I am not writing about the by elections before the results and will not publish partisan comments on them prior to the poll. There are so many candidates that balanced coverage needs to mention.

There have been plenty of populist parties rise in the EU. No wonder, when the traditional parties, the national establishments and the EU serve up slow or no growth, high taxes and high levels of inward migration. The populist parties do sometimes get into power, but then often let people down. Syriza seized the government of Greece only to get into a dispute with the Euro authorities over austerity and economic policy. They ended up backing down and the voters decided they had not enjoyed the experience, with a stop on withdrawing some of their money from Greek banks and more damage to the economy. In Italy Lega came into a position of influence but was unable to kick start the Italian economy or halt the arrivals of large numbers of migrants. From the left Five Star also rose and fell.

The populist parties of the so called right often adopt a number of important attitudes and policies from socialism, and populist parties of the so called left often adopt  supposedly right wing attitudes towards migration. They do so because they often create programmes – or more accurately craft soundbites – based around polling. Most voters are not ideological. Many want more freedoms for themselves and more controls on their neighbours, lower taxes for themselves and higher taxes for others, more public services that suit them and economies elsewhere. Why not? Of course people vote primarily for their own interests. The task of competitive parties is to come up with a policy offer that will work, to tackle the main concerns of the majority.

In the UK there are four populist parties today, Reform, Restore, Green and Advance. Green has decided to drive hard left, ignoring many of the traditional green issues like climate change and concentrating on major redistribution of wealth and income and Middle Eastern Palestinians concerns. Reform has flirted with backing parts of the two child benefit cap withdrawal, proposes extensive nationalisation, wants proportional representation, seeks to abolish the Cabinet Office and set up a much bigger and more powerful Office of the Prime Minister  and struggles to find savings in the spending of the Councils it runs.It has highlighted unacceptable levels of illegal immigration and suggested various measures to reduce it.

These parties hold out the hope that they could push through the change people want, but they find it difficult to set out how exactly they would define the change and how more importantly they would push it through.  Starting with a big change in the structure of Whitehall departments could prove costly and create plenty of delays in achieving things voters want. The continental parties remind us it can prove to be a big let down. Most of the problems we face flow from too much government, from taxes that are too high and from a public sector which delivers too little for too much cost. It needs a lot of work to decide what needs to be stopped and how to generate the change needed in government. Soundbites and headlines will not achieve it. Determination, a detailed plan and an ability to drive the machine of government from within is what is needed.

The UK suffered from slower growth, higher taxes, large EU bills and a big balance of trade deficit all the time it was in the EU. Going back in would be even worse because we would  not get the opt outs, lower contributions and what different  treatment we did manage to negotiate to ease some of the worst features of full membership.

We would lose the rebate on contributions successfully negotiated by Margaret Thatcher. The EU budget has gone up a lot since we left. The EU is taking on large piles of its own debt, where we would become part liable if we rejoined. It is likely our annual cost of membership would be around £30bn, far higher than last time. How would we pay for that? What taxes would go up? We would of course have to surrender our revenue from Customs dues and the plastics tax as part of the deal.

We would need to join the Euro. That would mean the loss of democratic control over our economy, with the EU telling us to put up taxes or cut spending in line with their fiscal rules. It would mean accepting interest rates and credit controls appropriate for the European average which might not work for us. Look at the damage done to the UK economy, with a nasty boom and bust, from accepting the EU policy of the Exchange Rate Mechanism. Joining the Euro is joining an ERM you cannot get out of, even if it is  giving you too much inflation or forcing you into recession.

Going back in would mean putting tariffs back on the imports of goods we do not make and food we do not grow if imported from non EU, and tariffs on the raw materials and intermediate goods we import to feed our factories. It would jeopardise our Free Trade deals with non EU countries, and take away our seat at the table of the World Trade Organisation.

It would mean imposing thousands of new EU regulations that we have avoided by leaving, adding to business costs and make companies less able to compete and survive. It would damage crucial new industries from digital to plant breeding with rules that would ban or restrict innovation.

It would mean greatly adding to the already excessive UK state debt burden. We would become part liable for their big and growing EU debt, and we would b e borrowing more to help pay for the high costs of membership.

I set out to a meeting organised by OUCA how in the 1970 s nationalised industries sacked many employees, put up prices and delivered poor service to customers, and cost taxpayers a fortune in losses, subsidies and investment spending.

I went on to  highlight the same bad patterns in our current nationalised industries.

The Post Office sacking and imprisoning good honest employees

HS2 costing us a fortune and failing to deliver any rail journeys on time or to budget

Steel absorbing large sums  to pay losses,probably ending in job losses and compensation to the Chinese.

It’s more a case of nationalised industries owning us and plundering our bank accounts, rather than us owning and benefitting from the nationalised industries. We used to own something called public dividend share in some of them but instead of paying us dividends they usually sent us big bills to pay their losses.

https://emea01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdrive.google.com%2Fdrive%2Ffolders%2F1bubP0hkT3IGIgXvLMrQAVl4wIzIpWetH%3Fusp%3Dsharing

The Labour Manifesto was clear. The next Labour government would not put us back into the Single market, or into the Customs Union and open borders with freedom of movement.

We read that the UK government think they could create a new single market area of the EU and the UK. The EU as the larger party will say the way to do that is for the UK to join the EU ‘s single market. They will not allow changes of rules, or joint decision taking or opt outs. They would also demand a big UK budget contribution, freedom of movement and other EU controls over the UK. All this should be a non starter.

The government is mad to think accepting EU rules, taxes and charges would boost our trade. We import much more than we export to the EU, whereas our trade with non EU is much better balanced. Being closer to EU rules and taxes would be used by the EU to boost their sales to us by more than we could boost to them, reducing our net jobs, incomes and wealth. It is bad to want to sell out in this way, wrongly pretending it is not breaking a Manifesto promise .

What does the government  think we could sell more of? It is going to ban us selling petrol and diesel cars, new oil and gas, and make it dearer to sell high energy using products. These are all things we sold a lot of. It is giving away much of our fish, preventing expansion of our industry and more exports. We are fortunate indeed that the EU seems to have been wise and turned down this proposal.

.

The government’s Bill “ to nationalise steel” was designed as a Labour MP crowd pleaser. It always came with the strange lawyerly caveat that it only applied if in the public  interest. It now emerges that it thinks nationalisation is not currently in the public interest, so it is a Bill designed to disappoint all those left wing ideologues who want state ownership.

I assume this means the government is desperately trying to get a deal with the Chinese owners. This was always going to be difficult after the UK government unilaterally took over managing someone else’s business. The Chinese would be understandably cross about this, and would see it as an opportunity to demand compensation. It was a stupid thing for the UK to do, possibly leading  to the Chinese firm walking away from its responsibilities to the workforce and from the potential redundancy costs. Both the Chinese and the government thought the  future was to close the blast furnaces and put in an electric arc plant with far fewer people. Their disagreement was merely over when to close the existing blast furnaces. After this failed negotiation the UK government then implied to the employees it wants to keep the blast furnaces open, but presumably only for a bit whilst they get someone to put in an electric arc plant instead as in South Wales.

This looks like another unholy government mess. The employees probably end up sacked. The blast furnaces probably  will be shut down by this government. The Chinese will probably be given a load of taxpayer money to help pay their debts and losses. The taxpayer will definitely be sent huge bills. Maybe in the end they will claim it is at last fully nationalised. Then there will be a hunt to find a private sector partner to help manage to works and to put in a new electric arc investment.

This massive expensive state intervention looks set to fail. The powers in the Bill are wide ranging and apply both to taking over the shares in the company, and the property. They do include provision for compensation with an independent valuer.

I have now been in the Lords for four months. In that time I have asked 20 Oral Questions and made 11 speeches. I have set out a number of ways the government could run better public services, save money, increase tax revenues without raising tax rates or imposing new taxes and develop a Growth strategy that could work. Work has been regularly interrupted by the prorogation of Parliament and the various Bank holiday recesses.

I have been impressed by the detailed work the Lords does  examining Bills and suggesting improvements. There is a sprit of cross party working to find ways of improving legislation given the government’s aims. There  are efforts to  seek compromises where the government’s  policy is likely to damage or disadvantage large numbers of people and businesses. The Lords rightly does not seek to stop a Bill the government wants to fulfil a Manifesto promise, but can be more critical of legislation that cuts  across the government’s election promises. The Lords understands that power rests with the elected Commons, but asking them to think again can produce better results sometimes.

The Lords did do good work in exposing the dangers of giving away Chagos and giving so much money to Mauritius. This was clearly against a Manifesto promise to support our overseas territories. The delays mean this may well not now go ahead, given the changing view from the USA whose consent would b e needed under the US/UK Treaty establishing Diego Garcia as a joint base.  The Lords has helped the Commons Opposition point out the follies of closing down our own oil and gas industry, only to import oil and gas from abroad instead. The government announced some movement with its tie backs policy. The Opposition has set out why business has suffered from the two Labour budgets raising taxes and the imposition of new rules and regulations.It has worked with the government on issues like harms of children from too much social media.

The lack of resolution of the US Iran war and closure of the Straits of Hormuz is driving energy and food costs higher with shortage of fertiliser and major restrictions on movements of oil.

The government’s response of lifting sanctions on foreign refineries using Russian oil to make jet fuel and diesel show they are rattled, but once  again coming up with  the wrong response. They close our refineries and stop us getting our own oil and gas out of the ground when there is a world shortage. This  makes us more vulnerable.

They need to lift bans on new UK oil and gas, take down taxes on energy and help re open the two most recent refinery closures. Why do they always back imports and stop or overtax UK activity?

They are now asking supermarkets to freeze prices on 10 or 20 products out of the 30,000 they sell. What nonsense. It will not stop food inflation but will create shortages of the few selected. Do they not understand it is their National Insurance, their farm tax, their industrial closures, their energy taxes that are much of the problem of food prices?