I have always thought that John Redwood was better than he is generally presented by the liberal media. He has seemed - to me - more sensible than the hard core of boneheaded right-wingers who have made the prime ministerial careers of John Major and Theresa May unnecessarily difficult. There was, of course, the extreme embarrassment of him being filmed [as Secretary of State for Wales] trying to move his lower jaw in time to the Welsh National Anthem: and failing utterly. But in general I saw him as a 'trier' who was honest and not lacking in intelligence.
Then I saw a bit of his performance in the House of Commons yesterday: oh dear!
The issue was Brexit. His face was distorted with extreme, vitriolic anger. He was fed up, he declared, with the people who do this country down. The remainers and the soft Brexiteers - from his perspective - belittle this great country. Of course we can stand alone in the world, and triumph economically [with the implication that this task is trivial compared to the glorious achievement of solitary Britain in 1940-42].
It was painful and tragic to see him reduced to such a stupid and irrational argument. In descending to this lack of serious content his speech was about the best argument against his side of the issue that I have yet encountered.
The hard Brexiteers ignore the realities of the economic situation in the world. WTO Rules do not offer a safe basis on which the UK can instantly build a pattern of close trade deals with countries outside the European Economic Area, as has so often been stressed in this blog. Tariffs are not the key issue: regulations and quid-pro-quo deals that get round WTO standards dominate in world trade agreements, and the UK does not have the intellectual resources of trained manpower that would be needed to get even tentative interim deals in place by March 2019; or, indeed, by December 2021.
By declining to vote in the Commons yesterday, on the motion to publish the dossiers on 52 sectors of the economy and the potential impact on them of leaving the EEA, the Conservative Party again displayed that it has lost control of the House. It is almost certain that when these dossiers are released, they will provide a massive stock of ammunition for the remainers and will seriously undermine the sanguine daydreams of the hard Brexiteers.
The resignation on the same day of the highly-regarded Defence Secretary, on grounds that most men [and many women] of his age and origin would think to be spectacularly trivial, indicates to me that Sir Michael Fallon welcomed an excuse to get out from under the bonfire that is being built in the Tory party.
Redwood is - in political terms - dead wood, tinder dry; ready to support a conflagration that could end the two centuries of Conservatism as the dominant political organisation in the United Kingdom. The arch-Brexiteers would [apparently] force the collapse of the May government if their diabolical mission to undermine the economy is defeated. An election before Christmas has become a strong possibility; thought not yet probable.
Corbyn has always regarded the EU as a capitalist club: so he has been against it, even though Labour under his leadership notionally supported the remainers in the 2016 referendum: where millions of old-Labour voters went the other way. I doubt if the Labour leader has a clear view of what the European Economic Area is: and it is problematic whether Keir Starmer can bring him to a sensible stance on that matter. This is the one factor that could loose a December [or February] election for Labour. Politics have suddenly become much more interesting: and more frightening!
Showing posts with label Regulations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Regulations. Show all posts
Thursday, 2 November 2017
Sunday, 29 October 2017
Brexit Buffoons and the WTO
Nobody who voted, either way, can claim to have understood the full implications of a 'Remain' or of a 'Leave' vote in the 2016 Referendum on Britain's place in the European Union.
It is almost certain that the great proponents of Remain - Cameron, Clegg and scaremaster Osborne - had no idea in advance how they would interpret, then implement, the Leave vote that occurred. Cameron ran away from responsibility:and even a gold-plated palace would not be a sufficient environment in which to write the exculpatory memoirs from which he hopes to make a pile of pennies. The fact that he has bought a sort of gypsy caravan, reminiscent of certain dead children's writers, for the purpose displays his ability to compound folly with ever-deeper illusion. Since the guilty men and their followers [and their mentors] had put the question to the nation, they should at the very least have had transparent contingent plans. They evidently did not. Nor did the civil service have anything like an adequate plan for what would happen after Cameron ran away, Clegg went into obscurity with his party, and Osborne's toxicity with the electorate was recognised by the new prime minister [of whose judgement and capabilities Osborne had been a vigorous critic when they had sat together in cabinet]. Evening Standard editor Osborne has been intermittently sensible in his comments on the Brexit situation, but he remains so much in the public mind as the author of the twin disasters of the Cameron era - austerity, and 'operation fear' in the Brexit campaign - that his political resuscitation is most improbable.
The prominent 'leavers' - who were far fewer than the high-profile 'remainers' - appear to have undertaken even less preparation than the remainers to meet the contingency that their side would actually win. The clownish assertion - written on their battle bus - that the net amount someone had calculated on a chewing-gum packet as the net annual payment made by the UK to Brussels would instantly be available to allocate to the National Health Service, resonated with a population that was all too aware that osbornian austerity was depriving family and friends of treatment that could be available. Whether the sum was in any way valid as an arithmetical calculation or an allocable fund did not count with those who used it. It was merely one of a few desperate claims that they made to align themselves with a population that was disgusted by the failed political class and utterly unconvinced by the econocratic arguments that underpinned austerity. Boris Johnson became a more popular buffoon, becoming recognised outside greater London. Michael Gove surprised people with his articulateness: only to earn buffoon status for himself by his last-minute, half-cock, ill-considered decision to stand for the party leadership after Cameron scuttled away [thereby sparing the party from the embarrassment of having Johnson as their leader].
Mrs May began her period as prime minister well, with conciliatory speeches and the dismissal of Osborne; since which she has got everything wrong that was within her power to influence. She called an election unnecessarily then threw it away. She activated the withdrawal procedure with the EU before she had any clear plan. But from the start she made clear her utter incomprehension what she was dealing with, when she said 'Brexit means brexit': while everybody knows that the word itself is totally meaningless. While she has struggled, with a group of spectacularly inadequate ministers, to define what Brexit might mean the country has drifted towards the disaster of leaving the EU with no interim deal that will keep the UK effectively [under deep make-up] within the European Economic Area.
This has created a field day for the couple of dozen Tory MPs who appear really to believe - in their enfeebled minds - that the World Trade Organisation [WTO's] tariff regime will enable Britain to survive as 'the fifth-largest economy in the world'. The whole point is, that it is NOT tariffs but REGULATIONS that are used by all countries and economic communities to keep out unwelcome competition. Inside the European carapace the UK necessarily conform to the rules, and thus its trade with other EU members states can move freely. To loose that benefit, with the block that sends and receives about half of Britain's imports and exports, would be irreplaceable. The assumption that German motor manufacturers and French wine growers will 'see us right' is infantile. Professor Minford's calculations of the 'benefit' for Britain of trading on WTO terms with the global community - including the EU - are agonisingly bereft of any allowance for the predominant pattern of restrictions on trade, that would be tightened against an innovative economy such as the UK if we were adrift in the world and thus are extremely dangerous. But those are the argument to which the headbangers adhere: because they have nothing else. Yet they hold the government in awe; and are increasing their power to ruin the country. I will have to return to this topic in the coming days, as the argument gets more fraught approaching the deadline for the next meeting of EU heads of government.
It is almost certain that the great proponents of Remain - Cameron, Clegg and scaremaster Osborne - had no idea in advance how they would interpret, then implement, the Leave vote that occurred. Cameron ran away from responsibility:and even a gold-plated palace would not be a sufficient environment in which to write the exculpatory memoirs from which he hopes to make a pile of pennies. The fact that he has bought a sort of gypsy caravan, reminiscent of certain dead children's writers, for the purpose displays his ability to compound folly with ever-deeper illusion. Since the guilty men and their followers [and their mentors] had put the question to the nation, they should at the very least have had transparent contingent plans. They evidently did not. Nor did the civil service have anything like an adequate plan for what would happen after Cameron ran away, Clegg went into obscurity with his party, and Osborne's toxicity with the electorate was recognised by the new prime minister [of whose judgement and capabilities Osborne had been a vigorous critic when they had sat together in cabinet]. Evening Standard editor Osborne has been intermittently sensible in his comments on the Brexit situation, but he remains so much in the public mind as the author of the twin disasters of the Cameron era - austerity, and 'operation fear' in the Brexit campaign - that his political resuscitation is most improbable.
The prominent 'leavers' - who were far fewer than the high-profile 'remainers' - appear to have undertaken even less preparation than the remainers to meet the contingency that their side would actually win. The clownish assertion - written on their battle bus - that the net amount someone had calculated on a chewing-gum packet as the net annual payment made by the UK to Brussels would instantly be available to allocate to the National Health Service, resonated with a population that was all too aware that osbornian austerity was depriving family and friends of treatment that could be available. Whether the sum was in any way valid as an arithmetical calculation or an allocable fund did not count with those who used it. It was merely one of a few desperate claims that they made to align themselves with a population that was disgusted by the failed political class and utterly unconvinced by the econocratic arguments that underpinned austerity. Boris Johnson became a more popular buffoon, becoming recognised outside greater London. Michael Gove surprised people with his articulateness: only to earn buffoon status for himself by his last-minute, half-cock, ill-considered decision to stand for the party leadership after Cameron scuttled away [thereby sparing the party from the embarrassment of having Johnson as their leader].
Mrs May began her period as prime minister well, with conciliatory speeches and the dismissal of Osborne; since which she has got everything wrong that was within her power to influence. She called an election unnecessarily then threw it away. She activated the withdrawal procedure with the EU before she had any clear plan. But from the start she made clear her utter incomprehension what she was dealing with, when she said 'Brexit means brexit': while everybody knows that the word itself is totally meaningless. While she has struggled, with a group of spectacularly inadequate ministers, to define what Brexit might mean the country has drifted towards the disaster of leaving the EU with no interim deal that will keep the UK effectively [under deep make-up] within the European Economic Area.
This has created a field day for the couple of dozen Tory MPs who appear really to believe - in their enfeebled minds - that the World Trade Organisation [WTO's] tariff regime will enable Britain to survive as 'the fifth-largest economy in the world'. The whole point is, that it is NOT tariffs but REGULATIONS that are used by all countries and economic communities to keep out unwelcome competition. Inside the European carapace the UK necessarily conform to the rules, and thus its trade with other EU members states can move freely. To loose that benefit, with the block that sends and receives about half of Britain's imports and exports, would be irreplaceable. The assumption that German motor manufacturers and French wine growers will 'see us right' is infantile. Professor Minford's calculations of the 'benefit' for Britain of trading on WTO terms with the global community - including the EU - are agonisingly bereft of any allowance for the predominant pattern of restrictions on trade, that would be tightened against an innovative economy such as the UK if we were adrift in the world and thus are extremely dangerous. But those are the argument to which the headbangers adhere: because they have nothing else. Yet they hold the government in awe; and are increasing their power to ruin the country. I will have to return to this topic in the coming days, as the argument gets more fraught approaching the deadline for the next meeting of EU heads of government.
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