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No Easy Answers For Immigration

By Guest
June 18th, 2016 at 12:00 pm | 3 Comments | Posted in EU

There’ll be little agreement on solutions but Brendan Cox’s analysis of the absurd immigration targets culture is spot on.

If Leave win on Thursday. Their immigration campaign will come back to bite them. Principally because they will be no more successful than David Cameron in ‘taking control’ of the issue.

The most sensible immigration policy is one that matches demand for labour with supply. While ensuring compassion and capacity for genuine refugees. Enabling them to be part of the solution to their plight, not just a burden on those that host them.

Neither element of that benefits from a quota. Quotas in economic migration are either irrelevant (if high) or damaging (if low). The notion the state can plan the ‘right’ number is as absurd here as it is in every other policy area.

With refugees capacity matters, and capacity can change in reaction to events. There is no objectively right number unrelated to the circumstances of the day.

In both cases you also need to look at why the UK finds it so difficult to cope with migration. We are not full, 97.5% of our land is undeveloped. There is no good reason why public services should not cope with expansion. You don’t hear businesses moaning about having more customers, why does the NHS?

Nor do we have to pander to the myth that immigration is only hard because of rampant racism from ‘stupid Sun readers’. Integration isn’t easy. But it isn’t helped by tribal politics and sneering elitism. Fascists and anti-Fascists screaming abuse at one another do not represent the core of any debate on community relations. Daily Express headlines have not turned us into a fertile ground for the BNP. Anti-racist hate tactics in political campaigns do not encourage tolerance.

And so on…an honest dialogue about immigration would be welcome. It might start though with a bit more understanding between factions as to where their views on the subject and the public come from… rather than assumptions.

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If it’s Leave, what then?

By Guest
June 14th, 2016 at 7:45 am | Comments Off on If it’s Leave, what then? | Posted in EU

The outcome of the referendum on June 23rd is still uncertain. As it has been throughout. The main difference is that it is now uncertain leaning to Leave, rather than uncertain leaning to Remain. We know this from the polls. From the reported state of the postal votes coming in. And on the ground from relative campaign activity.

If that is the outcome, it is not I think an overstatement, to suggest large parts body politic will be suffering something akin to psychic shock. We can already see evidence of this in the way the Prime Minister’s faction is behaving. They have started fighting the likely post-referendum battles through personal attacks on Boris Johnson. Something largely unhelpful to the Remain cause now. And long-term more dangerous than that.

If Leave win. It is not at all clear what the public has voted for… It is entirely clear what they will have voted against. The EU. But not which of the umpteen possible Brexit scenarios is preferred. Or who they’d prefer to try and achieve them.

In that regard Remainers should perhaps start thinking about which Eurosceptics they want to win the fall out.

The worst option would be to attempt to ignore the vote. This is the ‘Norwegian option’. Where the establishment saddled their public with a bad deal similar to full membership, in the hope of a rethink.

The continuing absence of Norway from the EU following referendums in 1972 and 1994 should tell you just how effective that strategy will be. Not to mention how badly that move will sit with the British public.

I strongly suspect, for example that a large part of the growing Leave vote is one of utter contempt for those that govern us. British and European. The Referendum has created a safe way of expressing that contempt, that doesn’t involve electing Nigel Farage or Caroline Lucas Prime Minister.

If the response of Parliament is contempt in kind. Which along with Norwegian deals, includes any scenario that doesn’t involve the swift resignation of the then self-discredited Prime Minister. That Farage option, or worse, will come back. The inexplicable desire of sane people to vote for hollow populists in the US, France, and other places, will become our problem as well.

Which is why the Cameron’s sanctioned personal attacks on Johnson, and possibly others soon, are so dangerous. Whatever one may think of Johnson’s opportunism. He’s not Donald Trump. And has rather been a fairly reliable tribune of the liberal centre ground tradition in the Conservative Party. He is not a fool. And he would be very unlikely as Prime Minister to saddle the UK with a Cabinet of fools, hell bent on proving the Treasury’s melodramatic forecasters right.

The same is true of Gove, and a number of other Vote Leave luminaries. All those wise enough to keep UKIP in their heritage theme park Britain box. Rather than let Farage use the Referendum as a personal platform.

The most dangerous outcome of the referendum then is if the centre-ground, divided on this one issue, decides to form a circular firing squad. Discrediting one another so bitterly and viciously that the next Prime Minister ends up being someone far less able or palatable. The sort who genuinely believes Mexican walls can be built in the Channel. Or heaven help us Comrade Corbyn, a man who still thinks Venezuela is a progressive paradise.

So like it not, on a Leave vote, the Remainers would be well advised to accept the outcome, and fight for the least unappealing regime change. In order to get the best Brexit possible. Many of the other alternatives are far worse.

Liberal Democrats vote to undermine affordable low carbon future

By Guest
March 15th, 2016 at 8:54 am | Comments Off on Liberal Democrats vote to undermine affordable low carbon future | Posted in Energy

The irony of the LD’s new extreme-green anti-fracking position is that it will largely self-sabotage things that green Liberal Democrats purport to care about.

It is easy, lazy politics to oppose fossil fuels. Petrol cars… boo… coal-fired power… double-boo… solar power… hooray!… wind farm (but not in my back yard)… double hooray!

Even some climate change sceptics don’t like burning oil, coal and gas for power. Whatever one thinks of carbon, burning these materials produces air pollution. It would better if they could be used purely for manufacturing. For example all those plastics and advanced composites that make up solar panels and wind turbines. And even with those there one day may be bio-based alternatives with superior properties for recycling and reuse.

But we are not there yet. We have technologies, but they are far from affordable, and will not be the technologies we eventually need or use to solve the problem. That’s how progress works. We try stuff, get better at it, and then try something even better. Magic solutions don’t just fall out of labs ready formed and instantly cheap.

That is why the previous Liberal Democrat policy on fracking was careful to hypothecate the revenue it would generate to low-carbon R&D. To use the problem to create the solution.

A position that then influenced Coalition policy. And led to a commitment to create a sovereign wealth fund on the back of future shale taxes. A real win. Which happily is still there if and when the UK shale industry starts delivering.

The Liberal Democrats just voted to scrap the fund… Without regard to the consequences. They could seek alternative finance (cutting elsewhere or raising other taxes). But they’ve also got to cover the cost of shutting down domestic gas for energy.

That economic home goal might be still be sensible if the fracking process represented some existential threat to the natural environment previously unseen.

But claims to that effect by the fringes of the green NGO movement have no basis in scientific fact. They have been repeatedly refuted by credible independent studies across the word. Including in the UK. Which already had a moratorium to consider these concerns. And as a result has a very rigorous level of regulation.

To ban fracking on environmental grounds you have to apply a level of risk mitigation to the process so extreme that if more widely applied would also see us ban all forms of transport, mobile telephony, medical treatments and other things that cannot guarantee never to be flawlessly safe. In essence is all human activity… and quite a lot of stuff in nature as well. It is a nonsense argument peddled by cranks and opportunists.

Which is really what this change of policy is all about. The Liberal Democrat Party comfort zone is local opposition to uncomfortable change. It looks at all the energy that goes into nimby campaigns and wants a piece of the action. It confuses activity with insight.

So it can now join the Greens in trolling construction workers and the Police. The policy makes no sense. But screw it. There will be photos of ‘very concerned’ councillors to put on leaflets ‪#‎libdemfightback‬. And phantoms of terror to unleash on disengaged local voters about water supplies and house prices ‪#‎spinninghere‬. There are Parish Council by-elections to be won.

The direct losers in that will be the fuel poor and British Industry, who need cheaper energy. One to survive. The other to thrive. The indirect losers though will be the low carbon entrepreneurs and scientists. They need real money to invest, not magic beans. It’s a pity that a Party that thought hard about how to link those things and effected the changes to deliver it, is now campaigning to sabotage their own legacy.

The Out-Inners

By Guest
February 27th, 2016 at 9:12 am | Comments Off on The Out-Inners | Posted in EU

The most moderate part of the Leave coalition is I think well represented here by Michael Howard. People who would like to be in a very different European Union, but are genuinely sceptical about whether this EU can ever get there. Boris Johnson is also in this camp.

Within the context of the Referendum their central hope is that a vote for Leave will finally persuade the EU to offer a form of associate membership they can accept. This is also what Dominic Cummings (the Campaign Director of VL) means when he talks about a second referendum.

Cameron is at the very mildest end of this point of view. He has after all used a single referendum threat to get change. He thinks the double-referendum bluff, is just that, a dangerous bluff. He earnestly believes that negotiation and compromise are the only route to successful reform. He worries that a Leave vote would be final, not a prelude to further deal-making.

Both have a point. Cameron’s analogy of improving your marriage by seeking divorce is a good one. It doesn’t happen. Equally though international diplomacy is not a marriage. It’s transactional. It’s ‘speaking softly and carrying a big stick’.

Out-Inners see a calm debate with a Leave vote at the end of it as in that tradition. They regard Maggie swinging her bag for a rebate, or De Gaulle’s empty chair as evidence that in the main European Leaders are “weak, weak, weak…” and respond mostly to the stick not the soft voice. They don’t think the answer to a bad marriage is a Directive on harmonised sleeping arrangements.

The problem though is that other member states may look at the Referendum and see British diplomacy as ‘screaming hysterically and carrying a bendy banana’. Possibly with a blond wig on it.

Those pro-Europeans regard Brexit as welcome and long overdue. They see the manner in which the UK blocks EU nation-building, taxes, common institutions and other federal goals as insuperable. They are UK-sceptics and want us gone.

In that divorce the ex is already repainting the walls as you walk out the door. Ta ta Britain, we’ll leave the tunnel open so you can visit the cheese. Those pro-Europeans are not a large group. But they’ll have a few new recruits on June 24th if we vote Leave.

Beyond that there are then very practical issues around what new deal the Out-Inners might agree. They don’t have homogeneous political views or reform ambitions. They would have enormous domestic fights to get some things like the Common Agricultural Policy or migration policy changed. None of them for this reason is prepared to stay exactly what renegotiation they would have gone for if in Cameron’s shoes. None of them knows if they could have got it.

For neutrals between these campaigns what we can say is that the Out-Inner strategy is a gamble. It’s risky. It’s not one I want I someone who finds some aspects of the EU nearly as unappealing as some aspects of Westminster.

Out would most likely mean out. The double dip is not I think a gamble worth taking.

Bernard Woolley explains the Syria vote

By Guest
December 3rd, 2015 at 10:18 am | Comments Off on Bernard Woolley explains the Syria vote | Posted in Foreign Policy, Liberal Democrats

BW: Congratulations Prime Minister you have won the vote.

DC: Excellent were we united?

BW: It was a comprehensive vote in the affirmative Prime Minister.

DC: But were we united?

BW: The Conservative Party were completely united, except for the seven who were not. This included Julian Lewis, the Chair of the Defence Select Committee. He voted with Jeremy Corbyn and just over 150 Labour MPs. But not the Shadow Defence Minister Maria Eagle, who voted with you. She, along with over 60 others voted with the Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn. But John Baron, one of your MPs on the Foreign Affairs Select Committee voted the other way. You can then say that nearly all those who take decisions about defence and foreign affairs are for you, but many of those who think that they should be taking decisions about defence and foreign affairs are against. It is similar to the way the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence feel about each other.

The DUP, UUP, independent Unionist and UKIP MPs all supported you. The SNP, SDLP, Plaid Cmryu and Green MPs were against. So the nationalists who like internationalism voted against international action by this nation. The nationalists who dislike internationalism voted for international action in another nation. The Greens are nationalists on climate change, which they accept requires international action, but should be managed nationally, and internationalists on military matters in the hope that they may then never have to take a national decision on an international matter with national implications.

The Liberal Democrats Leader and six of his MPs supported you, two of his MPs did not. This is relatively simple. The Leader is a social liberal, a group that tends to oppose military action, but he has decided to be in favour. The main opponent is an economic liberal, a group that tends to support liberal interventionism, but he decided to be against. The anti-war liberals then are opposed to their Leader but in favour of the man they voted not to be Leader, who is in turn opposed by those who thought he should be Leader, and are now supporting the Leader they didn’t vote for.

DC: What?

BW: Compared to the Labour Party and Liberal Democrats your position is entirely coherent and united Prime Minister.

DC: Thank you, Bernard. I believe our enemy will be on the run by Christmas.

BW: Yes, Prime Minister, and ISIL.

DC: Thank you, Bernard.