April 1

I hear that in a timely way EU leaders meeting in private have become alarmed. They are getting reports of a growing revolt in the UK against the long and unhelpful Brexit talks and have decided they need to take it seriously. After all, what would it achieve if they beat the UK government into submission only to find that UK voters were once again insistent that they just want to leave. Last time they succeeded in crushing a UK PM in negotiations it led directly to the vote to leave. This time it could lead to an early exit without any deal.

Germany is very worried they will not be able to export all those cars and manufactured goods tariff free. All countries are worried they wont get the £40bn leaving present which will so ease the financial pain of the UK’s departure. They are concerned that the UK may not be such a willing strategic partner, carrying a disproportionate share of the defence and Intelligence burden for the continent. The UK might become even less willing to take unemployed people from the continent and welcome them into jobs with benefit top ups.

As a result sources close on this special day tell me they are now resolving to let the UK have all it wants in terms of a future trade and economic partnership in the hope that will be enough to assuage the growing concern in the UK about the extent of the give aways. There is even discussion that as the EU thinks you need to pay to trade maybe they should do the paying, as they are the ones with the big surplus and with most to lose. Perhaps all those Remain commentators and politicians who have been telling us how the EU will be nasty, keen to give us a lousy deal, were wrong after all. Maybe the rest of the EU is learning that democracy is a fine thing and the UK has made a democratic decision. Maybe they see the advantages for them. Mr Macron can wield more power without the UK there, and Mrs Merkel can help complete her political union without the Uk trying to hold her back. As a result it is possible the UK will be allowed to eat cake, indeed encouraged to eat cake. Then all the rest of EU all can eat cake as well.

The lecture I gave in Speaker’s House will be shown again on BBC Parliament Channel at 15.10 on the afternoon of Monday 2nd April, for those interested.

This week end Christians remember the brutal execution of Christ and the resurrection.

We read of him as a great figure. The Son of God to Christians, a great prophet or teacher to non believers. His words echo down the centuries. They are as fresh and relevant today as they were when uttered.

Some wrestle with difficulty with the great gap between the peace loving messages of Christ seeking to improve relations between people and to calm tensions and conflicts on the one hand , and the deeds of the Churches in their centuries of power and wealth on the other.

Sixteenth and seventeenth century Europe was ravaged by religious conflict as rival views of the Christian message were used to fight for money and political control. The Church Militant often struck a political pose, supported warring powers, and provided some of the most influential people and arguments to progress the conflicts and hatred.

Gradually the policy of toleration spread, though it took until the last century to arrive at proper religious toleration in most western countries. I welcome the way today in the UK the Christian Churches respect each other and seek to avoid conflict. Today politics in the UK is not primarily about religion. Mr Blair was strongly advised not to do God as PM.

In today’s world there are still religious wars, and still too many incidents of religious persecution affecting several faiths. Sometimes the western allies intervene in these conflicts, with very mixed results.

In the UK we are left with an Established Church that does make forays into domestic politics, with some of its leaders urging their anti Brexit views on anyone who will listen. Often their main idea is that the state should provide a solution for every economic and moral problem. The private sector is usually something to tax and regulate to prevent or alleviate the alleged harm it does.

The MPC has a pessimistic view of the future of the UK economy. They think we can only grow at 1.5% per annum in future. It is true that like other advanced countries our growth rate since the Banking crash and Great recession has been a bit slower than the previous trend, but this figure looks unreasonably low given the scope for technology to carry on transforming our lives and the way we do business. It also offers us nothing for the extra spending at home once we cancel the EU subs, nor for the possible recovery of sectors damaged by common EU policies. They also need to take into account the continued expansion of jobs and the workforce. We have confirmation that the economy grew at 1.8 % in both 2016 and 2017, with the referendum vote making no difference.

Because it is pessimistic about the future, it therefore says it will need to slow our growth to avoid inflation. It’s a circular argument. They say  we think growth should be slow. If it turns out to be a bit faster they say we will need to slow it, because it will not be sustainable without inflation. That’s a gloomy doctrine that does not allow for the possibility that our future trend growth rate may be higher than they think.

They stated in their latest report “Given the prospect of excess demand over the forecast period (i.e the economy doing better) the ongoing tightening monetary policy over the forecast period will be appropriate”. The Bank did relax monetary policy a couple of months after the referendum vote, which helped demand and also pushed the pound down a bit more. More recently the Bank has tightened money by putting up interest rates again, taking action to reduce car loans, mortgages and consumer credit, and withdrawing special facilities for commercial banks. As a result the pound has gone back up against the dollar to where it was before the referendum vote and has even strengthened a little against a strong Euro. The Bank thinks a weaker pound caused inflation, so presumably they think this stronger pound will do the opposite, which should reduce their concerns. They don’t say much about that.

There is still a long year to wait before we leave the EU. This is quite enough time to make any changes that are needed. The government assures us we will be ready to leave with No Deal if necessary.

I want the government to get on with the new borders, fishing, farming and trade policies we can enjoy once outside. I also want to hear how we will spend all the money we save. If we are going to delay our effective exit and give them more money in a prolonged transition there will need to be a very good deal to justify the delay. The message from many of us is Get on with it. Brexit will bring substantial benefits and opportunities.

We have a borders and trade system which works for the rest of the world at the moment, so we know how to live outside the EU.

According to Global Firepower Russia manages to sustain 3794 military aircraft, 20,216 tanks and 63 submarines on the same level of defence spending as the UK. The UK has according to the same source 856 planes, 249 tanks and 11 submarines. The UK economy is twice the size of the Russian one at current exchange rates. Russian wages are lower and a lot of military output comes from state factories which may well subsidise production costs.

These figures reveal why the West takes Russia seriously. It may lack state of the art technology in a lot of its military hardware, and may have problems getting it all operational, but no-one can deny that Russia has a serious military capability able to operate a long way from home if it needs to. It does also have some smart weapons. Russia has allies throughout the Middle East and is seeking to improve relations with China. NATO led by the USA has plenty of firepower of its own to protect its people and member states. The West has recently shown some resolve following the attempted murders in Salisbury. For her part Russia should understand and accept that NATO is a defensive alliance with no wish to extend territory by force of arms.

When intervening in conflict zones in the Middle East Russia and her allies proceed with less concern for collateral damage, less worry about killing non combatants in the anti ISIS war. Russia has taken over as the main outsider defeating Isis, with the West carefully keeping in touch to avoid mistakes in crowded skies over Syria. Russia also has substantial cyber capability, and uses the world media to pursue its policy aims.

Europe continues to welcome large quantities of Russian gas and to carry on trading, despite the obvious political disagreements. I would be interested to hear your thoughts on what NATO as a whole and the UK in particular should be saying and doing about Russian policy.

Van Dyck’s great portraits of Charles I on display at the RA exhibition show how out of touch with political reality the King was in his prime. Just as Inigo Jones’s outstanding Banqueting House was both one of the Stuart triumphs and the stage set for Charles’s death, so the large equestrian portraits of the King fixed for ever an image of a would be autocrat with so little understanding of his people.

Charles wished to part of the privileged and cultured elite of royal Europe. He married a well connected French Princess with good links to the Pope, having failed to marry the daughter of the Spanish Catholic King. This was only some thirty years on from the Spanish attempted invasion of England by an Armada out to enforce conversion to Catholicism on a heretic nation. He spent large sums he could ill afford on a grand collection of great art, and commissioned large paintings from the best painters of contemporary Europe. Rubens was persuaded to portray the Apotheosis of James I on the Banqueting House ceiling. The effect was to remind visitors of the newly found imperial power of the united thrones of Scotland and England, with Charles as the heir to the achievement of his father. Van Dyck became the main court painter, producing many images of the King that make him unforgettable to the generations that have followed.

There are several portraits of Charles in armour sitting on horseback. It is these images that would have been unsettling to his Parliamentary critics. A man who probably rightly ended wars with Spain and France early in his reign, was to turn his armour and his military power against his own people in a prolonged civil war. He may have loved Van Dyck’s flattering portrayal of him as a powerful King and horesman, armed for a fight, but it turned out to represent a power Parliament did not want him to have and a military endeavour planned against the wrong people. Instead of him coming over as a loved father of the nation, feared by our country’s enemies, he increasingly came over as an autocrat who did not understand the growing role of Parliament and the importance of listening to grievances of subjects as voiced by their MPs and peers. His Catholic Queen added to his unpopularity in an age of unpleasant and often violent religious intolerance. England and Scotland were by and large protestant and expected their monarch to represent the majority view.

It is true we see very regal and authoritative images of Henry VIII and Elizabeth, though not usually dressed in armour. Their images come across as representing England. Both of those powerful monarchs allowed Parliament to meet and to argue with them. Henry VIII relied on Parliament to legislate for his religious revolution to give it greater authority. Elizabeth knew she had to appeal to her Parliaments to grant her the money she needed for the conduct of government. Charles thought for a decade he could rule without Parliament, resorting to ever more annoying ways of raising money without consent to meet his extravagant lifestyle. He was a good connoisseur of art, but it came at a heavy price. The costs of his new Palace buildings and the many paintings increased the strains with his spurned Parliament.

Seeing all these paintings together in one exhibition is a feast of great art. I came away with a reinforced understanding of just how worrying the King’s elite lifestyle and sympathy for the authoritarian monarchs on the continent would have been to the Protestant in the street or the puritan in Parliament. It was no wonder he ended his life in such tragedy. Parliament took its dislike of Charles following victory on the battlefield to the extreme and contentious decision to kill the King himself. The painting traditions of the more democratic and commercially successful Netherlands make a stark comparison to Charles’s taste. In the Netherlands still life, cameos of the day to day and portraits of many successful merchants and Councillors stood in contrast to the imposing regal portraits and the extensive allegories of the grand canvasses and tapestries favoured in Whitehall, in Madrid and in Paris.

I do not think there is a simple extra tax we can invent that will meet the future financial needs of the NHS. The UK government has usually avoided hypothecation of revenues for the perfectly good reason that there is no likelihood that a particular tax will always yield exactly the right amount that any particular service might need for its costs. We will need to spend more in future on the NHS, and that will come out of general taxation. The increased spending may exceed the increased yield of a nominated tax. The settlement will be unstable, with the NHS complaining if the hypothecated revenue falls short of what it thinks it needs.

Nor do I think there is a way to have a ten year financial settlement for the NHS. A ten year settlement will span three Parliaments which will have different governments whether of the same party or different parties, with MPs elected on different programmes and spending priorities. It is difficult to know how much health care will be needed in ten years time and what the technology and service delivery will be like. It may look very different from today given the pace of technical change. We could make what we think is a generous settlement today, only for the NHS to discover it has a good need of more money than settled on it at some future date. I doubt the fact of a ten year settlement would act as an constraint on the request for more cash, which might well be justified. There is a lot to be said for making a firm offer of cash for the immediate year ahead, with indicative budgets for the following few years. It is difficult to know today how much we will need to spend in 2028 and on what.

It is likely many people will want to spend more on their healthcare as they earn better real incomes. This will happen automatically as the tax take increases with rising incomes, and more money will be voted for the NHS. Some of this will also be possible from the increasing take up of private healthcare which many opt for. There is a lot of self treatment with the help of the local pharmacy, where over the counter medicines are bought on a large scale. Some of it takes the form of people taking out subscriptions to Health clubs, and paying for a diet and exercise regime they think will keep them healthier. Some people take out private insurance or have employers that provide it. Some pay for private treatment when they need it to get round long waiting times for non urgent NHS treatment or to benefit from the greater flexibility over timing of treatments and standards of supporting care, including private rooms in hospitals.

There will nonetheless remain a major requirement for the state to vote more money for more and better quality healthcare free at the point of use in NHS surgeries and hospitals. Much of the care and cost will be for the elderly as they live longer and develop more conditions related to old age that need treatment. It will require better integration with social care to cater for this growing group of patients.

The long and cold winter has not been kind to the roads. There are now many areas of damaged surfaces and a lot of holes forming through the tarmac. I have been lobbying the government to urge them to do more to recover from this problem now we may have seen the end of the snow and ice. Prompt action before the holes get any bigger would be good in itself and cheaper in the long run. I was pleased to see this morning the Transport Secretary has announced an extra £100m for Councils to do pothole work, on top of the Pothole Action Fund he provided earlier this year.

I am also renewing my submissions on how to improve the capacity of the present road network through better traffic management, and how to spend on road improvements that can ease congestion and improve safety. The list of ideas includes:

1. Rephasing lights to give priority to main roads, with sensors for side roads
2. Right hand turning lanes where possible
3. Mini roundabouts and roundabouts in place of traffic lights where this can ease congestion
4. More off street parking and less on street parking
5. Better arrangements for drop off and pick up at schools, away from cars parking on the main road
6. More bridges over railway lines to replace level crossings and to provide more routes into town and city centres, and more bridges over rivers.
7. More cycleways away from main roads to provide a safer route for cyclists
8. New and replacement utility pipes and cables to be buried away from the main carriageways of roads, with easier access points for repairs
9. Clearer signs for times of bus lanes, with more use of lanes by other vehicles outside peaks
10. More bypasses to take through traffic away from residential areas and High Streets

The UK establishment including the Blairite wing of the Labour party like contradicting themselves on trade. They tell us free trade is essential to the UK’s prosperity, and for that reason we need to stay in the EU to have tariff free trade with the other states. They go quiet about the fact that staying in the EU and its Customs Union means we do not have free trade with the rest of the world, but have to trade over high food and drink tariffs, vehicle tariffs and numerous non tariff barriers to trade. Our trade with the rest of the world is larger than our trade with the rest of the EU, and usually faster growing, despite these obstacles.

They also gloss over the way the EU is responding to the the USA both in response to Mr Trump’s words and actions where he is imposing tariffs and talking of more barriers, and as a result of the EU attacking various US companies and sectors. Mr Trump says he wants reciprocal trade arrangements, his word for fair. He says he wants the trade deal offered by the EU to the US to mirror that offered by the US to the EU. So, for example, Mr Trump says to the EU there is only a 2.4% tariff on EU cars into the USA but a 10% tariff on US cars into the EU. Does the EU intend to level this down, or is the EU relaxed about US retaliatory action on this matter? Is there sone counter to this likely to see off more tariffs?

Instead of dealing with these issues the EU is busily seeking ways to regulate and tax US corporations who are good at the digital economy more. At the same time as the USA is cutting corporate taxes to make business more welcome in the USA the EU is trying to find a turnover tax which will hit mainly US technology companies operating in the EU. Will this wind the President up to further unhelpful tariff action and give him in his view more grounds for unhelpful action?

Mr Trump points out that the USA has a collossal trade deficit with the rest of the world, dominated by its large deficits with China and Germany. He is taking specific action against China as he is worried about alleged theft of intellectual property and unfair subsidies. He is concerned about the huge number of EU cars imported into the USA and the unfair tariff arrangements, and may make a move on that as well.

The UK pays to trade with the rest of the EU. It means paying to run a large deficit with them. The big imbalance in food and drink is particularly curious, as we are barred from importing more from cheaper places outside the EU by a high tariff wall, and impeded in the better answer of producing more of our own by the Common Fishing and Farming policies. It is difficult to see the EU as a paragon of free trade when you look at the complex and defensive structure of the EU Customs Union and its complex regulatory and subsidy systems.