In the run-up to the election the Scottish businessman and blogger Kevin Hague has done a sterling service on his blog picking apart the wilder claims of the SNP. In particular in a recent post Full Fiscal Autonomy in 700 words he dismantles in the most thorough, even-handed and scrupulous way the claim that FFA could feasibly represent a workable way of continuing current levels of spending for Scotland.
Without wishing to put words into Hague's mouth - and I really do urge you to read his posts on FFA - he makes the point that Scotland is receiving about £1450 extra per person per year from Westminster in public spending, but generates about £250 less in tax revenue per year. Under FFA therefore Scotland would have to generate about £1700 per person a year in tax revenue in order to be able to carry on spending at the level it currently does. Unless the Scottish economy should suddenly start performing vastly better (using levers to which only the SNP would appear to be privy), Scotland will not have more public money under FFA than it has now but less. £9.1 billion less in fact.
In 2012/13 public spending in Scotland was about £65 billion. On these figures therefore Scotland would have to absorb a 15% spending cut if it chose FFA.
Of course, Hague is quick to point out that the Scottish government could try to fill the gap by swingeing tax rises, but he also notes that this would have consequences in terms of companies wishing to invest in Scotland and the willingness of high earning and talented people to carry on living and working there. FFA will, Hague believes, be a disaster for Scotland, and one which will hit the poorest hardest as their benefits are cut, as government services atrophy and job prospects diminish.
It won't surprise anyone familiar with the tone of much Nationalist discourse that Hague has received the direst possible abuse on social media, abuse to which he has attempted so far as I can see to respond in a decent manner without abandoning the forensic approach which marks his writing. At the same time he must have found it frustrating that the response on the Nationalist side to his forensic destruction of their plans has been so intellectually feeble. And that it doesn't, apparently, make one iota of difference to the wide-eyed Indy zealots.
Until now.
For in a strange irony, the newly elected MP for East Lothian, Kevin Hague's own constituency, George Kerevan has made a startling statement in The National, the new pro-SNP newspaper.
It runs as follows.
"For Scotland to accept fiscal autonomy without inbuilt UK-wide fiscal balancing would be tantamount to economic suicide. However, all federal systems have mechanisms for cross-subsidising regions in economic need by regions in surplus. To deny that to Scotland suggests a disingenuous Mr Cameron is hoping to derail any move to Scottish Home Rule within the UK".
Translation. If we are to have FFA, where Scotland raises and spends all its own tax revenue, we must have a system of fiscal transfers, where richer countries (like England for example), bail us out from time to time. So actually under FFA Scotland wouldn't be raising all its own tax revenue, according to Mr Kerevan.
Now I am not denying Mr Kerevan is right that federal systems like the USA have fiscal transfers in place so that richer states subsidise the poorer ones. Kerevan has apparently been an economics lecturer for 25 years, so he ought to be clued up on this. But think of the implications. The SNP's stated ultimate goal is independence, and FFA is just a staging post on the way. How many fiscal transfers will there be after independence? None.
So when Mr Kerevan writes "fiscal autonomy without . . . . fiscal balancing would be tantamount to economic suicide" what he's actually implying is that Independence would be economic suicide too.
Actually it would be even worse. Why?
Because once outside the Union iScotland wouldn't just be missing fiscal transfers (ie English subsidy). It would have no central bank and therefore no control over interest rates or lender of last resort. So its own borrowing would be more expensive. Mortgages would be dearer and harder to come by because of uncertainty over Scotland's future currency. Its financial service industry, which largely services England, would melt away south. Its health service would be under increased strain because its population is less healthy and has an older profile than rUKs.
For Scotland FFA, with or without fiscal transfers, is in fact infinitely preferable to Independence. Yet even on this the SNP has gone strangely quiet. Kevin Hague has been unable to get straight answers from George Kerevan. Nicola Sturgeon has disputed the accuracy of the figures (even though they come from the Scottish Government's own statistics) or said the gap would be filled by more borrowing. The SNP's line is that its thumping new mandate won't mean a second Referendum any time soon.
The SNP's position was characterised by one Twitter wag as follows -
"What do we want?"
"Full fiscal autonomy!"
"When do we want it?"
"Not yet!"
But this is to give too much credit to the SNP. Better might be -
"What do we want?"
"Full fiscal autonomy plus balancing transfers from England!"
"When do we want it?"
"Now and forever!"
Perhaps Partial Fiscal Autonomy then. Or maybe just Son of Barnett Formula.
Monday 11 May 2015
Wednesday 6 May 2015
Why would anyone vote Tory?
This is Danny Finkelstein's explanation in today's Times. It's worth quoting at some length. Apologies to Mr Murdoch for any copyright issues.
The basis of (Britain's) prosperity, liberty, tolerance and stability is our liberal market economy founded upon property rights and the rule of law.
The success of this economy is the most important thing to safeguard because of all that flows from it. I believe passionately in decent public services and a welfare state, but I believe equally passionately that they depend upon a thriving economy. . . those who want to replace capitalism with something else haven't a clue what they actually mean when they express that sentiment. Nor can they point to a single successful alternative to capitalism that exists anywhere in the world. While I wait for Russell Brand to think of one, I will remain calm about capitalism's imminent demise.
I do however believe that Ed Miliband and (the SNP) are hoping to ride to power on the back of two linked ideas about the market economy that are profoundly dangerous.
The first idea is that the limits of public spending are only set by the limits of our goodwill and compassion. This idea has formed the core of every Labour campaign in my lifetime and been the downfall of every Labour government. . . . In every election since it was founded in 1948, Labour has argued that there are just hours left to save (the NHS) from destruction by the horrible Tories. . . Yet since 1948 there have been 40 years of Conservative government and the NHS is still here. If the Tories are working on destroying the NHS they are certainly taking their time about it.
The idea that the NHS is about to be subjected, or has been subjected to some horrible right wing punishment is a childish way of escaping the obvious problem - that what prevents us from being able to buy every medical treatment we want for every person all the time is that there isn't enough money to do that. And trying to ignore that problem across every public service and in welfare means we end up with huge borrowing. That undermines the future of the welfare state with much greater certainty than any Tory moral failing. That is what Labour did last time.
"I'm afraid there is no money". Why not carve that on an 8ft stone, Ed, and stick it in your garden?
The second dangerous idea about the market economy is that the key to making people richer is to keep taking more from the very wealthy and from business. It is not that this notion is completely wrong. Of course we need progressive taxes, of course businesses should show a responsible attitude to employees and of course the law plays a role in making that happen.
Yet in the end, believing that can tax ourselves to prosperity is a delusion. It assumes people will come and bring their businesses here in order to pay more tax. It assumes no one will compete with our goods and services as we raise wages and regulation.
Just like borrowing too much, it can work for a time, but it can't work for a long time. In the end, the only thing that can sustain our welfare state and pay people decent wages is to make things and sell things and keep getting better at both of those.
We can't spend what we don't have. We can't have what we don't make.
There is plenty that can be said against David Cameron's government. I know that. But ultimately I think as prime minister he has the firmest grip on this essential point. The firmest grip on reality.
The last five years Britain has done something very important. It has shown the will to drive down current spending costs and get the economy growing again. The case for David Cameron is that we will only go on doing that if he is returned to office.
Election day is tomorrow.
The basis of (Britain's) prosperity, liberty, tolerance and stability is our liberal market economy founded upon property rights and the rule of law.
The success of this economy is the most important thing to safeguard because of all that flows from it. I believe passionately in decent public services and a welfare state, but I believe equally passionately that they depend upon a thriving economy. . . those who want to replace capitalism with something else haven't a clue what they actually mean when they express that sentiment. Nor can they point to a single successful alternative to capitalism that exists anywhere in the world. While I wait for Russell Brand to think of one, I will remain calm about capitalism's imminent demise.
I do however believe that Ed Miliband and (the SNP) are hoping to ride to power on the back of two linked ideas about the market economy that are profoundly dangerous.
The first idea is that the limits of public spending are only set by the limits of our goodwill and compassion. This idea has formed the core of every Labour campaign in my lifetime and been the downfall of every Labour government. . . . In every election since it was founded in 1948, Labour has argued that there are just hours left to save (the NHS) from destruction by the horrible Tories. . . Yet since 1948 there have been 40 years of Conservative government and the NHS is still here. If the Tories are working on destroying the NHS they are certainly taking their time about it.
The idea that the NHS is about to be subjected, or has been subjected to some horrible right wing punishment is a childish way of escaping the obvious problem - that what prevents us from being able to buy every medical treatment we want for every person all the time is that there isn't enough money to do that. And trying to ignore that problem across every public service and in welfare means we end up with huge borrowing. That undermines the future of the welfare state with much greater certainty than any Tory moral failing. That is what Labour did last time.
"I'm afraid there is no money". Why not carve that on an 8ft stone, Ed, and stick it in your garden?
The second dangerous idea about the market economy is that the key to making people richer is to keep taking more from the very wealthy and from business. It is not that this notion is completely wrong. Of course we need progressive taxes, of course businesses should show a responsible attitude to employees and of course the law plays a role in making that happen.
Yet in the end, believing that can tax ourselves to prosperity is a delusion. It assumes people will come and bring their businesses here in order to pay more tax. It assumes no one will compete with our goods and services as we raise wages and regulation.
Just like borrowing too much, it can work for a time, but it can't work for a long time. In the end, the only thing that can sustain our welfare state and pay people decent wages is to make things and sell things and keep getting better at both of those.
We can't spend what we don't have. We can't have what we don't make.
There is plenty that can be said against David Cameron's government. I know that. But ultimately I think as prime minister he has the firmest grip on this essential point. The firmest grip on reality.
The last five years Britain has done something very important. It has shown the will to drive down current spending costs and get the economy growing again. The case for David Cameron is that we will only go on doing that if he is returned to office.
Election day is tomorrow.
Donald Dewar, Ed Miliband and the West Lothian Question
I said I would stop political blogging, but with the election tomorrow . . . .
Like you, I have no idea what's going to happen. There's been much talk about whether Labour, if it isn't the largest party, could form a coalition with the SNP. Ed Miliband has ruled out any "deals", but of course as an ex-lawyer I'd be wanting to know exactly what he meant by "deals". I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a minority Labour government dependent on support from the Nats.
Would this be legitimate? Of course it depends on what that means too. My inclination is no.
Look at it this way. During the last parliament the forty-odd Labour MPs from Scotland forced the Tories into coalition. Without them, at least as far as matters pertaining to England are concerned, the Tories could have governed alone. In that sense Scottish Labour MPs were decisive.
As far as the UK as a whole was concerned that was fine. Of course Scottish MPs should be influential on subjects like defence or taxation. But what about health and education? These are matters which are devolved to the Scottish Parliament. Why should Scottish MPs have a say on what happens to education policy down here?
This situation, indefensible when Scottish MPs were merely forcing the Tories into Coalition, will become insupportable if Scottish MPs are helping a government pass legislation.
We will then be in the situation that Scottish voters are electing representatives to make decisions which will affect the English but which will not affect Scottish voters themselves. To put it another way, if the English don't like the decisions the Scottish MPs make, there is nothing they can do to eject them from office; and for the Scottish constituents there is no incentive to boot their MP out since decisions in which their MP participates won't affect them anyway.
To be clear, this has nothing to do with the flood of SNP MPs which is apparently coming. For me the fact that the SNP wants to break up the UK is not, as it is for some, reason for stopping them forming part of the government. It is a question of who those SNP members represent, their influence over people they don't represent, the lack of accountability to those people and the fact that their own constituents won't be affected by their decisions on crucial areas of English policy nor indeed have any incentive to remove them from office. That's fundamentally undemocratic.
Imagine if most English voters decide they don't like a Labour / SNP education bill and want to boot out the government. On this issue a good proportion of Labour's support, perhaps one fifth, would come from Scottish voters totally unaffected by the legislation. Voting those MPs out would be impossible for an English electorate.
No taxation without representation, goes the slogan. Here's another. No power without accountability.
Ah, I hear you say, but you've admitted yourself that Scottish MPs can properly speak on UK wide issues. You can't have two tier MPs, forming part of the government on UK wide matters but not on English ones.
Well I agree. And here - a place I very much regret starting from - we are at last with the West Lothian Question. Writ Large. It's a great shame Donald Dewar is dead. He was a decent man who brushed away Tam Dalyell's awkward questions and we are now likely to have the consequences fester across British politics for five years.
If Labour ends up trying to form a government with the SNP there will be trouble. It would be fundamentally unfair to the English for Ed Miliband to rule England with the help of MPs from Scotland. Unfortunately it would also be fundamentally unfair to the Scots for Ed Miliband to turn down the chance to govern the UK as a whole with the help of MPs from Scotland. Whichever path Miliband chose would be unfair. And whichever path he chose, Independence would be be more likely.
Donald Dewar thought devolution would settle the Independence question once and for all. How wrong he was.
Like you, I have no idea what's going to happen. There's been much talk about whether Labour, if it isn't the largest party, could form a coalition with the SNP. Ed Miliband has ruled out any "deals", but of course as an ex-lawyer I'd be wanting to know exactly what he meant by "deals". I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a minority Labour government dependent on support from the Nats.
Would this be legitimate? Of course it depends on what that means too. My inclination is no.
Look at it this way. During the last parliament the forty-odd Labour MPs from Scotland forced the Tories into coalition. Without them, at least as far as matters pertaining to England are concerned, the Tories could have governed alone. In that sense Scottish Labour MPs were decisive.
As far as the UK as a whole was concerned that was fine. Of course Scottish MPs should be influential on subjects like defence or taxation. But what about health and education? These are matters which are devolved to the Scottish Parliament. Why should Scottish MPs have a say on what happens to education policy down here?
This situation, indefensible when Scottish MPs were merely forcing the Tories into Coalition, will become insupportable if Scottish MPs are helping a government pass legislation.
We will then be in the situation that Scottish voters are electing representatives to make decisions which will affect the English but which will not affect Scottish voters themselves. To put it another way, if the English don't like the decisions the Scottish MPs make, there is nothing they can do to eject them from office; and for the Scottish constituents there is no incentive to boot their MP out since decisions in which their MP participates won't affect them anyway.
To be clear, this has nothing to do with the flood of SNP MPs which is apparently coming. For me the fact that the SNP wants to break up the UK is not, as it is for some, reason for stopping them forming part of the government. It is a question of who those SNP members represent, their influence over people they don't represent, the lack of accountability to those people and the fact that their own constituents won't be affected by their decisions on crucial areas of English policy nor indeed have any incentive to remove them from office. That's fundamentally undemocratic.
Imagine if most English voters decide they don't like a Labour / SNP education bill and want to boot out the government. On this issue a good proportion of Labour's support, perhaps one fifth, would come from Scottish voters totally unaffected by the legislation. Voting those MPs out would be impossible for an English electorate.
No taxation without representation, goes the slogan. Here's another. No power without accountability.
Ah, I hear you say, but you've admitted yourself that Scottish MPs can properly speak on UK wide issues. You can't have two tier MPs, forming part of the government on UK wide matters but not on English ones.
Well I agree. And here - a place I very much regret starting from - we are at last with the West Lothian Question. Writ Large. It's a great shame Donald Dewar is dead. He was a decent man who brushed away Tam Dalyell's awkward questions and we are now likely to have the consequences fester across British politics for five years.
If Labour ends up trying to form a government with the SNP there will be trouble. It would be fundamentally unfair to the English for Ed Miliband to rule England with the help of MPs from Scotland. Unfortunately it would also be fundamentally unfair to the Scots for Ed Miliband to turn down the chance to govern the UK as a whole with the help of MPs from Scotland. Whichever path Miliband chose would be unfair. And whichever path he chose, Independence would be be more likely.
Donald Dewar thought devolution would settle the Independence question once and for all. How wrong he was.
W1A, Pride and the BBC
Last night my wife and I watched the film Pride. In case you haven't seen it, the film chronicles the fortunes of a London-based Lesbian and Gay Support Group raising money for striking miners in the mid-80s. When its members go to the Valleys to meet the socially ultra-conservative miners and their families, much hilarity ensues. And not a bit of poignance, if that's a proper word.
I enjoyed Pride, although not as much as my wife, and not as much as I should have done. One of the annoying things about the film (and Brassed Off too) is that its account of the politics behind the strike is so one-sided.
The fate of the British coal mining industry is a genuine tragedy. The number of pits was in decline long before Mrs Thatcher came to power, and Harold Wilson closed many more mines than the Tories ever did. According to one set of figures I came across when I was writing an earlier post (Thatcher and the Miners Strike, if you're interested) nearly 350,000 miners left the industry in five years in the mid 1960s. By the time of the strike it cost £44 per ton to mine British coal. Other countries were selling it for £32 a ton. Taxpayers were subsidising the industry by more than £1 billion every year. Moreover the mining union was led by communists and militants who had demanded enormous pay increases and held the country to ransom in the 1970s in order to get them. The first of these strikes occurred when the NCB rejected a demand for a pay increase of 43%. The second brought down the Heath government, and after Labour was elected instead, Harold Wilson settled the dispute with a pay offer of 35%.
And yet while the economic and political case for buying coal elsewhere (or turning to other forms of energy, in particular gas) was overwhelming, so too was the counter-argument. Mining communities existed because of the pit. There was no other work. I know this from first hand experience because I went to school in South Yorkshire, which God knows was run down enough even before the strike, and it was only too easy to see what was going to happen once the pits closed. Whole communities faced ruin.
I gave money to the miners in the 80s because I couldn't bear to see them suffer; but in my heart I also knew they were fighting a losing battle. When other people can produce what you do more cheaply, it's wrong for taxpayers in other industries, without job security themselves, to have to pay so that you can stay in work. It's also wrong for workers in other industries to see the competitiveness of their products undermined by artificially high energy costs.
The dispute was, as I say, a tragedy because it forced essentially good people, facing ruin, into conflict with a government which was essentially right.
None of these nuances could be detected in Pride. The film lined up on the one side The Evil Thatcher, represented by the jeering police, impersonal, inhuman and existing only as an object of hate (two of the most sympathetic characters decided whether Fuck Thatcher or Screw Thatcher is the most appropriate epithet for a placard), and on the other a stellar cast of some of Britain's finest actors (Bill Nighy and Imelda Staunton particularly good) portraying the honest, humorous and human miners and their gay supporters. The film assumed that the justification of the strike and the rightness of the miners' cause was a given. It even, for God's sake, played Billy Bragg's There is a Power in a Union over the end credits. Not one second of screen time was given to the possibility there might have been another side to the argument.
Pride was a co-production by BBC Films. It was nakedly political. Incidentally it also demonstrated a view of gay people which was thoroughly positive, and of the main protagonist's suburban homophobe family as starchy, uptight and repressed. As it happens I'm not a homophobe - for one thing people can't choose their sexuality; for another I don't think it's a binary thing - but there was no mistaking Pride's political partisanship.
A rare example perhaps of history being written by the losers. Re-written, actually.
I don't mind the BBC making political films. It's very hard to produce art without political resonance anyway. But you have to ask yourself, Would BBC Films have put its money behind a film which took the other view? Would it have backed a film showing Arthur Scargill as an evil communist intent on bringing down the democratically elected Thatcher government? Or about Jack Jones taking money from the KGB? Would it have put money behind a story about dutiful women of South Wales Chapel righteously upset about the promiscuous Aids-bearing homosexuals from the capital? Even to ask the question is to realise how laughably unlikely that would be.
I've enjoyed the BBC's W1A much more. Hugh Bonneville does his bemused apparatchik turn to a tee; the rest of the cast are pretentious, ambitious, fatuous, ruthless and stupid by turns. Why is it funny? Because there's an element of truth in it.
On the one hand of course we should applaud the BBC for its willingness to lampoon itself in this way. On the other, the Corporation risks nothing by revealing its staff as some of them actually are because it knows that we've got to pay the licence fee anyway.
Two fingers to us - if things really are like this at Broadcasting House, or if we don't like the politics of BBC Films, there's nothing we can do about it.
I enjoyed Pride, although not as much as my wife, and not as much as I should have done. One of the annoying things about the film (and Brassed Off too) is that its account of the politics behind the strike is so one-sided.
The fate of the British coal mining industry is a genuine tragedy. The number of pits was in decline long before Mrs Thatcher came to power, and Harold Wilson closed many more mines than the Tories ever did. According to one set of figures I came across when I was writing an earlier post (Thatcher and the Miners Strike, if you're interested) nearly 350,000 miners left the industry in five years in the mid 1960s. By the time of the strike it cost £44 per ton to mine British coal. Other countries were selling it for £32 a ton. Taxpayers were subsidising the industry by more than £1 billion every year. Moreover the mining union was led by communists and militants who had demanded enormous pay increases and held the country to ransom in the 1970s in order to get them. The first of these strikes occurred when the NCB rejected a demand for a pay increase of 43%. The second brought down the Heath government, and after Labour was elected instead, Harold Wilson settled the dispute with a pay offer of 35%.
And yet while the economic and political case for buying coal elsewhere (or turning to other forms of energy, in particular gas) was overwhelming, so too was the counter-argument. Mining communities existed because of the pit. There was no other work. I know this from first hand experience because I went to school in South Yorkshire, which God knows was run down enough even before the strike, and it was only too easy to see what was going to happen once the pits closed. Whole communities faced ruin.
I gave money to the miners in the 80s because I couldn't bear to see them suffer; but in my heart I also knew they were fighting a losing battle. When other people can produce what you do more cheaply, it's wrong for taxpayers in other industries, without job security themselves, to have to pay so that you can stay in work. It's also wrong for workers in other industries to see the competitiveness of their products undermined by artificially high energy costs.
The dispute was, as I say, a tragedy because it forced essentially good people, facing ruin, into conflict with a government which was essentially right.
None of these nuances could be detected in Pride. The film lined up on the one side The Evil Thatcher, represented by the jeering police, impersonal, inhuman and existing only as an object of hate (two of the most sympathetic characters decided whether Fuck Thatcher or Screw Thatcher is the most appropriate epithet for a placard), and on the other a stellar cast of some of Britain's finest actors (Bill Nighy and Imelda Staunton particularly good) portraying the honest, humorous and human miners and their gay supporters. The film assumed that the justification of the strike and the rightness of the miners' cause was a given. It even, for God's sake, played Billy Bragg's There is a Power in a Union over the end credits. Not one second of screen time was given to the possibility there might have been another side to the argument.
Pride was a co-production by BBC Films. It was nakedly political. Incidentally it also demonstrated a view of gay people which was thoroughly positive, and of the main protagonist's suburban homophobe family as starchy, uptight and repressed. As it happens I'm not a homophobe - for one thing people can't choose their sexuality; for another I don't think it's a binary thing - but there was no mistaking Pride's political partisanship.
A rare example perhaps of history being written by the losers. Re-written, actually.
I don't mind the BBC making political films. It's very hard to produce art without political resonance anyway. But you have to ask yourself, Would BBC Films have put its money behind a film which took the other view? Would it have backed a film showing Arthur Scargill as an evil communist intent on bringing down the democratically elected Thatcher government? Or about Jack Jones taking money from the KGB? Would it have put money behind a story about dutiful women of South Wales Chapel righteously upset about the promiscuous Aids-bearing homosexuals from the capital? Even to ask the question is to realise how laughably unlikely that would be.
I've enjoyed the BBC's W1A much more. Hugh Bonneville does his bemused apparatchik turn to a tee; the rest of the cast are pretentious, ambitious, fatuous, ruthless and stupid by turns. Why is it funny? Because there's an element of truth in it.
On the one hand of course we should applaud the BBC for its willingness to lampoon itself in this way. On the other, the Corporation risks nothing by revealing its staff as some of them actually are because it knows that we've got to pay the licence fee anyway.
Two fingers to us - if things really are like this at Broadcasting House, or if we don't like the politics of BBC Films, there's nothing we can do about it.
Tuesday 28 April 2015
African refugees, doing the right thing and a case of Claret
The other day I went to a dinner raising money for an African charity. I am torn between hating these events for their sub-Band Aid kitsch, and admiring the people who devote themselves to trying to help others. My wife and I came away significantly poorer, but clutching a case of venerable Bordeaux which some kind soul had donated to the auction.
Significant pressure was applied for diners to sponsor a child's education. Would we pay a modest monthly sum to put a wide eyed child through school?
I wrote on here the other day about the strange pathology of the Left - the desire at all costs to be nicer than the Right. There's nothing inherently wrong with that (although it doesn't always form the best basis for dealing with the truly horrible), but it does have a tendency to inhibit the desire to examine all the facts rather than just the ones which provide personal validation.
Take the migrants currently trying to cross the Mediterranean to Italy. The ones Ed Miliband thinks are coming because the Tories failed to help sort things out in Libya. The ones Katy Hopkins described as "cockroaches". They are rightly objects of pity, and we should try and help them. What form should that help take?
There was outrage a few months ago when the Italians announced that search and rescue operations in the Med were going to be scaled down because, apparently, the knowledge that Europeans would be actively out looking for them just encouraged migrants to risk the dangerous crossing.
Cue outrage in the liberal press. How dare we abandon these refugees to the vagaries of storm, dehydration and brutal traffickers? People fleeing from persecution deserved better.
Well hold hard. Africa is such a mess that the numbers of people legitimately seeking asylum in Britain and elsewhere must vastly outnumber our capacity to accommodate them. Our asylum policy acknowledges this. It says you can't claim asylum until get to the UK. But the reality is that most people are too poor to apply for a visa or afford the travel costs. In other words our policy deliberately filters out the overwhelming majority of potential asylum seekers by limiting application to those affluent enough or strong enough - or lucky enough - to withstand the immense hardships inherent in working your way across a hostile continent.
This isn't a moral policy. It's a pragmatic policy. Very much like the policy decision to scale back search and rescue in the Mediterranean. If you asked Libyans, "Hands up who wants to come and live in Europe?" a very significant proportion of the population, perhaps even a majority, would want to come. Any policy short of welcoming them with open arms is, judged by the standards of the self-righteous, immoral.
Asked to choose between the just and the practical, the Left will always choose the former. Usually without examining the implications of the latter.
But a policy which leaves Africans to drown is not of a different order of evil from one which leaves them to starvation, persecution, rape, murder or torture at home. The outrage is thoughtless and synthetic.
The best way of deterring North Africa's migrants is to focus on the reasons they want to leave in the first place. Only a fool would say that none of Africa's problems arise from the legacy of colonialism; but the overwhelming majority of them are cultural and political. Lack of democracy, lack of education, corruption, the culture of the strong man and religious intolerance are surely the prime movers.
All the West's efforts should be focused on helping Africans sort this stuff out for themselves. It's arguable that well-intentioned mediation merely prolongs the agony. It puts off the day when Africans stand up and say, "We don't want to live like this any more".
When will that happen? Probably not soon. And helping Africans to leave probably won't make it happen any sooner. The philosopher Alan Wolfe wrote, "Behind every citizen lies a graveyard". I suspect that in many African countries the people have not yet been born who will fill those graveyards.
We are now sponsoring a Kenyan child's education. It's probably wrong. I have left liberalism sufficiently far behind to feel slightly bad about having done it; but I'm close enough to the desire to do the right thing that it was impossible to turn away. And a lot cheaper than a case of Claret.
Significant pressure was applied for diners to sponsor a child's education. Would we pay a modest monthly sum to put a wide eyed child through school?
I wrote on here the other day about the strange pathology of the Left - the desire at all costs to be nicer than the Right. There's nothing inherently wrong with that (although it doesn't always form the best basis for dealing with the truly horrible), but it does have a tendency to inhibit the desire to examine all the facts rather than just the ones which provide personal validation.
Take the migrants currently trying to cross the Mediterranean to Italy. The ones Ed Miliband thinks are coming because the Tories failed to help sort things out in Libya. The ones Katy Hopkins described as "cockroaches". They are rightly objects of pity, and we should try and help them. What form should that help take?
There was outrage a few months ago when the Italians announced that search and rescue operations in the Med were going to be scaled down because, apparently, the knowledge that Europeans would be actively out looking for them just encouraged migrants to risk the dangerous crossing.
Cue outrage in the liberal press. How dare we abandon these refugees to the vagaries of storm, dehydration and brutal traffickers? People fleeing from persecution deserved better.
Well hold hard. Africa is such a mess that the numbers of people legitimately seeking asylum in Britain and elsewhere must vastly outnumber our capacity to accommodate them. Our asylum policy acknowledges this. It says you can't claim asylum until get to the UK. But the reality is that most people are too poor to apply for a visa or afford the travel costs. In other words our policy deliberately filters out the overwhelming majority of potential asylum seekers by limiting application to those affluent enough or strong enough - or lucky enough - to withstand the immense hardships inherent in working your way across a hostile continent.
This isn't a moral policy. It's a pragmatic policy. Very much like the policy decision to scale back search and rescue in the Mediterranean. If you asked Libyans, "Hands up who wants to come and live in Europe?" a very significant proportion of the population, perhaps even a majority, would want to come. Any policy short of welcoming them with open arms is, judged by the standards of the self-righteous, immoral.
Asked to choose between the just and the practical, the Left will always choose the former. Usually without examining the implications of the latter.
But a policy which leaves Africans to drown is not of a different order of evil from one which leaves them to starvation, persecution, rape, murder or torture at home. The outrage is thoughtless and synthetic.
The best way of deterring North Africa's migrants is to focus on the reasons they want to leave in the first place. Only a fool would say that none of Africa's problems arise from the legacy of colonialism; but the overwhelming majority of them are cultural and political. Lack of democracy, lack of education, corruption, the culture of the strong man and religious intolerance are surely the prime movers.
All the West's efforts should be focused on helping Africans sort this stuff out for themselves. It's arguable that well-intentioned mediation merely prolongs the agony. It puts off the day when Africans stand up and say, "We don't want to live like this any more".
When will that happen? Probably not soon. And helping Africans to leave probably won't make it happen any sooner. The philosopher Alan Wolfe wrote, "Behind every citizen lies a graveyard". I suspect that in many African countries the people have not yet been born who will fill those graveyards.
We are now sponsoring a Kenyan child's education. It's probably wrong. I have left liberalism sufficiently far behind to feel slightly bad about having done it; but I'm close enough to the desire to do the right thing that it was impossible to turn away. And a lot cheaper than a case of Claret.
Friday 24 April 2015
Dan Hodges, Ed Miliband and the pathology of self-righteousness
It's a sign of how politics and the media works that a political storm has erupted today (and it's only 9 a.m.) about a speech Ed Miliband hasn't even given. Later on the campaign trail he's due to say, journalists have been briefed, that "The refugee crisis and tragic scenes in the Mediterranean are in part a direct result of failure of post conflict planning for Libya". The Tories have seized on this as a criticism of their role in the bombing which helped remove Colonel Gaddafi from power. There is much angry frothing of the mouth in the Tory campaign, some of it possibly even genuine.
Pre-leaking a speech gives the Labour leader the chance to amend it before actually making it. The latest I can find is that Miliband will say "since the action, the failure of post conflict planning has become obvious. David Cameron was wrong to assume that Libya's political culture and institutions could be left to evolve and transform on their own".
I'm not going to waste time deconstructing the differences, if any, between these two utterances, still less mulling over the wisdom or otherwise of the Libyan intervention or the effect it might have had on the thousands of migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean to a better life in Europe. The thrust of the intervention is that David Cameron got it wrong, and that he abandoned the people of Libya to their fate.
Ed Miliband, on the other hand, is a man who in those circumstances would do the right thing.
This is where reality steps up and bashes you in the face in the manner of a carelessly discarded garden rake. Ed Miliband? A man who won't abandon the people of the Middle East when they are in trouble? Does Miliband think no-one remembers the way Labour blocked the Government's plans to help the Syrian rebels against President Assad's regime in the summer of 2013? No post conflict planning was needed there because Miliband's action helped ensure that, nearly two years later, the conflict is still going on. Hundreds of thousands dead, millions displaced, a vacuum of power into which ISIS has swaggered with its decapitations, burnings, defenestrations and cultural genocide.
It would be wrong of course to lay all this at the door of a man whose Hampstead liberalism is characterised much more by its utter ineffectualness rather than brutality. But by preventing Britain from acting, Miliband helped to make it easier for Obama to step aside, and to create a political atmosphere across the western world in which it was possible for leaders afraid of commitment to draw back.
Ah, I hear you say, but Miliband's action was tough and principled. He stopped Cameron doing anything because he knew the result would be to make things even worse in Syria.
Now this is clearly balls - how could things possibly get any worse than they eventually turned out to be? - but nevertheless some people will believe it and so, not surprisingly, does Miliband himself.
In fact Miliband is so proud of his blocking vote that he has been boasting about it on TV. I know this because the (Labour-sympathising) journalist Dan Hodges wrote a terrific article about it in the Torygraph a month ago. You can read it here.
On Newsnight Miliband told Jeremy Paxman that he was tough enough to be British PM because he had "stood up to the leader of the free world" over Syria. "I made up my mind, and we said no, right? I think standing up to the leader of the free world shows a certain toughness I would say".
But even if you think Miliband made the right decision, Hodges shows in damning detail that it was not one made as a matter of principle. He accuses Miliband of lying.
Hodges - who is not, one imagines, on the Labour leader's Christmas card list - says Miliband told Cameron that he would be prepared to support military action, but the Labour party would need some persuading. He would need some concessions. The first of these was merely that Cameron would need to publish legal advice showing the action was legal. Then he said that Cameron would need to publish the intelligence showing the Assad regime had used chemical weapons. Then Cameron would need to show the action had UN approval. Then Miliband said a vote would have to await the publication of the UN weapons inspectors report into the attacks. Then he said there would have to be two Commons votes before action could be authorised.
These conditions were made over several days. Cameron agreed to all of them.
Hodges claims contact with sources on both the Labour and Coalition sides to back up his story. Labour whips, he says, had been told there would be "a significant backbench rebellion" if Miliband supported military action. Miliband was being warned that he "risked a reaction from Labour supporters, in particular, former Lib Dems who had recently switched allegiance".
Hodges concludes that "It was on that basis, and that basis alone, that Ed Miliband decided to vote against the Government. It was not an act of principle. It was not an act of strength. It was an act of political calculation and opportunism born out of political weakness". Remember that at the time there was significant disquiet in Labour circles about the quality of Miliband's leadership.
"Stand up to Barack Obama or Vladimir Putin?", Hodges asks cattily. "Ed Miliband wouldn't stand up to Diane Abbott".
I depart from Hodges in only one respect. I do think Ed Miliband is tough. You don't get to be Labour leader without being tough. But it depends what you mean by tough, and perhaps it might be better to describe Miliband as ruthless.
I see him as a ruthless man who will say or do anything to secure his own political advantage. That's why he will criticise David Cameron over Libya today. That's why he blocked Cameron's Syrian action, and that's why he lied about it on Newsnight. None of these things mean that Miliband would be a bad Prime Minister, or for that matter that he is markedly different from other politicians.
They do however make rather baffling the claim made by Labour supporters that Ed Miliband is a man of principle, a claim comprehensible only on the basis that the Left suffers from a pathology of self-righteousness and, being sure of occupying the moral high ground itself, cannot bear to imagine its luminaries in any other terms.
PS A few days after writing the above paragraph I learned that the New Statesman had done a survey to find out about the tolerance of political groups towards each other. It found out that people on the Left were twice as likely as the Right to drop a friend or acquaintance because they had different political allegiances. This mirrors work done by the American social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who found that Republicans were much better at explaining the views of Democrats than vice versa. Haidt put this down to lack of empathy. Whatever, as I said, it's a pathology.
Pre-leaking a speech gives the Labour leader the chance to amend it before actually making it. The latest I can find is that Miliband will say "since the action, the failure of post conflict planning has become obvious. David Cameron was wrong to assume that Libya's political culture and institutions could be left to evolve and transform on their own".
I'm not going to waste time deconstructing the differences, if any, between these two utterances, still less mulling over the wisdom or otherwise of the Libyan intervention or the effect it might have had on the thousands of migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean to a better life in Europe. The thrust of the intervention is that David Cameron got it wrong, and that he abandoned the people of Libya to their fate.
Ed Miliband, on the other hand, is a man who in those circumstances would do the right thing.
This is where reality steps up and bashes you in the face in the manner of a carelessly discarded garden rake. Ed Miliband? A man who won't abandon the people of the Middle East when they are in trouble? Does Miliband think no-one remembers the way Labour blocked the Government's plans to help the Syrian rebels against President Assad's regime in the summer of 2013? No post conflict planning was needed there because Miliband's action helped ensure that, nearly two years later, the conflict is still going on. Hundreds of thousands dead, millions displaced, a vacuum of power into which ISIS has swaggered with its decapitations, burnings, defenestrations and cultural genocide.
It would be wrong of course to lay all this at the door of a man whose Hampstead liberalism is characterised much more by its utter ineffectualness rather than brutality. But by preventing Britain from acting, Miliband helped to make it easier for Obama to step aside, and to create a political atmosphere across the western world in which it was possible for leaders afraid of commitment to draw back.
Ah, I hear you say, but Miliband's action was tough and principled. He stopped Cameron doing anything because he knew the result would be to make things even worse in Syria.
Now this is clearly balls - how could things possibly get any worse than they eventually turned out to be? - but nevertheless some people will believe it and so, not surprisingly, does Miliband himself.
In fact Miliband is so proud of his blocking vote that he has been boasting about it on TV. I know this because the (Labour-sympathising) journalist Dan Hodges wrote a terrific article about it in the Torygraph a month ago. You can read it here.
On Newsnight Miliband told Jeremy Paxman that he was tough enough to be British PM because he had "stood up to the leader of the free world" over Syria. "I made up my mind, and we said no, right? I think standing up to the leader of the free world shows a certain toughness I would say".
But even if you think Miliband made the right decision, Hodges shows in damning detail that it was not one made as a matter of principle. He accuses Miliband of lying.
Hodges - who is not, one imagines, on the Labour leader's Christmas card list - says Miliband told Cameron that he would be prepared to support military action, but the Labour party would need some persuading. He would need some concessions. The first of these was merely that Cameron would need to publish legal advice showing the action was legal. Then he said that Cameron would need to publish the intelligence showing the Assad regime had used chemical weapons. Then Cameron would need to show the action had UN approval. Then Miliband said a vote would have to await the publication of the UN weapons inspectors report into the attacks. Then he said there would have to be two Commons votes before action could be authorised.
These conditions were made over several days. Cameron agreed to all of them.
Hodges claims contact with sources on both the Labour and Coalition sides to back up his story. Labour whips, he says, had been told there would be "a significant backbench rebellion" if Miliband supported military action. Miliband was being warned that he "risked a reaction from Labour supporters, in particular, former Lib Dems who had recently switched allegiance".
Hodges concludes that "It was on that basis, and that basis alone, that Ed Miliband decided to vote against the Government. It was not an act of principle. It was not an act of strength. It was an act of political calculation and opportunism born out of political weakness". Remember that at the time there was significant disquiet in Labour circles about the quality of Miliband's leadership.
"Stand up to Barack Obama or Vladimir Putin?", Hodges asks cattily. "Ed Miliband wouldn't stand up to Diane Abbott".
I depart from Hodges in only one respect. I do think Ed Miliband is tough. You don't get to be Labour leader without being tough. But it depends what you mean by tough, and perhaps it might be better to describe Miliband as ruthless.
I see him as a ruthless man who will say or do anything to secure his own political advantage. That's why he will criticise David Cameron over Libya today. That's why he blocked Cameron's Syrian action, and that's why he lied about it on Newsnight. None of these things mean that Miliband would be a bad Prime Minister, or for that matter that he is markedly different from other politicians.
They do however make rather baffling the claim made by Labour supporters that Ed Miliband is a man of principle, a claim comprehensible only on the basis that the Left suffers from a pathology of self-righteousness and, being sure of occupying the moral high ground itself, cannot bear to imagine its luminaries in any other terms.
PS A few days after writing the above paragraph I learned that the New Statesman had done a survey to find out about the tolerance of political groups towards each other. It found out that people on the Left were twice as likely as the Right to drop a friend or acquaintance because they had different political allegiances. This mirrors work done by the American social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who found that Republicans were much better at explaining the views of Democrats than vice versa. Haidt put this down to lack of empathy. Whatever, as I said, it's a pathology.
Wednesday 22 April 2015
Tax, honesty and the General Election
The General Election is just over a fortnight away, excuse enough surely for a brief return to the political blogging that considerations of life's shortness brought to an end some time ago.
Last night I went to the hustings in a church where our local candidates were on display. I managed an hour of it. The Labour candidate was a fanatically intense dark-eyed Scot whose accent caused a perceptible chilling of the atmosphere (thanks to the SNP for this new development in Anglo-Scottish relationships). An Independent had a Shoreditch beard and top knot, bringing hipster style to the suburbs; hats off to him for having a go, but his pitch - no cuts are necessary and we just need to tax the rich more - was predictably utopian and lazy. It was still widely applauded, mind. The Lib Dem incumbent was a mousy little man, bland of utterance until he was heckled from the floor about tuition fees. His Tory challenger wore the defiant blue of a Thatcher twin-set and spoke perhaps more than was necessary about her business experience. The UKIP man was surprisingly cuddly and nice, although totally inept: truly the quality of its candidates peaks at Mr Farage and then goes sharply downhill. Lastly another Independent with an anti European stance floundered through an opening statement but then proved surprisingly capable in argument.
I left early partly because I always feel uneasy in this Church. The hustings were chaired by the vicar: if you're reading, Rob the Rector, welcoming electors with a snide remark about their non-attendance at other times of the year is not the way to fill pews. But I was also struck by the futility of the exercise. The candidates I liked most personally - the UKIP man and the Independent woman - were not remotely credible as MPs or as recipients of the discerning vote. But more bleakly, neither are the two main political parties.
This is the most dishonest general election I can remember. Labour overspent during its glory years, telling us that it had put an end to boom and bust; it then decried the need for any cuts (remember "Labour investment versus Tory cuts"?) saying that there would never be any growth under Tory austerity; then when there was growth they said it was the wrong sort; then when this turned out to be wrong as well they said they would cut more slowly and fairly than the Tories; finally, abruptly, they now claim to be the party of fiscal responsibility. Shameless.
As for the Tories, when their lacklustre campaign based on the premise that the choice is between chaos and competence appears to be faltering, they promise £8 billion of uncosted extra health spending in a vain attempt to hijack Labour's pro-NHS reputation. Pathetic.
Voting on the basis of what the parties say they're going to do is pointless. You may think this particularly applies to the Lib Dems, after their volte face on tuition fees (although ironically, the system which replaced Labour's was fairer and has encouraged people from poorer families to go to university). Take a clothes peg in the ballot box, take a deep breath and vote for what you think the parties are actually going to do.
In this morning's Times the IFS's Paul Johnson complains of the "narrative that there is a magic money tree that we can pluck at will. There isn't. . . Tax and welfare changes since the recession have left middle Britain largely unscathed, while hitting the rich hardest and taking benefits from the poorest. This can't go on. If we want to reduce the deficit, or maintain plublic services, we will have to pay. Not someone else. Or we'll pay in the end by both chasing away wealth creation and increasing poverty".
I think this is the debate we're going to end up having. It's just a shame that seven years after the crash we're still not grown up enough to have it.
Last night I went to the hustings in a church where our local candidates were on display. I managed an hour of it. The Labour candidate was a fanatically intense dark-eyed Scot whose accent caused a perceptible chilling of the atmosphere (thanks to the SNP for this new development in Anglo-Scottish relationships). An Independent had a Shoreditch beard and top knot, bringing hipster style to the suburbs; hats off to him for having a go, but his pitch - no cuts are necessary and we just need to tax the rich more - was predictably utopian and lazy. It was still widely applauded, mind. The Lib Dem incumbent was a mousy little man, bland of utterance until he was heckled from the floor about tuition fees. His Tory challenger wore the defiant blue of a Thatcher twin-set and spoke perhaps more than was necessary about her business experience. The UKIP man was surprisingly cuddly and nice, although totally inept: truly the quality of its candidates peaks at Mr Farage and then goes sharply downhill. Lastly another Independent with an anti European stance floundered through an opening statement but then proved surprisingly capable in argument.
I left early partly because I always feel uneasy in this Church. The hustings were chaired by the vicar: if you're reading, Rob the Rector, welcoming electors with a snide remark about their non-attendance at other times of the year is not the way to fill pews. But I was also struck by the futility of the exercise. The candidates I liked most personally - the UKIP man and the Independent woman - were not remotely credible as MPs or as recipients of the discerning vote. But more bleakly, neither are the two main political parties.
This is the most dishonest general election I can remember. Labour overspent during its glory years, telling us that it had put an end to boom and bust; it then decried the need for any cuts (remember "Labour investment versus Tory cuts"?) saying that there would never be any growth under Tory austerity; then when there was growth they said it was the wrong sort; then when this turned out to be wrong as well they said they would cut more slowly and fairly than the Tories; finally, abruptly, they now claim to be the party of fiscal responsibility. Shameless.
As for the Tories, when their lacklustre campaign based on the premise that the choice is between chaos and competence appears to be faltering, they promise £8 billion of uncosted extra health spending in a vain attempt to hijack Labour's pro-NHS reputation. Pathetic.
Voting on the basis of what the parties say they're going to do is pointless. You may think this particularly applies to the Lib Dems, after their volte face on tuition fees (although ironically, the system which replaced Labour's was fairer and has encouraged people from poorer families to go to university). Take a clothes peg in the ballot box, take a deep breath and vote for what you think the parties are actually going to do.
In this morning's Times the IFS's Paul Johnson complains of the "narrative that there is a magic money tree that we can pluck at will. There isn't. . . Tax and welfare changes since the recession have left middle Britain largely unscathed, while hitting the rich hardest and taking benefits from the poorest. This can't go on. If we want to reduce the deficit, or maintain plublic services, we will have to pay. Not someone else. Or we'll pay in the end by both chasing away wealth creation and increasing poverty".
I think this is the debate we're going to end up having. It's just a shame that seven years after the crash we're still not grown up enough to have it.
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