Rachel Wolf
@racheljanetwolf
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Founding Partner at Public First.
London
Joined January 2013
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If I were Starmer, I think I’d launch my own energy saving campaign.
I’d ask other prominent voices (Martin Lewis?) to collaborate.
I’d focus on things people are less likely to know, like flow temp on boiler, or the relative energy use of boilers vs lights.(1/3)
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“The Conservatives have lost moral authority and lack the democratic legitimacy to form an effective administration. At the earliest opportunity, leadership candidates should commit to holding a general election within six months”
James in Telegraph.
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You know what people never complain about? Gail’s. I have four posh pastry shops - breakfast easily matches a big mac - within five minutes walk of my house. Too posh to ban?
I've planned a bike route that goes past all the
@McDonalds
restaurants I can find in London - some 160 of them.
It's 466km long and will take me a weekend to ride. I'll burn about 15,000 calories doing it.
If I ate a Big Mac meal at every restaurant I went past, I'd consume…
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apropos of nothing, one of my favourite anecdotes in Blair’s autobiography.
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I HATE these stories.
When Starmer goes to the G7 will he stay in a hostel?On diplomatic missions will labour give the other side bread and water?
You just make it harder to govern and stoke disillusionment, and it won't help you win ('all the same')
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I think it would help show I was a government in waiting not a passive opposition (which remains their big risk) (3/3)
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Adult education is a perfect test of government. It bores journalists to tears, so no shiny Westminster village wins. It won't show big results for quite a while. But if you deeply care about opportunity, then you cannot have a system that offers one chance (1/2).
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I was unconvinced until he showed me the paragraphs he’d written on what the public had gone through. I now think he’s right.
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I’d say I know some of this might seem obvious, but if everyone does it, it will make a huge difference.
I’d say the risk is without advice, more people will do things that damage their health. (2/3)
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Why wouldn't you try to explain to people how to reduce their energy use if they want to? It saves them money, saves the taxpayer money, reduces risks. I find it baffling. You don't need to make them do it. It's just not an example of nanny state.
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I think the Whitty/PM exchange is government working well.
PM asks questions. Experts reply. He probes. Experts reply. He accepts their guidance.
Isn't this exactly what an elected politician + expert civil service is supposed to do?
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(This was actually James Frayne’s original idea but he’s not on twitter so…you snooze you lose)
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My assumption is that the govt is watering down their net zero commitments because they want to make it harder for Labour to demonstrate economic credibility in the election campaign. It will be to generate cost and tax stories. BUT (1/4)
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Why don’t we say that if you have a long history of paying rent on time, it means you can afford a mortgage (instead of needing big deposit)? What is the blocker? Really not my area!
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This drives me crazy. One of the great buildings of the world and a symbol of democracy and we’re letting it crumble. Our ancestors would be ashamed of us and our descendants will rightly blame us.
EXC: Major restoration works on the Palace of Westminster are unlikely to progress before the next election.
MPs were meant to choose a way forward this year but will now just vote for more scoping exercises.
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I genuinely don’t get why this is complicated. We LOVE banning stuff but won’t tackle child mauling dogs?!
I wrote warning about this menace in
@thetimes
in 2009. The dog charities opposed. Here we go again..
This breed is weapons grade:
👉Immediate ban
👉Existing neutered and muzzled
👉Amnesty to hand them in
👉Specialist Police Units
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I would like to read some serious proposals about what we do. A man quit politics because his office was set on fire. MPs are terrified of violence. A number have been killed. What can we do?
(I have 0 patience for the view that MPs being polite to each other is a solution)
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At a dinner last night with lots of right-of-centre policy people and we nominated growth policies: clear winner was Oxford Cambridge Arc. Why did we abandon this again...?
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“national insurance” is a monumentally stupid tax because it has given the impression to a huge number of people that is, oh I don’t know, national insurance. Unsurprising they think they’ve paid in.
A note on "I paid in all my life" when it comes to pensions: today's taxes pay today's pensions. So people retiring now mostly "paid in" for pensions at a much lower rate, for lower life expectancies, when pensioner poverty was much higher than now.
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And from our own research, lots of the public will assume the reason the target has been watered down is because the government is too incompetent to meet it. (4/4)
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I'm judging seriousness entirely, 100%, by whether they do any planning reform.
Pretty obvious what narrative team Truss are pushing "we'll do anything to get growth even if unpopular". Then if economy grows they can take some credit. But it doesn't fit with what they're actually doing. (1/?)
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A tragedy that
@michaelgove
won’t run another department and an even greater tragedy that he has no obvious successor as a reforming minister.
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This is genuinely hilarious.
‘I’m a changed man!’ he says while on holiday. Outside recess.
I expect he just had the wrong advisers.
NEW: Boris Johnson has been personally phoning MPs from his holiday to shore up support for a leadership bid.
During the call, Boris Johnson "accepted mistakes were made" and promised that "a future Downing Street he leads would have to be a different culture"
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Sweden recorded its lowest birth rate since 2005 (good childcare)
Italy lowest ever (think it has declining property values?)
Korea a catastrophe
I’m unconvinced this is because to something specific to the UK policy environment (1/2)
😬 What do people think is the cause?
a) Housing market?
b) Childcare?
c) Who wants kids anyway?
d) Other
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The Foreign Office should serve the best (ideally British) food and drink. Downing Street should be glorious to visit, with plenty to do in the lobby while you wait (without your phone.)
This is all ridiculous.
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I understand that mistakes get made in the rush to report immediately. I know the media are still learning how to deal with new flows of information.
I cannot understand why this hasn’t been taken down. It suggests the BBC are not learning from those mistakes. Not good enough
Hundreds of people have been killed in an Israeli strike on a hospital in Gaza, according to Palestinian officials
Follow the latest ⬇️
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An idea sparked by recent controversy.
If Starmer becomes PM he should give the leader of future oppositions a permanent civil service team to prep for govt, sitting outside political appointments.
Stupid or sensible? (think sensible but not sure…)
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And no, it's not credible to repeat 2019 and appear like an entirely new administration at this point. Nor can you credibly now sound like you care about net zero. Envt was just about the only piece of domestic progress of the last few years and now you can't talk about it. (3/4)
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There's a huge cost to this outside specifics on support for net zero (which leavers share!) - namely it is yet another thing the Tories have abandoned. Outside schools, and maybe employment, what consistent good story could you tell about about the Conservatives? (2/4)
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Under-investigated phenomenon: the percentage of journalists who are under 45 and can't afford a house. Feel like we've hit a tipping point in commentary but I would love to see the numbers...
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I'm a bit worried Liz Truss is getting ready to run for leader again after the election. Is that a stupid worry?
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I hope
@michaelgove
speech means they will properly sort out adult education, including for people with a degree and who just want to learn some stuff. Birkbeck is good and should get more funding, and there need to be proper equivalents outside of London.
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If you care about domain expertise, you need to make it easy for people to acquire it through life. And if you care about areas outside London, you need to support civic educational institutions- civic universities once taught more 'adult learners' than young undergrads (2/2)
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This is true, though a lot of it is driven by the decision to make highly female public sector jobs (specifically nursing/psychology) graduate jobs.
(HESA data)
The gap between women and men going to university really is huge
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This is beautifully written and perfectly pitched. She seems to be one of those unusual politicians who keeps getting better.
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I think this is a v good idea (obv depending on details). England is a big outlier. Even v academic kids are expected to make basically permanent decisions at 15 for careers that last into their 60s. They close off lots of options. (1/3)
Exclusive with
@oliver_wright
&
@RSylvesterTimes
Rishi Sunak drawing up plans for radical reform of A-levels with new style of British Baccalaureate
Children would study wider range of subjects post-16, with English and Maths compulsory until age of 18
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Munira is one of the most wonderful people I have ever worked with. I have always admired her intellectual and moral integrity, and she is a huge loss to the government.
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The Conservatives are not in opposition or newspaper columnists. If we dislike things we are able to change them.
This is a theme you hear a lot in Conservative circles at the moment. The idea that the “New Labour legal architecture” remains in place and has hampered them. It’s part of the growing narrative that these 13 years have, in many places, not been properly “Conservative”
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I also find this striking. Big chunks of life were expensive relative to my parents generation, but those 10-15 years younger have it so much worse.
Whenever I speak to people in their 20s, it is striking how in every financial area - rent, ability to buy a flat, student loan repayments, pensions - their situation is incomparably worse than mine was at the same age.
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Me on civil service reform for
@telegraph
. Though think my NY resolution is to stop letting people use photos of me from 2010 (before children aged me by at least 2 decades)
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If local support is the criterion for fracking, I assume it will be the same for onshore wind and solar (which are much more popular)?
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@rcolvile
@mrianleslie
As opposed to all the other times on twitter when you've had no opinion at all?
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Train home from Birmingham delayed indefinitely because there’s a trespasser on the track who won’t leave and it’s just the perfect end to this conference.
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Just to make myself unpopular...why does everyone dump on the idea that we should try to make the country richer? It's obviously not all about redistribution - with the best and most progressive will in the world, we couldn't redistribute as much in 1922 as we can now.
“Levelling up” and “let’s grow the pie” are just two variants of the same thing, aren’t they? Both try to avoid hard political and economic questions about resource allocation and income redistribution by assuming “a rising tide lifts all boats”.
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The best way to stop some schools inflating grades more than others is to have consistent, standardised exams.
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This is why I find the 'accept low growth and manage it' argument unconvincing. We know there are some obvious and unnecessary constraints. Remove them, and then we can talk about whether we have to accept the situation we are in.
Good thread this. One reason why I am if anything even *more* optimistic policy choices can improve UK growth is I think probably ALL UK cities are underperforming: even That London, the only mega-city in the chart, is being outperformed by much smaller European cities.
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I mean, he's not wrong (though 'office' is a generous description)
Ken Clarke to
@Peston
on manifesto promises (feat
@racheljanetwolf
as “some lady in the office”)
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I'm totally baffled by this. Our local pharmacy has been brilliant for vaccinations (Covid; flu) and it frees up capacity in GP surgery. Why is that bad?
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It is so refreshing to have a Prime Minister (and Chancellor) that act quickly and sort out the detail. NI, France, SVB. First time in a couple of years I've felt government was working at all.
Silicon Valley Bank UK has today been sold to
@HSBC
.
This transaction has been facilitated by the
@bankofengland
in consultation with HM Treasury.
No taxpayer money is involved and customer deposits have been protected.
Find out more ⬇️
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Worth noting this is Denmark. Which is not known for its terrible childcare...
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Have written for
@ConHome
on how the manifesto thought about new Conservative voters and what this means for next 5 years
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Does 92 vs 97 chat actually make a difference to anything? Does it meaningfully change what the government ought to do?
Chat in Tory circles is about whether we are in 1992 or 1997 territory at the moment.
Osborne on Channel 4 News: "Major was likeable, conscientious, like Rishi Sunak, but ultimately was not able to escape the downward pull of the Tory Party." via
@NewsAnnabelle
in Playbook
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I was really enjoying politics being a bit boring for a bit. We were talking about health, and how much Labour can spend on green infrastructure, and whether the US-UK deal was substantive.
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What I have noticed is that really successful ministers handpick their teams. Many of those people are from the civil service, but they aren't random (the way they are for most ministers). They're persuaded over from other departments (1/4)
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This is I think a problem. Most should be able to agree that it’s extremely stupid to compare Bravermans statement to Nazi Germany (and beyond annoying that people always reach for it) before then debating what the BBC does about it.
The row has arguably ceased to be about the original tweet or policy at all...
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This is v good. Clear argument, clear dividing line, clear policy, clearly popular with voters.
The cost of living crisis can only be beaten by tackling the climate crisis.
That’s what Labour’s Green Prosperity Plan will do – cutting energy bills, creating good jobs, delivering energy security and providing climate leadership for our country.
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This list is beautifully done.
We’ve written to the Chancellor, ahead of his fiscal plan, on the practical steps that can be taken to reduce energy demand in buildings.
This should be core to HMT’s exit strategy from the extraordinary sums going to the Energy Price Guarantee.
@theCCCuk
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I HATE train wifi. Why is it so bloody hard to sort out?
It's worse than having no wifi - the constant stress and disappointment on a 30 second feed back loop is unbearable.
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fascinating how well faith schools do. Is it because they have similar characteristics to the no excuses schools (behaviour, authority, routine) or because they have parents with different attitudes and behaviour? Or something else?
My colleague
@lehain
is tweeting the details but today's provisional Progress 8 scores represent an absolute triumph for
@michaelgove
,
@Miss_Snuffy
,
@MerciaSchool
et al - and for
@StarAcademies
too. These are now the best schools in the country, in some of the toughest places.
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What is actually worse about twitter so far? It seems the same to me (except that lots of people are talking about how much worse twitter is).
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A short thread on this report and that endlessly sexy subject, managers and the NHS.
It is pretty clear we don’t have enough people managing things on the ground, but it’s more than that - managers are too constrained to make much difference (1/6)
We have a new report out today by
@Samfr
&
@racheljanetwolf
on the hospital productivity puzzle. We identify 3 key reasons:
1) longstanding underinvestment in capital (beds, scanners, buildings)
2) the loss of senior staff
3) chronic undermanagement
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I know we have decided on a fast race (I think a mistake, but inevitable once you decide the PM should stay through the contest) but I hope the threshold isn't too high. Very interesting candidates have emerged, and even if they can't win their ideas could rejuvenate the party.
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@Samfr
For me think big ones are: 1. Energy infrastructure (all, including onshore wind and solar); 2. Housing; 3. Generalised planning deregulation in the investment zones (which have to be big); 4. Do the Oxford Cambridge arc and suck up the fact that you'll lose a couple of seats.
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I cannot figure out what the government should do. Big spending reductions won't get through MPs. Delaying capital and R&D expenditure is anti long term growth. Companies have already made decisions based on corp tax not going up. Where's best answer?
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I completely agree. I’m unclear - at the moment - how this inquiry will help us be better prepared in the future.
My disappointment with the Covid inquiry is the disproportionate focus on the salacious (for example swearing in private messages) over what I’d like to see which is interviews with experts from all the countries (Sweden, South Korea, etc) that took different approaches
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What matters nationally with the results is what politicians do next:
- For Labour, the confidence to come out with some bolder proposals: do important things as well as 'not lose the lead';
- For Conservatives, much more on the NHS and generally higher speed and momentum (1/2)
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Agree. Kind of surprised by all these people who’d be totally comfortable if every one of their private messages came to light.
Never thought I’d be defending Matt Hancock but gallows humour is fine in private. And these are private exchanges and have to be viewed in that light.
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@bbwxt20
That's true, which is why I think you'd need to front it with a bunch of other people (it's what the government would have to do too).
But I also think some of the advice is not that obvious to a lot of people, and if you focus on the cumulative impact, it's still worth it.
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a good sign your country is too centralised: local elections are treated as a national story and a verdict on a national government.
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Delighted that
@thhamilton
will be joining Public First from next week.
I promise I don’t recruit entirely on whether people are interesting on twitter, but it is a nice bonus.
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If you’re bored of two middle aged men you can have a younger middle aged woman (me) and, well, a middle aged man but a very interesting one (Sir John Curtice). With data.
First episode - how Brits’ opinions have changed over 40 years.
Quite frankly
@RoryStewartUK
@campbellclaret
you have a lot to answer for 😏
@MatthewdAncona
&
@mattforde
@amolrajan
&
@bbcnickrobinson
@arusbridger
&
@lionelbarber
@edballs
@George_Osborne
Please make it stop... Enough now!
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I am so proud of my mother
@XXFactorFacts
today. Quietly (well, maybe not that quietly), doggedly, over decades, she has done so much to change the country for the better. The lifelong learning entitlement should transform lives. The King's Maths School already has.
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Townhouse remark reminds me of my favourite focus group on David Cameron, where a lady in a quite wealthy bit of North West said 'everyone says he's rich, but I've seen a picture of that house in Notting Hill and it's really quite modest' (
@s8mb
might like)
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I felt slightly jinxed this week. First Will Tanner pulled out of our joint oped because of some random new job (though Adam Hawksbee more than ably replaced him) and then my wonderful energy policy director, Nick Park, decided to become Downing Street energy/BEIS adviser (1/3)
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I have been thinking about Margaret Thatcher a lot today. She is invoked by so many candidates, implicitly or explicitly. It seems to me she had three virtues which are often ignored (1/4)
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I have more sympathy than many for the government given external shocks (Covid; energy).
Still, hard not to feel deeply depressed at three years wasted. So much could have been done. Virtually nothing was.
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At least there are no events on the near horizon that will make the situation worse.
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I’m a bit disappointed to have been downgraded from ‘some lady in an office’ to apparatchik. But for what it’s worth, I agree with him: the world got upended. You don’t need to stick to the tax lock.
‘Ken Clarke just referred to you as an apparatchik on Radio 4’. Interesting way to start the day...
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I've written a short blog on the Cabinet, and a bugbear of mine. Conservatives are convinced knowledge matters in the curriculum, but think it's irrelevant for government (1/3)
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I agree with this. We have reduced opinion research to regurgitation. it’s important to understand what people care about and why. It’s also important to understand how their minds might change. That’s vastly harder, obviously, than reporting the results of a poll.
Politics is partly the art of persuading the public that a policy has merits. But it is often reduced in practice to a process of merely following what the public already thinks. This is often very bad...
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Great to see our polling for
@ukonward
covered in Politico this morning. Fascinating that the cost of living crisis has not dented support for environmental policies.
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I had a brilliant time at conference (I know this is unfashionable to say). I loved speaking on panels with interesting people, and seeing friends after two years, in a wonderful city.
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I don't think this is just about the next election. We have to make being an MP a nicer job - and purely anecdotally, women with kids are the most likely to be put off.
That has to mean some combo of money; time; admin support (which is money and time); protection from attacks.
Another couple of Tories have announced they're not standing today. Of particular concern that two of their younger women who are current/former ministers (Davison and Chloe Smith) are going.
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Delighted that Public First’s paper on energy bill reform is published today. If the government is serious about ‘decarbonising heat’ it needs to sort the incentives so that it's not much more expensive for a household to run net-zero heating
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Agree with this. There is a middle ground between 'ban wind' and 'ban gas' which is exactly where the public is. Maybe we should call it 'having enough energy now and in the future without bankrupting ourselves' Snappy, I know.
I’m glad that a large public-facing company is still pleased to say the obvious on our continued need for gas during the climate transition.
But I imagine PR/reputation means we will continue to see vital gas assets bought by private firms that don’t face the same scrutiny.
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I don't agree. It would only be suicidal if it was fronted and led mostly by politicians...which it doesn't need to be. Also, blackouts are more suicidal!
The reality is if the Government launches an energy saving campaign it will be politically suicidal. Every time a Minister says "try doing x instead of doing y" they'll get destroyed. "It's OK for you. I've got four kids. I can't afford four electric blankets" etc...
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This is the best thing I've read this week. Please tell me it's real.
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There's a lot of justifiable concern about what this will mean for the educational gap. It's not obvious to me what solves that problem other than extra catch-up time: summer schools etc. Is there a good alternative?
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I don’t see how we avoid digital IDs now there’s such powerful AI. It’s going to be terrifyingly easy to impersonate someone online otherwise.
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The PM now has momentum. If the govt now moves fast on a bunch of issues I think they could turn a lot around. I don’t think NI, in itself, does that (though it is a remarkable achievement).
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this is what having a consistent policy and minister does.
England comes 4th in the international comparative reading test PIRLS - the highest ever ranking. The performance of children here held steady during covid but fell back in many other countries.
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My piece on levelling up, and some ideas on what you could do, measure, and show progress on in the next few years
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A really fast contest would be terrible. There are some massive choices that haven't been resolved by this government and which will split voters, the Party or both. We need to play out the arguments.
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I'm not sure whether to be proud or horrified that my mother has added the Levelling Up Council to her negligible responsibilities at Downing Street and King's. She even made marmalade last weekend. Am a diluted generation.
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@Samfr
I think in general, globally, AZ has been treated disgracefully and I worry it will put off any company from doing altruistic things in future.
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