Bash the Bats, Other the Otters

Given the ministerial sneers and sniggers that have emerged from Team Starmer about allowing bats and newts to stand in the way of homes for hard-working British families, it was perhaps inevitable that the Government's own analysis would indicate the presence of no such problem. The proposed planning and infrastructure bill is intended to roll back the green crap not because environmental legislation hinders infrastructure projects, but because landlords and construction firms tend to have a more profitable time when they have to obey fewer rules. Presumably the lesson learned by Team Starmer will be to emulate their recently ejected Conservative models and refrain from commissioning any impact assessments that might place disreputable motives in disrepute; which given Team Starmer's likely motives would indubitably mean considerable efficiency savings on impact assessments. Then again, if mere evidence or the lack of it were a significant factor in our mother of democracies the Labour Party would never have undergone its antisemitism crisis and subsequent ideological cleansing, with fiscally disadvantageous consequences to all sorts of sensible and moderate persons.