer are going to remain cultural pillars if you tell a third of the class they can never play Hamlet, or Odysseus, or Helen, or Juliet?

The same goes for other things. If we want things to stay the same, some things are going to have to change. That means, in most cases, colour-blind casting becoming the norm. Both Miss Honey and the Master of Jordan College were white in the books, but there is no problem with them being black in the recent film / TV series. A black primary school teacher, or a black Master of an Oxford College, do not in any way break our suspension of disbelief. Dune did it brilliantly, with the broader Imperial society being - as one would expect - multiracial - and the Fremen broadly looking plausible for people who’d lived thousands of years in a desert. We should be relaxed, in most cases, about ahistorical proportions of non-white people in depictions of the New Victorians.

But if we’re going to embrace this as a society, we also have to be honest about the small number of circumstances when it doesn’t work - and not gush, coo and suspend all judgement just because a production has used a non-white actor. The approach of some identitarians, in which casting becomes an arena in which ethnic minority actors can do no wrong, while arbitrary guardrails are placed around what white actors can do, won’t wash either.

If a show is going for high levels of strict historical realism, then that has to include race, if our suspension of belief is not to be shattered.4 Shogun got it right here, with the Japanese characters looking Japanese and the European actors looking European. And we shouldn’t be afraid to say Wolf Hall got it badly wrong in its second season.

The same goes for realistic biopics of historical characters5, particularly recent figures, or those where race was essential to their lives, such as Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King.6 (Theatre, as opposed to film and television, is and always has been far more flexible, and should remain so. The audience demand for verisimilitude is much lower).

And while I’ve praised some fantasy/sci-fi works such as Dune and His Dark Materials, the Wheel of Time did less well. Having Padan Fain and Siuan Sanche be black was fine,7 but for the Two Rivers, an isolated, rural area, to be highly multi-racial jarred. The characters from there are country bumpkins emerging into a much wider world;8 there’s a significant plot point about one of the characters looking as if he doesn’t come from there; and there’s even a story-arc in a later book in which the region takes in large numbers of immigrants and becomes more cosmopolitan! To compound it, having done the rest of the world with colour-blind casting, they then made Shienar homogeneously ethnically East Asian, a peculiar decision which made the previous incongruities stand out more.

Most importantly we need to stop the nonsense of calling out people for not being precisely ‘the right shade of black’, or Jasmine in Aladdin being Indian-origin rather than Arabic9, or a Jewish actress not being a good fit for a role that was canonically half-Mexican, half-Jewish.10 The idea that actors can only play someone with the same identity characteristics is nonsense and wrong - they’re actors, and that’s what they do: act.11 Most roles should be open to anyone, and where that’s not the case, what matters is avoiding suspension of disbelief for the audience.12

Ethnically gating the canon only serves the interests of the philistines who wish to tear it down. Those who are only too ready to declare great works ‘problematic’, or ‘Eurocentric’13; who speak of ‘decolonising’ the curriculum or the arts. There is a legion of such small-minded, small-souled, individuals, who have wormed their way into positions of influence in our schools, our universities, our government bodies and our cultural institutions.

But though they have had great success in seizing the commanding heights of our cultural establishment, the wreckers face one insuperable problem. New-fangled pap, selected for its ideological purity or the identity of its author, can’t hold a candle compared to the works the iconoclasts seek to denigrate.

There’s a reason why audiences still throng in their millions to see Shakespeare, why Hollywood has given a top director hundreds of millions of dollars to make a blockbuster, or why the remakes and retakes keep coming.

Natalie Haynes’ A Thousand Ships isn’t good only because she’s a great writer, but because she’s retelling, with both great faithfulness and originality, timeless myths that have been told again and again over two thousand years, such that most of us, going back generations, would have familiarity with.

Hamilton isn’t only good because Lin-Manuel Miranda is a musical genius, but because the ideals of the American Revolution are noble and inspirational, and the founding fathers, collectively, a set of brilliant, impassioned and heroic men with the courage to make their dreams a reality.14

These are songs to echo through the ages, sung and resung by voices anew.

I care about the Western canon not because it is necesarily better than any others, but because it is ours.15 Because it speaks timeless truths. Because old things that have endured should continue to do so. And because more than ever, in a society that is becoming more diverse, and buffeted by social and technological change, we need shared narratives, shared stories and shared culture that we can hold in common.

If you care about the canon, your problem shouldn’t be with those such as Nyong'o or Miranda who wish to seem themselves within it.16 We are all17 adoptive, not natal, heirs to the legacy of Greece and Rome, through the actions of those in the Renaissance and Enlightenment who chose to centre it.

Western Civilisation is an idea18, not an ethnicity - and it is open to all those who choose to embrace it.

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Hot on the heels of that thought comes the realisation of just how hard it is to actually inculcate these values - and hot on the heels of that comes the awareness of all the ways in which you yourself, as an adult, fail to live up to the practices you’ve just decided are the healthy and wholesome ways to live.1

So what are those traits?2 Well, academic ability and perseverance (or ‘grit’) may be amongst the most important for success, and social skills for making friends and forming relationships.3 But in terms of happiness, contentment may be at the top - for however much we have, or achieve, without contentment, we can always want more.

One of the earliest things we banned with Eldest was watching those awful videos of children unwrapping toys on YouTube. At the age of 3 or 4 he’d watched some at a friend’s house - and I vividly remember the following conversation, in which I told him that these videos were made by bad people,4 who were trying to make other people unhappy so that they could make money - and that no good could come of watching them, except discontentment and misery. The message went home and they’ve remained verboten for our family ever since.

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Speak to anyone who’s used a vet recently, and there’s a good chance you’ll hear them lament how much they had to pay. But what’s really causing the problem?

As a preamble, yes, the Competition and Markets Authority has recently completed an investigation which concluded there were some problems in areas such as transparency and competition. Various remedies are to be enacted, such as requiring practices to publish a comprehensive price list for standard services. These are good things to do - but as many vets have pointed out, it’s not going to cause prices to plummet.

The fact that some countries in Europe (with similar GDP/capita levels) have cheaper vet fees than us for similar procedures suggests that some of our regulation is likely to have driven up costs in order to obtain higher animal welfare standards / staff ratios / safety than they accept in other countries.1 Given this has been a feature of almost every area of British society - from house-building to childcare to industry - it would be remarkable if this was not the case. But again, while reversing this to lower prices, it’s not the crux of the problem.

Last year, we sadly had to make use of a vet, after a kitten we acquired sadly took ill. It had been a rescue kitten and, sadly, had congenital FIV,2 upon the heels of which came a host of other infections which ultimately carried it away at around six months old.

We had excellent care and found each of our interactions with the vets professional and dedicated. The prices for routine treatments - check-ups, antibiotics and the like - were perfectly reasonable. But overall, the process gave me a new insight into what the real problem is - and it’s not the fault of vets, of the market or of regulation.

We decided to get a blood test, which told us the full extent of the problems. At this point, we are offered an advanced treatment, which would cost £6,000 - £8,000 over several months involving regular (daily?) injections and similar. Over this period, the kitten would have been in considerable discomfort - and the chance of success was only 25%.

The vets didn’t pressure us, or try to guilt-trip us, and were entirely open about the costs and the chance of success. The issue is not their behaviour - it is that the treatment exists at all.

In our case, we declined. While of course one would do this for a human3, we are both of the view that pets are not people, and that this is not something we would do for a pet. But even so, it felt hard.

And our society encourages people to feel that way4 - and even if it did not, it is natural to love a pet, and for many it may be their primary source of companionship. We are all far removed from the rhythms of the farm and field. So it is understandable that many will choose to pay - or else feel guilty that they will not, or cannot. What of those for whom such a sum is not merely large, but the house deposit they’ve been saving up for years, or their only buffer for a rainy day, or who choose to go into debt? What of those who feel no choice in the moment but to pay - and who then regret what it has cost them?

The range, sophistication and complexity of the treatments available have expanded dramatically since the days of James Herriot - or even since the 1980s and 1990s. Veterinary medicine has advanced, just as human medicine has. Advanced drugs, blood tests, MRI scans and more. They exist - and they are not cheap, for animals any more than for humans.5

There is simply no good solution to this. To ban them would be perverse. Banning an effective treatment that could save an animal’s life, and that someone was willing to pay for? People who wished to, and could afford to, pay would understandably be outraged.

About all that can be done, if one is a pet owner, is to think about it in advance, and - if relevant - to discuss it with your partner. What do you think about such matters? Are you both on the same page? At least, this means that any decisions can be made with forethought, and with less agonising, than if confronting them for the first time in the heartache of the moment.

In the meantime, we can and should see if we can make the market work better, or if every bit of regulation is needed. Every little helps in bringing down prices at the margin. But it will not obviate the central cause: that veterinary medicine continues to advance.

Religious Freedom

A couple of months ago there was a row over Muslims celebrating Eid in Trafalgar square6, after an MP, Nick Timothy, described it as an ‘act of domination’. This was widely criticised by a wide range of people who accused him of singling out Muslims. Some of his defenders tried to muddy the waters, arguing that his criticism had not been based on Islam, but that the event had been ‘against British values’ because it had been gender segregated, or ‘exclusionary’; before Nick, helpfully, used a follow-up column to clarify that his critique had explicitly been based on ‘Islamic domination’.

I don’t intend to relitigate the issue, on which many column inches have already been expended. Rather, I’d like to note that the debate showed that many of both his critics and defenders appear to have a minimal understanding of what both religion, and religious freedom, really mean.

It was notable that the criticism of Timothy’s comments was not just unusually severe, but included many who do not usually care about religious freedom; indeed, some who on other occasions have criticised religious institutions such as faith schools, practices such as Halal/Kosher slaughter, or supported restrictions on religious expressions, such as buffers around abortion clinics. The issue for such people was not Muslims’ freedom to pray, but the singling out of Muslims as a specific religious group. The issue was discrimination and uneven treatment, not a concern for religious freedom.

This is, of course, a valid thing to be concerned about! But there are two implications.

• First, one should not mistake this as demonstrating any upswell of support for religious freedom more broadly. Some may, of course, hold both views. But to assume those criticising Timothy would be willing to actively defend religious practices, freedoms or institutions they disagree with - provided any prohibitions were applied impartially across all religions - would be a mistake.

• More significantly, those who see religion as essentially equivalent to skin colour have a sorely lacking understanding of religious faith. The real world is not Civilization IV, where all religions are identical, with just a different colour, emblem and religious building.7 Religions are different: and for those who take their faith seriously, will shape their morals, values, actions and lives. It is absolutely possible that a religion - or to be more precise, a manifestation of a religion8 - may have values and manifestations that are opposed to those of liberal democracy.9 By refusing to even see that Timothy’s specific criticisms are worthy of engaging with, too many of his critics reduce religion to the realm of window dressing.

But if that is his critics, the statements of some of his defenders are even more inimical to religious freedom.

The suggestion that ‘there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet’, in itself, is unacceptable in a public place, would seem to cause severe problems for both the first commandment and John 14:6, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’ I have certainly seen the latter outside many churches! The logical implication is that only polytheisms should be permitted to worship in Trafalgar Square.10

The defences that rest upon gender segregation being ‘against British values’ are even worse. There was at least one occasion when a person advancing this was flummoxed when it was pointed out that some Orthodox Jews worshipped in this way, and did he wish to ban them too? And what of Catholicism, in which only men can become priests? This is the same perversion of ‘British values’ that saw Ofsted repeatedly fail private Jewish primary schools for not teaching LGBT content.

A religious liberty that depends upon the religion conforming to all of the current secular society’s mores is a shallow form indeed. It leaves no space for any but the most ‘progressive’ religions in public life. If that’s the goal, say so - but don’t hide behind religious freedom.

Defending religious freedom doesn’t just mean standing up for happy celebrations of diversity, such as celebrating a festival in public. It means defending the right of people to do things you fundamentally disagree with and think are actively bad.11 There can be limits, of course - FGM would be an example of something beyond those limits for me - but if those limits are not well beyond what things that you personally think are good, the amount of real toleration you are displaying is zero.12

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Fractional Soul Trading

Selling your soul to the devil is a mug’s game. No matter how much money, power and sex you get, it’s not worth a lifetime of eternal torment.

So while Faust is a great story, the number of people willing to make such a deal will be highly limited. There is therefore a strong incentive for the devils to make such deals more enticing.

One option explored in literature13 is the concept of a get-out clause if one passes a test, or challenge. The sort of person who believes they can strike a good deal with the devil is probably also the sort of person who thinks they can beat this sort of test. But this is a bit complicated and not that scalable.

In a world in which deals with the devil exist and the devils are as portrayed - powerful, intelligent, evil, hungry for souls and incapable of breaking explicit deals - sooner or later, either the devils or the humans are going to invent fractional soul trading.

In fractional soul trading, rather than trading their soul, a person trades a fractional probability of their soul - for example 10% - in exchange for proportionally lesser rewards. Multiple deals over a lifetime would be possible. Upon death, with probability equal to the amount that is owned by the devil, the devil takes custody of that person’s soul; if not, it goes to its normal destination.14

While the expected value of such a deal is still negative infinity, for any given individual, it looks rather different. Yes, they have a 10% - or 5%, or 20% - chance of damnation, but a 90% chance of an improved life, with no negative consequences at all. That is a bargain that many people, sadly, would take.15

Different people might take different approaches. Some might trade 15% or 20% for something they really wanted, such as great wealth, or the perfect partner. Others might trade 1% every few years, for small but significant boosts throughout their career. Those who abjured from such deals would rapidly be left behind.

Unfortunately, this would rapidly become a Molochian situation. Once some begin participating in such pacts, the higher levels of success in politics, in business or the arts could not be obtained without it. It would be the doping scandal in cycling writ large. In any zero sum game, others would be forced to do the same - or abandon any hope of success. The fractions of a typical soul traded would gradually edge up until the probability became too much for people to stomach - and yet each person’s chance of success would be no better than before fractional soul trading was invented.

A good nation would, therefore, prohibit such deals.16 But one can equally see a darker fate. A nation that institutes a draft, in which draftees are forced into fractional soul trading for the good of the nation. Inevitably this would go beyond wealth and infrastructure, to success in military matters, continuing the Molochian arms-race on an international scale, fuelled by the unwilling souls of the partially damned.

A devil’s deal, indeed.

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I appreciate there a lot of things to subscribe to, so I’ve set the monthly fee at the Substack minimum of £3.50 - about the price of a cup of coffee,1 and rather less than a pint. For those who’d rather not pay, about half of my regular posts will continue to be free for everyone to read - as will the Forecasting Contest, Christmas Quiz and any reader surveys.

To say thank you to all my existing readers, I’ve also cut the price for this opening weekend. For those who take out an annual subscription by or before Sunday, it will be £25 - or 40% less than paying monthly.

Thank you, as always, for reading.

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Complimentary subscriptions

I’ve provided complimentary subscriptions to a small number of people, including family, close friends,2 current work colleagues, MPs and peers. If you’re in one of these categories and I’ve accidentally missed you out,3 please get in touch to let me know.4

If you have your own Substack with at least 1000 subscribers, I’m also happy to give you a complimentary subscription if you add me to your ‘Recommendations’ list.

Looking forward to continuing this blogging journey with you all, free or paid.

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My political views haven’t changed dramatically over the years. While I was much less politically engaged as a student, I would still have put myself on the right. But occasionally it’s worth looking back at some of the big things I’ve changed my mind on in politics - and what prompted me to do so.

Now, too many ‘changed my mind’ lists end up being, ‘once I believed in social democracy, but after much reflection I’ve realised I’m actually a democratic socialist’ or, ‘I used to support clause 32(a)(iii) of the Tax and Accountancy Act 1994, but now I don’t.’ And I could give you dozens of small shifts of that nature.

So the five items below are all ones where (a) they’re genuinely big issues; and (b) I’ve properly changed my mind; a 180 degree turn1 taking me from one side of the argument to another.

They are, in no particular order:2

1. The Iraq War

2. Raising income tax thresholds

3. French/Welsh style cultural protection

4. Lifting student number caps

5. Public Sector Pensions

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1. The Iraq War

A classic one first: like around half of the population, I supported the war at the time, whereas now I think it was a mistake.3

Why did I support it? I believed the Government that Saddam Hussein either had, or was close to, obtaining weapons of mass destruction4 - and Saddam was clearly a bad guy, meaning I thought Iraq would be better off with him gone. The interventions in Kosovo and (as it seemed at the time) Afghanistan made foreign interventions look easy. I underestimated the challenges of nation building. And I didn’t (and still don’t) think that the consent of Russia and China makes a difference to whether or not a war is moral.

On an emotional level, I was probably irritated by the casual anti-Americanism and general lefty-ness of many of my fellow students,5 meaning a level of contrariness may have shaped my position.

My views have changed for much the same reason as everyone else’s. There were no WMDs, nation-building was hard, the cost was huge and the number of allied and Iraqi deaths, over the years, was immense. It squandered the good will of 9/11 and fractured the Western coalition that had gone into Afghanistan - and undoubtedly created the power vacuum which first enabled ISIS to flourish and strengthened Iran, both of which have caused as many problems down the line as Saddam did.6

2. Raising income tax thresholds

When the Coalition Government set out to raise the income tax threshold from c. £6,500 to £10,000 I was a big supporter. Although it was originally a Lib Dem policy, it was one I thought fitted fully with Conservative values.

It helped to make work pay - serving justice and strengthening the incentive to come off benefits. It was a tax cut, focused on the working poor who needed it most - and yet was universal, in that everyone benefited. I also felt the idea that we should tax low paid people, only to give a bunch of that money back via benefits, seemed pointless and inefficient: why should the government take with one hand and give back with the other?

Yet with hindsight, this was a mistake: a clear move away from the Lawsonian principle that taxation should be broad-based with low rates; i.e. that most people should contribute to some extent.7 Even if some of the money is ultimately given back, it would be better to have more people feeling they are contributing through tax, in order to maintain a stronger constituency for lower taxes.8

Following the reforms, more than 40% of adults were not paying any income tax at all. This is now down to just over a third - a much healthier state of affairs, and it is no coincidence that the pendulum on tax cuts vs tax rises has swung back as more people are dragged into the tax system. As someone who believes high taxes are economically damaging9, a broader base so that more people can directly feel the impact of higher public spending would be both beneficial and fairer.

To that extent, the recent freezes to the income tax threshold are a good thing. Of course, I’d have preferred them to be accompanied by a cut in the base rate of income tax (or, better yet, National Insurance10) alongside corresponding cuts to public spending. But raising the thresholds above inflation was a mistake - and restoring high-thresholds should not be a priority of a future tax-cutting government.

3. French/Welsh style cultural protection

I used to scoff at the way the French had language quotas for cultural preservation on the radio, or the Welsh government’s policy of relentlessly promoting Welshness via language, culture and history. Haha, how weak the French must think their culture is, to need such protections, I thought. Us in Britain have no need of such foolish things, as our culture is so great.11

But the reality is that any nation that wishes to survive as a nation needs to shore up its identity - which means an active, deliberate and ongoing programme of nation-building and cultural support. It is one of the most basic tests of whether you are a serious nation12 - and we can see that every nation (or similar) that is serious about its identity does this, whether it is small (Wales, Scotland) or large and powerful (the EU13, the US, China). Some in Britain mutter about North Korea every time this is suggested, but the truth is we have multiple democratic examples right on our doorstep.14

Even in Britain we used to do this - look at the Victorians! The idea we ‘don't do flags’ is a modern myth, dating to around the 60s and 70s, and perhaps one that was convenient for both those who regretted the loss of Empire, and those who were ashamed of its existence, to rally round.

In today's Britain - or rather England - we've moved from complacency to sabotage, with most of the institutions that should be at the forefront of maintaining our sense of self as a nation more interested in undermining it. Schools are more focused on highlighting areas of national shame rather than pride, while universities and museums openly adopt the anti-British, anti-Western ideology of ‘decolonisation’ to reorder their curricula and collections. Rather than the series it used to, such as Simon Schama's ‘A History of Britain’, the BBC chooses to commission David Olusoga's relentlessly anti-British ‘Empire’.15

This is not something that has public support. When polled, people - across every ethnic group - repeatedly show strong net agreement with statements such as ‘Britain, throughout its history, has been a force for good in the world’ or that ‘young people who grow up in Britain should be taught to be proud of Britain and its history.’ The approach taken by our schools, universities and museums has been a top-down cultural revolution, imposed by a small minority of the educated elites.16

And yet we can see the results of this relentless campaign of negativity in the attitude of young people, with only 41% of 18-27 year olds expressing pride in their country today, compared to 80% twenty years ago.17

Unlike the French and Welsh, our national language doesn't need protecting. But every publicly funded school and university, every publicly funded museum, and the BBC, should have an underlying duty to promote pride in Britain's history, heritage and culture.18 This doesn’t mean fabricating events, or banning the teaching of slavery. But it means an overall lens that is steadfastly dedicated towards pride, not shame. Again we don't have to look far to find an example of where this is done well. Visit Edinburgh Castle. They don't conceal that the English took Edinburgh at one point. But pride in Scotland oozes from every stone, along with a clear sense of satisfaction for every time they sent the English packing. And that - in Edinburgh - is exactly how it should be.

The biggest threat to Britain's continued survival, qua Britain, is not Russia, or China, or the EU, or Trump, or any external threat. It is simply that the British people give up any sense that Britain is something that is worth preserving, as an independent and united nation.

4. Lifting student number caps

You’ve seen me write about university over-expansion before, such as here, here and here. But believe it or not, when Willetts first said he was going to lift the caps on how many students each university could recruit, I thought it was a good idea.

Essentially I bought the argument that, ‘If Manchester wants to recruit more students, and more students want to go to Manchester, why should the state stop them?’ I believed that choice could be a powerful driver of quality - as it has been in schools, and in the private sector. And although I thought too many people were going, the numbers had been steadily increasing even with the caps, so I didn’t see this as a huge deal breaker.

In reality, what seemed like nice logic at the top of the sector had disastrous consequences. At the bottom end, thanks to no effective quality and standards oversight,19 we saw a huge proliferation of low quality courses, including in business studies and franchised providers, amongst other things. Higher tariff universities expanded rapidly, lowering their entry standards and degree standards to do so - all the while inflating grades, reducing staff/student ratios and over-crowding accommodation and lecture theatres. This in turn put yet more pressure on mid- and low- tariff providers, who faced further pressure to drop standards to recruit students, or else lay off staff.

Student choice also proved a poor driver of quality. In schools, strong external oversight and externally set exams provide robust information that parents can use to judge which schools are best. At university level, institutional autonomy meant it was all too easy for institutions to inflate grades or to dumb down content to inflate their National Student Survey results to climb the league tables. Removing the caps - alongside moving to an almost entirely fee-funded model - meant Government lost almost all influence on issues such as which courses should grow, regional provision or maintaining financial stability.

For some, that would have been a feature, not a bug. But we didn’t see the competition on price or quality that was promised. Instead, rather than competing on quality - as they used to - many universities chose to compete on size instead, with low interest rates fuelling an unsustainable splurge into facilities and infrastructure to attract new students, leaving debts that have come back to bite as interest rates rose.

Although student numbers rose when the caps had been in place, I also underestimated how much harder removing the caps would make it for government to put the genie back in the bottle. Rather than simply dialing the existing control mechanism into reverse, a whole new control mechanism would need to be added - a much harder political ask.

However, regardless of the issue of how many people should go to university, removing the caps was a disaster - as, increasingly, people who disagree with me about the ‘how many?’ question are also saying. The ‘market’ does not function in HE, it is a quasi market, backed by taxpayer funding, that has unleashed all the worst elements of competition - instability, reduction in standards and investment in wasteful conspicuous signalling - with none of the benefits, such as improved quality or lower costs. Regardless of whether you think more or fewer people should be going to university, institutional level caps need to be restored.

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5. Public Sector Pensions

When I was in the civil service it seemed both right and proper that I should have an excellent defined benefit pension. After all, this was an appropriate reward for our lower salaries - and likely outweighed by the large bonuses and stock options enjoyed by our counterparts in the private sector. I felt this strongly: the one time I went on strike was due to pension changes.20

The arguments that final salary schemes were unaffordable I discounted, or rather felt it was artificially created, blaming it on Brown’s tax raid on pension fund dividends. The other thing that struck me as unfair about the defined contribution model was the degree of luck that surrounded a person’s final pension. Particularly when the requirement to buy an annuity was in place, two people retiring just a year apart with the same pension pot might have annual pensions 20% different in size.21 Surely pooling this sort of risk was exactly what Government should do - in fact, could it not encourage this sort of risk-sharing in the private sector, perhaps backed by large insurance firms?

I might have accepted my initial pension - a ridiculously generous final salary scheme accruing at 1/60 per year and takeable in full from 6022 - was a little lavish, but remained strongly in favour of a defined benefit scheme.

A lot of these things are partly true. Brown’s tax raid did have an impact, there was an unfairness regarding the timing of annuities23, and many private sector workers do get benefits - whether shares, bonuses, private health care or staff discounts - outside of their headline salary that the ‘what about the pension?’ crowd ignore.

But it’s pretty clear that overall I was being biased by my own employment.24 Public sector pensions are, and remain, unreasonably high. Including bonuses, public sector pay is only 5% lower than the private sector - which cannot justify the disparity of 27% public vs 6% private average employer contribution into the pension.

Plus, of course, the public sector is more advantageous to employees in other ways, including greater job security, better terms and conditions (such as sick pay or maternity pay) and - at least for office based jobs - more working from home.25

Even if one did think the public sector (or parts of the public sector) should be paid more - perhaps to recruit and retain better staff - then having such a high proportion of total reward devoted to pension contributions would not be the way to do it.26 Employees notoriously undervalue their pension, and for retention and recruitment purposes it would actually be better to give a less generous pension and put more of that funding into increasing headline salaries. This is true whether we’re discussing getting more physics teachers to work in London, or compensating the very highest echelons (the only area where pay really does significantly lag the private sector equivalents) better.

A defined contribution funded pension scheme, with a standardised employer contribution of 10% and an employee contribution of 5%, would be much fairer. This aligns more closely with the best private sector schemes rather than the average, compensates for the 5% lower salary, and the total proportion of salary being invested into an employee’s pension, at 15%, is above the 12% recommended by Pensions UK for a suitable retirement.27 It would still be a good pension - just not an excessive one.

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Lessons learned

So is there a common theme?

There isn’t an obvious directionality: in some I’ve shifted to the right, in others to the left.28 And they are on both economic and cultural matters.

There’s definitely a case that in some cases I was biased - either because the system personally benefitted me (public sector pensions) or played into my prejudices (the English being better than the French) - or to be more credible of ideas if they were coming from people I agreed with on other things.

There’s perhaps another commonality on putting too much confidence in theoretical models of how something should work - the power of choice, nation building - and not enough into how things could go wrong, or how the incentives might play out differently in the real world to in theory. These often look obvious in hindsight, but are hard to spot in advance.

Overall, beware of bias, beware of sympathy/antipathy, and pay more attention to second-order effects as well as theory aren’t bad lessons to take away - even if they can be easier said than done!

26

Other peculiarities of public sector pension schemes include the fact that they vary so much between different parts of the public sector, for historical rather than economic or market conditions, or the fact that employee contribution rates can be relatively high (which is causing an increasing minority to opt-out altogether) and, in a weird ‘progressive’ way, get significantly higher as you get paid more - which can cause someone to see their take-home pay actually decrease when they get a pay-rise.

As someone who has worked through multiple changes of minister and Secretary of State, I’ve seen first hand how, after a transition - even within the same government - policies the civil service doesn’t like are quietly deprioritised or recommended for termination, while those it favours are presented again and again, until a minister can be found who will agree to take them forward.

So it was no surprise to see, despite having played a part in blocking them in 2021,2 the new School Food Standards emerge this week, like a dead rat the cat refuses to stop bringing in, just as I had seen them in draft, five years before.

As if designed by a committee of health food aficionados, to suck all the pleasure of eating from the next generation3, the proposed new rules are full of killjoy sentences such as ‘Fried breads, pastries and croissants are not permitted’, ‘Restricting the use of cheese as a main ingredient,’ ‘Once a week fruit to be the only available dessert option in primary schools’ and ‘Allowing only plain water, semi-skimmed or skimmed milk, lactose free milk and some plant-based drinks in primary and secondary schools.’

The more one reads it, the more depressed one gets:

For drinks:

For whole-grain starch:

Cheese is in the firing line:

As are meatballs, sausages and bacon:4

Traditional puddings such as crumbles, jam roly-poly and syrup sponge are almost completely eliminated - reduced to just once a week:

The Government’s announcement is supported - but of course it is! - by a host of charities, celebrities and assorted do-gooders. And quite possibly it polls well, if asked in the right way, to a population with dim memories of the Jamie Oliver ‘turkey twizzlers’ campaign from 2005. But in the real world, was this at the top of anyone’s priority list? In a world where the cost of living and the state of public services regularly top every poll and focus group,5 across voters from all parties, ages and locations, why do this?6

This is death by 1000 cuts, a never-ending stream of regulations that impoverish business, households and the public sector alike. It is not just the hundred million pounds bat tunnels and fish discos; not just the HS2 bridges to nowhere. It is the £1.8 billion cost of Martyn’s Law, requiring all premises such as church halls and larger pubs with over 100 capacity to take steps to mitigate the impact of terrorism; the £2.7 billion cost of requiring new higher buildings to have second staircases - both policies the Government’s own impact assessments assess to have minimal benefits.

It is the plethora of regulations which mean childcare costs have increased by 80% in real terms since 2000, why ever-longer regulatory codes choke our financial services, and why 20mph zones proliferate across our towns and villages. It is why Eldest’s year 8 school trip to France costs 33% more for 20% less time than mine did 30 years ago7 and behind the increasing requirements heaped upon pubs, restaurants, small businesses and charities. Nor is the public sector immune. It is why schools which used to have a couple of admin staff now have admin blocks, why the NHS needs more midwives to deliver fewer babies and why everything, from reservoirs to prisons, takes longer and costs more.

I am not saying any of these are unpopular in themselves - on the contrary, most are brought in to cheers and any attempts at abolition are met with howls of outcry.8 The British public loves banning things. Very few of these rules are entirely stupid, or have no benefit at all. But in aggregate they are immiserating, making life more expensive, less convenient and less colourful. The British people are facing the revealed consequence of their own actions.

What is more, those who push these regulations will never be satisfied. The school food standards were updated shortly after, and as a direct result of, Jamie Oliver’s campaign, updated again in 2014, with various smaller amendments since then. But still they cry for more. Whether it is alcohol, road safety, childcare, hygiene, health and safety or food, the ratchet only goes in one direction.9

As C. S. Lewis wrote:

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth.”

C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock

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This stuff makes me despair far more than major laws I disagree with, such as the Employment Rights Act. While the latter is individually more damaging, it is at least the result of a distinct political process: championed by a senior Cabinet Minister, included in a manifesto and passed with deliberate intent by a government strongly aligned with its measures. It can as easily be repealed - indeed, both the Conservatives and Reform have pledged to do so.

But how to deal with the torrent of regulation pouring, incessantly, from every department and quango? How to put the risk-aversion ratchet into reverse? St George marches out with shield and spear10 to face the dragon - but instead meets a plague of locusts which, sweeping past his clumsy efforts, strip the countryside bare.11

I have on occasion suggested that we should simply repeal every law and regulation passed since the mid-90s, with only a small grace period allowed to identify those we wished to keep.12 In reality this probably would not work - even if we could find a politician bold enough to do it.13 Other whimsical ideas, such as every law ceasing within 10 years unless an MP can be found to read it out, in full, in the Chamber, similarly belong more within the pages of a Heinlein novel than in real life.14

Nevertheless, there are measures that can be taken. The One In:Two Out mechanism imposed by the Coalition had some success, though too many measures were excluded from its scope to be effective. Sunset clauses could be applied routinely to new quangos and regulation (and even to older ones) and parliamentary approval required for regulators to impose new regulations which would have more than a minimal cost. An interesting idea I recently came across was for a standing committee tasked to systematically review regulation - primary, secondary and requirements from regulators - that could only recommend repealing (in whole or in part), not additions. Each quarter a package for repeal would be presented to a senior minister, who would then have the final decisions on whether or not to repeal, confirmed by a Parliamentary vote.

But all these mechanisms can only go so far. After years of stagnating living standards, to restore our prosperity, our freedom and our public services, we will need a Prime Minister and Cabinet who will tackle regulation with the same single-minded focus that Thatcher applied to privatisation, or Cameron and Osborne applied to deficit reduction.

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I’ve spent much of the last week playing Theme Manor, a fun new game created by members of the development teams behind the old classics Theme Park and Theme Hospital - and very much in the same vein - in which you have to design and manage your own Stately Home.

Initially developed in partnership with the National Trust, the Trust pulled the plug on the design team halfway through development, citing those old chestnuts ‘irreconcilable differences in values’ and ‘gratuitous levels of violence and gore.’ Fortunately the developers were able to raise the highly impressive $5,318,008 on Kickstarter - one of the largest sums ever raised for a computer game crowd-funder1 - and were able to complete the project despite the National Trust’s attempted cancellation.

Those of us who backed the Kickstarter got it a week in advance, and it has now just gone on general release.

Gameplay

The premise is that you’ve just inherited a dilapidated stately home with a rapidly declining bank balance, and that you have to renovate it and turn it into a top tourist destination before you go bankrupt.2 Gameplay and graphics are very much in the style of its classic 90s predecessors, with the same trademark detail-orientation and sense of humour.3

A quick-start game plunges you straight into the action after choosing a number of parameters: difficulty level, the circumstances under which you inherited the hall (including gambling debts, experimental architect and excessive travel - each of which can lead to certain events triggering) and location, for which choices include the Home Counties (expensive land and staff, but good proximity to foreign tourists), Wales (cheap land but it rains almost every day4) and Yorkshire (where the staff are hard-working but bloody-minded). Advanced start provides you with a much wider range of options, including the ability to customise every member of your family tree, who will then appear in portraits and statues.

You begin with a couple of rooms open, a basic car park and a cheap tearoom that looks like Ivy’s cafe from Last of the Summer Wine. You expand by ‘renovating’ rooms, both ‘upstairs’ such as the master bedroom or dining room, and ‘downstairs’ such as the kitchens and servant’s quarters, as well as building outdoor facilities such as a maze, falconry exhibit and adventure playground. In addition to this you’re responsible for hiring staff and volunteers5, maintenance and hygiene6, and much more.

Almost everything can be upgraded and customised, from the ornaments in the grand hall to the depth of the ha-ha. You can lay out guided tours, produce museum brochures and place your own period-style furniture.7 Refreshment stands are obviously needed - and former Theme Park players will be pleased to know that the classic trick of dialling up the salt still works. As you attract more international tourists, you’ll need to diversify your fare: Japanese like sushi bars, the Italians want pizza and the Americans demand burger bars.8 Everyone likes scones with clotted cream and jam in the tearoom, which periodically upgrades as you hit certain milestones, in the manner of9 the original Civilization’s palace.

In addition to money, the two main resources you’re managing are customer satisfaction and fame. The former must be kept high to ensure repeat visitors; it is improved by more and better rooms, facilities and amenities, and damaged by shoddy services, unkempt grounds and various money-gouging tactics you may choose to resort to. Fame is harder to get, but is essential for expanding your visitor base beyond the local area - and particularly to attract high spending international tourists.

In some cases, customer satisfaction and fame are aligned - but not always. For example, the more you expand your falconry display the better the customer satisfaction, and once you get enough rare birds it will start improving fame also.10 With the maze, however, beyond a certain size customer satisfaction drops off, as it turns out visitors don’t like spending their entire visit lost inside a giant maze - but making it bigger will still boost your fame.11

Getting fame to certain thresholds unlocks special rooms and buildings, including various follies, a hermit hut (complete with hermit), an artist in residence, secret passageways and the mad scientist. The last is particularly important because it enables new gameplay elements, including time travel missions to retrieve historic artefacts, as well as dinosaur cloning, which allows you to add a dino park to your manor grounds.

This in turn unlocks the second, and altogether stranger, part of the game.

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Dinosaur Mayhem

Whenever a storm occurs after the dino park is built, there is a small chance of an escape occurring - with the chance increasing with the size and number of dinosaurs in the dino park. At this point the game transitions to a first person shooter - like Doom or Half-Life - using the Unreal engine, in which you have to kill all of the dinosaurs before they eat the staff and visitors.12

In contrast to the more relaxed earlier part of the game, this section of the game is incredibly intense, fast-paced and violent, where your reactions will be tested to the limit to keep ahead of the dinos. Bodies pile high - both humans and dinosaurs - with masses of blood and entrails spraying in every direction. A hyper-realistic anatomy model ensures that disembowelments, trampling and limbs being torn off are rendered in graphic detail - with even the herbivores a potentially lethal threat. Meanwhile, the effects of the different weapons you can find to fight back with, from Kalashnikovs to chainsaws, are depicted with no less attention, brutality and gore.13

It was at this point that the National Trust, already frustrated by the supposed ‘cultural insensitivity’ of the design team, finally pulled the plug. Stereotyped food carts they could (just about) tolerate; graphic dinosaur violence, less so. But the developers refused to have their creative vision censored - and the rest is history.

Personally, I think the National Trust was a bit oversensitive. Sure, maybe some people would be distressed at the sight of an allosaurus swallowing a young family whole, or a pack of velociraptors ripping into the bodies of fleeing teenagers - but doesn’t that make it even more enjoyable when you blow them to pieces with a rocket-propelled grenade? As Iona Money-Pott, columnist for the Daily Telegraph, wrote:

‘This is cancel culture gone mad. Just because some woke palaeontologists in their ivory towers claim that humans and dinosaurs never co-existed, why should the National Trust try to spoil our fun? In my day, we spent our time playing good wholesome games like Grand Theft Auto and it never did us any harm.

The National Trust claim they want to diversify their audience, but they don’t seem to care about young men in their teens and twenties - most of whom wouldn’t be seen dead in a National Trust property. Theme Manor might have tempted some of them to take a visit - but the Trust would rather they were murdering each other like in the documentary Adolescence, rather than taking part in healthy dinosaur mayhem in the grounds of our glorious stately homes.

Iona Money-Pott, Daily Telegraph

Assuming you survive the onslaught, once the last dinosaur is killed you are shown a victory screen, in which you can be seen standing upon a mound of slaughtered dinosaurs. At this point, you are offered the opportunity to quit, start a new game, or return to your original manor (with dino damage miraculously repaired) to continue building and expanding in sandbox mode.

The last laugh

Despite having been left high and dry when the National Trust pulled out, the developers had the last laugh - as one of the Kickstarter ‘stretch goals’ they hit was for a ‘decolonisation’ mod.

If you install this mod (which comes included with the base game), a menu button is added with the option ‘decolonise your manor’. If you click it, you receive a prompt saying, ‘Warning: selecting this option may permanently damage your heritage. Are you sure you wish to continue?’ If you do continue then apologies for slavery are added to all of your family portraits, the scones in the tearoom are replaced with vegan alternatives and all of your statues are replaced by statues of black Welsh disabled women trade unionists.14

Overall Rating: 9/10. Theme Manor flawlessly blends the best of the classic simulation and first person shooter genres, combining surprising depth, modern graphics and the charming humour of its classic predecessors.

Theme Manor is available to purchase for £69.69 from Steam.

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Thank you to the 289 people who completed the Question of Law Survey. Thanks to you we now know important facts such that gay marriage is more popular than gravity, and that my left wing readers would rather see the return of slavery than smoking in pubs.1

As several people commented, there was a level of vibes about this, because in reality ‘repealing’ an Act - particularly an older one - might not be so simple, as it will have become intertwined with many other laws. But vibes still tell us something interesting, particularly when comparing different groups.

The survey respondents were:

• 84% male and 14% female (the remainder preferring not to say);

• 26% considered themselves to be on the political right, with 65% on the political left and 9% unsure or preferring not to say.

Given they were filling in an internet survey about Acts of Parliament, it would also be safe to assume that respondents were more politically engaged than the typical population.

To start with the more serious part of the survey, Acts of Parliament.

After the abolition of slavery, by far the most popular Acts to retain were same sex marriage and banning smoking in pubs - which is frankly quite astonishing given both were passed relatively recently to great controversy (including within the party that passed them). Both enjoyed very strong support from both right and left - a clear sign of rapid societal change.

Moving down, I was surprised to see such strong cross-spectrum support for banning the closed shop (Employment Act 1982). Reflecting the left-wing skew of respondents (see below) there was strong support for the Equality Act and Human Rights Act, though with a core of dissenters in each case. Digital-related bills such as the Data Protection Act and the Online Safety Act saw a strong desire for reform - while it was no surprise that the Groceries Code Adjudicator Act2 evoked the most indifference.

The Act of Settlement was the only Act which had an absolute majority for repeal - though almost as many, unsurprisingly, wanted to reverse Brexit. Worth mentioning also are a few Acts at the bottom which very few people who know about them think are working well, governing the planning system, the SEND regime, universities and the courts - each representing one of the more dysfunctional elements of the British state.

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But how does the picture change when we only consider right-wingers?

Abolition of slavery stays top of the ‘Retain’ list, but is followed by keeping the closed shop abolished and, to my delight, another of the Acts on which I worked,3 the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech Act). Gay marriage and the smoking ban slip down a little, but both still enjoy over 60% support with no more than 1 in 5 wanting them repealed. Brexit is unsurprisingly more popular than with the wider survey respondents, though there are unsurprisingly some right-wing remainers.

I was a little surprised to see so many right-wingers wanting to keep the Act of Settlement. My assumption is that this stems from support for the Church of England to remain established - and thus the monarch, as head, needing to be an Anglican - rather than any particular animus to Catholics.4

Most notable is a strong opposition to the core pillar of the New Labour constitutional settlement: The Equality Act, the Human Rights Act, the Climate Change Act and the Constitutional Reform Act. We see support for outright retention between 8% and 24% - and an absolute majority in favour of outright repeal for three out of four (the remaining one being 47% repeal). This is significant: these are hugely influential laws which were retained without significant amendment throughout the following fourteen years of Conservative-led government. Despite the small size and self-selection of this survey, I think this does reflect a broader mood shift on the political right - as indicated by both Reform and the Tories now being committed to leaving the ECHR - that is behind both the rise of Reform and a broader recognition that the right cannot substantively achieve any of its broader aims without substantive reform of the New Labour settlement.

Scottish devolution had some support, with Welsh less so. The Freedom of Information Act escaped the broader purge of New Labour legislation, while the Online Safety Act - despite being passed by a recent Tory Government - is deeply unpopular. A worryingly high proportion of right-wingers want to get rid of the OBR, while views on the SEND and planning regime track the broader sample’s very similarly.

And what about the left?

In contrast, the New Labour constitutional settlement enjoys huge support with left-wing respondents, with over 70% outright support for the Equality Act, Human Rights Act and Constitutional Reform Act, and only just under (67%) for the Climate Change Act. Dissenters in each case are almost all those favouring reform, not repeal. Devolution also enjoys very strong support.

Left-wing respondents also really really care that fox hunting remains banned5 while, unsurprisingly, over half wanted to reverse Brexit. Conservative legislation that did have more wanting to retain it than reform included the Academies Act and the Online Safety Act (though both with a big chunk for reform). There is no wish, however, to return to the days of the closed shop - it seems today’s employment rights battles are fought on different grounds.

Fully a third of left-wing respondents want to repeal the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act - no doubt believing that because their views aren’t censored, there isn’t a problem.6 Though disappointingly for me on tribal grounds, my left-wing respondents are far more fiscally responsible than my right-wing ones, showing much stronger support for the OBR, so I have to give them points here.

One interesting point is that if you average across all Acts, the total for each category is notably different for right-wing and left-wing respondents:

This suggests a country where the right - at least those who did this survey - is fundamentally less happy with the legal and constitutional settlement than the left. This makes a bunch of sense to me for two reasons:

• Logically, in that New Labour made some very significant, broad and deep changes to our law, which impact almost every area of domestic policy and life, which have not been altered, while the Conservative Governments that followed did not (with the exception of Brexit).7

• Observationally, on the right Reform is comfortably leading the Conservatives in the polls, whereas on the left, Labour and the Lib Dems are, together, still well ahead of the Greens,8 which suggests deeper dissatisfaction with the state of the country on the right.

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Now time for some fun

But what about the other laws - of physics and of society?

I’m honestly a bit disappointed by my respondents here. Sure, one wouldn’t want to actually repeal the law of gravity, but not to reform it? Even to make it easier to generate antigravity or artificial gravity? That would be great!9

I was a little surprised to see such strong opposition to Hubble’s Law,10 but glad to see the Second Law of Thermodynamics get some of the dislike it deserves (though still, an absolute majority for keeping it - astonishing!).

People were more willing to tamper with the sociological laws - with five seeing more votes for Reform than Retain. Gresham’s Law, Sturgeon’s Law and the Pournelle’s Iron Law all justly disliked. I was surprised to see how many people, even on the left, wanted to repeal Conquest’s Second Law11 (though more wished to retain, 32:24) and by the comparative lack of hate for Murphy’s Law (why do a third of you want to keep it?).12

Unsurprisingly, particularly with the rise of AI, The First Law of Robotics was top of the list to retain - though given how often it goes wrong in the books, perhaps we should not be complacent, and it should be reformed.13

And finally, the grand law megamix - thank you to everyone who took part!

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Following a consultation, the Bank of England announced that the practice of featuring renowned individuals was to cease, to be replaced with animals and nature scenes. Amongst the reasons for the decision they gave were that it ‘is not divisive: The theme should not involve imagery that would reasonably be offensive to, or exclude, any groups.’

This was met with an outpouring of criticism over Churchill being replaced by a badger,1 erasing Britain's history, and so forth, and a counterwave of others criticising those in the first camp for click bait and working themselves up over nothing. Kemi Badenoch, Nigel Farage and Ed Davey have all weighed in to criticise the Bank's decisions and even a few Labour MPs have, when asked, admitted that it might be nice to remember Churchill's role in defeating fascism.2

A few preliminaries. Firstly, yes, the sky will not fall in from this decision. Yes, bank notes only began featuring figures (other than the Queen) in 1970. Yes, the banknotes are updated every 10-20 years for anti-counterfeiting reasons so any current figure should be thought of as temporary, including Churchill.

Secondly, the Bank’s decision is not woke - a bit naff, perhaps, but not woke. They are not replacing the figures with lesbian trade unionists, or with Tipu Sultan and others who fought against the Empire. Badgers are not woke. The British countryside is not woke.3 Some of us are old enough to remember the Conservative Party Conference in which Boris Johnson bellowed ‘Build Back Beaver’ to the resounding cheers of the faithful.

But nevertheless it matters, both in itself, and as a symptom of a wider malaise.

As Ed West has written, “Banknotes are a little window into a country’s soul, and instructive…and that is precisely why states with weak or fractured identities tend to feature animals and natural objects.” He goes on to say, “It’s not the most important thing in the world, but bank notes do signify a great deal about a country’s prospects. Nature-currency is a bear signal, because if the ethnic groups comprising a state cannot unify around shared historical figures it’s an indicator that they won’t easily co-operate in the country’s political system.”

Indeed, the Bank itself has spoken repeatedly of the importance of the figures on its banknotes, as when its Chief Cashier said, “Banknotes are more than just an important means of payment — they serve as a symbolic representation of our collective national identity and an opportunity to celebrate the UK.” And those who campaigned in 2013 for a woman to be represented on a bank note, or in 2018 for an ethnic minority figure to be represented, certainly thought it mattered.

The Bank’s decision may not have been woke, but it was timorous at a time when we require leadership. By using the public consultation as an excuse to retreat to nature designs, it sought to avoid a public row over any particular choice - a decision which, on that criteria alone, has clearly backfired.4

Cohesive, confident societies do not simply arise - they must be built. And in a nation such as Britain’s today - multi-ethnic, multi-faith, with high levels of inward migration, growing ethnic tensions and low economic growth - an active approach to integration and cohesion is more important than ever. Contrary to the beliefs of some liberals, a set of deracinated values that could belong to anywhere is not enough to anchor that integration: it must be rooted in specific history, specific people, specific landmarks, heritage, places, sports teams and culture, an attachment to which binds and unites.5

I myself would not have signed the petition to put an ethnic minority person on a banknote. This is because while Britain has many ethnic minority people in its history who did inspiring things6, who deserve to be honoured with statues and blue plaques, it has - due to the relative recency of mass demographic change - none who stand in the first rank of national significance that marks others on our bank notes - though I have no doubt it will do in time. They are, to use my terminology, ‘Heroes’ rather than ‘Giants’ - and thus placing them on a bank note would be, and would be clearly seen to be, tokenistic.7

(I would note that this is not the case for women (Austen, Nightingale, Franklin, Pankhurst…), gay people (Turing, Wilde…) or disabled people (Nelson, Hawking…) where multiple individuals who are very clearly of that first rank of significance exist).

But while it would not be my first choice, nor would it distress me to see Khan, Equiano or Seacole appear on a banknote - and if that were part of securing broad-based support, alongside other, clearly deserving figures, then so be it. Sunder Katwala, who writes from the left on patriotism and cohesion, has suggested adding one ethnic minority figure, keeping Churchill, and then having two others. He understands that symbols matter - and while I may not agree with him fully on this, if push came to shove, I would stand shoulder to shoulder with him against a legion of badger apologists.

Rather than timidly retreating from the fray, the Bank should have found the courage to identify four figures which, together, could symbolise and celebrate our nation. Perhaps that would have meant facing down those campaigning for an ethnic minority figure, by finding an alternative impeccable candidate, as they did in 2019 with Turing - or perhaps it would have meant facing down sceptical voices on the right, and including one. Either way, Britain’s history is rich enought hat it would not have been beyond the wit of man to find a combination that could command broad-based public support - and to make that case to the nation.8

As our society fractures, public authorities must find the courage to lead. Bank notes may not be the be-all and end-all of national identity, but they play their part - and they are the only part for which the Bank of England is responsible. Only a nation that is confident in celebrating itself, its history and its heritage, that is patriotic, proud and inclusive, can hope to maintain its cohesion in these times. And if our public bodies and civic institutions will not take the field, they simply leave it open to the far-right ethno-nationalists, sectarian Islamists, and others who would rip our society to shreds.

To end on a lighter note, there is, of course, a solution.9 Just as the polar vessel RRS David Attenborough used the publicly voted name ‘Boaty McBoatface’ for its autonomous underwater vessel, so the Bank could acknowledge the public’s love of nature by combining both nature AND famous people, by filling the borders with woodland animals peeking through foliage, like the marginalia in Mediaeval manuscripts.

Or, for those who prefer the work of the great Quentin Blake, perhaps this, too, might find a spot on a banknote, at some point in the future:

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A few weeks ago I had a debate with a friend on whether a scheme in which the rich pay more was the same as one where the poor pay less. While a lot of this turned on semantics,1 it had at its root a more meaningful point: there are very different philosophies on how one should define public sector spending schemes, all of which can be described as ‘progressive’, and yet which have very different outcomes and impacts on those involved.

This isn’t just an academic question: we use all of these in the UK in numerous places. And while I spoke of ‘philosophies’, in practice they are often the way they are because of vibes, political calculation or historical accident. Nevertheless, thinking explicitly about the different design options for schemes, and their pros and cons, is useful for anyone wanting to reform them - or to design future schemes.2

We’ll look here a three of the principal options for designing a scheme, and then look at five other variants which are also used, some more than others.

1. Universalism

2. The poor get more

3. The rich get less

4. Sinners pay more

5. Saints get more

6. Contributors get more

7. The favoured get more

8. Those in a hurry pay more

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Universalism

A universal service or benefit is provided to everyone, regardless of their income.3 Some of the UK’s largest and most strongly supported spending programmes are provided on a universal basis, including schools, the NHS and the state pension, as are many public amenities, such as libraries and free museums.

There are strong arguments that appeal to all parts of the political spectrum for universalism4 - including the not-to-be-overlooked benefits of simplicity and cost of administration. For the right, universalism avoids the trap wherein those with savings, or who have worked hard, are penalised for their prudence or success; for the left, there is strong evidence that programmes which are used by all remain higher quality and enjoy stronger support than those which become ‘ghettoes’ for the poor.5 Given that all programmes or benefits are ultimately funded out of general taxation, to the extent that taxation is progressive - which it is in most countries, including the UK - a universal scheme is progressive.

One objection to universalism is that it may lead to services used by the middle classes or the wealthy more than the poor, who could be considered to need them most - middle class people use public libraries more, for example.6 As someone who believes in individual agency, I don’t see this as a problem7, however, this is a problem for Social Calvinists8, as well as for those who believe the principal purpose of government is to ‘close gaps’ rather than to provide opportunity for all.

However, the biggest disadvantage of universalism is that it is incredibly expensive - and that is disadvantage enough to place severe limits on its use. It is no coincidence that the the programmes mentioned above cost, between them, over £400 billion a year, or around a third of state spending. To make every social programme in the UK universal would have a prohibitive cost9 - so with resources scarce, it is understandstandable that people seek approaches that target scarce resources more narrowly.

In the next sections, we’ll be talking about ‘the poor’ and ‘the rich’. It’s well-established that no-one agrees who is poor and who is rich, but fortunately we will not need exact definitions here. Almost all of us would agree that the dividing line for ‘the rich’ is in the top half of the population by affluence, and similarly that for ‘the poor’ is in the bottom half, and that is the only intuition we need here.10

The Poor Get More

In Poor Get More (or pay less) schemes, some benefit or service is given only to a subgroup of people at the bottom of the income distribution11, with others either not receiving it or having to pay. This is frequently based on the concept of a ‘safety net’, where the state steps in for those who have fallen on hard times.

Free School Meals, free prescriptions and most benefits, including child tax credits, and housing benefit, are based on this principle. Universal Credit is means-tested, such that those with £16,000 or more in savings cannot claim it. Plan 1 and Plan 5 student loans are also a Poor Get More scheme, in that most people will repay their loans in full, but the bottom third by income will not, and see all or part of their debt written off.

The principle benefit of Poor Get More schemes is that the benefit is only given to those most in need, making it significantly more affordable to the taxpayer than if delivered on a universal basis. It keeps the size of the state to a minimum, keeping it out of most people’s lives, and in most cases has a clear philosophical underpinning, in that we are saying that no-one in society should go without certain necessities.

Disadvantages include that such means-testing inevitably creates circumstances where people on the edge of eligibility for such benefits can face very high effective marginal tax rates - or even lose income - as they lose eligibility, reducing incentives to work. The administration of eligibity can be costly, with some deserving people falling through the cracks. And with the middle classes and those with influence in society having no stake in them, programmes for the poor can often become poor quality programmes - repeatedly cut and then eliminated.

The Rich Get Less

In Rich Get Less (or pay more) schemes, the majority of the population receives a benefit or free access to a service, but a subset of people at the top of the income spectrum do not.

Child benefit is an example of such a scheme, as is free childcare and the final version of means-tested Winter Fuel Allowance.12 Plan 2 student loans are an example too, with the wealthiest graduates paying back far more than they borrowed in real terms, as well as being simultaneously a Poor Get More scheme, with the lowest earners not repaying.13 The withdrawal of various tax allowances for high earners could also be characterised as Rich Get Less schemes. Schemes such as Finland’s approach to driving penalties, where the level of your fine is based on your income, could also be considered to fall into this category.

The advantage of Rich Get Less schemes is that they are popular - it is easy to whip up dislike for anything that can be charaterised as giving benefits to millionaires. As the majority of the population continue to benefit from the programme it is easier to maintain public support. They are a little cheaper than Universal programmes and those who don’t get it are usually those who don’t actually need it.

The disadvantage is that compared to Poor Get More schemes, they save comparatively little - but bring with them all of the same disadvantages of additional cost and complexity in administering and high marginal rates of taxation.14 Whatever you think the top rate of tax should be, it is surely ridiculous that someone with two children under five is better off earning £99,999 than they would be earning £149,999 - an effect that you can literally see showing up in the stats.

We should not be sorry for those on the verge of earning six figure salaries - but that spike represents NHS consultants cutting back to 4 day weeks; programmers, lawyers and other professionals working and earning less - and millions of pounds in foregone tax due to the inefficiency.15

As you may be able to tell, I tend to think that where means-testing is necessary (and it often is), it makes more sense from a fiscal, moral and economic perspective to focus those scarse resources on those who genuinely need it, using the Poor Get More schemes. Sadly, due to politics, we all too often end up with Rich Get Less schemes instead (as the Winter Fuel Allowance row so aptly demonstrated).

The above three schemes represent the most common ways of determining who gets what based upon income or wealth. But there are other approaches, which use entirely separate criteria to determine who gains and who pays.

Sinners Pay More

Such schemes make the price of something we think is bad more expensive - either because we think it is bad for the individual or to price in negative externalities that the activity has on others.

It’s not hard to think of examples: taxes on alcohol, tobacco or sugar, carbon taxes, or fuel duty. A dynamic road tax would be a way of pricing in the externalities caused by congestion, by altering the price depending on what road, and at what time, someone was driving. Schemes which raise money from wrongdoers - such as speeding violations or library fines - are also applying this principle.

The advantages to such schemes is that deterring the activity is part of the point - if the tax causes fewer people to do the activity, that’s a benefit. This does cause a trade-off between money raised and amount of activity deterred.16 The main disadvantage is that such schemes tend to be regressive, with the heaviest burden falling upon the poor.17

Saints Get More1819

The reverse of the above, where government seeks to encourage a behaviour they value by rewarding or subsidising those who take part in it. Subsidies for solar panels or electric cars, the (miniscule, limited) transferrable tax allowance for married couples and Hungary’s lifetime income tax exemption for women who have four or more children are all good examples.20

The advantage to such schemes is that they are a straightforward way of government incentivising something it thinks there should be more of while still permitting free choice. The disadvantages are that such schemes typically carry a large amount of deadweight loss - paying people who would have done it anyway - and as such can be very expensive, particularly if one wants to pay enough to significantly shift behaviour. There is also a question over how effective such schemes are compared to overall cultural effects - or whether they need to combined with a much broader societal movement to have much impact.21

Contributors Get More

In Contributors Get More schemes, a person’s eligibility - and often how much they get - is determined by the extent of their contribution, or a proxy that is considered to measure it. The UK is an outlier in how little we make use of such schemes, with the principal one being the state pension - and that being quite loosely based.22 New Style Job Seeker’s Allowance is also a contributory benefit, paid to unemployed people who’ve paid Class 1 NI contributions in recent years.

The advantage of such schemes is that they tap into many people’s sense of fairness: that it is right that those who have made more of a contribution to society receive more back when they need it. Most people would be happy for a person who had worked in a factory for twenty years and lost their job when the factory closed to receive more unemployment benefit than someone who has never worked a day in their life. By linking benefits to contributions, it can also provide additional incentives to work, and reduce the circumstances where those who have done the right thing by society get the same as those who have shirked.

One disadvantage is that they can reinforce existing wealth differentials - though this can be mitigated if benefits are based upon years of contribution, rather than the actual amount paid. They can be more costly to administer than a simpler scheme - and more subject to fraud. A further disadvantage is that either the level is set such that some people (the contributors) end up getting more than they really need, increasing the cost, or some people (the non-contributors) get less, or nothing, which may be something that society is not willing to stomach.

The favoured get more

In such a scheme, only those who are in a certain identity category are able to access the scheme. Examples include those over a certain age receiving free TV licenses, ethnic-minority only internship schemes, or Reform’s proposals that only British citizens should be able to claim benefits.

Importantly, and distinguishing this approach from other entries, these categories are not directly connected with either affluence or need.23 They may be correlated - for example, someone might argue that British citizens are more likely to contributed, or that pensioners are more likely to be poor24 - but in such schemes someone is explicitly prioritising the identity category, otherwise it would be possible simply to make eligibility dependent on income, or on contribution, or whatever the supposedly relevant category is.

A scheme of this sort can be combined with other categories: for example, the modified Winter Fuel Allowance is both a Rich Get Less scheme (higher income pensioners do not get it) and a The Favoured Get More scheme (poor people who are not pensioners do not get it).

The advantages or disadvantages of such schemes depends entirely on how legitimate one thinks the favoured group deserves to receive differential treatment. Woke people who think we need to compensate for historic disadvantage may believe it is acceptable to establish schemes that differentially benefit ethnic minorities. Those who wish to strengthen the nation state and reduce immigration may support schemes based on citizens’ preference. Boomers may believe we should inexorably move to a situation in which every penny of GDP is given to pensioners,25 after which we should move on to converting first the solar system and then the Milky Way into more pensioner benefits. In each case, other people’s mileage may vary

Those in a Hurry Pay More

In rare cases, typically where a service is provided on a cost or near-cost basis, we allow those who wish to to pay more to get a better - typically a faster - service. An example is getting a new passport: there is a standard price to get it in the standard time, a higher price to get it within a week and a truly exorbitant price to get it within days.

The advantage of this is that it allows price differentiation: those willing to pay more can do so and the money is kept within the service, meaning that either prices can be lowered for everyone else, or the service can be improved by hiring more staff. We are used to this in the private sector, in everything from Amazon deliveries to business class travel.

The disadvantage is that it allows the wealthier to directly purchase a better service - something most people are typically not comfortable with on essential services, such as health care.26 In practice, what tends to happen is that this sort of scheme operates in effect outside of the core service, via the existence of a privately purchasable alternative for those who can afford it and wish to.

So, lots of possibilities, which should we prefer?

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3

Note that it may still be provided only to people in certain circumstances. When child benefit was provided to everyone who had children, that would class as a universal benefit, even though not everyone has children. Similarly, the NHS is allowed to give insulin only to those with diabetes, not to everyone, unless you are this guy:

The Greens have arrived. They’ve never won a by-election before, never got over 10% in a by-election - and this time it wasn’t even close. With 41%, they’ve shown they can contest and win - and are a genuine alternative in Labour’s heartlands. This will surely boost them in the coming local elections.

Growing your bloc matters more than ever. As I wrote before, if bloc politics is real - and it is - then growing your bloc matters more than ever. Both left and right have been stuck around 44% - 47% for the last few months - if either could break through to the 50%-55% territory, that would make a big difference party. Note that the right has an advantage here as the right vote is splitting two ways and the left three.6

Candidates matter. Both Labour and Reform could have picked better candidates for the seat. Labour blocked the popular Andy Burnham for reasons of internal party politics10; for Reform, a genuine local who coached the local football team (for example) would have been better in a by-election than a southern academic, even if the latter has a bigger national profile.11 Meanwhile the Greens chose a local plumber who was clearly rooted in the constituency.

Reminder, my reader survey, ‘A Question of Law: Retain, Reform or Repeal?’ is still open - a chance to say what you think of 25 of Britain’s most iconic laws - and a few others.

Take the survey here.

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Whether or not one agrees with him, there is no doubt that it has entered the pantheon of Britain’s most iconic laws - loved by some, hated by others, debated by many.

This survey is a chance to say what you think about Britain’s most famous laws - from the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 to the Equality Act 2010 and more.

Like an ultra-nerdy2 version of ‘Kiss, Marry or Kill’3, for each law you simply have to say whether you would retain it, repeal it or significantly reform it. There are also options to say you don't know or don't care, and any question can be skipped.4

There are 25 iconic5 laws from 1701 to 2023 for you to give your verdict on, plus a few questions at the end on the law of gravity and Murphy's Law, just for fun.

Take the survey here.

The survey will be open until Sunday 8 March and results will be published shortly after that.

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This year it received a massive 1108 entries1 - almost three times as many as last year and significantly above my best hopes. To give context, it’s more than a third as many people as entered Scott Alexander's ACX/Metaculus forecasting contest, which given Scott is far more famous than I am, with about a million times as many subscribers, makes me very pleased.2

I’m also grateful to the i Paper for writing it up again this year.

In this post I’ll be presenting the full Wisdom of Crowds, my own forecasts and a couple of other things of interest.

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The Wisdom of Crowds

The 1108 entries included 378 people who work in journalism, politics, public policy or similar - but the strength of the wisdom of crowds is that it doesn’t rely on the expertise of any single individual, but on aggregating the answers from all.

Last year, the wisdom of crowds would have come 28th, beating 93% of contestants, including the vast majority of those who work in related fields. This year, with three times as many people, it should be even more accurate!

So what did it say?

And here are my own forecasts (presented alongside the wisdom of crowds for comparison).

Regarding the leadership of Labour and the Conservatives, at the beginning of the year, I thought that one would last out the year but wasn’t sure which - hence putting 60 for each. Six weeks on, the forecast of last year’s winner, at 35% for Starmer and 65% for Kemi, is looking a lot more prescient!

In terms of other significant divergences from the wisdom of crowds, I am more confident Reform will get the most seats in the locals (70%), more confident inflation will fall (35% it will be over 2.5%), more confident that the cordon sanitaire will hold in Germany (25% the AfD enters a state government) and more optimistic about a cease-fire in Ukraine (60% - would be nice if that one came true). Time will tell!

To look at two other forecasts of possible interest, reader again used an AI - this time Opus 4.5 - to generate predictions.3 Last year the AI got a Brier score of 0.222 which would have put it 136th (35th percentile) - so better than the median human but well below the top performers. I must admit I think its forecasts this year look highly dubious, but its reasoning can be found here.

In addition, I’m interested to see what the best forecasters think will happen this year. Of the 27 people who beat the wisdom of crowds last year, I was able to identify ten who entered this year’s contest and had used the same name/pseudonym. It is a pretty eclectic mix,4 including, in no particular order:

• Last year’s winner, a TfL station area manager

• Me, a think-tanker and former civil servant and special adviser.

• An economics professor who was formerly a Chief Economist in the civil service.

• A public health economist.

• A KC who specialises in shipping law.

• A supply chain modeller at a major supermarket.

• Four other people who I don’t know.5

The average of these ‘experts’ is not that far off the wisdom of crowds in most areas - but it is different, and it will be very interesting to see whether taking only a small number of those who did well at forecasting in a previous year can outweigh the benefits of the much greater numbers in the full wisdom of crowds

Thank you to everyone who took part - and remember to check back in next January to see the results! (This is the bit where I remind you to subscribe, if you’ve not already).

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However, it is now out, a great piece by Will Hazell, which you can read here, including some forecasts from (and a lovely profile of) last year’s winner. I’ll put up the full Wisdom of Crowd forecasts (and my own) some time in the next few days.

Human Labour as a Premium Service

I regularly come across the sentiment from professionals in a field that AI won’t be useful because it can’t do the job as well as they can. You hear this a lot now from translators and interpreters - one of the fields which AI is disrupting fastest - but it will no doubt come for other professions faster than we realise.

I’m sure they were right about all the ways that AI still made mistakes and was less good at translating than they were.2 But in the assertions that no-one could rely on it, they were losing sight of the fact that hundreds of millions of people are already using AI in this way - whether that’s to read a foreign newspaper article, or to translate when conversing in a shop abroad, or with a tourist asking directions.

The history of human progress has largely involved developing products that were a little bit worse, but a lot cheaper.3 Factory-produced clothing is less good than a tailored suit - but the Industrial Revolution brought cheap clothes to the masses. Flying EasyJet is a less pleasant experience than air travel in the 1960s - but a whole lot cheaper. Attending a live concert is better than a recording - but recorded music is ubiquitous in our lives.

AI will be no different.4

Rather than arguing that AI can’t provide what they’re doing, service providers would be better arguing that they still provide a premium service. AI translation may be good enough for that newspaper article - but not for the soul-searing novel. A human artist may be able to draw out someone’s real desires, producing a picture the AI would never have thought of. In some areas, such as teaching, the need for humans is more obvious: no AI, however capable, can ever replicate the physical presence of a human teacher in the classroom.5

That doesn’t mean there won’t be disruption. The Industrial Revolution resulted in a lot fewer people employed as tailors - but tailors do still exist, even today, and the total amount of clothing we use has dramatically increased. The advent of music streaming saw bands and musicians shift to making more of their money from concerts and touring, but professional bands and musicians still exist.

AI will make translation, art, and many other things available in places where it was never previously commercially viable. Though it may be a bumpy ride, that abundance is intrinsically a good thing: how many of us would wish to reverse the Industrial Revolution?6

But for those in the services disrupted - and let us be honest, that will be many of us, one way or another - rather than denying that the tide is coming in, it is likely to be more productive to think about how we, as humans, can still provide a premium service.

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The New Victorians

We have a shared mental model of the Mediaeval period. It involves castles, knights, peasants, longbows, monks, witches, the Crusades and the Black Death, amongst other things. It draws on legends of King Arthur and Robin Hood, and countless book, television and film depictions, as well as real life.

It may not be perfectly historically accurate, but we all know where we are when we see it depicted - or if we see a fantasy setting that is clearly drawn from it, such as Game of Thrones, or Miles Cameron’s The Red Knight series.

The Wild West is perhaps another period which has a distinctive ‘shared cultural image’, heavily based on but not always entirely faithful to the historical reality.

As the Victorian period fades fully beyond living memory,7 it feels that in recent years we have been creating our own, new, shared cultural image of the period, reimagined for modern sensitivities. It can be found in media products such as the Enola Holmes films and Hogwarts Legacy, in books such as Pullman’s The Ruby in the Smoke, or in slightly more fantastical depictions, such as the recent Wonka film, Marie Brennan’s A Natural History of Dragons, or more dark and sinister variants, such as in the computer game Sunless Sea.8

Just as our Mediaeval image has knights, peasants and castles, so our ‘New Victorian’ is populated by orphans, workhouses and factories, by industrialists in top hats, feisty young women and factories. Explorers, scientists and high society join the working classes and underworld as they creep through London’s smog. It is a time of wonder and exploration, of great wealth and of poverty, of social conflict and technological change.

So far, so true. Just as our shared Mediaeval image is largely accurate, so too are the new Victorians firmly rooted in reality, even if the elements that come to the fore owe as much to Dickens as to a history textbook. But there are also some differences.

For one, it is surprisingly multicultural - though in quite a subtle way. Thanks to the Empire, it was absolutely possible to encounter a Sikh traveller, a Chinese businessman or a freed African slave in Victorian London. Wealthy Indian children attended England’s top private schools and the first Indian MP, Dadabhai Naoroji, was elected to Parliament in 1892, for Finsbury. It is rare that any individual character in a new Victorian setting is implausible - yet the proportion is typically closer to that of 21st century Britain, rather than the very small minority that existed in practice.9

Perhaps more significantly, social attitudes are surprisingly modern. Racism and sexism exist, but it is often depicted more along the lines of the 1980s - attitudes held by a few unpleasant people, rather than the deeply embedded social norms that defined society, and would have been believed at a core level by most people. Notably, when a protagonist defies these social norms, any character who is not a villain rapidly comes round to the idea, with their previous attitudes being discarded as a bit of fuddy-duddy stuffiness, rather than anything they really believed.10 Needless to say, this is not how deeply embedded societal mores actually work: most people really do believe in what their society tells them is true.11

Science and technology can be subtly different, too. The Victorian period covered almost seventy years, and sometimes elements from later years are found surprisingly early (or have diffused rather more quickly than they did). As wizards are to the Middle Ages, so steampunk is to the Victorian era, with sometimes even primarily conventional settings having the occasional steam-punk element in the laboratory of a wild-eyed tinkerer.

Overall, this seems like a positive development for fiction. The Victorian period was a pretty incredible time, of great changes and tremendous energy, for both good and ill, so I’m glad that modern story tellers want to set stories there, and have found a way to do so that appeals to a 21st century audience. Just so long as, as with the ‘Mediaeval’ settings, we remember that it’s not always identical to reality.

Limited Trust Fetters Discretion

A couple of months ago I came across a remarkably terrible idea, which was that all (US) academics should be forced to disclose their SAT scores - with, presumably, those falling below a certain line being dismissed or demoted.

It is not hard to find problems with this idea.12 Outside pure maths and perhaps a couple of other subjects, raw intelligence is hardly the only important measure of whether someone is a good academic.13 For people who could be in their 30s, 40s and 50s, isn’t there a more recent measure of achievement that could be used? The list goes on.

But it’s worth understanding where even dumb ideas come from. This arose in a context in which a large proportion of the US public have lost faith in universities and, particularly on the right, there is real scepticism as to whether academics are even interested in valuing academic prowess or meritocracy - and whether the peer review process for grants and papers is measuring anything other than political conformity.

I say this not to defend this particular idea. But to make the point that, in other areas where we don’t trust decision-makers, we regularly fetter decision-makers’ discretion in a way that predictably leads to sub-optimal decisions - because we believe the alternative is worse.

One area of this is public procurement. We worry that if we allow ministers to award contracts to whoever they consider best, they will give them to cronies or political donors. So instead we create rigid procurement frameworks, where bids are ‘scored’ against certain criteria and the highest scorer is awarded the contract.14

Unsurprisingly, this often produces bad results. One example that happened while I was in Government involved the National Tutoring Programme, designed to help children catch-up after the school closures during COVID. The highest scoring company was Randstad, a company with minimal prior experience in this area - and, although the minister responsible badly wanted to award it to another bidder, he was told that, if he did, the Government would be successfully sued. Cancelling the whole tender and restarting would have taken months - with no guarantee of a different result. So Randstad was awarded the contract and, predictably enough, they fell massively behind target and were ultimately axed.

Large employers are often worried that managers will be nepotistic, or discriminate.15 So instead of just saying ‘hire the best person’, they develop rigid hiring and promotion frameworks, where the same questions have to be asked to every candidate, and candidates scored against certain ‘competencies’, with the highest scoring candidate appointed.16 All of which increases fairness (or at least the odds of proving fairness in court), while reducing the ability to actually hire the best person.

Now, we should be clear that ‘politicians might award contracts to cronies’ or ‘managers might discriminate’ are not strawmen: they are things that actually happen and we are right to guard against! But we should equally be clear that, in a world where we had perfect trust in politicians to award the contract to the best bidder, and managers to always hire the best person, we wouldn’t have any of these systems. Fettering discretion may be a necessary evil, but it is only a good thing in as far as it prevents even worse outcomes.17

One of the things which I go back and forth on is whether we should introduce background-blind admissions to universities - in which applicants are judged solely on their A-Level grades/internal tests/portfolios. To the extent that universities are genuinely trying to find the best candidates - which I’m sure some still are, particularly at some Oxbridge colleges where the tutors making the admissions decisions are then directly teaching those students - it would make the results worse.18 But to the extent that universities are pursuing social engineering goals and ‘equity’,19 aiming to meet pre-prescribed ‘targets’ on background or ethnicity, and massively dropping entry and final degree standards, it would make things better.20

The most discretion, and the best outcomes, occur when there is a common understanding of what the goals should be, and all parties can have confidence the decision-makers will genuinely pursue those goals. In such scenarios, more information and maximum discretion is always desirable.

But as goals become misaligned, and distrust grows, the clamour to fetter discretion intensifies - not because it is seen as ideal, but because it is recognised the only way to avoid even worse outcomes. And such a low trust world ends up with worse outcomes for everyone.

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9% of everything they earn over £28,470 a year is deducted from their income to pay down that debt3 - and any that remains thirty years after the April in which they were first due to repay is written off.

It is the interest rates, however, which are the most invidious element of the Plan 2 loan. During study, the loans accrued interest not at inflation, but at RPI + 3% - and, after study, the interest rate is pegged to the graduate’s earning, on a sliding scale from RPI (if earning £28,470 or below) to RPI + 3% (for those earning £51,245 or more).4 Between August 2023 and August 2024, all Plan 2 graduates were accruing interest at at least 7%, regardless of income.

As a result, the total volume of money owed by Plan 2 students is increasing year-on-year - even though no new loans are being taken out.

At an individual level, the interest rate is brutal - with the IfS calculating the typical Plan 2 Graduate needs to earn £66,000 a year just to keep pace with the interest.5 The Times recently reported on a graduate who borrowed £49,000 but now owes £67,000 and rising - a debt that is likely to hang over her for the next 20 years.

The variable interest gives the scheme a Sisyphean character. For a graduate with a typical Plan 2 loan, between the lower and upper interest rate threshold, for every additional £100 a graduate earns they repay an extra £9 - but their debt also accrues an additional £7.20 in interest, thanks to the rising interest rate.

Astonishingly, a Plan 2 graduate with £69,000 or more of debt actually sees their debt increase faster as earnings and repayments increase, because the interest effect outweighs the repayment effect.

Now, it was always understood that some people would not pay off their loan - but it was originally optimistically calculated that more than 80% would, whereas the current predictions are that it will be more like 1 in 4. The write-off provisions were understood and sold as a safety net, for those who fell on hard times, or chose low paid provisions in charities, the church or social work.

Borrowers were not led to expect that those on good salaries, earning £50,000 or £60,000 a year would still be stuck in the debt trap, their repayments failing to even keep pace with inflation. Many will end up paying far more, after accounting for inflation, than they borrowed. A recent calculation suggested that a Plan 2 graduate who moved into a good graduate job paying £36,000, moved up to £50,000 within five years and whose earnings then followed a typical trajectory, would end up paying £87,000 in real terms.

The swingeing interest rates are sometimes justified as ‘progressive’. But as progressiveness goes, it’s weak sauce. Those with parents rich enough to pay the fees up front don’t pay. High earners who didn’t go to university don’t pay. And even for those with debt, those who rapidly move on to high salaries - such as investment bankers - pay far less (in both absolute terms and as a proportion of income) than middle earners who spend the first half of their career trying to keep up with the interest, and only pay down the debt in their 30s and 40s.

The 11 years’ worth of unfortunate individuals who took out Plan 2 loans are the only cohorts who face this punishment beating. Those who went before 2012, and after 2023, have their interest pegged to inflation, so that no-one ever pays back, in real terms, more than they borrow.6 If there must be fees and loans, this is the only fair way to do it.

There’s a case that given that most graduates benefit financially from their degrees that they should make a contribution towards them.7 There’s much less of a case that they should be charged the full cost, as has been the case for most students since 2012. And there’s no case at all that they should be trapped into a stealth redistributive pseudo-tax, with punitive interest rates that see them paying back far, far more than they ever borrowed.

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The great mis-selling scandal of our age

The increase of fees to £9,000 in 2012 was explicitly justified - as were previous fee increases - as necessary to fund university expansion and to shift the cost of university from general taxation to those who stood to directly benefit from it. The removal of number caps two years later was only possible because the Government would no longer be footing the bill.

By shifting to a high-fee, debt-fuelled model, with the costs kept off-balance sheet, the architects of the system - and the universities that supported it - avoided a discussion over how many people should be going to university. They knew the taxpayer would never stand for the tax rises required to send the numbers they wanted to send, if it was debated openly and honestly.

By outsourcing the decision to 18 year olds paying on the never-never, pushed by heavy pressure from schools and Government, bombarded by university advertising and pulled by their own understandable aspiration, they achieved the end they desired. And over a decade later, with those 18 year olds now in a debt trap that looks very much like a tax, paying 9% higher effective marginal tax rates. We’ve moved to a high-tax, mass HE society by stealth.

Telling an 18 year old who has failed their A-Levels, who has shown no sign of academic temperament or achievement, that yes, they to can go to university, and don’t worry about the 50 grand of debt, is not ‘kind’ or ‘progressive’ - any more than it is to give them a platinum credit card and telling them to go wild in Westgate.

Because the ugly truth is that most of the university expansion over the last two decades has been entirely worthless - even economically harmful.8

As I’ve written before, estimates by varying methodologies find that a third of graduates are not in graduate jobs - and this is despite the ‘upgrading’ of many jobs that never used to require a degree.

The IfS has estimated that at least 20% of those who go to university are no better off, or even worse off, over their lifetime than if they had never gone - and if we consider the amount spend by the state as well, those for whom it was not worth it rises to 30%. This figure will be propped up by ‘signalling’ effects, the phenomemon whereby some employers will prefer to employ graduates, even if the degree did not give them any useful skills, simply because the degree is a signal of something they find useful.9

But the reality is that this is almost certainly a massive underestimate. The study was carried out on the cohort that began university in the mid 2000s - but the graduate wage premium has plummeted since then. Only 59% of graduates are in full time employment 15 months after graduation and the latest DfE figures show that five years after graduation, the median real time earnings for a graduate from a first degree has dropped to just £25,400 - effectively identical to minimum wage.

And as higher education has inexorably expanded, the pressure on the limited government funding we still put into the system has led to the repeated cutting of other good things - from the adult further education budget to bursaries for students from poorer backgrounds.

You are not angry enough.10

Since 2012, the combination of high fees and university expansion has led to a million or more young people being lured into degrees they did not need and were not equipped to benefit from - and charged them tens of thousands of pounds for the privilege. For millions more on Plan 2, the hidden cost of the system has plunged them into a lifetime of debt that - other than for the highest earners - they can never hope to repay.

We have created a tax on aspiration, hitting young people with effective marginal tax rates we used to only levy on millionaires: 37% for those on £30k, 51% for higher rate taxpayers, and rates in the 70-80% for graduate parents caught by withdrawal of child benefit. The impact is felt precisely at the time these people, who have done exactly what society and the state told them was the right, responsible thing to, would be hoping to buy a home, settle down or start a family.

It is the great mis-selling scandal of our time.

The best that can be said in its defence is that those who implemented it genuinely believed they were doing the right thing - but then, the same can be said about those who took us into Iraq.

The Politics of Abolishing Real Interest Rates

Some say altering Plan 2 would be tinkering, and that our higher education system needs broader reform. I agree: I would have much lower fees, fewer people going and a restoration of high academic standards. You may have your own, different, views on how things should change. But we should not allow our grand plans for tomorrow forestall us from righting the injustices of today.

There’s a total of £200 billion of unpaid Plan 2 Student Loans. Full debt forgiveness would be unaffordable - not to mention unfair to those who have already repaid (or overpaid) in good faith. But what can and should be done is to stop it getting worse - by abolishing real interest rates and making future interest the same as inflation.11

This would mean no-one on a Plan 2 loan would see their debt get any bigger in real terms. It would place them on a similar footing to those who went to university before or afterwards, and would dramatically decrease the number of graduates who see their debt pile get bigger each year, despite repaying thousands of pounds.

As to the politics, one might think that raising the repayment threshold would have more impact, as that affects how much money people take home each month. But Theresa May tried that in 2017, raising the threshold by a whopping £4,000 - and almost no-one noticed or cared. But in reality, high interest rates repeatedly come up in polling, focus groups and the national conversation as the most hated part of the system. People have a strong sense of unfairness - there is something visceral about seeing your debt go up when you are repaying thousands that people understandably detest.

Both the Conservatives and Reform are now rightly sceptical of university expansion. The Conservatives have pledged to cut university places by 100,000 a year and fund apprenticeships for young people instead, while Reform’s manifesto said they would, ‘Restrict undergraduate numbers well below current levels.’12

These are the right policies - but, taken in isolation, can give the appearance that they dislike aspiration, and young people in general. They need a positive offer as well, which this would provide.

For the Conservatives, it would be a tangible break with the past, demonstrating they recognise mistakes were made - and that they now are determined to put them right.13 For Reform, it would be another signal of how they are not the Tories.

For the Lib Dems, abolishing real interest rates would be a partial atonement for the original sin of breaking their tuition fees pledge, and collaborating in bringing in the vile system in the first place.

The Greens regularly inveigh against debt-funded education, so this should be easy for them, though they might well want to go further.

As for Labour, while their manifesto was silent in the matter, in Opposition they said a lot on tuition fees, from Starmer’s original pledge to abolish fees, to current Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson writing in the Times, ‘Graduates, you will pay less under a Labour Government’. With them now leaching votes to the Lib Dems, Greens and Reform, this would be an opportunity to make good on at least part of that promise.

Is it enough? Any policy is only part of a broader platform.

But for any party, there is value to saying, ‘You were wronged, we hear you, what was done to you was a gross injustice - and we are going to put it right.’

There are five million graduates out there - and their parents, and grandparents - waiting to hear that message.

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For nearly half a century – from 1973 to 2020 – perhaps the single most important fact about British history was its membership of the European Union (or ‘Community’, until 1993). Membership touched almost every area of national life. It transformed how Britain was governed, who it traded with and who had the right to live and work here. It rewired Britain’s manufacturing base, rewrote its constitution and transformed its judicial system. Its effects have been felt across the spectrum of public policy, from gay rights and environmental protection to regional policy, agriculture and the peace process in Northern Ireland.

Dr Robert Saunders, Brexit in Historical Perspective, 31 January 2020

Thus reads the opening paragraph of Dr Robert Saunders’s essay, posted the day, more than four and a half years after the fateful referendum, that we finally left the European Union - and reposted by him yesterday, to (almost) mark its sixth anniversary.1

It’s an outstanding essay, and I recommend you read the whole piece. I hadn’t intended to write something for today - I wrote a piece in 2023 setting out my views, seven years on from the referendum, what had gone well and what less well - but reading Robert’s article, which so well set out the challenges and questions posed by Brexit, inspired me to write a more forward-looking piece.

Robert reminds us that joining the EU was a response to the perceived failure of Britain’s post-war strategy, in the wake of superior economic performance by France and Germany, tensions with the Commonwealth and the humiliation of Suez. It was seen as a way of maintaining Britain’s global influence in the post-Imperial world, ensuring that we could still be a country that could project power and sway world affairs.

From 1961 to 2016, every government (whether Conservative or Labour) started from three basic assumptions: that the best way to rebuild Britain’s economic strength was as the entry-point to an integrated, European market; that the surest route to influence in Washington or the Commonwealth was through a leadership role in Europe; and that the best way to maximise British sovereignty was to have a seat at the table where its destiny would be decided.

…

For a whole generation of politicians after 1945, the big challenge was to adapt to the contraction of British power: the fact that Britain was losing its global empire, its colonial markets and its control of the sea lanes. Joining the EEC was a way of responding to that challenge:

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It is understandable that politicians in the ‘50s and ‘60s sought to preserve the influence of Empire, nostalgic for the days when a quarter of the world was coloured pink. It is perhaps no coincidence that some of the most ardent Europhiles of the modern era, such as Blair and Cameron, visibly yearned for Britain to ‘punch above its weight’ in the world and to exert influence on the global stage.

Understandable, I say, but fundamentally mistaken. We are a mid-sized power2 and should tailor our aims and aspirations accordingly. As a mid-sized power adjacent to a culturally similar super-economy, it is not dreams of Empire but Canada that should be in our model. This is true most importantly, in the sometimes up, sometimes down, but always present relationship, deals and compromises that must be made with its neighbour - but one might also look to Mark Carney’s recent speech on mid-sized powers in a rapidly changing world as a guide to post-Brexit realism.

There will always have to be some form of relationship with EU: the neighbouring trading bloc cannot simply be ignored. This, just as Canada’s relationship with the US, will inevitably wax and wane over the decades - and reasonable people will disagree about what it should be, just as they do on tax policy, or the school curriculum.

Those who condemn every new deal as a ‘betrayal of Brexit’ are as foolish as those who mindlessly applaud such deals, whatever the terms.3 A sign of maturity in the post-Brexit debate will be when such deals are primarily assessed on their merits, rather than purely tribally, on whether they bring us closer or further away from the EU. As a thinking adult, I am free to welcome an agri-food deal that supports our farmers and food and drink exports, while simultaneously criticising spending £570m on free European jollies for university students as a profligate waste of taxpayers’ money.

As I demonstrated last year, there is no inevitability about whether a country will be better off inside or outside of a larger economic bloc. There are, indisputably, economic advantages from being part of large single market. There are also economic advantages from being a small nation able to flexibly determine regulation, tax policy and other decisions in a way that best suits its own economy. If we look at the global evidence, we can find examples of cases where each advantage predominates. Of course, if one leaves a large trading bloc while utterly failing to take advantage of those flexibilities - indeed, actually increasing the burden of corporate regulations, taxation and employment law - then one would predict that the country will suffer an economic penalty, which is indeed what has happened. But there was, and is, no inevitability about these decisions - or future ones.

So whether we end up richer or poorer, in the long-term, is not set in stone. But even in the latter case, Canada again is a good example. It would almost certainly be richer if it joined the US: it would not only gain access to a much larger market, but US laws, unlike the EU’s, are particularly benign for businesses and economic growth. And yet Canadians, overwhelmingly, do not want to do this - as can be seen by the outcry over Trump’s suggestion that they should become the 51st state.4,5.

Sovereignty and nationhood is, for most people, about more than money. It is always odd to see some progressives who have no trouble empathising with the Canadians as they reject Trump - or indeed with the Scots or the Welsh nationalists - appearing unable to see Brexit in anything other than purely economic terms.6

To return to Carney’s speech, no longer seeking to be a world power does not mean pure isolationism. It does suggest a more pragmatic outlook, one that is sceptical of ‘nationbuilding’ adventures in Iraq, or of lecturing other powers, over which we have no influence, on their human rights record. But defending Ukraine can be fully justified on ‘realist’ grounds: it is demonstrably in our national interest that Russia be stopped, rather than be victorious, and go on to menace other friendly democratic powers and trading powers on our doorstep. We can be proud to have worked effectively with European counterparts and others in this endeavour,7 and should continue to work to preserve the interests of friendly, liberal8 and democratic countries against those states that would do us harm.

Saunders goes on to say, rightly, that Brexit requires us to make new choices. As hesays, we should not pretent, “That a nation stripped of its colonies, its industrial power and its control over global finance has the same options today as in the age of its pre-eminence.”

We must instead be serious about the choices in front of us.

What is Britain’s economic future, as a medium-sized economy in a world dominated by China and the United States? What is Britain’s diplomatic role, in a world without an empire?… Brexit means we are going to have to find new answers, under perhaps less favourable conditions. If we pretend those dilemmas do not exist, or if we simply go back to old answers because we have forgotten why they were rejected in the first place, disaster lies ahead. Brexit requires a fundamental recasting of Britain’s national strategy.

They are the correct questions - and ones that are not answered by the old soldiers on either side, still devoted to fighting the Brexit wars. For my part, I stand with Benn and Powell9, those two iconoclastic giants of left and right, in rejecting the idea that we should seek to be a leading power in the world, and instead pursue the national interest as a mid-size power, in concert with our allies.

But even for those who aspire to maximise global influence and power, it had become apparent certainly by Lisbon10 - and arguably by Maastricht - that this was not something that could be achieved by Britain, qua Britain, within the EU.

‘Ever Closer Union’ is a reality, bedded deep into the very institutions, laws and courts of the EU, and it marches inexorably on, regardless of the views of transient national leaders.11 One of the most consistent guides to EU history is that at every stage of integration, things have taken place - a flag, an anthem, an EU defence force, more spending, abolition of national vetos, influence over voting rights and elections, the list goes on - that sceptics were mocked for saying would ever happen. In what the EU will become, the best that could be hoped for is that England, Scotland and Wales might survive as some form of distinctive regional identity, similar to Texas or Yorkshire today. Perhaps not in 20 years, but in 50 years, or in 100 years - but it will happen.12

Britain has endured for 300 years, arguably 400;13 England has stood unconquered for almost a millennium. Is now the point at which it should end? That is the fundamental point about which Brexit turns.

Legend and literature contain countless examples of a person14 who seeks power, often for noble ends, and yet the price of that power is such that it transforms them into something that is no longer recognisable to the original person, with fundamentally different values and objectives.15 In seeking to preserve themselves, they instead lose all.

Pursuing British membership of the EU to pursue or maximise British power is a temptation of just this sort. And, as to all other such temptations of this sort, the correct response is thus:

“I pass the test. I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.”

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This time we have questions on immigration, Chagos, life in the Philippines, demographic challenges, board games, left-wing writers I’d recommend and identity politics.

Rachael: What do you think the UK will look like in a couple of decades given various possible approaches to immigration?

After the 2021-2024 period, when 3.9 million people immigrated in just three years, we’re currently entering a period of much lower immigration, with net migration just over 200,000 last year, and falling. Asylum claims, however, remain high, at over 100,000, about half of which are coming from the small boats.

My central estimate for the next two years is that net migration will average 250k - 300k, in line with the 2000 - 2020 record, both because of the revealed preference of the governing ‘Anywhere’ classes, and due to economic pressures, enhanced by demographic challenges.

That would give us an additional 5 million to 6 million people in two decades, probably from a wide diversity of countries.1 That in turn means the ‘white British’ ethnic group falls from 74.4% at the 2021 census, to about 65%. At the same time, the number of ‘non-white British’ - in particular second or third generation British cizens - will have increased significantly: a third of under 18s are already ethnic minorities, and many of these will have been born here.

Sociologically, I actually think that’s a much less dramatic change than the previous twenty years, when the white British population went from nearly 90% to 75%. When I was at school in the ‘90s, it was still a good bet that an ethnically Chinese or Pakistani would have had parents who had moved here from that country, might still be nationals, and would have strong ties there. That’s now a much less strong assumption; it could equally well be that those parents will speak with a Geordie accent and support Newcastle United.

In terms of the impact on the UK, a huge amount depends on how far above or below that central estimate we go, who we take and how we handle it.

If we’re smart about it, hold net immigration to 150,000 - 200,000, prioritising high-skilled immigrants as per ’s ‘grammar school of the western world’ model, prioritise those with fluent English, focus on integration, stop the small boats and reliably deport violent foreign criminals, then it could be positive. Demographic challenges mean that we need some immigration just to keep the population steady, and that level of immigration would enable house-building and allow time for people to integrate.

On the other hand, if net immigration goes up to 350,000-400,000 a year or higher, if we return to permitting mass low-skilled immigration with many dependents, continue to allow third rate universities sell immigration rather than education, and continue to abhor the legal changes necessary to carry out deportations, things could be a lot worse. It should be a matter of greater concern that in 2024, for the first time in decades outside of Northern Ireland, four MPs were elected on a sectarian basis. The grooming gangs scandal,the recent West Midlands Police affair,2 and cases such as the Batley Grammar School teacher show what is happening as our public institutions move from upholding the law without fear or favour to ‘managing community relations’ with a fear of violence, unrest, or being called racist. The 2022 communal riots in Leicester, between Hindus and Muslims, could be a harbinger of much worse to come - with the violence and demonstrations in the case of a major clash in Kashmir outweighing anything we saw over Gaza.3

One of the most fundamental truths about integration is that it takes time: just as we should reject the ethno-nationalist contention that you have to be white to be British,4 so too should we reject the open borders mantra that there is no difference between someone who arrived here three years ago, unable to speak fluent English, and someone born and bred in this country (regardless of the colour of their skin). As Sajid Javid’s excellent recent interview about his upbringing makes clear, integration is, frequently, a generational process - and none the worse for that, but it does mean there is a limit to how many people we can comfortably integrate at once.

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Bryan Fries: If you had to live and work in any non-Western country for the rest of your life (with no opportunity to travel to or visit any western country), which would it be and why?

The correct answer here has to be India.

A country the size of Europe, with a similarly rich and diverse history and culture, and a wide diversity of climates and geography, from mountains to beaches.

English is widely spoken, it’s a democracy and more or less liberal, and sufficiently wealthy to have some developed areas, plenty of job opportunities, with good healthcare and education available, if one can afford it - with an economy growing at 7% a year, meaning that all this will only get better.

Plus the food is excellent!5

Sam: To what extent will the UK be able to remain as a highly-developed state, given the coming demographic crisis?

I am worried about global falling birthrates, not least because it’s happening everywhere, in all types of societies, and no-one seems to know how to reverse it; however, I’m not sure it will stop us being a highly-developed state.

The UK’s TFR only really plummeted in the last decade, and at 1.41, while far from good, is a long way above that of many European or East Asian countries - plus we have a strong ability to counter-act it with immigration, which while it brings its own problems (and is not a long-term solution, with falling birthrates everywhere), would stem off collapse. If we look at countries much further along this journey than us, or which lose a lot of their younger population to emigration, we can see a country can withstand a fair bit of shrinkage while remaining developed.

So while I think falling birthrates are likely to make us poorer, less innovative and less socially cohesive, I think we’ll remain a highly-developed state for the foreseeable future.6

Chris: Apart from the birth of your son, what was your most memorable experience when you were based in Manila?7

Living in the Philippines generated one unforgettable experience after another - it was simply such a different way of living, in a very new area of the world. Setting aside the ‘new child’ related ones, highlights include:

• Sitting on the balcony of our 15th story apartment during and watching a thunderstorm amongst the skyscrapers.

• Flying in a helicopter over tropical islands, before landing on an offshore gas platform.8

• My first sight flying into Singapore, seeing the ships in the strait and the high tech city, and thinking I’d never seen something look more like Stargate: Atlantis.

• A candle-lit dinner on the beach at Boracay for my wife’s 29th birthday.

• Attending a billionaire’s gala birthday celebration and listening to Lea Salonga (Jasmine in the original Aladdin).

• Figuring out how to live with three members of household staff - a maid, a nanny and a driver.

• Representing the UK at the ceremony for the anniversary of the Leyte landings.9

• Riding on an elephant and seeing the actual bridge over the River Kwai in Thailand.

• Walking through an ash-blasted landscape in the early dawn light to reach Mount Pinatubo.

But if I had to choose one, it would be the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan, where I had the opportunity to see the Foreign Office at its best. The disaster touched the heart of the British public who gave £85m; the Government added more and sent an aircraft carrier. The embassy went on to full-on crisis mode, with everyone who’d normally have nothing to do with this side of things, such as me, pulled in to work as cogs in a smoothly operating machine - responding to the crisis, reaching out to British nationals caught up in it, liaising with the military, helping to get aid out and more. It was an amazing example of what ‘the system’ can be capable of in times of crisis and it was inspiring to be a small part of it.

Alex Rich: In an era of rising populism and seemingly irrevocable division in politics nowadays, do you think there is much of a future for the pragmatic, thoughtful, compromise-based politics and policy that you generally advocate for?

The biggest issue we have driving distrust is the say-do gap: where politicians pledge they will deliver something but are unwilling to take action to achieve them. Both Sunak and Starmer campaigned on more economic growth and stopping the boats, but neither were willing to take the steps necessary to achieve this.

There are some genuinely hard problems in Britain (eg how do we improve NHS productivity), but equally, a lot of things aren’t - they’re just things our politicians shy away from:

• If we want economic growth we need to strip back regulation, and particularly regulation that stops us building things - from houses to energy generation. But that means building things near people, reducing environmental protections and curbing our judicial review system.

• If we want to stop the Channel boats, control our borders and reliably deport violent foreign offenders we need to leave the ECHR and then legislate explicitly to do this.

• If you want to stop ‘woke’ in the public sector you need to repeal the Public Sector Equality Duty, social value requirements in procurement and other such regulations, and then tell quango chiefs that if they do this sort of stuff in future they will be fired - and be willing to follow through.

• If we want to cut taxes we need to find significant savings in one or more of pensions, welfare or healthcare spending. You can probably get away with doing 2 out of 3; I doubt you can find enough in just 1 of these, given the current deficit.

• And, for the left, if you want to spend significantly more on public services or welfare, then taxes are going to have to rise.

Although I hope I'm thoughtful, I'm perhaps not as moderate as you think I am: all of the above changes involve slaying sacred cows and facing down powerful lobby groups - they can't be achieved just through compromise. But unless we get leaders willing to lead rather than follow, and with the will to do what is needed to deliver the changes they claim to want, voters will increasingly look to more radical parties who are willing to do this, on both left and right.

Sumi: How does the country move away from lopsided policies that are borne out of class wars? Thinking primarily around social engineering, what are the long term effects of it? Is it not discrimination when for example, Universities ignore grades of their exams, national exams, etc and use imperfect metrics to give out contextual offers prone to gaming the system?

The only way is to relentlessly stand for meritocracy, invidual liberty and treating each person as an individual, based on their own abilities and achievements, rather than as a member of a group or class.

Like many good things, it’s endlessly under threat and needs to be constantly defended. There was obviously widespread discrimination against women and ethnic minorities until relatively recently10 - but then EDI metastasised into a monster in which people would discriminate in the other direction, change entry criteria and speak openly about wanting anyone but a white man in the role.

There’s a genuine issue in that it’s true that if two people get the same score on a test, the one who self-taught in a library is likely to be more able than the one which was extensively coached. There are perhaps some Oxbridge colleges which are genuinely accounting for this and trying to find the strongest candidates. But if you actually read what most people working in this area say, they are fully fixated on equality of outcome between different groups, on ‘equity’, and often appear to deny the very ability to accurately measure (or the existence of!) merit or differing ability - which is why you get mad ideas like abolishing or ignoring standardised tests,11 or saying hiring managers can’t see the performance reviews of internal candidates. Given the repeated, open statements of many senior people in academia, the public sector and corporations about how they want to discriminate and pursue equality of outcome, the more we can use background-blind, name-blind, anonymously marked assessments the better - and alongside that, we need to tighten up the legal loopholes in the Equality Act which permit the use of race and sex based ‘targets’, as well as so-called ‘positive action’, such as internships that are only open to ethnic minorities.12

But the right also has to be careful here. The experience in the US shows that some of those who rightly condemned the ‘affirmative action’ happening at universities and elite firms are actually just old-fashioned racists. More seductively, there can be a temptation to embrace the politics of victimhood, and start asking for special treatment, perhaps because white boys are currently doing worse in education. But you don’t fight identity politics with identity politics - that just creates an endless cycle of grievance.

Kishan: Are there any commentators (be it X-posters, Substackers, or old school journalists) whom you respect enough to follow, and even recommend, from the other side of the political spectrum to you?

I read and follow quite a few people from the left, both to learn things and to make sure I understand what ‘the other side’ believes. In terms of recommendations, on Substack, I’d recommend (Comment is Freed) who writes broadly about public policy and politics, as well as (Political Calculus)13 who focuses more on electoral and political issues.

In the US, I read (Slow Boring) - who although I sometimes think I agree with him too much on markets and energy for this to count, is clearly coming at things from an explicitly centre-left perspective.

In terms of mainstream journalists, I often read individual articles, but regularly enjoy Stephen Bush from the FT and Rachel Cunliffe from the New Statesman.

What all of these have in common (other than writing well) is that their writing is typically either data rich and/or brings new insights, meaning that even when I don’t agree with them, I usually learn something. They’re all good decouplers, able to separate what they want to happen from what they think will happen, and also have a clear understanding that different things affect each other, in first, second and third order ways, rather than just asserting ‘this will happen because I think it should.’

Neil: What's the best new board game/board game mechanic you've played recently?

I love the iron and coal selling mechanism in Brass Birmingham.14 It operates so elegantly,15 with players rewarded for producing more resources precisely when they are in short supply, because they are what the game is currently using. A mark of its success is the way other players are genuinely happy when you do this massively advantageous to you thing, because it enables them to now do the things they want to do.

As a close runner-up I’d go for the scoring mechanism in Colour Brain - which could easily be transferred to any other ‘question answering game’. In the game, each round all players have to answer the same question and every player who gets it right gets a number of points equal to the number of players who got that question wrong. It’s an incredibly simple yet effective way of reflecting ‘how hard was this question?’ and scales to any number of players.

Heinrich Hyser: What do you think of the Chagos deal? Is there some secretive reasons we don't know of? Or is it simply "international law told us so".

If there’s a secretive reason then it’s not one I know about! I think it’s a terrible deal, driven by some combination of misguided legal maximalism and/or post-colonial guilt, or both. The deal fails on every front: historically, legally, morally and strategically:

• Historically, because the Chagos Islands were never ruled, colonised or otherwise occupied by Mauritius, from which they are separated by a vast distance, but simply joined together as an administrative convenience by Britain when it ruled both.

• Legally, because the International Court of Justice explicitly has no jurisdiction over this case, because the 2019 ruling was advisory only, and there is no international court that could make such a binding ruling. One does not show one’s commitment to the ‘rule of law’ by observing rulings that one is not legally obliged to do.

• Morally, because while Britain did wrong the Chagossians grievously when it forced them to leave the islands, and would ideally commit to a programme of resettlement,16 Mauritius was not wronged, a tiny fraction of the payments are earmarked to the Chagossians. Most Chagossians now are British citizens, not Mauritians, and appear to oppose the deal.

• Strategically, because the Diego Garcia base is vital to US and UK interests, and handing sovereignty to a country that may cosy up to China is the height of folly, and only increases the vulnerability of the base. Nor does it enhance our ‘soft power’ or increase our support in Africa, as can be seen by the fact that shortly after signing the deal, Mauritius joined other Commonwealth countries in calling for ‘slavery reparations’ from Britain.17

To quote someone who knows far more about this than I do:

No international tribunal can rule that Mauritius is sovereign over the Chagos or require the UK to cede the islands to Mauritius. There is no real risk to the operation of the electromagnetic spectrum, overflight access or civilian contractors.

If Mauritius were to attempt to frustrate US-UK defence interests, or were to take payments from our adversaries to enable their incursion into the archipelago, it would be a hostile state and should be treated as such. The answer to Mauritian lawfare is not to negotiate surrender.

The new treaty does not provide the UK with a veto over Mauritian actions that might endanger Diego Garcia. If it is ratified, Mauritius will be an attractive target for Chinese subversion. The government has unjustified confidence in the goodwill of future Mauritian governments.

US-UK defence interests would be much more secure if the UK retained sovereignty. For this reason and for many others — financial prudence, fairness to the Chagossians, environmental protection — the government should seize this opportunity to walk away before the treaty is ratified.

Professor Richard Ekins KC (Hon), writing in The Times, January 202618

David Edgington: In the engineering community around HS2, it is widely though that some of the greatest problems with the project have been, at least in part, caused by excessive meddling by the government, and the lack of enough ambition to invest in the long term capacity to deliver such projects more cheaply in the future. One of the most radical solutions to this, and other infrastructure problems, which I have seen is to abolish the Treasury (assumedly meant more as a way to stimulate conversation than a firm proposal). As someone involved in the civil service, what are your thoughts on this?

The key thing about HS2 is that it’s a cost-benefit question, not an ideological one. If it cost £1 million, almost everyone would support it; if it cost £1 trillion, it would clearly be a bad idea. With the cost at £100 billion before it was cancelled, and the official cost:benefit ratio fallen to less than one, for my part I agreed with the decision to pull the plug.

While the Treasury has its problems, I don’t actually think it was primarily to blame for this one. From my understanding, the main drivers of cost were:

• The decision to put so much of it through tunnels, motivated by a desire to appease MPs whose constituencies lay en route.

• The standard bureaucratic, judicial and other problems that dog every major infrastructure in this country, that led, for example to us building a state of the art road-bridge that led nowhere,

As you say, there have been numerous calls to abolish the Treasury over time. I personally think the Treasury gets a worse rap than it deserves: while it can be short-sighted and overcontrolling19, it’s the one part of Government that ever tries to save money which, with debt at 95% of GDP, we could do with more of.

Still, I can see the logic behind the idea that the department in charge of spending should not also be in charge of economic growth, the financial services sector and so forth - and thus we should split it into a spending department and a department of economic affairs. I’ve never been fully convinced, but it’s not a silly idea - and one of best places I’ve seen it expounded, is in The End of the Treasury, by Stian Westlake and Giles Wilkes (respectively, a former Tory and former Lib Dem SpAd).

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