The true history of Brexit: the deluded election

 This is part of what my gift from the future, The New Oxford History of England. Brexit 2015-50 had to say about the 2024 General Election:

'It has gone down in history as the 'Deluded Election'. Both the Conservatives and Labour ruled out increases in any of the major revenue-raising taxes - income tax, national insurance and VAT. With public services severely strapped for cash, this begged the question 'how are these services going to be saved from collapse'?

Both parties based their 'plans' to avoid this breakdown on growth in the economy. Neither had any satisfactory explanation of what would be Plan B if this growth was not achieved.

Bizarrely, the one policy guaranteed to deliver economic growth, reversing Brexit, was not only rejected by Labour and Conservative, but all mention of the damage leaving the EU had caused Britain was avoided. 

So fanatical was this Brexit omerta that Labour and Conservative candidates were not even allowed to discuss rejoining the Single Market, despite the fact that leading Brexit campaigners, including Boris Johnson himself, had promised that the UK would remain in the Single Market after leaving the EU.

And all this against clear evidence that by 2024 most people realised Brexit was a bad mistake, while only a tiny minority believed it had been a good idea.'

Truss and Kwarteng: it's the same old song

Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng (what WAS he doing at the Queen's funeral by the way?) - bless their little cotton socks: 'We want to speed up growth. We want to create a high wage, high productivity economy'.

Don't you love the way they say it as though it's some wizard wheeze no one else has ever thought of ?  I mean British governments are always saying: 'We want lower growth, lower wages and worse productivity,' aren't they?

In fact, every British government I can recall has said it has the same aim as Truss, but I don't recall many others who thought the way to achieve it was to borrow hand over fist saddling your children and grandchildren with massive debts so they can give huge handouts to the super-rich. 

Bodes well for the latest Brexit-crazed Conservative government, eh?

The real Queen's Speech - Brexit benefits, making us richer by making us poorer etc

For anyone who didn’t manage to sit through all the turgid, lying drivel of the 'Queen's Speech', (note for overseas readers - in the UK what's known as the 'Queen's Speech' is actually the Government's Speech, but ministers are anxious to get someone else to share the blame) below are the main points. I bet the Queen was delighted she had a sick note and didn’t have to read this guff out.

1. We will defend democracy in Ukraine, but not in the UK obviously, where anyone who does not bow down to worship the Great God Brexit and the heroic achievements of Chairman Johnson HAD BETTER WATCH OUT.

2. We appreciate that a lot of you can’t afford to eat or put the lights on, but don’t worry. We will be delivering you a whole pile of BREXIT BENEFITS (details to be announced in due course).

3. We will use the OPPORTUNITIES OF BREXIT, which makes our economy smaller, to make our economy bigger.

We accept NO RESPONSIBILITY for any policies that may prove defective.

Is this all right, Vladimir?

Boris Johnson’s Conservative ‘government’. 

Brexitwatch: a letter to the BBC

I am tired of the constant pro-Brexit bias and the inaccuracies about leaving the EU that I keep seeing and hearing on the BBC, a broadcaster I used to admire. This is what I have written to them. Please feel free to borrow, adapt etc if you feel the same.

This is the link for complaints 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/contact_us/making_a_complaint.html

I have held my tongue since the EU referendum, but I can do so no longer.

For decades I have defended the BBC and the licence fee, but, in view of the Corporation’s blatant pro-Brexit bias, I no longer feel I can.

During about 30 minutes on the ‘Today’ programme of March 29 on Radio 4, there were a series of examples of this. First shortly before 0800 Nick Robinson said that Remainers were demanding a ‘Second Referendum’ on the Brexit terms. This is completely inaccurate. There has not yet been a referendum on the Brexit terms, so any referendum on them would plainly be the first. To describe it as a ‘second referendum’ is likely, by accident or design, to undermine support for it by implying falsely that it is a re-run of or an attempt to subvert a referendum that has already been held.

Then, around 0815, Brexit supporter Liam Fox was allowed to claim without challenge that the UK economy had been doing well since the Brexit vote. This is completely untrue. The government’s own figures show the UK’s was the only major economy in the world to slow down last year, the fall in the pound that the Brexit vote caused has made us all poorer, real wages are still declining etc, etc. Why did your interviewer fail to put these points to Dr Fox?

Sadly, this is not an isolated instance. While pro-EU interviewees are usually given a hard time, Brexiters are allowed to spout their untruths without challenge. When a handful of Brexit campaigners set up a stunt the BBC covers it. When tens of thousands march against Brexit across the country, the BBC ignores it.

 The EU referendum was advisory and non-binding on MPs. The BBC constantly ignores this etc. etc.

Brexitwatch; how they demonise immigrants, 'experts', Cameron, while their fantasies wreck our economy

Even the Mail is waking up to the dangers from the anti-Europeans. From today's paper:

‘The time has come to talk about Project Hate. Three weeks ago we all woke to the following quote from a pro-Brexit MP: 'I don't want to stab the Prime Minister in the back – I want to stab him in the front so I can see the expression on his face.'

One week later Nigel Farage said that British women risked being raped if we didn't vote for Brexit. At the same time posters began to circulate from the Vote Leave campaign – replete with shadowy footsteps – warning of 55 million migrants entering the UK from Turkey. Last week, as immigration began to slip down the agenda, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove again demanded Cameron 'veto' Turkish accession.

A day after the Orlando terrorist attack, a poster was published by Leave.EU urging people to 'act now' before a similar attack occurred here in the UK.

This followed a warning from Gove that if Turkey were granted access, 'extremists everywhere will believe that the West is opening its borders to appease an Islamist government'. They know what they are doing. Farage. Gove. Johnson. They have always known. That they were opening a Pandora's Box. But it glistened before them so brightly.

And now we know too. The signs are everywhere. The plunging pound. The increasing panic on the stock market, not to mention the ever more strident attacks on the governor of the Bank of England, and any of the other despised 'experts' who dare to suggest Brexit represents a leap into the darkness.

In some ways, this is the most insidious element of all. The bonfire of reason that now underpins the Leave campaign. Facts, logic, experience – the foundations upon which any rational debate must rest – are systematically dynamited in pursuit of an intellectual abstraction known as 'sovereignty'.

Project Hate has brought us to the brink. Britain – the country we live in this morning – stands on the edge. This time next week it could all be gone. Our economic security. Our national security. Our international security. Imagine if it works. The overt racism. The overt demonisation of refugees. The graphic threats to stab the Prime Minister in the chest. Imagine if that is what constitutes a successful British political campaign in 2016.’

Europe: stay or leave? Focus on fact - 5

Today’s fact: other countries have rights and interests just as much as we do. 

The anti-Europeans are so focused on what they see as OUR rights and interests that they have a real problem getting their heads round the idea that our European neighbours have THEIR rights and interests too.

A similar thing happened in the Scottish referendum. The pro-independence campaigners were so obsessed with their own interests, they could not understand that the rest of Britain would consider ITS interests and say: ‘No. You can’t keep the pound.’

Because the other EU countries are better at selling things to us than we are at selling things to them, we have a huge trade deficit, but to the anti-Europeans in their parallel universe, this weakness is a strength, for it means the rest of Europe will be desperate to offer us a stonkingly favourable trade deal. Unfortunately it does not work like that.

Europe sells about 8 per cent of its exports to us. One would not want to give that up, but if push came to shove, one could do without it. Between 40 and 50 per cent of our exports go to Europe. If we lost that, it would destroy our economy. In any post-Brexit negotiations, the rest of Europe will have the strong hand, and we will have the weak one. We will be the ones desperate for an agreement.

The anti-Europeans want a relationship with the rest of the Europe that gives us all the benefits of EU membership with none of the costs, and they blame any suggestion of a refusal to give in to their demands on spite. Europe would certainly be justified in feeling spiteful when you look at the constant vituperation it receives from the anti-Europeans, but spite is not the reason it will refuse the Brexiters’ demands. The reason is that it is not in the interests of the rest of Europe to concede them. 

Panic on the streets of London

So I got it slightly wrong in my blog of February 23 – the Bank of England must have thought twice about cutting interest rates to minus 2.5%. Instead they just brought them down to 0.5%. In other words, suppose you lend someone £100, taking the risk you don’t get it back. For taking that risk of losing your money, you stand to earn yourself....50p! Interest rates have been slashed by 90 per cent since October, and Labour and the bank are astonished that nobody wants to lend.

Still, the bank’s governor Mervyn King gave a wholehearted defence of the policy. He said: "Nothing in life is ever certain, but these measures we think will work in the long-term." I feel better already! Who was it who said “in the long-term we are all dead”? Oh yes, it was the great economist John Maynard Keynes. Anyway, let me tell Mr King one thing that is certain – those who depend on interest from their savings – like pensioners, for example – are being hastened towards destitution, and they will do exactly the opposite of what the economy needs – they will stop spending.

Yesterday’s decision was another triumph of hope over evidence. Have the previous five interest rate cuts in five months got the banks lending? No. Why should this one? What effect have each of the previous five cuts had on the economy? Nobody knows, because nobody bothered to find out before making the next panic reduction.

All Labour’s economic policies – including the Mugabe option of printing money – are based on doing something, anything to get the banks lending, like the bizarre decision for you and me to take £325 billion of worthless assets off RBS’s hands so it would lend £25 billion (see my blog of Feb 27). It would have been cheaper, more effective, and more socially just for Labour to have simply given us the £25 billion.

There’s no point in basing an economic policy on prayers – prayers that the banks will lend money. Here’s what Labour should do instead – hand out an immediate tax cut or benefit increase to everyone receiving, say, twice average earnings or less. The pay-out should be on a sliding scale, with those earning most getting least, and the poorest getting most. This would stimulate the economy, as people who are less well off are much more likely to spend their money – and to spend it on local goods and services.

If Labour wish to be financially responsible (which I would advocate) the funds could be raised by an emergency tax levy on those earning more than, say, £100,000 a year. These people have benefited from huge tax cuts and pay increases over the last two decades, and are well equipped to help those less fortunate than themselves in what Mr King seems to be painting as the worst economic problems we have faced in the Bank of England’s 315 year history.

It's only money (2) + unhappy country

So now it’s official. Labour have been telling us that we are uniquely well placed to face the economic recession, but in fact we are uniquely badly placed. The International Monetary Fund has let the cat out of the bag, saying that we will be worse hit than the United States, Western Europe or Japan, and that we're heading for our worst slump since the 1930's with the economy shrinking by 2.8 per cent this year.

There is something we could do to mitigate this financial disaster, of course, but Labour are far too doctrinaire to try it. The economy needs people to spend. Poorer people are much more likely than better off people to spend their money rather than saving it, and more likely to spend it on local goods and services, rather than foreign holidays for example. Rich people, unfortunately, were given huge tax cuts by Mrs Thatcher (then the richest further rewarded themselves with huge pay rises). Many believed these tax cuts were unsustainable, and, indeed, they are now destroying our economy. We need tax increases for those at the top, with the proceeds distributed to poorer people as tax cuts or benefit increases. How nice to be able to do something that is not only right but profitable, but Labour won’t.

At the Congo war crimes trial of Thomas Lubanga yesterday, the first prosecution witness changed his story and said he had not been one of the 30,000 child soldiers recruited to fight in the civil war in the Ituri region. The court was then adjourned amid worries about intimidation of witnesses.

Today war is still raging in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and altogether more than 5 million people have died since 1998, making this the world’s deadliest conflict since World War Two. Back in the 19th Century, the region was taken over by King Leopold II of Belgium as his personal domain. During a 23 year reign of terror, according to official estimates, half the population of the Congo was wiped out, by murder, forced labour, starvation and disease. See A Disastrous History of the World.