Author: johnredwood

Poverty is a scourge which always needs fighting. I spoke about this on Monday. I was pleased to see the Prime Minister dedicate himself to an all out assault on poverty yesterday.  Poverty is relative as well as absolute. The west has long since gone beyond making sure people have the basics for life – enough food to survive, a few clothes and shelter. Our welfare systems are designed to let people afford  some of the benefits of the rich society around them in addition to some absolute minimum. The political argument is over how much should people enjoy from benefit payments, who should qualify for benefits,  and what is the best way of encouraging and helping more people into work, and then into better paid work.

In my speech to the Conference fringe meeting I sketched a small  society. Nine people each earned £20,000 a year. The average earnings of the community was £20,000, and there was no inequality. Total earnings were £180,000. A very well paid CEO of a multinational decided he wished to join this community, bringing his income of £820,000 a year. The socialist was against his arrival, as it would generate a huge jump in inequality.

After his arrival the average earnings of the community leapt from £20,000 to £100,000. Inequality shot up from zero, to the highest paid earning 41 times the lowest. The community  now had someone to be jealous of. The total earnings of the community reached £1 million.

Surely, however, the community should welcome his arrival. It would immediately mean the community could collect around £500,000 or more  of additional income, capital and sales taxes from the new arrival, to spend on the  existing community members and their needs. It would allow them to find new markets for their products and services, or to gain higher paid employment by working for the new arrival. Far from the new arrival being bad news, he would generate more growth  and allow the people on £20,000 a year each to earn more and to enjoy more public spending than they could afford for themselves. The inequalities need to be looked at on a post tax basis, not a pre tax basis, and need to take into account the impact of the spending by the more affluent on the incomes of the less affluent.

Poverty is the problem to tackle vigorously. Inequality is very bad if it comes about by the poor getting poorer. If inequality rises because more rich people decide to live here, it can provide money for higher living standards for all.

Mrs May has travelled a long way since 2002 and her modernising  agenda. More recently she asked the Conservstive party to vote to sacrifice criminal justice powers to the EU when we had no need to do so.

Yesterday she posed as a resolute fighter against the EU having power and influence over our borders and migration policy, and warned that allowing too much migration into the UK was damaging to our society.

Mrs May is the senior Minister charged with the duty of getting net inward migration down to tens of thousands from the current level in excess of 300,000 a year. This is a good and popular policy. I am glad she is taking it seriously.

It it happens to be remarkably similar to the policy offered by the Coalition government in the last Parliament, when Mrs May was also the responsible senior Minister. Maybe it was too difficult to do with Lib Dems using a veto on measures required to achieve it. Now she is freed of that problem, what we want to hear from Mrs May is the practical steps that she is taking to achieve the policy aim. We do not need dramatic language or warnings. We need her to preside over a harmonious and successful society, and to find fair and effective ways of carrying out her prime policy goal.

I  suspect she knows that we do need to regain control over migration from the EU to fulfil the policy objective.  Her new anti EU rhetoric needs to share with us  how she intends to get back lost powers over our borders from within the EU and how she is contributing to Mr Cameron’s renegotiation. I wish her well with that endeavour.

At the Politeia meeting last night on Stay or Leave we ended up debating sovereignty. Most of us wish to restore or reassert UK sovereignty. If the UK people and their Parliament want to change a law or control our borders, or decide how much to tax and spend we need to be free to do so. None of that is possible under the present Treaties.

Some argued that the UK remains sovereign. They pointed out that the EU only has power in the UK thanks to the 1972 European Communities Act. What Parliament granted to the EU it could take away. Clearly having a referendum on whether to stay in the EU is the act of a sovereign country. If we vote to leave then leave we can and leave we shall. We can leave by repealing the 1972 Act.

The problem is if the UK does not wish to exercise this power, at what point does the power cease to exist? At what point are we so dominated by European Treaty law and by EU regulations and directives that we can no longer claim to be sovereign? At what point would seeking the amendment or repeal of the 1972 Act cease to be possible, as we were so bound in by EU laws?

The danger is the EU already has a very different view of our legal position to our view of it. They see us as subject to the superior law of the treaties and European Court. Re asserting sovereignty comes down to a question of political will. Either the government has to show it in its renegotiation, or the British people have to show it in, the referendum. If we leave it too long we will discover our sovereignty is no more, and the EU can control us by court judgements and new laws.

I wish to hear today an optimistic message from Conference. Conservatives must use this period in office to promote greater opportunity and prosperity.

To do so requires lower taxes. People should keep more  of what they earn, and more of what they make by venturing their savings.

Lower tax rates on income and gains will also yield more tax revenue to help those in need. the state should be generous to the disabled, and to the elderly who need care.

To do so requires us both to build more homes and to limit inward migration. House prices are too high and rents too dear in places around the country and especially in London.

To do so requires more gas fuelled power stations providing more reliable and cheaper energy.

To do so requires a transport policy that makes it easier to get work by car or by train, with more commuter rail capacity and more road capacity.

I go to Conference to further my campaigns for these improvements.

Some in the media have already written the script for the Conservative conference – splits on Europe. It was a silly script to write during the Opposition years, when the Conservative party was happily united opposing the Nice, Amsterdam and Lisbon treaties, opposing the Euro and resisting more powers to Brussels. It is an even sillier script now we are united in offering the UK people a referendum on our membership, with all enjoying the freedom to express their own view on what is wrong with our EU relationship and how we wish to change it.

The good thing about the Conservative conference is it offers the government an opportunity to remind other members of the EU that behind Ministers lies a party and a country that is far from happy with our current relationship. We have alerted people to the growing political union on the continent, and how the UK needs a new relationship with that emerging union as we have no wish to join it. Today those who want to stay in the EU agree with many of the current Eurosceptic criticisms of the current EU. They do not defend the present borders and migration policy or our lack of control over our own borders. They do not defend the dear energy policy which is hitting our industry, the lack of trade agreements with India, China and the USA, the high bills sent to UK taxpayers for spending elsewhere in the EU, or the mass unemployment being created by the Euro in many countries of the Union.  They need to show us how the UK can negotiate a settlement from inside, as many of us are happy to leave to solve these problems once and for all.

Conference should be primarily about how we increase the prosperity of our country. It is time to explain and to develop the policies we need to offer home ownership to the many at affordable prices, to create more and better paid jobs, to rebuild industry and embrace new technology.

I will be speaking at

Think Tent  (just inside secure zone by conference hall)     “Does caring about the poor require caring about inequality?”   IEA   14.45   Monday 5 October

Politeia  Arora Hotel Princess Street Manchester  M1 4LG    “Britain and the EU   To stay or go?    18.30  Monday 5 October  (outside security)

I will also be attending other events to discuss the state of the economy and social policy.

Mr Obama dithers and changes his mind too often on foreign policy. He now watches as Russia moves in to fill the vacuum where the USA once was the dominant influence on  Syria and Middle East policy. The present situation is full of both danger and opportunity.

Russia’s relationship with the Obama regime was badly damaged by the annexation of Crimea. The West condemned Russia for an illegal occupation. Russia condemned the USA and EU  for helping destabilise a Ukrainian President who just about held the country together only  to see him replaced by a new President who could not get on with the Russian speaking peoples in his own country. The West imposed sanctions on Russia, and turned its attention to the deteriorating situation in Iraq and Syria. Russia sought to build its long standing diplomatic and economic links with the Syrian regime of Assad and with Iran as a prelude to possible intervention of its own. Russia offered sufficient help to the rebels in the east of what remained of the Ukraine to keep the Ukrainian civil war going. Both the rebels and the Ukrainian government used military means to extend their dispute, killing civilians caught in the crossfire.

President Obama came to power implying he would withdraw from Afghanistan and seek diplomatic rather than military solutions to Middle Eastern problems. He was talked into augmenting the military presence in Afghanistan and fighting for longer before withdrawal. He promised to end detention at Guantanamo Bay for suspected terrorists and others who were not put on trial, but was talked into holding people for longer who subsequently were not accused of any offence in a court. He was contemplating removing Assad from Syria by force, but did not do so. More recently he says he wishes to defeat ISIL, but will not use ground troops to do so. It is no wonder Russia sees weakness and uncertainty in these changes and attitudes.

Russia now sees an opportunity for a win/win. Russia would probably on suitable terms settle Crimea and join a joint action against ISIL, as long as Assad’s regime was not the target as well. If the West will not accept Russian terms for collaboration, Russia thinks she will get away with military intervention in Syria to weaken both ISIL and other enemies of Assad, strengthening Russia’s position as an ally of Syria and Iran with an important place in the region. I understand Russia’s strategy( I do not of course support it), but struggle to understand the USA’s reply. The USA says she welcomes help with tackling ISIL though it needs to be co-ordinated, but condemns attacks on some other forces fighting against Assad. What is the USA going to do about it if Russia does bomb non ISIL opponents of Assad?  Will the USA help Russia identify who they do want to kill?

Having both the USA and Russia intervening with  bombs in a highly unstable country with no clear agreed political strategy is dangerous. Involving Russia and Iran in a solution to Syria’s problems might be helpful, if it were done by talking. It is high time there was an attempt to get serious talks underway between the interested parties on the future of Syria. At some point war war has to give way to jaw jaw. Does Syria have a future as a unitary state? What happens after Assad? How will the expectations of the Kurds be handled? Can Sunni and Shia find a way of power sharing in a unified state? There are many questions to tackle. Bombs will not provide an answer to most of them.