Musical Chairs, anyone?

When we were small children, Musical Chairs was a favourite party game. It seems that it is still popular with Tory prime ministers. This week’s Secretary of State for Levelling Up, etc. is Michael Gove again. He previously held the post from 15 September 2021 to 6 July 2022 in Bojo the Clown’s government. Unlike other ministers who resigned in the dying days of Bojo’s government, Gove was sacked, apparently in belated revenge for having stymied Bojo’s original ambition to be PM in 2016.

In reality, not a lot has changed as a result of Rishi Sunak’s having taken over the reins of government. Sunak cannot claim, any more than Truss before him, that his is a ‘new’ government. These are the same tired crew who served under both Johnson and Truss. Sunak himself served continuously under both May and Johnson, having first been appointed as a junior minister in the newly re-named Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government in January 2018, during Theresa May’s premiership, then as a senior member of the Treasury team in Bojo’s government from July 2019 until his resignation as Chancellor of the Exchequer, when the Chief Clown’s government fell apart in July of this year.

I have deliberately refrained from commenting on emerging planning policy in recent months, because the situation was so fluid that was impossible to tell which parts (if any) of various planning changes that had been canvassed would be implemented in practice. At the moment, there is continuing uncertainty. Sunak is keen on promoting ‘free ports’ - a wizard way to facilitate money laundering and tax avoidance in those areas, as well as diverting existing jobs and investment from other areas. Truss was all set to promote ‘investment zones’ (effectively free ports on steroids), although it was being hinted that Jeremy Hunt, as Chancellor, was concerned at the cost of these, when he is desperate to find savings in government spending. So enterprise zones may prove to be still-born, although Sunak may still want to press ahead with his free ports project.

Other aspects of planning and development policy are still up in the air, and will depend on efforts to resolve the fundamental differences within the Tory party as to how much new development would be acceptable, particularly in the South of England. This is what prevented the implementation of the previous White Paper and led to the demise of the promised Planning Bill during Bojo’s time at No.10. So watch this space over the coming months to see what (if anything) actually comes forward, and whether significant resistance on the Tory backbenches might still defeat such proposals.

© MARTIN H GOODALL