Jeremy Corbyn has gained a new measure of popularity in recent months, largely because he has become popular. He has changed from being a crabby, obsessed 'leftie' to being an almost-charismatic emblem of popular disgust with boring, respectable politicians. In his speech yesterday his main task was to transmit some of the enthusiasm that was being shown - to excess - in the hall at the Labour Party Conference to the wider population; while combining it with a measure of responsible policy that can be presented to the electorate. Much of what he has recently advocated has my strong endorsement , based on half a century of intensive study of the history and effectiveness [or, as usual, ineffectiveness] of economic policy: especially when derived from economic theory. A modern country needs a mixed economy, with a large amount of state investment and public ownership of natural monopolies [which must, of course, be at least as well managed by the public sector as the private sector: which would be hard to achieve, but is doable].
One aspect of his speech, however, verged on the cretinous. That was his apparent Luddism in suggesting that action should be taken - including punitive taxation - to prevent human beings' jobs being taken over by robots; presumably at the behest of wicked capitalists. Virtually every forecast for the medium term future of the economy envisage huge benefits [not least, massive gains in productivity and in the range of products and experiences that will be available] due to innovations where human ideas are made into products and experiences to be enjoyed by everyone by the combined action of people and machines drawing on intensified robotics and enhanced artificial intelligence [AI].
The origin of the term Luddism comes from the mythical character Ned Ludd, the supposed organiser of the gangs of handicraft workers who broke into premises and smashed machines that were capable of replacing old-established crafts [because they greatly enhanced productivity] in the new factories, particularly in textile manufacture in the period 1790-1820. Individual employers were ruined by the Luddites, and a few workmen were penalised when they were caught in the act [or betrayed by colleagues]; but over a couple of decades the machines prevailed, and employment increased [though this often included child exploitation, until that was banned by laws that were enforced by inspectors who actually entered the employers' premises]. The ban on child labour, the ban on womens' night work, bans on the use of dangerous chemicals and processes need to be enforced in a civilised society: the state must be active in the economy to promote and preserve human rights and humans' health. One result of recent laissez-faire attitudes in society at the start of this millennium is the rise of 'modern slavery' [though I cannot detect anything notably modern about it]. The government's obsessive austerity has reduced the numbers of police officers, while terrorist threats have reoriented the work of many officers: with the result that offences like internationally-traded forced prostitution and domestic service have grown almost uninterrupted.
This is the background against which - so it is promised - Mrs May is to utter a peon of praise to the 'free market' as the central point of her speech to the Conservative Conference which opens today. This will be contrasted by the press [which is predominantly pro-Conservative] with the backward-looking old socialism and Luddism of the Corbyn effort yesterday. Mrs May will utter this claptrap in between calls to the US president asking for his intervention in a trade war with the US over the fate of the Bombardier aircraft factory in Belfast [and three other plant in Northern Ireland, as described yesterday in this blog]: a prime example of point protectionism which makes nonsense of the hard Brexiteers' vision of the future. Mrs May has to press this case, in defence of free trade ideology, despite the fact that her parliamentary majority depends upon taking a chauvinistic stance on the Bombardier issue. She lost the recent general election, and clings on to power with the votes of the Democratic Unionists. All the Bombardier plants are in constituencies held by the DUP: and the Bombardier jobs are of such importance to Catholic as well as Protestant workers that Sinn Fein's leader has signed a joint letter with the DUP leader to send to the US Vice-President. Hostilities at Stormont have been transcended by this issue; and Mrs May is compelled to make a nonsense of her free market rhetoric even as she utters it. Nevertheless, as a poodle of the Northern Ireland politicians she has no option but to demonstrate in the clearest way that her rhetoric is claptrap. Thus the Tories will be diminished by the inconsistency and infighting that will be in full view in the coming days: yet they all know they must hang on to office, or Corbyn will have the chance of his lifetime.
Showing posts with label Labour Party. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Labour Party. Show all posts
Thursday, 28 September 2017
Monday, 18 September 2017
Brexit Britain Divided
The United Kingdom is more deeply riven by economic, political and social issues than it has ever been before. I say this with the benefit of a quarter of a century teaching Economics and economic History in a major university followed by a further quarter-century living in Tower Hamlets and active in the City of London. Thus I have half a century of reading, listening and probing; and, as a bonus, I have the luck to have a second home in the Peak District where I hear another spectrum of opinions and lore. Throughout history, most constituencies were controlled by a single party, after the dominant landowners surrendered control during the nineteenth century. Rural areas and affluent inner London were solidly Tory, some mixed-economy areas tended to return Liberal MPs, and the heavily industrial and mining areas were solid Labour. There were - and still are - anomalies: the constituency in which I first had a vote [Darwen, now Rossendale and Darwen] has improbably elected Tories all my life; but such exceptions are rare. However, in a rapidly-changing context, the old certainties have gone. The Brexit vote cut right across party traditions, and leaders' admonitions had minimal impact on voters' choice.
In the nineteen-nineties the Labour Party was split by the Blairites, who did not eradicate old-Labour in the new century but instead left stagnant pools of Marxist infantilism to fester while the legendary pragmatism of the big-union bosses became heavily diluted. The present mushroom growth of a new-left Labour is both an indication of voter dissatisfaction - especially [but not only] among the young - and of a search for ideals. The cupboard-love of the students and graduates who liked Corbyn's reckless 'pledge' about tuition fees during the recent election has dissipated, and the peak of the latest boom has probably passed.
The Conservative Party has never been in such disarray as it now displays: the old establishment of 'grandees' who could remove a leader with swift silence seem to have disappeared, and everything now hinges on a speech in Italy which has been heralded for weeks and will prove in the event [on Friday] to be a display of the Prime Minister's incomprehension, confusion and insecurity. Even if her cobbled-together second kitchen cabinet is able to deliver a more rational speech than I expect, the Tories will be left with the recollection that they set the referendum hare running - expecting a different result - and they have no idea what to make of the situation that they have created. Mrs May said "Brexit means Brexit", a supremely silly phrase which will haunt her even more than "strong and stable"; and she has given no indication of whether she thinks the vote was to leave the political institutions of the EU [only] - as would gain massive popular approval - or to cut adrift from the customs union and the common market, which would smash the economy and make the Irish situation irresolvable.
Tories and Labour are split on which sort of Brexit was intended by the voters, and by their opinions as to where to go now. The LibDems and ScotNats are determined remainers, and may well swing parliamentary votes: especially by the LibDems in the House of Lords.
Meanwhile, media commentators cannot agree whether or not the country has a wider gap between better-off and worse-off citizens; though the gap between the most highly remunerated and the lowest has not been greater than it is now, since the economy and society were put back to zero by the Second World War.
An early General Election would not resolve the situation. In England the LibDem vote might go up, which would mitigate Labour gains and produce the spectacle of Corbyn and Cable negotiating a coalition: that would then have to try to attract the ScotNats and some Irish contingent [most of whom hate Corbyn as an IRA supporter].
Most people know that they are getting worse off. Many worry about their borrowing. Many are extremely anxious about the homes they can barely afford to keep or those they cannot afford to rent or to buy.
Just as the majority of Russians are content to have Stalin rehabilitated, and his statues refurbished in some places, so there is a nostalgia in Britain for the mixed economy and the welfare state that the Thatcherites and the Blarites did so much to destroy.
To that I will return tomorrow; as my recent blogs have become overlong.
In the nineteen-nineties the Labour Party was split by the Blairites, who did not eradicate old-Labour in the new century but instead left stagnant pools of Marxist infantilism to fester while the legendary pragmatism of the big-union bosses became heavily diluted. The present mushroom growth of a new-left Labour is both an indication of voter dissatisfaction - especially [but not only] among the young - and of a search for ideals. The cupboard-love of the students and graduates who liked Corbyn's reckless 'pledge' about tuition fees during the recent election has dissipated, and the peak of the latest boom has probably passed.
The Conservative Party has never been in such disarray as it now displays: the old establishment of 'grandees' who could remove a leader with swift silence seem to have disappeared, and everything now hinges on a speech in Italy which has been heralded for weeks and will prove in the event [on Friday] to be a display of the Prime Minister's incomprehension, confusion and insecurity. Even if her cobbled-together second kitchen cabinet is able to deliver a more rational speech than I expect, the Tories will be left with the recollection that they set the referendum hare running - expecting a different result - and they have no idea what to make of the situation that they have created. Mrs May said "Brexit means Brexit", a supremely silly phrase which will haunt her even more than "strong and stable"; and she has given no indication of whether she thinks the vote was to leave the political institutions of the EU [only] - as would gain massive popular approval - or to cut adrift from the customs union and the common market, which would smash the economy and make the Irish situation irresolvable.
Tories and Labour are split on which sort of Brexit was intended by the voters, and by their opinions as to where to go now. The LibDems and ScotNats are determined remainers, and may well swing parliamentary votes: especially by the LibDems in the House of Lords.
Meanwhile, media commentators cannot agree whether or not the country has a wider gap between better-off and worse-off citizens; though the gap between the most highly remunerated and the lowest has not been greater than it is now, since the economy and society were put back to zero by the Second World War.
An early General Election would not resolve the situation. In England the LibDem vote might go up, which would mitigate Labour gains and produce the spectacle of Corbyn and Cable negotiating a coalition: that would then have to try to attract the ScotNats and some Irish contingent [most of whom hate Corbyn as an IRA supporter].
Most people know that they are getting worse off. Many worry about their borrowing. Many are extremely anxious about the homes they can barely afford to keep or those they cannot afford to rent or to buy.
Just as the majority of Russians are content to have Stalin rehabilitated, and his statues refurbished in some places, so there is a nostalgia in Britain for the mixed economy and the welfare state that the Thatcherites and the Blarites did so much to destroy.
To that I will return tomorrow; as my recent blogs have become overlong.
Wednesday, 30 August 2017
Mrs May in Japan
I find it increasingly difficult to believe that Mrs May has any significant common sense at all. She demonstrates daily that she has no dress sense; and in the selection of her kitchen cabinet when she went into Number Ten she created a machine that came close to destroying her credibility with her party and her relations with her most necessary ministerial colleagues.
The Chairman of the EU Commission was quite right yesterday to assert that the position papers that have been cobbled together for the UK government lack both conceptual clarity and essential data. It appears that the Prime Minister - who was an indecisive 'Remainer' in the 2016 EU Referendum - has been bullied into quiescence by the noisy minority in her party who choose to believe that the narrow result of the Referendum must be interpreted to mean that the UK must leave the political Union and also the European Economic Area.
And now she has gone to Japan, where she will encounter almost-infinite courtesy but where it is most unlikely that anyone will speak directly to her of their country's attitude to the risks that are inherent for them in the present utterly unclear Brexit situation. Thousands of Japanese firms in both manufacturing and the financial services have established facilities and bases in Britain. One major factor in this is that London is [obviously] an English-speaking city so this suits the Japanese, most of whom are not great linguists but have been schooled in English for at least a decade of their lives. But a bigger factor than the use of English is that the UK is fully in the European Common Market and the customs union.
The "hard Brexiteer" position on the future relations of the UK with the EU will seem to the Japanese - who located their assets in Britain-in-Europe in good faith - to be a complete betrayal of the understanding on which they have invested so heavily in the United Kingdom. The Japanese are still keen on concepts of honour, and if Mrs May and her team dishonourably shuffle their papers and equivocate on the key question of whether Britain will remain in the European Economic Area after any 'transition period', Japanese finance will be withheld: and if Britain is sufficiently idiotic as to opt openly for a 'hard Brexit' Japanese firms will be among the first to move assets out of Britain. There is no equivocation about this, and however much Mrs May might try to con herself by accepting Japanese courtesy as acceptance of any stance that she might take up, the fact remains that Japan will be strictly self-interested. Grandiloquent talk about "island peoples furthering their common interests in a wide trading world" will just be talk.
Britain outside the European Economic Area is only of minimal interest to Japan, as a minor market for some exports. The main Japanese concern about Britain, in the event of a 'hard Brexit', will be to get their assets out of the UK with the least possible loss of money and of 'face'.
Prime Minister Abe is an unusual Japanese: he is more capable of directly expressing his individual thoughts than are many of his compatriots: and he seems to be more willing than most to do it. There is just a small hope that he will be able to educate Mrs May [who is, indubitably, difficult to educate], but I am not optimistic.
Now that the Labour Party has approached a sensible position on Brexit, the Tory majority of 'moderates' are realising that they have very limited time to talk their leader into common sense. I doubt that she is capable of undergoing that learning process: if so, the sooner she is removed from office, the better.
The Chairman of the EU Commission was quite right yesterday to assert that the position papers that have been cobbled together for the UK government lack both conceptual clarity and essential data. It appears that the Prime Minister - who was an indecisive 'Remainer' in the 2016 EU Referendum - has been bullied into quiescence by the noisy minority in her party who choose to believe that the narrow result of the Referendum must be interpreted to mean that the UK must leave the political Union and also the European Economic Area.
And now she has gone to Japan, where she will encounter almost-infinite courtesy but where it is most unlikely that anyone will speak directly to her of their country's attitude to the risks that are inherent for them in the present utterly unclear Brexit situation. Thousands of Japanese firms in both manufacturing and the financial services have established facilities and bases in Britain. One major factor in this is that London is [obviously] an English-speaking city so this suits the Japanese, most of whom are not great linguists but have been schooled in English for at least a decade of their lives. But a bigger factor than the use of English is that the UK is fully in the European Common Market and the customs union.
The "hard Brexiteer" position on the future relations of the UK with the EU will seem to the Japanese - who located their assets in Britain-in-Europe in good faith - to be a complete betrayal of the understanding on which they have invested so heavily in the United Kingdom. The Japanese are still keen on concepts of honour, and if Mrs May and her team dishonourably shuffle their papers and equivocate on the key question of whether Britain will remain in the European Economic Area after any 'transition period', Japanese finance will be withheld: and if Britain is sufficiently idiotic as to opt openly for a 'hard Brexit' Japanese firms will be among the first to move assets out of Britain. There is no equivocation about this, and however much Mrs May might try to con herself by accepting Japanese courtesy as acceptance of any stance that she might take up, the fact remains that Japan will be strictly self-interested. Grandiloquent talk about "island peoples furthering their common interests in a wide trading world" will just be talk.
Britain outside the European Economic Area is only of minimal interest to Japan, as a minor market for some exports. The main Japanese concern about Britain, in the event of a 'hard Brexit', will be to get their assets out of the UK with the least possible loss of money and of 'face'.
Prime Minister Abe is an unusual Japanese: he is more capable of directly expressing his individual thoughts than are many of his compatriots: and he seems to be more willing than most to do it. There is just a small hope that he will be able to educate Mrs May [who is, indubitably, difficult to educate], but I am not optimistic.
Now that the Labour Party has approached a sensible position on Brexit, the Tory majority of 'moderates' are realising that they have very limited time to talk their leader into common sense. I doubt that she is capable of undergoing that learning process: if so, the sooner she is removed from office, the better.
Sunday, 27 August 2017
Labour, Brexit and an Alt-Econocrat
There is no more pressing issue in British politics than that of the future relationship of the UK to the European Union, and therefore no apology is required on returning to the subject.
The Labour Party has taken a huge step towards rationality on that matter over this Bank Holiday weekend by making a new and very different statement on its policy. Under the new Shadow Secretary of State for exit, Sir Keir Starmer, they now accept that it would be essential for there to be significant transition period during which the UK would continue to enjoy the comfort of being within the European Economic Area [though out of the political Union, in deference to the referendum resut]. This would be at the expense of keeping the country under the jurisdiction of the European Court, and obliged to accept the free movement of people with the EU. Starmer can claim to be far more traditionally Labour than the public schoolboy Jeremy Corbyn, because his working parents named him in honour of Keir Hardie: an early Labour leader. If discussions during the transition can include the resolution of the two difficult issues of free movement and the extent of the powers of the European Court, Labour holds out the prospect that the 'transitional' could become the permanent basis for the relationship of Britain to the EU: while the country would be able to make additional pacts on trade with other countries provided the conditions for retaining membership of the European Economic Area are maintained.
This presents a package on which Labour can make a strong bid for the 'middle ground' of politics, and knocks any idea of the LibDems forming the core of a strong new 'Centre Party' right out of the picture. Corbyn's caricature student-leftery can virtually be ignored if the party continues to promote rational 'moderates' [with good political credentials] to shadow posts. Pro-EU Tory MPs - who formed the vast majority at the time of the referendum, and who have been largely ignored since Mrs May's 'conversion' to hard Brexitry - should be really scared, to the extent that they should now make clear their reservations about the tone of Cabinet policy, in view of the fact that Labor has displayed a capacity for rationality.
Also in recent days, Professor Patrick Minford has obtained publicity for his view that a 'hard Brexit' would be beneficial for the United Kingdom. According to his ultra-Econocratic model of the economy, Britain would gain massively by being completely outside the European Union [including all aspects of the European Economic Area], with a GDP at least 6.5% higher than is being achieved within the union. This rests on the assumption that the country could trade on a completely level playing field with all economic entities in the world; according to his model of a market economy whose participants operate on the basis of 'rational expectations' of each others' actions conforming to the psychological assumptions that are implicit in the model. Professor Minford achieved prominence when he supported extreme Thatcherism against the majority of the then-still-NeoKeynesian 'economics profession' in 1981. For a while he had the Prime Minster's favour, though he was eventually palmed-off with a CBE.
The fruits of Thatcherism are here for him to see, and to input into his model [which is now even more comprehensively Econocratic]: desperately low productivity, nil productiveness, a massive deficit on public spending, a constant deficit on the balance of payments, over-dependence of the economy on the service sector and on consumers spending borrowed money. To that catalogue of the achievements that are ascribable to the policies that he recommended to the Thatcher government, we can be sure that after a hard Brexit the UK would find that there was no permanently level patch on the playing field of global trade. Point protectionism [as mentioned several times in this blog], combined with long-term protectionism of favoured sectors in virtually every economy on the planet will ensure that a naked Britain, alone in the wicked world - which still remembers the slights from the British Empire of the past - would be nothing like the heroic entity in the professor's model, and the irrational prejudice which is more common in global statecraft than anything like Minford's 'rationality' would ensure that the model could not work. The limit to the Econocrats' world view is seen in the fact that real people have not vanished from the villages that surrounded the closed coal mines: they stay as second and third generation malcontents whose habits undermine their health, while they survive on a combination of low wages from non-productive jobs, state benefits and borrowing.
Keit Starmer is well on the way to producing a rational and humane model of Brexit for the Labour Party. Patrick Minford is trying to power the nutty Tory Brexiteers along a path that would enable
them massively to intensify the range and extent of the problems that already confront the real-world population of this benighted country.
The Labour Party has taken a huge step towards rationality on that matter over this Bank Holiday weekend by making a new and very different statement on its policy. Under the new Shadow Secretary of State for exit, Sir Keir Starmer, they now accept that it would be essential for there to be significant transition period during which the UK would continue to enjoy the comfort of being within the European Economic Area [though out of the political Union, in deference to the referendum resut]. This would be at the expense of keeping the country under the jurisdiction of the European Court, and obliged to accept the free movement of people with the EU. Starmer can claim to be far more traditionally Labour than the public schoolboy Jeremy Corbyn, because his working parents named him in honour of Keir Hardie: an early Labour leader. If discussions during the transition can include the resolution of the two difficult issues of free movement and the extent of the powers of the European Court, Labour holds out the prospect that the 'transitional' could become the permanent basis for the relationship of Britain to the EU: while the country would be able to make additional pacts on trade with other countries provided the conditions for retaining membership of the European Economic Area are maintained.
This presents a package on which Labour can make a strong bid for the 'middle ground' of politics, and knocks any idea of the LibDems forming the core of a strong new 'Centre Party' right out of the picture. Corbyn's caricature student-leftery can virtually be ignored if the party continues to promote rational 'moderates' [with good political credentials] to shadow posts. Pro-EU Tory MPs - who formed the vast majority at the time of the referendum, and who have been largely ignored since Mrs May's 'conversion' to hard Brexitry - should be really scared, to the extent that they should now make clear their reservations about the tone of Cabinet policy, in view of the fact that Labor has displayed a capacity for rationality.
Also in recent days, Professor Patrick Minford has obtained publicity for his view that a 'hard Brexit' would be beneficial for the United Kingdom. According to his ultra-Econocratic model of the economy, Britain would gain massively by being completely outside the European Union [including all aspects of the European Economic Area], with a GDP at least 6.5% higher than is being achieved within the union. This rests on the assumption that the country could trade on a completely level playing field with all economic entities in the world; according to his model of a market economy whose participants operate on the basis of 'rational expectations' of each others' actions conforming to the psychological assumptions that are implicit in the model. Professor Minford achieved prominence when he supported extreme Thatcherism against the majority of the then-still-NeoKeynesian 'economics profession' in 1981. For a while he had the Prime Minster's favour, though he was eventually palmed-off with a CBE.
The fruits of Thatcherism are here for him to see, and to input into his model [which is now even more comprehensively Econocratic]: desperately low productivity, nil productiveness, a massive deficit on public spending, a constant deficit on the balance of payments, over-dependence of the economy on the service sector and on consumers spending borrowed money. To that catalogue of the achievements that are ascribable to the policies that he recommended to the Thatcher government, we can be sure that after a hard Brexit the UK would find that there was no permanently level patch on the playing field of global trade. Point protectionism [as mentioned several times in this blog], combined with long-term protectionism of favoured sectors in virtually every economy on the planet will ensure that a naked Britain, alone in the wicked world - which still remembers the slights from the British Empire of the past - would be nothing like the heroic entity in the professor's model, and the irrational prejudice which is more common in global statecraft than anything like Minford's 'rationality' would ensure that the model could not work. The limit to the Econocrats' world view is seen in the fact that real people have not vanished from the villages that surrounded the closed coal mines: they stay as second and third generation malcontents whose habits undermine their health, while they survive on a combination of low wages from non-productive jobs, state benefits and borrowing.
Keit Starmer is well on the way to producing a rational and humane model of Brexit for the Labour Party. Patrick Minford is trying to power the nutty Tory Brexiteers along a path that would enable
them massively to intensify the range and extent of the problems that already confront the real-world population of this benighted country.
Monday, 10 July 2017
Lame Ducks and Kamikaze in Cloud-Cuckoo Land
Mrs May's new ploy might be quite clever; and if it is, one wonders who dreamed it up for her. To issue a draft speech two days early is a new trick, as far as I know. It is designed to set the media into a frenzy and to challenge the opposition parties to make a considered response to the apparently-arid actual content of the discourse.
Mrs May appears to be a lame duck premier, but her party dare not precipitate an election if it can be avoided. She may indeed survive long enough for the arch-Brexiteers to be shown up as lame ducks, instead.
A so-called Kamikaze wing of the Conservative party is - against all reason - demanding a 'hard' Brexit, which seems to mean complete withdrawal from the European Economic Area and the destruction of what the Thatcherites [and the neo-Thatcherite New Labour crew] left of the British economy. With various degrees of enthusiasm about self-immolation, there are reckoned to be up to sixty people of that persuasion: enough the prevent any more moderate consensus in the Tory party. Before her spectacularly unsuccessful election campaign, Mrs May hoped to get a big enough majority, including a large number of Remainers among the new MPs, to be able to face down the loonies and come to a solution of the Brexit dilemma [which she did not solicit personally] that could probably attract massive support in parliament and in the so-called parliament of the EU.
She is now launching an attempt to build a Commons consensus anyway. It will take a long time, but it may have the effect of moderating the success of the Momentum movement in the Labour Party.
Corbyn was spectacularly equivocal in all the recent election grandstanding about the Brexit issue. His personal antagonism towards anything that might protect or strengthen capitalism is beyond doubt, and as is evidenced in Germany the EU is good for business. M Macron's euro-enthusiasm is largely driven by his recognition that it will be less difficult finally to smash the French trade unions in a context of a stronger European Union than in has proven to be in a still-sovereign France. The Corbynistas will have noticed that: Macron is a product of the French system for producing technocrats who serve the secret state that lies behind the constitution, and the hard left recognises the enemy. This is the context in which Corbyn's twists and turns in the coming months should be observed. He has command of the party - increasingly - thanks to the crazy constitutional changes that his predecessor pushed through the party: but he has no empathy with the mainstream tradition of the Labour party which most of his MPs [including the new cohort] represent.
Thus Mrs May's scenario planning could set the Corbynista minority of Labour and the Kamikaze minority of the Tories on the outside of a developing consensus. As that political experiment fails at the first hurdle, but might eventually be made to run, economic reality will turn the enthusiastic Brexiteer ministers into lame ducks. Putting both Fox and Davis alongside Johnson in key roles at the sharp edge of the Brexit negotiations seemed crazy at first: and perhaps it was simply that: crazy. But now the real evidence is coming to the top, the wedges between the three musketeers will become apparent. David Davis is learning the limits of practicality, and will soon have to make a decision about whether he sides with Philip Hammond [who has already, in effect, said that the UK must remain within the European Economic Area] or go out on a limb. Johnson will follow where the wind blows: he was late in deciding to opt for the Brexit camp, astonished when they won, and confused now that they are faced with increasingly harsh realities.
Liam Fox has appeared to be the most dangerous Brexiteer minister. He seems really to have believed what he said about the gains that post-Brexit agreements with the USA and India and China can bring to the country. But today the main manufacturing employers' body has emphasised that point protectionism is increasingly transcending overall trade agreements specifically in China, India and the USA. To protect their own firms, trade associations and governments in those countries are simply setting up ad hoc barriers against imports, especially of the high-tech and IP-strong exports that Britain needs to build up in the future. Fox will be proven to be a very lame duck before he can be really dangerous; and that public exposure will greatly strengthen the argument that the UK must remain within the European Free Trade Area: on almost-any terms.
Mrs May appears to be a lame duck premier, but her party dare not precipitate an election if it can be avoided. She may indeed survive long enough for the arch-Brexiteers to be shown up as lame ducks, instead.
A so-called Kamikaze wing of the Conservative party is - against all reason - demanding a 'hard' Brexit, which seems to mean complete withdrawal from the European Economic Area and the destruction of what the Thatcherites [and the neo-Thatcherite New Labour crew] left of the British economy. With various degrees of enthusiasm about self-immolation, there are reckoned to be up to sixty people of that persuasion: enough the prevent any more moderate consensus in the Tory party. Before her spectacularly unsuccessful election campaign, Mrs May hoped to get a big enough majority, including a large number of Remainers among the new MPs, to be able to face down the loonies and come to a solution of the Brexit dilemma [which she did not solicit personally] that could probably attract massive support in parliament and in the so-called parliament of the EU.
She is now launching an attempt to build a Commons consensus anyway. It will take a long time, but it may have the effect of moderating the success of the Momentum movement in the Labour Party.
Corbyn was spectacularly equivocal in all the recent election grandstanding about the Brexit issue. His personal antagonism towards anything that might protect or strengthen capitalism is beyond doubt, and as is evidenced in Germany the EU is good for business. M Macron's euro-enthusiasm is largely driven by his recognition that it will be less difficult finally to smash the French trade unions in a context of a stronger European Union than in has proven to be in a still-sovereign France. The Corbynistas will have noticed that: Macron is a product of the French system for producing technocrats who serve the secret state that lies behind the constitution, and the hard left recognises the enemy. This is the context in which Corbyn's twists and turns in the coming months should be observed. He has command of the party - increasingly - thanks to the crazy constitutional changes that his predecessor pushed through the party: but he has no empathy with the mainstream tradition of the Labour party which most of his MPs [including the new cohort] represent.
Thus Mrs May's scenario planning could set the Corbynista minority of Labour and the Kamikaze minority of the Tories on the outside of a developing consensus. As that political experiment fails at the first hurdle, but might eventually be made to run, economic reality will turn the enthusiastic Brexiteer ministers into lame ducks. Putting both Fox and Davis alongside Johnson in key roles at the sharp edge of the Brexit negotiations seemed crazy at first: and perhaps it was simply that: crazy. But now the real evidence is coming to the top, the wedges between the three musketeers will become apparent. David Davis is learning the limits of practicality, and will soon have to make a decision about whether he sides with Philip Hammond [who has already, in effect, said that the UK must remain within the European Economic Area] or go out on a limb. Johnson will follow where the wind blows: he was late in deciding to opt for the Brexit camp, astonished when they won, and confused now that they are faced with increasingly harsh realities.
Liam Fox has appeared to be the most dangerous Brexiteer minister. He seems really to have believed what he said about the gains that post-Brexit agreements with the USA and India and China can bring to the country. But today the main manufacturing employers' body has emphasised that point protectionism is increasingly transcending overall trade agreements specifically in China, India and the USA. To protect their own firms, trade associations and governments in those countries are simply setting up ad hoc barriers against imports, especially of the high-tech and IP-strong exports that Britain needs to build up in the future. Fox will be proven to be a very lame duck before he can be really dangerous; and that public exposure will greatly strengthen the argument that the UK must remain within the European Free Trade Area: on almost-any terms.
Tuesday, 7 February 2012
The Other Silly Milliband
The British political class has almost eliminated 'real people' [such as miners, dockers and self-made businessmen; who formed significant cohorts of MPs even within living memory] from Parliament. 'Unreal' people who have no attachment to any identifiable strand of British society have come to the fore; especially in the Labour Party. Even in the bizarre firmament of Westminster the Milliband brothers are an unusual component of the prevalent class. Their immigrant academic father became influential in the left of the Labour Party which has always preferred intellectual games to any engagement with ill-spoken vulgar working men and women. The boys followed the path that their parents' patronage made available to them: to a carefully exceptional 'comprehensive' school that actually enabled its pupils for university entrance, to read subjects in elite universities where the admissions tutors knew their father from his writings and in many cases personally. On graduation they slid into to jobs that were recognised preparatory steps to adoption as Labour parliamentary candidates.
Both were elected to parliament, as candidates handed down from Party HQ to take over constituencies that may as well have been in another continent in terms of the brothers' experience and empathy. Both reached the 'New Labour' cabinet and David Milliband, once he was appointed Foreign Secretary, was tipped as a future leader of the party. After the electorate decisively rejected Gordon Brown's highly personal general election campaign in 2010, Brown stood down and in the subsequent election for a leader the younger Brother - Ed - shocked the faithful and delighted the media by competing against his sibling. As the campaign proceeded it became clear that the trade union component of the electorate had been encouraged to think that Ed Milliband was more sympathetic to 'old Labour' and more likely to repudiate the perceived ineptitude of Brown and the reviled warmongering of Blair than were the other candidates: and so against all expectations of commentators outside the party Ed won the leadership. His performance has rarely rated above 'embarrassing', despite the best efforts of the array of minders and scriptwriters, psephologists and policy analysts that surround any contemporary party leader. The recognition that a forced resignation of the new leader, followed by another election, would earn disastrous media attention for the party forced all factions of the party to coalesce in a show of support for a leader who was popularly likened to a cartoon character who displayed neither intelligence nor social grace.
In these circumstances the older brother has kept his parliamentary seat, but stood aloof from the shadow cabinet; repeatedly insisting that his sole political intention was to stand in his constituency at the next General Election as a back-bencher who was wholly loyal to his leader. He took on various tasks outside parliament: notably as a well-paid director of a local football club in his constituency, and as chair of a group to study unemployment among 18-24 year-olds. The report of the group has now been published. It strongly advocates the more extended use of artificial apprenticeships and fake jobs, subsidised by the state, to give the victims of these devices material to pack their curricula vitarum; data whose lack of applicability to what used to be called 'habits of industry' will be glaringly apparent to employers who need to ensure that every employee is able to deliver full value for every pound spent on wages. The report refers to the scandal that recruits even to simple jobs like serving in Pret a Manger or McDonald's are much more likely to be immigrants than native British [of any ethnicity]. The report does not emphasise the very much higher educational standards [especially in numeracy and rhetoric] that are achieved in many foreign countries as compared to the UK. Employers constantly point to appalling ignorance, illiteracy, innumeracy and lack of articulateness in British school leavers. Their lack of social graces sits uncomfortably alongside the limited knowledge and exiguous understanding that is represented by spoon-fed passes in mechanistic GCE examinations, to make tragically immature young men and women undesirable as employees.
With the publication of his report David Milliband has become a significant advocate for doing more of the costly lifetime-wasting fakery that began with the Thatcherites' YTS [Youth Training Scheme] in the 'eighties, was resurrected under Gordon Brown and is now a major aspect of policy under the Cameron-Clegg regime. It indicates a thoroughly bankrupt mental landscape, and goes some way towards vindicating those who preferred Ed over David as party leader. David has dug this neat new hole for himself: how very sad!
Both were elected to parliament, as candidates handed down from Party HQ to take over constituencies that may as well have been in another continent in terms of the brothers' experience and empathy. Both reached the 'New Labour' cabinet and David Milliband, once he was appointed Foreign Secretary, was tipped as a future leader of the party. After the electorate decisively rejected Gordon Brown's highly personal general election campaign in 2010, Brown stood down and in the subsequent election for a leader the younger Brother - Ed - shocked the faithful and delighted the media by competing against his sibling. As the campaign proceeded it became clear that the trade union component of the electorate had been encouraged to think that Ed Milliband was more sympathetic to 'old Labour' and more likely to repudiate the perceived ineptitude of Brown and the reviled warmongering of Blair than were the other candidates: and so against all expectations of commentators outside the party Ed won the leadership. His performance has rarely rated above 'embarrassing', despite the best efforts of the array of minders and scriptwriters, psephologists and policy analysts that surround any contemporary party leader. The recognition that a forced resignation of the new leader, followed by another election, would earn disastrous media attention for the party forced all factions of the party to coalesce in a show of support for a leader who was popularly likened to a cartoon character who displayed neither intelligence nor social grace.
In these circumstances the older brother has kept his parliamentary seat, but stood aloof from the shadow cabinet; repeatedly insisting that his sole political intention was to stand in his constituency at the next General Election as a back-bencher who was wholly loyal to his leader. He took on various tasks outside parliament: notably as a well-paid director of a local football club in his constituency, and as chair of a group to study unemployment among 18-24 year-olds. The report of the group has now been published. It strongly advocates the more extended use of artificial apprenticeships and fake jobs, subsidised by the state, to give the victims of these devices material to pack their curricula vitarum; data whose lack of applicability to what used to be called 'habits of industry' will be glaringly apparent to employers who need to ensure that every employee is able to deliver full value for every pound spent on wages. The report refers to the scandal that recruits even to simple jobs like serving in Pret a Manger or McDonald's are much more likely to be immigrants than native British [of any ethnicity]. The report does not emphasise the very much higher educational standards [especially in numeracy and rhetoric] that are achieved in many foreign countries as compared to the UK. Employers constantly point to appalling ignorance, illiteracy, innumeracy and lack of articulateness in British school leavers. Their lack of social graces sits uncomfortably alongside the limited knowledge and exiguous understanding that is represented by spoon-fed passes in mechanistic GCE examinations, to make tragically immature young men and women undesirable as employees.
With the publication of his report David Milliband has become a significant advocate for doing more of the costly lifetime-wasting fakery that began with the Thatcherites' YTS [Youth Training Scheme] in the 'eighties, was resurrected under Gordon Brown and is now a major aspect of policy under the Cameron-Clegg regime. It indicates a thoroughly bankrupt mental landscape, and goes some way towards vindicating those who preferred Ed over David as party leader. David has dug this neat new hole for himself: how very sad!
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