Mrs May's Brexit: from Chaos to Catastrophe

Mrs May and Mr Hammond - her Finance Minister - are represented by various sections of the media as being in a serious conflict about making provision for a 'no deal' outcome from the current negotiation between the UK and the EU. The Chancellor [who is wedded, as tightly as if he were welded] to the concept of 'austerity' has told a Commons committee that he has contingency plans, but does not want to release any funds until the very last moment. He could not make that statement if staff time and some expenses [notably consultancy] had not been applied to the planning: so what he obviously means is that he is reluctant to release funds on implementing such a plan until that should appear to be the [utterly disastrous] inevitability.

Mrs May seems to be saying the same things, when she indicates that £250 million has been set aside for implementing a 'hard Brexit'. Yet the press, notably the Daily Mail, has become hysterical about the 'dispute' and the 'disloyalty' - even 'sabotage' - attributed to the Chancellor.

This stupid scenario shows that the minority of extreme Brexiteers are dragging the Tory party to its destruction; which would be no bad thing [in view of the appalling inadequacy that is apparent right across the government] if there was an opposition that combined honesty and competence over the board. But that is not the case. Labour is led by an unreconstructed Marxist who is as good as the late Comrade Suslov [the chief exponent of Leninist-Stalinist orthodoxy as the USSR was heading for destruction] at avoiding direct or evidence-based questions. The Momentum group show a dangerous revival of the 'entryism' that undermined the Labour government in the nineteen seventies, and thus opened up the way for Thatcherism and the dissipation of all that remained of the legacy of the first industrial revolution.

If May or Hammond was serious about managing a really 'hard' Brexit their first decision - however covertly it was taken - would be the abandonment of 'austerity'. Government spending far in excess of £250 billion would be needed to install a full customs border with the EU. The recruitment and training of hundreds of thousands of officials would need to begin now: somehow, the IT systems would have to be provided - almost instantly - despite the fact that even modest government schemes for computerisation are always over-cost and excessively delayed in implementation [to the extent that they often have to be abandoned].

British firms that still make things - there are many, often high-tech companies developed or reconstructed since 2008 - are almost all integrated into just-in-time Europe-wide supply chains [both in getting their necessary inputs and in selling components to EU companies]. Such businesses are making contingency plans that would require them at least to double the manpower and computer availability just to manage the 'paperwork' that would be involved in trying to maintain the flow of business after a default Brexit. Many such firms are already finding that their European customers are looking elsewhere for contingent supplies. Furthermore, insuring trade and the goods traded in a crash-Brexit situation will become massively more complex and thus expensive.

The clowns on the Tory right, with their airy assertions that all will be well 'under WTO Rules' [which they certainly do not understand:cf my many references to point protectionism], are driving an amazingly weak Cabinet towards the destruction of the national economy.

There must a popular movement, of Leavers and Remainers united, to avoid national economic destruction.

Providential Penalties: A Salutary Case of Point Protectionism

This blog has often referred to point protectionism, my term for the myriad instances where governments override [or ignore] trade agreements - including those which are supposedly universal under the World Trade Organisation [WTO] - in order to give advantage to their native producers or to disadvantage alien producers who can outsell their native producers in some markets some of the time.

The recent cause celebre in this category is the action that the US government has taken against the Canadian aircraft firm Bombardier at the instance of Boeing, a US-Based competitor. Britain has a particular interest in this case as the wings of the aircraft under challenge are made in Northern Ireland. In the first instance, last week, the US slapped a 220% tariff on the import of the 'planes on the grounds that the Canadian and British governments had given grants to Bombardier. Yesterday the US took a second bite of the cherry, and added another 80% tariff. This 300% imposition is extremely high: in most cases where the US has accused another country of 'dumping' produce at lower prices than US firms can match, the levy has usually been below 100% of the sale price: as has happened in recent years with imports of basic classes of steel from China.

Britain and Canada have pointed out that Boeing is one of the most heavily state-supported companies in the world; which, of course, cuts no ice with the US Administration.

This is a crude and simple case where a competitor to the US market leader has introduced a product [to which no US firm currently provides a direct competitor] which is obviously highly desirable to US airlines. So the new product is to be priced-out of the American market.

This can happen in any sector of the economy, where a foreign firm attracts American customers to a new or redesigned product: and it probably will, as the world becomes ever more highly competitive. This is a timely and salutary lesson for the bonkers Brexiteers: those who say that Britain can thrive on its own in the world, under WTO Rules. Whenever it suits the USA, Australia, Brazil, Russia or any other country - however comprehensive a trade agreement Liam Fox can dream up with them - they can say "We have imposed this tariff! The WTO can whistle for their rules to apply; and the UK can put its trade deal where the monkey put the nuts." At such times - and there would be an infinite number of them - a solitary post-Brexit Britain would suffer immense disadvantage. To imagine otherwise requires a high degree of intoxication in a very small mind.

In the 2016 Referendum I voted for exit from the political absurdity of the European Union. I did not vote for this nation to die slowly, of starvation. We must stay within the European Economic Area, on the best terms that can be obtained. As Mrs May's moribund government fails to say what it wants to achieve, with any precision, the Torygraph today has a banner headline to the effect that the EU has opened up stronger channels of communication with Mr Corbyn and his associates. Mr Corbyn has learned a lot in the past year - more than I had previously thought possible - but whether he can absorb this particular lesson in Political Economy before he comes to power remains to be seen.

Why Blog?

For some months I have maintained a daily post on this site. Sometimes I have reiterated a broad point of principle, at other times I have drawn attention to an emergent fact [such as point protectionism as a major factor in the Brexit debate], and on few occasions I have enunciated a new principle; but more often I have merely commented on the recent news. I have found it enjoyable - sometimes even cathartic - to have got my reaction down in writing and thus 'off my chest'; but in taking that route I have departed from the main reason for starting the blog. So I will go back to the beginning, then state my plan for the near future.

I had the immense good fortune to go up to Durham University, and specifically to the Durham Division of that university when King's College, Newcastle and the Medical School were fully parts of one federal university. Had I gone to Newcastle I would have been able to study Economics as a single subject, and my entire career would have been different. In the Durham Colleges at that time there were well under 2,000 students, which meant that teaching resources were limited. Thus the only social sciences honours degree was in Politics and Economics; and furthermore the Economics syllabus had a heavy component of Economic History, while first year students also had to study Ethics or Statistics and a modern foreign language. This meant that we had a broad introduction to the field which has made me sceptical of the inner dogmatics of Economics ever since. We were well taught in Economics: my first year tutor became a distinguished regulatory knight under the Thatcher regime and the most of the rest of the staff were comparably competent and qualified.

By the time I graduated I had become so sceptical about Economics that I applied for - and, to my eternal surprise, got - a research place to study how Economics had evolved into what it was. At that time successive governments were keen to expand the university system and money was no problem; there was a shortage of able and willing graduates [this was long before the massive influx of overseas students provided an over-supply of good graduates alongside the growing cohort of UK students]. Hence, via scholarship funding and a research fellowship I was able to complete a Masters degree and a Doctorate: and I was invited to take up a lectureship before my doctoral thesis was completed. As a teacher who rose through the hierarchy of a good university to become Dean of Social Sciences and Pro-Vice-Chancellor I maintained my agnostic approach to Economics as the neoKeynesians urged governments into the inflationary spiral that undermined the entire system after 1973. I was PVC at the time of the first imposition of Monetarist-inspired cash limits on university spending, and was instrumental in getting a cash bonus for the university as one of the few that believed what the politicians were reciting from their Monetarist mentors and capped its spending plans accordingly. By that time the amiable notion that academics had 'tenure' of their posts for life, however ineffectual they proved to be, was ended; and the state funded a round of redundancies that marked the opening of a new era of 'efficiency' that covered a reorientation of Economics towards the free market dogma. It took a few years to impose the predominance of that doctrine: the first Thatcher cuts were opposed by 364 Economists who signed a letter to the Times which was ignored by the new establishment, and within a generation their opinions were either consigned to retirement or radically revised in accordance with the new dogma.

I saw no place for myself in that world, I so moved with modest success to the City of London where I found significant fulfillment. But I have constantly developed my contrarian views on Economics; which I expressed at length in the book that is advertised on this page: The Brexit Vote and Economics. In June, 2016, I took the view that the rejection of the government's advocacy of the Remain side in the EU Referendum was also, implicitly [and perhaps more importantly] a rejection of the underlying orthodoxy that gave us Thatcherism,the financial bubble and the inevitable crash of 2007-9, austerity and widespread disillusion and cynicism to the political class. I stated my own conclusions. Then I took the decision that instead of constantly trying to issue updates of the self-published text, I should make a constant commentary on my views and on the real-world events that I believe my text illuminates. This week the Tory Party Conference is likely to provoke some splenetic reactions on my part, so I have decided to take a more cerebral line, with less frequent but deeper ruminations on the site. We'll see how that goes....

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.

Labour Luddites and a Prime Minister as a Poodle

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.

Doctor Fox and Free Trade

A former medical practitioner, Liam Fox PC MP, the Secretary of State for Trade, is chafing at the bit He cannot begin any substantial work towards the task that he has supposedly been given - to arrange post-Brexit trade agreements with countries outside the European Union - until it is finally decided to what extent [if any] the United Kingdom will remain in the European Economic Area after 2020. It is beginning to dawn on Mrs May that a 'hard Brexit' will be calamitous for the British economy. Far from enabling the country to hold its head high among the major powers, solitary Britain would be seen for what it is: an ill-managed struggling economy with more legacy issues than thriving new world-class companies, with a huge and growing balance-of-payments deficit and massive external indebtedness.

Nevertheless, Dr Fox is apparently buoyed-up by the dogma that free trade is a universal 'good thing'; because that is what members of the Econocracy tell him. The professors who can no longer con their more intelligent students still hold sway with the headbanging Brexiteers who seem to control the present government; partly because the sorts of things that they say make the current policy ['no deal is better than a bad deal'] seem almost rational.


In the ever-narrowing intellectual universe that the professors inhabit, inconvenient facts can simply be ignored. So they chose not to notice that the eighteenth century, when Britain pursued protectionist policies, was a period of high economic growth during which the agricultural and industrial revolutions were accomplished. The period when so-called free trade was at its peak, 1848-1914, was the age of imperialism, when European monarchies led by Britain with its globally dominant navy and Russia with its serf army conquered all of northern Asia. The European empires controlled the world, with the exception of the United States.

For every free trade agreement that now exists between countries there are hundreds of inhibitions on free trade. Smoking, alcohol and mind-changing drugs are to varying degrees controlled by law, penal taxation and religious interdiction. Health and safety laws can easily be used to control imports when a government agency chooses to use such rules to restrain some trades. 'Free trade' in sex is increasingly subject to controls and bans. Point protectionism remains a powerful tool of government, when a country slaps a tax on a competitively-priced import on the grounds that the import is too disruptive to the market for competing products made in the country concerned.

Free trade is, and always was, a fantasy; and the more democratic a country may be - in the sense that the government has to respond the the demands of statistically-important minorities of its citizens - the less chance there is of that country implementing free trade arrangements that can do damage to the economic interests of such minorities. This, and no 'ideal' of free trade preached by Econocratic professors, is the reality of the trading world; and always will remain so.

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.

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.

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.