Life after Brexit

The vested interests use two main arguments against Brexit. Fear creation and the claim  that Brexiters don't say what's to replace  clinging to the EU.

Both are wrong. The fears are inflated. They were used to frighten us into joining the Euro .None materialised when we didn't.In fact we did much better than those who did join that deflationary block.The second is equally wrong As the world's fifth largest economy we would be free to pursue our own interests instead of being tagged along behind someone else. Here's a few pointers.

1)Supporters of remain are concealing what will happen if they win.The pound will come down because of the growing deficit.It will be revealed that the "long term economic plan" is failing, growth slowing ,unemployment rising,demand weakening making tough measures, cuts sell offs necessary

2)The status quo will be preserved until the time when we're prepared and see fit to activate the withdrawal clause. 

3)There is no basis for assuming that the other EU members will want to make life difficult for us. They need our market and they want us to keep buying their  overpriced food.

4)There's never yet been a trade negotiation about imposing tariffs where there aren't any. That would be insane

5)The pound will come down as it's going to anyway to deal with the deficit. This will tax imports and boost exports We must prepare to take advantage of it by restraining domestic demand and boosting investment as Roy Jenkins did after the 1967 devaluation

6)We will be free to use the weapons other countries have used to grow their exporting industries including state aid for industry, regional incentives,protection from takeovers and incentives to invest and support for exporters..  

7)We can rebuild our fishing industry and food production by taking control of our own waters

8)We can build up our trade with food producers, developing countries  and growing powers like India and China for mutual benefit

It won't be easy but it is necessary and better than being tied to the world's low growth high unemployment blackspot and forced to pay over the odds for it to take our jobs,companies and demand as we decline into a low cost, low wage, low skill adjunct clinging to Europe because we're too frightened to pursue our own interests.

BRAIN OF STRAW

Will Straw has just sent me his entry for the Pinocchio prize for the best collection of fiction since Grimm's fairy stories. It tells me over 3 million jobs are linked to exports to the EU to which the response is "so what?" How many jobs have been lost because of our huge deficit with the EU?

It says every household will be a precisely calculated £4000.00 a year worse off from Brexit. Impossible to calculate that.

It says 200,000 businesses trade with EU. But neither how many trade with the rest of the world nor why the EU should want to bankrupt those that do. Do they hate us that much?

It claims that the weekly shop will cost £350.00 a year more.Why if we throw off French agricultural protectionism and buy the cheaper food on offer from elsewhere? He must shop at Fortnum and Mason.

It says there would be spending cuts of 36 billion.What for, when we'd be saving on the EU budget, the CAP and the CFP and all the grants we get from the EU are our own money back with their heavy costs taken out.

All this concocted cacophony of consolidated crap is then repeated in their telly party political which makes no mention of all the jobs,money and businesses the EU has drained from us through its costs and the growing deficit. Before we went in manufacturing was nearly a third of our economy.Now it's 10% and our trade deficit is 7%. Remain and both will get worse 

On the other side of his miscellaneous mensonges he quotes four people who've as much to do with the EU and know as much about it as Joe Bloggs, plus Mark Carney a government toady and the TUC General secretary who clearly has no faith in the ability of unions and the Labour Party to get a better deal from our own country

What a dog's breakfast of Euro-lies and Tory half truths. Enough surely to get Will drummed out of the Britannia Coconut dancers. Is he trying to whip up support for Brexit or just grow his nose? 

A scare a day keeps BREXIT at bay

 David Cameron has a cunning plan for winning the referendum. Each day a new interest group will announce that their members want to stay in the EU for any reason they can think of. Friday the Luvvies and writers, Saturday the big grocery chains like Asda and Tesco. Next week still to come: The Seaside landladies, the Beekeepers, the Dog Walkers (particularly Dachshunds) the White Van Drivers, the Stamp Collectors (particularly those specialising in Luxembourg), The Fretworkers and the photographers (we Leica) Still a few slots left. Register Now!!!

Unfortunately the  "Rally for Europe" explanatory pack which the interest groups get to help them with reasons for the views they don't have, doesn't tell them what to say. It's difficult for them to speak with the same precision as the Treasury which has the gift of prophecy and the skill to tell us the precise amount we'll lose by leaving (a loss- two hundred thousand pounds per house in London or five pounds fifty and the closure of their outside lavatories in the North) so we get some very odd claims.The Luvvies couldn't really think of any reason why EU membership  would help actors or authors so they waffled on  about having to change the Merchant of Venice  to Merchant of Grimsby and M Junker reading less Shakespeare when he's sober.

The big super markets were even more confused. France, they whined, would refuse to take British lamb which I would have thought would bring the price down. The French would refuse to send us their over priced food forcing us to buy more cheaply elsewhere. The security services want to maintain the kind of cooperation the Belgians showed on terrorism (or when they refused to supply bullets to the British army in the Falklands) while the Generals can tell us what a big help the EU was when we invaded Iraq while Alistair Darling says the EU will protect us from another recession like 2008, even if it didn't in 2008.

 I await each new horror with rising terror. It'll be worse than 1940.Without Hitler .Saint Junker preserve us!

God save the Euro. Draghi can't.

GOD SAVE THE EURO.DRAGHI CAN'T

As I sit here terrified in my reconditioned Anderson shelter (built out of Spanish Pilchard tins) awaiting the disastrous consequences Cameron has predicted from a Brexit vote: world war three, rampant terrorism, the end of the health service, the collapse of the pound and of house prices, I've begun to think leaving the EU will be so bad  it will make what the EU is doing to Greece look kind and well intentioned.

Then I realise that Brexit can't possibly be worse than joining the Euro as so many of the anti-Brexit people want, Kaletski claims that the Euro has been saved by printing money on an enormous scale by Quantitive Easing but this can't be more than a temporary boost like morphine for a dying patient (and a shot which hurts us because it brings the  Euro down making them even more competitive against us).The Euro can only work if it's backed by a system of redistribution to the poorer areas (which Germany won"t allow) a central budget and economic policy (which France won't allow) and the development of a federal state (which electorates won't allow)

Until then the less competititive countries will be forced to deflate to get down to German levels of inflation unemployment will remain high,particularly for young people and Germany will continue to drain demand and jobs from other members by running a great surplus in its trade with them and not redistributing it. 

Meanwhile we'll sit there on the periphery unable to influence what's going on but suffering from the deflation in our major market which will have to foist more goods and people on us just to keep going.Victory for Remain will tie us bound and gagged to all this  David Cameron  tells us that June's decision is for  life.But he's wrong. We're committed to another referendum if there's any change to the treaty which there will have to be if they're to make the Euro work. 

What a mess. It's no fun being shackled to a corpose

Brexit- Balls- Up by Labour

Labour's leaders don't realise what they're doing to Labour's core vote by their over enthusiastic endorsement of "Remain". Jeremy has always been opposed to the EU but had to be whipped and forced into line by the Pro Europeans and the vacuous Euro enthusiasm Blair had built up. But at least his endorsement was grudging, stumbling and an expression of support for  an EU which doesn't exist and never will. Jeremy felt he should fall in to line on Europe in the hope of winning on Trident which is more important to him but It's still vainglorious to talk of leading Europe when we're in the outhouse and will be locked in there in impotence as the Euro-zone develops.

But then to go in and give us a lecture on the virtues of immigration and have Balls singing duets with Osborne and Kinnock laughing on the telephone with Cameron is not only sick making but seems well calculated to drive working class voters over to UKIP

We made the same silly mistake on the Scottish referendum when supporting the Tories caused a collapse in the Labour vote. Now we're doing the same to our core vote in the North. Make no mistake traditional Labour voters there are pretty fed up. They've seen that the last Labour government didn't protect them and its leaders went whoring after the City of London, the Banks and Big Finance. They've seen that Labour can't protect them from the cuts and unemployment created by this government while Labour postures and fratches (it's a Yorkshire word)

They've seen benefits showered on London and wealth accumulating in the south. They've seen their wages stagnate, the industries destroyed, their views driven underground by political correctness. They feel no one speaks for them anymore and they're fed up.

All these grievances accumulate  against immigrants. It's a mistake.  The immigrants aren't responsible for their problems the government is, but their political instrument the Labour Party and the Unions can't do anything about it. They know that their services and benefits are all being slashed so that folk far better off than them can have tax cuts but they can't do anything about that either.So,inevitably, they focus on something nearer at hand and look for a strongman who'll bash the overpaid financial interests, the greedy capitalists and the hard faced men who've done well for themselves by selling their companies and their country short. 

It's a syndrome. And it won't be assuaged by homilies about how good the EU, the immigrants and the wealth creators are for the country. Si Monumentum requiris Circumspice As they say in Barnsley.To translate it for Labour: speak for the North or die. 

Europe a Union that isn't

When Ted Heath dragged his reluctant country into Europe in 1972 he deliberately misrepresented the organisation we were joining as a trading arrangement, a Common Market, though he claimed later that it was a surrender of sovereignty to start on the path to ever close union. He knew that and if others didn't realise it then they should have.

Since then as the organisation grew in power it changed its name first to the European Economic Community,then to the European community and finally full admission of what only Heath had realised in 1972 ,a European Union, on the road to a full federal union .Which is exactly what's wrong with it today: It isn't.

A union is an entity like a nation with common standards  a common identity in which the more prosperous parts help and support the more backward areas as Britain does (inadequately)with regional aid,the Americans with defence spending and the Australians with cross subsidies between states. A union has common finances and a common budget. It's money flows are redistributed round the whole rather than monopolised by any one part. 

Europe's so called Union has none of these characteristics.While talking about  "ever closer union" it hasn't got far enough down that road to be anything better than the common market it started out as and still remains.Which is why membership has been, and remains, so damaging to Britain

In a market it's each part for themselvesi in a forum which depends on competition rather than cooperation.In a market the strong prevail and the weak go to the wall.In a market there's no machinery for either protecting the less competitive units,for helping them out of their difficulties or for bringing them up to a common level.In a market they decide their own fate and succeed or fail by their own efforts rather than by centrally controlled and managed policies.In a market winner takes all. And keeps it.

Which is a fairly accurate description of the so called union,In it super competitive Germany piles up huge surpluses which drains demand ,jobs and money from the others . This "union" has no system of redistribution or regional policy comparable with that of a nation state because Germany which was ready to spend enormous amounts to bring its kith and kin in east Germany up to  something nearing a common standard is not prepared to do the same for lazy Latinos or irresponsible Irish or the Bumbling British who misguidedly believe that "punching above their weight" really means living beyond their means " by running a growing trade deficit,now 6%and rising most of it with the rest of Europe.

There's the paradox.Membership would benefit Britain only if it were a genuine union.But the only moves to create this are in theEurozone from which we're excluded.So we're relegated to Europe's remainder bin as a peripheral annex clinging to a market in which we're loosing out

Complacent Brits may think that they have a divine right to maintain a standard of living they no longer earn .They may believe  that being part of a "union"will bring help and support They'd be wrong. .The fate of the uncompetive is clear from the appalling treatment of Greece. Having made the mistake of seeking unity through the Euro its members will try to make it work by strengthening central institutions and building on their bail-out fund a9to which we refuse to pay) to a European budget and an  economic policy from which we will be excluded .We'll be peripheral.

A vote for "remain" not only sanctions whatever the EU does in future,particularly decisions for and by the Eurozone but is a vote against fighting back by  rebuilding manufacturing The means of doing this are proscribed by Brussels from state aids, a more generous regional policy, conditions on contracts requiring work in this  country,or any restriction on sale of crucial industries firms and assets .It's not a vote for a "Britain stronger in Europe".It's one for relegation to the plangent whining periphery which Europe reserves for its losers.

British Achievements: Corruption

David Cameron had his conference in London to call everyone else grime bums and show that Britain's is clean and pristine.He's right only if corruption is interpreted only as bribery because our politicians aren't worth buying.We only bribe to get contracts with Saudi Arabia or lesser breeds without the scruples.But we're one of the most corrupt nations when it comes to fiddles and influence.

A country where party donors can buy seat in the legislature in the Lords is in no position to call anyone else grimy behind. Lesser donors get posts in the health service, education or quangos.  The government was going to abolish quangos but has now decided it's better to fill them with Tories.

Is it corrupt for public servants to take jobs with companies and organisations they've been regulating? Do they soft peddle the regulation to get the job? Is it corrupt for the big four accountancy houses to sell tax avoidance schemes? Or for areas which vote Tory to get better expenditure deals, or for HMRC to give big corporations  an easier tax ride that small businesses?

Is it corrupt for a government to consolidate itself in power by extending the term of parliament, reducing the number of MPs to increase the proportion of Tories, to purge the register so the poor,the transient and the students are deprived of votes and to hit the funds of the opposition by reducing trade union spending but doing nothing about the huge business spending that comes to it?

Is it corrupt to permeate government departments and particularly HMRC with senior personnel from the groups they're supposed to regulate, to give big contracts to the accountancy houses and others who contribute to the Tory Party, to refuse to do anything about the crown dependancies over which they have control providing all the fiddles associated with tax havens or to set out to encourage funny money,drug money and corrupt money from developing countries by lax regulation and opens up everything for sale to foreign interests.How about the long delays in dealing with abuses,from police lies to company fraud? That's surely corrupt but it happens all the time when regulators are permeated and controlled by the regulators.

Perhaps the Tax Justice group or the Labour party should hold its own conference on home grown corruption to show that Britain Can still lead the world in something.