Burnham’s idea of devolution contradicts the centralising measures the Labour government have been taking to drive through more housing, more accommodation for illegal arrivals, more wind arrays and solar farms, more grid pylons, less food growing. I bet he does not reverse those measures, as Labour struggles to impose more housing and net zero developments on a population that wants better control of our borders and fewer unreliable energy installations gobbling up farmland. Indeed, with his passion to build 1.5m homes with more emphasis on Council housing he may well need to intensify the override of our local Councils in his futile attempt to reach this unrealistic target.
Many of us would like our local Councils to have the power to say No to the conversion of military facilities into large open settlements for illegal arrivals. We would like national government to obey our wishes to reduce substantially inward migration to cut the need for so many new housing estates. We would like our Councils to be free to decide how much housing development and where.
It is true there would still be risk of disappointment with some Green and Lib Dem Councils, but if they defied local wishes on planning matters more people would see the need to vote to put in a Council that did reflect local views.
We would like local and national government to get out of the way in many decisions people and companies could take for themselves. Planning often gets in the way of people and businesses improving their existing properties, whilst imposing large new developments and changes of use of public sector property that communities think go too far.
July 4, 2026
I see the Refugees Welcome Brigade are demonstrating against1,250 refugees being housed at Bicester because it will induce Faaar Rite protests.
Oh, the irony.
Lord make me chaste, but not today.
July 4, 2026
Pure hypocrisy as we have come to expect of the lefties. Leave the money and power with the people who made it not local politician who have generally just wasted or are wasting on things like HS2, net zero, the mad Covid net have vaccines, duff and pointless university degrees, piss poor defence spending, the dire NHS…
July 4, 2026
Some very depressing betting odds – next election result over all majority – the order is No over all majority circa 50%, Labour 16%, Reform 16%, (Tories only about a 12% chance), Restore, Greens, Libdims…
Next Chancellor Miliband (circa 50%) is also firm favourite over Mc Faddon, Cooper Balls, Streeting, Mahmood… god help the country the chance of a decent right wing government that can actually gain power and actually deliver and undo the vast damage done to the UK by Blair through to two Tier Kier and Burnham is very low indeed.
July 4, 2026
@Lifelogic – in a nutshell the bookies are predicting a left wing coalition.
July 4, 2026
Indeed that more the punters and their stakes than the bookies doing the predicting.
July 5, 2026
Fortunately, ridicule does not kill. How can anybody take seriously betting odds when first those betting are only a tiny fraction of the population and likely are representative of a given fringe of the potential voters, and second when some years before the election there is no actual list of the constituency candidates.
Sir John was likely to be a favourite in Wokingham in the July 2024 election. He announced at the end of May 2024 (five-six weeks before the vote) he would not be candidate.
July 4, 2026
Good morning.
A further creation and expansion of the bureaucratic State.
July 4, 2026
The irritating guff one reads in the right-wing media about UK electricity costs needs to be called out
While the United Kingdom allegedly ranks among the costliest energy markets in Europe, it does not have the absolute most expensive domestic electricity. Across the continent, Ireland, Germany and Belgium consistently register higher household rates per kWh. Ireland grapples with high import reliance and isolated grid infrastructure, while Germany and Belgium face immense financial pressures from heavy network distribution fees and historical renewable energy surcharges. French, German and Italian industrial energy costs are heavily subsidised, especially French
The high cost of British electricity is driven by structural factors rather than a single metric. The UK relies heavily on “natural” gas for power generation. Under Europe’s marginal pricing system, the most expensive fuel needed to meet demand—usually gas—sets the wholesale price for all electricity, inflating the cost of even cheap wind and solar power.
To understand where the money goes, a standard UK household electricity bill breaks down into the following structural components:
Wholesale Energy Costs (45%): The raw cost of purchasing power. Wholesale generator profits fluctuate wildly based on global gas markets, though excess revenues face a 45% windfall tax.
Network Grid Costs (25%): Maintaining pylons, wires, and operating the physical grid.
Policy & Green Levies (9.5%) Taxes 5% – Standard domestic VAT.
Operating Costs & Net Profit Margin (12%): Out of this, Ofgem strictly limits the retail supply profit margin to 4% (roughly £35 annually).
Ultimately, the UK sits outside the absolute top spots for households due to regulatory price protections, even though structural gas dependency keeps bills punishingly high. How about you start telling the truth about it Nigel? It’s got nothing to do with net zero has it?
Reply Your figures show just how dear the green levies and extra grid costs are from having renewables. All the gas costs are the extra costs owing to the unreliability of renewables. If you have renewables you need gas back up. If you had gas on base load you would not need standby wind turbines. You completely ignore the ultra high business energy costs and taxes in UK which are closing down so much of our industry.
July 4, 2026
@Sakara Gold – the UK competes on the World Stage, having raw energy prices 4 times greater than our major competitors through central government diktats not market pricing ensures the UK is disadvantaged. The EU is not the World.
July 4, 2026
Exactly hugely disadvantages and as certain industries go overseas this causes further disadvantages in the supply chains and they go too. Doom loop yet again.
July 4, 2026
US electricity costs are 1/4 those in the UK – i heard someone say the other day 1/8. As Lord Redwood explains and you ignore, the reason our set up is so expensive is we have to pay twice. Once for the renewables and again for the backup. But im sure it’s all worth it. The environmental economist Bjorn Lomberg has modelled the potential reduction in global warming by 2100 if all countries meet the Paris net zero commitments by 2030. It’s a reduction of 0.05C. The UK is 1% of global emissions, so presumably the climate benefit of our net zero policy is 0.005C by 2030.
July 4, 2026
The policy is patently insane. The 0.005 C is only if all other things millions of them are the same (they will not be) also our Net Zero agenda will not really reduce CO2 if accounted for properly it just exports it. They even claims burning wood at Draz saves CO2, cycling, public transport, EV and walking save CO2 and other rather blatant lies and exaggerations.
0.005 C as an average temperature change across the World is not even measurable.
July 4, 2026
Bjorn Lomborg is a sensible chap (despite reading Political Science at university). I particularly liked his book How to spend $75 billion to make the world a better place. So many better things to do millions of times better than a bonkers war on CO2.
Also JRs The $275 Trillion Green Revolution: Will Consumers Buy It?
But will they get any choice with the Mad Ed driving as Energy Minister or even at No 11 (& will that be moved to Manchester too? Eh by gum it might well be chuck!
For how to spend several £Trillions to make the world a worse place look no further Ed’s insane war on CO2 and his deluded agenda that will not even save CO2.
But even Lomborg seems to accept that there is a climate emergency caused by burning fossil fuels and causing a bit more CO2 and very slightly warmer. OR perhaps he just thinks is more politic? There is no cause even for this. Yes all things being equal CO2 can cause some slight warming but no climate emergency is remotely likely and a bit more CO2 on balance is on balance a net good. The existing CO2 is capturing most of the heat in the wavelengths that it does already – a little more “paint on the door” now will make very little difference.
See Prof. Graham Happer and many others. We live in a dearth of CO2 in historical terms anyway. We have had ice ages with far higher CO2 levels.
July 4, 2026
As you appear an expert on matters Gas, Electricity, Gold etc would you explain the various promises of savings and reductions in the domestic bills in the UK? I have had successive notifications over a few years now that the revised gas and electricity prices for my home rates always go up, never down?
July 4, 2026
The Reform policy to house immigrants only in constituencies that vote for pro-immigration parties is surely the way forward. What could be more democratic than to get what you want?
July 4, 2026
Should go one step further, and reward anyone who votes for pro-immigration parties with an immigrant, which they have to house, educate, clothe and guarantee in case they break the law.
July 4, 2026
They are voting for everyone else to pay these costs! Very “generous” with other people’s lives and money.
July 4, 2026
We definitely need less government, both national and local. It’s not guaranteed to make our lives perfect, but the current trajectory is the route to a modern version of serfdom that will make useven look at China with envy.
The people who nowadays rise in politics and the institutions generally have a terrifying range of psychological disorders for people making decisions over our lives. Psychopathy, narcissism, cognitive dissonance, pathological arrogance, Machiavelliism..the full gamut of “Dark Triad traits”.
I think this is a world far removed from that of our kind host’s rise to government.
July 4, 2026
Many governments originated from dealing with war; some little more than protection rackets. This one is becoming more of a racket, being a nuisance to those it is supposed to look after.
July 4, 2026
@Wanderer +99
YES! — Never mind that they haven’t been half way around the block and have little or no business acumen, so many suffer from woke ideology and lack common sense.
This has to change – we should be vetting, for example, MP candidates for integrity, ethics matters and basic math and English.
July 4, 2026
Less government and one will a working compass for the few things government can do better than people. Law and order, defence, a bit of infrastructure perhaps… not much more than that.
July 4, 2026
The devolution I would like is for towns and their immediate surrounding villages to become responsible for their own roads, housing and public facilities. Instead the trend has been to larger and more anonymous authorities like counties to take powers upwards, with local boroughs disappearing. The police are on a similar trend.
July 4, 2026
I, and no doubt millions of Brits, cannot understand why left-leaning governments of all colours appear to favour foreigners over their own citizens. It makes no sense to the electorate, as is demonstrated by the regular polls published in our newspapers. Yet these same governments disregard them and the people who actually get to vote, and press on with these bewildering policies that intensely annoy and aggravate the British citizens.
In these dire days of the cost-of-living crisis, charity surely begins at home? Although you won’t find it hard to find a lefty government official who still believes we can save the world. Why?
Hmm! LOL, probably, maybe, but at what expense to the people who pay their taxes here?
Unless we have real change here and return to good old ‘Britishness’ everywhere, we’re doomed.
July 4, 2026
We can safely say , I think, that more devolution will be his first Lie.
No way will he allow Reform councils to pursue totally different policies than the others.
July 4, 2026
@Sir Joe Soap – the out-going crew have ensured lying is the new norm the new way of the Law
July 4, 2026
oh! is that something new?
July 4, 2026
A good suggestion from our host, but not something I could ever see labour doing – they want to be in control and have no qualms about imposing their will on us, especially if the area involved is not a labour one.
Labour’s version of devolution will possibly start out in a fairly sensible manner, until ideology gets in the way. The less popular labour become the more they are likely to devolve more to regain that ‘Burnham bump’ – after all it seems to be Burnham’s only semi-original idea and makes him a little different from Starmer.
In other words, as more politically devolved mayors and ‘others’ pop up, look out for a higher degree in bureaucratic bungling, a larger civil service and more wasteful spending and borrowing across the country, adding ever more to our national debt.
July 4, 2026
The claim that net zero policies are causing a wave of closures across British industry is contradicted by official economic data. According to the UK Insolvency Service, the manufacturing sector is not facing a unique crisis. Instead, it remains one of the country’s most stable sectors, accounting for just 8% (1,886 firms) of total corporate insolvencies over a rolling 12-month period tracking into 2026.
By contrast, sectors completely insulated from green regulations experience the highest failure rates. Construction (17%), retail (16%), and hospitality (14%) dominate insolvency statistics. If climate mandates were the primary driver of corporate failure, carbon-intensive manufacturing would lead these figures rather than trailing far behind consumer-facing industries.
Furthermore, economic analysis reveals that when industrial closures do occur, they are driven by macroeconomic forces, not environmental policy. The chief catalysts for modern industrial stress are high global interest rates, rigid working-capital constraints, and persistent material inflation. While advanced, tech-intensive manufacturing has seen a slight rise in corporate restructuring, analysts attribute this directly to sluggish global capital formation and legacy debts from previous economic shocks.
Ultimately, data from the ONS and business groups indicates that the net zero transition acts as an economic driver rather than a disruptor. The UK’s green economy grew by over 15% through recent cycles, offsetting legacy contractions. The narrative of policy-driven industrial decline is fundamentally unsupported by the evidence; British manufacturing is navigating global economic headwinds, not a regulatory shutdown.
Reply Dream on. I have set out in past articles the accelerated spate of factory closures and of course the throttling of oil and gas jobs and investment and the ending of ICE vehicle manufacture. This is an unprecedented assault on fossil fuel related industrial activity.
July 4, 2026
Concreting over more and more of our precious country to house more and more unwanted entrants is a bad policy and should be reversed.
July 4, 2026
As is covering our northern and often cloudy fields in Solar panels to give us more daytime summer electricity when we really need more winter evening, night time and early morning electricity.
July 4, 2026
For devolution to truly work taxes need to be levied and spent locally.
I look forward to my income tax rate being reduced and debating at local level how little we should spend on gay whales and immigrants. We will need fewer MPs and certainly fewer Lords, if more governing is to be done locally.
Will the Scottish and Welsh administrations receive less money as their councils receive more?
July 4, 2026
Devolution? In English that suggests power to run and control things moves closer to those that have the abilities, the need for the outcome.
In Socialist speak it has an entirely different objective, simply a body taking instruction from central command, to reinforce the dictatorship.
With devolution local matters would become local matters, the need for a central Parliament would simply be a central body looking after the Nations external affairs and when required coordinating in conjunction with the devolved parties’ common interests.
With devolution, central command needs to negotiate with local communities.
This UK Parliament can’t get passed the doctrine imposed on it by EU Command that it is they that are the Local Council for the whole Country, that it is always a central bureaucracy that gets to dictate.
The UK Parliament doesn’t like the idea of challenge; they are unable to accept as part of their function in a democracy is that everything they do can and should be open to challenge. The UK Parliament won’t even step up to its only purpose, to hold the Executive/the Government to account. That’s the point of democracy you carry the majority by discourse not decree. That is why 5-year terms are inherently wrong, it removes the democratic need seek and justify, it promotes dictatorship above democracy. The directions the Nation is being taken need regular validation/approval to be sort.
To much of what the UK Parliament does is about making it easy for them, so much so they have lost their purpose and are just now lazy free-loaders
July 4, 2026
We should start by ending the Barnett formula.
July 4, 2026
The only real devolution we want is an English Parliament, made up of the MPs in England sitting on several days a week to decide on all issues that apply to our country.
For far too long we have suffered a democratic deficit compared with every other component part of the United Kingdom.
This used to be an important cause prioritised by our host, but I suppose because it would inevitably now be dominated by Reform, rather than the Conservatives, it is never mentioned.
July 5, 2026
Well, a columnist, in a Scottish broadsheet newspaper, suggested that the number of MSPs in the Scottish Parliament should be increased because the Committee system in the parliament isn’t working fully. Is so, then Scotland should be returning powers to Westminster. Even if it’s just for a committee of Scottish MPs to look at, should England have dual mandate MPs.
July 4, 2026
Labour’s instinct is central control by big government. As Gus O’Donnell, former Cabinet Secretary and top Civil Servant under Blair, Brown and Cameron said in an interview in 2011: “When I was at the Treasury I argued for the most open door possible to immigration … I think it’s my job to maximise global welfare not national welfare”
July 4, 2026
You’ve given the strongest reason possible for the uk to source it’s own gas rather than let another neighbour drill and use the very same natural supply ground … ” the uk relies heavily on natural gas production for power generation”. So let’s drill, drill, drill instead of buy, buy, buy.
July 4, 2026
We need simple and sensible Government policies which are cost effective with regards to enforcement and management.
We should not need 600,000 civil servants to make up an ever increasing number of complicated policies which few ever understand and cost a fortune to implement..
We do not need 30,000 pages of tax legislation with tens of thousands of pages of explanation to manage the Country’s finances, which has proven even Ministers do not understand, even when paying for expensive legal advice.
We should have enough prisons to house all those who seriously break the law, so that they can be sentenced properly, and serve the full term without waiting in some cases, for years of delay.
Why do we have Law Courts that are only open and sit for a few hours a day which cause months/ years of delay for true justice, and why can they not operate for 12 hours or more a day.
We do not need thousands of different laws for theft, we only really need two (taking without permission, or and taking using threat or violence) I am sure many more could be simplified.
Etc Etc Etc.
July 4, 2026
We don’t need more devolution increasing the layers and numbers of apparatchiks running our lives. We need the democracy that the Uniparty has denied us for several decades by ignoring our votes. We need to leave the ECHR and end all the HR legislation which is anti-democratic having been designed specifically to give minorities’ wishes preference over the majority, a bountiful revenue stream for HR lawyers and to give power to criminals, subversive groups and activist judges. Instead of devolution we need referendums.
July 4, 2026
I have been watching a few reform local councillors on social media, they are more left wing than the Labour party, demanding, for instance, that more social housing is built as a condition of new private housing being built, ie new home buyers end up directly subsiding social housing users. yet more social engineering like this is exactly what the country does not need. if the Conservatives want to win they should be making the case against this.
July 4, 2026
I am thinking more and more about my schools hymn..I vow to thee my country..The words written into the early 20 th century before the 2world wars have deep meaning for me.
This is an example of GB tradition that many today just do not understand.A service orientated statement which talks about all our paths being peaceful.How can we turn the other cheek when despotic regimes attempt to overrun us?
July 4, 2026
Socialists are always right and everyone else wrong. They are intolerant of the need to argue their case and if they cannot persuade they legislate to suppress dissent and import people who will vote for them in exchange for handouts of other people’s money. It is always the same, the whole world over. The extraordinary thing is that so many Brits vote for this kind of person. The explanation lies in the fact that it is still the case, according to ONS data, that the majority of households are net dependents of the state. This was the intended outcome of Blair/Brown’s policies. Once the majority have their hands in the public purse, patriotism, cohesion and democracy end.
July 5, 2026
The only Devolution I want is equality with Scotland, Wales and N.Ireland. By the creation of an English parliament, with powers at least equal to those of the other nations.
(Not the current unspoken policy of chopping England up into EU designed Mayoralities)