As Ed Miliband ends the ban on onshore wind and moves to classify it as national infrastructure (i.e. like pylons, the secretary of state approves them and a local council can't go 'we have quite enough power to be going on with) I once again find myself thinking about Rishi Sunak's 2024 campaign.
He is ringing around defeated MPs to commiserate them - a good contact who lost their seat found it very awkward, because clearly Sunak was more surprised by their defeat than they were. (They weren't *thrilled* but as they said, 'I'm not a fucking idiot, I had a lot of time to prepare for it'.)
A thing that you could observe happening in real time from October 2022 to the summer of 2023 was he and his inner circle just forgetting that he lost to Truss.
I don’t understand this at all. The polls were rock solid with Labour 20 points ahead for two years. Do they… not know how to read a graph? How to spot that that is an unprecedented judgement on an incumbent party?
jonn elledge wrote a very good piece on how the Tory press appeared to be shielding the Tory leadership from that reality, with their constant stories of how the polls weren't that bad or didn't mean a labour victory was inevitable
Maybe if your first election is 2015 (Tories do better than polls) and you backed Leave in 2016 (some polls wrong, your side wins) then you sort of memory-hole all the instances where polls are either right or are wrong in a way that doesn't benefit the Tories?
I guess to be overly charitable, he lost to Truss amongst conservative party members who are not renowned for their acumen in judging effective administrators, but yes, I take the point.
Heh.
Although I imagine a few of them are problem a bit shocked. *cough* Ranil Jayawardena *cough*
Local Con campaign appeared to be doing very little for weeks, then RJ issuing a video where his kids say we have to save the polar bears, and then sending increasingly weird emails to everyone.
What sticks in my head is after the locals him insisting it was going to be a hung parliament, ignoring absolutely everything that said contrary to that.
I think he and his circle decided to ignore any other poll, including internal ones, that contradicted that thinking.
There were broad hints. The Labour lead would narrow, it was soft. The polls were wrong. After: We should abolish all polls during an election campaign.
Basically, if we’re going to get our butts handed to us, we don’t want to know.
One impression I got with Sunak was that he thought he was a technocrat because he couldn't tell his ideology from objective reality, maybe because the people who were around him in business/politics shared his beliefs. It was self-evident to him, and it was those who disagreed who were ideological.
Yes - there are plenty on the centre right (far from all, but plenty) who see their ideology as natural and apolitical - it's just the way of the world, and it's only attempts to change this natural order which are political. I think it's often an unconcious defense against examining their pivilege.
Isn't it just being bought into line with other energy generation development types? So it'll only be national infrastructure / NSIP if the proposals cross the 50MW threshold, below that it's for LA to determine.
Even more irrelevant side note: energy developers don’t always like the DCO process, you see plenty of solar farms firmly capped at 49.999....MW to ensure they stay at the local authority level.
Very good move. Onshore wind is way cheaper to build and operate. Yes, the NIMBY crowd will kick and scream about bogus noise and losing their unblemished views, but if the economy is to grow, these people's orthodoxy must be crushed, sooner or later.
Yes, but traditionally North Wales has voted Plaid and Tory, and the Borders and D&G are historically Tory too and so is the top end of Northumberland, and SW England is historically Lib Dem. And look where most of the wind farms are.
Berwick and eastern borders were LibDem for years before 2015 (if we're talking historical perspectives) and Tory/SNP after. D&G and its predecessors flip flops Tory and SNP/Lib. So yeah not all Labour areas but not solid Tory either.
Amazing to see this map, though. So many now!
At present, yes. But there are other areas of north Yorkshire and more in the Borders where the government could use this power to site onshore wind without fear of the electoral consequences. Or am I being overly cynical?
Yes, you are. Wind power is popular among most voters, elections outside England (one reason why it is concentrated in Scotland is the 2015 ban was reserved) show that it is even popular *for people who have it in their seats*.
The opposition to it is pure heckler's veto, in that that councils and some MPs get spooked by the letters in criticism, because no-one writes letters in support.
There is a small, but growing and very good natured, online pylon appreciation movement. It would be interesting to see what happened if they started writing letters to local papers and councils
Can confirm. My mum's elderly cousins in Dunblane waxed lyrical about the elegant wind turbines put in on the moors above them. (And as a north-eastener, I always enjoy seeing the turbines dotted along the coast but I know some people who live up Weardale were less keen on theirs.)
