When oppositions fall apart.....

FRAGMENTATION AND FAILURE

The law of political fragmentation (which I've just invented) states that when oppositions fall apart, government is all powerful. Usually our two party system  prevents this. The opposition maintains a continuous critique of the executive, develops an attractive alternative and stands ready to take over when and if the existing one fails

That hasn't worked when parties have broken up or opposition is divided. In 1884 the Liberals split over home rule and Liberal Unionistssustained a period of Conservative rule which went on, albeit with a brief and powerless Liberal government, until the Tories themselves fell apart over tariff reform twenty years later.

It happened again in the 1920s when another Liberal split gave Britain a three party system which lasted until Churchill brought all the parties together in his grand coalition in 1940. Now as Brexit and the rise of the SNP fragment the opposition once more, its happening again.             These precedents are bad. Previous fragmentations gave Britain stable but bad government as the Conservatives instead of driving to the centre as governments facing an effective opposition do  ignored the social and industrial problems of the long recession as Salisbury did or failed to deal with post World War One decline  and the suffering it produced as the government of the twenties did.

Now, a similar situation brings back the prospect of one party rule in which another Conservative government  isn't kept to the mark and the centre by an effective opposition. This is partly due to the slow death of party allegiance with fewer people voting for the two majors, more voting as consumers not loyalists, partly too to the erosion of Labour's base as Britain became more middle class now because the second party has split (yet) but because the opposition is  divided and it's component parts can't agree on much.

Paddy Ashdown and Peter Mandelson want  a new grouping to bring Labour and Liberals together. This is unlikely because, the Lib-Dems now have so little to offer that it would be like trying to mate an elephant with a flea. The Liberals are no longer the attractive partner they were when Tony Blair turned coalition down in 1997. They're in constant conflict with Labour in the councils, they disagree about the trade unions and equality , their socially liberal policies aren't too attractive to Labour's core support and Labour can never match their vacuous enthusiasm for the EU.

 Labour faces another threat on the other side from from UKIP though that is in its northern heartlands not Parliament  UKIP may win council seats and threaten Labour marginals by taking votes away but  the only possible relationship is frigid distaste. Labour MPs are too priscilly middle class to want anything to do with UKIP's populist upstarts whom they regard as a boil on the bum of the body politics,not potential partners.

The real problem is Labour's loss of its Scottish base. The rise of the SNP not only creates two oppositions but brings back, on a smaller scale, the problem the Liberals faced in 1910 . Labour can only be effective with nationalist support as the Liberals were with the Irish nationalists.Back in Edwardian times,however, the Liberals had something to offer in Home Rule which kept the nationalists in line. Now Labour has nothing .The battle in Scotland is a fight to the death to win back Labour's once and former heartland.

Another dose of devolution won't satisfy the SNP. Labour can't outbid them in their devotion to the EU, and with English financial support, the SNP inScotland has been able  to offer the Scots more than Labour did or can. The SNP's threat to call another referendum is pure bluff .They'd lose it thanks to the decline in oil revenues and the dependence on English subsidies but though Labour can win back seats it is never likely to win all the seats it once held . Without them it can't offer an effective alternative to the Conservatives in either Westminster or Holyrood

The Tories are compounding the opposition's problems by taking steps to entrench themselves. The massive redistribution consequent on the reduction to 600 MPs will hit Labour harder than the Conservatives. They've restricted trade union and Parliamentary funding, purged the electoral rolls by personal registration and are even considering  requiring ID to vote a device the Republicans  use to purge Democratic voters in the US

Taken together all this means that a government with a minuscule minority isn't threatened. It's opponants cant agree. They hate each other more than the government. They're are in direct competition with each other on the ground and all of them fear an election. They can agree on are the Health Service and demonstrating their distaste for President Trump but on no issue neither can they push hostility so far as to defeat a government which can treat any defeat as a question of confidence  and go for an election where the SNP is certain to lose some support in Scotland, Labour more in England.

 The ice is thin on any conventional measure but Theresa May can continue to skate on it and mobilise  all the powers of the elective dictatorship as if she had a majority of 200 and can continue to do that  up to 2020 just s as long as she gets a presentable deal on the EU, drops a few items from the Thatcherite menu of austerity, spending cuts and starvation of housing and local government and lives up to her own rhetoric by tilting things back to the "just managing"(who're probably also just Labour). Given that, it may be May for the foreseeable future. 

Fishing for Failure

Fishing was Ted Heath's greatest failure when he took Britain into the Common Market. Before negotiating with the three most powerful fishing states, Britain, Norway and Denmark the existing members saw their chance to take over more prolific waters and  cobbled together a Common Fisheries policy weeks before negotiations began just to do that. 

It was no more than the simple principle of equal access to a common resource Norway refused to fall into the trap but Ted Heath, desperate  for entry, regarded fishing as disposable and didn't even try to change a policy which was still malleable. He accepted it with only a ten year derogation before European fleets could fish right up to our beaches This ensured that Britain was unable to follow the world trend by taking its own exclusive waters and when it was forced out of Iceland the British fishing industry couldn't be rebuilt within our own limits

The result was the decimation of the English industry given only a three mile exclusive limit while Scotland was better protected by a 12 mile limit for a"North Britain" (which didn't include Yorkshire). The result was a conservation crisis caused by over  fishing in the wider waters where British vessels had traditionally fished. The lesson was clear. Only the nation state can maintain conservation  to hand sustainable stocks onto the next generations. Every nation outside the EU was doing that. We couldn't because Common access means paper quotas to allow everyone to grab their share. EU vessels crowded in, their fleets rebuilt and modernised with EU money not available in Britain because the government refused to put up the match funding. It wanted to decommission the fleet.

It's no wonder that the fishing ports and the shrunken British industry, rallied for Brexit.They see fishing as the forefront of the fight to take back control. No wonder either that the other EU members including, even those which are landlocked will fight  to protect their access to our fish.

It will  be difficult. British limits extend to 200 miles only to the North and west .Elsewhere the median line will be fifty miles or less. A bigger fishery protection effort will be necessary. Infringements will have to be dealt with though there is no need for any cod war. Only national control can rebuild the fishing industry with all its ancillaries in marketing, engineering and processing. The argument that we will need mutual arrangements to encourage conservation is specious in the light of the damage the CFP has already done to conservation. So is the argument that our fish exports will be damaged. In fact they will increase if other countries aren't able to catch our fish for us.

The best precedent is Greenland It got a clean break on leaving the EU and abolished all historic rights and now lives by fishing though it gives controlled access to others Or take the example of New Zealand which charges for access. With national waters we can stop French vessels  destroying the pots of Yorkshire shell fishermen,stop French depredations on Sea Bass, Spanish registrations as British to catch our quota and ship it to Spain or the farce of one Dutch vessel taking a third of the British quota. 

Once we manage our own sustainable quotas we can agree reciprocal catches with other fishing nations such as Norway and Iceland or even allow limited access to others paying charges. If the EU is prepared  pay for EU vessels to loot the waters of third parties, it can pay for controlled access to ours.

Fishing may be difficult case but it's crucial and should not be sacrificed again for other objectives, as it has been. It's the worst EU failure and offers the best prospect of benefits if we take back control. The government may want to delay the issue but it should  establish the principle of national control first then decide the details later. Brexit won't be real without our own waters to manage. For their good and ours. 

NOW FOR THE SERIOUS BUSINESS OF BREXIT

After all the grandstanding huff and puff by recalcitrant remoaners the bill to give notice to leave the EU under Article 50 will pass because none of its critics wants an election. That brings us to the end of the phoney war and begins the real battle of Brexit; a fight which is no longer between homegrown Brexiters and Remainers, but a serious grapple between Britain and the EU, with major consequences for both sides.

This is a whole new war game.It requires a domestic armistice in order to fight a bitter battle with  a European Union which is going to use every trick in the book to stop Britain's departure. Article 50 is designed to make leaving as difficult and unattractive as possible and the processes as obscure as Euro-enthusiasts prefer. The Brussels bureaucrats know that if Britain leaves others will want to change the terms of membership to make the EU looser and weaker. They also know that it will cost them by ending the eleven billion pound contribution Britain makes to boost Brussels. 

We're going to have to fight and fight hard to escape from the EU on acceptable terms which will benefit both sides, rather than terms designed to damage Britain and teach us not to be naughty. While British factions argue about what form of departure they'd like, soft, hard or hardly any Brexit at all, the EU ,the Commission, France and Germany and even the smaller nations have announced in a synchronised chorus that we can't have any deal which approaches fairness. We'll will have to suffer on the naughty step to encourage everyone else not to stray.

Negotitions are a game of bluff and bluster in which both sides start out by maximising demands. Better therefore to intimidate an opponent right at the start by making their task look impossible, severe damage look inevitable and the outcome painful. They'll face no internal opposition in doing this. No one is going to break ranks to demand a better deal for Britain, all fear that our departure will require the others to pay more, German manufacturers want to keep a market which gives them such a handsome surplus and French farmers want to keep us buying their dear food. So they all want to put us off and bring us back, submissive and chastened into the boot camp.

Britain has no such advantages, We enter the fight on a battleground  heavily slanted against us. We're less sure what we want. Remainers want to make our demands minimal others to make none at all. The media are divided but bound, by their love of conflict and argument to amplify every problem, heighten every difficulty, and exaggerate every complaint. For the two years of negotiation government's intentions and the electorates' hopes will be undermined and  questioned, every fear exacerbated.

The other side faces none this. If we were at war it would be rated as treason and those who did it labelled fifth columnists. But we are in a fight for the future, which is why Remainers must now  recognise that we're in a different game, fighting not the British government, but an undemocratic entity which doesn't have Britain's interests at heart. We're fighting for our future in much the same way as we fought for democracy in real wars.

In that conflict those who undermine Britain's case for a good and honourable deal which keeps the British economy strong are really working to ensure that we come out of the two year negotiations damaged and weaker with an economy which isn't able to bear the burdens or provide the benefits the nation needs. No use saying they want a Parliamentary say on the final deal. We should have that of course, but it requires  Remainers   to fight for the best possible terms rather than trying to stop Britain fighting at all and constantly criticising government for doing so.

 The electorate voted for coming out They couldn't have voted on the terms on which we did that.Those depend on the EU not us. But they'll be angry if we get a bum deal and have to slink back with our tail, and all the subsidies we pay, between our legs. They'll be even angrier about any one who contributed to such a humiliation by undermining Britain's case. Subverting  the people's will  by doing that damages not only a government doing its democratic duty to fulfill the intention of the people, but the economy and  the country. Do the rampant Remainers seriously want that?

Full English Brexit: the people's revolt

The vote for Brexit was the revenge of the people and the regions left behind. It came from the old industrial heartlands, the less well educated, the unskilled and the older people who remembered better times. None of them are fashionable but should neither be viewed as if  unworthy to take such an important decision nor dismissed as oldies who'll soon be dead and replaced by a smarter, younger generation which loves the EU

To understand it we must ask what makes Brexit voters feel as they do? Why have they been left behind ? What's wrong with Euro Britain which makes so many  want to reject the wisdom of the elite? The answer cant be the spread of dementia. It must lie in the way the economy has been run and the consequences of this for the people and their lives.

 In the first decades after the war, les trente glorieuses (which translates as  the Never Had it So Good years) the economy was run to reward the people for their sufferings in depression and war by full employment, maintained by Keynesian demand management, a welfare state, and  steady economic growth all underpinned by the post war settlement of fixed exchange rates.

This fell apart in the seventies. Growth stalled,  inflation roared and competition became a zero sum battle between workers and business. Governments tried incomes policy and high benefit spending to cushion the failure but this produced its own nemesis .The trade unions lost control of their members and destroyed the Labour government . The Conservatives came in to offer punishment In place of appeasement by disciplining labour and imposing neoliberal policies: monetarism, high interest rates and an overvalued exchange rate to control inflation and destroy jobs.

This was the revenge of the rich, a group embracing the wealthy, big business,  the banks and  Britain's well off elite. Having fretted through decades of pleasing the people they took their revenge by breaking  the trade unions, destroying their base, manufacturing and basic industries , privatising public assets for private profit and rolling back the State, the protector of the people, to give power to markets which benefit the strong not the weak. To him that hath shall be given, and it was to encourage  initiative , enterprise and the proliferation of gold Rolexes.

Labour, the party of the people, initially protested but soon found that to win it had to accept the new norms, take its base for granted and reach out to the south and the middle class who'd not been as hard hit.As a result the Blair government embraced much of Thatcherism and didn't deliver enough to either its people or the depressed areas but gave generously to Finance and the City, the architects of the new paradigm. It encouraged globalisation and became passionately pro European both of which which drained demand, money and jobs  from Britain.

 Labour was brought down by the Great Recession, produced by the financial forces it had ,liberated .  This brought in a Tory party to implement a cruel austerity, cutting benefits to the poor to give tax cuts to the rich. It turned London into taxhaven on Thames and encouraged the  inflow of funny money to buy up companies, property, land and citizenship .Deregulation made the labour market casual and uncertain. Immigration, unemployment and offshoring kept wages down. The economy was kept running by rising debt, a form of privatised Keynesianism and a lax monetary programme which boosted asset prices.The South East, the City, Finance and wealth got the best of the deal. The suffering heartlands were ignored.

In other countries this might have produced resistance and revolt but what could Britain's losers do? Riots are not the English way. We're better grumblers but the whole game was slanted against the people.The media preached neo liberalsm, and Labour, becoming more middle class, spoke their language rather than that of the people..Critics were viewed as scroungers, dinasaurs and relics. Trade unions and  workers were powerless.  Unemployment and immigration kept incomes flat. The middle class could manage by coping, doping, hoping and shopping, to which one could have added, viewing, for television is the opium of the people, and borrowing on an enormous scale  to keep up living standards. The result was a growing burden of debt, pressing hard on the poor for whom  credit terms  were harsh and punishments vindictive. The only consolation was  watching celebs and a greedy, grabbing, elite  enrich themselves.

Their only chance to fight back  was to seize the opportunity David Cameron had unwittingly provided in his referendum . This allowed them  to use the by-election weapon of slinging off, by focussing all  their discontents on a European union they had no reason to like. The high vote for Brexit was an outpouring of the  bitterness and resentments accumulated over thirty years of punishment and pain from  globalisation, neoliberalism, immigration, austerity, high unemployment, growing burdens of debt and all the other  punishments to which the people had been subjected in the name of a business friendly dynamic economy.

Here wasn't just a verdict on Europe. It was a people's protest, a plea for help which requires government not just to come out of the EU, but to tilt the economy back to the people and give them the fair deal they're demanding  and deserve. 

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LIVING IN LALA LAND

 I'll go to see the new musical. It might cheer me up having lived in Britain's la la land for so long. Yet it won't explain  why a shunken, middle rank country which has never found a role since it lost an empire and been in comparative decline for decades is still being told, and half believes, that it's the greatest, an example to the world, and the best place to be when, in fact, it's deep in debt, unable to pay its way in the world and being sold off bit by bit to keep importing goodies we can neither produce nor afford.

A nation in a mess on that scale needs a powerful reassurance industry to tell it that the plug hole is another of the great opportunities so constantly showered on it. Britain has it in a media which portrays every failing business as leading the world,  every new restaurant start up as economic salvation. Their efforts are boosted by governments which tell us we're punching above our weight, as if a poodle punched rather than yapped, and by a Finance Sector which believes that multinationals must be allowed to evade their taxes to attract them here.  

Trump has just discovered alternative facts. We've been fed on them for years. Indeed only a nation living in La la land could see creative destruction as regeneration and Mrs Thatcher's  ruinous de-industrialisation as the cure for economic decline as if phoenixes arise from ashes so the best way to breed them is to create more ashes. Our competitors have used protection and built up national champions to grow strong. We have preached free trade to damage our industry, broken up all our former national champions: ICI, General Electric, British Leyland (Rover), and Courtaulds (RIP) and imposed the higher costs of both privatised utilities and indigent local government on a business community which then howls for tax cuts to survive. 

Now we're told that a country which seems to be doing well only by contrast with an EU which is doing so badly thanks to the Euro, is an economic miracle. In fact it is a huge bubble boosted by ever rising asset and house prices and kept going by consumers borrowing to buy what they can't afford and a state borrowing ever more to keep going. If this is success one begins to wonder what disaster looks like and if we'll ever be allowed to recognise it.

These attitudes cripple the great debate on membership of the European Union.  Euro -enthusiasts talk about the wonderful things the EU has done for us when its drained us of jobs, money and demand for decades. Beneficiaries proclaim the benefits of EU aid when its only our own money paid back for the EU"s purposes with their massive running costs taken out. The membership fees are said to be well worth paying when we must borrow to pay eleven billion,(and rising) just to belong to a club that's doing damage to our economy. 

The City of London proclaims itself as the nation's all powerful saviour admired by the world,while at the same time threatening that it will  collapse and migrate to Luxembourg if we leave. British business proclaims the Single Market as essential to survival while ignoring the fact that we trade in it at an enormous and growing deficit  met only by overseas borrowing and the  jumble sale of British companies, assets, property' land, even citizenship. British capitalism dubs itself  a world beating triumph  even though it lives on fees for selling British assets and leaches on the state for subsidies, lucrative PFIs and  transfers of state functions which it can run down for the profit of overpaid executives and greedy shareholders, more concerned with the short term and shareholder value than building the long term strength of the company.. 

All nonsense but because Europhiles believe it so strongly they're prepared to sabotage Britain's case, preach the other side's arguements and support every threat dredged up by tin-pot politicians on the EU's side, acting as a fifth column posing as the essence of Britishness. They mock the government's efforts to implement the wishes of the electorate and portray escape from  the EU octopus as not only doomed to failure but certain to lead to economic ,social and political disaster if they suceed. These are the arguments of nervous Nellies not those of a confident, competitive business sector

Arguments so fragile can't possibly be true yet they are assiduously propagated and proclaimed by the liberal media, the vested interests and the Celtic nationalists who prefer subjection to Brussels to benefits from Westminster.  Even worse they are half believed by a public which has been told for so long that failure is success, decline improvement, debt virtue and subordination, independence. A nation fed on myths  can, in the fullness of time and diet, die by them. Unless our politicians are prepared to heed Lady Curzon's advice to fearful brides to"Lie back and think of England"

  

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BRITAIN'S ONE PARTY STATE

I'm beginning to lose faith in the omniscience of George Soros. He's miscalled the pound's  exchange rate. Now he says Theresa May "will not last"  He's right to say "she's got a very divided cabinet, a very small majority in Parliament" but very wrong not to see that her government is impregnable because  Britain is becoming a one party state.

When I was an academic I preached the virtues our two party system in keeping up a continuous critique of the executive  and providing for easy changes of government. Now all that's  gone. Social change and the opposition's decision to opt for suicide as a political strategy make Britain's a one and  assorted bits party system which keeps Theresa's government secure.

The old system was dying. The proportion voting for the two main parties fell from ninety percent to around two thirds. Party membership dropped. Fewer people bothered to vote,more were open to change. Sudden vote surges to the SDP,then Clegg  showed that people were voting like consumers not party loyalists. 

 Labour then decided to throw membership open to anyone who could afford a raffle ticket with a prize of electing the party leader.This brought in a flood of members who weren't prepared to do the hard party work, and felt Labour governments had sold out but supported Corbyn, the one candidate in an uninspiring leadership field who talked their language. Sadly not one spoken by the people Labour needs to win. Result? A leader  as impregnable as he's incomprehensible was saddled on a Parliamentary Party which could neither follow him nor get rid of him.

This commits Labour to swimming against the tide of the new politics. The old and still basic division between the two parties was about class and equality but Labour's manual working class base is shrinking as the middle class base of the Tories grew. Now, that old, left-right division is becoming less important than the social- liberal versus traditional-conservative gulf, which emerges over feminism, race, homosexuality, the environment, globalisation, immigration and  other symptoms of modernity.

 Both parties struggle with this, witness Cameron's failed attempts to get the Tories to hug hoodies and huskies but Labour's struggle is harder. It's core support is more traditional, snobs would say less enlightened, its leadership  more middle class and liberal. Career politics have almost eliminated manual worker MPs. Their replacements are middle class kids on the make who are more liberal, even passionate about  new causes those at the bottom of the social ladder were less bothered about.

 Labour stopped talking the language of the people but took the support of "our people" for granted and set out to win support in the south and from higher up the social ladder. The Blair government  never deliveried enough to its people or its regions,but did too much for the City, for Finance and for the liberal cause pushers. UKIP began to pick up votes in Labour seats The SNP took Scotland

This is now been  compounded by an almost religious argument over membership of the EU.  Kinnock and Blair had brought it round to a vacuous enthusiasm but the conversion process  didn't reach down to the  party's base There people were more nationalistic and harder hit by the immigration, the wage stagnation and the de-industrialisation membership had led to. So the party which rushed to campaign for the EU was astonished to find that  a third of its people voted the other way  and most MPs were on the opposite side to their constituents.

 First reactions were to blame the hapless leader. Long  opposed to membership Corbyn was bullied into supporting it but  too unenthusiastically for Europhiles who promptly blamed him for the defeat Second reaction was to proclaim the intention to use Parliament to block people's wishes in Parliament and Blair,Hain and perhaps thirty MPs still adhere to this but the bulk of the party don't know what to do. So they clamoured for  government to declare its negotiating objectives without being  able to say what Labour's are because it's divided on the single market and immigration .They can't decide whether to have a free vote on the start of Clause 50 negotiations or face a rebellion.

 Parties are more factional and fissiparous, but the Conservatives can cope better.  Loyalty remains their secret weapon and power their overriding priority. The others face futility. Marshalling  them into an effective opposition is impossible .They can huff and puff against the government but none of them wants an election. Futility is better than unemployment , Indeed Labour doesn't dare  risk anything which might threaten the government because in their present state an election would be a Labour massacre. Humiliation in the Clause 50 negotiations may endanger the government but is more likely to generate electoral anger than any surge to Labour.

 Labour will stagger on but become less  relevant with an exodus of the able and ambitious which has already begun. It can't offer prospects to  rising ambitious youngsters, the new Blairs. Spluttering on the back benches or devoting their lives to petty social work and insoluable problems in the constituency are no great attraction. People on the make will see that they can't make it in Labour which must come to resemble Beau Geste's fort with the dead propped up on the ramparts, the living few dashing round firing their rifles for them and the new recruits more likely to bayonet the defenders than the enemy 

 Labour will fight back in Scotland but to be effective  there it must preach Brexet not try to outbid the SNP in its Euro-enthusiasm. Elsewhere Labour's impotence may  drive up support for the Lib-Dems, from both Euro-enthusiasts and protesters. Meanwhile the division between the socially liberal and the more traditional will  gape even wider. All that tolls the death knell of the two party system. 

Proportional Representation could allow Britain to cope  by articulating the  divisions but incumbant politicians have closed their minds against this. It would require a referendum and winning that is unlikely. So the odds are  that we face a future  which may be fascinating for the commentariat , political scientists and other perverts but depressing for everyone else, particularly for idealists. That's my prediction. The two forthcoming by-elections will give us the first indication of whether its right.

Labour: Are we brave brits or Eurocreeps?

Its time for Labour to stop maundering miserably in the back blocks of politics, give up its infantile Euro enthusiasm, understand that its job is to build Britain's economic strength not preach a naive internationalism . Instead we must speak for England, and enthuse our people for the fight not make them miserable by horrible projections. That would mean fighting for  Scotland too if we're to win it back from a Euro-daft SNP who'd rather be ruled from Brussels than share power with London.

As Britain embarks on the negotiations for withdrawal my party should ask itself  not what Mandelson, Blair and the sycophants of Finance want but "what about the workers?" What's good for jobs, a strong Britain and the rebalancing of an economy which is becoming a bubble sustained by ever rising debt?

What's the single market ever done for us? It's led to a horrendous deficit in trade with the EU. When we went in we had a surplus. Increasing every year its now become a ninety billion deficit, much of it with Germany. British exports to the EU falter because the Euro imposes deflation and has made the Eurozone the world's blackspot for low growth and high unemployment while our imports,particularly from Germany, increase, all of them jobs exported from Britain

Its principle of free movement of labour,agreed in an age when that meant small transfers between advanced economies, now permits an uncontrolled flood from Eastern Europe. This drives down wages in Britain and imposes severe strains on our underfunded social,educational and housing sectors and has generated widespread concerns. These  may be naughty, unsocialist, even populist, but come from Labour's people more than the Tory voting classes.

Its insistence on the free movement of capital allows multi nationals and British companies to dodge their obligations to this country  and benefit from a race to the tax bottom which Ireland and Luxembourg are winning to our great cost. They then have the cheek to accuse us of aiming to outbid those EU tax fiddlers if we leave.

That same freedom which we impose more effectively than anyone else allows large numbers of British firms to be taken over  by foreigners in  the EU's freest takeover market.Our railways are now run by nationalised European competitors making big profits here to keep their own domestic fares down while pushing ours to ridiculous highs.Their national champions take over our markets but ours GEC,ICI, Leyland , Courtaulds arse dismantled and sold off We're not allowed to aid or help  British firms to fight back.

Because its basis was a dirty deal to help German industry and French agriculture we are not only prevented from buying food from the cheaper producers we used to trade with,thus increasing our costs, but required to drag French agricultural protectionism into every trade deal the EU negotiates for us. This makes it more difficult and time consuming to get any.

A party of the people should recognise the damage being done to them by playing a more powerful opponent on an unbalanced court and not leave it to UKIP to voice concern. Instead Labour prevaricates. Our first reaction was to suggest that the decision of the people should be reversed by the elite. Realising that this was hardly democratic we began to moan about the cuts in Euro-support for regions, institutions and those strong Labour supporters the landowners, failing to recognise that this was our own money back with their heavy costs taken out. 

Now we've moved back to  defending the single market and giving aid and succour to the other side in the negotiations. That's now being softened by the realisation that our supporters want something done about immigration  and telling them it was for their own good wasn't exactly working. So we began to consider controls having proclaimed the fact that they're impossible in the single market. Now our fall back position seems to be that the government should give away its negotiating position and tie its hands to a soft Brexit while  our demands must be kept secret because we don't know what they are.

More sensible than all that obfuscation would be to reflect both the interests and the instincts of our people and take a far more nationalistic (ie pro British) line .Demand the best possible deal for Britain, stop maundering on stop condemning nationalism and fight for Britain's real interests. 

Brexit has already produced the first essential step  for dealing with our crippling balance of payments deficit .The devaluation which wouldn't otherwise have happened now brings the pound to a more sensible and competitive level at which British industry can begin to complete and grow. Nothing can be achieved without that. Devaluation is the only way to deal with deficit.

Let's stop moaning miserable about Brexit as if it was an economic Bubonic plague . We should demand that the government seize the opportunity it provides and  urge it to build on that by the best possible exit terms. That would be a settlement which serves our real interests in jobs and in rebalancing a failing economy ,rather than those of Germany and France. Most of us joined the Labour Party to  build a more equal society and better the lot of those down the heap not to become part of the Junker Tabernacle Choir.

  

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