• Elections

Yes, they were a disaster for the Tories in that they lost two safe seats but such things happen at by-elections. However, I don’t think Labour should be ordering the fireworks and champagne just yet. (Mr Wolf had another way of expressing this sentiment in Pulp Fiction.)

If repeated, these vote changes would result in a Labour landslide: but they won’t be. Were by-election results to be followed at general elections we’d have a Lib Dem government. The turnout was also particularly low, some way below the average of about 50% for by-elections. The reason was that a lot of people. mainly Tories, felt they could most eloquently express their position through inertia.

In Mid-Bedfordshire, Labour’s vote was lower than in 2019, which was lower than in 2017. In Tamworth, last week’s vote was slightly higher than in 2019 but 2017’s was far higher than both of these. The idea that there had been any defection of votes to Labour thus doesn’t seem to make sense. The main reason for the defeat was that about two-thirds of the Tory voters on the last two occasions stayed at home. They were thus able to give the incumbents a good kicking by doing nothing: the people had spoken by not opening their mouths. If only half of these absentee Tory voters went back to the ballot boxes come the general election and Labour continued its current trajectory of votes, the Tories would re-take both seats. That seems to me like good news for them.

The by-elections did two other things. First, they gave the opportunity for disgruntled loyalists a chance to vent their spleen without it mattering much. Sunak doesn’t care if the party has two fewer MPS for the next year. Other cross blues up and down the country were not voting in sympathy – not that they could vote in these places, even if they wanted to (which they didn’t). Sunak will hope that’s got the dissatisfaction out of their systems.

The other big plus is that Sunak has got rid of two Tory MPs who, though for some time popular enough to command huge majorities, have in recent years fallen off the bottom the scale in terms of personal performance. Both were also closely associated with Big BoJo, Pincher because his ministerial appointment was the final straw for the Tory faithful in trusting the then PM’s judge of character; and Dorries because she was a slightly crazed cheerleader for the big man for an embarrassingly long time after the circus had been forced to pack up and leave town.

If Sunak wants to portray himself as “the change”, getting rid of these two leftovers was essential. The fact that his party lost the elections, entirely due to its own voters staying away, can be used as proof that it was distaste for the two previous incumbents and all their associations that was the problem. Were there to have been a genuine sea change for Labour then some of these people would have gone red. That, at least, is what I imagine he’s telling the faithful.

Of course, the current government is not well regarded. The Tory party’s internal debacles over the last few years won’t be forgotten. This was, after all, the party that inflicted the Truss-Kwarteng experiment on us, leaving millions of homeowners in the condition of lab rats being injected with anthrax on the principle of “that which does not kill me will make me stronger.” The problem for Sunak is that such good news as there is doesn’t seem to stick to him. In this respect, if few others, Nadine Dorries was right: he doesn’t have that X-factor. Nor, it would seem, does Kier Starmer. That’s perhaps the biggest message from the by-elections – the old was bad but the new isn’t that great either.

• Centralisation

The progresss of the Levelling up and Regeneration Bill through parliament has produced two reverses for local government which seem to me further proof that Whitehall and Westminster have no trust whatsoever in the local councils, despite most  – notorious exceptions like Croydon aside – having performed far better with matters such as the reaction to Covid than the fumbling, bumbling, one size (or three tiers) fits all approach from SW1. On 23 October, the Local Government Association (LGA) issued a statement concerning two aspects of the recent debate on the proposed legislation.

One concerned planning, a traditional battleground between national and local government. “Councils are extremely disappointed,” the LGA’s statement said, “that the Government has removed Lords amendment 82, which would have enabled local planning authorities to set fees for planning applications at a level that covers the cost of processing them. Currently, planning fees do not cover the true cost of processing applications. As a result, taxpayers are left subsidising planning services by almost £5 million a week. Planning departments are facing a significant deficit (£245.4 million in 2020/21) and experiencing growing skills and capacity challenges.”

These are quite big figures. Every party says it wants to streamline, fast-track or modernise the planning system but appears to forget that it’s a very complex – even over-complex – machine governed by and connected to numerous acts, regulations, judicial decisions and local plans. Charging a fair rate for applications seems logical given the number of things that a local planning authority (LPA) needs to consider. Whether these are always relevant is a separate matter.

There’s also the related problem of enforcement which is, amazingly, not a statutory responsibility for an LPA. None the less, not to be able to do this, as often happens, is to bring the whole process into disrepute. Either more money needs to be put into making the current machinery, including enforcing its decisions, work properly, or you abolish the whole system (as Brussels did in the 1960s and 1970s).

The LGA also criticises another piece of what I see as insane central control, as follows:

“We are also disappointed that Government have removed Lords amendment 22, which would have given councils the flexibility to use virtual meetings technologies at council meetings. This is despite 95 per cent of councils supporting the reintroduction of virtual meetings technology using a common-sense approach. We support Amendment 22B in lieu, tabled by Baroness McIntosh of Pickering, which provides for a Minister to bring forward secondary legislation to specify circumstances in which councils may be permitted to hold meetings that utilise virtual meeting technology. We urge Government to accept this amendment.”

This is just bonkers. The virtual-meeting rules were introduced during the pandemic and resulted in an upturn of attendance by councillors, local ward members, local MPs, pressure groups and members of the public. To remove this choice of in-person, hybrid or virtual is the final confirmation for me of the disconnect that exists between our national government and the local representatives who, generally under- or un-paid, provide so many of the services on its behalf.

• Police

People of my generation – and my class and ethnicity – were brought up to respect the Police. There is, however, a straight line to be drawn from Dixon of Dock Green to The Sweeney to Life on Mars to Line of Duty that shows this is changing. Many groups have, with good reason, never trusted them. I’m fortunate enough to have not needed to have much to with them. I’ve also remembered my father’s advice that a happy life is largely measured by how little time you spend in the professional company of police officers, lawyers or doctors.

The Police in the UK have two unconnected problems at present, both of which are serious for all of us. The first is that the Police force of our capital city, which is also one of the world’s most important urban settlements, appears to be completely screwed up. This is the latest example of a long-overdue apology for an awful piece of law enforcement at the expense of two innocent people.

The other problem is that there seems to be no money available to investigate any crimes at all. The Gov.uk page for Police funding for England and Wales 2015 to 2023 says that for the financial year ending March 2023:

• £16,987 million in funding for policing in England and Wales has been agreed
• overall funding will increase by £1,111m (7.0%) compared with the previous financial year, in nominal terms
• overall funding will increase by 2.8% in real terms
• funding has grown in real terms for the last eight years, following a decline between the financial years ending 2011 and 2015

This may well be true: but many people and communities feel this is not translating into the resolution of crimes like vandalism, theft and shoplifting that cause personal distress. There also seems to be a low clear-up rate with crimes at the more sophisticated end of the scale including cyber-fraud and identity theft. I’m sure that the 140,000-odd Police officers in England and Wales are all working as hard as they can at whatever it is that they do. The trouble is that it’s increasingly hard to see what this is.

It may well be that a vast number of threats we never know about are nipped in the bud by the Police before they become a problem. It’s also claimed that an increasingly large number of crimes are now virtual and that much police-work is now done online. Both points may be true, but the fact is that there is probably no less physical or visible crime than there was, say, fifty years ago: it’s just that a new layer of cyber-disorder has been overlaid on this which we’re expecting the same kind of officers to solve, and still be on the beat round our cities, towns and villages. The same could be said for our attitude to other aspects of life, such as health care, social care and education, where the gap between what we expect and what we receive is often widening by the day.

People of or about my generation were brought up when when demand for services didn’t outstrip supply, Now it does. Funding for things like the Police, the NHS, the BBC, social care and education needs to increase by an amount that no one would vote for. Money alone can’t solve them anyway as the world is becoming exponentially more complex. We need to pay more – a lot more than any politician would ever dare articulate – to get them up the standard we might wish and which they might once have enjoyed. Otherwise, we’ll have to get used to getting less.

• And finally…

• The clocks go back on Saturday 29 October in the UK and the EU and several other places. The debate about whether Daylight Saving Time is a good thing or not has rumbled on for years. The EU approved the idea of scrapping it a few years ago but other more pressing concerns have intruded since then. I’m surprised that the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg – who would like to turn the clocks back a couple of hundred years, never mind an hour – have not launched a campaign to “give Britain back control of its time”. This is one thing that even he can’t blame the EU for as it was introduced here in 1916.

• The BBC’s Director General Tim Davie has been “grilled” by the Conservative backbench 1922 Committee. I imagine the members greatly enjoy these sessions as there always seems to be some aspect of the BBC’s coverage that displeases them. Currently the main row is about whether Hamas should unequivocally be called a terrorist organisation. Doubtless in anticipation of this, the corporation’s CEO for News and Current Affairs, Deborah Turness, published a blog which explained some of the editorial decisions and the challenges of reporting such a conflict. With regard to the T word, she writes that “The BBC uses the word ‘terrorist’ with attribution. When we mention Hamas, we make it clear, where possible, that they are a proscribed terrorist organisation by the UK government and others.”

A BBC spokesperson added that “every four to five years, as a matter of course we look at our editorial guidelines. That’s next due to happen next year.” The BBC is often criticised for being too this, too that or too much of the other. It’s problem is that it actually makes attempts to be objective, something which most websites, newspapers and television stations do not. Any of these can call a particular organisation terrorists or freedom fighters or whatever they choose: but it doesn’t necessarily make them so.

• Rishi Sunak has said the the UK “will not rush to regulate AI“, according to The Guardian. The report then quotes all the usual stuff about championing innovation, points of principle and so forth. He finally addresses what seems to be the crucial point: “in any case, how can we write laws that make sense for something that we don’t yet fully understand?” Very little about the world and the people that live in it is fully understood so to follow this maxim in all cases would probably result in no laws at all. One of the ways, though perhaps not the best way, that we seek to impose order on it is through legislation – this is right, this is wrong; these are terrorists, these are freedom fighters. Legislation can look at first glance like a moral code but it’s only a reflection of what the legislators can actually get done. Any law is also almost worse that useless if it can’t be enforced (see Police section above).

The Telegraph also looks at the issue of how AI might change, or change us. The article claims that “researchers admit to “significant uncertainty” about how the technology will change given rapid changes in the last year, but said it is “almost certain” that systems will become more capable as large Silicon Valley companies invest increasing sums in the technology.” I don’t think that’s very earth-shattering news. It also refers to the opinion of “experts” as to when “artificial general intelligence”  – the  point at which AI systems can be said to match and overtake humans – will be reached. Their considered view is sometime between the year after next and 2070. Nobody knows, in other words. But does AI know? Do we dare ask it?

• This point about regulation was touched on in the same address when the PM said that “states should not rely on private companies ‘marking their own homework‘” but I’m not sure if this refers specifically to AI or to everything. Most of us can agree on some things – that the nuclear industry should be centrally regulated but that the TCCB’s definition of the LBW law should not – but there’s a big grey area between. Worst of all, though, is having a system of regulation which manifestly doesn’t work, like a law that isn’t enforced. Step forward, once again, the water industry. The Environment Agency is meant to mark the water companies’ homework and regulate their behaviour. The analogy that springs to mind is of a process-driven teacher with a self-confidence problem who isn’t given enough money to buy the coloured pens they needs to mark the work; and who in any case knows that if any detentions are handed out the unruly pupils will ignore them, while any fines amount to only a few pence from their pocket money.

• Talking about the LBW law, England’s performance at the World Cup seems to be going from bad to worse, the recent defeat by South Africa marking a new low, rapidly overtaken by an even worse defeat to Sri Lanka. I’m going to support Afghanistan from now on. They’re also ahead of us in the table and so a better bet. Proof if proof be needed that just because we invented things like cricket, football, railways, a national health service and the postal service, that’s no guarantee that we’re still any good at them…