Success?
Not for the couple of thousand Yanks ground to dust or the tens of thousands of women and children who perished in the retributory crusade that followed.




Yup, it'd have to be Jezza over the Bullingdon boy every time for me.
I'm just a sucker for a bit of social equality everytime.
It's a pipe-dream but it doesn't stop the wanting.

Pencilling WIZEB and Sal in for the Plum team!

Thanks.
I went to Damsonian College, Withernsea.

Wouldn't the most logical manifesto simply repeat whatever Finland has in theirs? Finland is frequently identified as the happiest country in the world whereas typically the UK sits around 15th. I accept that the geography and population density etc are different but surely they must be doing something right that we can adopt.

Coincidentally, given the bipartisan idea for this thread, the Finns generally have coalition governments - they use proportional representation and multi-seat constituencies.

Here are a couple of my snowflake to gammon policy pitches for evaluation and criticism.

1. Scrap HS2 and spend the money saved on improving commuter services in the provinces. Apart from MPs and the like, how many people in the North travel regularly to London or need to more often? It feels like a London-centric solution to Northern issues to me.

2. Scrap direct government foreign aid. This’d appeal to the ‘charity begins at home’ crowd (not really charity then, is it? But never mind). It could be simultaneously sold to soft hearted liberals by noting it is often just a bribe, sometimes to corrupt regimes, to further foreign policy aims - but isn’t even very effective in doing that.

By having a genuine Northern powerhouse we could eliminate the need for much of the business travel between here and London - and even if theres still a demand surely that doesnt need to be a high speed link. We can still do work and communicate whilst on the train. HS2 is a vanity project, which to have made any sense should have connected directly to Eurotunnel.

I haven’t and I’m not saying it is easy. However, my guess is that more people suffer more often on local lines doing daily commutes - and it could be improved relatively cheaply. I’m taking inspiration from a Dispatches on Channel 4 from a few weeks ago. Fair though



We’re off.

On the NHS - clinical/pharma excellence/progression is moving faster than the funds to support it - can we still expect the NHS to keep delivering as it is? Do we spend millions on cancer treatments for one person or millions doing cataracts for thousands of people etc.

On the second point - yes I am interested in a more Federal approach - were local issues are dealt with locally and Macro issues such as Fiscal policy is dealt with centrally

It is challenging to fund new treatments. However, it is worth remembering that only ~15% of the NHS budget is spent of drugs. The bigger challenge healthcare provision faces in the UK is a an ageing population, more than pharmaceutical innovation and its budget impact.

Rather than removing MPs from Scotland, NI and Wales from Westminster, would it make sense for that to remain as the central body and have regional assemblies in England?

I don't mind how its structured as long as duplication is reduced and decision-making is streamlined, we have seen during Covid how difficult it seems to make decisive decisions quickly

Out of interest, which decisions around the response to the current crisis do you think have been stymied by the second chamber? I ask that in the spirit of neutrality proposed by the OP - because I genuinely can't think of a single one; and I am in favour of constitutional reform, so we get off on the right foot.

On the NHS and the 'ageing population' problem - I have long advocated radical reform of the Social Care sector - and I speak from the inside; that in itself would solve a significant swathe of the problems faced by the NHS. But successive H&SC Secretaries forget the SC part of the brief.

I completely agree with your second point - the first point was more about the infrastructure of the public sector and how long it takes to get things done - we apparently have thousands of UK firms wanting to supply PPE but because of government processes they haven't been responded to - a crisis like this needs quick accurate decisions - some of which will be wrong - this isn't possible with a public sector as snail-paced as ours.