WHN #3: Loose threads and looking ahead
WHN #3: Loose threads and looking ahead
A newsletter on New Mills, new transport and a new dawn for the Tories?
On The Pod This Week
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. That’s what is on the pod this week.
With this year’s Conservative Party Conference mere days away, Sam headed to the two most relevant places he could find to discover What’s REALLY Happening Now.
Or, rather, he went to a village in an interesting nearby marginal constituency, then panicked that it wasn’t high concept enough for our sophisticated and growing global audience.
Enter “Tory Conference: A Tale of Two Cities… NEW MILLS versus NEW YORK”. The title may need some work. One isn’t a city, the other (it turns out) is too busy dealing with torrential rain and flash flooding to talk about the nuances of Conservative Party policy.
Next week’s episode will deal with both trips, as well as looking back on the Tories excursion to Manchester and ahead to Labour’s get-together in Liverpool.
For now, enjoy James’ explainer below of what to look out for as Britain’s ruling party meet up to remind everyone, and possibly each other, why they aren’t finished yet.
Loose Threads
Last week was transport week at WHN. We talked electric cars, we talked buses, we talked e-scooters. We even did a bonus episode. We did not, however, talk small cart-like inventions that bridge the gap between bike and car in a way we never even knew existed.
It turns out, that was our mistake. An oversight, perhaps, but one we are here to correct. In the conversation around World Car Free Day we considered other forms of transport, but not this one.
So, Sam sat down with London-based entrepreneur Sam Bailey to talk about his new micro electric vehicle, the Yo-go.
You’re a long way from the local golf course. Was this just one wrong turn that has got out of hand?
Although at first glance it looks like a golf buggy, we’re pretty confident it’s the future of city transport. It’s designed for city residents - or visitors - who don’t need the cost and bulk of a full-size electric vehicle that doesn’t really fit in a city street. It’s also super efficient and ultra-low carbon footprint – it produces 15x less CO2 in it’s battery manufacture than Tesla, and gets about 45 miles on a single charge – more than enough for most Londoners. It’s also designed to be super pedestrian friendly. We wanted to create a vehicle that doesn’t feel dangerous and intimidating for pedestrians or bikes to share the road with, but still keeps the rain off, is really easy to drive and park, and can carry 2 people plus their luggage and shopping. You can also park end on so you can always find a space. 4 buggies can park in the space taken by one car.
It’s even solar powered. If the sun’s out and you drive less than 9 miles a day (which is more than the average London driver does), then it’s fully self-charging, though we will need to plug it in winter in the UK. You could literally drive around all summer powered by sunshine.
Asking for a friend but… does it help you impress on dates?
The reception from people has been absolutely immense. Everyone is really positive about it. It’s like being a celebrity. People stop me in the street to ask about it and take a photo. Girls randomly jump in the passenger seat and ask for a ride. Cab drivers wind the window down and shout ‘That’s fucking genius!’.
Girls and cabbies may have noticed but be honest, do the police know you are doing this?
The Yo-go is a fully road legal, insured, DVSA inspected, EC certified electric vehicle with a top speed of 22mph. While you definitely don’t want to take it on fast roads, it’s got a roll cage and 3-point seat belts, so offers a lot safer alternative to cargo bikes or other micro vehicles, so is ideal in London and similar places where the limits are now almost all 20mph.
What’s next for the business?
We’re launching pilot schemes in Hammersmith and Oxford in Autumn this year. We’re going to install nodes of 4 vehicles on the end of a few lucky people’s streets, and they can then sign up and rent it with an App like an e-bike (and will cost a similar amount as an e-bike to rent). People can register at yo-go.city and if they leave their postcode, we’ll target their streets first as we roll out across the city and the country.
Also recently on the podcast, James told us about prospect of the UK’s first drug-consumption room. That took a step closer to reality this week with Glasgow City Council approving the plan.
Last week, Sam highlighted the story of a missing F-35 fighter jet. This gentleman gave more depth and flavour to the story than we ever could.
The Big Story: A spotters guide to Tory Conference
Whether you’re heading up in person, watching on TV, or skimming the highlights on social media, Conservative Party conference is set to be an unrivalled opportunity to witness so many different species of Tory in one place. So to make sure you don’t miss out on one of nature’s weirdest spectacles (ie: people who would actually join a political party in their natural habitat), here’s a short guide on what to look for.
1. Leaders-in-waiting
The next election legally has to be held before the 28th January 2025, which means that we’re probably looking at an election either next spring (perhaps the traditional May slot), or next November (like in 2019). This isn’t great news for the Tories, however, as for the last year pretty much every poll since ‘partygate’ in 2021, has pointed towards their catastrophic defeat at the hands of Labour.
And the worst part is that everyone knows this. So instead of singing from the same hymn sheet, expect to the next leadership brawling to begin in earnest, to decide who will take on the Labour government from the Opposition benches.
So watch out to see what some of the expected main contenders, the likes of Suella Braverman, Kemi Badenoch, Penny Mordaunt, James Cleverly, and dare we even say Liz Truss are up to.
Deflated moderates
With an internal civil war pencilled in for just after the next election, the expectation is that with a need to appeal to the party base, and freed from the need to actually govern, the winner will likely be whoever appeals to the right of the party. That’s why Suella Braverman has been talking tough on immigration and throwing red-meat to Conservative Party ultras, by claiming that multiculturalism has “failed”.
So if you’re wandering the halls of the conference next week, you can probably expect to see plenty of glum faces from more moderate wing of the party. Often called “One Nation” Tories, with husky-hugging David Cameron a long way in the rear-view mirror, they lack an obvious standard-bearer for the future and like Labour’s moderates during Jeremy Corbyn’s tenure, can probably look forward to several years of irrelevance.
Flailing Prime Ministers
It’s easy to forget but Rishi Sunak will also be in attendance, and he’ll be making his big pitch to the nation about why he should be granted a little longer in office before he’s forced to jet off to California and retire as a venture-capitalist tech-bro.
He’s going to have plenty of awkward encounters to navigate, as he attempts to placate the warring factions of his party, not to mention the general public. But perhaps most awkward of all is the on-going row over the HS2 railway line.
For a couple of weeks now, speculation has been growing that the government will imminently announce a curtailing of the new railway so that it only goes from London to Birmingham, instead of Manchester. The problem? Tory conference is being held in, er, Manchester. So it might be a tough crowd.
Bitter Johnsonites and Trussites
The turmoil since 2016 means that there won’t just be one ghost of Christmas Past stalking Tory conference, but two. Though it’s unlikely that Boris will put in an appearance himself (he can earn more money speaking at Crypto conferences anyway), he still has fans within the Conservative Party grassroots.
Similarly, and arguably more inexplicably, the same is true of Liz Truss too. As a free market true believer, her lightning-in-a-bottle Premiership (well, something in a bottle) really spoke to a certain section of the party’s id.
So is there a chance we’ll see either Johnsonism or Trussism reassert themselves? Could we see the Johnsonites kicking off about HS2 or Net Zero? Might the Trussites try to start a fight about corporation tax? Or will supporters of the two vanquished PMs play nicely, for the sake of party unity?
Anyone under the age of 25
Among 18-24 year olds, according to one recent YouGov poll the Tories are on… literally just 1%. That’s a long way from the roughly 30% of young people who backed them in 2010, when the party was on the up, and the 27% who did way back in 1997, where the party was in the doldrums as it is now.
Though we need to be very careful about reading too much into a sub-sample of a sample in a poll (so perhaps that shocking figure might not be entirely right), it is still abundantly clear that the party has a real problem with younger voters. So if you see any at conference who looks like they might be under the age of 25, be sure to stop them and ask them “…why?”.
James O’Malley is a journalist, writer and broadcaster. He’s Head of News at What’s Happening Now, and is hoping that the forthcoming Tory Civil War will be just as good as the fight between Captain America and Iron Man.