Author: johnredwood

 

Today we awake to find that Clacton has the same MP with the same views as it had before the by election, and to find that Labour has once again won the Heywood and Middleton seat. It’s a strange “earthquake” that leaves Parliament with the same voting balance on matters Eurosceptic, and one of the same people.

If UKIP had won in Heywood I would have welcomed that. An extra Eurosceptic vote and the replacement of a federalist Labour MP with one who would support a new relationship with the EU and an In/Out referendum would have been welcome. Mr Carswell  will be able to do less as a UKIP Eurosceptic than he could do as a Conservative one, because he will no longer have a voice and vote within a large Parliamentary party. He will need to rebuild some of his links with us Conservative Eurosceptics  if he wants other MPs to back any of his proposals, second any of his motions and help him get some airtime in a Parliament which requires numbers to achieve things.

It will be interesting to see how the Farage/Carswell relationship works. Mr Carswell already sounds at variance with his new Leader over immigration, and sounds as if he fancies being the UKIP leader. In the Commons, of course, Mr Carswell will be the UKIP Leader – and Chief Whip, and spokesman on every topic. It will have the fortunate consequence for him that he will never have to rebel against his own Parliamentary whip, but for Mr Farage it will mean there is now a very independent voice speaking for UKIP who may not be the same as Mr Farage.

On balance I fear last night has slightly weakened the overall Eurosceptic cause.

It was interesting to see how much Lib Dem support has vanished now they are so clearly the most pro EU option available. In Clacton their vote collapsed from 12.9% to 1.4%, and in Heywood from 22.7% to 5%. This too has helped Labour hold a seat for its more moderate pro  EU stance.

 

You can rely on the BBC to side with the Lib Dems against England. Sure enough they are advertising a programme to chart the support they detect  for devolution of power to some great English cities. This betrays a lack of  understanding of why we need English votes for English issues now – the devolution of Income Tax to  Scotland.

If the purpose of more devolution is to create a better governed UK where people are happier being in the UK as a whole, then surely the place to give devolution to cities a trial is Glasgow. We know that Glasgow is the one city in the UK where a majority want to leave our country. Surely that would be the place to test out this devolution to cities? Why does the BBC only ever want to split up England, and never examines the case for splitting up Scotland?

Under the Lib Dem/BBC cities model there are two particularly hard questions for them to answer. The first is why only big cities? Why Newcastle and not Sunderland, or why Sunderland but not Reading, or why Reading but not Wokingham? Why no rural areas? Are people only capable of more self government if they chose to live in large urban areas?

The second is how many different rates of Income Tax do they want? If they want all in England to have the same rate, as they clearly want all in Scotland to have the same rate, why can’t England have a devolved system for deciding its rate of Income Tax as Scotland will have?

 

 

Recent poor figures from Germany show that the Euro malaise has spread to the motor economy of the zone. Growth remains very slow and unemployment high in many countries within the single currency area.  Money growth is almost non existent, confidence  levels are low and  new credit constrained.

The European Central Bank is putting the commercial banks through further stress tests. These may be necessary, but they are taking a long time. During this process banks are reluctant to lend additional money, for fear of their ratios remaining poor or weakening further. The ECB is offering more cheap loans to the banking system, but all the time they have limits on their balance sheets it is difficult for them to take full advantage of this to lend more money on to the commercial sectors.

The German authorities are still keen to avoid full scale Quantitative Easing in the zone to offset the weak bank position. All the time the commercial banks are under tough control any monetary experiment will have limited favourable impact on activity.

Meanwhile, in both the US and the UK self sustaining recoveries are underway, with commercial banks now capable of  lending more money to facilitate sensible investment and consumption. In Japan where they are undertaking another huge quantitative easing they are still struggling to get decent money growth owing to the problems of their commercial banks.

In due course the UK and US will be able to put interest rates up a bit to make savings more worthwhile. In the meantime at least the US and UK have ended quantitative easing and  do have growth and a better record on generating new jobs. The Euro zone still has not worked out how to recycle or limit the huge German balance of payments surplus, nor how to transfer enough  money from rich to poor, or how to create a commercial banking system which can finance a decent recovery.

Trying to help settle Iraq, Syria and Libya is proving very problematic for the west. The politics of identity and religious loyalty is always complex and can become violent  if governments fail to carry enough of their people with them.

Perhaps we should  remember the UK’s  difficult experiences in Northern Ireland. No-one then suggested escalating the violence because some in the Republic supported the IRA, and no-one thought the UK  should  take action  against the USA because some  US citizens were  helping fund the Republicans. The UK state tried to keep it as a law and order matter in the province, seeking to enforce laws against violence whichever side in Northern Ireland perpetrated it. On the occasions when  the  police or army used too much force on the ground,  by mistake according to the  authorities,  it usually set back  a solution rather than helping. The more people who died on both sides, the more the bitterness intensified. Progress was only made when all agreed to sit down and talk about how to come up with a better future.

We need to ask what we learned from this difficult situation, and whether that knowledge can be deployed in places like Ukraine and Iraq where there are worse civil wars and terrorist actions within the state. The intervention of external forces may be well intentioned, but it is very difficult to see how military engagement can lead to a stable peace when there are so many struggling factions and when there are underlying power struggles between Shia and Sunni and between large regional powers surrounding Iraq. The barbarism of ISIL is rightly widely condemned, but other factions, armed bands and armies are killing people as well.

The west is going to find it difficult to help. We lack enough people with the language skills and with a deep understanding of the religions and politics of the area. It is asking a lot of our troops when we commit them to police a foreign country where they cannot speak to the people they are trying to help, where they do not automatically understand many of the local customs, and where attitudes towards the law and  obedience to the authorities are different to those in a western democracy. I am glad this time we are not putting boots on the ground. The boots that do the walking have to support the men that do the talking. It is going to take more talking and politics of a high order to bring some stability and peace out of the civil wars in current Middle Eastern states.

There are also worrying reports coming out of Iraq that ISIL forces are now well embedded with the civilian population and are involved in providing or taxing and controlling some local economic activity. This makes any military solution that does not also kill the people we want to help so much more difficult, and reminds us that as and when ISIL forces are defeated there needs to be recovery work on the ground to rebuild damaged facilities and assist in creating a new functioning economy and civil society. The unwillingness of Turkey to take action against ISIL for fear of helping Assad, and their worries about Kurdish separatism, provides further evidence of just how complex and difficult this situation is. Turkey is after all a member of NATO and should be a strong US ally, but on this occasion sees things differently to the USA.

 

Dr Cable effectively accused Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne of lying about future tax and spend plans. I would be interested in how you would describe this statement from the Lib Dem Manifesto of 2010:

“We will scrap unfair university tuition fees for all students taking their first degrees, including those who study part time, saving them over £10,000 each”

Dr Cable was the responsible Cabinet Minister who decided to keep Labour’s tuition fees, and put them up substantially. He then put both the Lib Dem and Conservative parties on a 3 line whip to vote for his scheme.

Under the Coalition agreement he could have asked Conservatives to draw up plans and could have refused to vote for them if he did not like them. Instead he chose to put up tuition fees.

Or how would you describe the Lib Dem promise to vote to reduce the number of MPs in the Commons as part of the spending reduction programme in return for the Conservatives voting to hold an AV referendum? You may remember Conservatives did vote for the Lib Dem referendum, but Lib Dems did not vote for the boundary review.

The main reason Lib Dems are struggling in the polls is the way they behaved over the tuition fee issue. I was summonsed like many other Conservative candidates in the 2010 election to a meeting of local sixth formers so the Lib Dems could offer them the abolition of tuition fees for university. I explained that my party did now back Labour’s tuition fees. I said we, like Labour if they were elected, would look at the forthcoming review of university funding Labour had set up and might reluctantly have to agree to increases in the fees. It was not a popular line, unlike the Lib Dems free gift promise.

The Lib Dem Manifesto for 2015 is taking shape. It is likely to send out clear messages:

Do not work hard and earn a good income – if you do we will punish you with higher income taxes

If you dare succeed and get a higher income, do not buy an expensive  house – if you do we will want to punish you with higher taxes

If you earn well and dare to save for your retirement, we will take money from  your pension fund with higher taxes

If you run your own business and want to sell it for a good profit, we will want to take profits with Capital Gains tax

If you save we will pursue you with higher dividend taxes

The Lib Dem advice is do not succeed and get a good income or make a business success. Or if you do, spend the money as quickly as possible. On no account save it or invest it. Saving, investing, building companies and buying dearer houses are ills that need to be punished.

What a depressing outlook.

 

 

Hi John

I am writing piece about where a potential English Parliament could be located if one was established.

I know you have proposed that the House of Commons could double up as an English Parliament, but I wanted to ask why you thought that would be the best location? Is cost a consideration? Why elese? Do you think any other locations should be considered, and if so, which ones? I have heard York, Birmingham and Manchester discussed. Is there an argument for locating it further north?

etc  from a named person at the BBC

 

Dear (X)

I want to find a good value  and easy solution to the problem of England which we can do quickly. We have capacity at Westminster in the building, and we have all the back up and resource we need to handle all the English devolved issues  with UK MPs from England doing both jobs. It would be a lot dearer to establish a new building and move all of us to and from it and Westminster to undertake our respective UK and devolved duties. It would be even dearer to have another set of MPs doing the English job.

Westminster is also the home of the English Parliament, and the English and Welsh Parliament, from the days before the union with Scotland and later with Ireland.  History, tradition, cost and practicality all combine to mean we should meet at Westminster.

I also look forward to the day when the BBC recognises England. I want BBC England to broadcast alongside BBC Scotland and BBC Wales. The overwhelming majority of people in England do not want to be broken up into regions for government as the North East referendum showed under Labour. Isn’t it time the BBC gave us  an English voice with BBC England?

Is the BBC also doing a feature on splitting Scotland into regions and moving the Scottish Parliament to Aberdeen or Dundee? If not why not? Why do you always have to seek to balkanise and split up England?

Regards

John Redwood

 

Syria, Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan.  All four of these countries have been through brutal civil wars recently, and three are still  suffering from conflict. The UK’s approach to each is different.

In Afghanistan we fought a full war with our allies, put troops in on the ground, policed territory and are now handing over responsibility for security to local forces and taking our leave.

In Iraq we have fought two wars, and are now helping others fight another  war against a militant insurgency, limiting our military involvement to a few missions by planes flying on long round trips from Cyprus. Our previous wars have not produced a settled country.

In Libya we used missiles and bombs delivered from the air and offshore to help topple an authoritarian regime, and are now leaving the civil disruption and war to local forces.

In Syria we are not intervening at all, though the government did wish to last year. It then wanted to intervene to help bring down the unpleasant ruler. More recently it has been more inclined to intervene against the militant insurgents who are seeking to topple that same government.

UK interventions are sometimes helpful to Sunnis, and sometimes to Shia. The underlying religious civil war continues. The current tilt of UK policy is pro Shia, seeking to defeat the nasty ISIL forces.

What can we learn from these different approaches?

Some in the military say the Afghan model is the right one. They believe  the west does have to intervene, bring down   bad regimes, and then use its forces on the ground to offer protection to an emerging democratic process. Some say Afghanistan will now settle down to a better peaceful democratic future. Others think the west should keep forces there for longer and offer stronger guarantees of stability to the latest civilian government. This would of course require consent from the Afghan authorities, in a  country where some  may be weary of foreign troops on its soil as well as weary of war.

Some say the Libyan model was right. A short sharp military intervention ended a bad regime. Time might then produce a better answer as the competing forces try to sort out a new future. Others say that so far the breakdown in law and order has been most damaging to the Libyan economy, with death and destruction stalking the land.

Some say we need to be more wholeheartedly engaged in the Iraqi conflict. We need to be prepared with our allies to commit more force to destroy ISIL  more quickly, and will need to commit western troops on the ground yet again because local forces do not seem so far to be up to the task of defeating the insurgents.

I think what I take away from all this is it is very difficult for the west, despite its massive force led  by the USA, to intervene successfully, to create stable and peace loving democracies. I am glad we are now leaving Afghanistan and support non intervention in Syria and Libya despite the obvious problems there. Sometimes you have to accept you cannot solve all the world’s problems. If more force is needed to kill more people in these countries the local powers with armies and airforces on the ground have plenty of ways of bombing, shelling and occupying territory.

When it comes to Iraq I remain concerned about our limited intervention.  Is the coalition giving the necessary support to local forces to recapture the territory lost to ISIL? Is there a good political strategy in place from the new government to win over Kurds and Sunnis to a unified Iraqi rule? Will arming the Kurds lead to demands for a separate Kurdish state, and how would this be accommodated? What is the strategy for dealing with the Syrian part of ISIL, and with Russia which retains influence in the region?

I am as appalled as any by the mindless evil of some ISIL people with the organised murders of humanitarian aid workers. I agree with the US and UK governments that discussing ransoms could encourage  more such detentions of westerners and would fuel the ISIL forces as it filled their treasury. It is tough having to tell families of those captured that it is likely their loved ones will die, but if the USA and UK does not know where they are being held it is impossible to rescue them. Usually with bullies the best approach is to hit them back.  These people are however both bad and mad. They are mad enough to deliberately provoke and take on the forces of the mightiest military coalition of the world led by the USA. I am not sure the usual rules of how to respond to bullies works with them.

 

 

 

I welcome both tax cuts announced by the Prime Minister for the next Parliament. I think it quite easy to answer Labour’s query, how will they be paid for? The answer incidentally will be set out in detail later this autumn when we see the next set of forecasts for spending and borrowing from this government which will give us revised base figures.

The Conservative leadership has ruled out one of the three possible ways to pay for the Income tax cuts – tax rises elsewhere. That leaves two ways to  pay for them – rising revenues from economic growth, and declining public spending.

These tax cuts are not like a cut in CGT from 28% or a cut in top rate income tax from 50% or 45% which pay for themselves because they raise more revenue. There will be a substantial revenue loss from raising the tax threshold and some revenue loss by raising the 40p threshold.

The first offset to the tax cuts will be increased revenue elsewhere. People with more spending money after tax will pay more VAT, fuel duty and other consumption taxes.

The second offset will be more tax revenue of all kinds as economic growth is likely to get a stimulus from the extra private spending power the tax cuts generate. It is likely to add to confidence and activity levels.

The third offset is some decline in benefits. As more people get into work, so there will be fewer on unemployment related benefits. As more people are on higher net and gross pay, so there will be reduced payments of top up benefits to make up their incomes.  A natural decline in benefit spending because people are better off will be a welcome spending cut.

We will need to see the official figures for how much  each of these categories contributes. The rest will need to be done by reduced spending.

In this Parliament the deficit has been reduced whilst large tax reductions through raising the Income Tax threshold have been pushed through. A Conservative government wishes to do more of the same. I welcome any move to cut Income taxes in ways which get more people into work and reduce the need to pay people top up benefits. I want people to be better off and benefit spending to fall as a result, which is what I understand this policy to be all about.

 

 

Today we hear the detail of what a Conservative government would do to put UK voters and their Parliament back in charge of human rights, welfare, criminal justice  and borders policy.  If elected a majority Conservative government will

 

Repeal the 1998  Human Rights Act

Restore the primacy of the UK’s own Supreme court in cases of human rights

End the ability of the ECHR to change British laws. Their judgements would in future be advisory.

Define in UK law where human rights apply, and restrict its application by reducing its reach into  trivial cases

Ensure that those who pose a threat to our country or have entered illegally cannot rely on Human Rights claims  to avoid deportation.

 

The new law would prevent people from using the right to a family life as a reason why they should for example be allowed to break our planning laws . It would stop non UK citizens  who had committed serious offences here from using the right to a family life as a reason to stay.

None of this means we are against human rights. Upholding liberties and ensuring  high standards of fairness and legal process is part of a democratic and free society. The ultimate arbiter of this should be Parliament acting on behalf of the UK people. We do not want unaccountable and unelected judges telling us what laws we need to follow or revising laws we have chosen. That should always be a matter for Parliament, with MPs deciding. This leaves the power where it belongs, in the hands of British people, who can vote to change their Parliament and therefore their laws.

Chris Grayling, the Lord Chancellor, has done a great job in developing these proposals and piloting them through the Conservative Manifesto process. He has been encouraged by a group of concerned Conservative MPs who have highlighted the way European human rights law has made it more difficult to control our borders and our extradition system.