Conservatism

• Former leader and former first minister Nicola Sturgeon had already described the events of the past few months as beyond her “worst nightmares” – and that was before she was arrested.
• Although Sturgeon was subsequently released without charge pending further investigations, opinion can hardly be divided on the state of that reputation now.

Chaos without a cost?

• The answer, judging by the graph below, is: almost unaffected.
• So the pair of columns on the far right in each cluster shows what has happened since that resignation.
• The SNP is down just two percentage points in both Westminster and Holyrood vote intention polls.

Stubborn support for independence

• Support for independence is basically unchanged since Sturgeon’s resignation.
• There was an upturn in support for independence in the autumn of 2022, which might be termed “the Liz Truss dividend” and the downturn that followed was in large part the unwinding of that effect (possibly aggravated by the unpopularity of the SNP’s gender recognition legislation).
• This tendency for independence support to be about what happens in London rather than Edinburgh is visible from other angles, too.

How Yes keeps the SNP afloat

• At every election since 2014, the overwhelming majority of those with a Yes vote intention cast at least one ballot for the SNP.
• This is why the overall level of SNP support is lowest in the middle cluster in the graph above.
• Even with a viable alternative Yes party, though, and even after the SNP’s annus horribilis so far, still at least two in three independence supporters would cast an SNP list vote.
• If Yes will keep the SNP afloat, will it also keep Labour at bay – maybe even denying Labour leader Keir Starmer a majority – in the upcoming general election?

• The illegal migration bill passed through the House of Commons earlier this year, but is being fiercely contested in the House of Lords.
• The bill is currently at the committee stage which allows the members to scrutinise the text and make amendments.
• With only five days scheduled for this process, the debate continued overnight on June 7 until 4am.
• Peers expressed concerns about a number of provisions in the government’s plan to deter migrants from crossing the channel in small boats.

Child victims of modern slavery

• Researchers and activists have been criticising the bill’s proposals that would deny certain protections and support to potential victims of modern slavery, including “unaccompanied asylum-seeking children” or “unaccommpanied children”.
• Only 2% of child trafficking victims between 2019-2020 with irregular migration status in the UK were granted the leave to remain.
• They may even increase the risk of child exploitation or going missing, as has already happened with asylum-seeking unaccompanied children in hotel accommodation.

International law

• But they have had calamitous consequences for people entitled to protection under international law on refugees.
• One would prevent the government from breaching international law relating to refugees and human rights.
• In this regard, the illegal migration bill has drawn a range of international criticism.
• As long as children in the UK’s immigration system face restrictions and the removal of their rights, this bill will be in clear violation of international law.

• Net migration is the difference between the number of people entering the country (and expected to stay long term) and the number leaving.
• Until 2010, the UK debate generally focused on the number of people arriving – and on the idea that immigration presented a problem.
• He promised to bring net migration – a metric usually only of interest to data nerds and researchers – down to the “tens of thousands”.
• But the reality was (and still is) that government only has limited control over who comes and goes.

A moving target

• The coalition years were dominated by this promise to hit the net migration target by the 2015 election.
• As the 2015 election neared, the magnitude of the failure to meet the target was becoming obvious.
• The party reiterated its promise to hit the net migration target, now referred to as an “ambition”, while Cameron campaigned to remain in the EU.
• And when Theresa May took over as prime minister, her administration continued to commit itself to the net migration target, including it in her election manifesto.

Caught in their own net

• He continued to suggest this would deliver lower numbers, but with attention elsewhere and net migration lower than before the referendum, nobody seemed keen for a return to Cameron’s “balancing the books”.
• Ultimately, the net migration target was hit by accident.
• But Johnson’s “have your cake and eat it” post-Brexit policymaking – which has continued under Rishi Sunak – planted the seeds for a new net migration panic.
• Now that the public has been introduced to the problematic concept of the “right amount” of net migration, the government may simply have to accept that it has been caught in its own net.

• Tech sector complaints about the difficulties of doing business in the UK have been repeated more recently by the manufacturing sector.
• A decade of “flip-flopping” by the government has left the UK without an industrial strategy, according to Make UK, which represents industrial and manufacturing employers.

Reasons for the UK’s decline

• There are a number of possible business-related drivers behind this decline.
• Training and education to ensure workers have up-to-date skills is no longer regarded as essential by many companies.
• Business confidence and investment are suffering as a result, with implications for jobs and innovation recovery following COVID-19 lockdowns.

Boosting British business again

• One major task will be to encourage infrastructure investment, to improve the woefully inefficient movement of goods and people within the UK.
• This is especially important since massive delays and overspending mean HS2 is unlikely to be the silver bullet needed to encourage business investment outside of London and Birmingham.
• Read more:
  UK energy windfall tax: what it is and why it needs to change

Business-friendly fixes

• Random dumping of EU legislation, particularly food and environmental standards, is also increasingly recognised as damaging for the country.
• As Sunak seems to recognise, having agreed the Windsor Framework, it’s better to improve relations with the EU and work with it to streamline rules on trade.
• It is unlikely to happen, though, under the current government’s “what will work today?” approach.