Author: johnredwood

Yesterday Opposition MPs shed crocodile tears about the need for a sovereign Parliament. They were under the misapprehension that Parliament has no proper role in the Brexit process. They seemed to think only unelected Judges could uphold the sovereignty of Parliament against a government determined to implement the wishes of the electors as expressed in the referendum.

Let me explain a few home truths to them. The first is we do not currently have a sovereign Parliament. That was the main point at issue in the referendum. All too many MPs in recent decades have voted away the powers of Westminster, passing authority on issue after issue to the EU. The public voted to reverse that. I have spoken out against the puppet Parliament we currently suffer from. All too many laws, budgets and policies are determined in Brussels in ways the UK Parliament cannot gainsay.

Any opposition there is  to implementing the wishes of the people should properly concentrate on the Parliamentary process. It should not need to go to the courts. The courts themselves need to be careful not to think it is their job to set the Parliamentary agenda. If there was a big body of MPs who wanted to reverse the decision of the  referendum and thwart the will of the people, there are ways they can seek to do so. The opposition parties have days allocated to their choice of business. They could use any one of those to hold a debate and a vote to prevent Brexit. They can use government debates on the EU which are available in abundance to make their case. They can make it during the various Statements the government issues. They can seek Urgent Questions on matters they rank as important. They can use their seats on the Brexit and European Affairs Committees to put their case. They can oppose the repeal of the 1972 European Communities Act when we get to it, when there will be government led votes which they can vote against.

The fact that they have chosen to do none of these things tells you that they rightly judge they must not been seen to deliberately seek to countermand the decision of the voters in the referendum. The Commons voted 6 to 1 in favour of a referendum, described as transferring the decision to the people by the government introducing the Bill. How can MPs who voted for the referendum go back on its central promise to let the people choose?  Both the Remain and Leave campaigns in the referendum agreed the people would decide.

If only more of these Opposition MPs would grasp that we do not currently have a sovereign Parliament. What a cruel irony that some Members of Parliament pray in aid the idea of a sovereign Parliament, whilst doing all they can to stop one being recreated. At least the Supreme Court was right to tell the Scottish Parliament that our membership of the EU is a matter for the whole UK and for the UK Parliament. Scotland does  not have a veto on this national decision.

 

The government has published its Green Paper designed to boost industry and productivity, and to spread investment and prosperity more widely around the UK.

One of the main improvements   I have been seeking is improved public procurement. The paper stresses the need for change in this area. The public sector buys all too many items from overseas, when acting as an intelligent customer and partner of UK business would allow it to buy good value goods and services here in the UK. The public sector would then benefit from the taxes levied on that business activity and on the incomes of the employees involved, and there would be a saving on the balance of payments.

The Defence department has ordered a large number of Ajax light tanks from Spain. Given the long term production runs needed the government could have worked with a UK company and design. It is importing steel for our new submarines on the grounds that our industry does not make the right specification. Surely it could have been worthwhile to discuss with our steel industry how they could invest in transforming their base steel into the required material?  We are importing large quantities of building materials and components for the UK public housing programmes executed by Housing Associations and Councils. This again is work that could be done at home.

In our overseas aid programme large sums are sent to foreign institutions, charities and companies to spend for us. I want to see us concentrate our aid activities on specialist areas like disease eradication and the provision of clean water. If we did we could have sufficient purchasing power to allow companies to invest in producing the vaccines and water plants here in the UK instead of importing them from other rich countries. Overseas aid is best spent in the country you are helping. Where that is not possible it should be spent on things we are good at here.

The Green Paper also covers R and D, skills, infrastructure, start ups, exports, affordable energy, world leading sectors, spreading investment around the whole UK and creating institutions to assist. Tax cuts would  also be a big help in generating enterprise and growth. Ensuring proper competition and preventing take over by large groups wanting to reduce competition will also be essential.

 

 

Dear President Trump

I congratulate you on your installation as President. Your vision  to create more jobs, revitalise US infrastructure, boost US take home pay and inject more life into  US economic leadership is a bold one. We in the UK are also embarked on a similar task as we leave the EU. We too need to build more roads, railways, bridges, energy plants and water supply facilities. We too need to make more things for ourselves and import less to narrow our trade gap. Our two countries can indeed trade with each other more, as ours is a fair trade with a reasonable balance of imports and exports for each party.

Your proposals to produce more realistically priced energy will help restore your manufactures. Cheap energy is a vital part of a flourishing industry. Your plans to cut corporate and individual tax rates will energise entrepreneurs, spawn more investments, and allow people to keep and spend more of their earnings. That in turn creates demand which generates more jobs.  The USA in recent years has pioneered much of the digital revolution and has done well in creating more companies and jobs in technology, but has suffered from Chinese, German and Mexican imports of industrial goods which could have been made more extensively in the USA.  Tax reform, cheaper energy, a better regulatory climate and a President who supports manufacturing will make a difference.

Both the USA and the UK could benefit from an early free trade agreement between our own two countries. Fair trade  which results in a sensible balance between the trading parties can enrich and enhance both sides. If our two countries  draw one up and sign it, it will show the world that the USA is not afraid of fair trade, and it will put more weight behind the UK’s intention to be an even more successful  world trading nation open for business globally.

I was pleased to read you are planning a summit in due course with Mr Putin. The West has made mistakes in recent years with its military interventions in the Middle East. Some carefully planned joint working with Russia which also has a presence and diplomatic interests there might help achieve the important but more limited objective you have set in combatting ISIS. Past policy has suffered from conflicting and ambitious aims which have resulted in all too many civil and religious wars in the region.

The UK and the US can make common cause to strengthen NATO for our mutual defence. As one of the few countries that does hit the minimum 2% GDP target for defence spending, the UK is a natural ally in your campaign to get all NATO members to spend at least the minimum. If I tried only paying a portion of the insurance premium I owe to insure my home the insurance company would cancel the cover. Why are countries that want their allies support any different if there is a minimum? The EU does not allow its members to pay a lower subscription, and none of our EU friends short change the Commission.

I am pleased our Prime Minister will visit on Friday. There is plenty of scope to increase our joint working on intelligence, defence, trade, economic policy and general foreign policy. I wish you every success in tackling the problems in the USA that you have identified.

Yours etc

 

 

 

 

Some contributors have not responded to my appeal. I have to reduce the amount of time I am spending on moderating this site, which is now considerably more time than it takes me to write my pieces for it. As a result, from today I will not be publishing comments which are

1. Long
2. Part of a series of multiple comments the same day from the same person
3. Require me to investigate a named third party site or other sources to check out allegations about named people of named institutions.

I value  all contributions from constituents, who are welcome to  make a longer comment or comments on relevant issues under a local issues story. They should include the first part of their post code as an identifier if they want to submit long or multiple postings.

The EU is always quick to point out that there will  be discussions about the details of our departure, and these are different from the discussions about our future relationship. Some in the Commission fondly imagine they can make a meal of the former. There is even talk of presenting the UK with a large leaving bill! A few people write into this site to ask if we have to pay it. Of course we don’t.

There is nothing in the Treaty to provide for the calculation and presentation of a leaving bill. There is plenty in the Treaty to say the remaining member states need to have good relations with neighbouring countries in Europe. Presenting a big bill would be a violation of that part of the Treaty.

The truth is the UK has a share in a wide range of assets built up by the EU over the years we have been a member, including our small shareholding in the vast  bond portfolio of the ECB, our share of the many expensive properties the EU institutions own and occupy  and our share of the cash and other financial assets held by the EU. I doubt the EU will be totting them all up and wanting to send us our share. Our rights to those assets will be unenforceable once we leave.

Similarly, the EU has borrowed a lot of money whilst we have been members, to spend on itself and other countries in the Union. There is no enforceable claim on us for any part of that debt after we have gone. If they send us a bill we will tell them we will not be paying it. If I resign from a club which has borrowed money and has a  valuable club house, I immediately lose my stake in the property and end any responsibility for the debts.  If just after I left the club they sell the clubhouse and distribute some  cash to members I don’t get a share as a past member. The assets and the liabilities are assumed by the remaining members. When a new nation joins the EU it signs up to share in the present and future assets an liabilities for the duration of its membership.

Some in the EU seem to think we should be liable for the pensions of Euro officials who happen to live in the UK and are UK nationals. It is difficult to see the logic behind this. They acted as EU officials, as EU citizens, and swore an oath to the EU. No-one asked the UK to underwrite their pensions at the time they were accruing them. Surely the EU has to accept it incurred the debts and it needs to meet them. It is a pity it didn’t invest the money from the pension contributions at the time, because then there would be no future problem.

The UK will have to pay the pensions of all those UK civil servants who have been effectively working for the EU for many years putting in place all their regulations and directives in the UK. The UK promised to pay their pensions and we will keep that promise. I was pleased to see senior German politicians  now talking about how they will need a trade deal with us to keep their exports flowing. This is an early sign of some realism returning to the continental debate.

 

 

President Trump could make a big difference to US foreign policy. He is likely to confine interventions in the Middle East to assisting the defeat of ISIS, often where requested by the incumbent government of the country concerned. He is unlikely to pursue the policy of his predecessor of seeking to confront both sides in the Syrian conflict, struggling to find a third force that he can credibly support with some chance of winning. This also means he will reduce some of the tension with Russia, which could flare under the previous policy given the proximity of Russian and US jets to each other over Syria and the disagreements over how to handle some of the present incumbent governments.

There will be three big changes of foreign policy. The first will be a more assertive attitude towards China, particularly on trade matters. Mr Trump will be wanting some wins to show that he is tackling what he thinks is unfair competition from the world’s most successful goods exporter.

The second will be a more sceptical approach to the EU. No longer will the US actively encourage EU political integration, and no longer will the US see Mrs Merkel as the de facto leader of the an EU coming together to be a single cohesive unit. Mr Trump may well prove to be on the side of history in this, as Brexit is followed by political advances of parties hostile to the Euro or to more EU integration in various continental elections this year.

The third will be what he sets out to achieve in his first well advertised summit with Mr Putin. I doubt Mr Trump and his experienced and tough Cabinet members are a pushover who like all that Russia does and says. They do look as if they are willing to seek common ground on reducing nuclear warheads, and seeing how the world might combat ISIS whilst bringing the Middle East closer to peace.  From Russia’s point of view they have a US President who might be willing to take them seriously and strike some common ground around the world as a token of the US understanding of Russia’s role. From Mr Trump’s point of view it would be good to draw a line under the numerous not very successful wars the US has fought in recent years in the Middle East, and to gain more time to concentrate on the economy at home which is his prime concern.

My main worry about Mrs Clinton as a candidate  was her bellicose approach to the Middle East and Russia, wishing to do more of the same which has left the Middle East with too many civil and religious wars. Whilst the west did not cause the disputes or want to bring about civil wars that combusted from within, recent policy has made too little progress in trying to resolve the conflicts and rid the region of its extremists. Lets hope the new team has some better ideas.

Welcome to the new President. On his Inauguration day I want to send him best wishes for his period in office. I want to encourage him to concentrate on improving the economic lot of voters in the USA. Tax reductions and tax reform can be a crucial element in his programme.

Mr Trump himself campaigned to cut income tax for the many, to reduce the number of income tax bands from 7 to 3, and to take more people out of income tax altogether. He argued for a corporation tax rate of just 15%, and an incentive rate to get offshore profits of US corporations repatriated to mainland and Main Street America.

To get any of this through he needs the active engagement of Congress. Paul Ryan, the Speaker, is also a tax cutter and reformer by instinct. He has made more radical proposals than Mr Trump’s. The two of them need to get together and sort out their differences, so something can get done.

Speaker Ryan wants to change company profits tax to a cashflow tax, where the destination of the goods or services matters. He wants to tax imports and exempt exports. He believes his proposals would pass muster with the WTO, though others disagree. Mr Trump is not persuaded by this element of the Ryan plan, maybe because he does worry about the international repercussions of such a direct intervention in favour of domestic as opposed to traded activity.

Some Republicans worry that Mr Trump’s reforms would lose the US too much revenue at a time of large deficits already. Others reckon the positive effects on growth and the onshoring of profits would mean the tax cuts were affordable. There is no doubt that a sensible tax package for companies can assist the President’s aim of making more in the USA. Cutting taxes on individual earnings can boost incomes, increase consumption, and start to deal with the feeling of many that they have been left behind in recent years.

The Prime Minister’s Brexit speech was well crafted and delivered. Many Remain voters like the vision that the UK will have strong and positive relationships with the EU once we have left. They like the vision of the UK leading the cause of free trade worldwide, and offering continuing free trade to our former partners. The Commission may still want to find some way of harming the UK at the expense of the EU member states themselves, but the member states are likely on reflection to want to avoid tariffs on their exports and to resist new obstacles in the way of selling into the UK.

One of the most important features of the government position is it narrows the areas for disagreement. By saying we do not want to be in the single market we avoid that planned row over what level of budget contribution and what elements of free movement we need to retain to keep us in the single market. I never thought it would be possible to be in the single market and not  be in the EU, and agree with Mrs Merkel on that matter. The UK government has spared the EU that argument.

It means the discussions to leave will be on narrow issues of when the liabilities stop and when we lose the use of the assets. We can move rapidly on from the question of departure to discuss the more important questions of what future trading arrangements we will  enjoy and what collaborations and joint programmes we mutually wish to continue.

The EU is under a clear legal obligation from its own Treaty to be friendly and positive in its relations with neighbouring countries. I am sure many of the member states, if not the Commission, will want to obey the Treaty law, as we have always been told we have to do. It is more likely they will because it is commonsense to get on well with the neighbours. It is imperative to get on well with the customers, and the UK is a mighty big customer.