Brief note:
One of our co-editors, Andrew O’Brien, will be speaking at a fringe held by More in Common & UCL Policy Lab on intellectually renewing Conservatism at Monday 5 October, 18.15 to 19.15pm at Executive Room 7, Birmingham ICC. No need to register. It would be great to see Conservative Readers there.
Towering Columns
In The Telegraph Tom Sharpe argues British naval presence in the Arctic must be increased to counter Russia’s shadow fleet of tankers.
Can we police the seas up there? No; it is Russia’s coast. But every one of these ships comes from somewhere and goes somewhere, mostly through the Barents and Norwegian Seas, past our allies and into our own backyard. The hulls going over the top in summer run the Channel in winter. All the world chokepoints are connected: Hormuz, Bab al-Mandeb, the Danish straits, Bering Strait, Malacca and the Panama are all one problem where the solution depends on how you are holding the globe to look at it.
What are our options? We should put the NSR regulars on the shadow fleet list, not just the Baltic ones – Bellona has published the names. We should lean on the flag states that keep appearing, starting with Oman: six of the tankers and two of the gas carriers were sailing under its flag. We should use port-state control and the insurers to squeeze the non-ice-class hulls before the ice season, not after. Share ice-zone tracking with the Nordics through the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) and Nato’s new Arctic Sentry.
The JEF already has the machinery. Nordic Warden, run from British naval headquarters in Northwood since January 2025, watches 22 areas from the Channel to the Baltic, and in Helsinki in March its leaders promised closer work on the shadow fleet. We should push that watch north into the Norwegian and Barents Seas, feed it satellite and patrol-aircraft data rather than ship-tracker AIS alone, and link it to Arctic Sentry.
Writing for The Times, Juliet Samuel highlights the inconsistency between Labour’s reindustrialisation rhetoric and their desire to cut British emissions.
Well, good riddance, you might say. The Hillhouse factory in Lancashire, which makes “forever chemicals”, is shutting down. It has been losing money, says AGC, the Japanese owner. The chemicals it makes are attracting regulatory attention. One of its longstanding inputs was banned in 2020 for being a carcinogen, but not before the plant had spent decades burning more than a hundred tonnes of the stuff into the air, contaminating everything nearby from duck eggs to allotment potatoes. Blood tests of several dozen locals show they have toxic levels of the chemical in their blood. Surely no one will miss this poison factory?
Except that the 190 people and 18 contractors who work there might miss it, plus their families, the factory’s suppliers, its customers and the local economy, in which it’s one of very few large employers. Perhaps even our chancellor, who has promised a “new age of industrialisation”, will miss it. Or the prime minister, who envisions “the re-industrialisation of the regions”.
Factory closures are awkward when you’re promising more industry. But the truth is having factories is awkward too, because every so often you find out they’ve been shedding ghastly substances into the area around them, the effects of which may not emerge for decades. Overall, our solution to such quandaries has been to drive this horrid activity offshore to somewhere far away, where we don’t have to think about it. But we are realising that while such a policy might move scandals like Hillhouse out of sight to foreign lands, it comes at a serious cost to our security and prosperity.
In The Critic, Charlie Cole examines the costs involved in the Afghan resettlement schemes set up in the wake of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The Afghan resettlement schemes are projected to cost £5.7 billion by 2032-33. As of publication of the NAO report, the Government has already spent £3.1 billion.
Afghans resettled under any of these schemes are provided accommodation by the Government or local authority. While local authorities are not mandated to partake in any of the resettlement schemes, the overwhelming majority have, with 348 out of 361 local authorities partaking (as of the latest Home Office release).
Local authorities receive a generous £24,110 integration tariff per resettled Afghan, which is paid over a three-year period. There is also an education tariff of £5,130 per individual for those aged 5-18 and £2,965 for those aged 3-4. Local health providers also receive a £2,600 health tariff for each resettled individual. The NAO notes that the Home Office has “revised the tariffs over time to reduce costs and simplify the funding streams”, so it’s possible the above tariffs were even higher before.
The NAO notes that one of the difficulties in providing accommodation for resettled Afghans has been the larger family sizes. The average resettled Afghan household consists of 5.5 family members, with more than 10% of resettled Afghan households having 8 or more family members. The Telegraph reported that one Afghan national brought 22 family members to the UK.
In The Telegraph, David Frost concludes that Andy Burnham’s Labour Party will be one that promotes 1970s-style socialism.
Second, he dropped a big hint on Europe. Burnham claims we haven’t established a proper long-term relationship with the EU. Actually we have. It’s called independence. It’s what people voted for and what was eventually delivered, at great cost and effort. People like him have since spent all their time undermining it.
Now he promises to “lay out the options” for that future relationship – as if we didn’t know what they were already. Either this means nothing, and it was just what he had to say to keep his party happy – or, more likely, it is what it sounds like, a firm commitment to start undoing the referendum result. Danger, danger.
Put all this together and you get Burnham’s vision: a return to 1970s Britain. His “theory of growth” has nothing to do with actual growth. He summed it up himself: “our plan for public control is a plan for growth.” It is nothing of the kind. It’s a plan to ration what little growth an enfeebled economy can produce. His slogan says it all: “Hope again”. Hope is the currency politicians use when they have nothing else to offer. But people can’t pay with it at the supermarket checkout.
Rory Hanrahan, writing for The Telegraph, argues that Sinn Fein are targeting Orangemen to deflect from their own shortcomings.
Andy Burnham has said a border poll on Irish reunification is “off the table”. In the North, Deputy First Minister Emma Little Pengelly has refused to hand republicans the Stormont crisis they once relied on. Northern Ireland is, imperfectly, functioning. So the old narrative that the place is unreformable is harder to sell.
Electorally the pressure is visible. Sinn Féin is losing votes on the Left to the Trotskyist People Before Profit. It also suffered a significant reverse in the Dublin Central by-election in May by failing to take a seat in McDonald’s own constituency against a government that has been in office for years.
Meanwhile, the conservative but republican Aontú party continues to nibble from another direction, and republican dissidents have been gaining ground on the streets.
With all this in mind, Sinn Féin needs a distraction and a rallying point. So, it reached for its oldest trump card. A Garvaghy Road stand-off lets Sinn Féin present itself as the indispensable defender of nationalist communities. It also keeps the constitutional question raw.
Wonky Thinking
Onward has published a new report on nuclear focusing on existing regulatory burdens, the potential benefits of a large expansion of domestic nuclear energy production, and recommendations to unlock such benefits. The conclusion of the report reads as below:
Nuclear power holds enormous potential for the UK.
It can deliver national energy security, drive economic competitiveness and help fight climate change. However, this potential will not be realised if the next series of nuclear projects falls prey to another round of cost and time overruns. Billions of pounds of public money is at stake, and public appetite for nuclear technology will be sorely tested by another high profile cost overrun.
There are reasons for optimism.
The British nuclear industry has been in a difficult position before, suffering from a number of troubled projects in the 1960s and 1970s. The industry was able to respond. The delivery model evolved, with greater responsibility placed with publicly owned utilities. Project execution improved and the UK built three new power stations at Heysham B, Torness and Sizewell B, delivered effectively in terms of both construction time and cost.
The Fingleton Review has highlighted the risk aversion, procedural complexity and poor incentives within the nuclear industry. The Review provides a blueprint for regulatory simplification and improved delivery, and the UK must adopt its recommendations in full. The next step is to ensure that a new generation of project leaders are able to take advantage of a new regulatory landscape and are rewarded for driving down costs and delivering on schedule.
Many of the UK’s difficulties are shared by other Western nations, as nuclear supply chains and delivery experience have eroded, due to a hiatus in new projects. If the UK can deliver a successful SMR project and replicate the same design time and time again, then Britain can once again lead the way in delivering clean and reliable power.
Podcast of the Week
On Quite Right! Michael Gove and Madeleine Grant are joined by Jonathan Hinder, the Labour Member of Parliament for Pendle and Clitheroe who joins them to discuss a Blue Labour vision for Britain.
Quick Links
Home Secretary to open refugee route for Afghans and those from the Gaza/West Bank
British judge pushes for more Pakistani judges in Britain
Urban youth riot across France, destroying properties and injuring innocents.
British and Danish forces undergo joint training in Faroe Islands.