'Yes' or 'No'? ......It's the economy, stoopid!

If you thought that the General Election campaign was over-long, tedious and boring, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Cameron has decided to run the Referendum next year instead of 2017, so we can expect both ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ camps to start bombarding us with their propaganda very soon.

 

Both sides want it over as quickly as possible, the ‘Yes’ side in anticipation that he will come back from Brussels with a bag of sweeteners, the ‘No’ for the opposite reason. It is predictable that there will be just enough on offer to bamboozle the pubic a la Harold Wilson.

 

It is just as predictable that big business will try to make our flesh creep with lurid warnings about the economic disasters that will befall Britain that will turn it into a third-world country.

 

So maybe it’s time to let some hard economic facts balance the CBI’s posturing.

 

The starting point is that the UK has run a balance-of-trade deficit ever since joining the EU. It is risible to argue that European business will give up its lucrative British market out of pique. In contrast to the £50 billion+ current account shortfall with Europe, Britain has a surplus with non-EU counties of more than £16 billion. It is still the fifth largest trading nation and sixth largest exporter.

 

Meanwhile, the proportion of exports to the EU continues to fall as Europe’s economies ossify and the Euro weakens. The official figure is 48% but if the effect of transhipments via Rotterdam and Antwerp is taken into account that figure falls to a maximum of 45%. And it is worth noting that whilst the whole UK economy  is subject to regulation from Brussels, trade with the EU accounts for less than 15% of GDP.

 

The EU is in decline in terms of its global output. The demographics are startling: Italy ranks as 212 in the birth-rate league table; Greece 213; Austria 214; and Germany at 219. None of these countries reaches the replacement rate of 2.2 children per family. Europe is wasting away. Over the next 30 years, Germany’s working population will fall by 25%, Italy’s by 21% and Spain’s by 14%.

 

Much of the future growth will be in  Commonwealth countries. Britain has much in common with them, not least language and the  common law. But it can’t take advantage of this because trade agreements are the exclusive preserve of Brussels. Outside, a Commonwealth FTA beckons And the suggestion that the UK is too small to go it alone is ludicrous. There is no correlation between size and economic strength. The two most successful economies are amongst the smallest – Singapore and Switzerland.

 

Europe has a great future behind it. If Britain’s future is outside this fading monolith, then so be it!

 

 

 

 

 

ISIL's happy hunting grounds...........

When Maggie memorably said that ‘terrorism is indivisible’, she was absolutely spot on, although Americans were slow to catch-on, regarding IRA bombers as ‘freedom fighters’ and refusing UK extradition applications.

 

Until 9/11, that is.

 

The West is now facing an unprecedented terrorist threat from Jihadist ‘freedom fighters’ who are nihilistic and have a death-wish so any notion of any kind of negotiation is ludicrous. There is no shortage of alienated Asian youth impatient for martyrdom.

 

And they have a ready-made conduit to Europe via the Mediterranean ‘boat people’ a fact that has scarcely been mentioned in the endless debates about ‘something must be done’. European politicians appear to have been mainly concerned about an illegal influx of impoverished immigrants and the consequent political fall-out from voters who have become increasingly impatient with ‘benefits migrants’.

 

The security aspect has been well-down the agenda; at least it was until the Italians recently collared one of the boat people who turned out to be a known ISIS terrorist.

 

Corralling refugees in camps in North Africa is replete with danger. Arab Muslims with no money, nowhere to go and no hope are ready recruits to such as ISIL and Al Qaeda, as was demonstrated years ago in Lebanon. There will be about a half-million of them if Europe succeeds in throttling the trade between Libya and Southern Europe. It only takes a handful to cause mayhem. One person can kill hundreds with a single bomb in an inter-city train, a ferry,  a truck being transported via the Channel Tunnel, in the London Underground at 8 a.m.

 

And amid the pious hand-wringing, the West’s alternative to actually doing something about the dire plight of the Rohingya in a completely different part of the world where there are 140,000 in refugee camps out of a population of 1.1. million, the situation has not been recognised as a potential threat to Western security.

 

These benighted people are the world’s most persecuted. They have no citizenship despite having been in Burma for generations. They are non-people with no rights or protection. They have suffered decades of violence, pogroms, destruction of schools and killings of pupils and teachers. The ruling regime, militant Buddhist monks, agents of Government, police and army have been involved in ethnic cleansing for years with scarcely a peep out of the UN or anyone else.

 

The crucial and dangerous implication for the West is that the Rohingya are Muslim. Terrorist organisations offering a way out of serfdom or a refugee camp, money, respect and the prospect of martyrdom would surely find a ready reception especially when weighed against the alternative of hopelessness.

 

The plain truth is that the West has only been nibbling around the edges of the terrorist recruitment threat. It can only be tackled at source – in Syria and Burma. There is no sign of this happening.

 

But there is a distant sound of boots-on-the-ground.

 

When Maggie memorably said that ‘terrorism is indivisible’, she was absolutely spot on, although Americans were slow to catch-on, regarding IRA bombers as ‘freedom fighters’ and refusing UK extradition applications.

 

Until 9/11, that is.

 

The West is now facing an unprecedented terrorist threat from Jihadist ‘freedom fighters’ who are nihilistic and have a death-wish so any notion of any kind of negotiation is ludicrous. There is no shortage of alienated Asian youth impatient for martyrdom.

 

And they have a ready-made conduit to Europe via the Mediterranean ‘boat people’ a fact that has scarcely been mentioned in the endless debates about ‘something must be done’. European politicians appear to have been mainly concerned about an illegal influx of impoverished immigrants and the consequent political fall-out from voters who have become increasingly impatient with ‘benefits migrants’.

 

The security aspect has been well-down the agenda; at least it was until the Italians recently collared one of the boat people who turned out to be a known ISIS terrorist.

 

Corralling refugees in camps in North Africa is replete with danger. Arab Muslims with no money, nowhere to go and no hope are ready recruits to such as ISIL and Al Qaeda, as was demonstrated years ago in Lebanon. There will be about a half-million of them if Europe succeeds in throttling the trade between Libya and Southern Europe. It only takes a handful to cause mayhem. One person can kill hundreds with a single bomb in an inter-city train, a ferry,  a truck being transported via the Channel Tunnel, in the London Underground at 8 a.m.

 

And amid the pious hand-wringing, the West’s alternative to actually doing something about the dire plight of the Rohingya in a completely different part of the world where there are 140,000 in refugee camps out of a population of 1.1. million, the situation has not been recognised as a potential threat to Western security.

 

These benighted people are the world’s most persecuted. They have no citizenship despite having been in Burma for generations. They are non-people with no rights or protection. They have suffered decades of violence, pogroms, destruction of schools and killings of pupils and teachers. The ruling regime, militant Buddhist monks, agents of Government, police and army have been involved in ethnic cleansing for years with scarcely a peep out of the UN or anyone else.

 

The crucial and dangerous implication for the West is that the Rohingya are Muslim. Terrorist organisations offering a way out of serfdom or a refugee camp, money, respect and the prospect of martyrdom would surely find a ready reception especially when weighed against the alternative of hopelessness.

 

The plain truth is that the West has only been nibbling around the edges of the terrorist recruitment threat. It can only be tackled at source – in Syria and Burma. There is no sign of this happening.

 

But there is a distant sound of boots-on-the-ground.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That bikers' donnybrook in Waco: a Texan reports......

 

There is little question that if the people of the political right needed help in enforcing their will upon the public legions of motor cycle gang members would be eager to help.

 

You may recall that recently, two such gangs engaged in mortal combat in Waco, the Texas city of the Branch Davidian fame. They scheduled some sort of pow wow in town and at a restaurant featuring poor food and scantily clad girls appropriately called 'Twin Peaks'. Undoubtedly, that was a big draw in itself.

 

Anyway, things went from cordial to brutal resulting in 9 dead and several more critically injured.

 

Now most Americans don't spend much time pondering motorcycle gangs. They are a thing of the past with the odd remnant of the Hell's Angels tamely touring about.

Moreover, the trend has been hijacked by iterant doctors and lawyers who spend their leisure time roving around the countryside on expensive and well heeled Harley Davidson bikes. Well, that's what most of us thought. After all, they often come through town in their leathers and aviator caps, eat at the most expensive restaurant, talk like they learned English at a British public school and then ride back home to the big city.

 

Not so in Waco. Many of these lads are abut the same age as your recent safety deposit box thieves who burrowed through a few meters of poured concrete to get their hands on all sorts of diamonds and jewels. Many are veterans from the Vietnam War era sporting medals, walrus mustaches and equally white hair.

They are big, did not learn English at any sort of public school and verging on criminally insane. They deal in drugs and among them yielded over a thousand weapons ranging from pocket knives to sten guns, The police were waiting for them when the gangs arrived.

The reported nature of the melee was a battle over turf and the right to add a region of Texas spelled out in letters on their jackets. Judging from the published mug shots, the gang members were Caucasian with some Hispanic mixed in. The news of curse went viral and the BBC took visible joy in reporting it with extreme schadenfreud.

EU 2017; What will Dave negotiate?

Say what you like about UKIP; at least it managed to get two subjects on top of the political agenda that were taboo only a short time ago – membership of the EU and the closely related topic of immigration. Although the referendum has been bandied about for quite a long time now, there has been a dearth of information and discussion about what kind of deal Cameron intends to negotiate with Brussels. What will be in his goody-bag that he will put before the people in 2017?

 

First up is the slightly sinister commitment to ‘ever-closer union’, shorthand for the pan-European Superstate.

 

Cameron will negotiate for an opt-out, which means that whatever moves are made towards the Brussels autocracy will be inapplicable in Britain.

 

Then the much more difficult problem of ‘freedom of movement’, the unfettered right of EU passport holders to emigrate to the UK. Brussels will not shift one inch on what is one of the EU fundamentals. Britain’s scope for negotiation will be limited to rights to benefits. This might take the form of time-limitation e.g.  two years residence before qualifying or previous contribution e.g. two years of NI payments. There is a good chance that Germany and some other countries might be supportive – excluding the Eastern Europeans, of course.

 

A key issue will be extending the powers of national governments to block U legislative proposals. By itself, this would roll back the frontiers of  the EU quasi-state. Again, there could be a measure of support from the ‘north’.

 

In the event of new admissions to the club, Cameron should seek new mechanisms to prevent any mass-migration. (The new admissions are likely to include the semi-criminal Balkan states but not Turkey).

 

Cameron could be calling for bonfire of EU regulations especially that burden business and stifle economic growth. He should also push for the acceleration of free trade deals, such as the stalled Atlantic FTA. New deals should be negotiated in Asia.

 

He must ensure that the City is 100% protected from Brussels, that seems to have a vendetta against our financial services industry, and that Eurozone rues on the single market are not applied to non-Euro members.

 

What else might be on the agenda?

 

The notion of a European defence force is risible; only the UK and France have a credible military, so Cameron need not waste much time discussing this except to echo Maggie. ‘No, no, NO!. But Brussels must keep its nose out of policing issues.

 

Finally there are the vexed issues of social policy – limitation on working hours, maternity leave and agency workers’ rights.

 

This all amounts to a pretty hefty programme of work. It is important that Cameron does not give into pressure to advance the date of the referendum, as some are suggesting. His chances of success are greatly bound up with not rushing!

 

 

 

 

What next, Dave?

Well, Dave has shot my fox.

 

I had intended to upbraid him for ignoring repeal of  the Human Rights Act. Now it has appeared high on the menu, and it is clear that he means business because he has appointed a pit-bull in Michael Gove to lead on this.

 

It will pave the way for rejecting the jurisdiction of the ECHR so that final legal jurisdiction will be restored to British courts.

 

The Tories election promises will demand £25 billion new spending. Where is Osborne to find this money in a climate of austerity? He could deduct a sizeable tranche from the Foreign Aid budget, now standing at nearly £12 billion. The Government foolishly legislated to commit 0.7% of GDP which means that the budget will rise by £1 billion. And yet DFID is awash with money and is reduced to parking some of it with the World Bank because it can’t spend it. (At the same time George could make economies by abolishing DFID and returning its functions to the F&CO).

 

Defence has not been mentioned. Cameron exhorted all NATO members to spend at least 2% of GDP on their military budget. Will he commit to the same for the UK? If so, the money available will increase as GDP grows. Don’t hold your breath!

 

Foreign policy was totally ignored by all parties during the whole campaign. Yet Britain desperately needs a higher international profile.

 

In  particular it  is difficult to understand why so much diplomatic and political heft has been dedicated to the Ukraine. This is a country that is irremediably corrupt, that produces little that we want to buy, has no strategic significance for us, and has no more relevance to Western especially British interests than Ulan Bator.

 

The West should be reviewing the extent to which   their interests coincide rather than conflict with Russia’s. This is not difficult. We both face the biggest threat to our security since the Cold War. The danger to Russia through Islamic terrorism is at least equal to that in the West. Large numbers of Chechnyan’s are fighting with ISIS. It is entirely possible that the bloody war in Chechnya is about to re-ignite, bringing terrorist attacks to Russia’s main cities. Apart from security considerations, the West, especially Germany, has vast manufacturing and energy investments in Russia. We should be fostering all this, not trying to damage our own interests by futile sanctions.

 

The Tories ae likely to get an unanticipated honeymoon period; possibly for the first time ever none of the opposition Parties has a leader in the Commons. The legislative programme must be pushed through as early in the new administration as possible.  The notional majority is 15, but this may start to evaporate with by-elections.

 

The SNP is the Millwall FC of politics. Everybody hates them but they don’t care! They appear to believe that they are going to call the shots in the Commons. This is almost certainly wishful thinking. They are mostly devoid of real political experience. They will be up against hardened professionals. They are in for a torrid time. And their party leader is not even in Parliament, so Wee Eck  will be taking his orders from Edinburgh.

 

Labour will have a serious morale problem for some time to come, but there are some heavyweight contenders for the leadership. Andy Burnham, the bookies’ favourite is also the Unions favourite. Yvette Cooper could be a real threat – attractive, well-spoken, very able and experienced. Umunna would suit Cameron as his election would show that Labour was still wedded to its trendy-lefty metropolitan Guardian-reading core that has nothing in common with ‘hard-working people’  oop North.

 

The real danger to Cameron, Dan Jarvis, has ruled himself out. Dave would have found that an Opposition leader who had killed real people was a tougher proposition than Red Ed.

 

Fasten your seat-belts; you are in for a  bumpy ride!

 

 

 

 

After the battle.....

‘The shouting and the tumult dies,

The captains and the kings depart’

 

Well, that’s it for another 5 years.

 

After the most boring and trivial election campaign in history, Dave confounded the pollsters and got his old job back. With an overall majority hen the money was on another hung Parliament.

 

It was as I predicted – that the thought of having the leader of the Scots Nats, the Virgin Sturgeon, leading Miliband by the nose in a coalition government was sufficient to scare a lot of waverers into the Tory camp. The election also took the scalps of here party leaders -Miliband Labour, Clegg Libdems, Farage UKIP (but you can be certain that Farage will be back in September.

 

But it really is absurd that SNP can get 50 seats out of 1.4 million votes and UKIP one out of 3.7 million. The ‘first past the post’ system worked in the days of a two-party system, but the system is now broken. Not that anything  will be done about it because any change would not suit the two main parties. But the least Dave can do is to ram through the long-overdue revision of constituency boundaries to get rid of the ridiculous anomaly of Labour getting more seats than the Tories with fewer votes overall. He should also repeal the equally ridiculous five year Parliaments law that fixes the term regardless of the state of the parties.

 

Previously it was the prerogative of the Prime Minister to decide the date of a General Election with the result that election campaigns only lasted the six weeks between Parliament being prorogued and polling day. And revert to the former system for postal votes, which were only available to a small number of people who were unable to physically get to the polling station. The postal-votes-for anybody is, as we have seen, an open invitation to corrupt practices.

 

Next up is the EU  referendum in two years’ time. No backsliding, Dave!

 

'When the boat comes in........'

The ‘boat people’ problem is not going away; no less than 32,000 have reached Italy this year, and 7,000 survivors have been plucked from the Med in the last few days. So maybe it’s time to get a bit of sense and sanity into the situation in place of the hysterical debates which have featured so far in both the media and political forums.

 

First up, Ed Miliband, your assertion that it is all Cameron’s fault because of his intervention in Libya is absurd even by your matchless standards. Perhaps you would have preferred Blair’s old friend Colonel Gadhafi to have survived.

 

This is not a ‘Libya’ problem. Although the harbours from which the boats set sail are mostly in Libya, the vast majority of boat people have no Libyan connection.

 

Neither are they all ‘economic migrants, ‘asylum-seekers’, or ‘benefits scroungers’. They are for the most part fleeing their native countries because they fear for their lives. They fall within the internationally-accepted definition:

 

‘refugees are individuals who:

• are outside their country of nationality or habitual residence;
• have a well-founded fear of persecution because of their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion; and
• are unable or unwilling to avail themselves of the protection of that country, or to return there, for fear of persecution’.

However reluctant many countries may be in accepting refugees, there is a certain obligation; Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that "Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution."

The ECHR has ruled that boat people must be given a fair chance to apply for asylum. Even if rescued in international waters they cannot be sent back to the place of departure.

The greatest cause has been the war in Syria. Syrians comprise the largest single group of refugees in the biggest displacement of people since WW2 – about 12 million in total of which 4 million have fled the country. The second largest group is from Eritrea, a country that seems locked in endless civil war or insurgency. Between them, Syria and Eritrea account for about 100,000 boat people out of a 2014 total of just over 200,000.

Needless to say, there has been much hand-wringing in Brussels but not much in the way of action. But there are no easy options. International law is clear that ‘first instance’ refugees such  as those fleeing war zones should be granted asylum. EU law requires finger-printing in the country of first arrival which then has the task of dealing with asylum applications, and ‘strays’ , such as those in Sangatte, should be returned to the country of first arrival. In short, once refugees arrive Europe will be stuck with a large proportion of them, whatever the political ‘right’ might say.

Thousands of Syrians and Eritreans need to be parceled-out amongst all EU countries, but try selling that politically!

One option that has been trailed is that naval forces should stop the boat people at the port of departure. This will need the co-operation of the host country, but the ports are mostly in the hands of the rebel administration in Tripoli. Co-operation could be interpreted as ‘recognition’, so the problem has to give way to diplomatic niceties.

The result would be half-a-million people stuck in a country that doesn’t want them, where they have no wish to be, and from which they have nowhere to go.

The inevitability of all this is that; like it or not, Europe will possibly have to grant asylum to about half the arrivals. It is now being proposed that asylum assessment centres should be set up in North Africa. That looks like a tall order since much of the region is in a state of insurgency.

A consolation is that it is likely that most Syrians  might wish to go home once the country has been pacified.

But the inescapable and hard reality is that Europe will have to get used to the boat people staying for a very long time or forever.

                                                      

Ed's Islamophobia..........

Maybe it’s because the entire nation has a nasty dose of election fatigue but it is surprising that there has not  been a more vociferous and hostile reaction to Miliband’s latest  vote-catching stunt.

 

To ingratiate himself with Muslim voters, he promises to criminalise ‘Islamophobia’.

 

He said : ‘We are going to make it an aggravated crime. We are going to make sure it is marked on people's records with the police to make sure they root out Islamophobia as a hate crime. We are going to change the law on this so we make it absolutely clear … our abhorrence of hate crime and Islamophobia.

 

He has been here before.

 

The 2006 Racial and Religious Hatred Act, the most serious attack on freedom of speech in memory, was to have carried a clause that would have criminalised ‘deliberately insulting religion’ (and it is obvious that for ‘religion’ we should read ‘Islam’). This was defeated so we are left with the still-oppressive 2006 Act.

 

Now Ed wants to make it even more draconian.

 

He goes on to say that ‘the police will record Islamophobic attacks right across the country." Not in the case of anti-Semitism, of course; Muslims only are to be protected. So of this  comes to pass, we can expect no further police enquiries into abduction and rape of under-age girls by Pakistanis. It will be ‘open season’ for these crimes and no doubt a good many others.

 

And quite what does Ed mean?

 

‘Islamophobia’ is a  stranger to the OED.

 

To the non-Muslim, there is a clear distinction between ‘Muslim’ and ‘Islamic’. ‘Muslim’ is you charming Pakistani doctor or nice Mr Zia who runs the shop and post office, and whose kids are at the same school as yours. ‘Islam’ conjures up ISIS, Al Qaeda, 7/11 and terrorism as a political culture.

 

A ‘phobia’ is an irrational, abnormal; fear of something. It is a state of mind. So there you have it. Ed wants to take another step to ‘1984’ by creating ‘thought-crime’.

 

Vote Ed, get Orwell!