Marc Newey 💙

👏 Finally, we have a PM telling the truth about why Britain is stuck in a trap, a trap that had been closing around us for decades, but which finally snapped shut with Brexit. The extraction of public wealth has hollowed out our essential services. It was enabled by an over centralised, winner takes all political system that hands enormous power to governments elected by a minority and allows wealthy donors and vested interests far too much influence over policy. In 1960s, the Beeching cuts dismantled thousands of miles of railway. They were implemented under transport minister Ernest Marples, who had longstanding links to the roadbuilder Marples Ridgway. Britain promoted motorways and cars by destroying much of the alternative. Other European countries expanded roads while retaining far stronger rail networks. In 1964, Tesco founder Jack Cohen successfully lobbied for the abolition of Resale Price Maintenance. It helped supermarkets consolidate power at the expense of independent retailers, farmers and smaller suppliers. Much of Europe imposed stronger restraints on monopoly and protected domestic production. Thatcher’s assault on industry was the most brutal stage. Rapid deindustrialisation devastated communities, while Britain’s North Sea oil and gas windfall helped the government absorb the resulting unemployment instead of building national wealth for the future, as Norway 🇳🇴 did. Then came the great privatisation: water, energy, transport and other strategic infrastructure treated as assets to be sold and exploited rather than services essential to national resilience. We can now see where that politics ends: sewage in our rivers, vulnerable water supplies, failing infrastructure, regional inequality and private extraction underwritten by the public. Brexit was the culmination. It removed Britain from the European structures that had constrained some of this behaviour, weakened our economy and left an already centralised state even more exposed to vested interests. So @andyburnham is right to connect our European future with electoral reform. To begin releasing Britain from the trap, we must repair our relationship with Europe and replace FPTP. Those are not separate reforms. They are the two keys needed to unlock the country. 👏