CentreRight

Mark Field MP: The looming threat of protectionism and just what it tells us about the path ahead

Mark Field is MP for Cities of London and Westminster.

With the furore over the hostile takeover of Cadbury by American giant, Kraft, the attacks by the Obama administration on British Petroleum, and worry over the number of companies being sold to buyers from the Middle East, China, Russia and India, the ownership of business has become increasingly politicised. Against a backdrop of rising unemployment and deep seated economic unease at home, any perceived failure by a government to stand up for the ‘national interest’ against ruthless foreign invaders risks domestic uproar.

Unfortunately, however, I fear these awkward collisions between the worlds of business and politics are merely the outward manifestations of an underlying trend towards protectionism that is beginning to infect the global economy. But why the urge to batten down the hatches and what does it augur for the future?

I would contend that growing protectionism is in reality only a symptom of a far deeper, more fundamental anxiety – that of the colossal trade imbalances that the financial crisis has so painfully exposed (and which were in truth one of its main causes). How these might be overcome and what the world will look like once they have been unravelled may eventually tell the story of the global economy in this century.

Turning aspirations to reform benefits into reality

There is a huge amount to like about the principles set out in 21^st Century Welfare, the new report from the Department for Work and Pensions which sets out the options for radical welfare reform.  It is a powerful statement of intent that Iain Duncan Smith intends to overhaul a system that is failing the poorest instead of applying more counter-productive sticking plasters.

The report sets out four options to drastically simplify benefits: a "Universal Credit" that simplifies existing benefits into a single payment scheme; a "Single Working Age Benefit" recommended by the IPPR that would replace all benefits to the unemployed, disabled and others with a single scheme; a "Mirrlees model" proposed by the Institute for Fiscal Studies that would cut benefits but provide an initially zero and then low withdrawal rate; and a negative income tax model recommended by the TaxPayers' Alliance in our recent report Welfare Reform in Tough Fiscal Times.

As I wrote in an earlier post, there are a number of serious problems with the current system:

1.   It is too complicated, with more than 50 different benefits (the take-up rate for Working Tax Credit is only 57 per cent)
2.   It is poorly administered, with fraud and error costing £4.5 billion each year
3.   It’s unfair on couples because some lose up to £1,336 by living together
4.   Those who work and progress in work are financially penalised, the minimum wage of £5.80 an hour can be worth as little as 26p
5.   The number of people living in severe poverty has increased from 5 per cent to 6 per cent in the last decade

A simplified system along the lines that the DWP are considering could yield huge improvements in all those areas.  Unfortunately, there are two areas where today's report falls down.

The DWP needs to look at changing the poverty line.  As they aren't willing to do so, they are still talking about marginal withdrawal rates of around 70 per cent.  While it would be an improvement from the situation facing some families today, that isn't nearly good enough.  A minimum wage of £5.80 an hour would then still be worth as little as £1.74.  That massively undermines the incentives to work produced by the market, it is hard to think that it would be seen as acceptable at the other end of the income distribution.  Under our proposal, with a poverty line of 50 per cent, it is possible to ensure that total marginal withdrawal rates are never more than 55 per cent.

The failure to take the tough decision and bring the poverty line down to 50 per cent also means that the scheme will cost money, at least until it gets more people into work.  That creates two threats to the reform.  First that a Government facing a dire fiscal crisis will be put off and water down reforms, or insist on a higher taper rate that will further undermine incentives to work.  Second that the public, who rightly think they already pay more than enough for the welfare system, will turn against the reforms and make it easier for them to be unwound by an antagonistic Government in the future.  Policy Exchange polling found that the four areas the public were most likely to support cuts were the BBC, culture media and sport, international aid and benefit spending and tax credits.  Can a coalition Government making cuts really afford to increase spending in two of the four areas of cuts that the public think that is least necessary?

The other area that the DWP need to think about is tapering benefits over time as well as with increased income.  From page 25 in our report we set out some details of how that might be possible to improve incentives to work without unduly complicating the vastly simplified system we proposed.

So there is a lot to welcome in this report, and that was certainly the focus of our response today.  But Iain Duncan Smith does need to understand that ducking some of these tough choices now could make things more difficult down the line.  We will be making that clear in our response to the consultation.

It’s the Breakneck not the Brokeback Coalition

Iain Anderson, Director and Chief Corporate Counsel, Cicero Consulting

You would hardly know that Parliament has risen for its summer break for the new Coalition continues to spew out a myriad of consultations into the late July air.

The air of a purposeful and dynamic Government is being created. It compares highly favourably with the dismal, glacial pace of policy under Labour in its final years – unable to move forward with many decisions as a result of the inevitable exhaustion that sets in following a decade in power.

Civil servants I talk to commend the Coalition’s energy – and you can see it when you go in to meet ministers – they are full of ideas and those ideas are quickly forming into Green Papers and – in some cases – directly into legislation.

With the strains of coalition I can understand this urgency to get things done in the first year or two when the majority is stable and to learn the lessons of New Labour – which failed to drive forward much reform in 1997 – when it had the clear electoral mandate to do so. There is certainly not a wasted moment in the new administration.

But while I welcome the purpose and the direction – as do civil servants who want clear leadership – it is really important that our new Government takes the time to get things right. The reforms to the financial regulatory regime are going to be subject to considerable scrutiny and given the failure of the tri-partite regime that is exactly right. Our education reforms - on the other hand - have been fired through.

Let’s take the time to get our reforms right and ensure we do not get burn out. While the reform is exhilarating – lets ensure our ‘Breakneck Coalition’ lasts the pace.

The problem with The Spirit Level

Recently a number of investigations of The Spirit Level - an influential book by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett which claims inequality drives a range of social maladies - have independently come to the conclusion that its empirical claims do not stand up to scrutiny.  First, Christopher Snowdon's book The Spirit Level Delusion, then a report we published in English by a team of economists in Sweden - The Spirit Illusion, and finally a report for Policy Exchange by Peter Saunders - Beware False Prophets.

In an article for the latest edition of Prospect I asked how "all those evangelists for The Spirit Level will respond as many of its empirical claims fall apart like an ageing Trabant."  So many prominent left wing politicians, activists and thinkers have praised the book to high heaven and are going to find it very inconvenient to admit it is wrong.

We're starting to get an answer.  The Guardian recently wrote the critical reports off as polemics and evidence that the right is "spooked".  Any of their readers who take the trouble to take the reports will be surprised to find they are actually quite careful dissections of the statistics in the book.

The authors of The Spirit Level published a defence of the book earlier this week.  Yesterday we put up a response to that defence from the authors of the report we published.  Here are a few of the key points:

• The startling statement in the book that Portugal is as innovative as the United States appears to be the result of not checking statistics from the Nationmaster website against the original source, the World Intellectual Property Organization.
• An article they cite as supporting their work, by Nobel laureate James Heckman, addresses a very different issue.  The author told our Swedish team that "[t]his is a misrepresentation of my work".
• Another article they cite for support is about China, while their analysis is focussed on developed countries.  That study only has six citations according to Google Scholar.  By contrast, there are almost 100 times as many citations for a study in the authoritative Journal of Economic Literature that constitutes the most robust review of the literature on this issue but was not mentioned in The Spirit Level, presumably because it disagreed with their conclusions.  This rather undermines the claim repeatedly made by Wilkinson and Pickett that their work is a fair representation of a finding that is well-established in the academic literature.
• The authors are having to back away from the prominent claim that "inequality kills", describing it as having "been made for us, in publishers’ publicity and in translation".  Unfortunately, that admission is only coming now after they have used it since before even the publication of The Spirit Level, in an article publicising an earlier book by Wilkinson.  It makes this, from the Guardian, a bit rich:

"The titles of the anti-egalitarian studies – which refer variously to The Spirit Level's "delusion", "illusion" and its "false prophesy" – reveal the polemical intent, a telling contrast with the meticulous subtitle of the original book: "Why more equal societies almost  always do better."

Not quite meticulous enough to check their press releases evidently.

The evidence that The Spirit Level just isn't reliable is stacking up.  The book's many avowed fans need to admit that.

What next - the FCO party party party twitter feed?

Note to the Home Office:

Catching those conducting sham marriages - good.

Paying civil servants to set up and run a Home Office flickr account, uploading numerous photographs memorialising your triumphs, in the midst of an ongoing budgetary crisis - bad. Well, let's settle on "highly questionable".

Plain speaking

Anne Milton has come in for some stick for suggesting that doctors should be able to use blunt language towards the hypermorphically-challenged. Her context was one of medical advice sought by a patient, rather than the state appearing in your living room to castigate you for a lifestyle choice, so I think her observation was in fact fair enough.

One of the more retrograde shifts over the past few years has been people increasingly being afraid of speaking their mind on sensitive subjects, simply because they are too self-conscious of how to express themselves. I exempt Yorkshire of course, and exclude David Cameron’s unfortunate recent forays into Peter Griffiths diplomacy.

What contrast, however, with the allegation on the front page of today’s Telegraph, to be explored in a documentary later tonight; "Mr Clegg decided weeks before the election that spending cuts were needed immediately, despite telling voters it would jeopardise economic recovery." We’ve heard the line since – political leaders simply didn’t know how bad the deficit was, or how bad the national debt was, or how much it will cost simply to service it. It was a surprise when they got into power. So the reason why the voter wasn’t told was because nobody could have known.

In reality, the scale of the deficit was merely one awkward subject the strategists had decided they would keep off-limits. It had been decided that the electorate didn’t have a right to debate, discuss, or choose. It now transpires the Liberal Democrat leader went further, and was advocating policy he himself always intended to overturn. And we wonder why people don’t trust politicians?

A doctor in his surgery bluntly informing Mr Supersize-me he needs to lose weight or he’ll die is just telling it straight. The same should have been said about the budget deficit, and an informed people should have been trusted to make the right choice. I’ll be tuned in tonight to see what else was planned but never said.

There would be no blockade if the people of Gaza had set about building a peaceful and prosperous land (rather than electing brutal lawless Islamist terrorists)

Lord Mandelson’s recent reflection on Blair’s refusal to condemn Israel during its war against Hizbollah makes poignant reading this week:

“[Tony] really needed friends and it would have been easier for him to play to the gallery - but he chose not to. It speaks volumes for Tony Blair. He was not at that time prepared to make concessions to Israel's enemies. He was not prepared to let Hizbollah off the hook by simply joining the criticism of Israel."

David Cameron could do worse than take heed of this remark following his speech in Turkey. Playing to the gallery of the liberal media (or is it the Liberal Democrats?) is too dangerous when it simultaneously plays into the hands of the lawless, Islamist terrorists who run Gaza.

As it happens, Gaza isn’t a “prison camp”. Tom Gross has comprehensively documented why here and it is so rich in impeccably-sourced research that I cannot add to it, save for urging you to read the whole thing.

However, to the extent that there are hardships and restrictions in Gaza, to choose to blame Israel for them (and to blame Israel alone) has the effect of squarely letting Hamas, the organisation committed by its Charter to the genocide of all Jews and international Jihad, off the hook.

You don't need me to tell you what a despicable regime Hamas run. 

But let’s be clear about another thing: when Israel withdrew from Gaza, the people of Gaza could have set about building a peaceful and prosperous land, no doubt facilitated by the extraordinary international aid and goodwill that the Palestinian people enjoy. They didn’t: they voted in terrorists, their chosen regime was Islamist and lawless and Gaza swiftly became Iran’s rocket-launching pad.

So who bears the blame for a blockade? When a criminal is incarcerated to protect the innocent, doesn’t one blame the criminal rather than the jailor? Any adversity suffered by Gazans is, bluntly, the price they are paying for the elections they have made and the avowed aggressive intent of their leaders.

To put it another way: if Wales voted in Hamas and started firing rockets at England, do you suppose we would think it was England’s fault that the people of Wales no longer enjoyed a liberal border policy?

Re: A greener, cheaper energy policy

Over the last few days, it has been extremely encouraging to see groups across the spectrum of British politics acknowledging the problems with our overly expensive climate change policy.  Unfortunately, the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) appears to be retreating into overly optimistic delusion and the Government policy is therefore still heading for a crash.

Yesterday the Energy Intensive Users Group and the Trades Union Congress released a major report on the potential impact of climate change policies on energy intensive industries.  Here is what some of the groups involved said about the potential impact on jobs, sorry to quote at length but this is an important statement from a number of major employers:

Neither justice nor home affairs

The news that the Government are signing up to the likes of the European Investigation Order is both astounding and increasingly predictable.

The background to this pernicious proposal can be found in this exceptionally useful paper. It is just weird that while politicians are now so concerned about extraterritoriality and extradition in our relationship with the States, ministers seem so ready to step away from a viable intergovernmental alternative and handcuff themselves to such risk.

It’s all the more the case when we consider that Britain, like Denmark, enjoys an opt out – one that Copenhagen seemingly is sensibly ready to here enjoy. But Britain is not. This draws me to one of two possible conclusions.

Either the Home Secretary has been instructed to use the EIO as a bartering chit to keep the Lib Dems happy. After all, it was LD policy up until a few weeks ago to greatly accelerate UK participation in Justice and Home Affairs matters.

Or the Secretary of State has already succumbed to the wiles of her department. We have in the past explored how Britain has been signing up to a remarkable number of JHA areas where the Danes have by contrast exercised their opt out rights. One might have expected a Conservative Government would at the very least make the most of its opt out to watch the flaws develop, and then demand they be fixed before joining. After all, it took several years for the European Arrest Warrant to include a tick-box, showing that an effort had been made to contact the subject to tell him he’d been on trial.

So, coalition bartering chit or civil service sway? Neither prospect augurs well.

Some bad arguments for AV

I see two coherent arguments for AV:

1) Some favour it because they believe it to be in their own partisan advantage.

2) Others favour it because it tends to encourage centrist coalition-based politics.

I see no coherent merit whatever in the other case commonly advanced: that it means that all candidates command more than 50% support.  Apart from being plain false (if you get 35% of first preferences and 50% of second preferences, you are supported by 35% - AV or no AV), I also see no value whatever in the majoritarian fetish.  But I've argued against that before, and will leave it for now.

Here, instead, I wish briefly to counter the other two arguments.

eis ten polin

David Cameron’s words on Turkish accession to the EU have stoked up some

thought-provoking comments on this site. I thought Dan Hannan’s blog today is particularly insightful (though that’s like assessing an Alp).

Conservative support for Turkish accession to the Community is of course not new. The policy was famously supported by Margaret Thatcher in the days of Turgut Özal, and for many of the reasons cited elsewhere.

The reality remains that Germany has issues with demographics; France is still struggling with defining a European national identity; Greece remembers Smyrna; some Commission officials hum the tunes of Midnight Express, or of the Kurdish Relief Concert; while many diplomats in Brussels have wrapped themselves so closely with the ideals of Schengen and freestanding European Defence that they now shudder at the thought of a common border reaching out to the headwaters of the Euphrates.

But regardless of what the Conservative leader may say, the game has already moved on. The Lisbon Treaty included a section cleverly inserted by Giscard d’Estaing precisely to address the Turkey issue. As new Clause 7a spelled out,

1. The Union shall develop a special relationship with neighbouring countries, aiming to establish an area of prosperity and good neighbourliness, founded on the values of the Union and characterised by close and peaceful relations based on cooperation.

2. For the purposes of paragraph 1, the Union may conclude specific agreements with the countries concerned. These agreements may contain reciprocal rights and obligations as well as the possibility of undertaking activities jointly. Their implementation shall be the subject of periodic consultation.’

If I’ve pointed this out before, I do so again here as it still seems nobody in the Foreign Office has explored (in public at least) the consequences of this invention. By legerdemain, the French are already more than halfway to having achieved their diplomatic objective with the Bosphorus, while incidentally setting out a position that settles the EU’s future relationship with countries like the Ukraine, Israel, Tunisia - who knows maybe even further afield.

Turkey might see it as a loss, but if it allows Ankara to find the middle ground for trade and friendship short of the monstrous costs of full membership, then it’ll be the one smiling. And by taking a short step towards the EU, it will also show governments like that of the UK that there is another option to submitting to the stranglehold of full union.

Perhaps with Ankara moving closer to the Brussels, and London in time stepping away, we’ll meet in the middle. Turkey’s EU future has massive implications whatever happens. We may yet end up closer to Turkey than anyone in Whitehall can possibly imagine.

Has the Electoral Commission has already made up its mind to ditch our voting system?

A national referendum on AV next May (on the same date as Scottish and Welsh and some but not all local elections) is "deliverable" according to Jenny Watson, Chair of the Electoral Commission on the Today programme this morning. Wilfully missing the point of John Humphreys' questions, Ms Watson took refuge in the kind of Nu-Lab speak which still pervades most of the quangos the Coalition has not yet had time to abolish. Yes, Ms Watson, many things are "deliverable" but the Commission has to consider whether such a crucially important referendum will be distorted by the uneven turnout which is inevitable in elections which are not consistent across the country. Humphreys pointed out that back in 2002 the Commission ruled that issues of national importance should be considered separately from other elections; Ms Watson said that "evidence" had since persuaded the Commission to change its mind. Curiously, Ms Watson also said that one of the reason the present electoral system is "at breaking point" is because "lots of things happen on the same day."

So much of the content of this interview betrayed Ms Watson's antipathy to the present voting system that it is hard to see how the Commission's participation in the preparation of the AV referendum can be regarded as impartial. Reflecting on the "trust-based" nature of our present system, she regretted that it was "designed for a previous era" - an echo of her dismaying TV reaction on election night when she blamed a "Victorian system" for the difficulties experienced at some polling stations, rather than apologising for any shortcomings on the part of the Commission. The Electoral Commission will play a hugely important role in overseeing the AV referendum. Ms Watson's performance this morning does not inspire confidence in that process.

Two connected developments on AV

1. Enough Conservative MPs have indicated support for the EDM on the timing of the AV referendum that, with Labour and minor party support, the Coalition's preferred timing would be rejected.
2. Last night it was confirmed that the Labour Party will oppose the AV referendum bill.

The issue of timing, though having its own merit, should not stand in isolation of the wider debate.  The ambition of the rebels ought to be to take down the whole bill, with Labour Party support.  (One side benefit of this might be that the Coalition would collapse, allowing us to proceed more straightforwardly with urgent matters such as renegotiation of our position within the EU.)  In itself, loss on the timing of the referendum could be shrugged off by the Coalition as a decoy defeat - with the hope of sating the rebels' desire to express discontent without anything of real substance being lost.

I hope that the timing rebels are simply the vanguard of a broader rebellion against the whole concept of a referendum on AV.  The Conservative Party does not believe in having a referendum on AV.  And whilst it is welcome to have Liberal Democrat support on spending cuts and on certain civil liberties issues, and whilst we could well have compromised with the Liberal Democrats on a number of other issues, we didn't need a coalition and if a referendum on AV was the price of formal coalition we should never have agreed to it.

Why we offered a referendum on AV

Michael Crick's doing his cheeky trouble-maker thing this evening, suggesting that the Coalition was founded on a lie, since Cameron told his MPs that it was necessary to offer a referendum on AV to secure the Lib Dems as coalition partners because Labour was offering AV without a referendum, when this simply wasn't true.  He's a bit unclear as to whether what happened was that the Lib Dems proposed the AV-without-referendum idea to Labour but was then rejected, or whether Gordon Brown offered this privately but then withdrew the offer well before the Conservatives made their counter-offer (a referendum on AV).  Either way, he seems pretty confident that Cameron was not correct when he told MPs that Labour had an offer of AV without referendum on the table when the Conservative referendum offer was made.

A stain on our national conscience

An urgent question tabled by Labour's Emily Thornberry is currently being debated in the House of Commons. She has rightly asked about the Crown Prosecution Service's announcement that a police officer will not face charges over the death of Ian Tomlinson, a newspaper seller whom the officer was filmed pushing to the ground during the G20 protests in London April 2009.

Mr Tomlinson was not involved in the protests - he was walking home when he was caught up in the demonstration. He died very soon after he was assaulted by the officer.

Dominic Grieve, for whom I have the greatest respect, has just stated that the CPS has told him that they could not proceed with the evidence available to them.

Really?

I would suggest that they watch the widely available video footage once again, and then let a jury decide.

This "decision" has taken months to arrive at. Doubt is expressed by all concerned about the conflicting evidence from the coroners (which I do not regard as the insuperable issue others apparently did: even if there are causation problems with proving that Mr Tomlinson's death resulted from the officer's attack, a simple assault charge would not have held such difficulties in the six months afterwards, and a charge of assault occasioning actual bodily harm is in any case not time barred. Furthermore, prosecution of the officer for acting outwith his professional responsibilities would seem right). Much of real concern has also emerged about the officer himself, who had been ejected from the Metropolitan Police once already before.

Think again. Confidence in the rule of law is severely undermined by such non-decisions. A wholly innocent man has been killed in broad daylight on the streets of London, the event was captured on video, and nothing has been done. It is a stain on our national conscience.

Alex Deane is the Director of Big Brother Watch.

So what happens in May 2015?

Parliament may be winding down towards its summer recess but political eyes now turn firmly towards a busy September schedule.

The next two full parliamentary weeks will commence the process towards a referendum on the Alternative Vote electoral system, fixed term parliaments and a radical redrawing of constituency boundaries.

Whether or not the Coalition gets its legislative way over AV, I suspect that leading party strategists are already working through likely scenarios for the run-up to the next election. Both David Cameron and Nick Clegg realise that their political fates are inextricably tied to the success of the coalition, so its full term survival is probable.

Whilst prospects of a fully-fledged merger between our Party and a large part (if not all) of the Liberal Democrats are not as fanciful as many might think, I reckon this is highly unlikely to have happened by 2015. Instead I believe the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats will almost certainly fight the next election as separate entities, but each standing on the basis of coalition achievements in government. Even if AV is on the statute book I reckon that defending a record in government will necessitate Conservatives giving most Liberal Democrat incumbents a free run in their seats. By way of reciprocation in the dozen or so Conservative-held seats most vulnerable to the Liberal Democrats, candidates from the latter party would also stand down. Conservatives might also enable Liberal Democrats in marginal battles with Labour (in Scotland, the North and parts of London) a potentially easier fight by withdrawing from the fray. Who is to say that dozens of candidates will not take the hustings as ‘Lib Dems with Conservative coalition support’?

Yet here is the paradox. Such a formal pact in selected seats clearly aids vulnerable Lib Dem incumbents, reinforces the coalition but also critically makes any post-election coalition between the Liberal Democrats and Labour more difficult to sustain. However, any electoral strategy short of equidistance risks destroying the Liberal Democrats’ broad appeal and threatens its status as an independent political force.

Naturally any of this would require changes in Conservative Party rules.

However, importantly, the impending boundary reviews may assist in formulating such an electoral pact as no one can be sure of the precise constituency make-up until 2013 at the earliest.

In short even in the most marginal seats of the sort that might be subject to a pact, there is unlikely to be any opportunity to have selected a Conservative candidate for at least three years.

And as we know 156 weeks is a long time in politics…

Big Society offers real power to the people

Big Society draws scepticism because it is hard to believe that any Government would willingly give up power and return it to the people. Yet people power lies at the heart of the Big Society. It has real potential and it would be quite wrong to write it off as window dressing, an updated version of the Citizen’s Charter, the Cone Hotline etc without at least giving the policy a chance to succeed.

 

Community empowerment comes in many different forms. For some, it is about taking over the local library. For others it is about recycling schemes, fast broadband, and village energy schemes. Yet it can be large scale too – like the Port of Dover project which is a project running into hundreds of millions of pounds. Leafing through Labour’s car boot sale, it is possible to see many more potential candidates for community take over – e.g. the Dartford Crossing, the Tote and the public forest estate. The broad thrust is so wide, many more possibilities exist – one could even see communities taking over neglected branch railway lines.

 

What links all these things? It is the difference community empowerment can make. People have a sense of ownership and interest in their local assets – it really becomes a community library. People (mainly) fund the projects. Far from being “cover for cuts” it’s about letting people reach into their own pockets to do the things they want to do which Government is not doing anyway. Taking the case of the Port of Dover Big Society project, which I know most about as the local MP, there is private sector funding available. I have been overwhelmed by the number of people locally who have said they want to invest their hard earned savings in Dovorian Bonds to assist the community take over. The purchase would cost the Government no money and lose it no money. It could be done quickly and the Government would have the receipt it wants by Christmas. Traditional style big clunking Government, with a traditional unimaginative Treasury approach, would flog it off on the cheap and fail even to get the receipt in this financial year.

 

Big Society is an acceptance that Government has so many things to do it loses focus. Communities are better placed to prioritise what’s important to them, are more motivated and more effective than Central Government ever could be. This is the true opportunity of the Big Society - the Port of Dover project alone would end the scepticism and show how transformation can take place at a speed no Government could ever match, at no cost to the taxpayer. So let’s not write the policy off yet. Why don’t we give it a go?

Roger Helmer MEP: Conservatives and Labour MPs should work together to defeat Chris Huhne's green zealotry

By Roger Helmer MEP.

The former Labour government, after years of prevarication, had finally come round to accepting the need for new nuclear capacity – at least to replace old capacity coming to the end of its life, and perhaps to increase the overall contribution of nuclear to the UK’s generating needs.

But today we have Chris Huhne, former Lib-Dem MEP and now, bizarrely, the Energy Secretary in the coalition, telling us that we need more wind power, and insisting there will be no public support for nuclear.

Conservatives who sacrificed their shoe-leather canvassing for Conservative candidates last May did not expect to end up with a green Lib-Dem zealot as Energy Secretary, and they did not do it to see a massive increase in wind farms across our green and pleasant land.  Huhne’s policies are untenable, and if he continues in this vein, his job will be untenable too.  The phrase “criminally insane” springs to mind.  Huhne may not be fiddling while Rome burns, but he is playing children’s games with wind-mills while Britain’s energy security is increasingly jeopardised.

In repeating his insistence that not a penny of public money should go to nuclear, Huhne omits to mention the vast subsidies that go to wind, in the form of Renewable Obligation Certificates – which unfairly bias the market for low-carbon generation in favour of wind and against nuclear.

In case you’ve forgotten the problems with wind, let’s summarise.  Ideally we need generating capacity which is continuous and predictable, like coal or gas or nuclear.  Tidal power is discontinuous, but it’s at least predictable.  Wind is the worst option – neither continuous nor predictable.  As some continental countries have found, increasing reliance on intermittent wind creates ultimately insuperable problems of grid management.  And distributed generation creates the need for new investment in the Grid of around £10 billion, over and above the cost of wind farms.

Wind requires constant back-up – conventional capacity fired up and ready to go (known as spinning reserve).  Maintaining this reserve means higher costs and higher CO2 emissions (and actually new conventional back-up capacity as well) – factors which wind advocates rarely take into account.  Indeed they often talk in terms of rated capacity and omit to mention that on-shore wind typically delivers only around a quarter of rated capacity.

The International Court of Justice has set a dangerous precedent

Yesterday, the International Court of Justice issued its opinion on the legality of the independence of Kosovo from Serbia.  The court found in favour of the Kosovan government.

The ruling has been welcomed by Kosovans as “joyous decision” and denounced by Serbia as “attack on its territorial integrity”.  Nobody expects either of the two parties to change their views of one another or cede any ground on their positions on Kosovo’s territorial status, although Kosovo can now expect to be recognised by scores of sovereign nations who had been awaiting the ruling.

Kosovo aside, the text of the ruling will have direct significance to separatist movements around the world and has grave implications for the territorial integrity of many nations. 

The ruling explicitly states that “international law contains no applicable prohibition of declarations of independence”.   Furthermore, the court rejected the argument that “that prohibition of unilateral declarations of independence is implicit in the principle of territorial integrity” instead arguing that the “scope of the principle of territorial integrity is confined to the sphere of relations between States”. 

At this early stage, the ruling appears to cast aside the need for negotiated independence settlements such as those in Montenegro and the former Czechoslovakia and codify unilateralism as a principle of international law.

It remains to be seen what the substantive reaction will be from the leaders of high-profile separatist movements, although the ruling will provide a boost to dictatorial and undemocratic regimes which have long been condemned by the British government. 

The ICJ’s decision to endorse unilateralism directly contradicts UK government policy towards sub-national separatist movements in many states on the European Union’s near periphery:

• North Cyprus (Cyprus) – “The UK does not recognise the self-declared 'Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus' ('TRNC') in the northern part of the island” (Foreign Office)
• Nagorno Karabakh (Azerbaijan) – “The UK does not recognise Nagorno Karabakh as a state and consequently does not recognise [its] constitutional and legal framework” (Hansard)
• Abkhazia and South Ossetia (Georgia) – “The government of Georgia does not recognise the unilateral declarations of independence by either South Ossetia or Abkhazia. The UK government... recognises their right to do so” (Foreign Office)
• Transnistria (Moldova) – “The conflict is a concern for Europe, especially given Moldova's position as a future neighbouring country of the enlarged EU... Moldovan territorial integrity [is] undermined” (Foreign Office)

Furthermore, the ruling can be expected to fuel the calls of nationalists in the Republika Srpska area of Bosnia to declare independence - a possible outcome condemend by the Foreign Secretary William Hague on this website last year.

Against the background of this ruling, the British government must stand firm on the principle of pragmatism in international relations.  While some independence movements should be welcomed, we must not be afraid to condemn and work against those that should not.

Update: William Hague has issued a statement making it clear that he consider the Kosovo ruling a "unique case [that does] not sent a precedent". 

A question of standards

Yesterday evening, passing by Victoria Tower I spotted that the Union flag fluttering from the summit was looking decidedly tired. Not quite ingloriously tatty, but very noticeably frayed.

A metaphor, perhaps.

This is one of those “on the one hand .. . on the other” issues. It’s a positive that the Parliamentary authorities are husbanding their resources (they’ve already announced significant cuts), especially given the IPSA costs fiasco today and the Irvine wallpaper of the past. Then again, flying a grotty national emblem from the top of the Mother of Parliaments (a Grade I listed building and World Heritage site to boot) is a bit tawdry.

As it happens I’m not going to delve into that particularly debate here. Nor am I suggesting that the Speaker’s wife should take time off from twittering to play at Betsy Ross. But it did get me thinking about what happens to these symbols of our national democracy after they have outlived their use. I suspect they are quietly retired.

The Americans have developed an almost industrial system of flying flags from Congress to hand out as gifts and awards. I’m certainly not saying we should go this far. But I wonder if we are not missing a trick with the ones that we do fly.

Can ConHome readers suggest to what use we could put a retired flag? Should we store it, waiting for presentation to, say, the Speaker of the Canadian Senate during Mr Bercow’s next visit there? What about having one hanging on permanent display at RAF Lyneham? Should it adorn the back of a hall in a large citizenship ceremony; sit in a presentation case ready to accompany the next General Schwarzkopf-style honorary knighthood (Petraeus?); or should we be absolutely dispassionate, and let it wend its way via e bay even to Beirut or Teheran, funding the flags budget and its replacement?

DC in DC

In the context of David Cameron’s current visit to the US, expat Washingtonian Nile Gardiner’s pieces for the Telegraph have been fascinating, especially this one where readers’ comments branched beyond the recent history of US-UK relations.

Yes, alright, there was that 1940 gaffe – particularly unfortunate since the father of Cameron’s godfather was killed in the Battle of Britain. But more revealing is the ding dong of viewpoints set in the broader perspective.

Of course, Anglo-US relations are a vital national interest for this country. We profit from a close relationship with the States politically, militarily, economically, linguistically, culturally (consider the Staines Massive) … The problem is one of defining the landmass of the much-vaunted ‘Special Relationship’ rather than defying the existence. Its reality famously becomes more ethereal the closer you are to the State Department and the further from the DoD (and the Oval Office of the past). But if you’ve gone out on patrol with the USMC in Sangin or Musa Qaleh you’ll have seen how those bonds - despite obvious differences in style - work.

The links are above all practical, and in turn fit into the US’s own broader national interests. That’s why John McCain came close to the mark in his proposals for a League of Democracies, which would have brought in the can-do governments rather than the talkers. Potter around a combat zone with Aussies, Canucks, Cloggies, Norgies and Danes and you’ll see people we are doing business with. There is a commonality at play in the serious NATO countries, if not "Anglo-Saxon" obviously then perhaps something of the Canute. The "Special Relationship" is simply the pinnacle of this cooperation, the practicality underlying an alliance that works.

As for the deeper context, in many ways – deep breath, pulls trigger - the American Revolution was one of the greatest tragedies of world history. It divided the English-Speaking nations. It provided an accidental inspiration for a French Revolution that would run out of control and fire cataclysm across a continent. It was often fostered by propaganda rather than reality. It laid the foundation stones for America’s bloody civil war, even perhaps lost an extra generation to slavery.

Fixed term parliaments are undesirable

I've already explained why fixed-term parliaments are unnecessary. I shall now explain why they are undesirable.

As I explained before, under our constitutional monarchy system, dissolutions are very likely to be granted before five years under two circumstances: if there has not been an election for about four years or more; or if the Prime Minister does not command a working majority of the Commons and a General Election is believed likely to produce a more decisive outcome. Dissolutions may also be granted (but are not guaranteed to be) if the Prime Minister feels that a General Election is required to secure a mandate for the most important policy of her government. Because a constitutional monarchy is very flexible, there are sundry other occasional circumstances, in which it will (at least sometimes) be appropriate to grant a dissolution, but which cannot all be specified in detail in advance.

If our constitutional monarchy were secure and robust, I believe that this would be a superior system. I believe that it can be made sufficiently secure and robust, though it is arguably not so at the moment. I shall explain more of how I suggest it be made more robust another time. For now I wish to focus on why a functioning constitutional monarchy-based dissolution system, reflecting the bases for dissolution I propose, is better than a fixed term parliament system.

How to reform welfare now

Within the centre right, I think most people agree that the welfare system is in serious need of reform.  It is simultaneously failing the poorest, unfair on couples, costing a fortune and - most importantly - trapping people in dependency with high marginal withdrawal rates.  So most of us wish Iain Duncan Smith well as he sets out to reform the system.  But there is an abiding concern that it might not be possible right now, with a crisis in the public finances.

Expenses scandal woes drag on

So, Mr Cameron. Your approach to the expenses scandal’s not looking like such a great idea anymore, is it? Deliberately painting your own team as much blacker villains than they were so as to cover up your own indiscretions seems, oddly enough, not to have made you too many friends. Strange, that.

And, mirabile dictu, it turns out that the monitoring systems introduced to police those oh-so-wicked MPs cost vastly more than the puny excess claims Speaker Martin’s hapless Keystone Cops had encouraged.  Says Benedict Brogan: ""We have created in IPSA a legal monster that is costing far more than we thought and isn't working," one Cabinet minister told me. "David knows this and wants to fix it. But the politics of the thing are terrible. We legislated in haste, and now we are stuffed."

In the meantime, it turns out that unless you are as well-heeled as Adam Afriyie (or David Cameron), the new system means a number of MPs running up vast overdrafts.  “And in tomorrow’s news, three MPs who lost their seats last week at the 2015 election have now declared themselves bankrupt, with debts in excess of £100,000 each..”

You don’t think…it isn’t possible that…actually, the vast majority of the MPs before weren’t so unreasonable with most of their claims after all?

Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you…

Don't simplify the burqa issue

Philip Hollobone and Roger Helmer are right about the burqa, but so is Damian Green and – this may surpise some who have read my previous articles on the Islamist threat – so is Caroline Spellman…!

‘Why don’t your women wear the burqa?’ asked the young talib on the bus between the Pakistan border and Jalalabad where the Taliban had just taken over in 1995.

‘Why do your women wear the burqa?’ I replied

‘Because if a man looked at a woman’'s face there would be a problem!’

‘What sort of a problem?’ I asked, already the knowing the answer...

‘Well a sin!’

‘So, who would be sinning the man or the woman?’

‘Well, the man!’

‘So why don’t you cover the man’s eyes then!’

Clearly this wasn’t an answer that fitted the Taliban rote learning of how to convert a non Muslim as the young Talib fell quiet and the rest of the bus full of Afghans quietly chuckled at someone finally getting one over on the Taliban!

In rural Afghan society the wife is regarded as the ‘property’ of her husband. She is also the public expression of her husband’s honour. So any hint of another man viewing a Pushtun man’s 'private property' would dishonour the man and could lead to divorce. While working as an aid worker in Afghanistan some years ago I learned of an incident in which another aid agency had most unwisely insisted on vaccinating everyone entering a Pushtun village. As they vaccinated an elderly burqa clad woman her husband turned to her and said ‘how can I look other village men in the eye now that other men have seen your upper arm, I divorce you I divorce you, I divorce you’ and he went one way and she went the other way. Shocking? The issue there was that the burqa was the outward form of oppressive values – that the women was her husband’s private property. In that situation the burqa was oppressive for women.

However, in other situations it is worn to protect women from the attentions of sexually predatory men. Let me explain. Even in moderate Islamic countries such as Pakistan women are expected to cover their heads with a chaddar or at the very least wear a duppatta (thin scarf) when out on the streets, because it is an outward symbol that she is a morally upright woman. In fact, a former lady colleague who had worked in Pakistan for over 30 years once told me that she had witnessed Pakistani prostitutes soliciting by removing their head coverings.