Labour and Brexit

The Remainer resistance is hoping that the difficulties of the Brexit negotiations will force Britons to change their minds , realise that they were wrong to reject the advice of the elite in the first place, and crawl back into the EU. Now they demand that Labour must come out against Brexit and demand a re-referendum to allow the nation to stand on its head.

Since  all those asking Labour to lay down its future for Europe one has to ask, as they magnify every difficulty, defend every EU policy and criticise every British approach, whose side are they on? Labour's sacrefice would certainly please Polly Toynbee  and the others who urged the party to campaign for their objectives, then the bomb and EU membership, in 1981 .When it refused they broke away in the SDP and kept Labour out of power for eighteen years. It would also please Yesterday's Men, Tony, Mandy and the rest, and bring us into line with those goneburgers,the LibDems. It would even gratify the pundits like Steve Richards by proving that they'd been right all along.

The only group it wouldn't help is the Labour Party. It would be faced with new divisions and difficulties if it gave giving  EU membership a higher priority than power ,national regeneration or democracy. Labour could  hardly win back the left behind people, many of them Labour supporters all from sections of society and regions which normally vote Labour. They voted to come out, and who knows what they'll think after being buggered about for two years by an EU which can neither negotiate nor balance the relationship better.

It won't get us any better terms. Poor old David Cameron got nothing  to help him win the referendum and after forcing  Britain to jumping hurdles rather than negotiating, the EU it then can't agree anything. A 27 headed hydra is totally inflexible. Such intransigence is no way to win friends and influence Brits, particularly if it's coupled with threats and dirty tricks like cutting back on grants to Britain, stealing our banks and financial services and plotting the downfall of the City of London.Giving the EU hope that Labour will crawl back to the fold isn't going to make the hydra more accomodating

If the last ditch Remainers get their way Britain will be asked to go back, humiliated, tail between our legs and swallowing our pride, not to a position of leadership in the EU, but to a pathetic periphery. All the action in the EU  now focusses on the French proposals to reform the Euro to make it work, rather than deflate. Those outside the Eurozone are relegated to a periphery outside the action and the few proposals for redistribution to help the laggards will be minimal and restricted to Euro members. Those on the periphery won't count.

Labour's concern must be for jobs and growth, but we wouldn't be able to  defend them by stopping the drain of money and jobs to the EU. Membership charges are  £11 billion and certain to rise. Our deficit with the single market is £60 billion and the costs of the CAP, a further £15 billion, all of which we have to borrow, because Britain can no longer pay its way in the world.

There's no way of stopping that drain unless we rebuild production in our lop sided economy .That involves government investment,  support and planning of the type Asian competitors have used to build powerful exporting sectors .The EU proscribes all that, so the only alternative will be to cut costs, reduce wages and taxes and join the race to the bottom . Does Labour want that?

It's too late for Eurowishful thinking. The only way forward is to negotiate hard for what the people voted for, forget the futile claims that they didn't vote for this, that or the other and fight for Labour's traditional priorities of jobs, betterment, growth and a strong economy which works for the people. To  throw up our hand in fear of the difficulties and saying that the people are wrong, the EU has beaten us before we can even get to round one and Britain is now so feeble it couldn't fight its way out of a paper bag. 

 Building the better society was never going to be easy but we cant even lay the foundations because we're drained by an EU run in the interests of Germany then we've given up altogether.

Trumpania versus Eurania

TRUMPANIA VERSUS EURANIA

Those who see Trump as a conventional President who's failing because he's temperamentally unsuited to the job have got it wrong. Trump is a populist genius. He's developing an entirely new style presidential style by  following a classic, populist, right wing approach pioneered in Europe.

Call it fascism, populism or Trumpism, it's a simple technique. If blocked by the conventional authorities and institutions or frustrated by advisers and pundits (aka the adults in the room), the leader appeals over their heads to the people. The people probably don't understand the issues. They might not even see that the leader's policies are damaging to their interests as Trump's tax proposals and the abolition of Obamacare surely are.

 It doesn't matter. There are enough people alienated from the ruling elites and the conventional authorities, because recession, poverty and frozen living standards has made them feel left behind and angry to back the leader. They see a populist figure as their man, like them and on their side. They identify with him and he with them.They trust the leader more than those who've let them down.So it's easy to rouse them in mass rallies to rally them against the elite as Trump is now doing.

This was the technique used by Hitler . He never got a majority of votes, became Chancellor because the right thought he'd be their puppet,was distrusted by the army, the existing authorities and opposed by the Social Democrats, but appealed to a population hard hit by depression and unemployment from which the powers that be had been unable to protect them. Result ? Hitler overruled them all by unleashing public hostility, took a firm grip on power, built the fascist state and led Germany into war. Or take De Gaulle, brought to power by the Algerian revolt then consolidating it by referenda to get the powers and the constitution he wanted.

 Europe learned the lesson which was don't trust the people. That's why the European Union was created, as a deliberately undemocratic structure in which the bureaucracy of the commission decides what's good for the people, then imposes it on them whether they want it or not. The Commission is committed to building an ever closer union, which neither national governments nor the European people want but which the Commission knows will be good for them. It  maintains the appearance of democracy in what is really a plutocracy, by having a Parliament which has no effective party structures to give it power, and by referenda where the electors are asked to vote again if they vote for something the commission doesn't like.

That's why the Commission, Europe's  elites and all the jumble of authorities which make up the EU are as hostile to Trump as they are to Britain's desire to take back control. Can't have populism. Trump will get out of control and the British people can't be trusted. Heaven knows, they might want to do something the Commission doesn't like. Give them power and other people might want it too. Can't have that. Better just to say no. Simpler too, because no is the only thing a 27 headed hydra can get agreement on. 

European democracy isn't what the people want. It's what the Commission wants . If you don't like it, you can't even be allowed even to leave because it's all  done for your protection and in your interests.. A country which takes back control may catch Trumpism and do what the Commission doesn't want.

Does Britain have a national interest?

The repeal of the Corn Laws in the 1840s and Irish home rule at the end of the nineteenth century are the only precedents for the kind of disruption threatened by  leaving the European Union. Both split parties, divided the nation and inflicted such deep damage on the Conservatives in 1846 and the Liberals in 1886 that they took decades to recover .

Like Brexit, both were arguments over interests; land versus industry in the corn laws, imperialism versus little Britain in Home Rule. But these great disruptions differed from today's in one key way. The arguments then were clear and basically about the national interest.Today's are nebulous, hypothetical and all about vested interests not the nation's.  Few today have any clear idea what Britain's national interest is.

The argument is unreal because the nature of the deal we may be offered  is  still not known.The EU's negotiating tactic is to make negotiations so protracted ,  and to impose so many hurdles that it deters anyone from leaving its happy band. It's all  a game of bluff and bluster, a phoney war in which Remainers parade terrifying fears like  David Miliband's claim that Brexit would be "an unparalleled act of self harm". Every vested interest trembles at the unparalleled horrors to come, and Brexiteers talk of opening up to the world  without explaining what that means. Neither side can justify its claims because it ain't over until the German lady sings.

Result? Maximum confusion,in which the national interest comes nowhere. That's always been a problem of our membership. The EU It began as a deal between Germany's manufacturing interest which needed wider markets and France's agricultural interest which demanded protection.

 We gave little consideration to our national interest because no one was sure what it was. We were told that the benefits would be primarily political, meaning it offered a new stage for Britain's elite to strut on .The economic arguments were said to be more evenly balanced, but were  sold as an opportunity to show our courage, determination and inherent greatness..

It was an astonishing degree of complacency backed by homely images which showed little understanding of industry.  Cold showers would stimulate our competitiveness. We would be hitching up to Europe's faster growth. Unfortunately the showers produced pneumonia, EU growth slowed and foreseeably (but not foreseen) it proved easier to penetrate our smaller market from the larger  than vice 

versa.

We were duly penetrated. The balance of trade with the single market became a huge and growing deficit and it became clear that we had assumed damaging obligations, the loss of our fishing grounds, the rupture of our trade with cheaper agricultural producers and a burden of payments far greater than our GDP per capita would justify, to join a club which offered us little. Except maintaining  peace in Europe which NATO was already doing

 Those at the top loved Europe and the EU and its puff pastry politics but the consequences hit the less well off, along with globalisation,austerity and stagnant incomes, so it was hardly surprising that the people left behind took advantage of David Cameron's over confident referendum to protest.

Which begins round two of the Great Debate, a phoney war which is even more of a clamour of  vested interests but should be about dosh.The cost of staying in the single market is a drain of approximately £90 billion a year with the trade deficit the membership fees and the CAP all of which we're now borrowing to pay. Yet there's no thought on whether an economy which cant pay its way in the world can continue to bear such a heavy Euro-Geld

 The costs of leaving are variously estimated by the EU at up to €100 billion.Is this worth paying and for what? Every interest claims that its own  is the national interest. They get away with it because Britain is the only advanced country  which has no idea of what its national interest is.

 What sort of economy do we want?  Free trade was in the interests of the world's first industrial economy but now of a society which consumes much but produces little. So what are the alternatives?Racing to the bottom with a cut price, low wage , low tax economy? A service economy driven by consumer demand and selling assets just to survive?  Or a high skill, high investment industrial competitor. Should we sustain the City or rebuild the industrial economy which is better balanced than lopsided dependence on finance?. Do we want free trade  or  insulation by a competitive exchange rate and state investment to build strength in the way our competitors  have?.Should we welcome or restrict foreign ownership, already greater in Britain than in any competitor?

Other nations make these decisions in the light of their national interest. Britain seems unable to understand what that interest is or what the pursuit of it entails. The EU's is clear given Britain's value as an easy market and a over generous contributor, but if Britain can't agree on what it's interest is, it's impossible to negotiate for it. 

This is not a rational discussion but a clamour of vested interests. Importers fight producers, the City fights industry, foreign owned businesses see things differently to British owned, consumers fight producers and employers argue with unions. So many battles that irreconciliable Remainers hope that it will all look so difficult that we'll give up and slink back into the EU. Yet they can't tell us on what terms, and experience with Greece indicates that the EU is not exactly designed to help lame dogs over styles.

It's a gloomy prospect. Not because withdrawal is wrong or right but because our elite, has no clear view of the national interest or how to pursue it. We'll probably muddle through getting the worst of all worlds, but in or out, the prospects for a weak economy unable to pay its way, can't be all that bright in a world  growing ever more competitive. Unless our leaders suddenly discover the national interest but I've got the dreadful feeling that they don't know.

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Does custard curdle faster with Brexit?

TIME TO REVERSE THE ARGUMENT

The rampant remainers and their journal, the Guardian, are never going to be able to forgive the British people for voting for Brexit. They just can't accept that our electorate might want a strong British economy rather than being the poor adjunct of Greater Germany they've reduced us to.

Every day they bring us news of fresh disasters. Is crime rising ? Is the health service under strain? Is the economy slowing?Does custard curdle before it used to? All due to Brexit. With much worse to come.

The hidden agenda is of course to defeat Brexit by the back door. They hope that this endless diet of fears and problems will cause the electorate to learn sense, give up on its crazy whims, and agree to  crawl back into the safety and warmth of a benign European Union. Vince Cable has already made this explicit ,Vernon Bogdanor has added his more magisterial approval and Polly Toynbee wants the Labour Party to do the job for her. Doubtless it's what the rest of Yesterday's men, Blair, Mandy, Cameron, Clark and Ashdown, Dad's EU army, all think. They may have fallen a little silent of late but that's only because they're  waiting for their prophecies to turn into the real disaster they're hoping for, to teach the electorate a lesson. Then they can re-emerge as the nation's saviours and offer the EU they love as the solution.

One might have hoped that some sense of patriotism might have pushed them to do a little more to stop such a disaster, however mythical, rather than gloat at the prospect. Rather than attacking every move Britain makes, exagerating every difficulty and taking the EU side in negotiations which the EU has deliberately made as difficult as possible, they might have used whatever influence they have in their beloved EU to argue for a sensible deal and more realistic negotiations than Barnier's three stage waterboarding.

They do neither. Strange things happen when you love Europe more than your own country. Which makes it time to challenge this political archeology. Forget all their ghastly warnings. Recognise that negotiation is a game of bluff which won't be over for months. Switch the debate round by demanding that they tell us whether, and in what way, Britain could do as they want and go back into the Euro-swamp

First they need to tell us whether we can just give up and resume our place on the periphery. Or does invoking article fifty and then deciding we're too scared/stupid/weak to take the risk, require us to beg our way back as a new state, required to join Schengen and the Euro, give up our rebate, accept the refugees and accept all the centralising processes Macron wants to make the Euro work and accepting accept the same bum's rush the EU gave Cameron?

Second. If we can go back on the old basis, how are we going to stop the drain of money jobs and demand which is sucking Britain dry? Our trade in the single market is £60 billion in deficit, our membership fee is £ 11 billion and the CAP costs us perhaps £17 billion in higher food prices and we're now borrowing all of that to belong.

 So how do we stop the drain, rebalance trade more fairly and stop Germany accumulating huge surpluses which it then refuses to spend or redistribute. Do tell because as far as I can see the Single Market isn't a form of salvation  but a suction pump draining economic strength out of Britain.

Third how do we tell the British public that we can't do what they want and its all their fault for putting us in this mess in the first place?  The second hand German water cannon Boris has bought may be useful but we'll surely have to hope that Tony will use his influence with Macron to get several detachments of French CRS over here as a fraternal gesture from Europe. That'll teach the bastards

Deutschland uber alles

It's no wonder that the EU has copied that other illegitimate regime, Ian Smith's Rhodesia, in stealing Beethoven's ninth as its national anthem. That magnificent music not only gives the EU a majesty it doesn't deserve but it disguises the true nature of the beast.The only anthem which truly expresses the reality of the EU is Deutschland Umber Alles. That might prove too frightening for the little chickens in the roost.

Economically the EU is dominated by a holy trinity of German interests.First there is the insistence on building up huge trading surpluses-currently the biggest in the world-which Germany refuses either to redistribute to help the poorer states or to spend to stimulate the economy.

Secondly there is the  German insistence on a competitive exchange rate to keep their economy exporting powerfully. Despite the pleas of the US and the UK they always kept the DMark down. Now the Euro does the job for them like a series of guy ropes in which the poorer economies keep the overall rate down. So markets aren't allowed to work and the German exchange rate can't rise to rebalance trade and make it fairer.

Finally there is the old fear of inflation which makes Germany insist that debts is sacred and must be repaid. Money loaned to Greece must be paid back in full even if its impossible, and any country owing money must squeeze, freeze no deflate to pay it back. See Yannis Varoufakis on that

The result is that Germany drains all the other members, requires them to deflate and prospers at the expense of the block.The EU won't work unless German dominance is ended and Brexit is a side issue which distracts attention from that.Britain can plan for escape, Macron can preach a common economic policy, a common budget and a common finance minister but nothing can happen unless the Germans agree it. If it infringes their holy trinity, they won't.

Result deadlock.Everything waits, not for Godot, but for Merkel and Schaubel. But one thing is sure. They're much more aware of their national interest and much more determined to defend it than Britain's vested interests who want to continue the drain of the single market, or our rampant remainers who have no higher ambition than  to drag Britain back, pathetic and humiliated into the new German empire.

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MUDDY MIDDLE?

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MUDDY MIDDLE?

I'm happy to join the universal confessions of failure from the psephologists pollsters and pundittieri over the election. We all got it wrong. We assumed that Jeremy's past would drag him down, Labour's radical manifesto would be a repeat of the longest suicide note of 1983 and a nervous electorate would want to cling to nurse.All wrong. Mea very culpa 

The problem is why. Electoral analysis used to focus on  getting out the vote. Marc Abrams in 1959 and Butler Stokes in the sixties described two great tribes, membership determined by hereditary and conditioning, which grew or declined with demographics. Parties won or lost by getting the vote out

 This analysis was  replaced as party allegiances weakened in the seventies by the centre ground theory. The argument here was that parties had to moderate their ideologues to win the centre ground where, it was claimed most electors lived. Strong policies would frighten the middle ground so parties had to soften their approach, blandise their appeal and avoid frightening people 

In my view the centre ground was a kind of mushy, middle, the home of floating voters and people less interested in politics, more apathetic, less likely to vote, and less involved . This was a tribe with no strong party commitment whose confused perceptions could be  easily influenced by moods, fears and media

Blairites had a different view of the middle ground. They saw it as marginal territory between the parties where people could be mobilised by fear, altruism and hope . In the Blairite view Labour's task was to blandise its appeal , moderate its policies, soften its ideology and reach out from its core vote to win votes in the south and among the more liberal middle classes.

Different perceptions  pointing to similar conclusions, specifically that Labour should take its core support for granted, forget terrifying things like socialism and nationalisation, avoid frightening people, disassociate from the unions and present itself as a party of government, hope and goodwill to win the centre ground .In a conservative country with a malign media, respectability and the avoidance of fear were the way to do that. Keep Prescott and Skinner in a cage. Smile, wave and win

It worked for Blair. Labour won but then threw it all away because having moderated itself out of everything it had little idea of what to do next. It lost ground in its core areas like Scotland which it had taken for granted but to which it delivered too little to keep them happy.

 In the light of all this thinking Corbyn's defeat seemed certain.We were clearly wrong. Yet that doesn't tell us why. Could it be that a techtonic shift is taking place?. Is the middle ground  moving.?

 The people  have  been subjected to three decades of neoliberalism, cuts, underinvestment and frozen living standards.They're beginning to realise that though the rich have benefitted generously, austerity has neither improved their own position nor given them stable employment and better prospects The fat cats prosper The people stagnate .

In the face of all this its hardly surprising if the middle grounders have become a little fed up, living in a country that's going nowhere with a standard of living that's static, employment uncertain and debt accumulating. As a result their apathy is fading, their fears subsiding

As  fear looses its grip, radical policies begin to look more acceptable and Labour looks less frightening. However desperately the media and the Tory Party invoke the old bogey person images , warn of tax bombshells, or bang on about the absence of money trees, the middle ground is opening up for change..

This can  be a new beginning in which we can have a serious discussion and develop serious policies to  deal with Britain's real and pressing problems. Instead of pretending all's well,  playing Mr and Mrs Nice and pretending that we can make things better by doing not very much we  might be able to  recognise that Britain is in a mess and offer serious, even socialist policies for getting out of it

EIN VOLK ,EIN REICH, EIN SINGLE MARKET

Labour did so well against all predictions (including mine) in the elections that it brings the prospect of power. After a long period of punishment, cuts, debt and frozen living standards, the electorate are becoming prepared to accept radical reforms. The middle ground has shifted our way and it's less easy for the media to scare folk off Labour by creating fears about unions, risky finances, state tyranny, rampant Marxism or Corbyn's BO.

With Labour's prospects improving in this way the worst thing the party can now do is fall apart in our usual fashion this time by opening up the old war over Brexit.Yet that's what Euro twerps like Umuna and the Chuckers, Chris and the Leslies and Gapes and the Gobbers want to do by their efforts to tie Labour to the single market. No deal without staying in the single market is their way of stopping any deal at all.

 Staying in the single market isn't leaving the EU.It's allowing it to continue to drain Britain. The electorate who voted to leave won't like it but BMW dealers, importers , French wine drinkers, the vested interests and all Britain's scaredy cat capitalists too frightened to compete in the world, can rejoice.Their fat livings are guaranteed. Eddie the Eagle economics of a country never quite making it will continue.

The Single Market is the Remainers' fig leaf . Its also worn by the CBI and the Engineering Employers whose directors put their love of the EU above the interests of their members. The Single Market is their way of leaving the EU while staying in it but so difficult to get and so restrictive if we do get it that the hope is that making it central will compel us to give up on Brexit and crawl back to Nurse.

Its benefits are largely mythical. Our trade deficit in it is around £60 billion a year. That's a drain of jobs, companies and growth out of Britain. We pay £11 billion. year to belong, which is a drain of dosh. It requires us to support agricultural protectionism and stops us buying food on cheaper markets, another cost of perhaps £20 billion in higher food prices.It allows British companies to pay their taxes in Luxembourg or Dublin to escape their tax obligations here. It requires us to contribute to adhesion funding for newer EU members, so companies like Nestle can be bribed to transfer jobs to Poland.

In short its a great deal for the EU but a bum one for Britain. The great beneficiary is Germany which accumulates the world's biggest surpluses which it will neither distribute to help others, nor spend to stimulate growth and help Greece Portugal or Italy .Germany drains the EU. Our problem is to stop it draining us Yet the Remainers who demand we keep it have no proposals to rebalance a single market that's not working for Britain.