Society as a Playmobile diorama - Macron's vision of Europe

Raedwald describes M. Macron's vision of Europe's (sorry the EU's) glorious future:

Here is the barracks with the SimEU army, here the detention prison of the SimEU Office of Internal Security; here is the SimEU Central Bank and the SimEU Ministry of Finance. And the whole thing populated by busy and happy little SimEU citizens on SimEU minimum wage playing safely on social media regulated by the SimEU Prefecture for Internet Safety, after a hard day's work inventing innovative new Euro things at the SimEU Creative Foundation.

This captures the prevalent centrist (I can now use this term as a perjorative) idea that nothing at all happens correctly unless it is overseen, regulated or controlled by a benign government. Macron - and indeed most of the centrist elite he represents - sees government as a sort of Playmobile diorama with people inserted (with due consideration of diversity, naturally) into socially useful functions by a stern but caring emperor.

Macron's vision, uncritically reported by pretty much all of Europe's main news agencies, is for a European Union modelled on France - centralised, managed by an elite through government agencies, mistrusting of democracy and economically protectionist. At the heart of all this is the increasingly common belief that unspecified foreign agents are conspiring to attack the idea of Europe - those little playmobile figures clearly aren't bright enough to decide for themselves they must be tempted into this populism by sinister manipulative forces.

It is not, however, just democracy that Macron and the centrists mistrust - it's business too. I know that all of Europes Macron enthusiasts (do we call them Macaroons?) can summon up cuddly words about a mixed economy and all of them have mates who work for big private concerns but underneath this veneer is a sort of Faustian pact with big business: you go along with us on protectionism, environmentalism and social control, and we'll protect your international interests.

Despite government being very bad at innovation (it always helps to check how regional economic growth is entirely unrelated to government spending on research) our Macaroons want to pile money into government-sponsored research. There'll be an "innovation council" spending taxpayers cash on things like Artificial Intelligence - creating lots of well-paid jobs in universities but little else. And a further splurge of research agencies doing independent scientific research to combat the influence of corporate lobbies (except of course, as we saw with the TPD and with GMOs when those corporate lobbies are helpful to the anti-business, anti-choice ideology).

A lot of the criticism of Macron's vision focuses on how it "involves the EU gaining further powers and greater influence over people’s lives, at the expense of sovereign states" but I've a feeling this misses the point a bit - the vision of applying the French model of government to the EU is about reducing the choices available to communities and of a state that is not subject to the vageries of democracy or the creativity of the market.

The EU's battle lines (regardless of what the UK does in this matter) are drawn - an uncomfortable alliance of socialists, liberals, old-school conservatives and centrist technocrats versus a mish-mash of populists, proto-facists and Trotskyites. Right now it looks like the former will have enough MEPs to at least stem the populist tide. After May, unless there's an upheaval of unprecendented scale, there'll still be pretty much the same set of faces running the EU and speaking for "Europe" as there are now. And any new faces won't be populists or trotskyites, they'll be reliable career-minded technocracts. Which, of course, is why we need to leave.

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The thing about trade is nearly everyone is wrong...

It is imports that matter and tariffs are just a tax on imports (meaning people are less well of):

When highly visible and politically influential producers believe themselves to lose sales because of some foreign-government’s trade practice, they complain to their home government, which then confronts the foreign government. The home government acts like a combined consigliere and hit-man for the complaining producers. But this hit-man’s immediate targets are home-country consumers and politically invisible home-country producers. That is, this hit-man – by raising tariffs – inflicts hurt on his and the complaining-producers’ fellow citizens. And this hit-man promises to ramp-up the hurt that he inflicts on his fellow citizens until the foreign government stops inflicting identical hurt on its citizens.

Of course it would be nice if foreign places stopped taxing their citizens for having the audacity to buy foreign products but it really is less important than us stopping taxing our citizens for buying stuff not made in the UK. Don Boudreaux's analogy above is a good one but a better one is here.

We are stuck in a world - that of David Cameron's "Global race" - where trade is seen as a zero sum game and where, if we don;t do these things to ourselves, some other country will "win". Worse still, trade is seen as something that is gifted to us by a benign government rather than a right removed from us by the powerful. This is the language of the "trade deal" where two or more governments agree not to interfere quite so much in the private arrangements of their citizens on a equal basis ("we won't make our people more poor if you agree not to make your people more poor").

Government's job isn't to manage the process of trade but rather to ensure that it is conducted fairly, that contracts are honoured and goods are safe. And the place to start (we can start doing this in the UK on 30th March) is by abolishing all the unnecessary tariffs - those taxes on the private choices of our citizens.


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Why a 'hard' Brexit won't work (despite being right on nearly everything about trade theory)

Probably the most important single insight that an introductory course can convey about international economics is that it does not change the basics: trade is just another economic activity, subject to the same principles as anything else.

If you're going to write about trade (and don't want to start with David Riccardo) then Paul Krugman, who got his Nobel Prize for writing about trade, is as good a place as any to start. And Krugman's opening point is that international boundaries don't change the fundamentals of economic theory. There is no essential (economic) difference between me buying something from Basingstoke and me buying something from Beijing. As far as theory is concerned, therefore, making this comparison practically as well as theoretically true should be the point of trade policy. Any other approach would be against the interests of the buyer (and, therefore, by extension favouring the interests of the seller) and bad for the economy.

The problem with trade is that, as they say on Facebook, it's complicated. It's not complicated because Krugman is wrong, it's complicated because sellers - producers - in various nation states and groups of nation states have persuaded their government (quite often - as with US sugar producers - through the extensive use of cash money as a persuader) that their particular business is peculiar and it will not benefit consumers to have access to all the world's production of that good or service. These persuasive folk have spun the point of trade 180 degrees - it's all about national competition, a global race as David Cameron kept telling us. Britain is competing with China and India and the USA and Mexico - we must back our producers even if it means ordinary Brits having to pay more for stuff. Here's Krugman again:

After all, the rhetoric of competitiveness, the view that, in the words of President Clinton, each nation is “like a big corporation competing in the global marketplace”, has become pervasive among opinion leaders throughout the world. People who believe themselves to be sophisticated about the subject take it for granted that the economic problem facing any modern nation is essentially one of competing on world markets, that the United States and Japan are competitors in the same sense that Coca-Cola competes with Pepsi, and are unaware that anyone might seriously question that proposition.

Again, Krugman is right - the point of trade is imports, the stuff us consumers buy, not exports. For sure we need the exports so we can pay for the imports but if we're running a gap in favour of exports then this is simply money that UK consumers would otherwise have spent on buying stuff (this is one reason why China becoming a net importer of goods sometime in the next decade or so is a very significant event - we'll need to find a new set of folk to buy stuff off). So when you hear that familiar Brexit Ultra argument, "they export more to us than we do to them so they need us more", smile sweetly because they've entirely missed the whole point of trade.

The problem, however, is that this position on trade utterly dominates debate - far from us seeking a trade policy that makes buying from Peshawar more like buying from Penge, we seek instead a policy that ossifies difficulties in exchange by pretending that international trade follows a different set of economic rules (or, more to the point, a set of rules defined without reference to economic theory by lawyers and bureaucrats, often at the behest of well-connected lobbies for business interests) to national trade. Here Scott Sumner sums up all this:

Over the past 200 years, debates about trade have occurred on two levels. Academics insist that unilateral free trade is the best option. However the “very serious people” (VSP) who conduct real world trade negotiations act as if open markets are a “concession”. They act as if we were doing other countries a favor by letting them export goods to our market. They view the academic perspective as hopelessly idealistic, even as the VSPs have worked hard to gradually move the world toward the same goal of freer trade, one agreement at a time.

Sumner goes on to say that the VSPs' chickens are returning to roost as first Trump then the EU succumb to managed trade - mercantilist - arguments. The most striking thing about the Brexit debate isn't its economic illiteracy (on both sides) but rather that, in the real world, neither side seems remotely interested in open markets. Indeed many of the arguments should have been put to bed while Wellington's boot was used to describe the oppression of the Corn Laws. Trade is only possible because of incredibly complicated sets of rules contained in huge tomes that only a few are able to understand. It's sad that governments - because of the effectiveness of business lobbies and the delusion of competition between nations - have created the situation where this sclerotic, rules-bound system makes it possible that a willing buyer in the UK is unable to get her goods from a willing seller in France (or for that matter The Phillipines). Anyone who thinks such a system is a good idea is, in my view, the worst sort of deluded fool. And, you'd hope that intelligent people would be trying to make sure such a system didn't come to pass.

It is, depressingly, what we've got. And the lawyers and bureaucrats aren't about to let something like 200 years of solid evidence backing up the best of economic theory get in the way of their lovely rules (there's a whole new can filled with self-interested worms right here). So the job isn't served by doing the right thing in terms of the evidence (more free trade, more open markets, lower tariffs, fewer regulations) but by making sure that, in the case of Brexit, the UK can leave the EU without a bunch of rules merchants crashing our economy simply out of spite. This is the only reason why a "no deal" option should be avoided - international trade still operates in an essentially mercantilist manner with the interests of producers sat round the table alongside the lawyers and bureaucrats and this means any settlement will, wrongly, be concluded on the basis of 'competitiveness', 'export' and 'protection' rather than in the interests of consumers.

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So there isn't a Brexit Dividend? (Or maybe there is...)

The decision to announce a huge bus-driven bung to the NHS has resulted less in a debate as to whether this is a good idea, if it's too much or too little cash, or cynical politics than one about whether there is (or isn't) a Brexit Dividend.

Seems to me there are three ways of looking at this question.

1. We pay over a significant sum to the European Union. For the sake of argument, let's call it £350m per week. When we leave the EU, we won't be paying over this sum of money so it stands to reason that money is available to spend on other priorities like the NHS. The only question that follows from this gives us the second way of looking at this issue.

2. Yes we won't be sending that £350m each week to Brussels but, after Brexit, we won't have all that money to bung at the NHS. In the short term there will be transitional costs, we have to consider what, if anything, replaces the agriculture subsidies, the regional development grants, and the social policy money. We also have a border to staff up, a trade department to run and ongoing costs where we decide to buy into EU programmes like Erasmus. In the short run - maybe five to ten years - there simply won't be a Brexit Dividend. It all makes some sort of sense - unlike the third argument.

3. There'll be no Brexit Dividend because government revenues will be lower as a result of Brexit. Now, leaving aside that this implies an actual decline in GDP rather than a drop in GDP growth, the truth about this argument is that it can't be refuted as it is based on the comparison of an educated guess - 'growth will be X post-Brexit' - and an actual number - 'GDP growth was X'. The problem is that the forecasters, for all their big machines and grand degree, are always wrong. And, during the debate around Brexit, have always been wrong in direction of doom and gloom. This argument can be set out simply as "we said, on very little basis or evidence, that we'd have £110 for every £100 we had back than, we've only £105 so therefore we're worse off." It isn't a good argument.

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Thoughts on The Negotiation...

I've no idea what the final outcome will be in The Negotiation and I'm not sufficiently informed or expert for any speculation to be of much value. I thought, however, I'd make some observations about The Negotiation itself and why it is extremely challenging. Plus why I think the UK government is making a fairly decent fist of the process, even though I would not have adopted the approach they have chosen.

When you or I undertake a negotiation it's normally a pretty straightforward affair even when it involves a significant deal like buying a house. Back when my better and wiser half was negotiating multi-million pound business deals, it was still pretty clear who were the parties involved, information was secure, and the process was conducted with a sense of goodwill and positive intent. None of this applies for The Negotiation.

Let's review.

In simple terms the UK government is negotiating with the EU commission but is doing so on the understanding that any deal is subject to approval by others (British parliament, European parliament, etc, etc.). But the UK government also has to deal with:

An active and well-connected campaign for the negotiation to fail supported by just about every broadcaster and broadsheet newspaper

An opposition party committed to disrupting the process and, it seems, working at least partly in cahoots with the other side in The Negotiation - while offering no strategy of its own

As repeated leaks demonstrate, a civil service that includes people who want the process to collapse

A group within the governing party that is seeking to undermine negotiations either for reasons of supposed principle or, just as commonly, personal ambition

Another party group seeking an impractical resolution that doesn't reflect the realities of the situation or represent UK interests

Direction or attempted direction from parliament, courts and 'expert opinion' that sets out alternative approaches - not in the interests of resolution but for reasons of disruption

A persistent narrative of failure from the media, politicians and commentators - nothing works, all is chaos nothing is right

Non-participant governments (Ireland, Spain) seeking to meet domestic political imperatives through pressure on EU party to negotiations

In this context it's quite remarkable that the UK government has stuck to the basis of its position as set out by the Prime Minister in her speech to Conservative Party Conference in October 2016 - leave the EU including the customs union and single market, negotiate a trade deal with the EU27 that (in the context of leaving) best reflects the interests of British business, industry and consumers.

The UK government may be mistaken in its approach, I'm not qualified to say one way or another, but to say it is unclear, chaotic or confused is simply rubbish. What's unclear, chaotic and confusing is all the chaff, cantreps and tripwires constructed by the list of people in the UK wanting The Negotiation to fail. Plus a constant barrage of negative misinformation from a - mostly ill-informed and partisan - commentariat that wants to paint Britain as useless, the government as incompetent and the whole process as some sort of existential threat to human civilisation.

I may be in a minority of one here but I think, given the unprecedented complexity caused by those who want The Negotiation to fail, the UK government is doing as good a job as can be expected.

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On those referendum Twitter bots...

It was, of course, the Russians:

The researchers also analysed the type of content the suspected bots were producing, finding this pool of accounts were eight times more likely to tweet slogans associated with Vote Leave, and tweeted more than average accounts in the run-up to the referendum – then less afterwards, before their removal from the network entirely.

There were, these researchers tell us, 13,000 of this sinister bots burst onto the social media platform spraying relentless pro-leave sentiments. And these bots - or so the MP who chairs the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee thinks - have snow on their boots.

In other news, we're told that the reason for choosing to leave was because about 2.5m mostly older, primarily working class and regional people - many of who seldom vote - toddled down to their local primary school, church hall or library to put a cross in the leave box. Just the sort of voters who use Twitter a lot!

At some point the rump of disappointed remain voters will stop trying to find some sinister external force - Russians, American data companies, Facebook - that explains why we voted to leave and recognise that, in truth, we voted to leave because the EU is a distant, anonymous, unapproachable, corrupt and interfering undemocratic institution. That's it - all of it. And if you ask people a slightly different question, they'll tell you that London is also a distant, anonymous, unapproachable, corrupt and interfering undemocratic place too. One run by and for people with more connection to New York or Paris than Barnsley or Stoke. Perhaps those still angst-ridden by us leaving can begin to learn this?

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"They can pay more for their food" - Jay Rayner meets Marie-Antoinette

I'm going to leave aside accusations of vanity, self-promotion and smugness because we are all guilty of such vices. I'm going to focus instead on the vexed question of whether it is ever morally defensible to argue that governments should enact policies people should pay more for something as fundamental as the food we eat.

Here's the argument:

British consumers have become too used to food being sold too cheaply. In an age of austerity when many are struggling it is a tricky argument to make, but the fact remains. We need an agriculture sector in a position to invest in its base to help improve our productivity and therefore our self-sufficiency. The 10% of income (down from 20% in 1970) that we spend on food does not enable that. Many may find this unpalatable but the fact is this: unless we improve our self-sufficiency, we will be at the complete mercies of those international markets. Unless we pay a little more now, we risk paying vastly more later. This is an argument that farmers, retailers and the Government needs to engage with.

This is the core of an argument made by food writer, Jay Rayner, as a sort of cod justification for refusing to give the benefit of his knowledge and expertise to the UK Government. Now I know most people think Rayner's article is about the unfolding terrors of Brexit but it isn't, it's about how Rayner thinks the UK (note the UK not Europe or the EU) needs to be more self-sufficient in its production of food because lots of terrible things might happen if we're not - most of which, surprisingly, is about food prices:

...the UK sits with dwindling self-sufficiency, in a stormy world in which food has become one of the great economic battlegrounds. Added to that is the appalling folly of Brexit, forced through by a cabal of ideologues happy to trot out falsehoods about the sunny uplands of economic joy that leaving the European Union would bring.

Instead it has resulted in a devaluation of the pound, making imports more expensive and the exporting of our food more attractive.

If, as many fear, a bad deal is done for Britain resulting in huge tariffs and penalties on trade, food price inflation is going to be in double digits for years to come. That’s if we can get hold of food at all. The people who will suffer the most, of course, are those who already have the least. For them the buying of food will use up a massive proportion of their expendable income.

Now there are a few things here that do rather matter with the first being the presumption that a UK government would impose "huge tariffs and penalties" on trade in food. And, given that this would be necessary to have the policy he wants of greater self-sufficiency, why he has such a problem with such impositions? Or, to put the question a different way, how does Rayner propose to increase the proportion of UK food consumption produced in the UK? And wouldn't this be completely impossible if we remained a member of the EU?

To give Rayner his due, he refuses to wholly embrace the 'supermarkets are totally evil' line used by many of those supporting his mission of expensive food. Rayner also slaps down the urban growing fad:

They are interesting educationally. Allotments are good for mental wellbeing and general fitness. But the carbon footprint of the food produced tends to be appalling.

The problem is that, in criticising localism, Rayner undermines the basis for his argument on food production and self-sufficiency.

...do not be fooled by environmental arguments around localism. What matters most when judging environmental impact of food production is the full life cycle: you need to look at the carbon (and other inputs) not just of the trucks getting produce from field to fork, but in the farm buildings and machinery, the fertilisers and the workforce.

It's hard to find a more compelling argument for international free trade in agriculture than this one. A world where food is grown in the place most suited to its production rather in a less fertile location just across the road. If food miles aren't the problem (Rayner cites transport costs as 2% to 4% of total food cost) then what are the arguments for self-sufficiency at any level below the whole world?

It seems to me that Rayner, if he is to make his argument for remaining in the EU, has to recognise that the shared competence on agriculture needs to be viewed at the level of the whole union not individual member countries. And just so we're clear what this means:

It turns out that the EU is not self-sufficient in terms of all the nutrients normally locked in agricultural products and principally available for different usages: The respective self-sufficiency ratio is only 91 per cent.

I hate to make Rayner's pro-remain argument better than he does but being 91% self-sufficient in food is better than being less than 50% self-sufficient in food - and this is without any change at all to our current approach on food prices. Rayner makes a localised and protectionist argument (one that, incidentally couldn't be achieved if we stayed in the EU) focusing solely on UK food production rather than EU food production within a single market.

Rayner doesn't set out how his proposal to increase food prices, perhaps even to double those food prices will be achieved. It seems from his article that the model is essentially to dramatically reduce the area under production through environmental regulation and, therefore, to increase the costs to UK farmers. Obviously such a policy can only be achieved if two things are done: huge tariffs amounting to de facto import bans on foods that can only be produced expensively in the UK and the introduction of VAT on food so as to fund, in part, the subsidies necessary to sustain newly uneconomic farm businesses. And, to be blunt, no government is going to get away with imposing a huge tax on food, so the only way to deliver Rayner's policy is through preventing (or at best, severely restricting) imports of food. Fans of the corn laws will be delighted!

It shouldn't surprise us that Rayner doesn't get to the financial and economic logic of his argument (preferring instead horror stories about horsemeat and vague suggestions that the European Food Safety Agency, EFSA, regime would be scrapped) because it makes almost no sense at all. Not only does the logic of his argument about the EU tell us we are already more-or-less self-sufficient but also that doubling food prices has to involve a massive tax hike on food.

To return to where we started - is it morally justified to argue for government action to hugely increase food prices? For my part, I don't think it is an ethically defensible argument. Food is essential (and especially the basic nutrients Rayner considers when he talks of the 2007/8 food price spike) and government should prioritise policies that reduce prices such as relaxing planning rules to allow more efficient supermarkets. Rayner, like Tim Lang, the lefty food policy wonk of choice, fails entirely to see that the very people who lose under their policies are the poorest. And to suggest otherwise as Rayner does, is to propagate a terrible misrepresentation - the massive hike in prices his policies demands can only reduce the quality of life for millions of families in Britain. I'll be OK, Jay Rayner will be OK, but the poorest and most vulnerable in our society won't be OK.

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London Habits - thoughts on the intellectuals' loathing of England

I give you a toast, ladies and gentlemen.
I give you a toast, ladies and gentlemen.
May this fair dear land we love so well
In dignity and freedom dwell.
Though worlds may change and go awry
While there is still one voice to cry
There'll always be an England

We know that there's a sort of intellectual that loathes England and the English, even while relishing the pleasures and treasures of the nation. George Orwell wrote about such people over seventy years ago and little has changed. What has happened is that many of these people have become essentially rootless, believing that they belong to some global patria - Harm de Blij's 'Flat Earthers' living in David Goodhart's 'Anywhere'.

What I don't understand is why the English members of that Laputan patria are so offended by the idea of England and Englishness. Not even the the football hooliganism bit of Englishness that causes us pain but the unchanging places of England's countryside, the market towns, cricket and the village pub. They've even found a name for it - Deep England:

Forget Little Englanders – Deep Englanders believe that life was better before the evils of industrialisation, foreign competition and, you know, immigration

Name: Deep England.

Born: In the good old days.

Appearance: A glass of warm ale, a sun-dappled larch on the village green, the thwack of leather on willow, a cheeky wink from the milkman.

To most of us this is just...well...England.  But the anonymously authored Guardian piece continues in this vein before concluding with telling us what we should say about this:

“Deep England is regressive and harmful for the population at large.”

You see my friends, those traditions of ours - village cricket, beer, church bells, morris dancing - along with the idea that you don't need to change something if it isn't broken, they are harmful. These are - our Guardian writer asserts - places that voted to leave the EU filled with terrible English people. England is a terrible place and we must stay in the EU so as to prevent England.

We have a rise in self-loathing bigotry among a class of mostly London-dwelling folk who aspire to be one of those 'Flat Earthers' living in 'Anywhere'. It hurts these England-deniers when they're reminded their near neighbours rather like where they live and also pretty much like the way it is right now. The 'Flat Earthers' pretend - contrary to the actual evidence from these places - that the folk living there are unfriendly, unwelcoming, suspicious of anyone who looks a little different.

These 'Flat Earthers' have developed an image of their enemy, a bigoted stereotype of the thick, fat, flushed Englishman - the corrupted image of Skegness's Jolly Fisherman adorning the front of these self-loathers house journal, New European sums up their ignorance and prejudice completely.



Look beyond the caricature here with it's UKIP scarf and spot instead at the discarded ice-cream cone, the litter on the beach and the brown sea. This is how the 'Flat Earthers' see the world outside their bubble - loud, lewd, dirty, common. What they don't see it that their world is closing in. The faces of the people outside that world are now pressed up against the bubble of 'Anywhere'. And the 'Flat Earthers' are scared. Scared of those ordinary folk who've suddenly realised they're just as important as the great and good in London.

I remember a boss of mine talking about visiting his soon-to-be wife's parents out in the sticks somewhere (Hampshire if I recall correctly). They'd had a lovely day, a pleasant evening, nice food, company and some wine. After everyone had gone to bed, Tom (my boss) was creeping along to his fiancees bedroom for a cuddle, only to hear his putative mother-in-law call out in a loud voice, "and we're not having any of those London habits here."

None of us provincials and suburbanites think everything is perfect or even that leaving the EU is some sort of panacea to society's ills. Rather, we would like to be seen as people rather than something to be either sneered at or patronised. Above all, as English men and women, we think our country is great, has done great things, and is worth preserving as a place rather than a mere brand in a nebulous, purposeless 'Anywhere'.

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A note on Conservative euroscepticism

There's a fairly common retort from those who still wish to remain in the EU when it's pointed out that we've had a referendum that voted to leave and parliament started that processs of leaving. It goes something like "Brexiteers had forty years of moaning about EU membership so they've no room to talk".

Now I'm sure we can probably find some few folk who, having opposed continued membership in 1976, continued to bang on about it from then onwards. Where you won't find them is in the Conservative Party. Aside from Teddy Taylor and a few unreconstructed Powellites, the Conservative Party was completely united in its support for our membership of what was then the European Economic Community (EEC). What opposition there was to membership came from the left - indeed Neil Kinnock, Tony Blair, John Prescott and other enthusists for EU membership fought and lost the 1983 General Election on a platform of leaving the EEC.

In that election I was agent for John Carlisle, MP for North Luton. I think it fair to say that John was as far to the right in the party as you could get but we still included support for EEC membership in the election address. Our membership simply wasn't an issue for Conservatives.

Between this time and the 2001 general election something happened. During the selection meeting for the parliamentary candidate in Keighley, I was asked a question about the Euro. My response was that membership of the Euro should only come following a referendum but that I didn't think we'd have one. I suggested that the next referendum would be about our membership of the EU not the Euro, and that I didn't know how I would vote come that day.

The something - well somethings really - that happened between 1983 and 2001 was all about money and the approach of government. Firstly we had the debacle of the UK joining and then leaving the Exchange Rate Mechanism, then the long drawn out Maastricht Treaty ratification process, and finally we had the creation of the Euro. Tory euroscpeticism was born. But even then it wasn't about leaving but rather that Britain should be less supine in its dealings with the EU and more assertive in opposing moves leading to federalism.

It wasn't until the mid-2000s when the Better Off Out campaign was launched with support from a few Conservative MPs like Philip Davies and Douglas Carswell that we saw a group within the Conservative Party committed to leaving the EU. The long war over ERM, Maastricht and the Euro had scarred the Party and the membership placed the blame squarely on the pro-EU leadership - men such as John Major, Michael Heseltine and Ken Clarke.

It is important, therefore, not to rewrite history as some sort of rationalisation for seeking to overturn the decision to leave the EU. There has not been a 40 year campaign to leave - UKIP wasn't formed until 1993 and James Goldsmith's Referendum Party campaigned for a referendum on further federalism (and did very badly) in 1997. Even then the media position on membership was overwhelmingly supportive and the Conservative Party remained committed to membership albeit with a somewhat grumpy attitude to the EU.

None of this is to suggest that Remainers should shut up but rather to observe that their claim of a long media campaign supported by the right of the Conservative Party is largely untrue. The important question to ask is how the Conservative Party transformed from an enthusiast for European economic cooperation firstly into a scpetical and questioning party and then, in large part, to an advocate of leaving. If we're looking for the reason we left, it happened on 7 February 1992 when the EEC stopped being a free trade alliance and became a nascent 'superstate', the EU.

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Why I'm Trigger Happy!

A moment of history. Two men who, without wanting to do them down in any way, will be famous for this image. And what a moment, the UK handing over a letter triggering our departure from the EU under the provisions of the Lisbon Treaty.

Speaking personally I see this as marking a change between a new and old order. We are leaving the sclerotic European system with its Laputan obsession with vain projects and the endless layering of government in the name of a mythical subsidiarity. The challenge we face now is making the right choices about our future - rejecting statist and centralised government, embracing free trade and opposing the EU's preferred mercantilism, and remembering that being a place people want to come to is a sign of strength not of being a soft touch.

The essential point is that we can now have a genuine debate about Britain's government, law and policy rather than one where we pretend that the decision isn't made under a different, less accountable system on the other side of the English Channel. This means people can vote for a parliament that wants to change laws on employment protection they can do so. Or to strengthen those protections for that matter. And the same goes for climate change, for state aid to industry, for trade and for consumer protection. Leaving the EU merely makes it possible for the UK to change its rules, it doesn't tell us the direction in which those changes might take us.

And this - not trade, migration or bent bananas - is why we are leaving the EU. And it's brilliant.

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The problem with English intellectuals? They don't like the English

England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse racing to suet puddings. It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during “God Save the King” than of stealing from a poor box.

Nothing much has changed since George Orwell made this observation in his essay "The Lion and the Unicorn" over seventy years ago. What Orwell observed was a distaste, verging on the pathological, for everything that characterises English culture. French food, Italian art, German philosophy, Scottish courage, Irish wit, Spanish football even Russian gloom - these are the good things. There is nothing English that can be shown as fine or noble - the English are uniquely vile.

The usual approach here is to take something the puts the English in a bad light - football hooliganism, vertical drinking and the pub crawl, kiss-me-quick hats and seaside slot machines - and make out that this is not only typical but problematic. This is followed by references to empire, colonialism and racism as if England didn't exist before the 19th century. The English are lost man-children who will only be saved by the nobility of what Deirdre McCloskey calls the clerisy:

The referendum vote does not deserve to be respected because, as an outgrowth of English narcissism, it is itself disrespectful of others, of our allies, partners, neighbours, friends, and, in many cases, even relatives. Like resentful ruffians uprooting the new trees in the park and trashing the new play area, 17 million English, the lager louts of Europe, voted for Brexit in an act of geopolitical vandalism.

So speaks one of those self-loathing English academics, Professor Nicholas Boyle. Leaving aside the accuracy of his numbers (and the manner in which he dismisses Wales as an English "appendage"), the entire tone here is that, somehow, the English are not fitted for polite society:

Hag-ridden by their unassimilated imperial past, by their failure of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, the English refuse to think of themselves as a nation in the same sense as Scotland or Ireland and have constructed a constitution for their United Kingdom which denies the obvious.

The pretention of this statement - comparing the German experience (a Prussian identity slapped on top of urbane, civilised small states then saved by Prussia being occupied by the Russians for 45 years) to England's is a delight but contains as much truth as would a comparison between England and that other great empire, China. It is what lies underneath Boyle's anti-English narrative that matters - only by having a polity, a government, a parliament can a place secure an identity. Englishness is a problem because it is expressed as a cultural rather than a political phenomenon.

And, as Orwell observed, intellectuals like Boyle hate English culture. They hate the beer, the food, the banter, the good and bad behaviour, the loudness and the humour. For all that such people dismiss us as Little Englanders - that classic term of sneering, intellectual crypto-racism - they want to make England small.

"...the reality that a nation with three-quarters of one per cent of the world’s population cannot claim significant, let alone exceptional, global status, and cannot survive on its own."

Given Boyle's anger at England and the English derived from how we impacted the world through empire, it's bizarre to then say that somehow England is small and insignificant. And pig-ignorant to suggest that a nation culturally-attuned to looking to the whole world as its market will ever be 'on its own'.

The problem for Boyle and his sort is that they see the English as dull, stupid and incapable - they have given up on us. I disagree and see this sneering and dismissive arrogance as little different from the sort of analysis that sees the Scots as tight, the Jews greedy, the French rude and the Germans boring. England is a great place filled with brilliant people and maybe Boyle should start there rather than with hating the English?

England is huge. It's not just the fifty million people. Nor is it the wealth and power of our industry and commerce. It isn't the guns, bombs, ships and tanks of the World's best armed forces. It's not even the best universities and finest schools on the planet. Or the traditions of art, theatre, music and song. England is huge because of what its ordinary men and women will do tomorrow - innovative, creative, inspiring, adventurous, challenging and spirited. Anyone who calls England 'little' has given up on those men and women - the old ones long gone in Kipling's charm, the ones here now doing great things in a small way, and the ones still to come who will take England's greatness even further.

To say that my country is small, to use that sneering put down 'Little Englander', is to deny our history. It shows a disrespect of those people - ordinary men and women - who built the finest place on earth for us to enjoy. Worse, it insults the English and the idea of England - an idea that is made by the people who call this place home.

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The art of the possible - taking a pragmatic approach to trade and Brexit

“Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable — the art of the next best”

It's fair to say that Bismark was - as were many other 19th century politicians - pretty much a cynic. Or a pragmatist as a spin doctor might put it nowadays. Grand old Otto wasn't alone in this, Lord Palmerston, Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Salisbury all fit the same pattern. And set against them were a bunch of folk who had a vision of that shining city on the hill, a glorious future, an untroubled world - Chartists, socialists, liberals all approached politics as if man was perfectible and the ideological schematic they adhered to need only be implemented for us to reach Utopia.


The bad news is that mankind is not perfectible (something that the god-fearing have always know), human nature is not innately good, and what looks like the solution to life the universe and everything probably isn't.


So that's the end of it? We can dismiss ideology as simply the domain of Toryboys, Marxists and Libertarians can we? Get a solid broad-bottomed coalition of people who stress the practical, who are focused on action rather than thinking? Perhaps not for, in doing this, we abolish strategy in favour of a cavalcade of beautifully spun tactics - "what matters is what works", Tony Blair famously said without thinking about or defining what he meant by "works".


It seems to me that there are three possible responses to our vote to leave the European Union:

1. Ignore it and stay in

2. Implement some sort of Utopian dream of UK independence

3. Be pragmatic and practical - apply Bismark's dictum


One and two above are essentially ideological responses. I know that the Remainers want you to believe that they are somehow saving Britain from thick, stupid, xenophobic voters (and thereby saving 'law and democracy' from the 'extreme right'). There is no talking with such people since their position is immutable and absolutist - the referendum was 'advisory', parliament must 'vote', we need a second, presumably advisory, referendum, the law trumps democracy, and leaving is far to complicated. All of this is entirely ideological.


For the Brexit Absolutists there's a different obsession intended to rescue Britain from the arrogant, elitist, out-of-touch, anti-democratic establishment. As with the Remainers, there's no talking with such folk - Britain is full, Brexit means having nothing at all to do with the EU, problems in the NHS, social care and education are down to immigration, and we shouldn't wait but should leave now by repealing the 1972 European Communities Act.


One of the things that both Remainers and Brexit Ultras talk a lot about is trade. In the case of the former, we apparently had no trade at all with anywhere in Europe prior to 1972 and trade is entirely down to the granting of permissions by governments. The Brexit Ultras are divided on this between those who want a smaller, UK-only version of the EU's protectionist model and those who sign up to the 'Go Global' idea and talk a lot about free trade.

Now some people think all this talk of free trade is an ideological obsession bordering on a cult - introduce free trade and, alakazam, all will be well and everyone will be rich. And the logic of economic theory tells us these cultists are right - here's Don Boudreaux:

Put differently, the only economic reason for trade is that each of us produces some goods or services at costs lower than the costs that our trading partners would incur to produce those same goods or services. That is, each of us has a comparative advantage in supplying the goods or services that we sell to others, and a comparative disadvantage in supplying each of the many goods and services that we buy from others.

Any barriers placed by governments in the way of allowing this trade to happen - borders, tariffs, regulations and so forth - make that trade less likely and us all poorer (in purely economic terms). So when Brexit Ultras like John Redwood or Tim Worstall argue for absolute free trade they are doing so on the basis of a robust base of evidence. More open trade does make us all better off so, logic tells us, absolutely free trade is ideal since that would give the greatest chance of all being richer:

Edwards notes that past studies have suggested that countries that are more open to the rest of the world are better able to absorb the rapid technological advances of leading nations. If the costs of technological imitation are lower than the costs of internally developed innovations, then a poorer country will grow faster than a more developed one. This faster rate of growth will continue so long as that country remains open to capturing new ideas until, at some point, an equilibrium is reached and the rate of growth slows.

Edwards uses a new comparative dataset for 93 countries to analyze the relationship between openness and total factor productivity (TFP) growth. He notes that past limitations in appropriate comparative measures of openness have left studies on the relationship between openness and productivity open to question. To bolster his case, he uses nine alternative indexes of trade policy.

Edwards finds that more open countries indeed have experienced faster productivity growth, and that result holds true no matter which openness index he uses. He further finds that his results are not specific to a certain period, but apply generally throughout the decades 1960 to 1990.

One of the ironies the we can take from this fact is that the Brexit Ultras and Remainers are using the exact same argument on trade but coming to different conclusions. The latter tell us the UK will be poorer because we will leave the single market and lose the benefits of more open trade across the EU. And they are probably right. For the former, the EU is protectionist and leaving opens up new markets and new opportunities in fast growing parts of the world. Again they are probably right.


Indeed, it is true to say that the pragmatists - those seeking to find a way of squaring the circle implicit in the ideological positions of Remainers and Brexit Ultras - are supporting solutions that are less (in pure terms) economically advantageous. As ever the answer is that, even if we just use Adam Smith as our economics source book, the argument is not really rooted in classical liberal absolutism but is rather more subtle:

As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value, every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.

We are, Smith says, protectionists by preference so it isn't necessary for us to be made protectionists through fiat. The local preference that opponents of free market liberalism claim to support (and wish to enforce) is right there in the founding text of liberal economics - made possible by the 'invisible hand'. All other things being equal we prefer to deal with the bloke we know rather than the one we don't. Indeed making your business or product seem comfortable and familiar is one of the main purposes of brand advertising!

It seems that the ideologues are wrong. Not wrong in saying that mankind is enriched by trade and the more open the better, but wrong in suggesting that open trade creates a level playing field between Peoria and Penge, Peshawar and Peking.


I voted to leave the EU in the full knowledge that this could have a short-term negative impact on trade and, therefore, on our economic well-being. We would lose access to those currently important, (more-or-less) barrier-free EU markets more quickly than we could replace them with new open relationships elsewhere. This isn't an argument against leaving because we have to set that loss against a different set of economic problems - the train crash of the Euro, the collapse of political stability in Southern Europe, and the continuing slow growth across much of the continent.


It is, however, an argument for interim or transitional arrangements even if those arrangements result in a longer period during which the UK pays money 'to the EU' and in fewer domestic controls over immigration than we would prefer. We should always resist the blandishments of regulatory bodies - national or international - who tell us their purpose is to facilitate trade when this is seldom the case. But this doesn't mean those bodies that promote standardisation, encourage food safety, help control environmental risks and police fair dealing are somehow unwanted, merely that - for all their value in consumer protection - they do not enhance or promote trade.


The process between now and the point when the UK leaves the European Union is about these arrangements, about balancing between maintaining access to the EU and openness elsewhere, and about the UK deciding upon and implementing a trade strategy. It's not and never has been about there being some 'plan', a sort of ideological blueprint for leaving the EU. Such planning's main function is in allowing the testing of different scenarios and in exploring how UK domestic decisions play out internationally:

But this question also has a common sense answer that every trade policy practitioner knows: governments negotiate trade agreements not because they wish to reduce their own trade barriers but because they seek to reduce the trade barriers imposed by their trading partners, and they are willing to "pay" - with market access "concessions" of their own - for the enhanced access to foreign markets that lower foreign barriers would bring.

It is true, as some Brexit Ultras would argue, that governments can simply ignore this process and implement whatever they wish (this is, after all, the entire point of sovereignty as a concept) but the realpolitic of international trade is that the other side expect concessions. If we have nothing to concede then there is no trade negotiation and no trade deal. This was essentially the point made by Phillip Hammond in his interview with Welt am Sonntag - the discussions we will have with the EU are not one-directional meaning that the Union (or its individual member states) cannot dictate the terms and the consequences of demands from one side may not be helpful to a satisfactory conclusion.


In some respects the very loud argument between Remainers and Brexit Ultras (plus the Farageist protectionists) is helpful to the government. Not because it protects them politically but because it provides them with the means of controlling both sides - "look over there", they'll say, "that's what you'll get if you don't play the game our way." The result of this is very clear in the manner of concerns from both Keir Starmer as Labour lead on Brexit and the Brexit Select Committee of Parliament. Questions are asked, doubts are raised but there is a consistent message of "we won't prevent the referendum being implemented". This infers, however, that the 'deal' depends on the process complying with the pragmatic approach and derives philosophically from Bismark's dictum and Salisbury's doubt rather than from a predetermined ideological end-game.


.....

2016: Year of the Remainer

Before 2016 Remainers didn't exist. There was a generally held view that anyone who had applied any thought to the matter was completely content with the UK's membership of the European Union. The problem was that David Cameron, against expectations won the 2015 general election and found himself obliged - mandated even - to hold a referendum on whether we stayed in the EU. It was a triumph for a small band of politicians, writers and campaigners who had argued for a long while that membership of the EU was bad for Britain - not just UKIP leader Nigel Farage (for all his grandiose claims) but politicians like Bill Cash, Iain Duncan Smith, Kate Hoey and Phil Davies as well as writers like Richard North with his EU Referendum blog.

And I don't need to remind you that on 23 June 2016 the British people voted to leave the EU. This was done against an avalanche of insistence by the great and good, from Barak Obama to Eddie Izzard, that leaving so was a really bad idea. The following day there was a cry of pain from the ranks of that great and good - how could people have disregarded all their expert advice and voted to leave?

The Remainer was born.

Over the coming weeks thousands of anxious, fretful articles were written about why people voted to leave. Numbers were crunched, opinions were pronounced and a received wisdom was established. People voted to leave because they were either conned by the leave campaign or else were a bunch of knuckle-dragging, Little Englander morons who probably shouldn't be allowed near sharp objects let alone a voting booth. The word xenophobia tripped from the tongues of Guardian columnists, FT bloggers and Economist writers.

Now it's true that most of those who voted to remain didn't take part in this catalogue of angst-ridden self-indulgence prefering to take the view that there'd been a referendum, the people had voted to leave and now the government should get on with the job of implementing that decision (however much they might have disagreed with it). But among the remain voters were the Remainers, a bunch of people who were so traumatised by the result that they visited a shock onto British politics.

Forget about the Brexit voter being the person bringing change to British politics, it's the Remainer. Now we know less about the profile of the Remainer than we do of the Brexiter because nearly all the analysis and opinion-making has been done by those Remainers - they want to understand why we voted to leave and will leave no stone unturned in their search for an appropriate collection of patronisingly dismissive characterisations for leave voters. What we do know is that remain voters and by implication our Remainers are younger, better educated and better paid than average (probably wittier, prettier and sharper dressed too).

Such people are the centre of British politics, those with the greatest amount vested in the current system and the most to lose from a short-term economic downturn. We're talking about moderate and thoughtful folk who assess facts, consider evidence and produce thoughtful analysis. And after 23 June 2016 a bunch of these folk suddenly got angry. So angry they were prepared to reject the ideas and principles of democracy so as to overturn the referendum vote. Court cases were crowd-sourced, marches were held and on-line petitions were launched - all with the express intention (if not always the stated purpose) of delaying, obstructing and ideally stopping the decision of the people being implemented.

People who had been moderate and considered in their politics suddenly became radicalised anti-democrats. People who a few months previously would have questioned our balance between the rule of law and civil liberties suddenly became champions of the former and questioning of the latter. A new and dangerous group of extremists were born, one that was prepared to reject democracy in order to stay as a member of the European Union.

Of course these Remainers don't see themselves this way and still use moderate, assured and confident language but their purpose is to obstruct the vote of 23 June 2016 being implemented. A few weeks ago some of these Remainers condescended to pay Bradford a visit. Calling themselves Common Ground this group say they're all about reaching out to leave voters, finding things we share. But peel back the cover of fine words and we have an anti-democracy campaign dedicated to overturning the decision of 23 June 2016 - you only need check out the group's 'network' to understand this as its purpose.

As a result, and because Remainers are not really interested in actually understanding why people voted to leave, our visitors went away with their prejudices reinforced. All this - and similar visits to other places that voted to leave - presents a picture of the leaver world as being dour, run down, left behind and divided. And we can infer that this contrasts with the golden city on the hill that is the Remainer's world.

These Remainers now represent the shock troops of a new authoritarianism, one that was perhaps there before 2016 but now has been animated - shocked into life like Frankenstein's monster - by the vote to leave in June. Remainers consider themselves as the prototypes for Plato's philosopher kings - wise, knowledgeable, experienced and expert. The natural rulers of a post-democratic state. They will be like Galadriel had she taken the ring:

And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!

Although with their talk of populism and nativism these Remainers want to portray the leave voter as the nascent authoritarian, the truth is quite the opposite. Remainers now consider that the ordinary voter cannot be entrusted with the future of the nation, this future should be in the hands of people who know, the experts. The idea of representative democracy is acceptable but only if it produces a result that allows the Remainer great and good to continue dictating the direction of policy. If the voters were to choose people reflecting their vote in June 2016 this would, of course, be a terrible thing indeed.

I repeat again that the Remainers are but a minority of those who voted to stay in the EU - perhaps a quarter maybe a third - but they represent an angry, self-serving, bigoted and undemocratic force that is the worst outcome of 2016. The political objective of 2017 should, in part, be to expose these people again and again as authoritarian, controlling and anti-democratic.

....

Abolishing the Corn Laws again - the case against 'food security'

It's not every day that you read an article saying that it was a mistake to repeal the Corn Laws:

The situation created by the British vote to leave the European Union is momentous for UK food. It is on a par with the Repeal of the Corn Laws of 1846 when Britain decided its Empire could feed it, not its own farmers.

The point about the Corn Laws was that they existed for the sole reason of keeping grain prices high so as to sustain marginal British agriculture. With the expected effect of making food prices higher:

The high price caused the cost of food to increase and consequently depressed the domestic market for manufactured goods because people spent the bulk of their earnings on food rather than commodities. The Corn Laws also caused great distress among the working classes in the towns. These people were unable to grow their own food and had to pay the high prices in order to stay alive.

By opening British farmers up to competition, the repeal of the Corn Laws resulted in cheaper grain and, therefore, cheaper bread (and beer). We forget, however, that the main justification for the corn laws wasn't landowner self-interest but the belief (at the end of a long war and a series of poor harvests) that what we'd now call food security was more important than open trade. At the heart of the food security concept is the idea of self-sufficiency.

My concern is that the security of food might get lost in the debacle. The UK must not let that happen. Food stocks are low in a just-in-time economy, an estimated three to five days’ worth. The UK doesn’t feed itself. It has dropped to 61% self-sufficiency, Defra reported last month.

Now leaving aside how the UK being self-sufficient in food is compatible with membership of the EU, let's ask instead what the consequence of self-sufficiency might be - here Professor Lang's article is helpful. The consequence - a policy aim in the professor's world - will be more expensive food:

Part of the challenge now is the UK’s love of cheap food. This was the legacy of the Repeal of the Corn Laws which sought cheap food for workers. Cheapness as efficiency is still central to the neoliberal project today, as Michael Gove stated in the referendum campaign. But in food, cheapness encourages waste and makes us fat. Good diets are too expensive for the poor.

Again, we'll ignore that Professor Lang also tells us in his article that Brexit will make food more expensive, and ask instead whether there is any practical basis for deliberately making food more expensive (for there surely isn't any moral basis). We'll note the negative impact on the economy from people spending more of their income on food - a huge and unnecessary opportunity cost. The main - probably the only - case is a health one:

The researchers found that healthier diet patterns—for example, diets rich in fruits, vegetables, fish, and nuts—cost significantly more than unhealthy diets (for example, those rich in processed foods, meats, and refined grains). On average, a day’s worth of the most healthy diet patterns cost about $1.50 more per day than the least healthy ones.

The problem here is that we have to accept the premise - Diet X is healthier than Diet Y - and to agree that there is a reason for government to intervene in food pricing (for example by making grain more expensive). And to understand just how much more expensive. Plus of course, we have to agree with the researchers that the price differential is so substantial remembering that these are extreme measures - the 'most unhealthy' diet set against the 'most healthy' diet.

So instead we get food policy planning that uses the idea of 'food security', on the assumption that there is a genuine threat to the supply of food meaning that, in the worst case, we get food riots. Indeed, Professor Lang thinks these are on the way because of Brexit:

But given that the WTO rules are “the lowest common denominator” and the Codex Alimentarius is determined in meetings that are “dominated by big business and lobbies [making] the EU look like the most democratic organisation in the world”, this is far from ideal. The result would be food riots, says professor Lang.

The agricultural sector is very keen (especially the bit that actually owns the land) to get this idea of food security high up on the agenda when food is discussed. It is the biggest justification for the continuance of agricultural subsidy post-Brexit and for the sorts of high-tariff models loved by the EU, USA and Japan. We should be resisting such a model (subsidy plus tariffs) since - as we can see from the corn laws experience - the result is more expensive food acting as a drag on the economy to the benefit of a tiny proportion of the UK's population. Smaller even than you think:

Each year we’re seeing a further concentration of benefits in the hands of fewer,
larger landowners, who seem to use their subsidy cheques to buy up more land and more subsidy ­entitlements,” Jack Thurston, the co-founder of farmsubsidy.org, told the Scotsman. “Most people think farm subsidies are there to help the small guy but we’re seeing it’s quite the reverse. The bigger you are, the better your land, the more public aid you get,” he said.

So we've a system of support (as, unintentionally, Professor Lang shows) not far removed from those 19th century corn laws. We know also that the main impact of subsidy comes in raising land values meaning that those agricultural subsidies and supports are doing little or nothing to maintain food security but represent a straight transfer of money from the taxpayer to the owners of agricultural land.

We should explore whether there is a model that works rather than promising to stay in the warm bath of subsidy after we've left the EU. Perhaps starting by asking how New Zealanders can grow onions that sell in a Kentish farm shop for the same price as locally grown onions. And why those Kiwis can produce lamb, ship it to the UK, sell it for less than British producers and make a profit:

New Zealand is the largest dairy and sheep meat exporter in the world, and a major global supplier of beef, wool, kiwifruit, apples and seafood. New Zealand-grown produce feeds over 40 million people, with 7,500 animal products and 3,800 dairy products going to 100 countries every month.

All of this without any subsidy:

New Zealand agriculture is profitable without subsidies, and that means more people staying in the business. Alone among developed countries of the world, New Zealand has virtually the same percentage of its population employed in agriculture today as it did 30 years ago, and the same number of people living in rural areas as it did in 1920. Although the transition to an unsubsidized farm economy wasn’t easy, memories of the adjustment period are fading fast and today there are few critics to be found of the country’s bold move.

So ask yourself a question. Do you want the sort of protectionist, subsidy-hungry food security that sucks up over £10 billion each and every year. Or an agricultural sector that contributes to a growing and successful economy? For me food security isn't about self-sufficiency but is about diversity and choice - we're more at risk if we've only one supplier of grain than if we've 50 suppliers. Yet the advocates of policy based on food security still argue that protectionism, trade barriers and expensive food (plus rich landowners) is the way to provide that security. The argument we thought we'd won back in 1846 when those Corn Laws were scrapped is still here today and we have to make the case for open trade in food all over again.

....

Brexit means we're leaving the EU - it really is that simple

****

"But what does Brexit mean?"

In a multitude of comments, each coloured by the particular preference or prejudice of its author, this is the cry. It's not enough to say you want to Brexit, you have to set out all the precise constitutional, legal, economic, political, cultural and moral details of that Brexit. If you don't do so it isn't Brexit and we can carry on pretending that, on 23 June 2016, the British electorate didn't vote to leave the European Union.

Worse still you can get your lawyer friends to cobble together an argument that might - just might - mean that the referendum result can be ignored in favour of what you'd probably call 'wiser counsel'. And then get surprised when ordinary voters wonder what the hell you're on about and which bit of the word 'democracy' you fail to understand.

Some have a cannier approach - rather than trying to use legal legerdemain to try and get round the fact that people voted a way you didn't like, they set about a process of getting a second referendum so as to get the right result. That result being, of course, one they agree with - that overturns the mistaken decision of those 'excluded' and 'insular' voters last June. We're familiar with this disdain for European electorates - our lords and masters have rammed through second referendums in Ireland and Denmark and, in the case of France, simply ignored the referendum result completely.

In summary Brexit means we're leaving the European Union whether or not you are happy about that. As the Prime Minister said - "Brexit means Brexit".

What was this I heard you say? "What do you mean by 'Brexit means Brexit' then?"

Really? You've not worked this out then? It's simple - the people voted to leave the European Union and, therefore, the government is morally (if not strictly legally) bound to take us out of that Union. That's it - people didn't vote to do anything else and it's for the government to propose, parliament to debate and the application of politics to decide just what the details of leaving might be.

But that doesn't include an option where we ignore the wishes of the electorate and remain a member of the European Union.

In the future all things are possible but right now our government has to set out a timetable and process for leaving the EU. I'm pretty confident that is what it will do and I'm also pretty confident that the government will seek the support of parliament for that timetable and process. And that parliament - if it has any respect for the idea of democracy - will endorse a timetable and process for us to leave the European Union. Probably one pretty close to that set down by the Prime Minister and her government.

I appreciate that there remain a bunch of folk who hate the result of June's referendum. And they've every right to argue for us to stay in (or, in some future scenario, rejoin) the European Union. But right now the right - as in moral, ethical, democratic - thing to do is set about doing what the electorate asked for. That is to leave the European Union.

Now, as a consequence of this, the UK government might have less open borders - "an end to free movement" as its advocates put it. But that's not what we voted for - we voted to leave the EU. Other things may happen as a result of us leaving - we might see more state intervention in industry. We might see an upsurge in the sort of economic nationalism that people like Will Hutton have been advocating for years. And we might see some new regulations and the ending of some old regulations.

The point isn't that these changes are or aren't made but that they will be made by British governments through the UK parliament. And when it becomes clear that ending all but "high skilled" immigration is a bonkers idea, a future UK government can open the borders up again. And the same goes for trade deals, for tariffs, for regulations on the shape of bananas and for much else besides - the final decision, while moderated by treaty and international negotiation, will be made be people we can boot out if they get it wrong.

All Brexit means is that we're no longer a member of the European Union subject to the obligations in the various treaties that form that Union. That's it. Nothing else. Indeed all the other stuff people are talking about - the assorted bogeymen and doom-laden dystopia set out by disappointed Remain voters included - represent the consequence of choices that can, and will, be made by the UK government.

So instead of crying salty tears into your schooner of achingly trendy craft lager try accepting that Brexit means Brexit and moving on to argue for a post-EU Britain that follows the sorts of policy you think right. You might not get those policies - democracy is a pain - but if your policy is to plan to say "I told you so" on a loop tape then you will definitely be disappointed. We're leaving the EU - what matters is making that decision a great one not in either insulting those who made that choice or else sitting with your bottom lip out and arms crossed sulking because your side lost.

....

How I might be disappointed by Brexit - and why this doesn't matter

EEA, EEA Plus, EFTA, WTO, the Norway Option, the Swiss strategy, the Canada solution - even the Liechtenstein approach. A veritable pot pourri of acronyms and discarded titles for Robert Ludlam novels - none of us really has a clue as to what the UK Outcome might be, what Brexit really means. We could even - parliamentary sovereignty being what it is - simply stay a member of the EU (although this option might do little for the electability of the politicians who take it).

In settling this matter some of us are going to be disappointed. This is because - as everyone has noticed - there's a divide in the world of the leave supporter. On the one hand we have the 'sunlit uplands' team who talk about an independent, free-trading country, a sort of giant version of Singapore. And on the other hand we have the autarchs, protectionists and nativists who want a sad, declining (and probably white) nation crouching from the nasty world behind barriers to trade, movement, investment and choice.

Now I'm a sunlit uplands sort of chap - I didn't vote to end 'free movement' but rather to leave behind a dated, tariff-based and protectionist customs union and go for free trade. As I say again and again, trade isn't something that's done by governments, it's a simple reflection of that human desire to maximise value by exchanging things with other humans. What governments have done is create barriers to trade - everything from bans and sanctions through to tariffs and regulatory constraint. All the state does is make trade more difficult and then, through tortuous negotiations, trim away some of those constrainsts to trade thereby allowing bigger, more open and more free markets.

I also don't know which of those acronyms and rejected Robert Ludlam titles is the right approach to leaving the EU. I know that the GATT rules and the WTO mean that, for most trade, the impact of us being outside the single market is negligible. But I also know that a big chunk of our economy isn't covered by those rules - not just agriculture but important sectors like finance, law and advertising where the UK is a dominant player. So it's not enough to simply sit back on WTO rules in trade if we want to make sure important export sectors perform.

I'm pretty sure too that imports - consumption - are more important than exports - production. So it's too easy to dismiss the argument that we simply have no trade barriers (beyond the physical and logistical) other than those contingent on domesitc standards set by the UK parliament. What we don't know is whether such a radical approach really does what the theorists say - reduces prices and costs allowing the glorious benefits of opportunity to drive economic growth.

Looking at what our new prime minister has done, I get a feeling that I'll be disappointed. There does seem to be an assumption that some new sort of immigration model - more restrictive, more limiting - will be imposed and that, free from EU state aid restrictions, we'll see a rash of supports and interventions that use taxpayers money to prop up inefficient industries. This sort of protectionism - in capital and labour - is politically popular with that constituency making up a sizeable portion of the leave vote and especially the provincial, suburban working class that tends to vote Labour.

So I'll be disappointed. The Brexit model chosen won't be the best one, will probably be rushed a little, and will focus more on protecting the British working class from the realities of the world's economy than on riding that economy as a route to riches. For sure, there'll be trade deals galore with each new one rammed down the throats of Remain advocates. But these will be technocratic deals - dropping a tariff here, a regulation there and a loophole over there, all washed down with state-sponsored grand deals in defence, technology and infrastructure. We won't have markedly changed from the system we enjoy - if that's the right word - within the EU (with the exception of replacing Romanian fruit pickers or Polish care workers with Indian, Chinese and African ones).

Now, dear reader, not only could I be wrong but, just as importantly, my disappointment doesn't matter (any more the does the disappointment of Faragist enthusiasts for a crypto-fascist autarky) for one simple reason. We - that's you and me as voters - can change it. If the chosen Brexit model doesn't work, we can seek a different approach. The people can elect a different bunch of politicians with different ideas to see if they can get it to work. We can have robust arguments about the options and choices available to government and then elect an administration with a fighting chance of implementing one or other of those choices. This is the real change that brexit brings - yes, I think we'll benefit economically if we get it right but next to regaining the power to choose where we go with our economy this is as nothing. So long as we remember the curse of democracy - sometimes the wrong people get elected. As democracy's blessing - we can kick those wrong people out when they screw up.

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Why 'Stronger In' lost - the ad man's tale

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In a close political contest and especially one conducted across the whole nation, campaign tactics and execution matter. Which makes this report on the 'Stronger In' advertising and messaging in Campaign very important:

But, without doubt, one of the key problems was that the Remain camp was determined to take a negative stance. MacLennan says his agency was clear on the need for a positive message. "We said don’t try to cower people into submission – encourage them to see the positives," he insists. "We came up with a strategy based around ‘Don’t leave it, lead it’ but they didn’t run with it."

James Murphy, chief executive of Adam & Eve/DDB, says his agency had also wanted to focus on positive messaging, presenting Remain as offering the best of both worlds (inside the EU but with special status): "But that didn’t fit with the prevailing feeling in the camp that the Scottish referendum and the general election had been won by emphasising risk."

So counter to the agencies’ recommendations, Project Fear became the linchpin of what was a confused and disparate strategy. While the Leave campaigners were able to talk up all the good things about quitting the EU, Stronger In’s agenda was almost unrelentingly negative and undynamic.

Now there's a disconnect here between our understanding of what works in political advertising and how we frame more regular brand communications. In simple terms we think negative political messaging - Project Fear - works whereas we believe negatively founded messaging causes long-term brand damage in regular consumer advertising. From an outsider's perspective the 'Stronger In' campaign had a simple (and fundamentally strong) strategy - secure endorsement for 'remain' from respected experts, commenters and celebrities and stress the value we get from EU membership. What seems to have happened is that this strategy was run from 10 Downing Street while the 'Stronger In' campaign team floundered about essentially directionless:

"We were simply called upon to provide creative window-dressing, not political strategy. And because Stronger In had no political strategy, we had nothing to say. Of course we struggled to get our message across, because the real art is working out the message in the first place and we weren’t allowed to help with that."

The Campaign report talks of divisions, suspicions and an inability to collaborate - coupled with the lack of focus that led to 24 people round the table deciding on the execution of strategy. 'Stronger In' had no message besides 'stronger in' itself - there was no effort to try and provide a context or rationale to that positioning, to explain in language people would understand just how we might be 'stronger in'. Instead 'stronger in' was defined in terms of us being 'weaker out' - in other words negatively. And people - or rather the people who mattered, the undecided voters - didn't believe that message or trust those proffering ever more shrill reasons why leaving the EU was bad.

In contrast (and for all its failings of strategy) Vote Leave - perhaps more by luck than judgement - hit upon a message that was both positive and also flexible enough to accommodate the range of views and expectations of people considering a leave vote. "Take Control" they said - positive, telling people they have power and agency, and hard for 'Stronger In' to refute or challenge. Alongside this, the media (and 'Stronger In' who should have known better) embraced the term 'Brexit' meaning that leaving became a thing, had a brand people could use.

There were other mistakes - once Vote Leave had adopted a red and white livery it was pretty dumb of Labour In to produce material in red and white. In the fleeting moment between picking the leaflet from the mat and putting it into the bin or the glimpse of a poster as we drive past, you need to capture attention - it seems that Labour couldn't bring themselves to use Stronger In's blue and white with the result that, at best, a confused message was presented to the voters it targeted.

As the disappointed 'remain' voters emerge blinking into England's watery sunshine, they're beginning - too late, way too late - to construct a positive message about the EU. One about personal links, shared history, economic co-operation and our voice in the world. It might have been a different result if that had been the message prior to 23 June. Instead we got a parade of the great and good spreading doom and gloom and a persistent sub-text that anyone voting leave - or thinking of voting leave - was a narrow-minded, xenophobic, racist bigot. It's really no surprise given this barrage that people took advantage of the polling booth's calm to stick two fingers up at those elites who painted such a negative picture of English voters.

I am, of course, pleased. But it could have been a very different result if 'Stronger In' had actually tried to explain why we would actually be 'stronger in'. And as a former Ad agency Account Planning Director and a pretty experienced political campaigner, it's clear to me that 'Stronger In' had every advantage in this campaign but failed entirely in using that advantage. Whatever the politics of this, 'Stronger In' - perhaps from complacency, maybe from lack of direction, or even arrogance - threw the referendum win away.

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The 'March for Europe' reminds us why we voted to Leave

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We voted to leave the EU on the 23 June because we wanted to live in a democracy. It really is as basic and simple as that - the EU was, and doubtless remains, utterly undemocratic. When Sukarno became leader of newly independent Indonesia after the withdrawal of the Dutch he created the concept of guided democracy where the trappings of democracy existed (elections, MPs and so forth) but the system was controlled - guided - by appointed experts.

Today some few thousand people marched through London demanding that the result of the 23 June referendum be ignored or overturned. The march included the usual bunch of ageing pop stars, alternative comedians and TV personalities accompanied by the go to demagogues of the radical left like Owen Jones. And while the official line was studious in avoiding any suggestion that the referendum should be set aside or its result ignored, this was the subtext - as one of the march's headline speakers, David Lammy MP made clear a day or two ago:

"The referendum was was an advisory, non-binding referendum. The Leave campaign's platform has already unravelled and some people wish they hadn't voted to Leave.

"Parliament now needs to decide whether we should go forward with Brexit, and there should be a vote in Parliament next week.

"Let us not destroy our economy on the basis of lies and the hubris of Boris Johnson."

You see, voters were too stupid to understand the nuanced, subtle argument that wise advocates of the EU were putting forward - just as Sukarno felt that freshly independent Indonesians needed guidance, David Lammy thinks we should just pat the electorate on the head and then say something like, "very good children, very good. Now the grown ups will show you what you should have done."

This arrogance, this assumption that people like David Lammy are better able to judge what's good for voters than those voters themselves, lies behind the leave vote. What we see is an undemocratic system, distant and incomprehensible, that rains decisions - some good, some stupid and many simply nannying and finger-wagging - onto the great unwashed horde of voters. The EU is the acme of this system - an entire government that looks as if it might be democratic but, in reality, has all the accountability and transparency of Kafka's castle:

One of the operating principles of authorities is that the possibility of error is simply not taken into account. This principle is justified by the excellence of the entire organization and is also necessary if matters are to be discharged with the utmost rapidity.

This was what those people were marching to support - an opaque, arrogant, unapproachable bureaucratic morass sold to us with flags, stars, bland statements of brotherhood and the judicious spreading of cash to favoured organisations. It's very likely that the government will ignore this march of the anti-democrats but while it's there it acts as a reminder why we voted to leave. We voted to get more democracy into the world of ordinary people. We voted against the guidance of the elite and in favour of a more free and more open system of government. We voted for democracy and I intend doing my damnedest to make sure we get that democracy.

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The EU's courtiers can't see the truth - their project is rotten to its core

The greatest of political scientists, S. E. Finer, wrote about how all polities have a court. And that those courts featured those closest to the king, those aspiring to get close to the king and those who formed a rival court. The threats to these courts are of two different types - ones that determine who is king and who are the courtiers closest to the king and ones that create a different order, that replace the king with a different king.

So when we analyse the European Union - important right now because we have to decide whether to be part of it - we should remember that it is a political thing not an economic thing and that many of the people seeking to influence your decision are, in one way or another, courtiers. We should also remember that those courtiers have no interest in there being a change of king because their career trajectory clings to the current rulers. To be more precise the courtiers adhere to the current system rather than to the specific people who form the central court of the European Union.

Tim Worstall describes the outlook in a comment on Visegrad 4 ( or rather some sort of conference thing in Prague recently under the aegis of the Visegrad 4 grouping):

The interesting bit was how scary it was in fact. The groupthink is strong in this arena. There is no questioning of the goal, even if it’s not clearly delineated. That ever closer union is just assumed: how to bring it about being the only difference anyone has. I was the only truly eurosceptic person there and I wasn’t on the panel discussing eurosceptics for example (Frances is reasonable on this subject where I am not).

At one stage I pointed out that fiscal union simply was not going to happen. Europeans just are not going to allow 15-20% of GDP to be distributed through Brussels, which is what would be needed for the automatic stabilisers to operate properly so that the eurozone comes even close to being an optimal currency area. To do that really does mean German taxes paying Greek pensions.

It. Will. Not. Happen.

Not this century at least.

Everyone was shocked: how could you say such a thing? And anyway, we need to work out how to make this happen not think of why it cannot.

What’s scary about this is that these are the people (the varied policy wonks, political aides and so on who made up the audience) who are actually deciding policy within that EU bureaucracy. and they’re simply off with the fairies.

Now Tim is an economist of sorts rather than a political scientist. This isn't to say that he doesn't understand how political systems work but rather that his answer (in this case about the Euro) is couched in terms of the economic consequences of one or other choice. Yet Tim has noticed that the European Union's court - the body round which these policy wonks, aides, advisors and so forth are clustered - is not making decisions based on the economic rightness or otherwise of that decision. Even were the careful deconstruction of the Eurozone to be the right policy, there is no way in which these courtiers could countenance that policy choice being pursued. This would be politically unacceptable.

The reason for this situation - why, in Tim's terms, the assorted folk at this summit are 'away with the fairies' - is that their personal interest, career and future income is tied to the interests of the EU's central court. To challenge the fundamental policy premise of that polity - to point out that Brussels is naked - would be to threaten those interests, that career and the good income to be gained from clustering round the EU's court. So what the courtiers offer is the classic response of such people when faced with an existential threat - reform. We're told that the EU can be reformed, which means that a different set of courtiers sit at the centre of a slightly reconfigured court (with the gamble from the courtiers proposing 'reform' that they will be closer to that centre - and a little richer, a tad more powerful - than at present).

Everything that these courtiers do is Laputan in its distance from the real world of the people who those courtiers like to pretend are the real drivers of their world. For all the talk of elections, voting and democracy, the world of our courtiers is - for the most part - unchanging. This goes some way, perhaps to explaining why there is so much fret about neo-reactionary trends in European politics - it's not just that the Free Democrats, National Front, AfD or UKIP are right wing but rather that they position themselves away from the comfort of the EU's court. This trend is a threat to the EU and therefore incomprehensible, frightening and to be stopped at all costs.

So when those courtiers tell us we're 'blind' or wave their arms and exclaim in exasperation 'wake up, wake up', what they're doing is telling us we should come in from the cold, join their cosy world. We should accept the core ideology of the EU court - 'ever closer union' and so forth - and work with them on 'reform'. At one time I'd have been inclined to take this offer - the EU was a positive force in the world (or so we thought) - but having been close enough to what it does, I know differently. Far from buying the old lie about economic benefit, I now realise it is a political project that seeks the end of those things I value as important. It is only superficially democratic, specifically supranational and founded in List's old ideas of state directed, corporate capitalism (the same ideas borrowed by Mussolini in trying to hammer some sort of intellectual structure onto Fascism).

In one respect it is quite sweet that so many very clever people cluster around the EU's court. Like every other bunch of courtiers throughout history, these people mostly believe (when they've finished chasing consultancy contracts, speaking engagements, advisor positions and policy jobs) that there really is no alternative to the world in which they live, they develop a sort of strabimus with one eye gazing into their narrow little world while the other swivels frantically searching for ever grander ideas of union, collaboration and co-operation. We're told these people are the bright ones, the 'experts', yet they are - quite literally - ignorant of the lives, loves, aspirations and hopes of the people who are supposed to be their bosses.

What scares these courtiers is that a unruly rabble of people they've been told to dislike (and, as with all revolutions, some will actually be dislikeable) will pull down their comfortable castle and expose it to the light of truth and reality. There is a world beyond the EU. We can have a different king. There is - as there always is, whatever Maggie said - an alternative.

The argument for the EU is presented to us as an economic one - we'll be better off as a member, as art of a process of papering over genuine differences with euro-pap. What you should remember is that this is a political project. As Michael Portillo put it:

It has created hardship, unemployment and division on a dangerous scale. It is the result of an ideology; and the ideologues who pursue the goal of union do not count the cost in human misery. Why should they, since it is paid by others? Europe’s political elite is so self-satisfied with its self-proclaimed virtue in uniting Europe that it never doubts itself nor tolerates those who point out the damage that it does and its sheer incompetence.

The EU's courtiers don't see the truth - their project is rotten, dying and it it risks, as we've seen in Greece, pulling down the lives of ordinary people to satisfy its hubris.

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