On YIMBY Pod this week:

• For the first time on the pod, James makes the case for liberating the Postcode Address File.

• And we speak to Lord Mark Pack about how Secondary Legislation is a hidden problem that is slowing down the business of government.

Mark’s excellent Lord’s Eye View newsletter is here, and The Week In Polls is here.

James’s newsletter is here, and he’ll have a guest post up by the time you’re reading this.

Martin’s newsletter is here, and his YouTube channel is here.

Don’t forget to tell your friends about the pod – and leave us a nice review on Apple Podcasts!

YIMBY Pod is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Substack and hopefully wherever you get your podcasts!

You can find James on Bluesky here, and Martin here.

POD! On YIMBY Pod this week, we dig into another example of BBC local journalism having a weird NIMBY bias, in this case against the new Universal Theme Park. Then I speak to Dan Mead from ThinkLabour, about the case against nationalising Thames Water. Listen here, or wherever you get your pods!

Hello! It’s time for Odds and Ends, your semi-regular round-up of the most interesting links I’ve seen lately.

I’m still on holiday, so there won’t be a ‘proper’ essay post for a couple of weeks. But next week I’ll be dropping something I hope you’ll find fun or interesting. And in the meantime, I hope you’ve enjoyed the excellent guest posts on how Openreach might be inadvertently helping Reform, and on how Chinese robotaxis could create a big security problem for Britain.

Anyway, let’s get on with a slightly shorter selection of links than usual. This time I’m featuring…

• A video featuring my acting debut (!)

• Palantir seemingly working as it should do...

• How AI is helping tackle ‘fatbergs’ in our drains

• Yet another reason Rishi’s HS2 cancellations were disastrous

• And another grim example of the BBC’s NIMBY bias

The road that fell down a cliff (Martin Robbins)

Before the paywall, I wanted to feature my YIMBY Pod co-host Martin’s lates YouTube video. He’s been down to Galley Hill Road, which I wrote about last year, and you might spot a familiar face if you look carefully…

Read more

POD! On YIMBY Pod this week, we dig into another example of BBC local journalism having a weird NIMBY bias, in this case against the new Universal Theme Park. Then I speak to Dan Mead from ThinkLabour, about the case against nationalising Thames Water. Listen here, or wherever you get your pods!

Following the news that the Treasury is reportedly urging supermarkets to introduce (voluntary) price controls on certain goods, and as I’m still on holiday, I thought it would be a good time to liberate this post from last September from behind the paywall – as it speaks a little to the issue,1 and also I think it is pretty good.

So please enjoy my spirited defence of, er, Big Supermarket!

Sometimes I like to check in on YouTube Shorts to see what the hot new thing is with Gen-Z, so I can pretend that I’m not yet old and out of touch.

That’s how I learned recently that the next ‘Labubu’ could well be Labour MP Liam Byrne, who is the star of this viral short published by the campaign group 38 Degrees.2

As you can see above, it’s a clip from the Business and Trade Committee, which Byrne chairs. In the video, he holds up two identical packs of Weetabix, and explains that one was bought from a Tesco Express in a poorer part of his constituency for £2.20, and the other was bought from a larger Tesco supermarket in a leafier area, for just £2.

At the time of writing, the short has 5.7 million views, demonstrating that it’s an effective piece of theatre, as sitting watching him explain this are two senior executives from Tesco and Sainsbury’s.3

Byrne is also clearly proud of the gotcha. He’s released a longer cut of the exchange on his own YouTube channel and accuses the supermarkets of “two-tier pricing”, which he also connects to the broader themes of his book on wealth inequality.

And it is this unfairness that really animates him.

If you watch the longer video, or read the transcript of the session, you’ll see that Byrne and his fellow Labour MP Matt Western really hammer away at the price disparity between supermarkets and smaller convenience stores, like it is a damning moral indictment of the supermarkets.

“Sainsbury’s made a profit of nearly £1 billion last year. Tesco’s profit was nearly £2.8 billion, so both businesses are extremely profitable. The question for us is why you are charging higher prices for people who can only shop in smaller stores when there is not a profit problem at either of your companies,” says Byrne.

He then turns the screws, asking if ensuring low income customers have access to affordable food is considered an “important mission” for Tesco, and whether the company’s representative thinks the price disparity status quo is “basically fine”.

Now here’s the point where I’m going to make myself unpopular, as I can’t really see what the supermarkets are doing wrong here. I think any attempt to imbue their actions with moral meaning is fundamentally a misdiagnosis of the problem – and if we want to mitigate this disparity, we need to get serious about understanding the actual problem.

So join me behind the paywall as we dive into the economics of supermarkets, the competitiveness of the grocery industry, and the most on-brand solution you could possibly imagine.4

An unusual target

Let’s start with the pricing disparity. Sure, Byrne is accurately describing a bad outcome – it’s bad that poor people are paying more for groceries on a like-for-like basis than rich people. But the explanation why is basic economics: It’s down to operating costs and economies of scale.

Dominic Morrey, the Tesco guy at the committee, said as much in his response to Byrne, which for some reason 38 Degrees neglected to include in their viral clip:

“The differential is based on the fact that those stores have longer trading hours, take different approaches to maintaining, updating and supplying them, and can often be in locations that are more expensive to run than an out-of-town superstore. We have to reflect those price differentials, and that is what we do.”

I think this is basically fair enough.

If you imagine two stores – one a small, town-centre convenience store, and the other a large, out-of-town supermarket – then fixed costs like rent and staff are going to be higher on a per-square-metre basis in the smaller store. Likewise, supplying goods to the smaller store will be costlier too, as instead of one lorry delivering a couple of pallets of Weetabix to one location, boxes will have to be decanted into smaller packages, and then transported to numerous different locations.5

So of course, prices are going to be higher than in larger stores.

And similarly, though the disparity may be an outcome of this reality, I don’t think the blame can really be placed on the supermarkets themselves, as there is no evidence that it is corporate greed driving the supermarkets to rapaciously target low-income customers.

We know this because in July 2023, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) published an analysis of the grocery industry in light of the cost-of-living crisis, and found that operating margins had actually fallen since the prior year. This suggests that though supermarkets are also facing higher prices than before the crisis, they are not passing all of the extra costs on to consumers.6

The CMA also notes increased market share for Aldi and Lidl, the lowest-priced stores, which suggests that customers are shopping around – also indicating that prices in the industry can’t easily be hiked without losing customers. So even if the supermarkets wanted to rip off their customers, it would harm them to do so.

And we can even see this in the actual financial results of Sainsbury’s and Tesco, the two supermarkets at the committee.

For example, though Byrne points out that Sainsbury’s profit in the most recent year was £1.8bn and Tesco’s was £2.8bn, this was on a turnover of £32.8bn and £69.9bn respectively – meaning operating margins of under 5% for both. This doesn’t exactly scream ‘evil extractive corporations’ to me.

So in other words, though we may want to paint supermarkets as avatars of the worst excesses of the capitalist machine, the annoying reality is that they’re not. The grocery industry is actually pretty damn competitive, the market is functioning as intended, and selling groceries is pretty capital-intensive for relatively small returns!

The values of the Carphone Warehouse

What I find strange about Byrne’s haranguing of the supermarkets is that… surely he must know everything I’ve said above? Not only is he a former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, and someone who knows far more than I ever will about economics, but he says as much in his book, The Inequality of Wealth.

The core argument of the book is that the reason we have such an unequal society is because of ‘rent-seeking’, which Byrne describes7 as “the business not only of extracting more in profit than is strictly needed to mobilise effort to achieve some objective, but also an attempt to maximize rewards by securing privileges through the political arena”.

A classic example of this is, well, rent. If you pay rent to a landlord, they earn passive income just by virtue of owning the property – not by actually doing anything (or at least not that much).8

Yet as Byrne appears to recognise in his book, but seems to forget when wielding Weetabix, is that though rent-seeking behaviour often results in bad things, it’s not really a moral choice on the part of corporations per se – it’s just every actor in a given system is responding to incentives.

And to believe otherwise would be the same fallacy as when people pretend that corporations waving pride flags, donating to charity or talking about how much they care about privacy is because they have some underlying values beyond turning a profit. They don’t – they’re just responding to incentives and maximising their position, per whatever rules of the game have been set.9

So surely the more important question for the committee is not whether the supermarket executives agree with Byrne that affordable food is morally an “important mission”, but more about what outcomes the market is structured to deliver, and how it can be shaped to deliver something more desirable?

Supply-side economics

To be clear, I’m not claiming that the grocery industry status quo is great.

There were a number of real problems raised in the same session, for example.

Labour MP Antonia Bance raised the issue of infant formula. There, the CMA found that the market was not functioning effectively, and urged the supermarkets to voluntarily work to address it (before a regulator forces them to).

Similarly, Sarah Edwards, another Labour MP, raised the issue of loyalty card pricing. This is where Nectar/Clubcard users get a discount on a number of goods. She was concerned about how these schemes can be hard to access for people in temporary accommodation, because of the need to register with an address.10

Then more broadly, there are plenty of other long-standing grocery industry problems we can think of too, like monopsony – where supermarkets are in a disproportionately advantaged position when negotiating with farmers and other suppliers, because the grocery industry is so consolidated. And I haven’t even mentioned the scourge of England’s Sunday trading laws.

And in fact, I do think Byrne is right here that the status quo is bad. It really is unfortunate that the poorest people in his constituency are getting hit with the highest prices. But ultimately his moral outrage feels a bit misplaced. The problem isn’t rent-seeking – it’s economics.

However, acknowledging this gets us to the more interesting question: What policy interventions could we make to remedy this unfortunate outcome?

One option could be for the government to force supermarkets to charge the same prices in convenience store formats as they do in larger supermarkets. But I’m not sure that wouldn’t have unintended consequences – as the grocery business model works on relatively small margins. So why wouldn’t Tesco just close its Express stores?

Another could be to directly subsidise stores in poor areas to cut prices – but this would be a strange use of taxpayers’ money. Or perhaps we could increase welfare spending, so that people on low incomes have more money to start with? In principle, I’m extremely supportive of having a wildly more generous safety net, but you don’t need to be a sophisticated scholar of British politics to understand why that might be… politically tricky.

So ultimately any lasting intervention is going to have to be on the supply-side: If the underlying costs associated with convenience formats can be cut, so can prices! I’m not sure exactly how this could be done, as most stores like this are already pretty lean and running with minimal staff – most checkouts at stores like this are now self-service, for instance.

Though perhaps more could be done in terms of delivery? If self-driving lorries become a reality, the cost of supplying smaller stores could fall. Or if autonomous cars and delivery drones take off, and if we achieve abundant mobility, the cost of home delivery will fall, and deliveries will be more ubiquitous. That would mean more people could be served their groceries direct from distribution centres, taking advantage of economies of scale even greater than those at supermarkets.

But as much as I may sincerely believe these things to be plausible in the future, I realise this is a hard sell. And in any case, it is still unlikely to close the gap completely with large format stores – meaning the disparity will persist, because economics is a real thing that exists.

One incomplete solution

Unfortunately then, I don’t think there is a clean solution to this problem. Shame won’t work, and the underlying economics of the grocery industry is stacked against any solution.

But there is something that I think the government could do, which may mitigate the problem at least a little bit. And that’s to make pricing more transparent.

There is a precedent for this. A couple of years ago, the CMA created a voluntary scheme in which fuel retailers would share their pricing data, and publish it as a machine-readable file.

You can see the datasets here, and the upshot is that it means that anyone can go online and see the price of fuel at any petrol station in the country. And collecting the data in one place makes it possible to make maps like the one below, which reveal that if you fill up at the Esso in Camden Town, you’ll pay 137.9p per litre – but if you instead head to the Asda on the Old Kent Road, it’s only 132.7p.

At the moment, the scheme is only voluntary and is only updated once per day. But the government has said that by the end of 2025, it’ll be a legal requirement, and there will be an API that updates in real-time. So by next year, you can probably expect to start seeing fuel prices in Google Maps and on your in-car Satnav.

Anyway – you can probably see where I’m going with this. Why can’t we make supermarkets do the same for groceries?

It wouldn’t be technically difficult. All of the major supermarket chains already carefully manage their inventory in enormous databases, and every product already has a barcode number (or ‘SKU’). So adding some code to export or publish pricing data for even hundreds of thousands of products would be relatively trivial.11

But if it were to happen, it would instantly prove useful to price-sensitive consumers, as it would tell them where to find the cheapest goods. It would drive down prices as differences are made stark. And it would no doubt lead to an entire ecosystem of third-party price comparison apps, to help customers find the best deals.

Sounds crazy? Perhaps. But not only has the CMA been exploring price transparency schemes, there are already some countries where supermarket pricing data is published. Israel, Uruguay, Argentina and Mexico already have laws demanding transparency, and there have been proposals for similar in Australia and Austria.

It appears the laws may work too. According to one study of the Israeli law, it ended up reducing prices by around 4-5%.

So though I don’t think this would solve everything, perhaps this could be a better cause for Liam Byrne to take up with the supermarkets? I’m not convinced that moralising will reduce prices – but I think a little more price transparency just might.

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POD! On YIMBY Pod this week, we dig into another example of BBC local journalism having a weird NIMBY bias, in this case against the new Universal Theme Park. Then I speak to Dan Mead from ThinkLabour, about the case against nationalising Thames Water. Listen here, or wherever you get your pods!

I’m on holiday for the next few weeks but worry not, I have recruited a few of my smartest friends to write guest posts! This week’s is from Tym Syrytczyk from a new think tank, the Institute for Driverless Transport. Tym also writes his own fantastic Substack at Self Driving Insights, so make sure to subscribe if you want to understand the brave new, autonomous world that we’re heading into.

Last month, the first of a new fleet of robotaxis arrived in London. The cars are made by Apollo Go, an autonomous vehicle company owned by Chinese tech-giant Baidu. It’s the third company with Robotaxi ambitions in Britain, following Google-owned Waymo, and British ‘unicorn’ Wayve, both of which have begun testing in the capital in recent months.

What makes Apollo Go different is that it means for the first time, Londoners could one day soon find themselves hailing a ride in a vehicle designed, built, and driven by software that’s entirely made in China.

This is, unsurprisingly, controversial, because though China is a key trade partner for Britain, it is also a strategic adversary. So it seems sensible to ask the questions: Should we worry? Are there any risks here? And if there are, how can we mitigate them?

The Chinese threat

So why does it matter that these robotaxis are Chinese? One reason for concern is that last year, the Norwegian transport agency, Ruter, found remote-access kill-switches buried inside its own Chinese-made buses.

Arguably, this is not a reason to worry. It is standard practice for manufacturers to update the software in modern vehicles remotely. ‘Over-The-Air’ updates are common for cybersecurity patches and are widespread for autonomous vehicles and robotaxis.

But in this case, a Romanian eSIM was discovered on the buses that could conceivably switch off the power supply – a capability that’s hard to justify for normal vehicle maintenance. That’s why Ruter claims that the buses could conceivably have been stopped remotely if a command were to be sent by the manufacturer.

So the worry is the same vulnerability could exist in Chinese-made autonomous vehicles here in Britain.1

And though there is no evidence of any foul play on the part of Apollo Go or other Chinese operators in the UK, there are more circumstantial reasons this should, in principle, concern us. For example, China’s 2017 national intelligence law requires Chinese organisations and citizens to support state intelligence work when required – conceivably obliging Chinese companies to follow the Chinese government’s orders.

So this essentially elevates the risk. The more deeply Chinese firms are embedded into Britain’s transport infrastructure, the greater the potential for Chinese national security operations to make use of this infrastructure against us, if tensions between China and the west were to rise.

National security

The security risks also go well beyond simply powering down buses or robotaxis. Autonomous vehicles, if misused, can create both new surveillance and physical security risks.

For example, Robotaxis are designed to track human motion. They can scan hundreds of pedestrians and vehicles around them. This makes them potentially useful as mobile surveillance or for the extended tracking of specific individuals. One does not even have to use the robotaxi service to conceivably be tracked, as autonomous vehicles scan public roads. They could even be routed to prioritise surveilling key buildings, to keep watch on who goes in and out.

Then there’s also a direct physical security risk.

Many autonomous vehicle companies, though not all, have remote control features as part of their services. In Apollo Go’s case, a single remote operator reportedly has access to multiple vehicles. In principle, the intended uses are uncontroversial, such as making way for emergency vehicles or helping Apollo’s vehicles not get stuck. But this same remote control capability could also conceivably be used with bad intentions that can be easily imagined, from terrorist attacks to simply blocking traffic.

But this is not the only risk. The bigger problem is that autonomous driving behaviour is largely determined by shared software deployed across the fleet, perhaps with local modifications for particular cities.

This means a single bug, flawed update, or a cyber attack can make many vehicles behave in the same risky way at the same time, potentially creating chaos.

In fact, we’ve seen this happen already. Earlier this year in Wuhan, hundreds of Apollo Go robotaxis stopped suddenly, including in live traffic, during what was described as a cybersecurity incident.

So even if Apollo Go stores all service data in the UK as the company has promised, that alone should not be enough to reassure regulators. Instead the more important question is whether the UK can trust the company operating the fleet, and the company controlling the autonomy software, to both defend their fleet from cyber attacks, and to never to misuse that access themselves.

The counterargument

This all sounds pretty scary, but there is a plausible counter-argument: that Britain already uses plenty of Chinese technology. Pretty much every piece of modern tech is manufactured in China – the device you’re reading this on now was probably made in China.

But once again, this comes back to ownership and perceptions of risk. We already have millions of Chinese-manufactured iPhones in the UK, all with cameras and Face ID features. However, a camera manufactured in China alone does not necessarily create large-scale surveillance risk. In this case, the product owner, Apple, and its manufacturing partner, Foxconn, are trusted actors. And though iPhones are assembled in China, the operating system, data governance and product control sit with Apple, an American company.

That’s why policymakers care more about TikTok, in which a Chinese company owns the data going through the app, rather than the phones themselves.

And this brings us to perhaps the best analogy for the Chinese autonomous car situation – the case of Huawei, the Chinese company that makes much of the phone network infrastructure that makes 5G possible.

For the initial 5G rollout, Huawei’s equipment was used in UK phone networks, potentially giving the company (and therefore the Chinese government) a direct window into the mobile traffic of millions of British people.

But in 2020, the government ordered that Huawei’s equipment be ripped out and replaced, to limit the perceived risks. Arguably there is a case for doing the same with Chinese-owned robotaxis – and some important players are indeed taking this seriously.

For example, some parts of the Ministry of Defence consider Chinese-made electric vehicles to be a surveillance risk, and although there is no central national-level policy restricting Chinese vehicles on MOD land, some military officials have banned personnel from connecting their phones to Chinese vehicles or having conversations above ‘Official’ classification in Chinese cars.

Hiding behind brands

London is not the first place to face this dilemma. Back in March, the first robotaxi service in Europe began operating in Zagreb, Croatia. Another Chinese firm, Pony.AI, is supplying both the car, and the self driving software – but in this case, the service is operated by Verne, a Croatian company within the Rimac Group, even though there is little Croatian technology involved. So effectively, what Verne has done is ‘scrub' the national identity of Zagreb’s autonomous deployment with its own branding.

And this has created some ambiguity. Publicly available information does not make clear how much control Verne actually has over its vehicles, or the extent to which Pony.ai retains access to the robotaxis. It is also unclear how much scrutiny Verne placed on Pony.ai’s vehicle supply chain as the whole service announcement and deployment was likely to have been rushed to meet a EU grant deadline.

But for the companies involved, it’s a win-win. Verne has branded the service as its own, and Pony.ai is happy to successfully partner with a European firm, as it enables future market share in Europe. But what it ultimately means is that to the public and many regulators, the service may look Croatian, even if the underlying technology is Chinese.

And why this matters to us is that a similar dynamic is emerging in London through Uber and Lyft’s role in Apollo Go’s deployment, as the ‘country of origin scrubbing’ is happening here.

This is because there won’t be ‘Apollo Go’ robotaxis on the streets of London, like there will be for Waymo. Instead, they will be made available through Uber and Lyft’s ride-hailing platforms. So even if a Chinese company controls the cars under the hood – for most of users, it will appear as though the vehicles are operated by familiar American companies.

The Swiss example

The choice for politicians then, is complicated. It’s a difficult trade-off between embracing new technology and managing the risk posed by a strategic rival.

But there could also be a third way, where we get the best of both worlds, and that’s the approach taken in Switzerland.

Over there, the Swiss public transport operator, PostAuto AG, has signed a deal with Baidu to provide a robotaxi and ride-pooling service from 2027. The cars and the technology are exactly the same as Apollo Go’s proposed London service. However, what’s different is that PostAuto will be forced to comply with strict requirements on operations, for instance ensuring that all remote operators are based in Switzerland and have a Swiss driving licence. PostAuto also owns the vehicles, has full operational control, and has the ability to dismantle them to check for kill-switches if it wishes to do so. The Swiss firm also retains full ownership over the data that’s collected by the vehicles.

This focus on trusted ownership could lead to a more secure service. The Norwegian transport operator owned the buses which allowed for the kill-switch discovery. By analogy, this is also why the US has pushed for American ownership of TikTok on security and oversight grounds.

So could we do the same in Britain too?

On the surface Apollo Go’s British deal may already look like the Swiss model. Rather than operating the service itself, evidence suggests that it has handed that role to Lyft and possibly Uber. So the similarities are there, a trusted Western firm owns the fleet, and Apollo Go supplies the technology.

But there are crucial differences too: PostAuto is a public transport operator with full operational control and a clear mandate to serve Swiss citizens. Lyft and Uber are commercial firms whose primary incentive is growth. The details of Apollo Go’s partnership with Uber remain opaque, but the Lyft press release is revealing. The announcement states that Apollo Go’s role will be to provide vehicles, validate the technology and provide “comprehensive technical support”. Unlike in the PostAuto deployment, Apollo Go’s control over the autonomy software is not explicitly ruled out.

So it remains publicly unclear how much control either firm will have over the software, such as which firm can send an over-the-air update.

A question of risk

In practice, the extent to which Chinese firms contribute to British autonomous vehicle services should depend on the scale of the risk, the strength of oversight, and the degree of operational control held in the UK or by trusted partners.

Right now, Waymo has a hundred vehicles in London, and Apollo Go could scale beyond that size in less than a year. As robotaxi services grow they will inevitably become critical national infrastructure. So now is the time to work out our approach – so that one day in the future, when robotaxis are carrying thousands of people every day, we’re not forced to do an awkward Huawei-style U-turn.

With thanks to Otto for an early reading of this draft and James H for later review.

On YIMBY Pod this week:

• Martin reveals the extraordinary grip one Bedfordshire councillor has on BBC coverage of the new Universal theme park.

• And James speaks to Dan Mead from Labour Together about why nationalising Thames Water might not be the best use of the cash, when can build trams instead.

Dan’s post about Thames Water is here.

James’s newsletter is here, and he’ll have a guest post up by the time you’re reading this.

Martin’s newsletter is here, and his YouTube channel is here.

Don’t forget to tell your friends about the pod – and leave us a nice review on Apple Podcasts!

YIMBY Pod is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Substack and hopefully wherever you get your podcasts!

You can find James on Bluesky here, and Martin here.

Hey everyone, I’m still on holiday, so this week I have a guest post from my excellent friend David Landon Cole. Dave is an astute observer of politics, an expert on populist nationalism, and a Labour councillor in Huntingdon. This week, he’s written this fascinating piece for me about how something as innocuous as an infrastructure upgrade could inadvertently fuel discontent.

Earlier this year, a set of legal notices went up around Huntingdon. Openreach, the BT-owned telecoms infrastructure provider, was installing a number of 10m telegraph poles to deliver faster internet to homes, using a bit of law that meant they didn’t have to go through the usual planning process.1 The notices explained that Openreach had also notified the planning department at Huntingdonshire County Council, and that one of the streets where work was due to take place was Bradfield Close.

The problem was, however, that the notices didn’t explain this. They didn’t explain what the telegraph poles were actually for, or what they might look like. They confused Huntingdonshire for a county council, when it is a district council.2 And the Bradfield Close that was mentioned? It doesn’t exist.

What came next was predictable. Residents thought that they were going to have 5G masts outside their homes. These notices were not about 5G masts; they were wooden telegraph poles. Indeed, 5G masts go through the usual planning procedure. Unfortunately, the notice just read ‘five new BT 10m poles’. But if you don’t deal with, well, telegraph poles all day, it’s not obvious what a ‘BT 10m pole’ is or looks like.

To make it worse, the email address on the notices didn’t work. Getting hold of Openreach3 was surprisingly difficult and resulted in boilerplate emails that didn’t acknowledge the mistakes, let alone try to correct them.

However, from Openreach’s point of view, and possibly from yours, this might look like nothing more than a minor clerical error of no real consequence, beyond minor embarrassment for Openreach. I’m guessing that if you’re reading this, you are engaged in public policy, know how to look up legislation, have a lot of social capital, and may even work for Openreach.4 And, anyway, it’s obvious that they meant Huntingdonshire District Council, as the district council is the planning authority, and a quick look at the map will reveal a Bradshaw Close, on the Oxmoor estate.5

Unfortunately, not everyone feels this way. I’ve heard as much from the residents I represent.

What is no doubt legally compliant and efficiently handled inside Openreach looks careless at best and contemptuous at worst if you’re on the receiving end. And it’s hard to have confidence that any objection you raise will be taken seriously.

If you live on Bradshaw Close, it’s easy to feel like a mushroom: you’re kept in the dark and occasionally have shit thrown over you. Though to be honest, it’s true for a lot of people across the country – not because Openreach is uniquely awful, or because Huntingdon is uniquely afflicted, but because there are countless large organisations that affect us every day.

That’s the real issue here – not that people are hacked off with Openreach, but that people are hacked off with the system. Openreach is technically a private company, not part of the state. From the pavement, though, it doesn’t matter; it all looks like the system.

Large organisations, public and private, do things that you have no say over, and it’s hard to understand the mess6 of local7 government, contracted out services, privatised services, and private businesses that affect your day-to-day.

What people see is the asymmetry. When ‘they’ make a mistake, it’s ignored, but when you make a mistake, you get a fine from HMRC.

The path from scepticism to mistrust and distrust is made shorter by repeated institutional interactions that suggest it’s one rule for them and another for you. If you put Bradfield Close on your driving licence instead of Bradshaw Close, you’d be worried about a hefty fine. Openreach can apparently make the same mistake with impunity.

Repeated experiences of bureaucracies not saying what they’re doing, not explaining why they’re doing it, and not holding up their hands when they make a mistake are never going to make someone think the system works for them. In an era of declining trust not just in politics, but in society generally, this reinforces the belief that ‘the system’ will do what it wants. It’s easy to feel that the system was not designed with you in mind, will do what it wants without regard to what you need or want, and will proceed regardless of whether you understand or consent.

Healthy democracies run on scepticism; that is to say, on watching what institutions are doing, partly so they can be held to account and partly because the fact of being watched makes people and institutions behave better. Mistrust is what develops when that scepticism goes unanswered; it is when people conclude that the system is simply indifferent, that engaging with it is a waste of time, and that the most rational response is to stop trying. Distrust is a step further again; it is the belief that the system is not merely unresponsive but self-serving, that it is actively working in its own interests at your expense, and that anyone who tells you otherwise is either naive or in on it.

And it’s not just this one organisation. From having a Facebook post taken down for reasons you don’t understand and with no way of giving your side of the story, to planning applications that go through apparently irrespective of what people nearby think, it can seem like we are perpetually shouting into the void. The fact that a lot of services that look like things the state should do, from water to council housing to fixing potholes, are one way or another done by private companies just adds to the feeling that anything that might look like accountability is carefully excised by the powers that be.

We are not yet a low-trust society8 but it would not surprise anyone to see the 2026 World Values Survey or European Values Survey showing declining confidence in institutions or, indeed, in each other. When co-operation and legitimacy are weakened, we open the door to populism9 and authoritarianism. We are seeing that already with the rise of the Greens and Reform in the UK.

What’s particularly frustrating is that it’s not ideology or malice but institutional habits that stop them from communicating better. There are some really simple things that institutions could do to improve this. These small fixes won’t reverse the populist tide by themselves, but they’re the part each institution actually controls, and continuing to fail at them is a kind of unilateral disarmament; a small daily concession to the people who say the system is contemptuous of you because, in this small instance, they’re right.

So, first up, pay attention to the perspective of the recipient. How does your institution’s notice, your institution’s email, your institution’s letter look to someone encountering them in the wild who doesn’t have the knowledge of someone working inside the system? How does it look to someone who isn’t as well-informed or well-educated as you? How does it look to someone whose Facebook feed is populated by posts from pages titled with things like ‘Council Tax is a Scam’?

Secondly, you should provide more information than you are strictly required to give. The legal requirement may be met by a formal notice, but a lot of problems could be avoided by saying that you’re putting in a wooden pole for faster internet and not a 5G mast like the ones you’ve seen installed around town.

Thirdly, and obviously, acknowledge mistakes openly and correct them. It’s an opportunity to build trust, not just a legal risk.

It’s always going to be difficult for large institutions to respond to every message they get. I’m sure it’s frustrating to have to respond to endless emails that are just not very well-informed. But being more forthcoming with information could actually help reduce those emails. If the various utilities, councils, government departments, banks, and so on took that kind of approach to communication, they could materially strengthen public trust.

In a low-trust society, boring competence, clarity, and courtesy may be among the most important democratic virtues we have.

So, please – put the right email address on your scary-looking legal notice.

You can find David on his Facebook page, or head to his website for bus route maps of Huntingdon, which I feel my audience would be very into.

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Hello! It’s time for Odds and Ends, your semi-regular roundup of the most interesting links I’ve seen lately – plus some shorter takes.

I’m on holiday for the next three weeks, but I will have some guest posts coming up – the first one should be dropping tomorrow. And below the paywall today is indeed an extremely hot short take.

So please do read on, as this time I’m featuring:

• My view on the current Labour leadership drama (including who I think is probably Labour’s best bet).

• A major report from the Labour faction that’s pitching an abundance agenda

• The NHS has made a mad decision about open source software

• A frankly horrifying realisation about the Lower Thames Crossing’s planning process

• And vertical farming... in London?!

But first, a couple of things involving, er, me.

Labour Tribes Mapped: Interactive guide to Labour’s MPs (LabourList)

I’ve been helping the team at LabourList build this incredibly cool interactive that attempts to map all of Labour’s ‘tribes’ – think all of the different categories you can split Labour MPs into, such as their faction (Mainstream, LabourFirst, Blue Labour, etc), or other things like the size of their majority or whether they are calling for Keir Starmer to resign.

Using the tribes tool you can visualise the divisions in the party, and see how the different tribes and interests intersect – which is going to be invaluable for understanding the forthcoming leadership contest. And even more useful if you’re a Labour MP plotting a leadership bid. Click through to LabourList to try it for yourself.

WATCH: Me on a panel with Jimmy Wales!

Excitingly, a few weeks ago I was invited to be on a panel at Kings College London, alongside none other than Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, discussing trust in the age of generative AI.

I thought it was a super fun event – and now the video has now been posted online. I’ll be honest – I’m pretty horrified by the state of my (lack of) hair, to the point where I’m realising I just need to bite the bullet and shave my head. But if you can ignore that, I think it’s a pretty interesting chat!1

Read more

On YIMBY Pod this week:

• James and Martin dig into some astonishing YouGov polling that reveals a huge gender gap in support for nuclear energy… and desperately try not to get cancelled while talking about it.

• And we speak to Tym Syrytczyk from the Institute for Driverless Transport to check in on Britain’s autonomous vehicle progress.

James’s newsletter is here, and by the time you’re reading this, he’ll hopefully have something published!

Martin’s newsletter is here, and his latest video will be here.

Don’t forget to tell your friends about the pod – and leave us a nice review on Apple Podcasts!

YIMBY Pod is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Substack and hopefully wherever you get your podcasts!

You can find James on Bluesky here, and Martin here.

Hello! I’m on holiday for the next few weeks. I’ve got some cool guest posts coming up from some excellent people, and will still hopefully be publishing my ‘Odds and Ends’ links newsletter.

But I couldn’t let you go without a local elections take. It’s lucky, then, that… I’ve already written one. I first published this as a paid post back in March, and now it is more relevant than ever. So please enjoy my take on why now could, conceivably, be the moment for proportional representation.

(And if you value my work, please consider joining as a paid subscriber, as it is only with your support that I’m able to write every week (er, aside from the weeks I’m on holiday).

British politics is in flux.

Reform is slowly sapping support from the Tories on the right, and as the Gorton and Denton by-election evidenced, the Greens are now a serious force on the left, capable of stealing even the safest of seats from Labour.

Then there’s the LibDems, who are still there, occupying the lane of being a suitably inoffensive vessel for people who don’t mind immigrants and don’t like houses.

Together, this adds up to something unprecedented. For better or worse, we’re now living in an era of five-party politics – but this isn’t the interesting part.

What’s more notable is how these unusual circumstances have quietly aligned the incentives of all five major parties so that today, in theory at least, they would all stand to benefit from electoral reform, and a shift to proportional representation (PR).

So I know this sounds mad, but I can’t help but wonder if this means we’re at the closest point we’ve ever been to a change in the electoral system.

And now I’m going to explain why.

Five-party politics

The fragmentation of British politics isn’t a new trend. It’s arguably been happening for a generation – save for the weird blip of the 2019 election.1 Perhaps the starkest illustration of this recently is a YouGov poll that was published earlier this week. Shockingly, it shows the Greens overtaking Labour and leaping into second place – behind Reform, the other insurgent party.

I’m guessing this poll will turn out to be an outlier2 – but it does illustrate the general trajectory we’re on. And the upshot of this is that now they all have credibly high polling numbers, the potential range of outcomes in a general election becomes absolutely chaotic.3

A good way to illustrate this is with Ben Ansell’s excellent seat calculator, which takes projected vote shares like you might find in a poll, and translates them to how many seats each party would expect to win.

So let’s imagine for a moment that the Tories are on 16.8%, Labour on 16.7%, LibDems on 15.8%, and the upstart Greens are on 21.5%, and Reform leads the pack with 23% – numbers that aren’t a million miles away from the YouGov poll above.

According to the calculator, those numbers would result in the right-wing bloc – Reform and the Tories – having a combined total of 273 seats, and the left-wing bloc – Labour, the LibDems, and Greens would have 279. Both are below the threshold for an outright majority, but it would give the left coalition first dibs on forming a government.

Now let’s take just one percentage point from the Tories and give it to Reform. A microscopic shift, yet suddenly the right bloc wins 293 seats to the left’s 260, and Nigel Farage is heading for Downing Street instead.4

In a nutshell, then, this highlights the problem with five-party politics under our First Past The Post (FPTP) system. Five parties in competition basically destroys any connection between vote share and the number of seats won.

As Rob Ford wrote, a few months after the last election:

“Aggregate poll numbers are all but useless as a guide when so much turns on geography and local variations in opponents’ strength. Labour, for example, could win another big majority with a lower overall vote share than now, or lose their majority altogether with a higher overall vote share - everything depends on where the gains and losses fall, and how local competitors fare.”

And this… seems like a bad situation to be in, as it works for basically nobody.

For voters, it turns politics into a meta-game of guessing how to vote tactically (as we saw in Gorton and Denton). For parties, it makes it difficult to campaign, as it isn’t clear who the enemy is, and how best to attack them.5

And for everyone else, it just creates a huge amount of uncertainty about the future. Which isn’t great whether you’re an election junkie reading a politics newsletter, or a business trying to make an investment decision.6

Why PR is more possible than ever now

This brings me back to proportional representation.

As you can probably sense, I’m broadly in favour of PR. I wouldn’t necessarily rank it on my list of the most important political issues, and a bit like the people who worry about the birth rate, I think if you make it your main thing it probably makes you a bit of an oddball.

But I’m not interested in making the case for or against PR in this piece – I know about 40 people (most of whom are LibDems) who could bore on at punishing length on the merits of different voting systems.7

The point I want to make here is like I say at the top – whether good or bad, I think the current circumstances are the best they have ever been, in terms of making the case for PR.

And I say this not because I’m looking at a poll going and thinking that it would be much simpler that way, but because if you look at the incentives and objectives of each of the five major parties, you can see the stars aligning in support of PR.

For the LibDems, Reform and Greens, the case for reform8 is obvious: It’s an opportunity to bag themselves more seats, and lock in a permanent place at the top table of British politics. If we switched to PR, every election would result in coalition negotiations, where the insurgent parties could score themselves cabinet seats and policy commitments.9

But what about Labour and the Tories? Unusually, both parties are bleeding support at the same time to insurgent parties on their flanks, and this flips their incentives.

For the Tories, Reform is at this point an existential threat. There’s a very real possibility that by 2029, Reform is the undisputed dominant party of the right.10 If that were to happen, there would be good reasons for the remaining Tories in Parliament to cast aside the party’s historic support for FPTP, and back PR as a survival strategy. This would be the best chance of avoiding total destruction, as it will be easier to scrape together a Parliamentary Party from the dregs of every seat, rather than hoping for wins in specific places.

Then this is more speculative, but for Labour, the situation could be similar. The Greens have not made quite the same inroads yet, and the structure and demographics of Green support could put a ceiling on just how many voters the party can conceivably steal. But if the Greens continue to poll strongly, it could scare the hell out of plenty of Labour MPs in urban centres, and push them to look for an emergency brake.

And this is not to mention that the party also faces significantly more internal pressure, as many Labour activists and MPs have long campaigned for PR as a point of principle. In fact, Labour MPs were raising the issue in Parliament just last week.

So this is all to say that taken together, we’re in the strange position where all five parties could conceivably align around changing the electoral system. Because of the unique circumstances they’ve all found themselves in, there could soon be an increasingly strong incentive to change. And given that the parties who stand to lose the most by not changing, are the ones who – until 2029 – hold most of the power then… I won’t be surprised if those parties start taking the PR option seriously.

It still won’t happen

So what I’m observing here is a historically unusual alignment of incentives, and this is notable because it is in situations like this when dramatic changes can happen.

In fact, this sort of alignment of interests is why we ended up as a Parliamentary Democracy in the first place.

As Francis Fukuyama argues in The Origins of Political Order, in 1688 as a result of the Glorious Revolution, constitutional government emerged almost accidentally, as it just so happened that the balance of power at the time did not advantage either the aristocracy or the emerging class of business elites and tradespeople. One side could not completely dismantle the other, so an early form of modern constitutional government arose as basically a compromise.

But this isn’t to say that I think a change to PR is likely.

The problem with electoral reform has always been the fundamental coordination problem – and that applies even when on paper, everyone should be aligned. For the party in power, even though it might make rational sense to change course, when looking at polling evidence, status quo bias is very powerful, and MPs may still be reluctant to roll the dice on change.

The same goes for individual politicians, as unless the expected outcome is total wipeout, there will still be MPs who resist because of either their own personal circumstances (ie, an enormous majority) and the irrational belief they have a special personal vote that is immune to political trends, or simply because of principle-driven support for First Past The Post.

Then there’s the fact this alignment I’ve identified is fragile, and the polls could still shift dramatically. Who knows what impact a new Labour or Conservative leader might have? What if Ed Davey is forced to retire after a waterskiing accident, and a chaotic LibDem conference anoints Lembit Opik as the new party leader?11 What if Reform receives some proper scrutiny from the press and everyone realises that an ideologically incoherent party of Putinists and weirdos isn’t as appealing as it once appeared?

And this isn’t even to say anything about the process by which the electoral system would change. Every spod in Westminster would be wading in on the merits of different proportioning systems, which would be unbearable. And then it might have to (God forbid) go to a referendum.

So to be clear, my argument here isn’t that it will happen. What I’m arguing is that the underlying circumstances of British politics are the best they have ever been for electoral reform.

It’s a bit like how if I were to lose half my body weight, I’d technically be in the best position I’ve ever been in to win an Olympic medal. But actually doing so would still be vanishingly unlikely.

So electoral reform might not happen. It probably won’t happen. But if it is ever going to happen – now might be the time.

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POD! On YIMBY Pod this week, Martin and I reflect on Britain’s AI strategy and how it’s basically to make the best of a bad situation. Then I speak to Hannah Keenan from the Institute for Government, who patiently explains to me why I was totally wrong on the pod a few weeks ago. Listen here, or wherever you get your pods.

ICYMI! Over the bank holiday I posted another long essay on Palantir, and tried to figure out whether the company is good or evil. Go check it out if you missed it!

In the next few weeks a decision could be made that will decide whether HS2 will be a success – or a fiasco.

If nothing changes, it is possible that when HS2 services to Manchester begin in the late 2030s, the first trains to leave London’s new Old Oak Common mega-station will be completely full – from day one.1

It’s not just that there will be no extra passenger capacity created by the new railway. The new Manchester train could actually be even worse than it is now, with fewer total seats than there are now on the old West Coast Main Line (WCML) service from Euston.2

Yes, this is an absolutely mad situation to be in.

But it gets worse. Though the Department for Transport (DfT) is by now well aware of this possibility, the widely expected fix, which might avoid embarrassing headlines on day one, could screw up the railway even more in the long run.

However, there is good news. There is a way out of the mess, and a potential solution to both problems. But there is also bad news – the guy who came up with the plan was sacked last week for telling parliamentarians about his plan.

Intrigued? Pull on your anorak and grab your spotter’s notebook, this is going to be a nerdy one.

If you value journalism like this, please subscribe and support my work, as it is only thanks to you that I can spend the time digging through the brain-breaking complexities you’re about to learn about.

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The original sin

The story begins at the 2023 Conservative Party conference. You might remember it, as it was the one where then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak chose short-term political expediency3 over the long-term economic health of the country, and announced the cancellation of the Birmingham-to-Manchester leg of HS2.

The new plan for HS2 was that trains to Manchester would travel from London on shiny, new, high-speed tracks, and would then join the existing WCML just north of Birmingham, at Handsacre, near Lichfield.

In principle, this might sound like an elegant fix. HS2 trains will still get to Manchester, as promised. They’ll just be a little slower than if they were on dedicated high-speed tracks. But the reality is more complicated – and the curtailing of the high speed line actually creates two downstream problems.

The first is the trains. HS2 trains are planned to be 200m long, with 504 seats. This is shorter than the existing London to Manchester trains on the WCML, the Pendolinos, which are 265m long and have 607 seats.

But this wasn’t going to be a problem, as the new trains are designed so that two can be coupled together, forming a 400m long train, together sending 1008 seats heading to Manchester – roughly a 40% increase in the number of passengers who could be carried!

Except… because the Manchester leg of the railway was chopped, this plan no longer works. Without the new line, Manchester Piccadilly station is no longer going to receive the billions of pounds of rebuilding necessary to accommodate 400m trains.

So this essentially means that when Pendolinos are switched out for HS2, the arriving trains will only be 200m long, reducing the number of seats on each train service arriving at Piccadilly station.

At this point, you might be thinking – well, why not just run more trains? If the trains are shorter, we could still make up the difference by running more of them. Or why don’t we really max out trains to Manchester, by continuing to run slower, WCML trains to Manchester from London in addition to HS2 trains?

Unfortunately, this gets back to the entire premise of HS2.

Despite the name, as rail bores like me like to remind people, High Speed 2 isn’t actually all about increasing speed – it’s about increasing capacity. And one of the reasons the new railway was planned in the first place is because the WCML is already overloaded with rail traffic. DfT estimates that by the mid-2030s, sections of the line north of Birmingham will not be able to physically fit any more trains – before HS2 services even start, and add to the crunch.

If you want the really nerdy details, I understand that one particular pinch point is between Lichfield and Stafford – the point where the WCML, HS2 and trains from Birmingham heading to Manchester all converge. And this is a hard constraint. If we want HS2 trains to run north of Birmingham, then it will necessarily mean removing other services from the line.4

So what can possibly be done? One terrible option could be to make the dramatic decision to basically cut off HS2 from the north entirely, and have it operate as a self-contained railway that only shuttles between London and Birmingham.

That way, trains north of Birmingham would basically remain as they are now, with Pendolinos on the WCML operating the same train service they do now, between London, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow and so on.

However, this is a non-starter for a couple of reasons. The first is political – you’d have to be a brave and possibly politically suicidal politician to deny the north access to HS2. And every indication is that nobody wants to do that, presumably because it might cause Andy Burnham to raise an army and march on London.5

But more substantively, the problem with doing this is that it would pretty much defeat much of the point of HS2 in the first place – because as mentioned, the point of HS2 is to increase capacity. And the way it is designed to do this is by moving long-distance services from the WCML to the new line, thus freeing up space on the WCML for more local passenger services and more freight traffic. If long-distance services are still being operated on the WCML, it makes it much more difficult to operate slower, stopping services, and thus retains most of the same bottlenecks that HS2 is supposed to remove.

Fixing the trains

What’s clear then is that short of actually building HS2 as originally intended (we can dream), the limiting factor is space on the actual rails. So if we can’t change this, what about changing the trains themselves? Why stick to 200m trains?

And now we get to the reason why this is a surprisingly urgent problem.

Sometime soon, possibly in the next few weeks, I understand that the Department for Transport is expecting to finalise the HS2 train order with Hitachi and Alstom, first made in 2021. This is because we’re reaching the point in the construction timeline where final decisions need to be made, as construction of the depots to house the trains will soon have to start, not to mention construction of the trains themselves.6

As things stand, the plan is to build 54x 200m trains as originally planned, but there are reports and rumours that suggest that the contract could be changed at the last minute to instead instruct Hitachi and Alstom to build trains that are between 250m and 260m7 long instead, by essentially bolting on a couple of extra carriages to each train.

The theory is that this would at least solve the most embarrassing problem, the fact that HS2 will reduce capacity to Manchester. If trains are 250m, it would bump the seating on an individual train to around 630 seats – slightly more than an 11-car Pendolino!

However, unfortunately this isn’t the Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card that DfT might be hoping for either, as the problem with this approach is that it would unleash a whole host of other problems upon the combined HS2/WCML railway.

For example, 250m trains could complicate construction of the railway – which is already underway – as trains, depots and other infrastructure would have to be redesigned.

And operationally, it would complicate the running of HS2, as you can’t couple together 250m long trains like you can with 200m trains, as HS2 platforms won’t be long enough.8

But there is a bigger problem with the new HS2 trains – regardless of whether they are 200m or 250m. And that’s what happens once they join the WCML north of Birmingham.

Think about the existing Pendolino trains. What’s the one thing everyone knows about them? No, not that the trains originally had their toilet ventilation too close to the air conditioning intake. It’s the fact that they tilt, so that they can take curves on a winding, Victorian railway at faster speeds than conventional trains.

On the WCML, this means that there are certain sections where the Pendolinos can travel at 125mph, whereas a non-tilting train would be stuck at 110mph. Which is a problem if you’re replacing the Pendolinos with non-tilting, HS2 trains. As fast as they can travel on the newly built HS2 track, the new trains will still be limited to non-tilting speeds on the WCML section, as the limitation is the track, not the trains.

And this could make a real difference to journey times in the north. Though London-to-Birmingham would be faster on HS2 tracks, with new HS2 trains, some routes that travel further north would be slower than now.

For example, according to an analysis by HS2 Ltd, travel from Glasgow to Handsacre (the point where trains will join HS2) could be 13 minutes slower than it is now, because of the lack of tilting on the new trains.

On net, this might still work out positively in terms of time saved, but saving would get worse the further north you go, as trains will have to travel on more non-HS2 track.

For example, at present, London to Glasgow takes about 4 hours 30 minutes. Under the original HS2 plan9 which would have built a new line all the way to Manchester, that would have fallen to around 3 hours 38 minutes – saving almost 50 minutes. But with HS2 now curtailed, according to Rail Engineer, the same trip is expected to take around 4 hours 18 minutes, saving a grand total of… 12 minutes on what the journey is today.

So for people in Glasgow, even with 250m trains, HS2 might end up being a train that has more or less the same capacity as now, which runs slower for shorter distance services, and which gets you to London just 12 minutes faster. All for the princely sum of £80bn.

The Gibb plan

I did warn you that this was a mad situation. Though HS2 will still work for some people – it’ll be pretty nice to travel from Birmingham to London – Rishi Sunak’s world-historic bad decision will make the new railway worse for many others.

However, there is a plan out there to make the best of this bad situation. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the guy who came up with it was recently sacked for talking about it.

Chris Gibb is a veteran railwayman, who has spent his career working on, and then managing the railway network. Between 2007 and 2013 he was Chief Operating Officer for Virgin West Coast, and his job was running the WCML. More recently, he was a non-executive director of DfT Operator Ltd (DFTO), the government-run company that operates a number of nationalised train companies.

This was until he spoke in a personal capacity to the All-Party Parliamentary Rail Group about his proposed remedy for the nightmare I describe above – and the Chair of DFTO promptly removed him.

I’m not going to dwell on the issue of his removal, as these things are invariably messy, and I don’t know any more beyond what has been reported. But suffice to say, it seems like a crazy decision to me.

But anyway, what I do know is that politicians and the Department for Transport really should be taking his HS2 plan seriously – as at least to my layperson’s eyes, it seems like a rather good one.

So how does Gibb propose we solve the looming capacity problem?

Essentially, what he envisages is moving from treating HS2 as a new, standalone thing – and instead thinking about it as part of a combined railway, internalising that the Handsacre WCML crossover is going to be a fact of life from now on.

This is actually quite a big philosophical break with the past, as since its inception, HS2 had been imagined as something that ran almost entirely separately to the rest of the rail network.

But what does this mean in practice? Essentially, Gibb thinks HS2 should take advantage of a rather lucky coincidence.

As alluded to above, because of all of the delays and turmoil in the HS2 programme, though there’s no ‘official’ date that has been announced, the expectation is now that HS2 services will begin some time in the late 2030s.10

And this happens to be around the same time that the current fleet of Pendolinos on the WCML will reach retirement – which is currently expected to be in the early 2040s.11

So Gibb’s proposal is that the best way forward is to keep the existing HS2 train order as-is, for the sake of simplicity. Build the long-planned 200m trains (that couple to 400m), so they can be used on the London to Birmingham leg of the railway, as well as on other lower-volume HS2 and WCML services, such as London to Liverpool, or Birmingham to Manchester12.13

But what about Manchester, Glasgow and the north? Here, Gibb argues that the Pendolinos should be replaced by commissioning a brand new, more customised train that is specifically designed for running on both HS2 and the WCML north of Handsacre.

What does this look like in practice? For a start, these new trains would be designed to both run on HS2 and tilt on the WCML – so there’s no loss of speed to the north. And to maximise capacity, these trains would be specifically designed to be a very precise 286m long – because this is the exact length that maxes out the platforms at Manchester Piccadilly and Glasgow Central. Gibb believes that these trains could conceivably have up to 750 seats each – improving capacity as much as possible, without needing to rebuild the stations.

In other words, it’s a pretty neat solution that avoids both reducing seat capacity and slowing down journeys. Though it doesn’t come without complexities.

For example, to make the most of his plan, Gibb argues that it would be wise to upgrade the signalling on the WCML to modern standards,14 which would allow trains to run faster on the conventional railway anyway – and when coupled with tilting, could reduce journey times further north.

Though perhaps the more dangerous trade-off for politicians is that it would entwine HS2’s opening date with the fate of the Pendolino replacements, which would need to be a pretty custom-built train to meet the criteria of both HS2 and tilt at the same time, and there would be a separate political fight over procuring the replacements in time. So it would be more complicated than simply adding a couple of extra carriages like the 250m proposal.

But even so, despite this I still think this is a trade-off worth making. If we want a railway that actually functions as intended in 2039, this appears to be the way to do it.

Details matter

If your head hurts after reading so much punishing detail about capacity constraints on Britain’s railway, then it’s understandable – the closer you look, the more wildly complicated the technical details become.

But getting the details right is important, because the decisions being made about HS2 today are creating path-dependencies that will affect how Britain’s railways work for decades, maybe even centuries to come.

We know this because it has happened before. Remember the pinch point between Lichfield and Stafford, that means we can’t run any more trains to Manchester? This is known as the Shugborough Tunnel, and it was built in 1845 to placate Thomas Anson, the 1st Earl of Lichfield, who didn’t want trains running across his land.

Today, nearly 200 years on, a significant number of London to Manchester trains still runs through this tunnel, and it is one of the reasons we are in the current mess. It’s path-dependencies all the way down.

But this should also serve as a reminder of how the choices we make today can have a long-lasting impact. And it’s possible now to imagine how the wrong choice of train today could echo into the future.

In his speech to the Parliamentary group, Gibb mentioned how if HS2 is overloaded from day one, railway managers in the future might decide they have no choice but to hike prices or make ticket reservations mandatory, like we currently have on the Eurostar, to reduce demand.

This wouldn’t just be annoying for passengers, it would fundamentally change the character of the railway and how people use it – and it would make it less useful.

Take a football match, for example. What if Manchester United find themselves in an FA Cup semi-final at Wembley at short notice?15 If train tickets are sold out long in advance, it means that fans either won’t be able to get to the match, or will be forced to drive instead – which is the opposite of what we want.

But whether or not this remedy is settled upon, or another way to ration demand is determined, this is obviously a bad situation to be in. And this brings me to my final point: What is HS2 actually for? If it results in fewer seats and slower trains, what’s it all for?

Despite my carping about the detail above, I still strongly believe that finishing HS2 is absolutely critical to Britain’s future.

But the point of building a new railway isn’t simply because big infrastructure projects are interesting and trains are cool. HS2 should be a strategic national asset that grows the economy, decarbonises transport, and helps people get about.

This is why the extra capacity is what matters. It is the extra space freed up by the WCML where new local rail services will run, connecting smaller towns to larger cities with higher-quality rail services. It is the extra seats on trains that will make it possible for more economic activity to happen, and for commuters to live in high-growth areas where housing is being built, like Milton Keynes. And it is the improved connectivity with Manchester, Glasgow and beyond that will level up the north and stimulate growth.

I asked both HS2 Ltd and DfT if they had looked at the Gibb plan. A spokesperson for HS2 Ltd told me that they haven’t. DfT, sadly, hasn’t got back to me.16

But I hope they will take it seriously, so that when the ribbon is cut in 2039 and the first trains leave for Manchester, we’re not left quietly wondering if we’ve just built a new Shugborough Tunnel.

If you’ve read this far, then make sure you subscribe (for free!) to get my newsletter direct to your inbox.

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On YIMBY Pod this week:

• James talks about Technology Secretary Liz Kendall’s speech last week, which essentially sets out Britain’s AI strategy – and he explains why the strategy is determined by some rather limited choices.

• And then we speak to Hannah Keenan, from the Institute for Government, who takes James to task over an incredibly bad take on the pod from a few weeks ago.

James’s newsletter is here, and he’ll have something new up about Palantir by the time you’re reading this.

Martin’s newsletter is here, and his YouTube channel is here.

Don’t forget to tell your friends about the pod – and leave us a nice review on Apple Podcasts!

YIMBY Pod is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, YouTube and hopefully wherever you get your podcasts!

You can find James on Bluesky here, and Martin here.

Palantir makes a lot of people mad.

The tech company, co-founded by Silicon Valley billionaire and Trump ally Peter Thiel, is unusual in its approach to public relations.

A few weeks ago, Palantir’s Twitter account posted an excerpt from a book co-written by CEO Alex Karp, setting out the 22 core tenets of a manifesto it calls ‘The Technological Republic’.

And though some of the ideas aren’t obviously objectionable – such as the observation that American power has underscored the long peace since World War II – some of the tenets are pretty spicy. For example:

21. Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures . . . have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful.

22. We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what?

Yeah.

What’s more, this isn’t exactly strange behaviour from Palantir. Last year the company paid for digital billboards near a number of American universities claiming that “A moment of reckoning has arrived for the West”, which as an advertising slogan is slightly more provocative than “I’m lovin’ it” or “Just do it”.

So it is perhaps understandable and pretty obvious why Palantir scares people, including many British politicians, who have called for the company to be disentangled from the hundreds of millions of pounds of contracts it has with the British state.

For example, last month LibDem Treasury spokesperson Daisy Cooper called for an investigation into Palantir’s work with the Financial Conduct Authority, and Green MP Sian Berry said the company should have “no place” in UK government systems.

Then a couple of days before the Technological Republic excerpt was posted, a group of MPs urged the government to remove Palantir from a major NHS contract to build the health service’s Federated Data Platform (FDP).

And then most recently, just a few days ago, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan reportedly threatened to block plans for the Metropolitan Police to use Palantir’s software.

If you want a full accounting of Palantir’s reach in Britain, then Carol Cadwalladr’s new outlet, The Nerve, has a somewhat paranoid-looking red-string infographic with the details, but the upshot is that across the board, lots of politicians are unhappy.

So the obvious question to ask is… are they right to be? Do we actually need to worry about Palantir? Is the company really as malevolent as detractors imply? Or is this another Cambridge Analytica-style scandal, where despite the hysterical coverage there isn’t actually much there there?1

As I’m someone who styles himself as a tech-and-data guy, who writes about government tech projects and the like, I feel like I should know the answer to this, and have a considered opinion on Palantir.

But the reality is that I don’t – at least, not yet.

So this week, let’s have a look at the case for and against Palantir, and work out whether we should worry or not.

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POD! On YIMBY Pod this week, I’m still mad about solar farms, and Martin talks about his trip to see the Bat Tunnel. Plus we speak to economist Dan Davies about why the planning system is too adversarial, and how to fix it. Listen here, or wherever you get your pods.

ESSAY! Don’t forget to check out my exhaustive long read from last week, debunking all of the arguments against ‘industrial-scale’ solar.

Hello! It’s time for Odds and Ends, your semi-regular round-up of the most interesting links I’ve seen this week, plus some shorter takes.

Before we begin, just because I’m a total show-off, here’s a photo from last Friday, of me speaking on a panel at Kings College London, alongside none other than Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales! Many thanks to Prof Elena Simperl for inviting me along!1

Anyway, I believe the event was recorded, so I’ll post the link as soon as it has been published.

Now, let’s get on with the links – this time I’m featuring:

• An intriguing new progressive project

• Someone built the bin app of my dreams!

• A jaw-dropping gender divide on nuclear energy

• A grim assessment of where the energy crisis is heading

• Someone did the maths on how many solar farms we need

• Why data centres provoke so much bad thinking

• A genius way to avoid future Chagos situations

• Could building data centres actually help us decarbonise?

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On YIMBY Pod this week:

• Why Green Party complaints about “industrial scale” solar farms are fundamentally unserious.

• Martin visits the actual Bat Tunnel – and returns with a crazy plot twist.

• And we speak to Dan Davies about his pitch for a less combative planning system, Build the Rail! Save The Snails!

Dan Davies’s book, The Unaccountability Machine can be found here.

James’s newsletter is here, and his latest post is a deep dive into the arguments against solar farms – and he explains why none of them hold up.

Martin’s newsletter is here, and his latest video, visiting the Bat Tunnel, is here.

Don’t forget to tell your friends about the pod – and leave us a nice review on Apple Podcasts!

YIMBY Pod is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Substack and hopefully wherever you get your podcasts!

You can find James on Bluesky here, and Martin here.

POD! On YIMBY Pod this week, why it’s your patriotic duty to run your air conditioner, why phone signal is so bad in Britain, and the NIMBYs taking on… a cancer hospital. Listen here, or wherever you get your pods.

It is likely that this summer Britain will achieve a major decarbonisation milestone.

If the sun shines brightly, the wind blows fast, and demand on the grid is low, it is possible that the national grid will briefly be entirely free of fossil fuels.

And it will probably happen. Just yesterday, in fact, we nearly did it. At 11:30am, the share of gas fell to just 2%. So on a hot, windy, weekend afternoon in July, when factories are powered down and shops have closed, it could finally be the moment.

When it happens, it should be a moment we celebrate. Just like how Britain moved from a grid in the 1980s that was mostly powered by coal, to a grid today without a single coal power station, it will be another tangible sign that we really can build a better world.

And the word “build” there is important.

When the grid reaches net zero – at first momentarily, and in time permanently1 – it will be because we have transformed the built environment of the United Kingdom, and transformed our energy system by building new infrastructure.

But there is still a long way to go. Hitting net zero when circumstances are perfect is one thing, but we still need to build much more, so that we don’t need to fire up the gas generators when the sun isn’t shining.

And the only way we are going to do this is if we generate green energy at industrial scale. Think vast wind farms both at sea and on land, solar farms blanketing swathes of the countryside, and nuclear reactors to provide baseload power for when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind does not blow. We’ll also need new pylons and other energy transmission infrastructure to move this new, clean energy around the country.

So it will be an enormous challenge, but – perhaps surprisingly – so far, it is not one at which Britain is failing. Around the country, utility-scale renewable projects are planned or are under construction, incrementally adding to Britain’s supply of green energy.

East Pye Solar in Norfolk is one such project. It’s a solar farm that will be chained across ten sites close to the village of Long Stratton, and the 500 megawatt (MW) project could one day generate enough clean energy to power 115,000 homes. It is so important that it has been designated a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project by the government, and it’s exactly what we need to be building, if we are serious about decarbonising the grid.

Sadly though, it seems that not everyone is quite so serious about decarbonising, and there is opposition to the project from politicians of all stripes.

For example, predictably Reform deputy leader Richard Tice, who splits his time between Dubai, London, and hopefully his constituency of Boston and Skegness, has criticised the development, because he’s the absolute worst.

But there is also opposition from one party that might be more surprising. The party that you might assume would be in favour of renewable energy, because until recently it was the party’s entire schtick.

I’m talking, of course, about the Green Party.

The leader of the Green Group on Norfolk County Council, Catherine Rowett, expressed her opposition to the scheme, telling the BBC that:

“The basic thing is that these shocking schemes are [proposed by] foreign investors looking to make a profit out of our ridiculous energy prices,” said Rowett.

“It’s a huge profit margin for those who can get some renewable energy from our sunshine and take the profits offshore.”

In other words, she has searched around and in an impressive feat of mental gymnastics, she has managed to find a rationale to oppose a large solar development in her proverbial backyard.

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It’s all about me

I’m now going to make this all about me.

When I saw the BBC story linked above, because I can’t help myself I posted about it, writing that “I see the Greens are opposing (checks notes) solar power now”.2

Let’s just say the reaction was… mixed. It wasn’t a pile-on – most of the feedback was either polite or at least as equivalently rude as I was, and you know, you shouldn’t dish it out if you can’t take it. So as my mentions filled up, I attempted to exercise good epistemological hygiene, by only blocking the truly abusive people, who invariably had anime avatars.

Anyway, seeing the Green supporters’ pushback was strangely interesting. It was striking just how many people were willing to drive an intellectual Zamboni behind Rowett, and attempt to justify or further explain her opposition to building solar, without conceding that she was, as I saw it, opposing the construction of solar energy.

But as open-minded as I like to think I am to changing my mind, basically all of the arguments against constructing the solar farm are bad. So I thought that rather than go toe-to-toe on Bluesky, I’d write a proper response here and dig into the real arguments that were made against building. And for ease, I’ve sorted them into four core arguments, and included a representative response that makes the case.

So let’s go through them and get mad.

Argument 1: Put solar panels on buildings instead

It’s a seductive argument. Instead of rows of solar panels in a field, why can’t we put them on top of buildings instead?

Now, I’m all for rooftop solar where it’s possible. In fact, a couple of weeks ago I signed a contract to have solar panels installed on my own home because, well, have you seen the news?

But rooftops are not a magic bullet that avoids the need for difficult choices. The reason we’re going to need large solar farms is because we can only generate the energy we need, and we can only do it affordably, if we do it at scale.

Let’s start with cost. Laying panels out in rows in a field is just obviously much cheaper than retrofitting existing buildings, for the same reason that building on a greenfield site is cheaper than brownfield. There’s no need to come up with a bespoke installation, put up scaffolding, or work around the existing built environment. And similarly, there’s no need to fight thousands of individual planning battles,3 or arrange thousands of separate new grid connections.

However, I think the bigger problem is nobody realises just how many buildings we’d need to transform.

Let’s say that like East Pye, we wanted to generate 500MW for 115,000 homes, and let’s imagine the best case scenario for rooftop solar: we’re not putting panels on a historic building, or somewhere architecturally tricky in the centre of a city.

Instead, we’re putting panels on top of a boring, massive metal box, like the 2-million-square-foot Amazon warehouse in Tilbury, Essex. It’s equivalent in size to 28 football pitches, and the roof is relatively flat, so this should be the easiest install in the world.

Except... in 2020, Amazon proudly announced that it had installed 11,500 panels onto the warehouse in its largest single solar deployment in Europe, and yet despite the enormous size, total generation capacity was just 3.4MW, or equivalent to 700 homes.

That means to generate the equivalent energy to East Pye, you’d need over 147 Amazon warehouses.4

And again, this is the best case scenario. In fact, this warehouse is the largest single warehouse in the UK. And this back of the envelope calculation doesn’t take into account the complexities of retrofitting panels on different types of buildings in the real world.

So I think this basically illustrates why achieving utility-scale solar with just rooftop solar is largely a fantasy. And given costs are constrained – because money is not infinite – if you want to deploy solar and get the most bang for your buck, then large solar farms need to be a significant part of the solution.

Argument 2: Large solar farms should be community owned and the problem is private equity

On an emotional level, I can understand the appeal of ‘community ownership’ of solar assets. It implies that the energy generated will pay back to the local area, just as putting solar panels on your house means you can sell energy back to the grid.

The only problem is, well, there’s absolutely nothing practical about building solar in this way.

The term is used pretty loosely, but as far as I can tell, the largest solar farm in Britain that we can reasonably call ‘community-owned’ is currently Derrill Water in Devon. It only has a capacity of 42MW – less than a tenth of what East Pye will manage. And even there, the model is that only 10% of the shares are reserved for local residents and local businesses to buy – with the remaining 90% sold on the open market just like normal commercial developments.

And for context, the second largest community-owned site I could find is Ray Valley in Oxfordshire – which generates only 19.2MW. The list rapidly shrinks from there, with most other community-owned facilities weighing in at around 5MW, a one hundredth the size of East Pye.

So I suspect that in reality, if we did insist on a ‘community’ owned East Pye, it would effectively just mean that no solar gets built. And at risk of sounding like a neoliberal shill in my old age, this sort of illustrates why private equity firms like East Pye’s owner, Macquarie, are often involved in solar deployments – because they can do something ‘communities’ cannot. They can raise the cash to build the solar farm quickly, and because they own other things around the country (or world), they are better hedged against any one project failing.5

By contrast, if local investors, or even a local government like Norfolk County Council, were to put all of their spare cash into a solar farm, and it were to fail for some reason,6 locals would be totally out of pocket.

Finally on this argument, there is the very specific point that with East Pye it isn’t just any private equity company involved. Macquarie is the Australian multinational that until 2017 owned and arguably mismanaged Thames Water.

Surely I’m not going to defend that company getting involved?

I mean, I’m not looking to specifically hold a candle for Macquarie here, but it does seem like there is a significant difference between a company putting up the cash to build a new solar farm, and taking ownership of an existing, decaying asset like Thames Water. Not least because there is less that can go wrong, as less electricity can’t leak like water can and worst case scenario, the new thing doesn’t get built, instead of the existing utility getting worse. So honestly it doesn’t bother me that much.7

Argument 3: Farmland is best kept for food production

One common argument against building new houses on greenfield sites is that whatever is planned is taking away valuable farmland. It is usually only an absolutely massive coincidence that the proposed development is close to the opponent’s own home.

So it is fun to see the argument deployed here, against a solar farm. As much like how people don’t seem to understand the scale required for a renewable grid (see above), I don’t think people quite appreciate the unnatural reality of farming.

Let’s start with biodiversity. As my YIMBY Pod co-host Martin likes to point out, farming isn’t great for biodiversity! In fact, the entire point of a farm is to plant rows of the same crops as a monoculture. And even though fields might appear natural, they are basically just as man-made as our cities. That’s why George Monbiot-types have tried to make ‘rewilding’ a thing. So it really isn’t clear to me why replacing crops with solar panels mounted on frames is particularly different here, not least because solar farms tend to place panels on frames on top of grass fields anyway.8

But what about the food production point above? I’m not sure if the respondent here is making an argument that it’s better to grow locally for environmental reasons, or an argument about food security.

If it’s the former, then we can immediately discount it. There isn’t a link between the distance from farm-to-table and emissions, because we live in a world of industrial production and container ships. Hannah Ritchie wrote a great piece about it, arguing that if you really care about carbon impact, it’s more important to think about what you eat. So if you actually care about the carbon impact of your food, you should become a vegetarian or vegan.9

But what if the food argument is more about security? Well, the reality is that Britain has not been self-sufficient for literally hundreds of years. By 1870, we were only 60% self-sufficient in terms of food, and we are only 65% self-sufficient today.10

So I guess I’m left wondering, is this really a problem? Unlike energy (more on that in a moment), food imports are not subject to any particular bottlenecks like the Strait of Hormuz, and the overwhelming majority of our imports come from 27 of our closest democratic allies in the European Union.

And finally, the numbers are what really make this non-issue the most stark. A full 69% of Britain’s land area is agricultural land, and as of December 2024, just 0.1% was solar farms. So what problem are we actually trying to solve here?11

Argument 4: Energy sovereignty is a good thing

This is the argument I find the funniest. One easy way to land in a bad place when arguing on the internet is to transpose an argument because it feels like it is the right shape, even though the context is completely different.

An obvious example of it now is how sometimes people try to argue that AI is not a major technological breakthrough, following the template set by cryptocurrencies and NFTs – even though AI is, obviously, a massive deal.

Anyway, I think something similar is happening here with the argument for ‘energy sovereignty’.

In principle, controlling our own energy system is hugely important. Recent years have taught us how precarious it is if oil and gas prices are set by Russia and events in the Middle East.

But this argument does not transpose well from fossil fuels to renewables.

Why? Because unless Putin follows Mr Burns’ lead and attempts to block the sun, who owns the solar farm does not actually matter all that much as long as it is physically located in Britain.

This is for obvious reasons. Unlike our gas power plants, our solar farms do not rely on a steady stream of raw material getting shipped in from some of the world’s most volatile regions.

And even if we were to go to war with Australia for some reason, the physical energy generating infrastructure will remain intact and will continue to work as the sun will continue to shine. So the biggest problem in that scenario will be a severe lack of bar staff in London.

However, more seriously there is a real energy sovereignty argument – it’s just not the one being made above. But let’s quickly steelman it for good measure.

And that real argument is, of course, China.

If a Chinese company owned a solar farm in Britain, I would definitely be slightly more concerned. Let’s imagine if a Chinese firm bought East Pye from Macquarie. I don’t want a strategic adversary of Britain to potentially have an ‘off’ switch for thousands of homes.

But even if this were the case, in a crisis the infrastructure is still ultimately in Britain, so there would be little to stop the government taking control – as it did with the emergency nationalisation of British Steel last year.

But that is just operations. What about manufacturing? It’s not clear where East Pye will be sourcing its panels from, but given that 80% of global photovoltaic manufacturing is in China, Chinese panels are pretty much an inevitability.

So is this a case for caring more about energy sovereignty? Perhaps. But if it is, it’s also a case against building any solar at all.

Take climate change seriously

The reason I’ve spent upwards of 3,000 words getting mad about this is because unlike many Green activists and politicians, I take the energy transition seriously. If we want to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change, not to mention secure our energy supply against global instability, we need to move to renewable energy with a sense of urgency.

“Emissions must peak in 2020 and start stabilising, reaching net zero by 2030. The urgency of the situation should not be underestimated,” wrote the authors of Energising The East, a report on energy transformation in East Anglia, published in 2020.

It was commissioned by the aforementioned Catherine Rowett, back when she was an MEP, and I couldn’t agree more with the sentiment.12

However, it is now 2026. The 2030 deadline she endorses in the report, and the one set by Ed Miliband for decarbonising the grid, is now only four years away. So what are we going to do?

If we’re serious, we cannot let perfect be the enemy of the good. We don’t have the time to indulge unworkable fantasies about community ownership, or waste time pretending there are get-out-of-jail-free cards. We need to to build more renewable energy at an industrial scale.13

And if we want a grid in the future that isn’t just occasionally net zero, but is permanently net zero – then we need to start building now.

If you’re interested in politics, policy, and actually being sensible about things like energy and climate, then make sure you subscribe (for free!) to my newsletter to get more like this in your inbox.

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On YIMBY Pod this week:

• Why it’s patriotic duty to switch on our air conditioners this summer.

• The NIMBY battle against a cancer hospital (!!!)

• And we speak to Maxwell Marlow from TYI Strategy about why phone signal in Britain is so crap – and how we can fix it.

James’s newsletter is here, and his latest is about his most left-wing opinion.

Martin’s newsletter is here, and his latest video, visiting the actual Bat Tunnel, is here.

Don’t forget to tell your friends about the pod – and leave us a nice review on Apple Podcasts!

YIMBY Pod is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Substack and hopefully wherever you get your podcasts!

You can find James on Bluesky here, and Martin here.

POD! On YIMBY Pod this week, Martin and I get extremely mad about the delays to the Leeds Tram, and we speak to Andrew Greenway about his ideas for fixing the Civil Service so that it actually… works effectively. Listen here, or wherever you get your pods!

Hello! It’s time for Odds and Ends, your semi-regular round-up of the most interesting things I’ve seen lately – plus some shorter takes.

I hope you don’t mind the strange Sunday scheduling – I needed to fit it in between my big, surprisingly left-wing take from Friday, and a new YIMBY Pod dropping tomorrow.

Anyway, this time I’m featuring:

• My review of a 37 year old TV show

• Why we shouldn’t nationalise Thames Water

• An actually good SNL UK sketch

• A new word to describe Britain’s pathological inability to build infrastructure

• A depressing reflection on the rise of antisemitism

• And a very satisfying takedown of Mr Beast

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POD! On YIMBY Pod this week, Martin and I get extremely mad about the delays to the Leeds Tram, and we speak to Andrew Greenway about his ideas for fixing the Civil Service so that it actually… works effectively. Listen here, or wherever you get your pods!

As I get older, I can feel my political views becoming more boring and moderate.

The way I describe my politics now is that I used to think I was quite left-wing – then Jeremy Corbyn happened.

So over the years, I’ve become decidedly more milquetoast and centre-left-leaning.

I can see this when I look back. Though I never started out on the very, very far left – I was never an annoying Marxist as a student1 – I was into plenty of far left cultural output. I grew up listening to punk bands who wanted to smash the state, and some of my favourite comedians were people like Marks Thomas and Steel.2

However, today, aged 38, my views have evolved, and as a balding adult with a mortgage, I’m more into reforming the state, and I now find a lot of people to my left quite annoying.

For example, when I see Zack Polanski making absurd spending commitments and unworkable promises, rather than find him inspiring, I just think it destroys his credibility. And when I see middle-class conspiracy theorists like Jolyon Maugham and Carol Cadwalladr promoting distrust in institutions, it makes me depressed.

So broadly speaking, today I’m much more of a shill for the centrist establishment than I was. My broad view of economic policy today is basically “economics is real but we should help poor people”, and on social policy it is “biology is real but no need to be an arsehole about it”.

And on foreign policy I’ve now made peace with the arms industry, and would very much like Ukraine to have access to all of the missiles and bombs they could ever need.

However, there is one area where I haven’t moderated.

Try as I might to chill out about the issue, I still find my blood boiling, and transform Hulk-like into a raving Marxist whenever I think about it.

And that issue is private schools.

So I thought that this week I’d write about why I haven’t moderated away from the position that really, private schools shouldn’t exist.

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On YIMBY Pod this week:

• James and Martin get unusually mad about the latest developments in the West Yorkshire team saga. We just want a tram!

• Then James speaks to Andrew Greenway, a partner at Public Digital about his fantastic essay on fixing the Civil Service, titled ‘In Permanence Crisis’.

Noah Vickers’ reporting on the West Yorkshire tram is here.

James’s newsletter is here, his latest is not as billed on the show, but actually all about Artemis II, and why he’s still inspired despite, well, you know…

Martin’s newsletter is here, and his latest video, visiting the actual Bat Tunnel, is here.

Don’t forget to tell your friends about the pod – and leave us a nice review on Apple Podcasts!

YIMBY Pod is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Substack and hopefully wherever you get your podcasts!

You can find James on Bluesky here, and Martin here.

POD! On YIMBY Pod this week, I talk about Tory plans for a ‘National Pothole Patrol’ and how AI can be used to spot potholes and Martin tells the story of a big NIMBY campaign to save a car park. Plus we speak to Asif Ghafoor, CEO of EV charger company BE.EV, who explains to us why building out the public charger network can be a nightmare. Listen here!

The contrast over the last ten days has been almost too much to bear.

On the one hand, we watched as NASA’s Artemis II astronauts travelled further from the Earth than anyone ever has before. It was an incredible feat of science and engineering. A tangible manifestation of what humans can achieve when they work together.

But at the same time we witnessed the worst person on the planet threatening to wipe out Iranian civilisation in its entirety. Whether the ceasefire has held or not by the time you’re reading this, it was another grim milestone in the unravelling of the post-1945 world order.

Given the latter, along with everything else Trump has done, some people had a very understandable reaction. They were keen to make it clear that they did not feel the same sense of excitement and wonder about this latest moonshot, as we associate with the Apollo missions of the 1960s.

And it wasn’t just the people you might expect saying this.

In fact, despondency was the response of a couple of Britain’s highest profile science communicators – the sorts of people you might expect to be particularly excited by the Artemis programme.

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