Positive thinking

Calvin Jones, Cardiff University   English towns with struggling economies will receive £ 1.6 billion of funding over six years. The UK government announced the creation of the “stronger towns fund” – the lion’s share of which will be distributed to towns in Northern England and the Midlands. Critics have focused on the fund’s assumed purpose as a “bribe” to gain Labour MPs’ votes for Prime Minister Theresa May’s deal to leave the EU, and on the inadequate size of the pot. Leaving the first criticism aside, the second certainly has some merit: £1.6 billion sounds a large sum for a single project (at least, for one outside London ). But it’s a tiny amount to complete a “transformative” programme of work in many places over a number of years – especially when those places have already lost much more than that during the past decade of austerity, and stand to lose further billions in EU support if and when the UK exits the union. The difficulties the fund will face hav...

Nando Sigona, University of Birmingham   “Daddy, have we jumped the queue?” She looked at me with her big inquisitive eyes, a little confused and worried. Matilda is four and in reception class. She’s learning a lot of fascinating things at the moment, about planets, robots, rockets and space exploration. She’s also learning about how we share with others and behave in class. One of the things drummed into her very early on at school was that you don’t jump the queue. You must wait for your turn when it comes to speaking in circle time or being served food. “Daddy, have we done something wrong?” she added. After a moment of puzzlement, I joined the dots. The speech Theresa May gave to business group the CBI, in which she said that a new post-Brexit immigration system would stop EU migrants from “jumping the queue” ahead of migrants from non-EU countries, had somehow reached her, probably not the prime minister’s target audience. The impact of the CBI speech on he...

Nicholas Allen, Royal Holloway ; Erica Consterdine, University of Sussex ; Feargal Cochrane, University of Kent ; John-Paul Salter, King's College London , and Maria Garcia, University of Bath   After a summit with her cabinet that sparked several ministerial resignations, British prime minister Theresa May has published a controversial white paper setting out her government’s vision for Brexit. This will now be sent to the European Union for further negotiations. Experts assess the proposals in key areas. An appeal to party unity Nicholas Allen, Reader in Politics, Royal Holloway, University of London The publication of the Brexit white paper is the latest step in Theresa May’s effort to broker a common position for negotiating future UK-EU relations. It is also the latest step in what might be called the Cabinet “peace process”. Senior ministers have been sniping at each other for months and two cabinet ministers – David Davis and Boris Johnson – have res...

Maria Goddard, University of York   The good news is that the NHS has received a 70th “birthday gift” in the form of a 3.4% per year increase in real spending over the next five years. The bad news is that, although this may be enough to fight the current battle, it may not be enough to win the war against rising pressures on the NHS. The planned expenditure, announced by Theresa May, the prime minister, on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, amounts to an extra £20.5 billion over the period up to 2023-24, which is actually not remarkable in terms of historical trends. Average annual increases in spending on the NHS since it was founded in 1948 have been around 3.7% – so 0.3% higher than the current proposed annual increment. There are some concerns that the increase is based only on the money received by one part of the system – NHS England – which is responsible for spending on the day-to-day running of the NHS, but not for public health, training and infrastructure, such...

Yvonne Skipper, Keele University   Grammar schools are never far from the headlines and the BBC’s new mini-series, Grammar Schools: Who will Get In sheds further light on the selective schooling system, at a time when the prime minister, Theresa May, plans to expand it . The series follows pupils at three schools in Bexley, south London – which has a fully selective education system. The children featured in the programme showed high levels of anxiety and articulated fears that failing the 11+ exam will make them “a failure in life”. Children who go to grammar schools may achieve better GCSE results . But of course, not all children can attend grammar school – and the selection of the children who do attend is fraught with difficulty. Not all children are given the opportunity to take the 11+ – in some counties, only those who are selected by the teachers as likely to pass will take the exam – and of these children between 25-50% of children will pass . Our re...

   Barnali Choudhury, UCL and Martin Petrin, UCL The UK is introducing new legislation t hat will require companies to publish the ratio of what they pay their CEO compared to the average worker’s salary. The move follows a number of corporate governance reforms introduced by the government over the last year and a half as part of an effort to build a fairer economy . But if the government was truly committed to building a fairer economy, it would not rely primarily on companies to do its work for it. When Theresa May first became prime minister, she vowed to reform the UK’s economy to ensure that it would work for everyone . Reforming the way that companies operate is a key part of this vision. According to May, corporate governance mechanisms are the tools by which these responsibilities should be imposed. May is not alone in her views on the usefulness of corporate governance mechanisms to promote public responsibilities. Countries around the world, fro...

Erica Consterdine, University of Sussex Immigration policy under Theresa May’s tenure might be the most draconian in Britain’s history. Never has an administration focused so much time and effort on an anti-migration policy – and one that is failing by all counts at that. Countless restrictive measures have been placed on almost every migration stream since 2010, when the coalition government set itself a flawed net migration target. This was driven by a Conservative manifesto pledge to reduce annual immigration from hundreds of thousands of people to tens of thousands. Behind the changes to the immigration rules has been an overarching policy to create a “hostile environment”. The public is now seeing the harsh and inhumane implications of this policy, with the Windrush generation , who helped to rebuild post-war Britain, being denied their rights. But what is this hostile environment and where did this policy come from? The story starts back in 2004, when the Labour...

Daniel Hough, University of Sussex Priti Patel’s ignominious departure from the UK cabinet after it emerged that she had held undeclared meetings with Israeli officials during a personal holiday exposes many flaws in her conduct. The commentariat tells us she showed a lack of judgement, a lack of awareness of due process and a willingness to conduct what, in effect, was her own foreign policy. One word that hasn’t come up so frequently is “corruption”. That’s in many ways understandable. Corruption is generally understood in transactional terms with four key parts. An act is understood as corrupt if there is a (i) deliberate attempt (ii) to abuse (iii) entrusted power (iv) for some sort of private gain. Corruption is normally regarded as a process rather than an outcome and acts that tick all of those boxes are subsequently judged as such. That all of those terms can and do require some sort of external judgement to be made ensures that we can’t talk about objective r...

Elizabeth A Faulkner, Staffordshire University There has been an explosion of interest in modern slavery and human trafficking in recent years. Figures such as British prime minister Theresa May , UN secretary general Antonio Gutteras and Pope Francis have come together to fight against this “ scourge ”. Awareness campaigns are part and parcel of this initiative. Anti-Slavery Day , for example, has been held every year on October 18 since 2010. The day is an opportunity to “raise awareness of human trafficking and modern slavery, and encourage government, local authorities, companies, charities and individuals to do what they can to address the problem”. The introduction of this national day is seen as a positive step by many. But to me, it sums up the major flaws of the contemporary anti-slavery movement. The problem? That the aim is to raise awareness. This may seem a controversial statement. What better way to tackle contemporary slavery than through awareness rai...

Simon Usherwood, University of Surrey In A Room With A View, an English woman’s life is changed profoundly by a trip to Florence. Whether Theresa May had EM Forster’s classic novel in mind when planning her speech on Brexit is moot, but it is clear that a Lucy Honeychurch-style escape from the cares of the world is not currently on the cards for her. This speech mattered, because it was May’s last opportunity to unblock the Article 50 negotiations before the European Council meets in October to decide whether there has been “sufficient progress” to move to the second phase of Brexit talks – when the two sides will negotiate a transition arrangement for the UK’s departure from the European Union. The first phase of talks has run into the sand somewhat. The initial topics of financial liabilities, citizens’ rights and the Irish border have proved more difficult to unpick than had been anticipated, not least because the UK has been unwilling (or unable) to settle on ...