Politics Thread (encompassing Brexit) - 21 June 2017 onwards

[breadandcheese]

7 minutes ago, Buce said:

 

I don't have that kind of interest or knowledge.

 

Maybe you could Google it if you're sufficiently interested.

I did and couldn't find anything. That's the problem. 

[Salisbury Fox]

19 minutes ago, Buce said:

 

Nothing personal, mate, but there was nothing heroic about Bloody Sunday.

 

It was - as you put it - indiscriminately targeting innocent lives.

Never suggested there was. I wasn't there and so I am not going to defend anyone who was.  I am not blinkered enough to think that things do not happen that should never have happened, but I can say that in my experience no one I know of or knew ever consciously went out to harm civilians unlike the IRA.   It does seem like you are bringing that one incident up to tarnish the reputation of the British Army which I whilst I am not defending, I do think you are only doing so because of your defence of the Labour leadership considering the hundreds of occasions I can name where the IRA targeted innocents.  

[Buce]

[Salisbury Fox]

21 minutes ago, Buce said:

 

I don't have that kind of interest or knowledge.

 

Maybe you could Google it if you're sufficiently interested.

If he did then perhaps it shouldn't be that hard for you to find evidence to support this. I remember Corbyn getting ripped a new one by Andrew Neil during the election about this very subject where he presented evidence indicating that he had no such role in the peace process other than a one sided support of all things Republican  Corbyn had no answer to it.  I would suggest looking it up, but then you are not interested anyway

[Buce]

Just now, Salisbury Fox said:

If he did then perhaps it shouldn't be that hard for you to find evidence to support this. I remember Corbyn getting ripped a new one by Andrew Neil during the election about this very subject where he presented evidence indicating that he had no such role in the peace process other than a one sided support of all things Republican  Corbyn had no answer to it.  I would suggest looking it up, but then you are not interested anyway

1

 

Now you're getting it.

 

I have no argument with you, mate - and even less interest in the subject - but don't let me stop you and cheesy from discussing it.

[Wymsey]

Quite agree.

Cllr NicholasOKeeffe

 

@NicholasOKeeffe

Just catching up on #TheresaMay speech. More waffle. Yawn. How many speeches does there have to be, before the UK Gov. will be clear on what Brexit means for UK and EU. It's clear as anything that they haven't a clue themselves. Ridiculous.

10:36 pm · 2 Mar 2018

[Guest Kopfkino]

Don't think Iain Martin is all that far away here. I know our Guardian reading friends will see wince at any idea the EU could possibly face criticism but I'm sure they can revel in his criticism of May and her government. Tbh he's been a far bigger critic than most all along. 

 

When I wrote a series of opinion pieces headlined variously "Is May really up to it?" and "Can this farce get any worse?" and "Who will rid us of this appalling Prime Minister?" I might have given the impression that Theresa May is the most ill-starred occupant of Number 10 Downing Street since Anthony Eden thought it a clever idea to try a disastrous cloak and dagger operation at the Suez Canal with the aid of the French and Israel, to the fury of the Americans.
 

After that Eden had to go, and there have been plenty of moments since last year's UK general election when it looked as though Theresa May would be removed as Tory leader. Those of us who have long lamented her strange lack of elementary curiosity, and her bizarre non-leadership style, found it almost baffling that May could remain in place at a critical historical juncture. The UK is trying to undertake one of the most difficult tasks since the Second World War yet it is doing it without the help of a strong leader who knows what they want and how to get it. Imagine a Churchill, Attlee or Thatcher dealing with Brexit.
 

My ultra-critical analysis was possibly wrong, one of her strongest female critics on the Tory benches, told me a few months ago. Even her critics admire her persistence. May just keeps going, she said. This is what she did as Home Secretary. May uses silence, wearing people down. Perhaps this is what she is doing on Brexit, with the cabinet and the EU, until both give up arguing and agree a deal, any deal, to make it stop. It might work, but it might not. We are all, in the next few years, about to find out.
 

This week it is working. The astonishingly resilient May is in moderate recovery mode. She duly put that small amount of political capital to particularly effective use, delivering a serious and substantial speech on Brexit on Friday.
 

There had to be some hard truths all round, she said. Neither side, in the UK or the EU, would get everything they want in the next stage of the negotiations and there would have to be British and EU compromises. The UK will be out of the Single Market, and the Customs Union, yet to get decent access to each other's markets what is required is a system for recognising equivalent regulations and settling disputes between the UK and the EU in various industries that are key to both sides.
 

For all the talk of divergence by hardline Brexiteers, on goods most standards are set globally. There is zero interest in the UK diverging on car safety standards for example. Perhaps any hardline Brexiteers advocating it can explain how this would work?
 

The City and financial services are a different matter. The City, as I have bored people senseless saying for several years, powers the eurozone. It is a financial powerhouse, a giant hub of expertise, and its regulation simply cannot be sub-contracted to Brussels or Frankfurt. Why on earth would the British government agree to that?
 

With that reality in mind, the speech contained a welcome recognition that, with the Treasury and the Bank of England now largely aligned, the UK proposes a sensible compromise. There will be no more EU/UK "passporting"- always an overrated concept - and instead the British propose regulatory cooperation but self-government. The EU, whose eurozone depends on London for access to capital, would be best advised to face reality.
 

May's speech could very easily have been a flop. In British politics this has been a week of speeches (rather old-fashioned and interesting) from leading figures and former leading figures. Sir John Major, the man who as Prime Minister whipped through the integrationist Maastricht treaty in the early 1990s, was reborn as the hero of the Remain movement, calling for a free vote (an unwhipped vote) in Parliament on Brexit and possibly a second referendum. There's some cheek. Sir John did not offer up Maastricht as a free vote. The ultra-Remain position now seems to be that referendums are appalling devices, but let's have another one to reverse Brexit before we abolish referendums for all time. Er, no thanks.
 

Then this week Tony Blair said something again too, although no-one can remember what. Lord Heseltine, former Deputy Prime Minister, was never off the television being Hezza-ish. And Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn gave a clever speech which should be read not just as an attempt to stay in a Customs Union. That's all parliamentary tactics. Corbyn and his team are now thinking post-2019, realising that the battle there will be on delivering for the left behind, many of them Leave voters. The Corbynite pitch, as Alastair Benn wrote on Reaction this week, is targeted at Britain beyond Brexit, and the Tories should consider getting their act together.
 

Up against all that, a weak May could have bombed on a snowy Friday afternoon. Instead, her speech at the Mansion House in London on what the UK government seeks in terms of a future relationship with the EU was perfectly-pitched, and more detailed, thoughtful and realistic than anything offered by the government until this point. It was the winner of speech of the week in a week of speeches, the best thing she has said on this subject since becoming Prime Minister.
 

The temptation might have been to hit back hard against the EU, after its chief negotiator Michel Barnier overplayed his hand on the Irish border this week. May avoided it, sensibly. Even some ultra-remainers in the UK were offended by the assumption, mapped out in the EU's draft withdrawal agreement, that Northern Ireland could be compelled to stay in the Customs Union and Single Market after Brexit. The EU was exposed as playing around with Irish politics. The British have centuries of experience of cocking up on Ireland. In respect of Ireland, the EU are a bunch of arrivistes.
 

May banked that advantage, and responded by being constructive. The Tory tribe is so exhausted, and worried by the intensity of its internal warfare perhaps letting in Corbyn, that the speech was welcomed across the spectrum, from Remainer to hardline Leaver. This does not - not - signify that the speech was meaningless or free of content. It illustrates that the Tories, or most of them, want a resolution, because of the consequences of there being no deal with only a year to go.
 

That's the good news for the Tories. Now for the bad news. This speech was at least a year overdue and the amount of time wasted by the government  is shocking to the point of being a national disgrace. Throughout that time, the civil service - criticised by hardline headbangers - has battled away valiantly, and several ministers and whips have battled to hold it all together too. But it is still astonishing that with so little time remaining, Number 10 is only now  at a point where it is possible to describe the UK position as being clear and realistic.
 

The dithering means the EU can, justifiably, say that the British government has been so shambolic on this for so long that the EU cannot trust what is said. Unity among the 27 against the UK seems to be holding, for now, although there are fractures. Hungary's Foreign Minister met Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson on Friday, and reminded everyone that the current European Commission - under Jean-Claude Juncker - will be remembered for losing as a member the EU's second largest contributor and second or third most important economy, that is the UK.
 

In that context, what really counts is that May has finally and politely put the European Union on the spot and invited those in the 27 who think compromise should be possible to quietly apply pressure. All along, serious progress has been hampered by the boneheadedness of the British debate, combined with the rigidity of the EU and its obsession with a legal order that is a recent invention turned into institutional obsession accorded the status of biblical texts. May deserves credit for reasonably pointing out that solutions requiring some compromise and flexibility are called for and possible. The UK under May will compromise a little for the greater good if the EU will. Let's hope it's not too late.

[Vardinio'sCat]

This is my take on the Corbyn concerns, I will try not to get into long exchanges, because Brexit is the business of the the day, not raking over this rather old debate.

 

The 'old' left have always been sympathetic to what they regard to be victims of oppression, and particularly British oppression. One can look at the examples in South Africa, Ireland, Israel, Zimbabwe, India and many other colonial or post-colonial situations, and find horrific acts on both sides.

 

If one focuses on the terrible things that were done in our name, you can paint a picture of of Britain that many in this country have relatively little idea about, a Britain with dirty hands. This is not taught in our schools, and why would it be, because every nation lies to itself, and we couldn't afford the compensation if we admitted the truth (a good example here is the former Mau-Mau fighters recently compensated for the various tortures and castrations done in our name). All of the European former colonial powers struggle to face up to the legacy of actions taken when views of the world were, shall we say, somewhat different.

 

Of course, these actions that would today be considered criminal, drew a violent response which was often terrible, and sometimes more horrific than the wrongs done by the Imperial powers.

 

The power bases amongst these victims are often held by men of violence, partly because they had the guns, but often alongside political parties. Knowing quite who had 'clean hands' in these situations is difficult, and in hindsight I'm sure that Corbyn probably shook a few hands he shouldn't have.

 

But it is worth remembering how many figures on the right did the same to various South American meat-packing glitterati (anyone get the reference?), African demagogues and South-East Asian dictators. Pinochet was the most famous example of this, but the list is massive, I won't even start to list them.

 

Today we still shake hands with despots, tyrants and murderers, hoping to trade and often sell them instruments of oppression, and politicians on both sides have reason to be ashamed.

 

So is Corbyn an enemy of the state, guilty of consorting with the enemy and maybe even spying on Mrs Thatcher's breakfast? 

 

He may well have made the odd mistake in his time, as the left is no more perfect than the right. But for all his faults, I really don't think Corbyn condones violence as a way of solving conflict, because philosophically he is more jaw-jaw than war-war. Indeed I have more concerns that he would be too timid a leader, if a situation came along where decisive military action is required, but I voted Labour at the last election, so clearly I am prepared to take that risk.

 

Mcdonnell is slightly different, because he has a touch of the provocateur about him, but ultimately he is not standing for prime minister.

 

I think it is quite easy for the Daily Mail to look back and make out that these causes that have been supported by the left for decades were all dodgy, but how do you square that with the history in South Africa, where the left were clearly on the side of the angels, and some on the right were balls deep in the disgusting racist ideology of Aparthied.

 

Thankfully we have a situation in Ireland that is so much better than the dark days of the Troubles. No more IRA bombs attacking the heart of our government, no more diefication of the Armalite, no more collections for the men of violence outside catholic churches in the Republic, no more bandstands being blown up by remote control, no more British soldiers walking the streets of Ulster fearing for their lives, being shot when taking delivery of a pizza, and most of all no more hideous atrocities committed by the IRA in the name of a romanticised, bastardised and futile attempt to solve the conflict by violence.

 

But also. No more 'shoot to kill', no more security services and RUC turning a blind eye while Unionists murdered Catholics, no more torture of misguided IRA men and boys, no more hunger strikes, no more blanking out of legitimately elected MP's voices, no more disregard for due process and the rule of law, no more casual acceptance of deeply divisive inequalities between ordinary decent people, no more internment without charge,  and no more executions of injured men tied to chairs, or SAS death squads.

 

Please, when criticising Corbyn, at least try and keep some common decency and balance. If we propagate tribal myths as if they are balanced analyses of history, we encourage the kind of complacency and ignorance so recently displayed by our Foreign Secretary. Going back to our tribes is not an option.

Edited 3 March 2018 by Vardinio'sCat
spelling

[Guest MattP]

@Kopfkino Iain Martin is fast becoming one of my favourite columnists. 

 

@Vardinio'sCat That's a pretty good defence, I don't think many do actually think Corbyn supports violence though - I think he's been a useful idiot of those who want to exploit things and I think his naivety over a lot of his past meetings leave a lot to be desired but I don't think he condones killing.

 

I think his views on foreign policy which always seen to come down on supporting whoever is opposed to the US, Britain or Israel are quite awful, especially when it leads to situations like standing on a stage supporting regimes like Iran or sharing platforms with holocaust deniers - but again - I put this down to naivety rather than malelovance.

 

McDonnell on the other hand I have no doubt supports violent means if it gets where he wants, I know he's not running for PM but he is running for a great office of state - the evidence on him just keeps stacking up.

 

He's repeated calls for a female MP to be lynched, he's praised the "bombs and bullets" of the IRA, he's openly spoken of "direct action" against opponents, he jokes about knee cappings and he has been pictured campaigning to shut down our security service - now we find out he has a plaque on his wall presented to him by a guy sentenced to 20 years for politically motivated murder. 

 

It isn't going to wash he's saying or doing these things to show his commitment to the peace process, its a laughable defence, this man is as dangerous as they come and people like him shouldn't be anywhere near a position of power in a democratic country.

Edited 3 March 2018 by MattP

[Guest MattP]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2018/03/02/content-now-not-time-nitpick-brexit/

 

Well I am surprised, Rees-Mogg content and Soubry saying she's happy on R4 this morning. Whether it's genuine or whether it's just a united front against the obvious Labour CU tactic is another thing, we'll find out soon enough. 

  

For what it's worth I think hard leavers need to now stop playing up, we are getting exactly what most before the referendum described as "hard Brexit" ie leaving the single market and customs union, being able to trade freely, having full border control and losing jurisdiction of the ECJ (even if it carries on longer than some would like during transition/implementation)

 

Shouldn't have any worries now about the withdrawal bill passing through parliament. 

[Buce]

5 minutes ago, MattP said:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2018/03/02/content-now-not-time-nitpick-brexit/

 

Well I am surprised, Rees-Mogg content and Soubry saying she's happy on R4 this morning. Whether it's genuine or whether it's just a united front against the obvious Labour CU tactic is another thing, we'll find out soon enough. 

  

For what it's worth I think hard leavers need to now stop playing up, we are getting exactly what most before the referendum described as "hard Brexit" ie leaving the single market and customs union, being able to trade freely, having full border control and losing jurisdiction of the ECJ (even if it carries on longer than some would like during transition/implementation)

 

Shouldn't have any worries now about the withdrawal bill passing through parliament. 

 

Do you not think you might be jumping the gun a bit?

 

May stating what she thinks should happen is a long way from the EU agreeing to it, and the Irish question is still up in the air.

[Guest MattP]

8 minutes ago, Buce said:

Do you not think you might be jumping the gun a bit?

 

May stating what she thinks should happen is a long way from the EU agreeing to it, and the Irish question is still up in the air.

Jumping the gun on what?

 

The next stage of the withdrawal bill (with customs union amendments) is presented to parliament before the negotiation concludes.

 

Although I have no doubt Stage 2 will be exactly the same as Stage 1 - the EU kicks up a fuss, pushes another country into doing something (probably Ireland again) then we kick off, threaten to pull out and then again something works out and the EU again pushes the country they forced into kicking up a fuss back into line to agree.

 

I honestly can't recommend "adults in the room" by Yanis Varoufakis enough, it tells you everything you need to know about how the European commission conducts it's negotiations. 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/03/yanis-varoufakis-greece-greatest-political-memoir

Edited 3 March 2018 by MattP

[Guest]

Shameful

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/life-expectancy-poorest-girls-women-england-ons-a8235471.html?amp&__twitter_impression=true

 

[Strokes]

5 minutes ago, toddybad said:

Shameful

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/life-expectancy-poorest-girls-women-england-ons-a8235471.html?amp&__twitter_impression=true

 

Don’t we want all the racist pensioners to die today then?

[Alf Bentley]

Outstanding post from @Vardinio'sCat's cat, above, explaining the Corbyn/McDonnell political outlook.

 

I agree that the Hard Left has always instinctively supported "victims of oppression" (often very real victims) leading them into kneejerk support for anyone supporting those victims or opposing the "oppressors". There has often been no questioning of the merits and methods of groups opposing such oppression: e.g. Israel has done some bad stuff, but the ideas and actions of Hamas and Hezbollah also need to be questioned - which hasn't happened enough on the Hard Left.

 

There's some truth in what @MattP says about the Hard Left instinctively supporting whoever opposes US, British or Israeli "imperialist" foreign policy. Sometimes this is justified, but not always - and again not enough questioning is done. Among rank and file on the Hard Left, there's also always been something akin to what now gets dismissed as "virtue-signalling", though not quite that bad - a desire to unthinkingly support all the "right causes": e.g. support Cuba Solidarity because of decades of US blockade, without questioning the merits of the Castro regime - very good education/health services, yes, but poor living standards and terrible human rights. This is how Corbyn gets himself in a mess, giving unquestioning support to the Chávez regime in Venezuela. I hope that he's starting to wise up and be a bit more critical now he's leader - not before time, if so. Emily Thornberry (Shadow Foreign Sec) is less unquestioning and Corbyn does listen to other views, so might be being forced to question his attitudes more but for decades, as a Hard Left rebel Corbyn was mainly living in a bubble surrounded by people sharing that uncritical Hard Left approach. 

 

I think you're over-stating how dangerous McDonnell is, though, Matt. He's certainly said some dodgy stuff, as you point out, but I don't think he seriously supports violence. He's just very partisan and intemperate in his rhetoric. I'd see him as more like a left-wing cross between Boris and Tebbitt: a hard bastard who'll act ruthlessly at times (the Robert Huth that every party needs), but also someone with an unsubtle sense of humour who is prone to getting carried away and making unwise partisan comments to please grassroots hotheads when "among friends". Tbf, I wouldn't be keen on seeing him as Foreign Secretary - he'd be as unsuitable as Boris. But he does have a brain and some of his economic/investment policies as Shadow Chancellor are decent, provided they're not implemented to excess or too rapidly, risking economic stability.

 

As for the Irish border issue, I agree with Vardinio that propagating tribal myths just ends in unpleasantness. For the record, I don't think Corbyn did make a significant contribution to the peace process - that was down to Hume & Trimble, then Major, Blair, the Irish PMs, Adams, Paisley, Clinton, the EU and various others. Corbyn didn't advocate violence but he was partisan and wrongly so - he supported a united Ireland. That might have been a reasonable stance in 1885 or 1922, but time has moved on, and all communities needed to be kept on board for peace to work - as other politicians on all sides came to realise by the 1990s.

 

For anyone unfamiliar with the history of the Troubles in N. Ireland or with Irish history generally, it's worth getting some understanding of it (I don't claim any great knowledge myself, but have read up on it a bit). Any risk of a resurgence of conflict in Ireland is something we seriously must avoid through the Brexit settlement. Hopefully 20+ years of peace will alleviate any risk.

Here's Wikipedia context on "the Troubles" (sickest ever understatement/euphemism): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles

And Wiki on the Irish Famine with some other historical background (remembering that when 25% of the population died/emigrated in the 1840s, Ireland was part of the UK): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)

 

[Strokes]

22 minutes ago, Alf Bentley said:

Outstanding post from @Vardinio'sCat's cat, above, explaining the Corbyn/McDonnell political outlook.

 

I agree that the Hard Left has always instinctively supported "victims of oppression" (often very real victims) leading them into kneejerk support for anyone supporting those victims or opposing the "oppressors". There has often been no questioning of the merits and methods of groups opposing such oppression: e.g. Israel has done some bad stuff, but the ideas and actions of Hamas and Hezbollah also need to be questioned - which hasn't happened enough on the Hard Left.

 

There's some truth in what @MattP says about the Hard Left instinctively supporting whoever opposes US, British or Israeli "imperialist" foreign policy. Sometimes this is justified, but not always - and again not enough questioning is done. Among rank and file on the Hard Left, there's also always been something akin to what now gets dismissed as "virtue-signalling", though not quite that bad - a desire to unthinkingly support all the "right causes": e.g. support Cuba Solidarity because of decades of US blockade, without questioning the merits of the Castro regime - very good education/health services, yes, but poor living standards and terrible human rights. This is how Corbyn gets himself in a mess, giving unquestioning support to the Chávez regime in Venezuela. I hope that he's starting to wise up and be a bit more critical now he's leader - not before time, if so. Emily Thornberry (Shadow Foreign Sec) is less unquestioning and Corbyn does listen to other views, so might be being forced to question his attitudes more but for decades, as a Hard Left rebel Corbyn was mainly living in a bubble surrounded by people sharing that uncritical Hard Left approach. 

 

I think you're over-stating how dangerous McDonnell is, though, Matt. He's certainly said some dodgy stuff, as you point out, but I don't think he seriously supports violence. He's just very partisan and intemperate in his rhetoric. I'd see him as more like a left-wing cross between Boris and Tebbitt: a hard bastard who'll act ruthlessly at times (the Robert Huth that every party needs), but also someone with an unsubtle sense of humour who is prone to getting carried away and making unwise partisan comments to please grassroots hotheads when "among friends". Tbf, I wouldn't be keen on seeing him as Foreign Secretary - he'd be as unsuitable as Boris. But he does have a brain and some of his economic/investment policies as Shadow Chancellor are decent, provided they're not implemented to excess or too rapidly, risking economic stability.

 

As for the Irish border issue, I agree with Vardinio that propagating tribal myths just ends in unpleasantness. For the record, I don't think Corbyn did make a significant contribution to the peace process - that was down to Hume & Trimble, then Major, Blair, the Irish PMs, Adams, Paisley, Clinton, the EU and various others. Corbyn didn't advocate violence but he was partisan and wrongly so - he supported a united Ireland. That might have been a reasonable stance in 1885 or 1922, but time has moved on, and all communities needed to be kept on board for peace to work - as other politicians on all sides came to realise by the 1990s.

 

For anyone unfamiliar with the history of the Troubles in N. Ireland or with Irish history generally, it's worth getting some understanding of it (I don't claim any great knowledge myself, but have read up on it a bit). Any risk of a resurgence of conflict in Ireland is something we seriously must avoid through the Brexit settlement. Hopefully 20+ years of peace will alleviate any risk.

Here's Wikipedia context on "the Troubles" (sickest ever understatement/euphemism): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles

And Wiki on the Irish Famine with some other historical background (remembering that when 25% of the population died/emigrated in the 1840s, Ireland was part of the UK): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)

 

Yeah I do admit to my knowledge of Ireland/Northern Ireland history to being on the thin side. I’m definitely going to read up on it now, as I think it’s certainly a good time to know your fact from fiction 

[Vardinio'sCat]

6 hours ago, MattP said:

@Kopfkino Iain Martin is fast becoming one of my favourite columnists. 

 

@Vardinio'sCat That's a pretty good defence, I don't think many do actually think Corbyn supports violence though - I think he's been a useful idiot of those who want to exploit things and I think his naivety over a lot of his past meetings leave a lot to be desired but I don't think he condones killing.

 

I think his views on foreign policy which always seen to come down on supporting whoever is opposed to the US, Britain or Israel are quite awful, especially when it leads to situations like standing on a stage supporting regimes like Iran or sharing platforms with holocaust deniers - but again - I put this down to naivety rather than malelovance.

 

McDonnell on the other hand I have no doubt supports violent means if it gets where he wants, I know he's not running for PM but he is running for a great office of state - the evidence on him just keeps stacking up.

 

He's repeated calls for a female MP to be lynched, he's praised the "bombs and bullets" of the IRA, he's openly spoken of "direct action" against opponents, he jokes about knee cappings and he has been pictured campaigning to shut down our security service - now we find out he has a plaque on his wall presented to him by a guy sentenced to 20 years for politically motivated murder. 

 

It isn't going to wash he's saying or doing these things to show his commitment to the peace process, its a laughable defence, this man is as dangerous as they come and people like him shouldn't be anywhere near a position of power in a democratic country.

 

I dunno about as dangerous as they come, but I do think he seems to have many more questionable actions than Corbyn, so I can see why you would be worried. Arlene Foster is effectively in power, and she worries me, and no doubt she is closer to the men of violence than Mcdonnell.

 

Good post though, I think we would agree that Mcdonnell is an electoral liability.

[leicsmac]

1 hour ago, Alf Bentley said:

Outstanding post from @Vardinio'sCat's cat, above, explaining the Corbyn/McDonnell political outlook.

 

I agree that the Hard Left has always instinctively supported "victims of oppression" (often very real victims) leading them into kneejerk support for anyone supporting those victims or opposing the "oppressors". There has often been no questioning of the merits and methods of groups opposing such oppression: e.g. Israel has done some bad stuff, but the ideas and actions of Hamas and Hezbollah also need to be questioned - which hasn't happened enough on the Hard Left.

 

There's some truth in what @MattP says about the Hard Left instinctively supporting whoever opposes US, British or Israeli "imperialist" foreign policy. Sometimes this is justified, but not always - and again not enough questioning is done. Among rank and file on the Hard Left, there's also always been something akin to what now gets dismissed as "virtue-signalling", though not quite that bad - a desire to unthinkingly support all the "right causes": e.g. support Cuba Solidarity because of decades of US blockade, without questioning the merits of the Castro regime - very good education/health services, yes, but poor living standards and terrible human rights. This is how Corbyn gets himself in a mess, giving unquestioning support to the Chávez regime in Venezuela. I hope that he's starting to wise up and be a bit more critical now he's leader - not before time, if so. Emily Thornberry (Shadow Foreign Sec) is less unquestioning and Corbyn does listen to other views, so might be being forced to question his attitudes more but for decades, as a Hard Left rebel Corbyn was mainly living in a bubble surrounded by people sharing that uncritical Hard Left approach. 

 

I think you're over-stating how dangerous McDonnell is, though, Matt. He's certainly said some dodgy stuff, as you point out, but I don't think he seriously supports violence. He's just very partisan and intemperate in his rhetoric. I'd see him as more like a left-wing cross between Boris and Tebbitt: a hard bastard who'll act ruthlessly at times (the Robert Huth that every party needs), but also someone with an unsubtle sense of humour who is prone to getting carried away and making unwise partisan comments to please grassroots hotheads when "among friends". Tbf, I wouldn't be keen on seeing him as Foreign Secretary - he'd be as unsuitable as Boris. But he does have a brain and some of his economic/investment policies as Shadow Chancellor are decent, provided they're not implemented to excess or too rapidly, risking economic stability.

 

As for the Irish border issue, I agree with Vardinio that propagating tribal myths just ends in unpleasantness. For the record, I don't think Corbyn did make a significant contribution to the peace process - that was down to Hume & Trimble, then Major, Blair, the Irish PMs, Adams, Paisley, Clinton, the EU and various others. Corbyn didn't advocate violence but he was partisan and wrongly so - he supported a united Ireland. That might have been a reasonable stance in 1885 or 1922, but time has moved on, and all communities needed to be kept on board for peace to work - as other politicians on all sides came to realise by the 1990s.

 

For anyone unfamiliar with the history of the Troubles in N. Ireland or with Irish history generally, it's worth getting some understanding of it (I don't claim any great knowledge myself, but have read up on it a bit). Any risk of a resurgence of conflict in Ireland is something we seriously must avoid through the Brexit settlement. Hopefully 20+ years of peace will alleviate any risk.

Here's Wikipedia context on "the Troubles" (sickest ever understatement/euphemism): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles

And Wiki on the Irish Famine with some other historical background (remembering that when 25% of the population died/emigrated in the 1840s, Ireland was part of the UK): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)

 

3

Never a truer word has been spoken.

 

So why on Earth do people keep doing it?

[Vardinio'sCat]

 

Here is an article which responds to the much trumpeted return to surplus. I would particularly be interested in Beechey's response  This article, by an Oxford Professor of Economics, makes some similar points to mine, but is far better written, and has a much better understanding than I do. It is written for economists and non-economists alike, so it isn't that technical. My take home is that the argument against austerity is not some fringe debate, and despite Beechey's fine grasp of the numbers, there is a strong argument that Osborne's austerity was a political construct, rather than a political necessity.

 

 

 

Saturday, 3 March 2018

The economic and political cost of UK austerity

 

 

The UK now has a surplus on the government’s current budget. George Osborne tweeted “We got there in the end — a remarkable national effort. Thank you.” This has been a remarkable period in UK macroeconomic history, but not in the way Osborne thinks. A majority of economists have always been against trying to reduce the deficit when interest rates are stuck at their lower bound, a majority Osborne chose to ignore. So what has been the cost of this “remarkable national effort”?

 

The first time I looked at this I did a very simple calculation. The OBR estimate (here, chart E) that fiscal consolidation took just under 1% out of the economy in 2010/11 and over 1% in 2011/12. I wanted to get a simple estimate that no one could suggest was too high. As actual output was pretty flat until 2013, I assumed that output was 2% lower in 2011/12 (1% from the previous year plus the additional 1%) as a result of fiscal consolidation, remained 2% lower in 2012/13, but then fully recovered by 2013/14. That gave a total output loss of 5%, which is almost £4,000 per household.

 

I think we can now do things a little more scientifically. (If you are not into these sorts of calculations, you can skip to the paragraph starting £10,000.) I originally took the OBR estimates which had embedded in them a declining influence on GDP over time, based on historical experience. I think it is wrong to use these, because the reason that the impact of fiscal consolidation normally declines is that monetary policy counteracts it. This didn’t happen after the Great Recession because interest rates were stuck at their lower bound and QE was pretty ineffective. The OBR have now provided estimates of the ‘direct’ effect of fiscal consolidation, that take out the impact of the decay from past consolidation. See here for a detailed discussion.

 

 

The Impact of UK fiscal consolidation on GDP

Fiscal impacts	10/11	11/12	12/13	13/14	14/15	15/16	16/17	17/18
Direct impact on growth	-0.8	-1.4	-0.6	-0.7	-0.3	-0.5	-0.2	0.0
Impact on level of GDP, no decay	-0.8	-2.2	-2.8	-3.5	-3.8	-4.3	-4.5	-4.5
80% decay	-0.8	-2.0	-2.2	-2.5	-2.3	-2.3	-2.1	-1.7
Cumulated loss		-2.8	-5.0	-7.5	-9.8	-12.1	-14.2	-15.9

 

The table above starts in row 2 with the direct impact of fiscal consolidation (the orange bars in Chart E). There are reasons for thinking these numbers are too low, because they still embody some within year offset from monetary policy, but lets go with them. Suppose there was no tendency for GDP to rebound from these impacts (like kicking a ball each time it stops). The third row computes the total impact on the level of GDP in each year.

 

Assuming zero decay from fiscal consolidation is too strong, even when interest rates are at their lower bound. For example the impact of tax or transfer cuts are likely to be greater in the short term than the longer term. QE had some impact. So row 4 assumes a decay of 0.8 i.e. only 80% of the fiscal consolidation remains in aggregate demand the following year. This is very crude and no substitute for a proper model based estimate, but I do not know of any recent model based estimates so it is the best we can do. The final row shows the accumulated loss of output: the total cost of fiscal consolidation over the whole period. The final figure suggests the national effort to reduce the deficit cost over 15% of GDP, which when GDP is around 2 trillion and there are 27 million households, gives over £10,000 per household.

 

There is a big objection that this calculation. If GDP had been 2% higher in 2016/17, say, the Bank of England would have raised interest rates because that level of GDP would have been inflationary. In other words I should be using a much higher decay factor as we come closer to 2017. However there is an even stronger counterargument to that. I argued here that austerity was a cause of the productivity slowdown that began in 2012. By delaying the recovery for three years, austerity made firms put productivity enhancing projects on hold, and we have seen no sign as yet of any catch-up. I think it is reasonable to assume that the productivity slowdown caused by austerity led to a reduction of at least 2% of GDP from the supply side by 2015. That nullifies the argument that the bank of England would have had to raise rates if austerity had not happened. [1]

 

£10,000 for each household is an average figure, but we know that austerity did not fall evenly, but was concentrated on those at the bottom end of the income distribution. It is certain that cuts to social care and the NHS cost lives: it is just a question of how many thousands of lives we are talking about.

 

And then there is the political cost of austerity. The Coalition government, and particularly our current Prime Minister, has used immigration as a scapegoat for the impact of austerity. With the help of the right wing press that scapegoating has worked. In particular, as I show here, many people believe that immigration has been bad for public services like the NHS. In reality the opposite is true, but the government and press have succeeded in creating what I call a politicised truth: something that is believed to be true just because politicians and the media keep saying it is.

 

The government may well have pursued this line even if austerity had not happened, but it gained some of its potency because austerity did lead to pressure on public services like the NHS. That in turn helped create the atmosphere required to gain a majority for leaving the EU. Austerity, for this and other reasons, created the conditions that allowed Brexit to happen. Those who think the UK descended into political madness with Brexit are wrong: the madness started with austerity in 2010.

 

The final point is that austerity was completely unnecessary. By austerity I mean cutting the deficit when interest rates could not be cut to offset the impact of fiscal consolidation. There is zero evidence that the markets demanded austerity in 2010, and plenty of evidence they did not. Even if the markets had panicked at the size of the deficit, the Bank of England would have bought government debt as part of its QE programme.

 

The unusual feature of the Great Recession was not just its size, but that for the first time since the 1930s governments started reducing spending in what should have been the recovery period. They have never done that since the 1930s because economic textbooks and state of the art models say it is a stupid and costly thing to do.

 

Of course the deficit needed to be reduced, but the government could easily have waited for a few years until the recovery was well underway and interest rates were well above their lower bound. The £10,000 per household is not the cost of deficit reduction. If the government had been patient it could have reduced the deficit with no cost at all. Whatever the motive for George Osborne disregarding the lessons of history, his actions have lost the average household £10,000 worth of resources and caused additional ongoing economic and political damage to the economy. Not so much a “remarkable national effort” as a predictable man made disaster.

 

 

 

[1] There is an argument that without austerity interest rate would have increased in 2011, because they nearly were anyway. But that would have been a huge mistake by the Bank, who were panicked by higher inflation. One of the reasons inflation was high was austerity: the increase in VAT. So I think letting austerity off the hook and passing the hook to the Bank of England because of something they might have done is not a very convincing argument.

 

 

https://mainlymacro.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/the-economic-and-political-cost-of-uk.html

 

 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Vardinio'sCat said:

 

Here is an article which responds to the much trumpeted return to surplus. I would particularly be interested in Beechey's response  This article, by an Oxford Professor of Economics, makes some similar points to mine, but is far better written, and has a much better understanding than I do. It is written for economists and non-economists alike, so it isn't that technical. My take home is that the argument against austerity is not some fringe debate, and despite Beechey's fine grasp of the numbers, there is a strong argument that Osborne's austerity was a political construct, rather than a political necessity.

 

 

 

Saturday, 3 March 2018

The economic and political cost of UK austerity

 

 

The UK now has a surplus on the government’s current budget. George Osborne tweeted “We got there in the end — a remarkable national effort. Thank you.” This has been a remarkable period in UK macroeconomic history, but not in the way Osborne thinks. A majority of economists have always been against trying to reduce the deficit when interest rates are stuck at their lower bound, a majority Osborne chose to ignore. So what has been the cost of this “remarkable national effort”?

 

The first time I looked at this I did a very simple calculation. The OBR estimate (here, chart E) that fiscal consolidation took just under 1% out of the economy in 2010/11 and over 1% in 2011/12. I wanted to get a simple estimate that no one could suggest was too high. As actual output was pretty flat until 2013, I assumed that output was 2% lower in 2011/12 (1% from the previous year plus the additional 1%) as a result of fiscal consolidation, remained 2% lower in 2012/13, but then fully recovered by 2013/14. That gave a total output loss of 5%, which is almost £4,000 per household.

 

I think we can now do things a little more scientifically. (If you are not into these sorts of calculations, you can skip to the paragraph starting £10,000.) I originally took the OBR estimates which had embedded in them a declining influence on GDP over time, based on historical experience. I think it is wrong to use these, because the reason that the impact of fiscal consolidation normally declines is that monetary policy counteracts it. This didn’t happen after the Great Recession because interest rates were stuck at their lower bound and QE was pretty ineffective. The OBR have now provided estimates of the ‘direct’ effect of fiscal consolidation, that take out the impact of the decay from past consolidation. See here for a detailed discussion.

 

 

The Impact of UK fiscal consolidation on GDP

Fiscal impacts	10/11	11/12	12/13	13/14	14/15	15/16	16/17	17/18
Direct impact on growth	-0.8	-1.4	-0.6	-0.7	-0.3	-0.5	-0.2	0.0
Impact on level of GDP, no decay	-0.8	-2.2	-2.8	-3.5	-3.8	-4.3	-4.5	-4.5
80% decay	-0.8	-2.0	-2.2	-2.5	-2.3	-2.3	-2.1	-1.7
Cumulated loss		-2.8	-5.0	-7.5	-9.8	-12.1	-14.2	-15.9

 

The table above starts in row 2 with the direct impact of fiscal consolidation (the orange bars in Chart E). There are reasons for thinking these numbers are too low, because they still embody some within year offset from monetary policy, but lets go with them. Suppose there was no tendency for GDP to rebound from these impacts (like kicking a ball each time it stops). The third row computes the total impact on the level of GDP in each year.

 

Assuming zero decay from fiscal consolidation is too strong, even when interest rates are at their lower bound. For example the impact of tax or transfer cuts are likely to be greater in the short term than the longer term. QE had some impact. So row 4 assumes a decay of 0.8 i.e. only 80% of the fiscal consolidation remains in aggregate demand the following year. This is very crude and no substitute for a proper model based estimate, but I do not know of any recent model based estimates so it is the best we can do. The final row shows the accumulated loss of output: the total cost of fiscal consolidation over the whole period. The final figure suggests the national effort to reduce the deficit cost over 15% of GDP, which when GDP is around 2 trillion and there are 27 million households, gives over £10,000 per household.

 

There is a big objection that this calculation. If GDP had been 2% higher in 2016/17, say, the Bank of England would have raised interest rates because that level of GDP would have been inflationary. In other words I should be using a much higher decay factor as we come closer to 2017. However there is an even stronger counterargument to that. I argued here that austerity was a cause of the productivity slowdown that began in 2012. By delaying the recovery for three years, austerity made firms put productivity enhancing projects on hold, and we have seen no sign as yet of any catch-up. I think it is reasonable to assume that the productivity slowdown caused by austerity led to a reduction of at least 2% of GDP from the supply side by 2015. That nullifies the argument that the bank of England would have had to raise rates if austerity had not happened. [1]

 

£10,000 for each household is an average figure, but we know that austerity did not fall evenly, but was concentrated on those at the bottom end of the income distribution. It is certain that cuts to social care and the NHS cost lives: it is just a question of how many thousands of lives we are talking about.

 

And then there is the political cost of austerity. The Coalition government, and particularly our current Prime Minister, has used immigration as a scapegoat for the impact of austerity. With the help of the right wing press that scapegoating has worked. In particular, as I show here, many people believe that immigration has been bad for public services like the NHS. In reality the opposite is true, but the government and press have succeeded in creating what I call a politicised truth: something that is believed to be true just because politicians and the media keep saying it is.

 

The government may well have pursued this line even if austerity had not happened, but it gained some of its potency because austerity did lead to pressure on public services like the NHS. That in turn helped create the atmosphere required to gain a majority for leaving the EU. Austerity, for this and other reasons, created the conditions that allowed Brexit to happen. Those who think the UK descended into political madness with Brexit are wrong: the madness started with austerity in 2010.

 

The final point is that austerity was completely unnecessary. By austerity I mean cutting the deficit when interest rates could not be cut to offset the impact of fiscal consolidation. There is zero evidence that the markets demanded austerity in 2010, and plenty of evidence they did not. Even if the markets had panicked at the size of the deficit, the Bank of England would have bought government debt as part of its QE programme.

 

The unusual feature of the Great Recession was not just its size, but that for the first time since the 1930s governments started reducing spending in what should have been the recovery period. They have never done that since the 1930s because economic textbooks and state of the art models say it is a stupid and costly thing to do.

 

Of course the deficit needed to be reduced, but the government could easily have waited for a few years until the recovery was well underway and interest rates were well above their lower bound. The £10,000 per household is not the cost of deficit reduction. If the government had been patient it could have reduced the deficit with no cost at all. Whatever the motive for George Osborne disregarding the lessons of history, his actions have lost the average household £10,000 worth of resources and caused additional ongoing economic and political damage to the economy. Not so much a “remarkable national effort” as a predictable man made disaster.

 

 

 

[1] There is an argument that without austerity interest rate would have increased in 2011, because they nearly were anyway. But that would have been a huge mistake by the Bank, who were panicked by higher inflation. One of the reasons inflation was high was austerity: the increase in VAT. So I think letting austerity off the hook and passing the hook to the Bank of England because of something they might have done is not a very convincing argument.

 

 

https://mainlymacro.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/the-economic-and-political-cost-of-uk.html

 

 

I really hope our right wingers read this with an open mind as it is making exactly the points many of us have been making for months on end.

[Guest Kopfkino]

 

But yet it's perfectly logical to actively support a party led by a man who praised Iran's 'acceptance and tolerance' whilst being paid many thousands of pounds to appear on a questionable Iranian state TV channel. Iran being a state where being gay is punishable by death. 

 

Meanwhile, Matt Chorley's column is a good one:

Typical bloody Tories. They never change. This week we found out they’d appointed a new equalities adviser who is a racist, told MPs not to complain about antisemites in the party and taken cash from someone named on a leaflet claiming “coloured immigration threatens your children’s health”.

Edited 3 March 2018 by Kopfkino

[leicsmac]

5 minutes ago, Kopfkino said:

 

But yet it's perfectly logical to actively support a party led by a man who praised Iran's 'acceptance and tolerance' whilst being paid many thousands of pounds to appear on a questionable Iranian state TV channel. Iran being a state where being gay is punishable by death. 

And yet the UK government of the day is happy to give material support while seemingly raising no issues (not ones that are being acted on anyway) with another Middle Eastern regime who are pretty similar in terms of how they treat their LGBT population.

 

TBH I'd prefer a situation where there's actually a political party that actually doesn't give at least tacit approval to regimes and groups who happily wish that vulnerable demographics didn't exist. Wishful thinking, huh?

[Buce]

1 hour ago, toddybad said:

I really hope our right wingers read this with an open mind as it is making exactly the points many of us have been making for months on end.

 

I wouldn't hold your breath, Toddy.

[Guest Kopfkino]

7 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

And yet the UK government of the day is happy to give material support while seemingly raising no issues (not ones that are being acted on anyway) with another Middle Eastern regime who are pretty similar in terms of how they treat their LGBT population.

 

TBH I'd prefer a situation where there's actually a political party that actually doesn't give at least tacit approval to regimes and groups who happily wish that vulnerable demographics didn't exist. Wishful thinking, huh?

 

I'm not making any point regarding LGBT or any of that. Hypocrisy is everywhere, no shit. I just think there is not a place for people to be so openly intolerant and aggressive towards views that they don't share. Whether that be calling people 'Tory scum', calling for direct action, or calling people a 'special kind of dickhead'. I am just opposing the attempt to legitimise her words and pointing out it doesn't work. 

[Guest Kopfkino]

1 hour ago, toddybad said:

I really hope our right wingers read this with an open mind as it is making exactly the points many of us have been making for months on end.

 

No definitely interesting words. But of course, we can paint anything as badly as we try if we only consider some downsides and no potential upsides. Just like I could take the ECB's findings of "there is a significant negative effect of the size of government on growth" and "government consumption is consistently detrimental to output growth irrespective of the country sample considered" and conclude that means government consumption should be cut to 0. 

 

In fact we could really just view austerity as Daniel Mitchell's "bad policy begets bad policy". Austerity being a bad policy response to big government.