Anyone around Monday 5th meeting in usual spot at 8pm. May move on from there by 9 so will post that up on the site on the evening if that happens. All those who have been before to these meets welcome as well as any new faces. BTW I can be there a bit earlier if people are caught for time.
Even in those constituencies that recorded the highest votes to leave the EU in 2016, more than twice as many voters now believe the best route forward is to move in the opposite direction – and forge closer ties with Brussels.
The survey of more than 10,000 voters, for the internationalist campaign group Best for Britain, accompanied by detailed MRP (multilevel regression and poststratification) analysis based on new constituency boundaries, will provide sobering reading for Rishi Sunak, who backed Brexit as a route to greater economic success.
And:
The poll by Focaldata found that three times as many adults (63%) now believe Brexit has created more problems than it has solved, compared with just 21% who believe it has solved more than it has created.
And:
Overall, 53% of voters now want the government to seek a closer relationship with the EU than it now has, having left the single market and customs union, against just 14% who want the UK to become more distant.
I’d imagine the polling is accurate, and yet, look at that 53%, that’s not that much higher than losing margin in the Brexit referendum. In other words only perhaps 5% has been added to the overall Remain vote. Granted that’s not a question about Remain – this is simply (or most complexly) about a closer relationship whatever that may be. But look at the fact there’s 10% who don’t know what they think of a closer relationship. I’m not suggesting that sentiment hasn’t changed, that combined 37% of those who don’t want to change the current relationship or seek a more distant relationship (just 14% which is striking given the continuity hard-Brexit efforts amongst some on the Tory right) is small enough. But it’s not an overwhelming change in sentiment.
There’s little question but that Brexit has been hugely counter-productive to Britain. We know that most acutely on this island and for good reason. But in some ways all this is abstraction. The current government is likely to remain in power another few years. They most certainly will not change the relationship with the EU. Labour seems largely mute on the issue and while their return to power would likely ease matters yet further I wonder how far the current remarkably hesitant version of that party will want to shake things up in an area that it sees little scope for anything other than negative blowback to it? And beyond that, a sense that in truth the status quo, if it can be maintained in the face of the DUP, is likely to persist into the indefinite future. Whatever the polls say.
The latest Census figures show that there were 5,149,139 people in the State on Census night, which took place in April last year.
That is an 8% increase on April 2016 figures.
The Census population of 2022 summary results also show the average age of the population increased from 37.4 in 2016 to 38.8 in 2022, compared with 36.1 in 2011.
There’s so much in the Census returns to consider. When it was taken a third of all workers worked from home (due to the pandemic). The fall to 69% of the population declaring themselves Catholic (from 79% – down 10% in just 7 years).
There’s 631,785 non Irish citizens. 12% or so. Just a thought, I’ve read that if Ireland had proportionate the same population density as England there would be 35.5 million people on the island. Worth considering when people argue Ireland is (sic) full. As it is, if England had the same population density as Ireland it would have just shy of 10 milllion people. As it is in England there are 54.8 million people.
The average age is now 38.8. The highest increase in numbers in the population cohorts were those over 70s – 26%. That’s not insignificant given Covid and so forth. In the 25 to 39 cohort there was a fall of 4%.
There are more women than men, 98 males for every 100 females.
And lest all of this seem fantastic, consider this:
The number of people who reported experiencing at least one long-lasting condition or difficulty to a great extent or a lot was 407,342 (8% of the population).
A further 702,215 (14% of the population) reported a long-lasting condition or difficulty to some extent or a little.
As well as:
The number of unpaid carers increased by 53% to more than 299,000 between 2016 and 2022.
But there are even bigger oversights at the heart of the Johnson cult, which also seem to be evident in politics and the media more widely. In Westminster, news about his alleged lockdown antics inevitably generates a huge amount of noise – but in doing so, it heightens the sense that there are stories about Covid and its legacy that we have still barely heard.
And he points to continuing high rates of absenteeism in British schools post-pandemic.
Rates of “persistent absence”, defined as missing more than 10% of school, have soared from 13% to 24%, which means that 1.7 million children in England are regularly not in the classroom. These numbers are much worse in places with high levels of poverty and deprivation: Newcastle, Bradford, Middlesbrough.
And there are other signs of the problem:
Clearly, every absent, underperforming or anxious child is indicative of a level of social damage that still seems to be barely registering. In January this year, an estimated 2 million people in the UK were experiencing what the government calls “self-reported long Covid”. In 2022, 2.5 million people said they were not working because of long-term sickness, an increase of about 500,000 since the pandemic began. Between 2021 and 2022, the number of people newly awarded disability benefits doubled: about a third of the new claims were for mental or behavioural conditions, but among those under 25 that figure rose to 70%. The most visible political response to all this so far has been the government’s tightening of benefit sanctions and Tory calls – linked to the party’s angst about immigration – for the benefits system to punitively push people into work, which is a good indication of Conservatism’s current ethical bankruptcy.
And this:
At the most recent count, there have been 226,622 deaths in the UK with Covid mentioned on the death certificate, which entails a terrifying number of people who have experienced the effects of bereavement, often in the most impossible circumstances. Through 2020, 2021 and beyond, friendships slipped, and millions of people’s loneliness deepened. Grandparents and their grandkids were stuck in the midst of a particularly awful predicament: the time eaten up by lockdowns was an eternity to most children, and equally soul-sapping for people approaching the end of their lives. Throw in Brexit, inflation and all our other national problems, and you have an instant picture of why this country feels so disoriented and exhausted.
In some ways Harris is almost making a whataboutery case – almost. But to a purpose I think.
I’ve long been struck, and others have mentioned it on this site, at how much damage, and much of it unacknowledged, the pandemic has caused – first and foremost in terms of those dead or with chronic illnesses. But also at the fabric of lives and the mental health of all who went through an unprecedented process that lasted for years. Few if any alive now experienced this before, surely? And certainly the impacts of the pandemic (which by the by it’s only fair to note isn’t over albeit much alleviated) across so many areas are obvious to see. Politics was already fragile in some ways here and there, but certain expressions of political activity I’d hesitantly argue were accentuated by the stresses of the pandemic. And similarly across a range of areas. How could it be otherwise.
Of course the question is how to address all this, I’d also wonder is that even possible given the complexity of the society? Harris suggests notes the absence of consideration about the pandemic and its impacts. He writes ‘we hear almost no attempts to even speak meaningfully to the country about what it is still going through.’ In one sense that’s understandable. Politicians, of all people, are keen to turn the page. So are people. It’s been noted how the 1918 flu pandemic faded from memory with remarkable speed, though the proximity to the First World War no doubt played a part in that. Is there some element of that at play here?
Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien has insisted that Government will remain cohesive as he sought to play down the row between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil.
Last week, three Fine Gael junior ministers wrote an article proposing a €1,000 tax break for workers in autumn’s budget.
Standing alongside his constituency colleague, Fine Gael TD Alan Farrell, he claimed the events of the last week had been overplayed.
Mr O’Brien said the best place to put a budget together was at Cabinet, saying it will be in keeping with the agreed Programme for Government.
The UK could break apart unless it is rebuilt as a “solidarity union” where every citizen’s rights to public services and financial security are protected, the first minister of Wales, has warned.
Mark Drakeford said the social and political bonds that tie the different parts of the UK together have come under “sustained assault” from 40 years of neoliberalism, a trend launched by Margaret Thatcher in 1979 and then reinforced after Brexit by Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.
“In order to persuade people in all parts of the United Kingdom that their futures lie together within a restructured United Kingdom, we have to recreate a solidarity union,” the Welsh Labour leader said in an interview with the Guardian.
And:
That included rebuilding the safety net for those sick or out of work, with fundamental rights, he said, to environment, consumer and trade union protections, to human rights and to affordable public services.
“We have to rebuild the safety net, so you know that your membership of the United Kingdom entitles you to that collective security that it represents,” Drakeford said, implying that without it, Scotland and Northern Irelandcould choose to leave the UK.
“If you move from Scotland to Wales, you know that you will take those fundamental rights with you as part of your citizenship. Those have all been eroded progressively by Tory governments, particularly since 1979.
“The long years of neoliberalism have been a sustained assault on the notion that citizenship means rights and the next Labour government needs to rebuild those rights, to do it explicitly and to say to people, this is what you get – that’s why it is worth belonging [to the UK].”
Of note is where this message is to be reiterated:
Drakeford is expected to expand on that stance at a conference in Edinburgh on 1 June hosted by Gordon Brown, which will explore Labour’s proposals for significant reform of the UK. Organised by the former prime minister’s Our Scottish Future thinktank, speakers will include Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, and the Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar.
Drakeford is one of Labour’s most prominent advocates of wholesale reform of the UK, arguing that is the most credible response to the demands for independence in Scotland and for Northern Ireland’s reunification with Ireland.
He’s right. But. How can this possibly happen in a context where the most populous part of the Britain is run by the Tories, at least for the next couple of years? And cast an eye closer to home and contemplate how a party like the DUP would ever integrate the idea of a ‘solidarity union’. Or the UUP for that matter? It is remotely plausible that they would buy into that in the way that even the SNP or Drakeford style Labour could?
Tellingly Drakeford appears to get parties like the SNP (or PC obviously in Wales) better than many in Labour.
That outlook helped Drakeford build a close working relationship with Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s former first minister, during their battles with the UK government over Brexit and during the Covid crisis. Drakeford is widely respected by senior Scottish National party politicians.
That said, given the Union isn’t about to vanish today or tomorrow one wonders if some will consider what is being said by him more seriously?
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
