There has been serious panic in the Treasury, which has resonated round other government departments, about the latest 'findings' of the Office for Budget Responsibility [OBR] on the basic facts about the UK economy. With no evidence in the raw data to support the supposition, it has been assumed that the productivity of the economy is increasing. If it were true, it would mean that on average, across all sectors of the economy, the output per worker per day is increasing. For half a century until 2007, year after year, on average productivity was increasing by around 2%. This constituted the strongest evidence that the output in the economy was growing and that there was more output to provide investment in new plant in industry and commerce, and to renew the economic infrastructure, and to improve welfare services and education, and still to afford more wages for most of the employed people year after year.
It is now admitted, rather shamefacedly by the government ministers and officials who have assumed that productivity 'must have been' rising since 2010 at something close to the historic norm of 2%, that this has not been the case. The financial crunch of 2007-8 was a huge shock to the whole economy; but it has optimistically been assumed that things have been returning to 'normal' since 2010. It is also noted that the entire world economy suffered a shock in 2007, and that most 'mature' economies' growth since 2010 has been less than the pre-crunch norm. Nevertheless, the USA, Canada, Australia and the Eurozone all have experience increasing productivity in recent years: while India and China have continued to make massive strides forward [though at an irregular rate year-on-year].
I am not alone in having banged-on since 2007 about the fact that productivity in the UK is abysmal because the people who control the country - grossly misled by the Econocracy [the professors of Economics] - are totally unaware that productivity is always dependent on the productiveness of the system; but not many people have been saying it, and nobody has been listening. Productiveness is the capacity of the system to deliver increased productivity; and it can only be increased by well-targeted investment. Karl Marx was at one with the other nineteenth-century Political Economists who saw that industrial progress [and the development of the infrastructure of railways, ships and ports, postal systems, banking and the telegraph] was entirely dependent on a surplus being accumulated from the sales of current output and withheld from consumption by the people so that it can be converted into new and improved means of production. Marx thought that he had made the discovery of the age by claiming that the accumulation of capital had been captured by a 'class' of capitalists, who were taking over the levers of economic power from the landlord/aristocratic class who had dominated Europe since the dark ages. Other Political Economists saw that the development of shareholder capital allocated the profits that were derived from from industrial and commercial activity between the controlling shareholders in firms [who could decide how they divided the dividends and wages that they received between their own consumption and re-investment of the profits to produce even higher returns from the business in future years] and the other shareholders who would decide for themselves how much of their dividend income they would apply to their own consumption and how much they would spend on buying more shares. Investors in shares could choose between all the shares and bonds that were on offer in the stock market: so provided those investors were reasonably sensible the majority of buyers would opt for putting their investment into firms that were effective and innovative: those that were enhancing the productiveness of the economy, whose fruits would be seen in terms of higher productivity and high future dividends. Workers could be rewarded with high wages [or even profit-sharing schemes] and thus the entire economic ans social systems would be strengthened.
Obsessed Marxists gained control of Russia in 1917 and it took their successors seven decades to prove decisively that a simplistic Marxist regime does not work. Mao tried the same, and drove China into even deeper poverty than had been achieved in Russia; only for China to be restored by pragmatists who know better than capitalists the importance of concentrating on the productiveness of all sectors of the economy.
Britain's 'productivity problem' arises from the failure of industry and commerce to invest since the 2007 crunch. Companies have built up cash piles, some of which has been distributed to shareholders through devices such as share buy-back; while consumers have increased their borrowing to carry on buying goods as prices rise faster than wages.
Now the Chancellor of the Exchequer has been driven into a corner by the productivity data: the entire nation is heartily sick of 'austerity', but output is [at best] stagnant. Hospitals and prisons are in crisis, schools are increasingly stressed, the police has been cut back too far. What can he offer in his autumn Budget?
Jeremy Corbyn's almost pristine Marxism cannot be any sort of solution; but at least he has adopted more reasonable rhetoric for the purposes of getting elected. Provided Labour produces - and adheres to - a rational Manifesto, they offer the best bet for the nation in the coming years. But the trust problem is probably unsurmountable.
Tuesday, 10 October 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, 8 October 2017
Monopolies, Markets and Mumbo-Jumbo: Privatised Utilities
Telecommunications are - so far - the only sector of privatised provision of utilities where the original network of copper wires has largely been replaced by the use of airwaves. The great Volta achieved some measure of success with his experiments to transmit electricity without wires, more than a century ago. So it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that some equal genius, with the advantage of a century more scientific discovery to draw upon, will be able to distribute electrical energy safely without the infrastructure of a National Grid. But that it not yet on the horizon.
It is most improbable that gas or water could be distributed to their millions of domestic and commercial users other than by pipelines; and trains will always need tracks, even if they become vacuum tubes through which the vehicles are sucked or pushed at hundreds of miles per hour.
By selling the licence to use the copper wire telephone system [that was originally laid across the country by Post Office Telephones] to the shareholders of British Telecom [BT], the Thatcher government did not extinguish the material monopoly that POT had created: they simply sold the ownership of the system. Alongside the massive development of airwave communications, some rival firms have put their carbon-fibre equivalent of wires in some parts of the country, to compete with the mix of copper and carbon-fibre that BT now use; but in most of the country the BT infrastructure provides the single means by which a consumer can connect their devices to the global telecoms system. As a result of this fact, which is derived from the impossible cost of replicating or triplicating the BT infrastructure, 'competitor' companies of BT have to hire the use of BT capacity. An 'economic regulator' OFCOM was established at the time of privatisation with the task of making the 'competition' of BT and other providers look a bit like the sort of a market that Economists imagine in their fantasies, and teach to captive students on the basis that acceptance of the 'model' is necessary to pass the exam. Thus the students are in the equivalent position of students of literature who are studying 'nonsense' poems by Edward Lear: with the difference that the Eng Lit students know that the content is not real-world rational thought; while the Economics students are expected to pretend that the Econocratic model is superior to the reality that prevails in a corrupt and inefficient world.
The job of OFCOM in communications, like that of OFWAT in the mock market in water and that of OFGEM in the speculative sphere of energy, is to make rulings which set the basis for the provider firms to charge customers and to maintain and enhance their distribution systems. Each of these organisations hires youngish Economists who are still at least half-convinced of the 'scientific' validity of Econocratic assertions, and these constantly come up with ways of 'refining' the models that the regulators use to bring the regulated system closer to the models they had from their teachers. When one of these tweaks of the system seems to be effective, some of the Economists who introduced the new wrinkle are recruited on higher wages by the other regulators to tinker with their systems.
Hence we have seen water companies urged to invest massively in replacing old pipes: then suddenly to stop as the regulator realises that the notional capital value of the company is being increased too much [for their model] at the expense of consumers' bills. We see constant attempts to compel users of electricity to join in a game of swapping 'suppliers', when everybody knows that the competing firms all use the same power stations and wires: the competition is only in publicity and customer relations [including billing]: and on a basis of 'swings and roundabouts' over a ten-year period of staying with the same supplier there will be periods when that is the most expensive and periods when it is less expensive than a firm to which one might have switched.
The whole experience of privatisation is of an expensive game: paid for by the poor consumers. The gut reaction of the British people has been to agree that Labour has a point, in putting re-nationalisation of at least some of the utilities back on the political agenda.
It is most improbable that gas or water could be distributed to their millions of domestic and commercial users other than by pipelines; and trains will always need tracks, even if they become vacuum tubes through which the vehicles are sucked or pushed at hundreds of miles per hour.
By selling the licence to use the copper wire telephone system [that was originally laid across the country by Post Office Telephones] to the shareholders of British Telecom [BT], the Thatcher government did not extinguish the material monopoly that POT had created: they simply sold the ownership of the system. Alongside the massive development of airwave communications, some rival firms have put their carbon-fibre equivalent of wires in some parts of the country, to compete with the mix of copper and carbon-fibre that BT now use; but in most of the country the BT infrastructure provides the single means by which a consumer can connect their devices to the global telecoms system. As a result of this fact, which is derived from the impossible cost of replicating or triplicating the BT infrastructure, 'competitor' companies of BT have to hire the use of BT capacity. An 'economic regulator' OFCOM was established at the time of privatisation with the task of making the 'competition' of BT and other providers look a bit like the sort of a market that Economists imagine in their fantasies, and teach to captive students on the basis that acceptance of the 'model' is necessary to pass the exam. Thus the students are in the equivalent position of students of literature who are studying 'nonsense' poems by Edward Lear: with the difference that the Eng Lit students know that the content is not real-world rational thought; while the Economics students are expected to pretend that the Econocratic model is superior to the reality that prevails in a corrupt and inefficient world.
The job of OFCOM in communications, like that of OFWAT in the mock market in water and that of OFGEM in the speculative sphere of energy, is to make rulings which set the basis for the provider firms to charge customers and to maintain and enhance their distribution systems. Each of these organisations hires youngish Economists who are still at least half-convinced of the 'scientific' validity of Econocratic assertions, and these constantly come up with ways of 'refining' the models that the regulators use to bring the regulated system closer to the models they had from their teachers. When one of these tweaks of the system seems to be effective, some of the Economists who introduced the new wrinkle are recruited on higher wages by the other regulators to tinker with their systems.
Hence we have seen water companies urged to invest massively in replacing old pipes: then suddenly to stop as the regulator realises that the notional capital value of the company is being increased too much [for their model] at the expense of consumers' bills. We see constant attempts to compel users of electricity to join in a game of swapping 'suppliers', when everybody knows that the competing firms all use the same power stations and wires: the competition is only in publicity and customer relations [including billing]: and on a basis of 'swings and roundabouts' over a ten-year period of staying with the same supplier there will be periods when that is the most expensive and periods when it is less expensive than a firm to which one might have switched.
The whole experience of privatisation is of an expensive game: paid for by the poor consumers. The gut reaction of the British people has been to agree that Labour has a point, in putting re-nationalisation of at least some of the utilities back on the political agenda.
Saturday, 7 October 2017
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.
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.
Friday, 6 October 2017
Productivity, Productiveness and Personnel
One of my professional institutes, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development [CIPD], is holding its annual bash in Harrogate: a sign that the nights are drawing in and Christmas preparations should be made, Among all the stalls promoting clever systems for improving the efficacy of the personnel function and the the productivity of workers there will be the usual mix of 'motivational' and 'experiential' presentations from the stage. Employers will be encouraged to mobilise the funds that are grabbed by the government in the tax called the Apprenticeship Levy, and no doubt that will push along the trend to encourage 15-21 year-olds to undertake pseudo-apprenticeships as provided for in the state's heavy handed allocation of resources. Meanwhile the government remains deaf to requests that the support for vocational programmes that are actually sought for by people over 24 years of age, who have had time to learn on-the-job about work, and assess what they need to know and to understand to move to a better position for themselves and for their employers: a place where their productivity can really improve.
This whole structure of wasteful spending allocations and cuts is deeply depressing, and I have railed about it on many past occasions.
All I want to do in this piece is to reiterate a frequent assertion: that in Millicent Fawcett's brilliant little book Political Economy for Beginners [1870] the point is made, very clearly, that there is a link between productiveness and productivity. Productiveness is the capability of an installation - one work place, or a whole factory, or anything in between - to deliver output. Productiveness is increased by making relevant investment: in machinery, in staff training and development, in the selection of superior input materials etc. Productivity is the measure of the resultant output, stated in the cash return from the sale of the output as compared with the cash expended in wages [of management and of operatives] to achieve the output. It stands to reason that productivity can be increased by offering higher wages: sometimes. Or productivity can be increased by penalising 'slackers', as under some dictatorships: sometimes, for a short time. Or productivity can be increased [or be reported to have been increased, for propaganda purposes] by Stakhanovites: so called after a Russian worker called Stakhanov who was held up as an example by Stalin's publicists because he was alleged to have increased his effort and effectiveness out of sheer enthusiasm for the regime and its targets under the five-year-plan. The whole of the proletariat was urged to emulate him, and thus bring on the socialist paradise much quicker than could otherwise be done; and, of course, eventually the whole thing was exposed as a sham and was quietly shelved.
The most consistent and effective way to raise productivity is by increasing the productiveness of the plant that is provided for the workforce to work with, and by raising their own ability and willingness to use the a resourcesvailable optimally.
It is patently obvious that in many democracies, and especially in Britain, productivity has 'flatlined': it has hardly increased across the whole of industry and commerce, for the past decade; and, if anything, it is declining. This is because - again, over almost the whole economy - serious investment to improve the productiveness of plant and people has simple not taken place. Fake apprenticeships do nothing to relieve this situation: and companies sit on billions of pounds of profits because they do not have enough confidence in the future to apply that cash to new machinery and really deep improvement of their processes and their people.
So: what can be done about that? More next time...
This whole structure of wasteful spending allocations and cuts is deeply depressing, and I have railed about it on many past occasions.
All I want to do in this piece is to reiterate a frequent assertion: that in Millicent Fawcett's brilliant little book Political Economy for Beginners [1870] the point is made, very clearly, that there is a link between productiveness and productivity. Productiveness is the capability of an installation - one work place, or a whole factory, or anything in between - to deliver output. Productiveness is increased by making relevant investment: in machinery, in staff training and development, in the selection of superior input materials etc. Productivity is the measure of the resultant output, stated in the cash return from the sale of the output as compared with the cash expended in wages [of management and of operatives] to achieve the output. It stands to reason that productivity can be increased by offering higher wages: sometimes. Or productivity can be increased by penalising 'slackers', as under some dictatorships: sometimes, for a short time. Or productivity can be increased [or be reported to have been increased, for propaganda purposes] by Stakhanovites: so called after a Russian worker called Stakhanov who was held up as an example by Stalin's publicists because he was alleged to have increased his effort and effectiveness out of sheer enthusiasm for the regime and its targets under the five-year-plan. The whole of the proletariat was urged to emulate him, and thus bring on the socialist paradise much quicker than could otherwise be done; and, of course, eventually the whole thing was exposed as a sham and was quietly shelved.
The most consistent and effective way to raise productivity is by increasing the productiveness of the plant that is provided for the workforce to work with, and by raising their own ability and willingness to use the a resourcesvailable optimally.
It is patently obvious that in many democracies, and especially in Britain, productivity has 'flatlined': it has hardly increased across the whole of industry and commerce, for the past decade; and, if anything, it is declining. This is because - again, over almost the whole economy - serious investment to improve the productiveness of plant and people has simple not taken place. Fake apprenticeships do nothing to relieve this situation: and companies sit on billions of pounds of profits because they do not have enough confidence in the future to apply that cash to new machinery and really deep improvement of their processes and their people.
So: what can be done about that? More next time...
Thursday, 5 October 2017
What Brexit? What Price?
The future of Mrs May as the Prime Minister is being much discussed this morning, while her distress in delivering her conference speech yesterday was so awfully exposed on television and excessively discussed on all the media almost as soon as the coughing began. She was 'escorted' from the platform by her husband, and one could pause to ask how she would have been able to walk without his immense support. The scene was one of extreme [and most unfortunate] personal stress, exacerbated by the security failure that allowed the 'prankster' - as the media all-too-quickly dubbed him - to hand her a sheet of paper. Boris Johnson could have secured his future as leader by grabbing the man by the collar and frogmarching him towards the exit, but in the stress of the moment he merely [weakly] tried to wave him away.
The whole episode was sad.
But it was also shameful.
If Mrs May and Mr Hammond have agreed to spend £2 billion on more social housing [of what kinds, where, when?] they must have an idea how much they are going to offer to the European Union in the next round of Brexit talks. Mrs May should have told us. Just as she should have made her 'Florence speech' in the House of Commons last spring, she should have regarded her speech yesterday as the very final chance to share her thinking with the electorate on the uppermost issue of the day. The reaction of the EU Commission, Council and Parliament to the imprecision of the Florence proposition should, surely, have impressed even on Johnson and David Davis [though perhaps not yet on Liam Fox] the understanding that waffle never had its day, and is now deeply irritant to the rest of the European Union.
It is legitimate to say that resolving the question of the Irish border is inseparable from the resolution of the question what sort of economic border it is going to be; which can only be decided when the question of Britain's membership of the European Economic Area is determined. But the Irish question would be much easier to set aside until a later stage in negotiations if the British government would clearly articulate its hopes in that area.
On the other two questions that the EU insist must be close to resolution before the wider issue of trade is discussed, the answers must be simple. Davis has implied his acceptance of the two-year transitional period, Johnson has specifically agreed to his version of that, and Philip Hammond has advocated it consistently and strongly.
For two years after March, 2019, the existing rights of EU citizens in the UK will remain as they are, with the European Court as the ultimate arbiter. After March 2021 a new relationship must be agreed; and here Mrs May - as a 'failed' Home Secretary - apparently has a serious hang-up. The UK has been willing to make laws which allow US courts to require the extradition of British citizens to the United States to stand trial for alleged offences committed while the Brit [usually, but not always, a geeky young male who has developed perverse software or algorithms] was safely located back home; usually in the back bedroom. This has always seemed to me to be an amazing concession, which puts the British courts in the role of part of the supply chain to the US Justice System. Surely, something similar can be devised for EU citizens in the UK, and for UK citizens in the EU, after we leave the political union?
This then leaves the most basic issue. Does Brexit automatically mean that the UK MUST leave the single market, and must leave the customs union, and must leave all the agreements on drugs, nuclear control, civil aviation,. research co-operation and a long catalogue of other working agreements whose abrogation would desperately hurt the UK [and which would take decades to replace, once abandoned]? These issues were not specified in the referendum question, which referred solely and specifically to membership of 'the European Union'. The extreme Brexiteers who have taken up the negative position are relatively few in number; and for that very reason, as empty vessels, they are making most noise. They will be opposed massively in the House of Lords; but the Commons is the forum in which the debate will be focused in the end. And here one man can ruin the country on his own: Jeremy Corbyn has been viscerally against the 'club of capitalist states' for decades; and although his party has adopted a sensible stance, he could undermine it on the basis of his antediluvian Marxism. He must be corralled.
Meanwhile, Mrs May's total failure of leadership is now apparent to all. Let the agony end, soon.
The whole episode was sad.
But it was also shameful.
If Mrs May and Mr Hammond have agreed to spend £2 billion on more social housing [of what kinds, where, when?] they must have an idea how much they are going to offer to the European Union in the next round of Brexit talks. Mrs May should have told us. Just as she should have made her 'Florence speech' in the House of Commons last spring, she should have regarded her speech yesterday as the very final chance to share her thinking with the electorate on the uppermost issue of the day. The reaction of the EU Commission, Council and Parliament to the imprecision of the Florence proposition should, surely, have impressed even on Johnson and David Davis [though perhaps not yet on Liam Fox] the understanding that waffle never had its day, and is now deeply irritant to the rest of the European Union.
It is legitimate to say that resolving the question of the Irish border is inseparable from the resolution of the question what sort of economic border it is going to be; which can only be decided when the question of Britain's membership of the European Economic Area is determined. But the Irish question would be much easier to set aside until a later stage in negotiations if the British government would clearly articulate its hopes in that area.
On the other two questions that the EU insist must be close to resolution before the wider issue of trade is discussed, the answers must be simple. Davis has implied his acceptance of the two-year transitional period, Johnson has specifically agreed to his version of that, and Philip Hammond has advocated it consistently and strongly.
For two years after March, 2019, the existing rights of EU citizens in the UK will remain as they are, with the European Court as the ultimate arbiter. After March 2021 a new relationship must be agreed; and here Mrs May - as a 'failed' Home Secretary - apparently has a serious hang-up. The UK has been willing to make laws which allow US courts to require the extradition of British citizens to the United States to stand trial for alleged offences committed while the Brit [usually, but not always, a geeky young male who has developed perverse software or algorithms] was safely located back home; usually in the back bedroom. This has always seemed to me to be an amazing concession, which puts the British courts in the role of part of the supply chain to the US Justice System. Surely, something similar can be devised for EU citizens in the UK, and for UK citizens in the EU, after we leave the political union?
This then leaves the most basic issue. Does Brexit automatically mean that the UK MUST leave the single market, and must leave the customs union, and must leave all the agreements on drugs, nuclear control, civil aviation,. research co-operation and a long catalogue of other working agreements whose abrogation would desperately hurt the UK [and which would take decades to replace, once abandoned]? These issues were not specified in the referendum question, which referred solely and specifically to membership of 'the European Union'. The extreme Brexiteers who have taken up the negative position are relatively few in number; and for that very reason, as empty vessels, they are making most noise. They will be opposed massively in the House of Lords; but the Commons is the forum in which the debate will be focused in the end. And here one man can ruin the country on his own: Jeremy Corbyn has been viscerally against the 'club of capitalist states' for decades; and although his party has adopted a sensible stance, he could undermine it on the basis of his antediluvian Marxism. He must be corralled.
Meanwhile, Mrs May's total failure of leadership is now apparent to all. Let the agony end, soon.
Wednesday, 4 October 2017
Catalonia and the European Union
The Spanish state, with the specific endorsement of the King, has made very heavy weather of the ongoing attempt by a bunch of Catalan nationalists to set up an independent state. These Nationalists have achieved a majority in the regional parliament; but there is no reason for an external observer to believe that there would be a majority vote of eligible electors in Catalonia in favour of full international statehood if a full and fair referendum was held. Many Catalans are dubious about the prospect; many other Spaniards live within Catalonia who value to unity of the state, and many non-Spanish EU citizens may have voting rights.
The regional government was crazy to hold a 'referendum' that the central government simply had to declare illegal and disrupt. The very heavy-handed methods used by some police will affect the debate for months to come, and will scar some people for life [and some of them will pass on visceral hatred of 'Madrid' to future generations].
It appears that up to a quarter of the population did manage to fill in ballot forms - the exact number will never be known - and the regional authorities announced that 90% of the votes they have received were in favour of a split. Thus they claim that they will declare 'independence' within a few days; and bring their region under Spanish martial law. A few individuals will leap onto a bandwagon from being demonstrators to seeking 'martyrdom', mostly by getting themselves imprisoned but some may put themselves at risk of being killed, either in skirmishes or by committing terrorist offences which could be subject to the death penalty.
The exclusive responsibility for bringing the situation to such a crisis point lies on the regional government. It has no evidence that even a narrow majority of the population wants this high level of confrontation; even if they do resent the net payment that is extracted from their taxes to support the less-affluent areas of a large and complex country. The regional hotheads have mistaken a populist fad for a massive and well-founded 'national' consensus of the Catalans: and in so doing have set back the negotiation of a well-justified extension of their region's autonomy for a generation.
While individual politicians all over the EU have expressed regret at the heavy approach from Madrid, the EU institutions have been united in support of the central government, which is the member of the Union. There are far too many minorities, all over Europe, who would claim various degrees of separation - ranging from autonomous status to full sovereignty and EU membership - or their allegedly separate status. Hence the Union shrugs off such disruptive aspirations, and [in the way of all bureaucracies] discounts the claims of populist 'nationalism'. Left over from the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary, a couple of million 'ethnic Hungarians' live in Slovakia, Romania and Ukraine. Slovakia grants minority rights to the Hungarian language and to Hungarians, but takes careful steps constantly to adjust county boundaries so that none of then ever shows a majority Hungarian population that could then opt for secession [notionally taking their Slovak minority into an alien state]. Left over from Stalin's ruthless realignment of frontiers and populations in 1944-8 are at least twenty million German descendants of the expelled populations of East Prussia, eastern Pomerania, Danzig, Sliesia, the Saxon settlements of Transylvania, Sudetenland and many more areas that were ethnically cleared.
Bundled into a single country as Belgium, Netherlandish-speaking Catholics were allocated with French-speaking Walloons and given a foreign king to 'unite' them: a bizarre settlement that just about works, but is repeatedly threatened. Two small German-speaking areas were allocated to Belgium by the Versailles Treaty, and remain within the state with local linguistic exceptionalism. It is now a strange thought that most of Napoleon's 'French' subjects did not speak Ille-de-France French, but used a whole host of regional languages; many of which are related to what is spoken in other territories under different governments, as was his own native Corsican patois. A rigorous policy of enforced use of French was imposed through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: most notably on the Germans of Alsace and Lorriane between the two world wars. Several regions of Italy are home to vissiparous movements; and there is no clear linguistic frontier of demarcation between Poland and Belorussia or Ukraine. Latvia and [to a lesser extent] Lithuania and Estonia have an uneasy endowment of Russian-speakers whose families were settled there by Stalin.
Ireland is providing a serious sticking-point in the Brexit negotiations. Brittany and Cornwall have minorities who cherish a fondly romantic view of their common separateness from the states in which they subsist. Hundreds of thousands of Austrians were given Italian first names by decree in the South Tyrol when it was ceded to Italy as a shabby reward for its belated entry into the First World War on the winning side. Greece still prevents the statelet of Macedonia from using that name because it has its own province of Macedonia, complete with a suppressed Slav minority population.
In the ignoble but undoubtedly aristocratic tradition of Metternich, the EU simply prefers not to know about these nationalist issues. In the high-level scenario building around Brexit, some ScotNats though that there was a chance that a suddenly-independent Scotland could retain the UK's membership of the EU. The fact that there has been a decline in support for independence since the referendum on that subject opted for retention of the UK made a snap referendum too risky; and EU sources made it clear that a post-Brexit breakaway Scotland would have to go to be back of the queue for EU membership applications.
Spain has now been brought to the brink of a massive and wholly unnecessary confrontation, by a minority of a minority who are trying to impose a new constitutional order on a putative statelet. They are more appallingly ignorant even than they are overwhelmed by ambition. It will be tragic when people start getting hurt as a result of their irrational ambition.
The regional government was crazy to hold a 'referendum' that the central government simply had to declare illegal and disrupt. The very heavy-handed methods used by some police will affect the debate for months to come, and will scar some people for life [and some of them will pass on visceral hatred of 'Madrid' to future generations].
It appears that up to a quarter of the population did manage to fill in ballot forms - the exact number will never be known - and the regional authorities announced that 90% of the votes they have received were in favour of a split. Thus they claim that they will declare 'independence' within a few days; and bring their region under Spanish martial law. A few individuals will leap onto a bandwagon from being demonstrators to seeking 'martyrdom', mostly by getting themselves imprisoned but some may put themselves at risk of being killed, either in skirmishes or by committing terrorist offences which could be subject to the death penalty.
The exclusive responsibility for bringing the situation to such a crisis point lies on the regional government. It has no evidence that even a narrow majority of the population wants this high level of confrontation; even if they do resent the net payment that is extracted from their taxes to support the less-affluent areas of a large and complex country. The regional hotheads have mistaken a populist fad for a massive and well-founded 'national' consensus of the Catalans: and in so doing have set back the negotiation of a well-justified extension of their region's autonomy for a generation.
While individual politicians all over the EU have expressed regret at the heavy approach from Madrid, the EU institutions have been united in support of the central government, which is the member of the Union. There are far too many minorities, all over Europe, who would claim various degrees of separation - ranging from autonomous status to full sovereignty and EU membership - or their allegedly separate status. Hence the Union shrugs off such disruptive aspirations, and [in the way of all bureaucracies] discounts the claims of populist 'nationalism'. Left over from the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary, a couple of million 'ethnic Hungarians' live in Slovakia, Romania and Ukraine. Slovakia grants minority rights to the Hungarian language and to Hungarians, but takes careful steps constantly to adjust county boundaries so that none of then ever shows a majority Hungarian population that could then opt for secession [notionally taking their Slovak minority into an alien state]. Left over from Stalin's ruthless realignment of frontiers and populations in 1944-8 are at least twenty million German descendants of the expelled populations of East Prussia, eastern Pomerania, Danzig, Sliesia, the Saxon settlements of Transylvania, Sudetenland and many more areas that were ethnically cleared.
Bundled into a single country as Belgium, Netherlandish-speaking Catholics were allocated with French-speaking Walloons and given a foreign king to 'unite' them: a bizarre settlement that just about works, but is repeatedly threatened. Two small German-speaking areas were allocated to Belgium by the Versailles Treaty, and remain within the state with local linguistic exceptionalism. It is now a strange thought that most of Napoleon's 'French' subjects did not speak Ille-de-France French, but used a whole host of regional languages; many of which are related to what is spoken in other territories under different governments, as was his own native Corsican patois. A rigorous policy of enforced use of French was imposed through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: most notably on the Germans of Alsace and Lorriane between the two world wars. Several regions of Italy are home to vissiparous movements; and there is no clear linguistic frontier of demarcation between Poland and Belorussia or Ukraine. Latvia and [to a lesser extent] Lithuania and Estonia have an uneasy endowment of Russian-speakers whose families were settled there by Stalin.
Ireland is providing a serious sticking-point in the Brexit negotiations. Brittany and Cornwall have minorities who cherish a fondly romantic view of their common separateness from the states in which they subsist. Hundreds of thousands of Austrians were given Italian first names by decree in the South Tyrol when it was ceded to Italy as a shabby reward for its belated entry into the First World War on the winning side. Greece still prevents the statelet of Macedonia from using that name because it has its own province of Macedonia, complete with a suppressed Slav minority population.
In the ignoble but undoubtedly aristocratic tradition of Metternich, the EU simply prefers not to know about these nationalist issues. In the high-level scenario building around Brexit, some ScotNats though that there was a chance that a suddenly-independent Scotland could retain the UK's membership of the EU. The fact that there has been a decline in support for independence since the referendum on that subject opted for retention of the UK made a snap referendum too risky; and EU sources made it clear that a post-Brexit breakaway Scotland would have to go to be back of the queue for EU membership applications.
Spain has now been brought to the brink of a massive and wholly unnecessary confrontation, by a minority of a minority who are trying to impose a new constitutional order on a putative statelet. They are more appallingly ignorant even than they are overwhelmed by ambition. It will be tragic when people start getting hurt as a result of their irrational ambition.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)