Malcolm Blair-Robinson's Blog, page 134

Ofcom Report

The report from Ofcom suggesting that Open Reach can be made an arm’s length company while still owned by BT is fundamentally ridiculous. In the end both companies are owned by the same people with the same shareholders. The proposal to allow other companies to put wires on poles and in tunnels is even more stupid as it will cause congestion under ground in many places, more digging of holes and problems with multiple wires on poles in the country. When failure occurs it may not always be easy to identify who is at fault. It is unlikely to enhance good service and will have to be paid for in the end by customers. It is almost as silly as proposing multiple water mains, or sewers.

While it is acceptable to allow privatized communications companies to offer a competitive service to customers, it makes no sense for a private monopoly to control the infrastructure which carries that service. Open Reach should be publicly owned and charged with the delivery of high speed internet and phone communications as a service to every house and business, for which a monthly or annual rental is charged, in much the same way as water, gas electricity and drainage. The owners can then shop around for the right choice of provider. If a break occurs the owner rings Open Reach, not the provider, which is the reverse of the current frustrating arrangements.

There should be a Ministry of Communications responsible for all of this with a Minister answerable for its efficiency. The idiotic quango Ofcom should be disbanded. This notion that government responsibilities can be contracted out to statutory agencies provides unaccountable governance with huge inertia, endless reports and very little action. Moreover it removes responsibility from ministers who are accountable to voters whose money is funding the fiasco, to a whole lot a statutory public servants who appear to be responsible to no one but a rule book.

Trump Storms On

It is hard and unwise from this side of the Atlantic to try and call American elections, but it is becoming obvious that Trump now has momentum which may not be stoppable. He narrowly lost Iowa but has won comfortably everywhere else. Indeed the margin is going up. In Nevada he polled twice the votes of the next man, Rubio. The question now to be pondered is not what will happen if Trump gets the nomination, but what happens if he becomes President? Quite a lot probably.

Brexit Thoughts 1

Bit by bit we shall see key points emerge from the Remain and Leave camps to explain the superiority of their analysis and the better value of their offer. Although this Blog has declared it is for Remain no matter what, I will still unpick the detail of arguments deployed by either side in order to help readers drill down to the core issues which affect them personally and which will inform their choice in the referendum.

Several times in the last few days I have heard Leave enthusiasts assert that the fears about London’s position as a world, actually the world, financial centre are groundless in the event of Brexit and to back this bold claim, they cite City anxiety about not joining the Euro, which turned out not to matter. Maybe not for the City but it did matter for everybody else. Here is why.

By staying out Britain made a huge miscalculation. It failed to see that to be part of a market based on a universal currency from which we excluded ourselves, would place us at a severe disadvantage as an industrial and manufacturing power, because the pound has for most of the time been valued way above the euro, whilst each unit buys roughly the same in its area of circulation. This makes British goods expensive in the Euro market and Euro goods cheap in the British market. So the EU sells us about £50 billion a year more than we sell to it. The last point is often made by Leave, but they fail to make the currency connection to the problem.

Equally unrestricted EU migrant immigration is the trump card of Leave and the big doorstep issue up and down the country. Both the free movement of people and the entitlement to benefits are seen as problems which leaving will somehow resolve. The problem is not caused by benefits, it is caused by the fact that earnings in pounds have a higher value when repatriated to the EU than the euros to which they convert. Had we been in the Euro this would not be happening.

The shortage of housing, excessive housing costs, low wages at the base of the economy, frightening trade deficits, record breaking debt per household are all issues which would be on a far more manageable scale if we had been in the euro. The currency would also have been far better run with a much more assertive system of governance. In a nutshell ordinary people would have been better off. Like in Germany.

So the City was right to lament that we did not join. It was wrong to believe it would be adversely affected. The snags would have to be born, as so often in these things, by the weakest elements of society. The few would be all right Jack. But the many would pay. And will go on paying.

Boris Backs Out: A Labour Gain?

Boris is the best known politician in Britain and by far its most popular. He invokes certain aspects of Churchill, about whom he wrote an acclaimed book. Churchill remained a powerful political figure when not in government and was generally known by his first name in an age of great formality; men called each other by their surnames without the Mr, but with Churchill it was always Winston. He was also something of a showman.

The peculiar fact about this type of personality is that it rises to the top, whatever stands in its way and however big its mistakes. Churchill became prime minister after the debacle in Norway led to Chamberlain’s downfall. But Norway was Churchill’s project and responsibility. Many are suspicious of Boris’s motives and wonder at his uncharacteristic dithering. Is this real or a show?  The answer is almost certainly a little bit of soul searching but a great deal of showmanship. And a lot of shrewd calculation.

If we vote to go he will have led the charge and Cameron too will have to go, whatever he says. Boris will be the darling of the elderly Brexit majority of the Tory party in the country who will elect Cameron’s successor. Boris will be a shoe in and will be prime minister by the autumn. If we vote to stay Boris will be even more than the darling of the Tory membership, he will be the hero who put his career on the line to champion a just but lost cause. When Cameron goes in about eighteen months as he says he plans to, Boris will replace him and will be the iconic Tory prime minister who leads the party into the general election in 2020. A weird combination of celebrity, clown and statesman.

Of course things could take a nasty turn. We could vote Leave causing Scotland to Leave the UK. Uncertainty and alarm could cause borrowing costs to rise sharply. The debt burden could become crushing. Negotiations for new trade deals could go awry. Unemployment could soar. There is no doubt that Boris supporting Leave makes a vote for Brexit more likely. That is why the pound has dropped on the news. Cameron will go down as the prime minister who led Britain out of Europe and drove Scotland out of the UK. But Boris will be the one who made both happen. As in 1945, 2020 could be Labour’s hour, but Boris’s doing. An echo of history.

EU Choice: Sovereignty

As the debate about in or out gets into its stride, we shall hear a lot about sovereignty from the Leave campaign. There are some points to be made here. The whole idea of a Union is that when its laws are agreed by all its members, all of them must abide by them and Union law has to have primacy over national law of member countries, otherwise there would be chaos. It would not be a Union. It would be a Confederation. It was on this issue that America had its Civil War. So it is an issue which can engage the very hearts of all who believe one way or the other.

Cameron is hinting that he is proposing to introduce in parliament a new law which will declare that in the final analysis the UK parliament is Sovereign over EU law. Several eminent lawyers have appeared on the media to explain that this is impossible without breaching the various EU treaties we have signed. So even if passed it would have no effect. Other countries in the EU do not have this difficulty because all of them have written constitutions. It is accepted that a country should not be obliged to do something in violation of its own constitution, unless its voters have approved an amendment to their arrangements in a referendum to permit it. This is how the EU Constitution bit the dust. Some countries, led by France voted No.

The problem for Britain is that it has no constitution in the sense of a codified document. Parliament is the constitution in a state of permanent evolution.This poses a problem for modern democracy upon which the European Union is founded. In Britain the constitution is owned and controlled by the government. In a true democracy it is owned and controlled by the people and lays down the rules under which they must be governed. Being in the EU offers the British people a layer of protection against bad and exploitative government which otherwise they do not have. If they vote to leave they need to get themselves a codified written constitution, approved by the people ASAP.

Trump Sails On

Trump was way out ahead in South Carolina notwithstanding a critical Pope. Cruz should have done better in this State. Bush has dropped out. So the only thing we now know for sure is that in November it cannot be a dynasty revival of Bush v Clinton.

Hilary won in Nevada by less than she ought, so Bernie is still very much in the race. One feels that Hilary is the more likely to end up with the nomination, but as with the Republicans, there are signs but no certainties. The next big moment will be Super Tuesday. Before then we can expect a piece of Trump theatre. The kind at which he excels. Stuff that would sink any other candidate, but for Trump such disasters add to his popularity and momentum.

Waiting For Boris

Before adding more comment on the now for sure referendum over our place in the EU (or not) this blog is planning to let the dust settle for a few hours and see what the shape of things to come actually is following manic negotiations, political ructions, a media frenzy and wall to wall news. It is in the end about whether we wish to be part of Europe or not and that is a question which has not vexed the public over much, but has traumatised the Tory party for over thirty years. All Europe knows  that it is because of the Tory split we all have to go through this. Corbyn was right when he said the Tory schism has now grown to continental proportions. Labour too is split but not in such a frenetic fashion. It has learned its lesson at the last referendum.

The Tory party members are in the majority over sixty out in the countryside and of a certain stripe. Young people shun the party and relatively few join, the figure is in single figures. A far cry from the pre-Thatcher era when the Young Conservatives were the largest political youth organisation in the free world. Most of these older members want to leave, because they look back on a past, rather than contemplate a future. But nobody can tell what is going to happen over the next four months and the only certain thing is that referenda often take an unexpected turn, especially if something or someone sets them alight.

Which brings us back to Boris. Many important hearts flutter in Westminster tonight as they await his decision.

Fallon And The Falklands

This blog has always been riled by the idiotic pronouncements of the UK Defence Secretary Michael Fallon. His latest two border on the irrational. The newest is his assertion that Jeremy Corbyn is a bigger threat to the Falklands than Argentina, because the Labour leader suggested that Britain should try and reach a reasonable accommodation with her. So we should. This never ending stand off does nobody any good, least of all the islanders. I remember supporting the use of force to take the islands back after the ill judged invasion by the doomed military junta, but on the condition that having proved to them that such disagreements could not be solved by brute force, we sit down and talk and reach a settlement. We never did. If Corbyn does get the opportunity it will be well worth the try.

A couple of days ago we had the accusation that Russia was deliberately bombing civilians in Syria. Such is the nature of the combat, the variety of enemies and their entanglement among civilians that mishaps are inevitable and both the Americans and the British have had problems in Iraq and Afghanistan in the past. But to go on and accuse Putin of war crimes is way over the top and entirely counter productive in the current struggle to pause the fighting and bring respite to the suffering. As for bombing civilians, perhaps Mr Fallon could spare a moment to explain Bomber Command’s Area Bombing campaign in WWII, in particular the Hamburg fire storm in which the RAF killed over 40,000 civilians, mostly women and children, in a single night. That was not by mistake. It was on purpose, as a matter of policy and approved at the highest level.

Printing Money: New Ideas

QE in various forms is now very much part of the economic conversation, especially in connection with recent market turmoil. Dynamic Quantitative Easing (also called Peoples Quantitative Easing) remains under government, not bank, control and targets specific investment projects without borrowing, interest or repayments. It can reboot the economy, boost manufacturing and exports and enable sustained growth of real national wealth shared by all, rather than just asset inflation which is the downside of ordinary QE. If you want to find out more you can enjoy a lucid explanation of the original idea from the link below.

Download .99p  Paperback £2.99   

Is Cameron In Trouble?

Surely it was not supposed to be like this? Negotiations to the wire which even if they succeed, will deliver a deal that is either smoke and mirrors or much less than expected. As for immigration, the clincher according to many commentators? Every expert asked has confirmed the inflow of migrants in unlikely to reduce much if at all, even if Cameron’s benefit curbs are agreed in full, which is impossible.

This blog has worried that the referendum is going to be about terms rather than principle. It would have been better to hold and in out referendum which would have been won by Remain and then use the enhanced clout of the UK to fix a few deals to improve the EU for everybody. Now we are heading into an argument about fine print, with several cabinet heavyweights planning to drive the Leave campaign. The idea of divided government has only been tried once; by Harold Wilson at the last EU referendum. Labour was seriously damaged and went into a decline which lasted over twenty years. If it is a Remain victory will Cameron be able to put his government back together again or will it be a Humpty Dumpty moment? If it is Leave who win, then what?

Then there is  that elephant in the Tory room.

Boris.