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 hard Brexiteers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hard Brexiteers. Show all posts
Thursday, 2 November 2017
Saturday, 30 September 2017
Brexit Buffoons, Regulations and Point Protectionism
Boris Johnson has sounded-off again, this time to the Sun, with his demands about Brexit. The transition must be absolutely no more than two years, and the UK should not accept new EU regulations in that period. This keeps him in front of the 'hard Brexiteers' in the Conservative Party, ahead of what is certain to be a very painful party conference for the Prime Minister who decided to hold an election, then ran it the way her close advisers suggested, and so lost her parliamentary majority. Members of the party from all factions know that the Corbyn-McDonnell chances of winning a general election [in England, Wales, and - just possibly - the lost Labour heartlands of Scotland] are astonishingly high. Thus the Tories dare not topple the leader, simply because there is no obvious alternative who could surely prevent the party from disintegrating sufficiently to force a general election.
Thus the Conservatives have to negotiate Brexit: with an increasing majority of the party daily becoming more aware [as are Labour MPs] that the complete separation of the UK from the European Economic Area would put the livelihoods of all sixty million people who depend on the UK economy in grave jeopardy. The Minority of fervent Brexiteers, together with the ambitious chancers who have joined them, assert that the UK can open up huge vistas of trade all over the world, by making trade agreements with a whole raft of countries under WTO Rules.
The World Trade Organisation had its origins in GATT - the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade - which was set up alongside the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development [normally called the World Bank] and the International Monetary Fund [IMF] by the victorious allies at the end of the Second World War in the belief that the two devastating wars of the twentieth century were largely economic in origin. The USSR was wholly, dogmatically convinced that the First World War was the result of expansionist imperialist competition between the European powers; and they ascribed the second to a re-run of the same conflict between a resurgent Germany and the 'Anglo-Saxon' states that had succeeded in 1918 and then dissipated the fruits of victory in the Depression of the 'thirties. The USA and the UK shared the view that the competitive inefficiencies of capitalism had exacerbated the economic problems of the late 'twenties and early 'thirties. The idea behind the new system was to provide transparent means by which each economy could grow as part of a successful international community.
The USSR soon withdrew from active participation in the institutions, and compelled its satellites to leave as well. Then the international organisations served the 'capitalist' world, in an uneasy relationship with the 'third world' of notionally 'non-aligned' countries [which asserted their independence of both the USSR-led and US-led pattern of alliances that maintained the cold war from 1949 to 1992]. During that period the GATT became the WTO, and had to accommodate itself to a global reality where the rhetoric of free trade was greatly modified by each country building up defensive mounds of regulations that kept out many imports that other countries could offer them in greater quantity and of more sophisticated design than their own factories could produce; without imposing tariffs that openly breached WTO rules. When such rules failed, and a government wanted to exclude some import, they could - and did - simply impose 'extraordinary' tariffs, usually 'temporarily' to keep out the unwelcome export. That is what I have called point protectionism in this blog. The recent spat engineered in the USA by Boeing is merely one of thousands of examples.
If Boris Johnson and Liam Fox are such starry-eyed innocents that they believe that WTO Rules will be enough to ensure that the UK can make a safe transit into a post-EU trading world, they are profoundly dangerous.
Thus the Conservatives have to negotiate Brexit: with an increasing majority of the party daily becoming more aware [as are Labour MPs] that the complete separation of the UK from the European Economic Area would put the livelihoods of all sixty million people who depend on the UK economy in grave jeopardy. The Minority of fervent Brexiteers, together with the ambitious chancers who have joined them, assert that the UK can open up huge vistas of trade all over the world, by making trade agreements with a whole raft of countries under WTO Rules.
The World Trade Organisation had its origins in GATT - the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade - which was set up alongside the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development [normally called the World Bank] and the International Monetary Fund [IMF] by the victorious allies at the end of the Second World War in the belief that the two devastating wars of the twentieth century were largely economic in origin. The USSR was wholly, dogmatically convinced that the First World War was the result of expansionist imperialist competition between the European powers; and they ascribed the second to a re-run of the same conflict between a resurgent Germany and the 'Anglo-Saxon' states that had succeeded in 1918 and then dissipated the fruits of victory in the Depression of the 'thirties. The USA and the UK shared the view that the competitive inefficiencies of capitalism had exacerbated the economic problems of the late 'twenties and early 'thirties. The idea behind the new system was to provide transparent means by which each economy could grow as part of a successful international community.
The USSR soon withdrew from active participation in the institutions, and compelled its satellites to leave as well. Then the international organisations served the 'capitalist' world, in an uneasy relationship with the 'third world' of notionally 'non-aligned' countries [which asserted their independence of both the USSR-led and US-led pattern of alliances that maintained the cold war from 1949 to 1992]. During that period the GATT became the WTO, and had to accommodate itself to a global reality where the rhetoric of free trade was greatly modified by each country building up defensive mounds of regulations that kept out many imports that other countries could offer them in greater quantity and of more sophisticated design than their own factories could produce; without imposing tariffs that openly breached WTO rules. When such rules failed, and a government wanted to exclude some import, they could - and did - simply impose 'extraordinary' tariffs, usually 'temporarily' to keep out the unwelcome export. That is what I have called point protectionism in this blog. The recent spat engineered in the USA by Boeing is merely one of thousands of examples.
If Boris Johnson and Liam Fox are such starry-eyed innocents that they believe that WTO Rules will be enough to ensure that the UK can make a safe transit into a post-EU trading world, they are profoundly dangerous.
Monday, 31 July 2017
Odd Ministers at Odds
Dr Liam Fox is a non-practicing physician, which means that he might have some advantage over a person with a doctorate in Economics when it comes to diagnosing the mind of the British population. But for him to suggest that it would be some sort of breach of faith for the government to seek a 'soft Brexit', or a period of transition from membership of the common market to some other status, because a small majority of the voters in the 2006 Referendum voted to "leave the European Union", would be too far to stretch credibility.
I voted to leave, partly because I thought that we 'leavers' would loose but that a strong marker could be put down against the continentals' nonsense of developing an "ever closer union" with its own military capability. When my side won, I hailed the narrow victory as a licence to negotiate a rational settlement with the remaining states of the European Union that would get the United Kingdom out of the morass of the Brussels and Strasbourg institutions but keep this country in the close European free-trade pact that pre-existed the Union. That Dr Fox is now putting up his version of what the vote means is in some ways helpful; because it shows that the Tory 'hard Brexiteers' are truly dangerous for this country.
The rhetoric around the time of the last general election, that both Labour and Conservative parties accepted the majority decision in favour of [undefined] Brexit, masked the underlying fact that most Members of Parliament from both parties who were to be returned in the election had voted to remain in whole shebang of the Union in the referendum. It would now appear that most Members of the Commons do not know how to interpret the referendum result, while an overwhelming majority of the Lords are opposed to the whole concept of Brexit but recognise that they cannot blatantly overturn the decision of the electorate.
The present constitutional position appears to be that referendum result stands as an historic fact, but the sovereignty of parliament was not abandoned by that result. Thus any resultant agreement with the European Union - as with the USA, or Australia, of Belarus - will be made with the assent of the Queen, the Lords and the Commons.
The present political fact appears to be that a small group of headbanging Brexiteers have been given licence by Mrs May to discuss half-baked promises of potential free-trade agreements with various governments that all have the common purpose of clinging on to power by not upsetting too large a proportion of their electorate. These tentative discussions about trade treaties appear to be understood to mean that the hardliners can simply effect a British exit from the European Union with no comprehensive draft treaty with the EU in place. This is infantile absurdity. If such a cliff-edge Brexit were to be undertaken, in a world characterised by point protectionism [as defined in this blog: do a word-check], it would be a recipe for economic devastation in this country.
Mrs May seems to have been flattened by references to her past 'failure', as Home Secretary, to reduce net immigration to a few tens of thousands of people annually. She seems to be caught in the headlights of a juggernaut that is bearing down on her, terrified lest she would be seen to oppose those few party colleagues who assure the electorate that they can keep out mass migration without detriment to the health service or the wider economy. The spectacularly dull Chancellor of the Exchequer is bringing some sense to the discussion, and thus earning the odium of those parts of the press that enjoy the power to press for reckless policies simply because they cannot be held responsible for any outcome. Those same media constantly carry stories to the effect that before the election Mrs May wanted to get rid of Mr Hammond, and can not now do it because of the precariousness of her own position. If the sort of sense that Hammond is promoting is swept aside by the 'hard Brexiteers' the country will be brought to a point of crisis which Mrs May shows no sign of a capability to control.
What Liam Fox was reported to have said over the weekend is gravely alarming: so the sooner the Democratic Unionists abandon their contract with Mrs May to sell her their votes, the better. The collapse of the government into backbiting is the harbinger of collapse; so let it all happen soon.
I voted to leave, partly because I thought that we 'leavers' would loose but that a strong marker could be put down against the continentals' nonsense of developing an "ever closer union" with its own military capability. When my side won, I hailed the narrow victory as a licence to negotiate a rational settlement with the remaining states of the European Union that would get the United Kingdom out of the morass of the Brussels and Strasbourg institutions but keep this country in the close European free-trade pact that pre-existed the Union. That Dr Fox is now putting up his version of what the vote means is in some ways helpful; because it shows that the Tory 'hard Brexiteers' are truly dangerous for this country.
The rhetoric around the time of the last general election, that both Labour and Conservative parties accepted the majority decision in favour of [undefined] Brexit, masked the underlying fact that most Members of Parliament from both parties who were to be returned in the election had voted to remain in whole shebang of the Union in the referendum. It would now appear that most Members of the Commons do not know how to interpret the referendum result, while an overwhelming majority of the Lords are opposed to the whole concept of Brexit but recognise that they cannot blatantly overturn the decision of the electorate.
The present constitutional position appears to be that referendum result stands as an historic fact, but the sovereignty of parliament was not abandoned by that result. Thus any resultant agreement with the European Union - as with the USA, or Australia, of Belarus - will be made with the assent of the Queen, the Lords and the Commons.
The present political fact appears to be that a small group of headbanging Brexiteers have been given licence by Mrs May to discuss half-baked promises of potential free-trade agreements with various governments that all have the common purpose of clinging on to power by not upsetting too large a proportion of their electorate. These tentative discussions about trade treaties appear to be understood to mean that the hardliners can simply effect a British exit from the European Union with no comprehensive draft treaty with the EU in place. This is infantile absurdity. If such a cliff-edge Brexit were to be undertaken, in a world characterised by point protectionism [as defined in this blog: do a word-check], it would be a recipe for economic devastation in this country.
Mrs May seems to have been flattened by references to her past 'failure', as Home Secretary, to reduce net immigration to a few tens of thousands of people annually. She seems to be caught in the headlights of a juggernaut that is bearing down on her, terrified lest she would be seen to oppose those few party colleagues who assure the electorate that they can keep out mass migration without detriment to the health service or the wider economy. The spectacularly dull Chancellor of the Exchequer is bringing some sense to the discussion, and thus earning the odium of those parts of the press that enjoy the power to press for reckless policies simply because they cannot be held responsible for any outcome. Those same media constantly carry stories to the effect that before the election Mrs May wanted to get rid of Mr Hammond, and can not now do it because of the precariousness of her own position. If the sort of sense that Hammond is promoting is swept aside by the 'hard Brexiteers' the country will be brought to a point of crisis which Mrs May shows no sign of a capability to control.
What Liam Fox was reported to have said over the weekend is gravely alarming: so the sooner the Democratic Unionists abandon their contract with Mrs May to sell her their votes, the better. The collapse of the government into backbiting is the harbinger of collapse; so let it all happen soon.
Tuesday, 18 July 2017
Brexit: Hard, Soft or Stupid?
Yesterday, David Davis began his 'negotiation' with the agents of the EU Commission about the terms on which Britain will carry through its invocation of the relevant provisions of the Lisbon Treaty, for the cessation of Britain's membership. It was emphasised on all the visual media, that the EU side of the table had extensive piles of briefing material while the British had none.
The British people has no idea whatsoever their government is seeking in this vital negotiation. All inquiries are referred to Mrs May's 'Lancaster House Speech'; which is uninformative and no longer relevant. It is uninformative because it has no specifics; it is irrelevant because since she made that speech she has tried, and disastrously failed, to establish a strong political base in the Commons for herself. On becoming the prime minister, she made the spectacularly stupid remark: "Brexit means Brexit". Brexit means nothing: it was dreamed up as a code-word for the process that no-one understood - how to interpret and implement the intentions of the narrow majority in the 2016 Referendum - and it copied the term Grexit which had been coined in the previous year to cover a potential Greek withdrawal from the Eurozone.
I voted for leaving the EU as part of the mass protest against the political class - even more the continental version than the British - and, more specifically, against the idiotic scare stories that were being promoted by George Osborne and David Cameron. I expected the remainers to win, but I hoped that their majority would be so small that it would serve as a warning to the class [right across the Union] that they were pushing the mass of the people too hard in a direction of austerity and integration that the people deeply resented.
It was obvious that the political class would still be in power on the day after the referendum; and my hope was that they would be sufficiently chastened for their europhilism to be modified. Instead, the class leadership crumpled. Cameron ran away early on the morning the result was announced; and in quick time a mild remainer, Mrs May, became a prime minister who was totally unprepared to address the situation. Inevitably, she rid her government of Osborne; then, at her own discretion she appointed three 'Brexiteers' to lead the negotiations and thus to shape the path that that the UK should take in implementation of the referendum vote. Boris Johnson has developed his role as an insubstantial buffoon and a pretty ineffectual Foreign Secretary. The important role of planning the way through 'Brexit' [whatever that might mean] was divided between Davis as lead negotiator with the EU and Fox as the man who would - apparently - make trade deals with the rest of the world that would substitute worldwide markets for what Britain might loose in a Europe that was closed against British goods and services. So far as one can tell, these are two dafter buffoons than Boris, who have been given licenses separately and in their own ways to ruin the country.
It is essential that Britain remains within the European Economic Area: news items every day show that supply chains from toffee factories to radiotherapy suites depend unconditionally upon that precondition; and the UK must be prepared to pay whatever has to be paid, immediately and for the indefinite future, to get out of the EU political institutions [Commission and Parliament, in particular] and to remain within the economic union. There must be a massive national uprising if and when it becomes clear that the 'hard Brexiteers' are trying to produce any other result. As I pointed out a few days ago, India, China and USA - in particular - are notorious for overriding trade agreements whenever point protectionism is needed to protect one of their industries or service activities. It is the height of folly for any responsible adult to pretend that a series of one-to-one trade agreements - even if they could be effected - would be validated by events.
Allegedly, some members of the Cabinet, unable to halt the buffoons, are arguing for a long adjustment period, during which more rational thinking should be allowed some space. Against such 'slow Brexiteers' there are those who argue that the national referendum result was binding, that it must be implemented in the most ruinous way, and that it must be done quickly to give effect to the 'will of the people'; who will be free to repent of their votes at leisure. Mrs May has no authority to adjudicate on this contest.
Mercifully, Corbyn has shown himself to be completely out of his depth on the matter: otherwise, the Labour opposition could be extremely difficult at this time. The Labour party will not provide the focus for the national revolt: so we all may have to fall back on Vince Cable to be the nation's lightening conductor. Let us hope that, if it comes to that, he has the necessary stamina. At least, he got his doctorate in Economics before the Econocracy had gained their mastery of the field.
The British people has no idea whatsoever their government is seeking in this vital negotiation. All inquiries are referred to Mrs May's 'Lancaster House Speech'; which is uninformative and no longer relevant. It is uninformative because it has no specifics; it is irrelevant because since she made that speech she has tried, and disastrously failed, to establish a strong political base in the Commons for herself. On becoming the prime minister, she made the spectacularly stupid remark: "Brexit means Brexit". Brexit means nothing: it was dreamed up as a code-word for the process that no-one understood - how to interpret and implement the intentions of the narrow majority in the 2016 Referendum - and it copied the term Grexit which had been coined in the previous year to cover a potential Greek withdrawal from the Eurozone.
I voted for leaving the EU as part of the mass protest against the political class - even more the continental version than the British - and, more specifically, against the idiotic scare stories that were being promoted by George Osborne and David Cameron. I expected the remainers to win, but I hoped that their majority would be so small that it would serve as a warning to the class [right across the Union] that they were pushing the mass of the people too hard in a direction of austerity and integration that the people deeply resented.
It was obvious that the political class would still be in power on the day after the referendum; and my hope was that they would be sufficiently chastened for their europhilism to be modified. Instead, the class leadership crumpled. Cameron ran away early on the morning the result was announced; and in quick time a mild remainer, Mrs May, became a prime minister who was totally unprepared to address the situation. Inevitably, she rid her government of Osborne; then, at her own discretion she appointed three 'Brexiteers' to lead the negotiations and thus to shape the path that that the UK should take in implementation of the referendum vote. Boris Johnson has developed his role as an insubstantial buffoon and a pretty ineffectual Foreign Secretary. The important role of planning the way through 'Brexit' [whatever that might mean] was divided between Davis as lead negotiator with the EU and Fox as the man who would - apparently - make trade deals with the rest of the world that would substitute worldwide markets for what Britain might loose in a Europe that was closed against British goods and services. So far as one can tell, these are two dafter buffoons than Boris, who have been given licenses separately and in their own ways to ruin the country.
It is essential that Britain remains within the European Economic Area: news items every day show that supply chains from toffee factories to radiotherapy suites depend unconditionally upon that precondition; and the UK must be prepared to pay whatever has to be paid, immediately and for the indefinite future, to get out of the EU political institutions [Commission and Parliament, in particular] and to remain within the economic union. There must be a massive national uprising if and when it becomes clear that the 'hard Brexiteers' are trying to produce any other result. As I pointed out a few days ago, India, China and USA - in particular - are notorious for overriding trade agreements whenever point protectionism is needed to protect one of their industries or service activities. It is the height of folly for any responsible adult to pretend that a series of one-to-one trade agreements - even if they could be effected - would be validated by events.
Allegedly, some members of the Cabinet, unable to halt the buffoons, are arguing for a long adjustment period, during which more rational thinking should be allowed some space. Against such 'slow Brexiteers' there are those who argue that the national referendum result was binding, that it must be implemented in the most ruinous way, and that it must be done quickly to give effect to the 'will of the people'; who will be free to repent of their votes at leisure. Mrs May has no authority to adjudicate on this contest.
Mercifully, Corbyn has shown himself to be completely out of his depth on the matter: otherwise, the Labour opposition could be extremely difficult at this time. The Labour party will not provide the focus for the national revolt: so we all may have to fall back on Vince Cable to be the nation's lightening conductor. Let us hope that, if it comes to that, he has the necessary stamina. At least, he got his doctorate in Economics before the Econocracy had gained their mastery of the field.
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