Keir Starmer has said he wants a bonfire of red tape. That is the same goal that ended at Grenfell when David Cameron promoted it. What it actually means is that consumers take the risk in society, and those who create the risks don't, and there's not an iota of sense in that.
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This is the transcript:
Keir Starmer says he wants a bonfire of red tape. And I say he's an idiot. Why am I quite so confident in my prediction? Because regulation exists for a purpose. That purpose is to deliver a number of benefits to society.
One is to simply make sure that everyone is treated equally. And in fact, of all the benefits of regulation, this is by far the most important. If markets in this country are to work, everybody has to work to common rules. That is obvious, I would have thought.
Starmer is a football fan. I follow football a bit. I know full well that if everybody plays to different offside rules, you would never have an effective game of football. You would just have a pile of fisticuffs, or worse still, absolutely no chance of anyone completing a game and having a fair competition.
That's what would happen if we got rid of regulation - regulation that everybody must comply with, which in other words means it must be enforced. It's what is necessary for fair competition to take place. Get rid of it and unfair competition takes place. It is as simple as that.
Who benefits? Well, two lots of people benefit. One are the cheats, and they will take advantage of any lack of regulation to abuse us by selling counterfeit goods, by not paying their taxes, by undermining honest traders, by employing people in ways that are illicit and which therefore will expose them to risk, and on and on.
And the other group of people who will benefit will be large businesses, who will find the loopholes in these regulations, and walk their way through them. They will claim, of course, that their actions are entirely legitimate, just as they did with tax avoidance, which was a form of regulatory abuse. But nonetheless, just as tax avoidance created a cost to society, so will a burning of regulations do the same.
But there's something quite different, much worse, about the language that he used. David Cameron said he wanted a bonfire of red tape. And we know where that ended. Grenfell Tower was where that ended. People died because insufficient building regulations were in place and ministers would not enforce them.
They believed that for every regulation they brought in, they had to get rid of one. And the consequence was the terrible standards of cladding that were applied to that building, which cost people their lives. That's where poor regulation takes us.
Regulation is essential to ensure that people are protected from abuse of all sorts. You can get rid of regulation, but what you do as a consequence is you transfer that risk. Regulation does not take risk away. Regulation manages risk. If the companies that create the risk don't accept the responsibility for it, which is what this burning of red tape would mean, then somebody else is going to bear that risk.
And that's you. And that's me. And I don't want that. Because I don't know about the risks that are being created in many of the products that are being created, because I don't know about the risks that are being created in many of the products that I consume. And I'm quite certain you don't either. And that's why we require specialists to create regulations and to enforce them.
A government that does not believe in regulation does not believe in doing its job properly. It's as simple and straightforward as that.
And I know that sometimes that regulation will feel burdensome and annoying and everything else. Oh, I know that. I'm no greater lover of doing my tax return than anybody else, but I know darn well we need them to be done. And I know that that's true of all the other things where I have to comply with regulation to fulfil my duties when running a business.
So, why does Keir Starmer not know that?
Is it because he and most of his colleagues have never really worked in the real world where they've had to accept responsibility for the enforcement of regulation? I think that is a real risk.
And the rest is that they're blinded by dogma. They believe that a free market means one free of government interference.
Well, a market free of government interference is not free to do anything but to abuse us, and that's what he's promoting.
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Quite I agree entirely. Yes Starmer is an idiot – anyone with any intelligence would know that regulations are very important in dealing with negative externalities and poor standards and crooks. Again he is wedded to a free-market without seeing that markets only work effectively within a framework of law and regulations.
There are cases where regulations need to be changed because they are out of data or do not achieve what was intended. [My own experience of hedgerow cutting regulations is that they are ineffective with too many loopholes and fail to take account of what they should be achieving].
I have no problem with better regulation
Unrelated to this post – but just wondered if you had seen this further insanity apparently being proposed by Reeves. https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-horizon-europe-program-brexit-deal-research-development-budget-economic-growth/
Totally crazy
This is also what happened after the bonfire of the red tape around trading mortgages and derivatives in U.S. that led to the 2008 crash.
It is all about benefiting someone and you can be assured that the trickle downers will tell you it ‘raises all boats’ it certainly does not.
Does Stymied bank on us having such short memories?
Does he think we are all that stupid?
This is getting beyond a joke.
What the bonfire of Red Tape “actually means is that consumers take the risk in society, and those who create the risks don’t”.
This is the real story, but not the whole story. Not only is the risk passed to consumers (‘caveat emptor’, on steroids) but by eliminating the risk for companies, it is not just the risk that disappears; so do all the costs of ensuring your products or service is safe to use. At the single stroke of a politician, the cost structure of all the affected business models are transformed. It becomes a lot easier to profit from doing nothing, and being indifferent to harm. Instead of all the costs of eliminating potential harms before bringing the product to market, and maintaining that standard, the cost of protection is passed to the consumer. The only option consumers have is the law, and only after the event of harm; where they are typically at the disadvantage of fighting weak legislation and inadequate financial resources, in an uneven contest.
That is one notable reason corporate interests back with funding of whichever version of the Single Transferable Party has its turn of power (typically after a Grenfell tragedy has reminded electors why they threw the other version of the Party out of power).
It is long past time voters checked the safety of the political revolving door they keep using.
Much to agree with
Grenfell is an interesting case because there plainly were and are building regulations, but they were weakened and then badly enforced.
The regulations were weakened in 2013 by reforms that replaced specific requirements in the local London Building Acts with more vague provisions in the national Building Regulations, and the enforcement regime was “reformed” (that is, weakened) in 2005 by the replacement of a certification regime with a “risk based” approach. And then none of the construction team (or indeed the supplier) or it seems the regulator took responsibility for checking that the materials were up to standard or installed properly. Indeed the original specification was downgraded to a cheaper and unsafe alternative in an exercise of “value engineering”. That is, cutting corners.
And now we have “burdensome” new regulations in the recent Fire Safety Act and Building Safety Act. Good. Better than another 72 avoidable deaths.
Agreed
Building regulation was also much damaged by the privatisation in 1997 of BRE, the Building Research Institute. Overnight it was transformed from a force on the side of regulation into an organisation begging for scraps from the very people it was supposed to be overseeing.
As icing on the cake of that particular dumb decision, BRE is also slowly losing its role as an internationally respected independent research institute, one of the flag bearers for UK’s soft power.
The raison d’etre for a bonfire of red tape is, as you say a “free market”, one without government “interference”.
But the market is a mechanism to allow trade. It has no consciousness. There is no mystical “invisible hand” (sorry Adam Smith).
Many decades ago I pondered about Margaret Thatcher’s quasi religious veneration of “free markets”. Could she be right I wondered? And then I saw a counter example, a car. A car is an excellent example of a mechanism, in this case for getting from A to B. And it needs a driver. A car without a driver is a useless, dangerous thing. Without a driver it won’t get you anyway, it will crash and injure or kill you. Don’t believe me? Try taking your hands off the wheel whilst driving along a motorway – or rather don’t try this.
A market is a mechanism too, an excellent one, and it needs a driver. The driver is regulations, “red tape”. Without regulations markets will crash, and will injure or kill people.
Driverless cars?
Actually, why? What would be the point? They are an answer to a question no one is asking.
And “driverless” cars still have a driver, just not a human one.
But what we currently have is a driverless economy.
They will come, I don’t know when but your response assumes we are the master of technology, when technology determines what we do. We only drive cars because the technology invented, determined there would be drivers of cars. The technology determines what we do; it always did, we just didn’t notice. We notice more now with digital technology, but only because it changes so much in our lives so fast; and often the bad effects are almost as obvious as the benefits. The principles are the same. The technology determines us.
Driverless cars……..
Hmmmmm…… the automated ‘driver’ wouldn’t (perhaps) fall asleep at the wheel, wouldn’t (perhaps) be distracted by irrelevant events. Wouldn’t (we hope) be daydreaming instead of concentrating.
I can imagine a time when we will look back in amazement at a time when we allowed humans to drive vehicles and wonder at how few accidents occurred.
I can’t see it happening
But a whole new market opens up: people want the newest innovation and rush out to buy one (which will doubtless be even bigger and more wasteful of scarce natural resources than the latest “new” car). It will be expensive and doubtless prove their status.
The legislation on motor cars stipulated a pedestrian with warning red flag bearer proceeding in front of the car. The Locomotives on Highways Act, 1865 required the red flag provision for ‘self-propelled’ vehicles on roads (2mph limit in cities, 4mph elsewhere), as people grappled with what was then ‘futurism’, but did not survive long the invention of the motor car, and the Act was extinguished in 1896. The important point here is not the seeming absurdity, but the understanding of technology and its application, in the intellectual, political and social context of the time.
I think this sub-discussion reflects a similar misunderstanding of how technology works in our own time.
The underlying intellectual and philosophical problems here are not new; you can find them in Veblen, Heidegger (buried in over-abstracted Kantian formulation), or Joan Woodward in Management Organisation theory, in the 1960s/70s (not a complete list).
And the reason why the Boeing 737max crashed was because the computer had been reprogrammed and had a glitch – sending the plane into a nose dive that the human pilot could not over ride – and had been kept in ignorance about the computer change. You don’t thjinkl that won’t happen to driverless cars? There have already been stories of the driverless car accelerating out of control OR there is the possibility of the being taken over by someone in control of the computer doing whatever they may want. Not to mention the ability for someone to know exactly where you have been. I’ll live with the odd driver falling asleep at the wheel thanks.
The 1865 Act was the result of people envisaging serious accidents through alarming prospect of in an unheard of revolution in the speed of traffic. As soon as the motor car was invented (around1885), the Act collapsed within only ten years (before cars were a mass consumer product), under the demands of new technology. Road deaths in the UK are around 1,300 per year and over 130,000 are injured. In the 1960s-70s it was 7,000-8,000 deaths per year, and well over 300,000 per year injured. The totals of dead and injured in almost 130 years since 1896 I shall not attempt to quantify. The point is; such considerations alone do not ever stop the advance of technology. The same pattern is repeated, time after time. AI is another alarming prospect (it terrifies even the inventors), but the prospect of stopping its freewheeling advance is slight.
We have been her before, many times. The result is invariably the same.
“I’ll live with the odd driver falling asleep at the wheel thanks”.
This is the classic response to the technological challenge. There is no evidence whatsoever that it has ever had any effect on the relentless march of technological innovation. There is no “choice” involved here. Politics and legislation operate on a level of existence that is systematically ineffective in the real world in which technology thrives, operating on rules it makes up for itself. In motor cars, which is only an example; seat belts were only introduced (for front seats in new cars) in 1968. They became compulsory to wear only in 1983. Rear seats came even later. That was almost a century after the invention of the motor car. The idea that safety ever effectively leads the innovation of technology is false; it is always a lag, not lead indicator (even when there is preventative legislation). It comes late, usually very late. Whether you approve of what happens is irrelevant – because it affects precisely nothing. I am simply observing the very long list of precedents that confirm how the world works; and that is the world I live with, whatever I (idly) approve or disapprove.
Might it be less than wise, appropriate and kind (W A K) that Mr Starmer has chosen such emotive/affectively powerful language to describe a vitally important matter so that critical, analytical thinking (CAT) is effectively mugged?
Might the pursuit and rigorous maintenance of optimal regulation be a better expression?
How might we persuade him to talk, and so think and behave more objectively, rationally and for the common good?
You do not make a racing car go faster by getting rid of the weight of the steering equipment.
“Might the pursuit and rigorous maintenance of optimal regulation be a better expression?”
Of course it would be. But Starmer appears captured by neoliberal thinking. So I think he really wants to delete regulations.
An excellent example of “red tape” is the MOT test. All those costly bills each year and not being able to use your car if it fails. Get rid of it I say! So what if the brakes fail once in a while? The chances are the resulting accident may not be fatal. Think of the advantages for the second hand car market. Reduced cost and no need to employ expensive mechanics!
OK, perhaps not a good idea, but you get my drift.
Does irony work here?
I am never sure. But I get your point.
It would be fine if he meant a bonfire of the ‘self regulating regulators’ which seemed to proliferate in the building industry once the BRE was privatised and builders could set up their own personal regulators – and which lead to Grenfell.
Its not so much ‘regulation’ – which sounds intrusive, petty and interfering – it should be ‘rules’ – one rule for all, which means less overlapping pseudo regulations, and spreading accountability so thin it doesnt exist.
Each week seems to bring forth another ideologically-driven stupidity
Better regulation has already been mentioned which is always good.
But what about enforcement?
The chaos in the Criminal Justice system and the loss of 20000 Police Officers is in the public domain however what about the gutting of other enforcement agencies such as HMRC, The Health & Safety Executive and Local Authority Enforcement in areas like Trading Standards, Housing, Building Control and Planning?
And thats before we get on to an explosion in Fraud that nobody in power seems to be that bothered about
Never mind a Bonfire of Regulations we have a Bonfires of Enforcement
Yes John – and in social housing we are expected to sort this mess out using OUR budgets – not government budgets – and it was government who ripped up the regs in the first place and created the problem.
Our budgets are being used to build the homes we have lost to RTB which has not been cancelled and my local authority has something like a 10,000 person waiting list.
The Housing Revenue Account (HRA) is locally managed. There will be a point where the council might consider a large scale voluntary transfer (LSVT) into the private sector to raise private loans to pay to build and refurbish housing.
Based on what I have seen of other LSVTs, this means local services will be cut and a huge property portfolio will exist just to use its rents to fill the pockets of investors.
Are housing associations subject to the capriciousness of Right To Buy, and are any private providers of social housing also subject to this?
I wasn’t aware, and thought that it only applied to housing owned by local government.
Yes, North, a separate Right to Buy scheme exists for tenants of housing associations.
https://www.gov.uk/right-to-acquire-buying-housing-association-home
I wish I could post pictures here because on my topic it would be quite apt.
Something is very certainly happening in the consumer market with pricing. We’ve seen our chocolate bars shrinking and even going up in price but it is happening to other things too and I think that consumer protection is going south.
I use a shampoo called Nizoral in order to help control a scalp problem.
At Sainsburys I could buy 100ml bottle of this shampoo for £5 – at Boots, it would be £9 but we know that Boots these days is ran by a bunch of crooks which is why I won’t even go there for prescription anymore. Latterly (after the Ukraine invasion) the 100ml bottle sold for £6, still not bad deal.
Well, the other day I bought some and found that the 100ml had shrunk to 60ml for which I was expected to pay £7.50.
I have both bottles in front of me as I write. Thornton & Ross who make Nizoral (and other stuff like Savlon) are part of the STADA Group – which seems to be based in Germany and reporting strong growth.
But, the direction of travel is clear: more money for less.
How that can be justified is beyond me.
Are we now in an era of pure exploitation of the many by the few? Just looking at two plastic bottles on my desk here seems to say so.
North
During the last Tory ahem,. ‘government’, some housing associations (HAs) were invited to do allow RTB and some did.
Ex-council tenants have a ‘right to acquire’ if their homes were part of a large scale voluntary transfer into a housing association in order to keep their RTB rights.
Essentially, along with a bit of government grant for building, HAs housing stock is essentially owned by the private banks they borrow from as a collateral for those loans.
This is what bringing in ‘private resources’ actually means in public policy.
I can’t get my head around the fact that an ex DPP, who has a penchant for locking the public up for objecting to lack of tangible action to mitigate the climate catastrophe, could possibly think that rolling back regulations (ie laws of the land) is acceptable.
What shall be do next? Have a bonfire of the laws that say rape is a criminal act – because we have a declining birth rate problem so to have enough workers we need to get the birth rate up?
Or maybe we don’t just put through the legislation on right to die – but put through a law making an obligation to die for all of us “useless eaters” as we wrinklies, frail and disabled” are classified in the neoliberal brave new world.
Starmer needs to look in the mirror, listen to himself and give his head a thorough wobble. He’s been totally captured by the lure of power and ‘pretty things’ which have brainwashed him of any ability to think independently.
Sir Keir Gollum.
Starmer was a member of the Trilateral Commission whilst in Corbyn’s shadow cabinet.
“the Trilateral Commission, a body dedicated to promoting corporate power, was plainly incompatible with Labour’s then-stated policies of redistributing wealth and power from the few to the many.”
https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmer-joined-secretive-cia-linked-group-while-serving-in-corbyns-shadow-cabinet/
Totally agree with you. Even our use of language makes rules and regulations seem like an unnecessary burden rather than something that protects us and ensures a level playing field. When we say “red tape” people think of excessive, rigid or redundant bureaucracy.
Unfortunately many of these rules and regulations exist mainly because of the cheats who exploit the loopholes for their personal gain. So often people will clamour for more regulations to stop the abuse, but the unscrupulous actors will always find loopholes and the rules will penalise the honest participants.
This is how we find ourself in a place where we have rules and regulations that may sometimes cause unnecessary obstacles for honest actors while not stopping the bad faith actors that would anyway find a way to avoid complying. I don’t know how we can fix this apart from maybe having more severe penalties for wilful non compliance or avoidance.
40% or more of tax law is to stop tax abuse
Well SKS is certainly talking the talk of a Thatcherite Tory.
Presumable Reeves will walk the walk in a few days time.
With increasing abnormal weather due to climate overheating building and planning regulations need to be strengthened and added to. Building on flood plains is already happening and most new build is not of the highest ecological standard to withstand the coming storms and extreme temperatures that are worsening every year at an alarming rate.
[…] Keir Starmer’s bonfire of red tape is very dangerous Funding the Future […]
I can’t believe the idiocy. How about chucking the two child benefit cap on the bonfire? Yes, no chance of that! Could he explain how reducing water regulation would improve the quality of our rivers, lakes and coastline.
I see that turning a blind eye to regulating Israeli war crimes will allow a peaceful solution to be achieved in no time at all.
I watched the Steve Keen podcast last night and was particularly taken by the fact that voters don’t care that they are being lied to as long as long as the liar is going to tackle the “enemy within”, be that Brexit, immigration, whatever!
The best lie is; the figureheads are the puppets of the establishment who are the “ enemy within”.
“Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.”
And if they would destroy economies, they first create a wealthy class on top and let human nature do the rest. The acquisition of power soon leads to its abuse, to social and economic hubris. By seeking to protect its gains, the power elite locks in its position by excluding and injuring those below. The wealthy indebt them, shift the tax burden onto the less powerful, facilitate their exploitation and turn government into an oligarchy.”
(From Michael Hudson)
The UK has failed to submit to next week’s conference COP16 – of IPBES (Intergovernmental Panel for Biodiversity & Ecosystem Services) – its National Biodiversity Strategy & Action Plan. Incidentally, the outcomes of 2022’s COP15 of IPBES was as portentous as was IPCC’s COP15 for climate in Paris (Not that our cr*ppy mainstream media will inform us of all that).
Agreed it is not only ‘Bonfire of Regulations AND Bonfires of Enforcement, but also Bonfire of much needed strategic planning (The ethos of regulation?).
The over-riding mission of a country’s government is a focus on the welfare of its people and, therefore, their environment also. This country is one of the most ecologically degraded on the planet. Prior to Brexit, the vast majority of our environmental regulation obligation came from the EU. The Tories undermined much of that. Ecological goals from the river basin management planning were pushed back to 2042 from the previous 2027 deadline. It also explains why water companies have got away so much with polluting our rivers.
Our quality of life within a capitalist system absolutely depends upon regulation. Kid starver just proves himself to be an absolute fawning cretin to his idea of what he thinks businesses want to hear. When actually, most credible businesses want certitude; regulation which they know will be enforced properly and consistently: a level playing field.
Well said Richard M & other respondents on here. Apologies if I am showing my anger.
Anger permitted, and appropriate.
It is notable that ‘free market’ advocates always stop short of supporting UBI. Freedom is fine for companies, but goodness me, never allow workers the freedom to turn down a job that pays so little that they are still reliant on Universal Credit in order to live.
Isn’t it time we stopped subsidising companies which prefer to make vast profits instead of paying living wages?
I do wonder if Starmer and Reeves realise how identical to Cameron and Osborne they sound? Do their advisers realise? Anyway – any red tape bonfire ended in tears – not just in UK, but world-wide. There’s no reason why this one won’t. Unfortunately it won’t be Starmer’s and Reeves’ tears.
Sometimes huge externalities, risks, or unintended consequences are not always immediately apparent and even when they do become known, but only to a select group, often the very people responsible for creating the problem, the risk is deliberately hidden from the public.
Some examples: lead in petrol, smoking tobacco, burning fossil fuels. And by the time politicians and the public understand the risks the thing is so completely embedded in the economy and people’s lives that it is very difficult to do anything about it. And of course the people making billions out of selling toxicity have captured tame accountants, lawyers and politicians to oppose any proposed regulation and enforcement.
Probably the next catastrophic, but as yet unknown, externality is already on its way.
Well we already have the VAPE crisis- something that anyone working in Public Health should have been all too aware of given the history of smoking. So who / what / how was bought off to allow vaping to be a legalised substance and surprise surprise, no red tape with regard to children / advertising / contents. Urgently needed an investigative journalist.
I’ve been thinking about real-life everyday risks that “red tape” & effective enforcement have protected us from in the past, but do not any longer…
(All these examples are off the top of my head, from real life reports/incidents.)
Having the cladding burn my block of flats down.
Buying/renting a newly built house on a flood plain.
Buying/Renting a new-build, and discovering it isn’t structurally or electrically safe and the NHBC has gone AWOL.
Getting sick after a river or marine swim or surf.
Getting food poisoning from a restaurant/take-away.
Dying from a food allergy from purchased food.
Dying/being maimed in a work related accident.
Visiting a school or hospital & having the concrete roof fall on my head.
Going for a drive and losing my suspension on a pothole.
Buying a battery charger, or washing machine or tumbler dryer & then dying in a housefire.
Getting killed in a Boeing 737 instead of having a nice holiday.
Not being able to rely on the bus/train to get me safely & reliably to work.
Being abused/exploited/harassed/threatened/defrauded online or in the media.
Having a baby delivered in an unsafe maternity unit.
Losing my citizenship or residency status because of Home Office incompetence.
Being abused or exploited in an inadequate or maladministered care facility.
Being a victim of financial malpractice and being unable to get a financial regulator to help or compensate me.
Suffering a data or privacy breach where the guilty party is not effectively sanctioned nor do I get recompense.
I’m sure this list could get a lot longer without anyone making things up.
Thanks
It did not take long for Me to detest this awful and smug corrupt Government which for all our sakes needs to be removed from office immediately not in 2029
Starmer’s speech to the Investment Summit explicitly rejects the idea of a ‘bonfire of red tape’. Quite the contrary, he is quite clear that good regulation is essential.
It is difficult to defend the example he quotes of 4000 documents required for the East Anglia 2 offshore windfarm, plus two years in judicial review. I wouldn’t invest in a project with those kinds of overheads.
That is not what he said