A heartfelt letter to Nicola Sturgeon

               It’s a funny old thing when you start writing a politics blog. I chose to do it entirely for my own interest and to get myself writing regularly. My original aim was to write semi-amusing articles that some people would like and some wouldn’t – and to deliver something every couple of weeks. I hadn’t realised that politics in the country would be turned on its head by a vote to leave the EU. I sat down last night and counted 15 separate topics I wanted to cover in separate blogs. It’s a funny old world sometimes. We now have a smirking Nigel Farage trying to destroy any goodwill remaining in the European Parliament, racism and xenophobia rampant on the streets, David Cameron resigning, looking less likely that we will actually Brexit every day, Boris Johnson not standing for PM (right now) and a thoroughly horrible coup in the Labour party threatening to rip the party apart. But there has remained one constant – Nicola Sturgeon would like to take Scotland out of the United Kingdom.

                

Dear Nicola Sturgeon MSP

             

               Firstly, well done to Scotland for voting to remain within the EU. This would have been my preferred outcome for the whole of the UK. Many people across the country are still reeling from that vote. The only thing that we can say with clarity because of that vote is that we are heading for a great deal of uncertainty. This uncertainty affects all of us – whether we are in Scotland, England, Northern Ireland or Gibraltar.

                The numbers in the vote were quite stark – and the differences between the countries marked. 1.6 million people voted to Remain across Scotland compared to 1 million people who wanted to Leave. That is a 62% remain vote within a turnout of about 67% (http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/find-information-by-subject/elections-and-referendums/upcoming-elections-and-referendums/eu-referendum/electorate-and-count-information) . A huge push for Remain. Whilst this was across the UK the biggest democratic exercise that has ever been performed (in terms of turnout) it wasn’t in Scotland. Many more Scots voted in the Independence referendum in 2014. Then you have another 1 million people voting.

                Obviously, we can’t know which way people voted in each referendum – whether people who wanted to stay in the UK wanted to also stay in the EU for example. I am not sure the data is readily available for that. But it is a desperate shame that we couldn’t get more EU remainers out to vote in Scotland. It could have had a big impact on the overall result. As it is such a low turnout in Scotland may have helped the Leave side – and forced you into considering a second referendum yourself.

                Although I say forced, I am not sure that is quite the correct word. You are after all the leader of the SNP. Your entire raison d’etre as a party is to take Scotland out of the UK. The party line following the defeat in the last independence referendum was that something would have to materially change to hold another one. This certainly seems to count. I can understand to some degree how you must have felt after that result – I am sure it was similar to how I felt this week. But here’s the thing – given the uncertainty can you be sure that is the right thing for Scotland?

                My often repeated views during the original referendum were quite simple – the case put forward for independence was pie in the sky and didn’t add up, and that we are all better being part of something bigger. That co-operation with others was always the best way to go. To not follow arguments that were purely nationalistic rather than actually good for the country. I would have argued until I was blue in the face that the people of Britain believed that. I would have argued that leaving to go it alone was an inherently more risky proposition for Scotland. I can see how some of those arguments have absolutely been holed below the waterline now.

                Of course at the time we had no idea what the Scotland Out campaign would really deliver. A manifesto that promised a government to be all things to all peoples was never going to wash. The fact that the manifesto was predicated on receipts from oil money that has largely dried up also now shows the wisdom of the Scottish voters in rejecting it (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scottish-independence/12052565/Independent-Scotland-would-be-bankrupt-and-appealing-to-IMF.html) . There seems to be an interesting learning from both referendums best summed up by Jamie Vardy – “Chat shit. Get Banged.”. If you try to sell the voters a clearly unreal picture they will rally against you. Of course in your case that was a picture of Scotland that could never come to pass. In the EU case that was a serious of threats to do horrible things to pensioners and the working class that no-one believed by George Osborne.

                I would imagine you have learned from that. I am sure there are some very clever election strategists working out how to avoid that pitfall. Maybe that would help in any future campaign to deliver the result that your party has been seeking for its entire life. Certainly it must be really tempting, whilst the rest of the UK and our politicians are looking the other way to try and push ahead with your agenda. Knowing they are out of the game whilst fighting within their party or negotiating with the EU would certainly make me go for an early referendum.

                But would that, right now, be in the best interests of Scotland or Scottish people? Or is your desire for independence at any cost clouding your judgement a little bit? Because to win a referendum you would have to change the minds of about half a million Scots – and if I may generalise for a moment – it is hard enough getting one Scot to change their minds once they have decided on something. Would using the fact that Scots want to be part of the EU be enough to change how voters would vote?

                Firstly, you would need a clear, realistic plan of what would happen if you left the UK. That needs to be clear from 2 points of view to win people over. One of those is that you would have to be clear what you are going to. If you ceded from the UK, what would that plan be – to immediately rejoin the EU? If so, you would need to be really clear the terms that would be on and get assurances from the EU on that. Do you think that is going to be, right now, a top priority for EU politicians? Never mind the fact that you would have Spain standing in your way at every step (because of their own Catalan separatists) (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-36656980)? So how quickly would you be able to do that? Also, given that the oil price has fallen off a cliff and doesn’t look like recovering the economic case this time round would be much weaker that isn’t helping your case.

                The other point of view is showing people what they are voting away from. As you have shown once simply answering “The English” to this question really isn’t enough. Whilst the Leave EU campaign managed to tap into people’s anger, you have failed to do that once. So what would you be taking people away from? The answer is that you simply can’t know. I get that neither would any Stay campaign – and from a political point of view that would possibly help you massively. But look inside yourself and be honest  - would that really be doing your best for the Scottish people as a whole? There still remains a possibility that a UK outside of the EU would be a good thing for Scotland. There also remains an increasing possibility that nobody will be brave enough to pull the trigger on Brexit – or as Leavers hoped – we end up with all the benefits and none of the costs.

                You simply can’t know. And so you would be asking the Scottish people to vote blind-folded, with one hand tied behind their backs on what would be right for them. Purely to achieve a vote for independence from something unknown and unknowable on the basis of nationalism. If you think you can live with that on your conscience, perhaps go and talk to David Cameron.

                I understand that the SNP will re-run this referendum time and again until it gets the right result. But please, do what is right for Scotland first and foremost, and wait until people can honestly know what they are voting for and against. Because voting in the absence of knowledge can often get you the wrong result.  

I shouldn’t be writing this blog

           I really shouldn’t. On Thursday the UK voted that we should leave the EU. 1 million people more voted to leave than remain. Whether you agree with that decision or not it is a fact. The people who voted most strongly for Leave were, based on the official polling data, from working class towns who have been let down and left behind over the past 30 plus years. This was a chance for them to scream out their anger and rage at the state of their lives and the fact that they don’t feel listened to. Since the results the far right, the racists and the xenophobes have used that as an excuse to peddle their hatred, believing (I think wrongly) that the vote has shown more people agree with them than they previously knew. The Prime Minister has resigned. The EU want us to start negotiations. The Vote Leave campaign have come out already and said their big claims (more NHS money and lower immigration) were never actually true. People who voted leave are about to find out that when the campaign said “Take Back Control” they added a silent “and give it to Etonians in London”. We are about to go into one of the angriest phases in this country’s history.

We should all be sitting down, and working out what we do to get from this point to one where we can act as a country again. Hell, we need to decide what sort of country we really want first. Not what sort of country are we being offered by career politicians in London. I should be setting out, as a socialist, my view for what that could look like and how we could achieve it. We need cool heads, reconciliation and calm debate to answer all of those people who voted in anger. We must not fail to hear that voice – they are the majority in this country. That is what I should be doing.

But no. Instead I am writing a blog about another attempted coup in the fucking Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP). A party which now appears to be so full of career politicians from the Blair years that it is incapable of seeing outside the Westminster bubble they live in. Who think it is more important to get the “right” result from the leadership election they were on the wrong side of than look to their constituents and address their concerns.

Now, in an attempt to upset every Labour party member in one go, I am going to admit to something which people will see as an act of treason itself. I no longer believe that Labour would get the best possible results in a general election with Jeremy Corbyn as their leader. I voted for JC, and I strongly believe that we need a left leaning leader in order to win back not only votes, but those people who have roared at the government in this referendum. We must not allow them to fall down the route of listening to the racist demagogues of UKIP. So I think we need a left-wing leader who can get those people back. I believe there may be better candidates than JC. I do not believe his performance in the referendum was strong enough. There were enough instances of poor performance and behaviour that we should all be able to see it. I do believe that a move towards a left wing leader who is a more natural vote winner is the direction we should go in.

But this is not the way to do that. At a point when we need a strong, united and responsive Labour Party we are turning our backs on the country to fight internally. What a hideous joke. I am still waiting for the punchline. Let’s be clear on this – dear politicians of pretty much every party YOU ARE NOT DELIVERING WHAT THE PEOPLE OF THIS COUNTRY WANT. Many feel they no longer have a voice and government is a long way away and not listening. Well done to the PLP for showing those people that is exactly what politicians do. Particularly when you consider the reason for this timing – so that this coup can happen before changes to the NEC lead to rule changes that might make it more difficult to get rid of the party leader.

The problem is one entirely of your own making PLP. The party in parliament is so far further right than the party members that when the leadership election comes up there is only ever going to be one left wing candidate – the fact that they take turns putting themselves forward proves that. But what happened last year (after the tories won an outright victory) is that people said “enough is enough, we want left wing policies and a left wing leader”. We gave you those instructions. By an absolute landslide. There is no questioning the view of the party members in this. The fact that people signed up to join the party in their thousands to make sure that happened should have given you some idea. This, I believe, is the route to taking our country back from those who no longer care about the working class.

Instead of working with those instructions and that leadership you have used every opportunity to undermine and challenge it. You have shown no loyalty to your party members. I do now hope you understand that those party members should feel no loyalty back to you. Neither should the electorate of the country as a whole. You have put your own self-interest ahead of the national one. For that you should be appalled at your behaviour. If you do not like the views of the membership of the Labour party feel free to leave and join another party. Get elected on the back of their membership fees, their hard work and activism, their policies. You truly should be ashamed of your behaviour. We certainly are. 

WARNING! This post contains SPOILERS about what happens after a leave vote

              Or, then again it might not. I say that because nobody actually knows what will happen to the economy if we leave. Nobody can. David Cameron and George Osborne don't. Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson don't either. Nor do Economists for Brexit, the IFS, the WTO or The Economist magazine. Neither do I. But given that the economy is one of the main areas of discussion in the EU referendum debate we can't possibly ignore it. So, before you read any further, there is a massive health warning - any projections which are made OR referenced might be completely wrong. This has been part of the issue that has been turning so many people off from this referendum. The repetition that as soon as one side trot out an indisputable fact, the other side dispute it with their own fact.
              So what can we say about the economy and the impact of leave or remain? Well a really good place to start is to understand some basic ideas which are directly relevant to the question at hand. Let's set out then what the EU is (from a purely economic point of view), where it came from (again from an economic point of view) and what are trade deals, tariffs and the regulations that are often discussed by various commentators on both sides. This might take a while and bore the shit out of you - so if you want to go and get a drink now is the time to do it (I'm certainly having one). This is the explanation nobody else will do - because it is incredibly long and boring. But I think worth getting to the end of. One thing I will try NOT to do is to address any claims or counter claims - there is enough of that round already.
               The EU was originally set up very much as a trading block. The underlying theory of many politicians at the time was simple (and actually pretty true) - that most wars, when you get down to it, are really about access to resources. Those resources might be money, land, water, access or a million others. Given that Europe had spent the best part of a thousand plus years at war, then wouldn't it be better to settle disputes over a negotiation table instead of a bayonet? Therefore a "trading block" was set up relating to Coal and Steel - at the time the 2 key resources you needed to fight a war and also the 2 resources you would be likely to fight over. To avoid using an EU reference, you can find all of that information on wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_European_Union ). How would that trading block work? Well, they would work together to decide how much to produce, who to sell it to, at what price and what would be the rules for producing it. The last point is really important. They would also allow the countries in the block to sell to each other without "tariffs" - that is the governments wouldn't add costs to goods coming in from the other countries. To make this fair and achievable, what was very important to the countries involved was that the produce was created in the same way. So, same workers rights, same standards of outputs etc. This was so that no individual country could make more profit by undercutting the others unfairly.
               These are the regulations that are often held up by leave as blockers to British dominance of markets. These hated "regulations" that are thrown around as such a terrible thing include measures to ensure that:

1. What you are buying is actually what you are trying to buy
2. You are not paying too much for products and services
3. When you buy something it wont kill or injure you and your family
4. The people producing goods are not being abused / have employment protections
5. Producing these goods doesn't damage the environment more than it has to
6. There is a standard level of quality for goods that you buy
7. No single organisation or country can run the entire market and abuse a leading market position.

              As a general rule of thumb then, regulations are good for consumers, good for the market, good for workers and costly for businesses, and if it is costly for businesses that increases prices for consumers too. So whenever you hear the term "regulations" - run through that as a checklist and decide if they are things you want or not. Of course part of the problem identified by some on the Leave side is that these regulations attach to all companies whether they trade across Europe of not. I personally quite like the idea of regulations to stop all companies abusing workers and damaging the environment - irrespective of where they trade.

              In very basic economic terms then, the EU has now become a single market where lots of products and services are sold across Europe - with common regulations, but without tariffs being added if they come from within the EU. Tariffs go hand in hand with international trade - so let's look at what they are. Say your country and it's economy is very reliant on the production of "thingies" as an example. You as a government want to make sure that the "thingie" industry is protected. Therefore, what you do is add an import tariff to any "thingies"made overseas being imported - with the aim of making foreign "thingies" more expensive. It is called protectionism. It has existed since the start of international trade. Why wouldn't you do it?

              There are a couple of big problems with protectionism. The first one is quite simple - that protectionism breeds protectionism. Therefore whilst we are trying to protect our engineering industry, France is trying to protect their wine industry. Italy and Germany are trying to protect their car industries. And it goes on, and on, and on. What that means is that we all pay more for our products and services, but also because people don't want to pay higher prices they don't buy, so economies are held back. Secondly, protectionism favours rich countries. After all, if you have more to protect and trade, then you can afford to be tough to other countries with your tariffs ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protectionism ). So as part of a global world we screw other people, our own consumers and ultimately our own economy. Again, as a rule of thumb then, tariffs are bad for consumers, bad for the overall economy but potentially good for individual companies in an economy.

                There are other ways of course as well as tariffs that countries can protect their own industries. Nationalised companies obviously have government support so can (generally) borrow money more cheaply. Or Labour costs can be controlled by government to help companies. Or grants, or a variety of other measures and methods that can be used. For example, the recent furore over the death of Tata Steel in the UK is often blamed on cheap imports of Chinese Steel "flooding the market". There is a huge lack of transparency around why the EU didn't stop this. The arguments (depending on which side you are on) are that the EU rules stopped the UK from intervening to help our steel industry OR the EU tried to block the chinese steel (by increasing tariffs) and the UK government stopped them from doing that. Whilst it is unclear what happened in this instance, the EU rules on this are quite clear - we could have increased tariffs at a European level to counter the protectionist measures of the Chinese. What is worth considering is whether the whole EU standing up to China would have more impact than the UK standing up to them on it's own.

             So, a single market, with common regulations and no tariffs, across a regional trading block, with an end consumer base of 500 million people. That is great because it gives companies (particularly international companies that trade across borders) certainty. Set up in Britain and access that market. Sounds pretty sweet. The main problem raised though is that in order to access that market we have to be (currently) a member of the EU. That in itself comes with a few costs. Firstly, the cost of complying with regulations as discussed above. Secondly, we have to pay to be a member of the EU. This is not a small amount of money, and the budget is set in Europe - we don't decide ourselves how much to pay. After rebate (which we do control) we pay £14 billion a year to the EU.                 That sounds like we might just be better off paying the tariffs in the first place. To put it into perspective - that is out of total UK government expenditure of £772 billion. Our payments to the EU (before looking at what they give us back in other ways) equate to 0.5% of the cost of government ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending_in_the_United_Kingdom ). So less than half a penny in every pound paid in tax goes to the EU. Finally, there is a cost of being part of the EU when we try to trade with non-EU countries. Because we are members when we trade with other countries without a trade deal the EU makes us apply tariffs. This is why the EU is currently trying to agree trade deals with a range of countries - Canada, the US, China as examples. However, overall tariffs are coming down across the world - in some cases slowly, but in other cases more quickly.
              There do seem to be some other major costs too economically. One of the obvious key ones is that if you are running a business in the UK then because of the close integration of the markets you are potentially not just competing with the business next door - but also the business in Paris, Madrid and Berlin. Is this a bad thing or a good thing? Well, first of all it means that the businesses in Europe are also competing with you - you can enter and sell to their local customers. Competition should also (according to prevailing economic theory) lead to better prices for consumers and a more efficient market, innovation and better products and services. The impact of this will depend on your business - common sense would suggest it is much easier to sell "knowledge" services over a phone line or internet connection. It might be much harder to sell fresh cream cakes.
            Finally then, there is also the concern over free movement of Labour - one of the central tenets of the European model of tariffs and regulations. Now, I have already written a blog about immigration generally ( http://unexpectedsocialist.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/if-immigration-is-your-answer-someone.html ) and I don't want to revisit a lot of those points. But being part of Europe also requires us to allow workers to seek employment in any other part of the EU without barriers to that. Is this a cost to our economy? At a very basic level it would seem intuitive that having a greater Labour pool would help companies make money. They can drive down wages and salaries by hiring people from lower paid countries to work for them. This could therefore be good for companies (and earn more money for an economy) but bad for employees. It could also transfer funds from wealthier economies to poorer economies - by individuals remitting wages back to their home country. At the same time though, we have more individuals in the country spending their money here, paying taxes here and generally because they are of working age using less public services (remember, we are only talking about working migrants). Unfortunately, I do need to refer to a study here ( http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/brexit05.pdf ) that shows that immigrants have NOT reduced wages for the UK population. It is simply a not true assertion. BUT TAKE THAT WITH A PINCH OF SALT.
           Economically then, what is the EU? Well a single trading block that increased potential customers but also potential rivals. A law making body that creates a lot of regulations that apply to all companies irrespective of whether they trade internationally. A body that tries to reduce protectionism and tariffs for the good of the global economy, not just ours. A bloc that negotiates on our behalf with other large economies that sometimes doesn't get the results that we would want. A larger, more competitive market that companies either thrive in or fail in. And one where the free flow of Labour allows people to work across a different range of countries depending on their skills, abilities and needs. This of course sounds rosy, but then again I am for remaining in. The problem is that whether we vote to stay in or vote to leave we are picking winners and losers. Some businesses will benefit from staying in. Some will benefit from losing. What we have to do is decide is whether getting rid of or replacing the things above will benefit US as individuals / companies AND what will be the impact on the overall economy. 

If Immigration is your answer, someone has given you the wrong question

                Well, there are only 3 weeks left (ish) until probably the biggest vote any of us able to vote will take for the next 50 years. The EU referendum. As a topic, for a lot of people the single biggest turn off since the first time they realised that their parents had sex. The reason for that disengagement is varied, and consists of several strands according to various insights and polls produced for our delectation. For some people it is a lack of hard facts, for others it is the language and behaviour of both sides of the argument – spurious figures, absolute certainties shared, fears mongered. There is also some concern over the topics that the debate seems to now centre on – immigration, the economy and control / democracy.

                Now this is only a little blog, so I am going to focus in on just one of these areas – and the one that still a lot of people feel uncomfortable talking about – immigration. It is probably the most pertinent and divisive of the areas. After all, where were all these democracy warriors when the referendum on proportional representation was happening? Probably best to set a few ground rules for myself though. Firstly, talking about immigration, and the volumes of immigration, and the process for managing immigration is NOT racist. Some views might be, but the subject itself isn’t. It worries a lot of people, and so is well worthy of consideration. Secondly, in any discussion about remain or leave there are a limited number of hard facts. There is only evidence and expectation, assessment and opinion. But where possible I will try to bring in what facts there are.

                A lot of the arguments about immigration really focus on one thing – the sheer VOLUME of inwards migration of people from Europe and our ability to control it to suit our needs. Indeed the UKIP Leader Nigel Farage has gone so far as to claim that Britain “is in the grip of an immigration crisis” (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-surrey-34348834 ) and that we can’t do anything about it until we leave Europe – as they set our immigration policy. But we need to pick this apart in to chunks that we can consider, and see what stacks up.

                So, we should really look at whether immigration has increased to the UK firstly, and whether Britain is particularly special in this. Next we need to define what a crisis would be and whether what we are experiencing is one, and if we are, is it being caused by immigration. Finally, we should look at specifically the impact of Europe on that migration level, and whether leaving the EU would help.

                So, is immigration higher now than historically? Well, almost certainly. Various studies have been done on long term trends on migration. Just between 1960 and 2000 the growth in the number of people living outside of their birth country is 100 million. That is 100 million more migrants in just 40 years (http://www.jstor.org/stable/27645348?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents ). Clearly, that is a huge amount. But is this particularly surprising? Simply factoring in advances in travel, our economies (and how we work) and the increase in the middle class, you would expect more people to be living, working and settling overseas. So it is not unfair to say that we are seeing more immigration now than before. But this is part of a global trend. The problem with trying to put barriers in place for inwards migration is that those same barriers then go up for outward migration too.

                Are we taking the brunt of this immigration (from a European perspective) in the UK? Certainly there has been an ongoing attempt by the media to create a “moral panic” about Eastern European flooding to the UK to either steal our low paid jobs or live off our benefits system (or from some people, confusingly, live off our benefits AND steal our jobs). Actually, when we look across Europe we are pretty much middle of the pack in how many immigrants we have living in our country. This graph is from 2009, but is a good indication:

( http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/sep/07/immigration-europe-foreign-citizens ). So whilst the overall average level for the EU is 6.4%, for us it is 6.6%. Hardly evidence that we are an outlier in this case.

                Still, size isn’t everything. It is still possible this is a crisis. What should really decide that is the impact it has on the receiving country. So even though we are not receiving lots more immigrants than other countries it is how they are affecting the indigenous populations that can really have costs (and in some cases benefits). In fact the official Vote Leave campaign points out two areas in particular – the  NHS and schools ( http://www.voteleavetakecontrol.org/our_case ). But also in other areas people genuinely have concerns – availability of housing, access to jobs and the impact on our culture. All of these have been raised as problems of uncontrolled immigration.

                It is a quite simple supply / demand question. You have to do one of two things - either increase supply or reduce demand. "Get control of our borders" rhetoric is about a belief that you can reduce demand (but there are strong arguments it wouldn't have any impact). The alternative is to increase supply of all of these things.

1) The majority view of experts is that just in order to stand still in terms of housing we need to build 250,000 new homes each year. No government has achieved that since 1980. In fact, since the economic crisis in 2008 housebuilding has tanked (https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/live-tables-on-house-building table 211). And I am not suggesting we concrete over the green belt – there are £12 BILLION of empty homes in the North West alone (http://www.mancunianmatters.co.uk/content/070811937-housing-crisis-%C2%A312billion-worth-homes-lie-empty-across-north-west-according-report )

2) When the last coalition government had an opportunity to secure the NHS and pump extra money in, they instead pushed ahead with a costly top-down re-organisation. One which makes the NHS much more privatisation-ready. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-31145600 )

3) LAs are no longer allowed to open new schools where they are needed - these can only be opened at the mercy of the open access academy system. This is purely to break the link between those dangerous left wing county councils and school leadership.

4) LA funding and social services funding has been strangled on the back of an austerity drive which has ADDED to the national debt, not taken away from it.

5) We are currently told by the government that we have the lowest unemployment figures in a long time at 5.1% and holding (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36320028 ).

So really, this crisis is not one made from too much demand, but one created by too little supply. Quite simply, our governments have created this issue. And migrants are a handy scapegoat for us to blame. Of course, all of these things have to be paid for, and have a cost to the economy too. How can we do that?

Well, migrants are actually net CONTRIBUTORS to our economy (http://www.cityam.com/213058/eu-immigrants-contribute-463-second-uk-economy ) – in other words having migrants actually means we have more money to pay for services even after taking account of the cost of providing services and benefits to them. Where has this extra money gone? Over the period of tory-imposed austerity that has led to many of these cuts the government have managed to find the space to cut corporation tax to 18% - even though there is zero evidence base this brings more companies and employment. The real pressure on services has been created by the recent governments this country has had – none more so than the coalition and current governments. I don’t deny that there are crises in all of these areas – but the cause is much closer to home.

So, a fairly fact informed consideration of immigration (I hope) and we haven’t yet mentioned EU Brexit OR been racist (I REALLY hope). We should probably turn to one of those two topics now – Brexit. How much of our immigration comes from within the EU as part of freedom of movement rules? Again, trying to arm ourselves with the best facts available, the ONS reckons that EU migration makes up less than half of our inwards migration (https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/bulletins/migrationstatisticsquarterlyreport/may2016 ). Not only that but MORE of the EU citizens coming here have definite jobs to go to than ever before (about 60%). So most of our migration comes from outside the EU, and those from within the EU come here with definite jobs. So if we could stop EU immigration we would only be stopping half of the inflow – and a half with a good track record of helping our economy.

Maybe that would be enough? Perhaps cutting immigration in half would allow our underfunded services to get back to an even keel over time, house building could pick up etc. Well, there are still a couple of major challenges with that suggestion.

The first is that a lot of those services (particularly the NHS) rely on European immigrants to fulfil their staffing requirements (http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jan/26/nhs-foreign-nationals-immigration-health-service ). A lot of other areas do too – construction being another. Not a great idea when you are trying to increase housebuilding.

The second problem is that leaving the EU does not guarantee that we would be able to refuse rules on freedom of movement if we wanted to trade with Europe. All of their other local trading partners who are NOT members of the EU have had this stipulation placed on them. It is almost certainly one that the EU would place on us too. So Brexit would not in any way guarantee us the ability to stop EU migrants, whilst at the same time carrying lots of other risks. Quite simply, Brexit do not know what would happen with free movement of Labour.

So, there you have it then. It is not racist to be worried about the crises in public services, in housing and in jobs. The problem is that you have been given the wrong cause of the problem by political parties and media alike. It is much easier for you to be told the problem is economic migrants (and by extension the EU). Actually, the problem has been our own leaders. So if you are still not sure which way to vote (and that will be many people given the way the campaigns have run) do think carefully. But do one thing right – don’t make your decision based on immigration. It is the wrong argument to be focussed on.

Should politics and social media mix?

         This is not the next blog I expected to be writing. The eagle-eyed and elephant-memoried of you will know that I was just starting a mine series of blogs about economic competence and the action of the tory government. This stopped ten weeks ago because of a specific event for me. I posted a link to somebody else’s blog on Facebook and because of the content of that blog a couple of people I thought of as friends (with whom I shared a particular crucible in fact) walked away from our friendship. The blog I shared used some very harsh and questionable language. It also had some extreme opinions on things. This led me to consider a number of things. It seems timely when there have been a plethora of stories about “trolls” from various political wings causing problems on social media. Is it right that a friendship can be ended over political views? If we are politically interested people, is it fair to share it with others on our social media? Are there rules we should stick to when posting on social media?

I will come on to my own mistakes in a little while, but I first wanted to set some of the background to why this has caused me to think so long and hard. The use (abuse) of social media in politics is very much here to stay, and it has been used to good and bad effect a number of times recently. Just this weekend, Jeremy Corbyn has joined snapchat (http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/apr/17/jeremy-corbyn-snapchat-instagram-labour-leader ) - genuinely. I imagine you have all paused from reading this in order to go and sign up for snapchat and then find his page. I know I haven’t. But there are murkier tales abounding from the internet of social media being used to target and attack Labour MPs over the vote to bomb Syria (http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/momentum-vitriol-highlights-the-sexism-inherent-in-the-hard-left-a6761801.html ). Of course, the key sentence used is “No direct link can be proven between Momentum organisers and the keyboard warriors” but don’t let that stop you basing a story on it. Equally, the tales of CyberNats during the Scottish Independence Referendum campaign are the stuff of legend ( http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/13165014.Call_to_end_online_poison_after_cyber_attacks_on_JK_Rowling/ ).

There are a couple of similarities I wanted to pick out on these stories – firstly that they both point to a number of tweets but only reference only one, and secondly that they are linked to a particular organisation or campaign but with no evidence they have been officially sanctioned.  This is an interesting point about social media use. If you want to denigrate a group as a troll, don’t wait until they themselves have said something, simply take umbrage at something somebody else has said that is on the same side of the argument as them, and blame them for saying it. It’s effectively a “straw man” argument for the new age. That is not to in anyway argue that social media trolls don’t exist. They absolutely do and they risk poisoning political debate on social media (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/13/trolls-trampling-political-discourse-abuse ) but they should not be allowed to end our use of social media.

There are also some very good examples of people thinking about social media and the impact it can have. Certainly, it has been identified as one of the reasons that a groundswell of support grew so quickly for Jeremy Corbyn during the leadership election (http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/04/jezwecan-jeremy-corbyn-social-media-vote-labour-leadership ). Certainly the more piss-take accounts (remember @corbynjokes – if you missed it go there now) even seemed to help. The question is whether the social media element itself did the work, or the strength of the candidate. After all, Liz Kendall had social media too.

So as a Labour party member, surely I should be free to profess my views as and where I want on my own social media accounts. Yes, I absolutely am. However I have been incredibly naïve in understanding the impact it would have on other people. And yes, this has led to people removing me from their timeline. Now, the obvious bullish (dare I say masculine) response is to say “fuck it, you can’t lose real friends, only people pretending to be real friends”. I am not sure this rings true. For example, I have unfollowed and unfriended people who have started espousing right-wing and nationalistic claptrap. If you realised one of your friends was a proto-fascist you would forgive yourself for wanting nothing to do with them. It should be equally fair if you vehemently disagree with a friends postings (even when they are re-posting something written by other people) if they are writing from the left instead of the right.

In terms of my own misdemeanour, I posted on my personal facebook a blog which stated it was quite acceptable to call people who voted tory at the last election c*nts (you can probably work out that word, but I would not be sleeping in the big bed tonight if I said it correctly on my blog). Whilst the language was strong, it was nothing you wouldn’t expect to hear in a barracks or pub. The underlying intent to show that people who voted tory should reconsider their position next time round given how horrific the current government are, also still rings true for me. I was attacked on the basis of it being taken as a personal attack by proxy – that their mother had voted conservative and by extension I was calling his mother. I can understand this. Another line of attack was that (and this is not a direct quote) “I voted conservative, I don’t know enough about politics, you might be right, but admitting it makes me feel uncomfortable about myself, and social media isn’t the place for making me feel uncomfortable”.

Certainly, I can understand that, and I have learned from this, there does need to be some separation between social media friends and acquaintances and your loony-left or swivel-eyed right leaning views. I will now have 2 social media presences – one for the unexpected socialist and one for Barry. I will still cross-post though. Partly because my view of the world is a major part of who I am. But partly because I am a technological luddite who will end up doing it by accident. Hopefully that will be enough for my detractors. But I can’t promise that my loony-left-ism wont sneak out in other ways too. 

You can't trust Labour on the economy (updated since originally posted 15 months ago) Part 1

As the general election campaign for 2017 has now started in earnest, I have been locked away trying to understand the outcome from the Margaret Beckett report on why Labour lost the last election (http://press.labour.org.uk/post/137620361394/learningthelessons ). Now, whether you believe the report or not http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-35392319 is entirely up to you. However, even without the additional analysis being included, one thing can be said with certainty – voters did not trust Labour with the economy. This has been borne out by my own un-scientific research – i.e. speaking to people on internet forums and social media. It is one of the most repeated phrases I hear and read from a whole spectrum of people. It is one of those "truths" that has become so because it has been so oft-repeated.

There will always be a subset of people who, no matter what can be proven, will decide that they will blindly vote Conservative. We have the same people in the Labour party and that is absolutely fine. People vote for their own reasons. If you are one of those people who hate the Labour party and will never look at evidence with a view to changing that position don’t read this. Use the time to do something useful – read something else, make a cup of tea, look after your children, speak to your life partner. That is fine. But I did want to consider that individual central tenet – that people did not trust Labour on the economy, and therefore wouldn’t vote Labour. I am going to try to extrapolate that too – should they trust Labour on the economy now or in the future.

In order to split this down we probably need to think about two things – firstly what is a “good” economy and what does that look like? Secondly, why should we trust a party? If we can answer those two, we should be able to put together a fairly strong case one way or the other. Just writing those two questions down outlines a whole host of problems, but let’s try and answer them.

What is a “good” economy?

So, the real difficulty with this is that there is not, and can not be a single definite answer to this. There are some broad areas of understanding, but nothing that we can concretely say “that right there is your answer”. Each individual will necessarily have their own view on this – and it will be coloured by their upbringing, their view on how the world works and what is important to them. We are after all a country of approx. 60 million single issue voters – that single issue being “what is important to me”.

From my perspective then (as a socialist) there are a number of measures of what makes a good economy. The key one is that the national economy should be measured on how that is used to provide a wellbeing for those people involved in and covered by the economy. A good economy would be one where: 

1. any growth in the economy benefits those who work for it;
2. it provides opportunities for everyone to participate and add to the economy whilst;
3. providing a reasonable level of protection from external shocks to the national economy and individual shocks through changes in circumstance

I don’t pretend this is the only answer. There are other things that we could look at - a key one being how the economy is used to look after members of society in need. There are I am sure many issues that this doesn’t address. As we will discuss, some of these items might even rub against each other in different directions. Lots of people would argue that some of those goals are impossible whilst we live in a capitalist system. It is the system we have at the moment and nobody has yet convinced the British public to rally together to change this system for an alternative one. Additionally there are some huge topics that I have left out – the Private Finance Initiative (PFI and PF2 which are the same thing) are a massive burden on this country. However, political parties of all hues are currently wedded to continue delivering them, so they don’t provide a difference between how they are treated. This is a massive topic and the subject of so much unknown and unknowable that it has its own Nobel Prize. To expect me to do justice to it in a blog is probably asking too much. Even with the simplified items above I am going to split this down into a couple of (hopefully easily digestible, probably completely incomprehensible) blogs to not completely frazzle people.

Should we trust a party to deliver?

The next question should then be: How do the last Labour administration and the current (including the coalition years) Conservative government stand on each of those measures? And how do we believe a Corbyn government would stand against those measures? Whilst this may be a little unfair (every government in waiting is brilliant until it gets in), we need to recognise that a Corbyn government would be very different to a Blair / Brown government. 

Well the first measure mentioned above on economic growth and fairness really requires two parts to it – one is a growing economy, and two that the benefits of that growth are shared amongst the actors within it. Whilst there are a range of indicators for a growing economy a useful one is GDP per capita. This shows the value of the outputs of an economy shared equally by the population of that economy. For the UK, this shows the following output (taken from https://knoema.com/atlas/United-Kingdom/GDP-per-capita ).

What you can see from this is that under the last Labour government the GDP per person was higher than it currently is at its high point. It also had a steeper growth – i.e. people were (on average) getting wealthier, faster. This changed in 2008 because of the sudden correction in the markets – caused by the banking crash. The key term there I feel is “correction”. Put simply the market growth was to some extent a myth, caused by a bubble of over-inflated house prices across the globe and reckless behaviour of banks and consumers around the world.

Can we blame Labour for this? I think there must be an element of realisation that for Tony Blair and Gordon Brown the key indicator for economic success was GDP growth. Therefore the worst excesses of the banks were missed at best or ignored and encouraged at worst. This lends to the suggestion that Labour can’t be trusted. In order for us to stick with that as a reason, we should also look at the behaviour of the Conservative party in office. If the property bubble and banker behaviour were key components of the sudden correction, then to trust the tories they would have to clearly demonstrate a different approach.  

I would say that quite clearly isn’t the case. In fact the light regulation that allowed this to happen is slowly returning. Despite the rhetoric about this at the time, the Conservative Party (funded by hedge fund managers and property tycoons http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/labour-funding-party-donors-tories-factcheck/13899 ) is indeed pushing back on the regulation of the banks. Ring-fencing of banks (to protect consumers and the economy) has been watered down. There have been a plethora of new scandals SINCE the financial crash ( http://www.channel4.com/news/five-other-banking-scandals-since-2008 ) they have slowly stopped investigations and reviews into the current banking market. 

So, if you don’t trust Labour on the economy for this reason, you quite clearly can’t trust the Conservatives either. As an argument, it is nonsense. Oh, and if you think that they have at least made sure another housing bubble wont appear and burst, then forget about it (http://uk.businessinsider.com/roubini-the-mother-of-all-asset-bubbles-will-burst-in-2016-2014-12?r=US&IR=T and http://moneyweek.com/uk-property-market-could-be-in-trouble-after-the-2015-election/ ) – those risks are still there. Worryingly from the above graph we can see that rather than the Tories increasing GDP per capita it has fluctuated and is falling again - and this is before the impact of Brexit takes its toll. 

The next thing to consider from any growth in the economy benefits those who work for it is that it benefits those who work for it. To me, this means that the benefits are shared in line with hard work, effort and risk. That is impossible to measure on an individual basis. It is also massively unfair when we have different starting points. Instead a good measure of how the people in an economy are benefiting, and whether it is fairly or not, is something called a "gini-coefficient". If you wish to understand the maths behind it, then it can be readily understood from wikipedia. It basically measures how fairly income is shared amongst a population. This ties in with GDP above – as it measures the income in a period, in much the same way, and then looks at how income is spread between people. There are 2 extremes – but the lower the gini-coefficient the more equally money is shared between the people in the economy. Gini is calculated as between 0 (everyone gets the same) and 1 (1 person gets all of the income). As a co-efficient it is not useful on it's own - but is useful for comparing 2 things - such as different points in time, different countries or different governments.

In order to get a fair reading on this, then we must look at not only what the gini-coefficient was but how it has changed over time under each of these governments. So under the previous Blairite Labour administration, the gini co-efficient (http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/household-income/the-effects-of-taxes-and-benefits-on-household-income/2013-2014/data--the-effects-of-taxes-and-benefits-on-household-income--financial-year-ending-2014.xls ) after tax showed a gini-coefficient of 0.38 between 1997 and 2008 – this didn’t really move. Since the coalition government came to power there has actually been an improvement in income equality - the figure got lower to 0.36 up to the end of 2013/2014. This will be in large part due to the changes in taxation that was pushed through by the Liberal Democrats. 

What remains to be seen is how the changes enacted since then will impact through 2014/2015 and 2015/2016. Although if you believe that trying to cut working families tax credits and battering disabled people’s payments will make income more equal then you have really missed the point. I would expect that the gini-coefficient starts to move back out sharply. After all, the current government have tried to remove income from their definition of poverty ( http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/tory-plot-scrap-child-poverty-7244505 ). That can never be a good sign. Whilst we don't yet have the official figures for 2015-2016 (the first year of a solely Tory government), for 2014-2015 the gini coefficient has started to move out again - that is we are becoming less equal once again.

What we can't know is how this will change under a Corbyn led Labour government. However, we can look to the policies that have been unveiled already - investment in public works to kick-start the economey, higher taxes on large corporations and wealthy individuals, higher national minimum wage, a clampdown on tax avoidance and evasion and an end to using the benefits regime to punish the disabled and these would all point to an improvement in this measure (and all measures) of inequality. In fact, his first major speech of this election campaign has been entirely rooted in sharing wealth more equally. So, if we believe that he will be true to his word, this would suggest that on my first measure there would be an improvement in both GDP per capita and how that is shared. But, what we can already say based on the available, independent evidence shown above is this - the Conservative party are NO MORE trustworthy than the last Labour Government. That isn't opinion, that is clear fact when you consider the above. So don't let anyone suggest otherwise - without proving them wrong. 

Of course, this is only one measure, and I will look at the others in my next blog. An absolute key one is what state the economy and public finances are left in. This is another area where many believe what they are told in the media - that every Labour government bankrupts the national coffers if it is allowed to do so. But is this really true? Well, hopefully I can answer that point in my next blog. 

How to face the UKIP challenge

          Never one to step back from a challenge me. I recently got myself embroiled in a debate (well, I say debate, I was providing arguments whilst ‘kippers were sharing faked up images from Tommy Robinson) on twitter. The disagreement was over UKIP policies. I actually had to think on this – do I know their policies well enough? Do I understand them? We certainly can’t assume that we have enough liberal people in the country that UKIP can’t be a threat. Maybe I am doing them a disservice – and there is more to support than denigrate.

So, the challenge is twofold. One, I have set myself is to review and consider their manifesto. After all, they might be a party that we face at the next election (unless they crumble in the run up to or the aftermath of the EU referendum). Two, how do we see off their challenge? They themselves feel that they are a direct challenger to Labour in working class areas (although, you know, only when they aren’t faced with a democratic vote of the people of an area http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-35003152 like in Oldham West and Royton).

Certainly, in specific instances, UKIP do sound like they have some compelling arguments and ideas. Patrick O’Flynn came across as the least rabid right-winger on Question Time on Thursday 14^th January 2016 http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b06wcm9d . Although I would urge caution – the other right wingers included Camilla Long, Kelvin Mackenzie and Nick Boles, so Genghis Khan may have appeared reasonable in that company. He certainly gained some praise for the housing policies he espoused.

As the last formal document expressing policy for UKIP, I got hold of a copy of their 2015 manifesto http://www.ukip.org/manifesto2015 which comes with a handy back of a fag packet economic assessment of their tax and spending plans – provided by CEBR. This is marked up as “independent”. Now, if anyone has ever bought a house, you know that there is no such thing as independent. Whoever pays the bill calls the shots and gets the report they want. I couldn’t quite find the details of the independent person who had paid for this report. I am sure UKIP will help explain how this was done independently. So in the interest of fairness we will assume it was performed independently.

I will be honest, there is probably too much to wade through in one sitting – even if you enjoy blogging as much as I do. So I can going to focus on specific areas. What got me into this conversation was the explanation of UKIP housing policies, so we should look at

Housing.

                The main thrust of the UKIP argument is really strong. A really sensible proposal. An absolute acceptance that there is a massive shortage of social housing, and that it has been caused by housing sell offs during the 80s. In order to combat that, they have a number of different planks to their housing strategy.

•                 Bringing 280,000 houses back in to use by charging 50% additional council tax for homes left empty for 2 years.These are houses which the owners can already afford to own, and leave standing empty whilst paying council tax on them. How much difference will an extra £500 per year make? This would not have anywhere near enough of an impact. (Rating – not effective)
• Incentivise building of 2.5million houses on Brownfield sites at a cost of £1.75billion over 5 years. Really, looking at this, I initially believed this to be reasonable. However, the devil is in the detail. To build 2.5million houses would require all of the sites to be redeveloped. Even UKIP have admitted their incentives would only cover 30% of sites – so a basic assumption would be an extra 750,000 houses built over the 5 year period on top of where we are now. So that would still make it a win – if the technology genuinely exists to achieve this. (Rating – appears possible)
• Releasing long held dormant land from local and central government.There are no costings for this, or how much impact there will be from this – it is a completely uncosted, result free fudge (Rating – space filler)
• Reduce the pressure on housing waiting lists by not allowing foreign nationals to access social housing until they have been here for 5 years, working and paying tax. This is the biggest plank of their proposal, and seen as the biggest issue, so I want to consider this in more detail.I think here we see the real thrust of UKIP and what they want to achieve. 

                So let’s agree some basic facts. Using the latest data I can find, around 8 million foreign nationals abide in the UK http://www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/briefings/migrants-uk-overview at the present time. If we assume they are in family groups of 4, that means they require about 2 million houses. Of those 43% own their own home and 39% rent privately http://www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/briefings/migrants-and-housing-uk-experiences-and-impacts . That leaves approx 18% in social housing – that would mean a reduction in the social housing stock of 360,000 houses. There are 4 million social houses in Britain https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/423249/Dwelling_Stock_Estimates_2014_England.pdf out of a total of 23 million.

So, as a very rough estimate, that means that migrants (of all types) take up 8.7% of housing, and 9% of social housing. I don’t have any better figures, but let’s assume 50% of migrants have been here less than 5 years. That means actually, this would free up about 4.5% of social housing – but push this into private rented. This would simply mean higher private rents (more people after fewer tenancies). What are social housing rents now set with regards to? Private rents. So rent will go up for everyone, and the only people who will benefit are PRIVATE LANDLORDS. 

Alternatively, this approach could mean we have fewer migrants at all. This would seem to follow the general thrust of the UKIP arguments in other areas – where they wish to reduce immigration.  Many might think this is a benefit to us. Of course, it would mean the end of the NHS, as 11% of all NHS staff are foreign nationals http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jan/26/nhs-foreign-nationals-immigration-health-service - rising to 26% of doctors. So, yes, cheaper housing, but an NHS that can not cope – without enough doctors. So irrespective of any question of morality, that would be a massive loss to the country.

(Rating – higher rents paid by EVERYONE in the private sector OR no NHS – you decide).

So, there you have it, the UKIP housing policy laid bare for all to see. One potentially good idea, two soundbites and one policy so monumentally dangerous we could never enact it (that is even if it was compatible with the law, which I am not sure it would be). My worry is that like a lot of their other policies, what initially sounds straightforward is really an absolute disaster waiting to happen. This is why we need to fight UKIP – and this is how we need to fight them. By challenging their catchphrases and soundbites and making them admit the dangerous policies that follow behind.