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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022

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The responses below have already explained the scandals that brought Boris down, but another point is that Boris failed to get any credit in the bank; after the Brexit deal, his government basically achieved nothing despite a large majority.

There were plenty of external factors that Boris had no control over, for which he was pretty unlucky. Covid, of course. Even if Boris had stuck to the original plan of "let it rip" and herd immunity, the rest of the world is still going to lockdown, destroying supply chains and driving inflationary forces. British borrowing would be in a better place at least, but that wouldn't stave off inflation and a recession.

The invasion of Ukraine is probably still happening. In fact the response to this was one of Boris's few successes, so if it didn't happen he wouldn't be better off. And even if he had immediately commissioned a dozen nuclear power plants after the GE, there is nothing he could have done about the energy crisis which engulfed Europe, due to the blunders of Germany.

But there is plenty he could have done. Immigration was a major driver of Brexit, with voters eager for reductions to both legal and illegal migration. Yet the Tories responded to heavy reductions in EU immigration by massively expanding visa numbers to other nations. And they have seemingly done nothing for waves of English channel crossings that have occupied papers day after day.

Another big promise was "leveling up", spreading economic benefits to left-behind areas of the country that had switched to the Tories and reducing the dependence on London. Other than the continued lumbering forward of the HS2 rail line, I can't recall a single policy that might have done anything about this.

Other than the continued lumbering forward of the HS2 rail line

HS2 is a project to allow people to commute to London more easily. It has nothing to do with the north; that section won't even be built. You can tell because they started building it in London first. The intent is to cancel the northern portion once the part London wants is done, probably citing budget reasons.

HS2 is a project to allow more people to commute to London, not to allow people to commute to London more easily - the business case is utterly dependent on the idea that the main line between London and Birmingham is at capacity, and that the marginal cost of building the new line to high speed standards is low. If rail use continues to grow in the way it was growing pre-pandemic, then the existing main lines to Leeds and Manchester will be at capacity by the time HS2 reaches them. If it doesn't then the northern bit of HS2 probably won't get built because speeding up trains that already run at 125 mph is not a good use of anyone's money.