More British Self-Destruction

BAE systems is one of Britain's outstanding engineering companies; with a great deal of its success based on the supply of 'defence' equipment to the British and many foreign governments. The flow of government orders to the company has stimulated countless innovations, some of which have been widely diffused in industry worldwide. Like all defence suppliers, BAE systems depends on a massive complex of components suppliers, and it is itself a very significant contributor to other firms' final products.

This week it has been announced that the major parts of its aircraft assembly capability are to be closed. This follows a recent joint announcement by France and Germany that are to go it alone, together, on the construction of a next-generation fighter aircraft. It is unsurprising that Brexit Britain is not to be a partner in this venture, as we were in the Eurofighter which is to  cease production [in the UK] as soon as the existing run of orders is completed.

The largest concentration of job losses is at the two airfield based assembly plants at Salmesbury and Warton, in Lancashire. Warton is west of Preston, Samlesbury is to the east: Preston has always been a major centre of engineering, and the modern aviation capability was developed there by the English Electric Company, which had taken over the Dick, Kerr works that had been a major builder of tramcars and then of electric and diesel-electric railway engines while the higher level aircraft division was developed. Probably the highest level to which that firm aspired was in the nineteen-sixties with the development of a revolutionary fighter, designated the P1, that was confidently expected to become the world's leading 'plane for the 'seventies and beyond. Rumours circulating in Lancashire at the time indicated that British politicians were being browbeaten by the Americans into ordering US-designed rivals to the P1, while the British Treasury got cold feet about the cost of taking the design beyond the existing prototype to a full production version. So the project was abandoned: and that was regarded at the time as a major retreat from advanced science. This feeling of shamefaced abandonment of the 'best of British' was compounded by the fact that another very promising project, TSR2, was also abandoned.

Thus the UK was tied in to European joint fighter 'planes; which at least were assembled in this country while civil aviation was centred on Toulouse and the British industry became a components supplier to the Airbus and later to Bombardier when Short Brothers was sold to that Canadian firm. The facilities at Warton and Samlesbury, taken together, are Britain's last chance to retain the capacity to build aircraft. The present government, in thrall to the austerity lobby, are almost certain to let this capability - and the massive human skills base that contributes so much to it - be binned.

Meanwhile the Navy is being provided with the two biggest vessels it has ever had: aircraft carriers for which it is most unlikely that there will be so really effective aircraft for several years. The government is contracted to buy American 'planes that will need massive adjustment [paid for by the UK] to be even partially effective in operating from the carriers. To pay that bill, cuts so deep in the rest of the military are being imposed that this country's entire defensive capability is at risk.

A government with will and imagination would charge BAE with a project to build  a completely new generation of vertical take-off and landing [VTOL] planes, for which a global market could be generated once the planes were proven in service on the carriers.

Instead, the short-sighted submissive wastrels who cannot frame a Brexit negotiation with the EU will wring their hands at the loss of jobs and of technological capacity: and blunder on with the policy of austerity and the actuality of dismantling the economy on which the entire population depends.

Osborne Bashes the Old and Threatens the Future

George Osborne, the British Finance Minister, yesterday performed the annual ritual of presenting a plan of spending and taxation [known as the Budget] and the Labour opposition joined in the ritual by quibbling about the data that were presented. None of the lead speakers in the discussion has ever held a job in the 'real economy' for a significant number of years, and all the performers read statements that were prepared by teams of script writers and Economists.

The hallmark of the Budget was the expressed intention that all the concessions that were made to taxpayers were compensated by equivalent increases in other taxes. An increase in state retirement pensions was offset by a reduction in tax reliefs for millions of pensioners. The Liberal Democrats' cherished policy of increasing the level of income that is exempt from income tax was offset by cuts in benefits and tax credits, and by raised taxes on fuel, cigarettes and alcohol: they were shown even more than previously to be totemistic twerps as they boasted of their 'great achievement'. The star of the day, Osborne, again showed the depth of his nervousness by  exaggerating his swagger and by the reedy edge that worsens his always-sneery voice: the more cock-sure he looked, the more his voice betrayed the fact that he was well beyond his comfort zone. His minders had clearly not recognised that critics and opponents would set together proposed tax reliefs for the rich and  increased taxes, diminished benefits and reduced tax reliefs for the relatively poor. The elaborate game of balancing gains and losses for each income decile that so pleases the inner circle means nothing to the electorate at large.

Osborne presented a 'tidying' of taxation that turned out [only after examining the supporting documents that were published the same day] to be the biggest tax grab in the Budget: his misjudgement in trying to introduce the new grab from pensioners as a mere administrative detail will haunt him. Alongside his support for the ruinous Health and Social Care Act and the leading role he has taken in the government's campaign to undermine the protection of the cherished countryside he has probably done enough to bring down the government at the next election. The sooner the coalition government collapses, the fresher will be the public memory of Osborne's duplicity and silliness and the more certain will be the public repudiation of both coalition parties. Labour are a shambles, and they will fail spectacularly as a government: but they are 'not this lot' and that is all that is needed to return them to power.

The British newspapers today bash the 'granny tax' but recognise that much more important news is happening outside little Britain in their features on the siege in Toulouse [France] where a confessed killer is holed-up in a flat after exacerbating racial tensions and affecting the volatile mood of Israelis. Analysts of Britain will recognise that the Budget does nothing to accelerate the reduction of the endemic deficit on state spending and nothing that will significantly foster economic growth. For the last two years Osborne's 'austerity' programme has encouraged international investors to continue supporting British government debt: yesterday's Budget brought forward the date when analysts will stress the precariousness of the government  and the probability that an early election will open the gates to chaos. This tragic inevitability is made one significant step more certain by Osborne's performance yesterday.