I have met Damian Green a few times, mostly in his capacity [when the Tories were in opposition] as a director of his regional water company. I would be very surprised indeed if he wasted his time, or risked his reputation, using an office computer to spend 'many hours' watching soft porn. If his computer was used in that way, by one of the staff in Portcullis House or possibly by an intern, then it is no part of the role of the police to make accusations against Mr Green on national television. The fact that the credibility of the First Secretary is being challenged suggests that there are indeed dark forces at work, with the intention of bringing about the end to the agony of failure of this government.
The precarious state of our national politics is again emphasised by the letter to the Prime Minister [which has, of course, been released to the press] from Nigel Lawson, John Redwood, Jacob Rees-Mogg and others who seem to want the nation to be quite sure of their guilt if the economy hits the disaster to which their demands would drive it.
I find it difficult to concentrate on other issues - of which there are many - when the key elements of national sustenance and security are being knocked away. The people, whether the they voted to stay in or to leave the European Union, deserve a better politics than they are offered at present. The entire political class, including McDonnell and Corbyn no less than Mrs May and the Thatcherite dinosaurs who have just sent her a 'nudge' towards ruin, have forfeited the trust of the electorate; but we are left with no better choice, no alternative that could achieve any degree of visibility to the electorate before March, 2019.
If, in the coming days, there is real news about the economy or our society - or about Economics - I will not be able to restrain myself from blogging about it; otherwise, I shall go off-line for a period and try [yet again] to set out my current understanding in a longer piece of continuous text.
Showing posts with label Tories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tories. Show all posts
Sunday, 3 December 2017
Monday, 9 October 2017
Mrs May Drags Out the Agony
Putting aside the disasters of the recent election and the very recent Tory Conference, as best she may, the Prime Minister will today fantasize in the House of Commons about 'progress' in the talks with the EU about Brexit.
From what has been released in advance, she plans to develop on the charade that she enacted in Florence a couple of weeks ago, when she spoke to much of her Cabinet, the British press and a few bored Italian officials about where she thought the negotiations had got to. She was spectacularly vague on all the relevant points about which EU officials and commentators had already asked repeatedly for clarification and specificity. She apparently intends to say to the Commons that she has now made everything crystal clear, and that the EU must now 'respond' by offering concessions.
The truth is, that David Cameron led to Tories to their surprise victory in the 2015 election by promising the referendum on leaving the EU. He confidently expected that this would produce a massive vote in favour of remaining, which would bury the Tory exiteers who had been a pain to the party since John Major accepted the Maastricht Treaty. The Liberals were removed from the scene, effectively, in 2015 by the kicking that they got for aligning with the Tories in the 2010 coalition that had increased student fees. Labour lost votes in Labour heartlands in that election, partly because they opposed the idea of the referendum. So, against all expectations, the Tories won the 2015 election; but their majority in the Commons was only half the size that would be needed to marginalise the thirty-or-so Conservative nutters who apparently believe - really believe - that Britain can survive as an independent economy in a world characterised by regional trade pacts, point protectionism and chauvinistic policies to protect sectors of the economy that are essential for national defence. These headbangers airily assert - contrary to all the available evidence - that if we boldly go where no sane man or woman would go, we will reap the same sort of rewards as the UK gained when we were both the only industrialised economy in the world and the most dominant imperial power. The sheer silliness of such thinking - or, maybe, absence of the power to think - needs no further comment.
By losing the election this year, Mrs May found herself left with around thirty MPs who are determined to devastate the economy in pursuit of their delusion. They will support Boris Johnson remaining in high office, and they are apparently demanding that the Chancellor be sacked for making reasoned statements about the probable economic effect of a 'hard Brexit'. Mrs May is evading giving a strong lead, and this will weaken her already-impossible position and contribute to the ultimate demise of the Tory party as we have known it.
The only powerful and patriotic thing that she should do - starting with her Commons statement today - is to say that the UK has been shamefully imprecise in the Brexit talks so far, to give a specific cash offer on the 'divorce bill' [making it quite clear that mediation is available] and make a sensible offer as to what would be the relations of UK courts and the EU Court in the period after March 2019. Then she should outline sensible terms for a post-Brexit relationship with the European Economic Area and defy the headbangers to force a general election that Labour would be likely to win.
The bonkers Brexiteers should be flushed out and forced to say - precisely - where the 'facts' arise that nobody else can see. Then they should fall into line to avert a Corbyn government.
The clock is ticking on Brexit, and Mrs May's attempts to evade the implosion of the Tory Party - though entirely comprehensible - are ruinous.
From what has been released in advance, she plans to develop on the charade that she enacted in Florence a couple of weeks ago, when she spoke to much of her Cabinet, the British press and a few bored Italian officials about where she thought the negotiations had got to. She was spectacularly vague on all the relevant points about which EU officials and commentators had already asked repeatedly for clarification and specificity. She apparently intends to say to the Commons that she has now made everything crystal clear, and that the EU must now 'respond' by offering concessions.
The truth is, that David Cameron led to Tories to their surprise victory in the 2015 election by promising the referendum on leaving the EU. He confidently expected that this would produce a massive vote in favour of remaining, which would bury the Tory exiteers who had been a pain to the party since John Major accepted the Maastricht Treaty. The Liberals were removed from the scene, effectively, in 2015 by the kicking that they got for aligning with the Tories in the 2010 coalition that had increased student fees. Labour lost votes in Labour heartlands in that election, partly because they opposed the idea of the referendum. So, against all expectations, the Tories won the 2015 election; but their majority in the Commons was only half the size that would be needed to marginalise the thirty-or-so Conservative nutters who apparently believe - really believe - that Britain can survive as an independent economy in a world characterised by regional trade pacts, point protectionism and chauvinistic policies to protect sectors of the economy that are essential for national defence. These headbangers airily assert - contrary to all the available evidence - that if we boldly go where no sane man or woman would go, we will reap the same sort of rewards as the UK gained when we were both the only industrialised economy in the world and the most dominant imperial power. The sheer silliness of such thinking - or, maybe, absence of the power to think - needs no further comment.
By losing the election this year, Mrs May found herself left with around thirty MPs who are determined to devastate the economy in pursuit of their delusion. They will support Boris Johnson remaining in high office, and they are apparently demanding that the Chancellor be sacked for making reasoned statements about the probable economic effect of a 'hard Brexit'. Mrs May is evading giving a strong lead, and this will weaken her already-impossible position and contribute to the ultimate demise of the Tory party as we have known it.
The only powerful and patriotic thing that she should do - starting with her Commons statement today - is to say that the UK has been shamefully imprecise in the Brexit talks so far, to give a specific cash offer on the 'divorce bill' [making it quite clear that mediation is available] and make a sensible offer as to what would be the relations of UK courts and the EU Court in the period after March 2019. Then she should outline sensible terms for a post-Brexit relationship with the European Economic Area and defy the headbangers to force a general election that Labour would be likely to win.
The bonkers Brexiteers should be flushed out and forced to say - precisely - where the 'facts' arise that nobody else can see. Then they should fall into line to avert a Corbyn government.
The clock is ticking on Brexit, and Mrs May's attempts to evade the implosion of the Tory Party - though entirely comprehensible - are ruinous.
Sunday, 6 August 2017
Politics, Economics and Science
There are degrees that purport to qualify their graduands in 'Political Science': there are even some professorships under that title in British universities. That there is some degree of scientific precision in some aspects of the study of politics has been proved in recent British general elections, where 'Exit Polls' that systematically ask voters how they have actually voted have displayed an astonishing degree of accuracy; as demonstrated 24 hours later when all the votes are counted. I describe this accuracy as "astonishing" because it contrasts with Opinion Polls conducted right down to the day before the election, which are often wildly wide of the mark; thus, politicians and commentators who rely on them can grossly be misled, as were most of both those groups when the Tories' chances were over-rated and Labour's popularity was grossly under-reported in the polls before the election this year. This appears to show that people are in large measure unsure how to vote [or whether they will vote] until the last minute, while it can be inferred that many do not tell the truth in advance of their casting their ballots. After voting, people seem more confident that they can not be swayed in their decision-making by the lift of the questioner's eyebrow or their sniff of disapproval; so then they tell the truth, and the statisticians and psychologists who set and assess the actual questions to be asked are vindicated in the precise methods that they use.
The scope of 'Political Science' is much wider than this, of course. Where it combines statistical rigour with sound social analysis or experimentally validated psychology, interesting and potentially useful data are produced. But where it attempts to explain the underlying factors which make a population of humans behave in this way or that to determine the direction of government it can only follow the conclusions presented by sociology, psychology or history: and within each of those disciplines there is no agreement on what are the rock-bottom principles emergent from the study that should be followed by government with the same degree of authority as applies to Botany, Geology or Medical Science. There are, of course, fundamental disputes within the natural sciences; but there is also a sufficient consensus to validate measures that are taken to support public health, safe transport and the control of thousands of potentially dangerous substances.
Politicians with some degree of common sense - and many such people still exist, though their expression of their views is often limited by the need to have the support of their party at the next election - make a mix-and-match pragmatic personal portfolio of ideas drawn from the natural sciences, and from academic politics, history, psychology and sociology; and accept that they must be willing to change their understanding in line with new facts [including new false interpretations that capture the public mood]. This inner assessment of the situation is necessarily combined with what the electorate in the particular constituency where the politician is based understand and want. This is a precarious situation to be in and politicians usually recognise their vulnerability within the nexus of shifting popular opinion.
The biggest intellectual problem that many politicians face is that of Economics: the pseudo-science that has been captured by the Econocracy, the hegemonic advocates of the crazy dogma that markets can become so developed - on their own - that they produce results that could not be bettered by any amount of detailed direction from the political machine. The tragedy to which that dogma has given rise is that in the countries that have partially opened up their markets to untrammeled competition it has increasingly become apparent that untrammeled [or even relatively unrestricted] free operation of markets conduces against humans having an inner sense of wellbeing. This is now the very nub of political debate in the USA and in the United Kingdom, and must be a major theme in this blog for the next few days.
The scope of 'Political Science' is much wider than this, of course. Where it combines statistical rigour with sound social analysis or experimentally validated psychology, interesting and potentially useful data are produced. But where it attempts to explain the underlying factors which make a population of humans behave in this way or that to determine the direction of government it can only follow the conclusions presented by sociology, psychology or history: and within each of those disciplines there is no agreement on what are the rock-bottom principles emergent from the study that should be followed by government with the same degree of authority as applies to Botany, Geology or Medical Science. There are, of course, fundamental disputes within the natural sciences; but there is also a sufficient consensus to validate measures that are taken to support public health, safe transport and the control of thousands of potentially dangerous substances.
Politicians with some degree of common sense - and many such people still exist, though their expression of their views is often limited by the need to have the support of their party at the next election - make a mix-and-match pragmatic personal portfolio of ideas drawn from the natural sciences, and from academic politics, history, psychology and sociology; and accept that they must be willing to change their understanding in line with new facts [including new false interpretations that capture the public mood]. This inner assessment of the situation is necessarily combined with what the electorate in the particular constituency where the politician is based understand and want. This is a precarious situation to be in and politicians usually recognise their vulnerability within the nexus of shifting popular opinion.
The biggest intellectual problem that many politicians face is that of Economics: the pseudo-science that has been captured by the Econocracy, the hegemonic advocates of the crazy dogma that markets can become so developed - on their own - that they produce results that could not be bettered by any amount of detailed direction from the political machine. The tragedy to which that dogma has given rise is that in the countries that have partially opened up their markets to untrammeled competition it has increasingly become apparent that untrammeled [or even relatively unrestricted] free operation of markets conduces against humans having an inner sense of wellbeing. This is now the very nub of political debate in the USA and in the United Kingdom, and must be a major theme in this blog for the next few days.
Thursday, 29 June 2017
The Descent of Ascension as a Symptom of Britain's Decline
Ascension Island was indispensable to the Falklands War in 1982: without that airbase the islands could not have been supplied. Subsequently, until recent weeks, regular RAF flights from the UK to Stanley have stopped off at the Ascension airstrip: which has given the locals a regular access to the UK for themselves and for supplies. That has had to stop: the islanders must now travel several days by ship to South Africa to get a commercial flight to Britain. Sick people are in a deep quandary and it is impossible urgently to secure any medical supplies.
The reason for this is Osbornian austerity: the cuts that have so disastrously undermined every aspect of social and public services in the UK and its dependencies. Under a longstanding agreement, the Americans have use of the Ascension airstrip; in return for which, they maintain it. The cuts in UK defence spending [even before the Queen Elizabeth is fully manned or armed] mean that the RAF has had to dispense with the planes that have formed the 'airbridge' between Brize Norton and Stanley, via Ascension. The planes that are now available are unsuitable for the increasingly ropey surface of the airstrip on Ascension, which the Americans do not plan to upgrade for a couple of years. Thus an important point of communications, which has been militarily vital since at least the Second World War, is left to fester along with with council tower blocks, decaying schools, under-equipped hospitals and all the other increasingly conspicuous evidences of the failure of the state.
Ascension island is a long way off, so it is almost completely out of mind to the British public: which suits their government very well. The Tories [aided and abetted by the LibDems for their first five years in office] have painted themselves - and the country - into a corner where many options are cut off, and will remain so until the inevitable decision is taken to open up the stop-cocks of state spending. Then the catching-up will be begun, with remote islands in the South Atlantic very low down the list of priorities.
But hereby hangs another tale. The UK government, after a century of pleading, did build an airport on the larger island of St Helena: and located it in a place where the prevailing winds make it next to impossible for the sort of 'planes that could use the airport to do so. So one dead duck and one white elephant have been provided on the UK's major possessions in the mid-south-Atlantic. Thus the bureaucracy and the supine politicians whom they manipulate have embarrassed the nation, at significant cost in the case of St Helena and at the opportunity-cost of surrendering essential access to Ascension. Between crass incompetence and cretinous austerity Britain has created a total cock-up.
But why should anyone really take notice? The answer is very clear. Today the Chinese president drops in on Hong Kong, to mark the twentieth anniversary of the surrender that Mrs Thatcher left it to John Major and Chris Patten to complete, the abandonment of any chance to secure the then-colony's independence. Hong Kong is inexorably being wound in to the hegemonic block that China wants to consolidate. Meanwhile, China is building islands islands in the South China Sea to provide military bases and evidence on the map that a huge area is 'Chinese home waters'. Those claims are contested, and will increasingly be a source of friction with neighbouring countries and the USA.
Meanwhile, Britain is frittering away the residue of a great empire: in the island territories all around the world that could be developed [as the Chinese are developing theirs] into strategically significant points of focus. If Britain would just invest the necessary few billions of pounds the islands from Ascension to Pitcairn to South Georgia would restore a global presence as the contest to control the resources that are accessible in and under the oceans becomes increasingly important. The UK has given up or wasted most of its assets. It should quickly undertake a rational audit of what we have, and what can be done with it by an enterprising nation.
The reason for this is Osbornian austerity: the cuts that have so disastrously undermined every aspect of social and public services in the UK and its dependencies. Under a longstanding agreement, the Americans have use of the Ascension airstrip; in return for which, they maintain it. The cuts in UK defence spending [even before the Queen Elizabeth is fully manned or armed] mean that the RAF has had to dispense with the planes that have formed the 'airbridge' between Brize Norton and Stanley, via Ascension. The planes that are now available are unsuitable for the increasingly ropey surface of the airstrip on Ascension, which the Americans do not plan to upgrade for a couple of years. Thus an important point of communications, which has been militarily vital since at least the Second World War, is left to fester along with with council tower blocks, decaying schools, under-equipped hospitals and all the other increasingly conspicuous evidences of the failure of the state.
Ascension island is a long way off, so it is almost completely out of mind to the British public: which suits their government very well. The Tories [aided and abetted by the LibDems for their first five years in office] have painted themselves - and the country - into a corner where many options are cut off, and will remain so until the inevitable decision is taken to open up the stop-cocks of state spending. Then the catching-up will be begun, with remote islands in the South Atlantic very low down the list of priorities.
But hereby hangs another tale. The UK government, after a century of pleading, did build an airport on the larger island of St Helena: and located it in a place where the prevailing winds make it next to impossible for the sort of 'planes that could use the airport to do so. So one dead duck and one white elephant have been provided on the UK's major possessions in the mid-south-Atlantic. Thus the bureaucracy and the supine politicians whom they manipulate have embarrassed the nation, at significant cost in the case of St Helena and at the opportunity-cost of surrendering essential access to Ascension. Between crass incompetence and cretinous austerity Britain has created a total cock-up.
But why should anyone really take notice? The answer is very clear. Today the Chinese president drops in on Hong Kong, to mark the twentieth anniversary of the surrender that Mrs Thatcher left it to John Major and Chris Patten to complete, the abandonment of any chance to secure the then-colony's independence. Hong Kong is inexorably being wound in to the hegemonic block that China wants to consolidate. Meanwhile, China is building islands islands in the South China Sea to provide military bases and evidence on the map that a huge area is 'Chinese home waters'. Those claims are contested, and will increasingly be a source of friction with neighbouring countries and the USA.
Meanwhile, Britain is frittering away the residue of a great empire: in the island territories all around the world that could be developed [as the Chinese are developing theirs] into strategically significant points of focus. If Britain would just invest the necessary few billions of pounds the islands from Ascension to Pitcairn to South Georgia would restore a global presence as the contest to control the resources that are accessible in and under the oceans becomes increasingly important. The UK has given up or wasted most of its assets. It should quickly undertake a rational audit of what we have, and what can be done with it by an enterprising nation.
Tuesday, 27 June 2017
Not a squalid little deal!
Mrs May's agreement with the Northern Irish DUP has a 'headline' cost of £1billion in extra cash to be available for the Northern Ireland Executive to spend. But that is not even the beginning of the cost [and I refer to the cash cost, leaving aside the reputational damage that is being done to keep this weak and wobbly government in office, but not truly in power]. Retaining the 'triple lock' on state pensions and retaining the free winter fuel for all will cost billions more, and the deal may well last for the five years for which the parliament could remain in being. Given that some demands from Scotland, Wales and English regions will have to be met if the Tories are to have any hope of winning future election, estimates of the ultimate total cost of the deal seem to be running upwards of fifty billion pounds in the next few years. This drives a coach and horses through the residue of Osborne's austerity which Philip Hammond's Treasury Team was seeking to maintain. Thus it will be necessary for the government to increase its borrowing while the Tories negotiate with the DUP on the possible increases in taxes that Mr Hammond already knows will be necessary. Since the DUP-Tory agreement is on the basis of 'confidence and supply' the DUP will have an effective veto on any tax increases: so the overwhelming probability is that state borrowing in the coming year will be several tens of billions of pounds more than had been foreshadowed in any of Mr Hammond's [actual or imagined] spreadsheets.
I am sure that Mrs May's grasp of economic reality is slight, and that she has not yet comprehended anything of the hydra-headed monster that she has attached to her government. Austerity was becoming intolerable to the electorate as its effects on policing, schools and hospitals became apparent. The departure on sea trials of HMS Queen Elizabeth - the biggest ship ever assembled in Britain - was accompanied by comment that she went without any aircraft, amid rows about how many 'planes could ever be afforded to fly from her. Almost all the other areas of the armed services are being robbed of funds to make some sort of show of fitting out Queen Elizabeth properly, which means that Britain's power of self defence is significantly diminished at a time when perceived threats are increasing. Mrs May's new monster, that she will not be able to control, is the myriad demands for more money that will come from every sector of the public services and every region of the country. Ryedale in North Yorkshire has been given press coverage as one of the two areas on England most deprived of reasonably-fast broadband, and that part of the country has a special plea that may become irresistible if Scotland and Wales are allocated extra money for communications: and so it will go on, inexorably, for longer that than Mrs May can hold on to power.
Should Mr Corbyn come into power, he would find that all the key-turning jobs have been done for him, by default. The military are virtually prostrated. Austerity is being overcome by sectoral and regional demands that will become irresistible. Government borrowing will be high, and Mr Corbyn and his clique would have no compunction in 'taxing the rich' to fund even more state spending. In those circumstances the stock market will collapse and the pound will decline rapidly in external exchange: so a radical government could claim justification for radical measures to establish control of a 'socialist' economy.
The Tories will remain desperate to prevent Corbyn having access to the electorate. So they will have to try to control the monster that they have released. How they do this will be fascinating to watch: or perhaps the Tories have finally lost that ruthless determination to survive that has sustained then for centuries?
I am sure that Mrs May's grasp of economic reality is slight, and that she has not yet comprehended anything of the hydra-headed monster that she has attached to her government. Austerity was becoming intolerable to the electorate as its effects on policing, schools and hospitals became apparent. The departure on sea trials of HMS Queen Elizabeth - the biggest ship ever assembled in Britain - was accompanied by comment that she went without any aircraft, amid rows about how many 'planes could ever be afforded to fly from her. Almost all the other areas of the armed services are being robbed of funds to make some sort of show of fitting out Queen Elizabeth properly, which means that Britain's power of self defence is significantly diminished at a time when perceived threats are increasing. Mrs May's new monster, that she will not be able to control, is the myriad demands for more money that will come from every sector of the public services and every region of the country. Ryedale in North Yorkshire has been given press coverage as one of the two areas on England most deprived of reasonably-fast broadband, and that part of the country has a special plea that may become irresistible if Scotland and Wales are allocated extra money for communications: and so it will go on, inexorably, for longer that than Mrs May can hold on to power.
Should Mr Corbyn come into power, he would find that all the key-turning jobs have been done for him, by default. The military are virtually prostrated. Austerity is being overcome by sectoral and regional demands that will become irresistible. Government borrowing will be high, and Mr Corbyn and his clique would have no compunction in 'taxing the rich' to fund even more state spending. In those circumstances the stock market will collapse and the pound will decline rapidly in external exchange: so a radical government could claim justification for radical measures to establish control of a 'socialist' economy.
The Tories will remain desperate to prevent Corbyn having access to the electorate. So they will have to try to control the monster that they have released. How they do this will be fascinating to watch: or perhaps the Tories have finally lost that ruthless determination to survive that has sustained then for centuries?
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