Author: johnredwood

“Pour me another,  lets toast the new year
Here’s to a better, put  fizz in our cheer”

Tonight’s  not for sorrows, no mulling old wounds
Come banish our troubles,  lets sing some new tunes

Caught in the present is a moment to choose
To look forwards or backwards, to win or to lose

If you comfort yourself holding what’s past
This precious moment of hope won’t last

Grasping  the future and its unknown way
Could bring success and many a wonderful day

The past is well trodden where  we know the ending
The future is for moulding, for shaping, for bending

As last year expires, with hopes and promises broken
Change things this time , leaving resolutions unspoken

So pour me another,drink to the new year

here’s to a better, put fizz in our cheer

If your life is a drama  you can change the plot
If your friends are the  actors you can recast the lot

If people around you are holding you back
Tell them you’re changing, cast aside their rack

Lets hold on to new clichés that drive us to more
Lets venture out from  behind that closed door

We can stretch for the stars and strive for the sun
We can soar with  the wind making life more fun

You are only out of the game  when you give up the play
So write some new words so you have a new  say

Aim for something better, embrace the best
You may fall short of target  but gain from the quest

So cast off the old
Live a new dream
Grab the future foretold
Mine a new seam

So pour me another, lets toast the new year
Here’s to a better, put fizz in our cheer

I know tomorrow can be better than today
Let the future  empower us with its  new way

The future is only ours, my friend, if we want to race it
Tonight is the night to embrace it

So pour me another, lets toast the new year

Here’s to a better, put fizz in our cheer

The 20 teens were hesitant years. There was a cautious economic recovery from the slump of 2008-10, as the deficit was tamed and capacity gently rebuilt.

There was a crisis over the UK’s role in the world. The ruling elites saw the UK as part of the EU project to centralise power, with the UK as a covert participant in the mighty task of European political, monetary and economic integration. A majority of the public wanted the UK to return to being an independent country, capable of self government with a confident outward looking view of herself in a global world. Happy to trade with the EU, keen to travel, to promote many exchanges in education, culture and tourism, the majority saw no need to lock us into a political union to allow these things to continue. They will continue anyway when we leave as they do for many other independent countries having dealings with the EU .

The elite’s refusal to accept the decision of the people led to undue stresses and strains on most of the institutions of the UK state. The Central Bank, already brought low by its failure to stop excesses in credit prior to 2008 and by its clumsy and damaging over correction, entered the fray against the majority decision. The Courts took up cases against government and Parliament, and made decisions designed to slow down or prevent Brexit.

Parliament itself turned against Brexit, despite most MPs being elected in 2017 for Labour or Conservative on promises to see it through. Brexiteers were left with the irony that the very institution they wished to restore to full power did not want that power and spent its time trying to prevent the UK taking control of its own money, laws and borders.

Some large companies turned out endless propaganda against Brexit as if the decision had not been made, repeating the often phoney claims of future economic damage that they had used to try to get people to vote their way in the first place.

The EU itself refused to accept the verdict of the UK people, and worked with the Remain forces in the UK to seek delay or damaging terms for exit that might get the public to change their mind.

Despite all of this the people voted again decisively as the decade ended to get Brexit done. That included many who voted just to leave, and others who voted for the Withdrawal Agreement on offer in anticipation of a Free Trade Agreement to follow. Tomorrow I will look at how and why the next decade can be so much better.

I look forward to 2020 full of hope and optimism.

The new government has a majority and has energy to make things better. I am delighted they have made Prosperity the main aim of policy, as I asked them to do. I am putting in plenty of ideas about the January budget to give our economy the boost it needs and to leave people with more of their own money to spend. I look forward to the arrival of the extra money for schools, surgeries and the police in  our area that I have battled for in recent years.

The New Year makes  many people reappraise and ask themselves if we can do things better than in the year just gone. In politics it would be difficult to do things worse than in 2019.A fractured and angry Parliament prevented government governing, accentuated the negative, and let the country down. It undermined our negotiating position with the EU and needlessly delayed our exit.

This year we not only want a positive policy to improve public services and quicken growth in the economy, but we need to try to bring  more people together behind that common purpose. Our public discourse has been more rancorous than robust, often nasty rather than incisive or illuminating.

On the central issue of our membership of the EU we can learn from the past. As a young man casting one of my first votes I voted to leave the European Community in 1975. I was on the losing side. I accepted the verdict of the voters and resolved to do my best to keep the spirit of what the majority voted for, membership of a free trade area or common market. It was only  two decades later that I started to think we needed another referendum, when our country was plunged into a deep recession by our membership of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, a close commitment to the EU which was not envisaged in the original referendum.  It is one of those unwritten rules of democratic politics that if you lose an election or referendum you accept the will of the majority. It is also an unwritten rule that the majority should  be attentive to the worries and concerns of the minority and seek to allay their fears or deal with their problems.

In  that spirit this government needs to ensure that as we leave the EU there is none of the economic damage some have forecast. I have always held the view that we can be better off out and have set out  the policies we need to follow to achieve that. It will be a central task for me to make that case in the new Parliament. It is also important to show how we will still travel to the continent, have many trade, cultural and educational links with the continent, and enjoy the wider European culture.

I do not regard Remain voters  any less favourably than  Leave voters, and will judge everyone’s case on its merits. All I ask in return is that passionate Remainers understand the we Leavers are motivated by our view of what is best for our country and communities. We wish to work closely with all our fellow citizens to improve lives  and promote happiness and prosperity. I have lived most of my life with the answer on EU membership I did not want, but have not let it embitter me. I have often had to live under a Labour government I did not welcome, but never challenged their right to govern when they had won the election.

So let us enjoy the freedoms of our democracy in the new year.  Let us have robust and strong debate, but let us play down the nastiness and abuse which came to replace such democratic principles too often last year. Far from improving democracy shouting abuse is an attempt to close it down. It damages the very liberties which make this country great.

Media commentary on the outgoing Governor and the new Governor hit a new low. We were told of the rock star Governor leaving, with silly mildly abusive comments on  the alleged personality of the incoming Governor. There was  no critical commentary of the failings of current Bank policy, nor comment on the huge opportunities  to change things for the better under new direction.

Governor Carney leaves an economy stalled, pursuing a uniquely tight money policy at a time when all the other main  Central Banks are rightly fighting slowdown and recession with a range of monetary tools at their disposal. He has been besotted by Brexit to the point where he has not understood the forces at work on the UK, which are largely  the same as anywhere else in a globalised world economy suffering from sluggish growth and mercifully low inflation in the advanced world. All the time he has been Governor we have been full members of the EU, just as he wanted .

When he first arrived he promised reform. He told us he was going to use forward guidance to give markets a clearer steer of where interest rates and monetary policy were going. The first two occasions when he guided people to expect a rate rise he did not follow through with one, and after the third warning of a rate rise after a gap   he actually cut rates. It was difficult to see  how any of this helped.  

During the referendum he politicised the Bank by producing a series of  very pessimistic short term forecasts  of jobs, unemployment, output and house prices  which only Remain  could accept. They turned out to be very wrong as I and other Leavers forecast.

After the vote he did nothing. A few weeks later he decided to cut interest rates, relaunch Quantitative easing and make money  available to the banks. This stimulated activity and inflation, and pushed the pound down a bit. From 2017 onwards he then changed tack, withdrew necessary facilities from the commercial banks, put through two rate rises and slowed the economy markedly until over the last three months there has been no growth at all. This was needless and predictable.

He could have shifted UK policy in late 2018 to promoting more growth and activity as the Fed did. He could have done so this autumn when the ECB did. Instead he ignored the obvious signs of global weakness and tightened controls over commercial bank lending. On his watch the repair of the commercial banks has been completed so they are  now robust and able to withstand bigger external shocks.  They now need an LTRO or funding for lending scheme to access money to lend on to businesses who wish to invest and to people who want to buy homes and cars.

To Brexiteers there is just one kind of Brexit – taking back control of our money, our borders, our laws and our trade policy. It is about independence. The Conservative Manifesto confirms all of that. That was why I did  not need to add to it or amend during the election, as I was happy with the clear statement that we will indeed be taking  back control.

Staying in the Customs Union, legislating to ensure our rules and laws stay in line with whatever the EU wants, being an external member of the single market and having to accept all their Directives are  not Brexit. The EU has been masterful in extending its reach ostensibly in the name of trade into a dazzling array of other governmental and legal areas. We end up with freedom of movement, large tax impositions and detailed laws on everything in the name of the single market.

We wish to trade with the single market, as many other countries from around the world do everyday. They do so without accepting freedom of movement, or all the laws of the EU or without making budget contributions. They do so under WTO rules, which are superior even to EU laws, and are designed to facilitate trade between fellow members.

I do not like the Implementation period. I wanted us to leave in March 2019, and again in October 2019. Instead the Remain Parliament and Mrs May  prevented us doing so. We have ended up with an unsatisfactory period when we still have to obey EU laws and pay large sums of money. The new Parliament which will vote through our exit by December 2020 will not vote for our immediate exit this coming January. We will have to accept the costly legacy of the last Parliament was expensive delay to our exit.

The government is being urged to make sure all legal requirements and financial obligations end when we leave next December. They have also been persuaded to put in a Sovereignty clause to protect us against abuse of EU power during the Implementation period. The Committee stage of the Bill will give the government opportunity to strengthen the position, and in so doing strengthen its bargaining hand for the Free Trade Agreement  they seek in the discussions ahead with the EU. There is no need or desire to make further concessions on things like fish to secure a FTA.  

There seem to be two main strands in leadership proposals for Labour. The first is to go back to the damaging topic of Brexit which has splintered them so badly in the last three years, and to present a stronger Remain view. The second is to let the Conservatives deliver Brexit and concentrate instead on the radical social and economic agenda. Neither of these offers an easy route back to popularity.

Many of us see the result of the referendum followed by two elections where pro Brexit parties have won as a clear indication of the country’s view. We decided and we should get on with it.  Trying to do at a later stage  what the Lib Dems failed to do in the 2019 election seems foolish. Dressing it up as a second vote  when they want to have a vote between two kinds of Remain will not convince the Brexit majority. It is also a short term policy. The next General election should take place long after we have left the EU.

Those who want to stress the domestic agenda and develop the work of Corbyn and McDonnell are right to think forwards to a post Brexit world. They also need to ask themselves why was there so much hostility to their generous large offer of “free” services and nationalised businesses in 2019?

The voters in the North and Midlands they lost did not just switch because of Brexit, important though that was. They also felt Labour had forgotten the needs and views of the many  aspirational families who are not well off but who look to government to offer a hand up not a hand out. Labour constantly spoke out for the tiny minority that sleep rough, or the minority that still cannot find a job rather than for the many who pay taxes to pay the state bills and who want more of their own money to spend. Labour also speak for the migrants still to arrive, which worries those facing housing shortages or low wages.

If Labour take away the conclusion that free hand outs and nationalisations are popular, so they need more of them, they may well lose again. Labour last won under Tony Blair, when he tacked a long way towards Conservativism at a time when the Conservatives had messed the economy up thanks to the  European Exchange Rate Mechanism.

I rarely write about the Opposition parties, preferring to concentrate on how government can do better.

We will, however, hear a lot about Labour’s future as they embark on choosing a new leader. Our constitution thrives best with a strong Opposition that looks like a government in waiting, so what Labour does will matter. For this reason I am interested in your thoughts on what they might  do next. It was interesting that the biggest array of freebies ever offered in an election did not tease out  more supporters.

Their first self appointed task is to work out why they lost so many seats in 2019. They have been all but eliminated in Scotland where they used to be dominant, have been largely excluded from the South outside London and lost many seats in old heartlands in the North and Midlands. They are an urban party with a strong dependence on the capital.

The last election was two elections at the same time. There was a Leave/Remain battle. The Lib Dems tried to make it an election to revoke our departure, and the Conservatives stressed the need to get Brexit done. Labour was scarcely part of this contest, as they sought to present a range of Remain tilted opinions as a new policy whilst saying the were also a home for Leave voters. Their spokesmen and women were unconvincing on the biggest issue of the day. Anyone desperate to keep us in the EU would vote Lib Dem and anyone keen to leave would vote Conservative.

The second election was about economic and social policy. Labour led this debate with a comprehensive offer of much more state control and “free” goods and services for people, against a Conservative targeted offer of spending increases on the NHS, schools and police. Some in  Labour claim to have “won” this battle of ideas, yet the polling evidence suggests otherwise.

Those who think Labour’s twin problems were Brexit and the personality and past record of their Leader cling to the hope that otherwise their ideas were popular. Instead the more free offers Labour launched, the more people felt their policy was unaffordable. The  answer that only the rich would pay did not add up, and was contradicted by their Manifesto itself with the ending of the marriage allowance.

It appears the voters rejected not just Labour’s Brexit stance but also their economic offer. People remembered what happened with past Labour governments spending and nationalising  too much. Tomorrow I will look at what they could or might do next.

Early one recent morning when I was walking to my Parliamentary office a taxi driver stopped to tell me how pleased he was we would at last implement the referendum. He is training to be a teacher. He told me he was so fed up with Establishment and media bias and all the efforts to reverse the decision. He represents the passion and the decency behind the Brexit vote. He wanted to thank me but I felt I needed to thank him for holding true to the opportunity the vote offered.