Leaving a comment as I've built a database that could support a British DoGE effort. Using AI and webscraping I developed a unified database of council spending across the UK.
It currently has around 23m transactions linked to around 100k+ suppliers. It may be the only database of its kind at the moment.
Cursory findings include:
- Lambeth Council has paid out £27.5m to one private landlord in the last few years (Midos Estates Limited)
- Councils have spent almost £100m on REED RECRUITMENT LIMITED (Barnsley Council alone have spent £22m somehow)
- Southwark Council have paid out £15m to one parking company (APCOA PARKING (UK) LIMITED)
- A for profit foster care company ultimately registered in Jersey has made over £20m across a few councils (FOSTER CARE ASSOCIATES LIMITED)
- STRICTLY THEATRE CO LIMITED have made around 500k from councils
Anyone interested further give me a shout at at emr.newid@outlook.com. I’m 25 and currently working a sisyphean corporate tech project job. Working on an out to build projects like this full-time, any help appreciated - cheers!
Any chance you could scrape the company director details (Companies House website) for those companies and link to political donations? Could be an interesting Venn diagram…
Ran a quick search comparing company donations from the electoral commission data* to the database. Top results shown here (https://freeimage.host/i/donors.2p1vyT7). Also looking to make this data available in a web app.
Agreed that this seems like an excellent investigative journalism tool. I'm a professional statistician and in my experience joining together datasets is probably the most valuable way to get insights. Possibly another (less spicy) way to get an angle would be to combine it with which party (or parties) are in power: companies that disappear/appear from the list around the dates where council control changes are probably good targets for analysis.
Hey Dom, we had a quick hello at LFG Dec '24. I was one of those young people near the Monnet book signing.
A/ What's your opinion on the idea of a lawyer LLM that can: 1) Fight back against SW1/Whitehall slowing things down 2) Finding loopholes (e.g. asking lawyer LLM to stop boats without leaving ECHR). Would this be helpful?
B/ re Politics/Law: What's the interplay between winning in the courts vs public opinion? How often do you have jury nullification type scenarios where laws are on paper but you can just ignore them and do something else? -- e.g. Court not allowed to release Southport criminal name but they do anyway because riots out of control. -- e.g. Scrap procurement rules during Covid like you've described before.
A/ Theres a lot of projects on this including in the top 5 labs
For sure law will be upended.
B/ not sure what you mean but -- a core element of govt now, thats fundamentally different to the old world is - we have a set of primary legislation especially HRA and Equalities Act that is a/ superior to normal statutes b/ written in a way such that nobody can know how theyll be interpreted by courts and what will be 'unlawful'.
E.g 1992, SAS soldiers given medals for operation. 2025, coroner uses the HRA to declare the operation 'unlawful'. Now soldiers in their 70s have to hire lawyers.
In No10 these problems happen multiple times per day. You CANNOT know what courts will say.
This is paralysing govt especially cos the AG issued new Guidance, see link in blog
It creates a massive incentive to undermine the rule of law, which is indeed how the rest of the world tends to cope with it. That is not a healthy response, but a dangerous one.
You sound like a law student that needs focusing on a task. Do you fancy fighting some cases where 90% of the action happens rather than the cases that the media wants you to look at?
Discord Invite link for LFG / Crush Crime isn't working, has anyone got an up to date one?
It will be interesting to see how things play out in SW1 over the coming few years - I agree that Kemi is hopeless, I can't think of anyone obviously better that will take over so the default position as Dom says is that the Tories will be in a WORSE position in 2029 than even now.
It will be difficult to get Reform to accept a coalition with Tories and would ?probably? have to happen prior to the 2029 election in order to avoid splitting the vote.
My personal area of expertise is the NHS - the outcome of a UK DOGE investigation into government spending in the NHS would boggle the mind. Bring it on!
Superb. Not your purpose in writing, I know, but even the coherence of your thought, and your energy, gives me hope. I was a VP in Biostatistics until retiring this year at 54. I'd vote for and help your "new coalition" of post-Kemi Tories + well-led Reform + 'third force'.
One crisis that I think is likely to explode later this year (with unpredictable consequences) is the ongoing slow-motion disaster in universities. I think it is quite possible some collapse outright and some subjects (music; chemistry) are at risk of more or less vanishing at the national level (they will survive in some places, obviously).
“We took back control from Brussels but now No10 and Parliament must take back control from Whitehall.” = powerful sentence 🔥
“Part of what’s needed is a sort of ‘Monnet’s think tank crossed with a VC crossed with PARC crossed with Kronk gym crossed with Rick Rubin’s studio’ to train people who want to change politics/government and *match talent to projects*… Finding talent is easy. Finding things that seem a better use of time for those people than working on a startup or private research etc is very hard... This is the vicious circle we must break. DOGE shows it can be done!” ❤️
“Do Farage and Zia set out a convincing path for Reform to reform?”
I thought they were heading in the right direction, but yesterday they released their energy policy and it was muddled and arbitrary.
(IMHO
Getting rid of Net Zero - good
All the nimbyist crap - bad.
The UK energy policy should be pretty simple: energy abundance by maximising our Oil & Gas resources, going all out on new Nuclear supplemented by some renewables.)
So apart from the get rid of Net Zero point it was an anti-growth policy seemingly designed to play to the worst sort of red trouser wearing shire Tories. It was fronted by Tice so maybe Farage & Zia let him roll.
Either way, I think it shows that they are perhaps not capable of being a party of genuine reform and have discouraged people who want growth & techno-optimism.
So that pushes people down the 3rd option of engaging with political start-ups like LFG and hoping they can take over or merge with someone like the MAGA/Tech Bro combination.
Agreed that the Reform energy policy is not well-thought-through. Possibly good politics, but it is nevertheless another unexpected tax to disincentivise investment in the UK, which is crazy given the current despair. I agree it seems an indicator of the need to get better team around them.
In terms of energy mix: tidal could be cheaper than nuclear and plays well to our high tides/geographical strengths and similarly good for base load. I’m not opposed to nuclear, but tidal seems worth pursuing.
It was a complete muddle and v poorly communicated. But when you watch the press conference they gave and the Q&A afterwards they support all of the things you rightly call for. But it was a shambles. They definitely need to try a lot harder on policy!
I don't feel a serious agenda from them, the likes of which Dom has been advocating for. They seem unenergetic, media-focused, unintelligent, unserious. It doesn't feel like they have a serious plan or strategy for successfully controlling the government.
In fairness, they’re in the political growth phase, as Farage acknowledges. The priority is to build a movement first. Getting a ‘Third Force’ or some sort of external supportive intelligentsia - the trappings of a credible governing party - comes later.
Seems to me that the ideal separation of public and private enterprise is determined by data velocity & that the role of the political class has always been to run arbitrage.
I.e. roads may be better served as a public, rather than a private good, if centrally charged fees are less cumbersome than toll roads. Historically, this became true, with the rise of the modern state, with the corresponding loss to voluntarism. (Road users would offer a small coin, to horse shit shovellers, without the need for well defined rights / obligations.). This will, doubtless, flip the other way, as the ulez panopticon is rolled out, enabling the (re)creation of a whole new area of revenue collection (pay per mile) that would, logically, be better served by private institutions.
The horse and cart analogy is equally apposite to the outdated arbitrage that is run by the SW1 set. What I call “horse and cart” democracy, in that it was designed for an era when data velocity was limited by the speed of a horse and cart. You went to the town hall & furnished your ballot, marked with a cross, to signify who you wished to send down to SW1, to do your bidding, for the next five years. Once installed down there, several waterings, grazings & changings of horses later, he would do your bidding, in relation to things of such import as tariffs on the tea and silks, imported from china. Since then, the velocity of economic transactions has accelerated to almost light speed - I pull a device from my pocket, bounce transactions off orbiting satellites, until a robot drops my impulse purchase into a waiting cart. The velocity of political transactions remains at the same horse-and-cart limited speed, meanwhile. “Our man in SW1” hence, has no incentive to yield the arbitrage power she now has, preferring to feed our rapacious appetites & flatter our moral sensibilities. She has no interest in exposing the intrinsic contradictions and hypocrisies, given that we were stupid enough to vote for her, yet again.
To return to Toynbee:
Creative power - currently relates to ways to accelerate and / or harness these increases to transactional velocity.
Mimesis - limited by the growth of the corpocracy. We cannot have nice things.
Unity - sadly a phantom, or an empty corporate cliche, rather than the high trust society needed to protect the creative energies and nurture organic mimesis.
In regards to political philosophy, this quote by Jefferson always struck me as profound. Especially the last part; the breakdown of the basic political dimension Jefferson describes - rooted in human natur - seems key to explaining the ongoing "madness" in a simple way at a high level of abstraction:
"And after all it is but a truth which exists in every country where not suppressed by the rod of despotism. Men, according to their constitutions, and the circumstances in which they are placed, differ honestly in opinion. Some are whigs, liberals, democrats, call them what you please; others are tories, serviles, aristocrats etc. The latter fear the people, and wish to transfer all power to the higher classes of society. The former consider the people as the safest depository of power, in the ultimate, they cherish them therefore, and wish to leave in them all the powers to the exercise of which they are competent. This is the division of sentiment now existing in the US. it is the common division of whig and tory, or, according to our denominations, of Republican and Federalist, and is the most salutary of all divisions. It ought therefore to be fostered, instead of being amalgamated. For, take away this, and some more dangerous division will take it’s place. But there is really no amalgamation. The parties exist now as heretofore. The one indeed has thrown off it’s old name, and has not yet assumed a new one, altho’ obviously Consolidationists." (https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/98-01-02-4848)
It seems to me the genius of the British, as exemplified by Burke & peaking with Churchill, was to cut through it and declare the consensus position to be as follows: one should build a state that works for as many people on this spectrum as reasonably possible, always including the centre. Not a "conservative" position, but rather a way to safely harness liberal energy for rapid progress. Falling apart in the most dramatic way when reactionaries unable to embrace their Tory/Norman nature turn to fanatical collectivism, typically after being abused by some particularly ungracious liberals/Anglo-Saxons.
Related inspirational reading: Churchill, Thoughts and adventures, 1932, especially the chapters on consistency in politics, will we commit suicide (von Neumann-type argument), mass effects, and the parliamentary system & the economy: https://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20230735
A possible strategy is to anchor some things in pre-WWII Churchill, who seems underestimated also by Churchill fans (& there is still leverage in him, it seems, also because bad thinkers feel a strange compulsion to contextualise/demonise him). By the time he came to power, he was apparently only an impressive shadow of his younger self. His objective since 1904 was quite clearly to prevent it all, not simply pull through it.
DC, I've encountered yet another tale of how WW3 was nearly started by accident, this time by half a dozen unassuming junior soldiers manning a listening post in Berlin '89.
Your description of what has gone wrong (and why) is entirely persuasive as is much of your prescription for what's needed to put things right.
My question is: do you see faith (religion) having any part to play in helping to reshape the future in a functional direction?
You don't mention faith in this blog, but it seems to me that both the C of E and the RC church in the UK mirror the failings of SW1 and that they require a programme of reform similar to the one your suggesting for No 10/Whitehall.
If the Straussian analysis that modernity has led to nihilism and relativism and the denigration of essential human nature and morality is correct, can faith be part of the framework that rebuilds the human/social/moral dimension?
Perhaps this is unlikely in this country, given that religious observance is so pitifully small, but I can't help feeling there could be (perhaps even needs to be) a spiritual dimension to the revolution you are proposing in how we govern ourselves.
Worth mentioning that the leader with the strongest record of reforming an utterly broken system, Nayib Bukele, is adamant that the spiritual war is the one that decides earthly matters. All is downstream of that.
I think a spiritual dimension is essential for true regeneration. But we need a reformation just as radical as the political one Dominic proposes above.
We need to re-launch a Christian movement based purely on the words of Jesus. No resurrection, miracles, flying off to heaven, coming back to judge us etc. Just the teachings of Jesus as he tried to lead us to the realisation of our transcendental nature, beyond this finite body.
The moral and ethical framework doesn't need to be touched. The beautiful buildings are there waiting to be used.
We just need to outflank the religious civil servants and go directly to the source. They will flip out of course, but let them carry on. I'm more interested in finding those who share my spiritual hunger, and together we seek communion with something bigger than our little selves.
That is the bedrock on which sane politics can stand.
If Christianity is going to be a successful pillar of the future, it needs to be untied from old institutions that present themselves as the governers, and more part of a personal journey being close to the values taught in the Bible.
This would surely be more successful than outright pressure towards full faith, whilst also instilling a greater set of values than previously had.
Christianity is greatly tied to the culture of our countries history and therefore commands a form of nostalgia for the days we feel so far from and therefore may be well received if tied with a sense of direction to the future.
It would be tough to derive moral authority from Christianity, but perhaps it could shift inside of the overton window at some point? However, the teachings and moral stories could be implemented into communications, and further still can religious education be focused specifically on Christianity. If you want a specific culture that unites the country, we can't be multi-cultural. This isn't to say those people shouldn't be here, but there has to be a dominant culture with dominant ideas.
I can see the C of E reuniting with the Catholic Church in 2034, which will be the 500th anniversary of Henry VIII's Act of Supremacy. Of course there will be Anglican splinter groups that wish to preserve their separation. But, although I'm not an expert on ecclesiastical matters, it does seem as if their doctrines are less at odds these days, and less firmly so where they are, than in former times.
"can faith be part of the framework that rebuilds the human/social/moral dimension?"
There is no other source of transcendental values. The ancient Greeks recognised that there is a cognitive event horizon that prevents us from defining things like truth, justice, goodness, beauty etc, in spite if the fact that we are able to recognise them handily. Without an appeal to a divine source, the definition of everything is up for grabs, as any individual has equal authority to define what is beautiful, or just, or good. This is why the definition of "woman" has been corrupted so badly, when it is all so obvious to anyone with eyes to see. Coherence with transcendental values is ultimately coherence with objective reality, which is non-negotiable for any government attempting at competence.
Ultimately, the success of any movement against the current madness will require a coherent and sincere Christian core at the very top of the decision-making structure. No pagans, no atheists. Screen them out.
interesting isn't it? The Tories get chucked out of power in July 2024 and all of a sudden the Tory press (Telegraph, Spectator etc) start screaming about the ECHR and there sheer absurdity of that court's activities. Anyone who reads your blog would clearly reply to them "What took you so bloody long! How did you not notice the way it rewarded some of the worst people in our society whilst hounding some of the best?". The supposedly conservative legacy media just wants to shout in opposition and not actually achieve anything in power.
The media obsession was one of your most key insights for me Dom, something that was so bleedingly obvious that we missed it right in front of noses. Look at the way Boris uses his column in the Mail to criticise government immigration levels whilst as PM he did more than anyone else to dismantle immigration controls! These people really do prefer to be journalists and editors than actually people with any power to change things for the better. Gove's new job at the spectator is another sign of this.
SW1 is just so utterly and completely rotten. But it seems oddly proud of its rotten status. I fear it will bring the entire country down just to stay in power for another decade. Regime change can't come soon enough.
Is the UK culturally equipped to produce an Elon-type personality (in terms of ability to get shit done and change govt) or a genuinely popular Obama-type movement, and could that type of person survive British politics or public opinion?
Can't help but feeling that our history shows that our capacity to produce, support, and sustain genuine political movements - rather than just reactionary surges of anti-something sentiment - is very limited compared to the US.
The prospect of rallys made up of "normal" people rather than fanatics, based on support for a positive idea rather than protest against something that makes something angry, just seems completely foreign.
What should give us hope in terms of the capacity of this country to produce genuine revolutionary change that lasts beyond an initial surge?
I think my primary concern is not that we're capable of producing "regime change" moments - referendum showed that we're more than capable.
My concern is that we're not able to sustain anything meaningful beyond a couple of years before cynicism, tall poppy syndrome, and reversion to the status quo/consensus sets in. It's an autoimmune disorder our society has that prevents anything meaningful from taking hold for long enough to do anything. There are advantages to this, of course (which might actually outweigh the costs), but at the moment it's seriously crippling us.
Thoughts on Robert Jenrick taking over the Conservatives? His stuff seems compelling and messaging is good, especially the recent video he did on Chagos. Is him becoming leader of Conservatives a nail in the coffin of him being in a better camp?
It feels like Reform doesn’t have an intelligent force backing it, and everyone seems like a local pub-type. More generally as well, why is it that the intellectual class are not involving themselves more, seeing as the issues are becoming existential. Especially as the pace of change will increase. It feels like Reform could win, but I’m not confident that they actually have what it takes, or the understanding of exactly what needs to be done. Winning the election is one thing, but actually doing everything is the main point. Is the 3rd force you talk about what covers this side?
At the moment they obv do not have any sort of policy, campaign communication etc machine. It's unclear to me why. It's v hard to recruit talent to the Right cos people rightly think the Left will attack them and the Right wont defend them.
The Third Force must bring in elite talent with network effects
Is it possible to create something better than Reform that can manage all of this properly, or is it now too late because of the level of support they already have? They're essentially a one-man-band at the moment, and they give a vibe of self importance rather than actually trying to achieve something. Though, of course they are currently the only option for anything to actually change
It's definitely wildly complicated, as I realised when starting to map it out. Most councils seem to be controlled by people of 1/2 the calibre (in terms of ability to actually do anything good) of MPs.
Do you think Lizz Truss would be a positive addition to Reform, as she performs well in conversation format media (i.e. Peter McCormack podcast - she is however terrible on stage) when she talks about the failure of deep state etc, as she seems to understand the key points and is pushing them? Reform doesn't seem to be pushing that as much.
Me too. Dom doesn't post blog articles very often, but when he does there's a lot to digest. It's like those Jurassic cliffs in Dorset: Nothing happens for a few months but then an enormous section of cliff cascades down in a giant heap!
### Update: Beta version available -> https://www.govspendbase.uk/
Leaving a comment as I've built a database that could support a British DoGE effort. Using AI and webscraping I developed a unified database of council spending across the UK.
Councils have to publish their spending but they do so in a disparate way, excel files, csvs, web app etc. All of this is published on each council's individual website so as far as I'm aware there's no unified data source. e.g. (https://www.richmond.gov.uk/council/open_richmond/information_about_the_council/council_payments_to_suppliers, https://www.barnsley.gov.uk/services/our-council/information-we-publish/expenditure-over-500/)
It currently has around 23m transactions linked to around 100k+ suppliers. It may be the only database of its kind at the moment.
Cursory findings include:
- Lambeth Council has paid out £27.5m to one private landlord in the last few years (Midos Estates Limited)
- Councils have spent almost £100m on REED RECRUITMENT LIMITED (Barnsley Council alone have spent £22m somehow)
- Southwark Council have paid out £15m to one parking company (APCOA PARKING (UK) LIMITED)
- A for profit foster care company ultimately registered in Jersey has made over £20m across a few councils (FOSTER CARE ASSOCIATES LIMITED)
- STRICTLY THEATRE CO LIMITED have made around 500k from councils
Anyone interested further give me a shout at at emr.newid@outlook.com. I’m 25 and currently working a sisyphean corporate tech project job. Working on an out to build projects like this full-time, any help appreciated - cheers!
Ace!
Ill tweet link
when i click link asks for log in details
Password protection removed, tweet would be fantastic - LFG!
My twitter is @eroberts___
-> https://www.govspendbase.uk/
Any chance you could scrape the company director details (Companies House website) for those companies and link to political donations? Could be an interesting Venn diagram…
Ran a quick search comparing company donations from the electoral commission data* to the database. Top results shown here (https://freeimage.host/i/donors.2p1vyT7). Also looking to make this data available in a web app.
*https://search.electoralcommission.org.uk/?currentPage=1&rows=10&sort=AcceptedDate&order=desc&tab=1&open=filter&et=pp&et=ppm&et=tp&et=perpar&et=rd&isIrishSourceYes=true&isIrishSourceNo=true&prePoll=false&postPoll=true&donorStatus=company®ister=gb®ister=ni®ister=none&optCols=Register&optCols=CampaigningName&optCols=AccountingUnitsAsCentralParty&optCols=IsSponsorship&optCols=IsIrishSource&optCols=RegulatedDoneeType&optCols=CompanyRegistrationNumber&optCols=Postcode&optCols=NatureOfDonation&optCols=PurposeOfVisit&optCols=DonationAction&optCols=ReportedDate&optCols=IsReportedPrePoll&optCols=ReportingPeriodName&optCols=IsBequest&optCols=IsAggregation
This is great work. Got details on which political parties were involved too? Some good return on investment for some of them there!
Agreed that this seems like an excellent investigative journalism tool. I'm a professional statistician and in my experience joining together datasets is probably the most valuable way to get insights. Possibly another (less spicy) way to get an angle would be to combine it with which party (or parties) are in power: companies that disappear/appear from the list around the dates where council control changes are probably good targets for analysis.
Fantastic work, this will be a great resource.
Thanks! I'll do a post on a) how I did it and b) any findings
Also looking to make it publicly available in the near future
Beta version available here -> https://www.govspendbase.uk/
Beat me to it! I’ve been working on the same thing, but months behind you. Will reach out via email, I’d be interested in looking at the data model.
I’ve got an idea for an analytics layer to put on top
Incredible stuff, really insightful from a cursory glance. Hope Dom takes a look and passes it to pals.
Hey Dom, we had a quick hello at LFG Dec '24. I was one of those young people near the Monnet book signing.
A/ What's your opinion on the idea of a lawyer LLM that can: 1) Fight back against SW1/Whitehall slowing things down 2) Finding loopholes (e.g. asking lawyer LLM to stop boats without leaving ECHR). Would this be helpful?
B/ re Politics/Law: What's the interplay between winning in the courts vs public opinion? How often do you have jury nullification type scenarios where laws are on paper but you can just ignore them and do something else? -- e.g. Court not allowed to release Southport criminal name but they do anyway because riots out of control. -- e.g. Scrap procurement rules during Covid like you've described before.
A/ Theres a lot of projects on this including in the top 5 labs
For sure law will be upended.
B/ not sure what you mean but -- a core element of govt now, thats fundamentally different to the old world is - we have a set of primary legislation especially HRA and Equalities Act that is a/ superior to normal statutes b/ written in a way such that nobody can know how theyll be interpreted by courts and what will be 'unlawful'.
E.g 1992, SAS soldiers given medals for operation. 2025, coroner uses the HRA to declare the operation 'unlawful'. Now soldiers in their 70s have to hire lawyers.
In No10 these problems happen multiple times per day. You CANNOT know what courts will say.
This is paralysing govt especially cos the AG issued new Guidance, see link in blog
It creates a massive incentive to undermine the rule of law, which is indeed how the rest of the world tends to cope with it. That is not a healthy response, but a dangerous one.
You sound like a law student that needs focusing on a task. Do you fancy fighting some cases where 90% of the action happens rather than the cases that the media wants you to look at?
We shd talk 👍
Discord Invite link for LFG / Crush Crime isn't working, has anyone got an up to date one?
It will be interesting to see how things play out in SW1 over the coming few years - I agree that Kemi is hopeless, I can't think of anyone obviously better that will take over so the default position as Dom says is that the Tories will be in a WORSE position in 2029 than even now.
It will be difficult to get Reform to accept a coalition with Tories and would ?probably? have to happen prior to the 2029 election in order to avoid splitting the vote.
My personal area of expertise is the NHS - the outcome of a UK DOGE investigation into government spending in the NHS would boggle the mind. Bring it on!
will get new one
here
https://discord.com/invite/Fk2VjMsm
Superb. Not your purpose in writing, I know, but even the coherence of your thought, and your energy, gives me hope. I was a VP in Biostatistics until retiring this year at 54. I'd vote for and help your "new coalition" of post-Kemi Tories + well-led Reform + 'third force'.
One crisis that I think is likely to explode later this year (with unpredictable consequences) is the ongoing slow-motion disaster in universities. I think it is quite possible some collapse outright and some subjects (music; chemistry) are at risk of more or less vanishing at the national level (they will survive in some places, obviously).
“We took back control from Brussels but now No10 and Parliament must take back control from Whitehall.” = powerful sentence 🔥
“Part of what’s needed is a sort of ‘Monnet’s think tank crossed with a VC crossed with PARC crossed with Kronk gym crossed with Rick Rubin’s studio’ to train people who want to change politics/government and *match talent to projects*… Finding talent is easy. Finding things that seem a better use of time for those people than working on a startup or private research etc is very hard... This is the vicious circle we must break. DOGE shows it can be done!” ❤️
“Do Farage and Zia set out a convincing path for Reform to reform?”
I thought they were heading in the right direction, but yesterday they released their energy policy and it was muddled and arbitrary.
(IMHO
Getting rid of Net Zero - good
All the nimbyist crap - bad.
The UK energy policy should be pretty simple: energy abundance by maximising our Oil & Gas resources, going all out on new Nuclear supplemented by some renewables.)
So apart from the get rid of Net Zero point it was an anti-growth policy seemingly designed to play to the worst sort of red trouser wearing shire Tories. It was fronted by Tice so maybe Farage & Zia let him roll.
Either way, I think it shows that they are perhaps not capable of being a party of genuine reform and have discouraged people who want growth & techno-optimism.
So that pushes people down the 3rd option of engaging with political start-ups like LFG and hoping they can take over or merge with someone like the MAGA/Tech Bro combination.
yes at the moment they dont have a campaign/communication/research etc machine.
farage has said theyll build it, we'll see
Agreed that the Reform energy policy is not well-thought-through. Possibly good politics, but it is nevertheless another unexpected tax to disincentivise investment in the UK, which is crazy given the current despair. I agree it seems an indicator of the need to get better team around them.
In terms of energy mix: tidal could be cheaper than nuclear and plays well to our high tides/geographical strengths and similarly good for base load. I’m not opposed to nuclear, but tidal seems worth pursuing.
It was a complete muddle and v poorly communicated. But when you watch the press conference they gave and the Q&A afterwards they support all of the things you rightly call for. But it was a shambles. They definitely need to try a lot harder on policy!
I don't feel a serious agenda from them, the likes of which Dom has been advocating for. They seem unenergetic, media-focused, unintelligent, unserious. It doesn't feel like they have a serious plan or strategy for successfully controlling the government.
In fairness, they’re in the political growth phase, as Farage acknowledges. The priority is to build a movement first. Getting a ‘Third Force’ or some sort of external supportive intelligentsia - the trappings of a credible governing party - comes later.
The Toynbee quote is a keeper.
Seems to me that the ideal separation of public and private enterprise is determined by data velocity & that the role of the political class has always been to run arbitrage.
I.e. roads may be better served as a public, rather than a private good, if centrally charged fees are less cumbersome than toll roads. Historically, this became true, with the rise of the modern state, with the corresponding loss to voluntarism. (Road users would offer a small coin, to horse shit shovellers, without the need for well defined rights / obligations.). This will, doubtless, flip the other way, as the ulez panopticon is rolled out, enabling the (re)creation of a whole new area of revenue collection (pay per mile) that would, logically, be better served by private institutions.
The horse and cart analogy is equally apposite to the outdated arbitrage that is run by the SW1 set. What I call “horse and cart” democracy, in that it was designed for an era when data velocity was limited by the speed of a horse and cart. You went to the town hall & furnished your ballot, marked with a cross, to signify who you wished to send down to SW1, to do your bidding, for the next five years. Once installed down there, several waterings, grazings & changings of horses later, he would do your bidding, in relation to things of such import as tariffs on the tea and silks, imported from china. Since then, the velocity of economic transactions has accelerated to almost light speed - I pull a device from my pocket, bounce transactions off orbiting satellites, until a robot drops my impulse purchase into a waiting cart. The velocity of political transactions remains at the same horse-and-cart limited speed, meanwhile. “Our man in SW1” hence, has no incentive to yield the arbitrage power she now has, preferring to feed our rapacious appetites & flatter our moral sensibilities. She has no interest in exposing the intrinsic contradictions and hypocrisies, given that we were stupid enough to vote for her, yet again.
To return to Toynbee:
Creative power - currently relates to ways to accelerate and / or harness these increases to transactional velocity.
Mimesis - limited by the growth of the corpocracy. We cannot have nice things.
Unity - sadly a phantom, or an empty corporate cliche, rather than the high trust society needed to protect the creative energies and nurture organic mimesis.
In regards to political philosophy, this quote by Jefferson always struck me as profound. Especially the last part; the breakdown of the basic political dimension Jefferson describes - rooted in human natur - seems key to explaining the ongoing "madness" in a simple way at a high level of abstraction:
"And after all it is but a truth which exists in every country where not suppressed by the rod of despotism. Men, according to their constitutions, and the circumstances in which they are placed, differ honestly in opinion. Some are whigs, liberals, democrats, call them what you please; others are tories, serviles, aristocrats etc. The latter fear the people, and wish to transfer all power to the higher classes of society. The former consider the people as the safest depository of power, in the ultimate, they cherish them therefore, and wish to leave in them all the powers to the exercise of which they are competent. This is the division of sentiment now existing in the US. it is the common division of whig and tory, or, according to our denominations, of Republican and Federalist, and is the most salutary of all divisions. It ought therefore to be fostered, instead of being amalgamated. For, take away this, and some more dangerous division will take it’s place. But there is really no amalgamation. The parties exist now as heretofore. The one indeed has thrown off it’s old name, and has not yet assumed a new one, altho’ obviously Consolidationists." (https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/98-01-02-4848)
It seems to me the genius of the British, as exemplified by Burke & peaking with Churchill, was to cut through it and declare the consensus position to be as follows: one should build a state that works for as many people on this spectrum as reasonably possible, always including the centre. Not a "conservative" position, but rather a way to safely harness liberal energy for rapid progress. Falling apart in the most dramatic way when reactionaries unable to embrace their Tory/Norman nature turn to fanatical collectivism, typically after being abused by some particularly ungracious liberals/Anglo-Saxons.
Related inspirational reading: Churchill, Thoughts and adventures, 1932, especially the chapters on consistency in politics, will we commit suicide (von Neumann-type argument), mass effects, and the parliamentary system & the economy: https://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20230735
A possible strategy is to anchor some things in pre-WWII Churchill, who seems underestimated also by Churchill fans (& there is still leverage in him, it seems, also because bad thinkers feel a strange compulsion to contextualise/demonise him). By the time he came to power, he was apparently only an impressive shadow of his younger self. His objective since 1904 was quite clearly to prevent it all, not simply pull through it.
DC, I've encountered yet another tale of how WW3 was nearly started by accident, this time by half a dozen unassuming junior soldiers manning a listening post in Berlin '89.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-157347655
The Mill Substack re Oldham Rochdale and grooming gangs and weird goings on.
https://themill.substack.com?r=17frcx&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=profile
It blows my mind how poor SW1 is at digital comms!
Even a small increase in digital/new media comms could make big differences.
This YT channel is interesting for anyone wanting to understand the skills of short form video and story telling https://youtube.com/@kallawaymarketing?si=ebV32BjeSVXiZVaK
Dominic, your best blog yet, in my opinion.
Your description of what has gone wrong (and why) is entirely persuasive as is much of your prescription for what's needed to put things right.
My question is: do you see faith (religion) having any part to play in helping to reshape the future in a functional direction?
You don't mention faith in this blog, but it seems to me that both the C of E and the RC church in the UK mirror the failings of SW1 and that they require a programme of reform similar to the one your suggesting for No 10/Whitehall.
If the Straussian analysis that modernity has led to nihilism and relativism and the denigration of essential human nature and morality is correct, can faith be part of the framework that rebuilds the human/social/moral dimension?
Perhaps this is unlikely in this country, given that religious observance is so pitifully small, but I can't help feeling there could be (perhaps even needs to be) a spiritual dimension to the revolution you are proposing in how we govern ourselves.
yes i do. agree both churches also following the path of disintegrating institutions.
your question is at the deepest level, as you say this is really a core Q for modern political philosophy.
ill post on strauss next week
Worth mentioning that the leader with the strongest record of reforming an utterly broken system, Nayib Bukele, is adamant that the spiritual war is the one that decides earthly matters. All is downstream of that.
I think a spiritual dimension is essential for true regeneration. But we need a reformation just as radical as the political one Dominic proposes above.
We need to re-launch a Christian movement based purely on the words of Jesus. No resurrection, miracles, flying off to heaven, coming back to judge us etc. Just the teachings of Jesus as he tried to lead us to the realisation of our transcendental nature, beyond this finite body.
The moral and ethical framework doesn't need to be touched. The beautiful buildings are there waiting to be used.
We just need to outflank the religious civil servants and go directly to the source. They will flip out of course, but let them carry on. I'm more interested in finding those who share my spiritual hunger, and together we seek communion with something bigger than our little selves.
That is the bedrock on which sane politics can stand.
If Christianity is going to be a successful pillar of the future, it needs to be untied from old institutions that present themselves as the governers, and more part of a personal journey being close to the values taught in the Bible.
This would surely be more successful than outright pressure towards full faith, whilst also instilling a greater set of values than previously had.
Christianity is greatly tied to the culture of our countries history and therefore commands a form of nostalgia for the days we feel so far from and therefore may be well received if tied with a sense of direction to the future.
It would be tough to derive moral authority from Christianity, but perhaps it could shift inside of the overton window at some point? However, the teachings and moral stories could be implemented into communications, and further still can religious education be focused specifically on Christianity. If you want a specific culture that unites the country, we can't be multi-cultural. This isn't to say those people shouldn't be here, but there has to be a dominant culture with dominant ideas.
I can see the C of E reuniting with the Catholic Church in 2034, which will be the 500th anniversary of Henry VIII's Act of Supremacy. Of course there will be Anglican splinter groups that wish to preserve their separation. But, although I'm not an expert on ecclesiastical matters, it does seem as if their doctrines are less at odds these days, and less firmly so where they are, than in former times.
"can faith be part of the framework that rebuilds the human/social/moral dimension?"
There is no other source of transcendental values. The ancient Greeks recognised that there is a cognitive event horizon that prevents us from defining things like truth, justice, goodness, beauty etc, in spite if the fact that we are able to recognise them handily. Without an appeal to a divine source, the definition of everything is up for grabs, as any individual has equal authority to define what is beautiful, or just, or good. This is why the definition of "woman" has been corrupted so badly, when it is all so obvious to anyone with eyes to see. Coherence with transcendental values is ultimately coherence with objective reality, which is non-negotiable for any government attempting at competence.
Ultimately, the success of any movement against the current madness will require a coherent and sincere Christian core at the very top of the decision-making structure. No pagans, no atheists. Screen them out.
interesting isn't it? The Tories get chucked out of power in July 2024 and all of a sudden the Tory press (Telegraph, Spectator etc) start screaming about the ECHR and there sheer absurdity of that court's activities. Anyone who reads your blog would clearly reply to them "What took you so bloody long! How did you not notice the way it rewarded some of the worst people in our society whilst hounding some of the best?". The supposedly conservative legacy media just wants to shout in opposition and not actually achieve anything in power.
The media obsession was one of your most key insights for me Dom, something that was so bleedingly obvious that we missed it right in front of noses. Look at the way Boris uses his column in the Mail to criticise government immigration levels whilst as PM he did more than anyone else to dismantle immigration controls! These people really do prefer to be journalists and editors than actually people with any power to change things for the better. Gove's new job at the spectator is another sign of this.
SW1 is just so utterly and completely rotten. But it seems oddly proud of its rotten status. I fear it will bring the entire country down just to stay in power for another decade. Regime change can't come soon enough.
yup!
i told you after the election the tories wd suddenly discover the ECHR is a nightmare!
Hi am here to answer Qs...
Will go through old and answer live...
You may want to stick something on X/blog post itself as it was unclear that AMA had actually started and was happening in comments
Is the UK culturally equipped to produce an Elon-type personality (in terms of ability to get shit done and change govt) or a genuinely popular Obama-type movement, and could that type of person survive British politics or public opinion?
Can't help but feeling that our history shows that our capacity to produce, support, and sustain genuine political movements - rather than just reactionary surges of anti-something sentiment - is very limited compared to the US.
The prospect of rallys made up of "normal" people rather than fanatics, based on support for a positive idea rather than protest against something that makes something angry, just seems completely foreign.
What should give us hope in terms of the capacity of this country to produce genuine revolutionary change that lasts beyond an initial surge?
Yes, historically we are the richest place on earth for such people.
Hut they are rigorously excluded from public institutions now and even most public companies
agree on problems but a historic regime meltdown is a different situation and different rules will apply - like in the referendum
I think my primary concern is not that we're capable of producing "regime change" moments - referendum showed that we're more than capable.
My concern is that we're not able to sustain anything meaningful beyond a couple of years before cynicism, tall poppy syndrome, and reversion to the status quo/consensus sets in. It's an autoimmune disorder our society has that prevents anything meaningful from taking hold for long enough to do anything. There are advantages to this, of course (which might actually outweigh the costs), but at the moment it's seriously crippling us.
Thoughts on Robert Jenrick taking over the Conservatives? His stuff seems compelling and messaging is good, especially the recent video he did on Chagos. Is him becoming leader of Conservatives a nail in the coffin of him being in a better camp?
It feels like Reform doesn’t have an intelligent force backing it, and everyone seems like a local pub-type. More generally as well, why is it that the intellectual class are not involving themselves more, seeing as the issues are becoming existential. Especially as the pace of change will increase. It feels like Reform could win, but I’m not confident that they actually have what it takes, or the understanding of exactly what needs to be done. Winning the election is one thing, but actually doing everything is the main point. Is the 3rd force you talk about what covers this side?
At the moment they obv do not have any sort of policy, campaign communication etc machine. It's unclear to me why. It's v hard to recruit talent to the Right cos people rightly think the Left will attack them and the Right wont defend them.
The Third Force must bring in elite talent with network effects
Is it possible to create something better than Reform that can manage all of this properly, or is it now too late because of the level of support they already have? They're essentially a one-man-band at the moment, and they give a vibe of self importance rather than actually trying to achieve something. Though, of course they are currently the only option for anything to actually change
How important is control of the governing structure underneath the national government (i.e. combined authorities and councils)?
that whole structure itself needs big changes & a shift of taxes from national to local
It's definitely wildly complicated, as I realised when starting to map it out. Most councils seem to be controlled by people of 1/2 the calibre (in terms of ability to actually do anything good) of MPs.
Do you think Lizz Truss would be a positive addition to Reform, as she performs well in conversation format media (i.e. Peter McCormack podcast - she is however terrible on stage) when she talks about the failure of deep state etc, as she seems to understand the key points and is pushing them? Reform doesn't seem to be pushing that as much.
no she brings narcisssist energy and chaos
What do we need to build, and how can we create a hub for people of like–mind to generate and work on these things together?
What can people do to get actively involved with the process of regime change, whether they are an average person or a specialised person?
Another brilliant blog. It landed at 11:30pm and I was about to sleep - but then stayed up until 1am. So much to think about and consider. Thank you!
Me too. Dom doesn't post blog articles very often, but when he does there's a lot to digest. It's like those Jurassic cliffs in Dorset: Nothing happens for a few months but then an enormous section of cliff cascades down in a giant heap!