Author: johnredwood

I am tempted to think that whatever the Remain side do now it will help us Leavers. The government “impartial” pamphlet has angered many more people. Most think it quite wrong that taxpayers are being asked to pay for one sided propaganda close to an important ballot. No-one believes a Labour or Conservative government should send out a document written by the civil service recommending general government policy and its benefits ten weeks before a General Election, and no past government has tried to do that. This is similar to such a decision.

It is true that in 1975 the Labour government sent a pamphlet to all households arguing the case to stay in. Subsequent changes to election law have tightened provisions for elections and referendums to ensure greater fairness between the two sides. That can no longer be regarded as acceptable practice.

It is interesting to look back at the lies we were told then by the government. The biggest was our sovereignty was not at risk. They told us that “The Minister representing Britain can veto any proposal for a new law or a new tax if he considers it to be against British interests. … Remember: All the other countries in the market (note not EEC, its true name) enjoy, like us, democratically elected governments answerable to their own Parliaments and their own voters. They do not want to weaken their Parliaments any more than we would”

The pamphlet denied the idea that the Commission has important independent power, and did not mention the binding nature of European court judgements. It was before a directly European Parliament had some say. Ever since we have seen the constant erosion of that veto by Treaty change, and erosion of power away from Ministers to the Commission, Court, European Parliament and other EU institutions.

So why would anyone believe the modern version of this pamphlet? That says “The UK has secured a special status in a reformed EU”. Where are the reforms of the EU? Where are the legal guarantees for the UK and restoration of our rights to make our own laws and levy our own taxes? It says “The UK will not be part of further European political integration” That is clearly wrong. Every new Regulation, Directive and court judgement will drive us into more dependence on the EU and its laws.

It implies we could lose our right to travel and spend money on the continent, which is absurd. It is silent on how we can control numbers of EU migrants properly within the EU, just referring to some changes to benefit rules.

Many will send their pamphlet back to Downing Street, and will want their taxpayers money back from this ill thought through venture. We warned the government not to do this in Parliament before the event, and thought Ministers had assured us it would not happen.

Mr Juncker, the President of the Commission, made clear in an interview just before the Netherlands referendum on the EU/Ukraine Association Agreement that a vote against the EU plan would “open the doors to a continental crisis”. As I presume he is an honest man who knows his EU, I await his measures to deal with this crisis that he has helped create. The results rejected the Agreement roundly, by 64% to 36%.

The vote was called on a petition by Netherlands voters. Though it is advisory, the Netherlands government has rightly said they cannot ignore this strong expression of public opinion. The proposition was rejected despite a vigorous and hard hitting campaign to persuade people to vote for the EU scheme. Voters were told in no uncertain terms that a vote against was a vote for Mr Putin. One poster showed Mr Putin embracing the leading opposition politician in favour of voting down the Agreement.

So why didn’t voters believe the EU and their government? The first thing to realise is the EU/Ukraine Association Agreement is not just about trade, as some sloppy people in the media have claimed. To the government in Kiev the most important parts of its are probably the opening sections about political, foreign policy and defence collaboration. The Agreement sets up “regular meetings both at the level of high officials and of experts of the military institutions of the parties”. It establishes a Political and Security Committee. Article 7 promises to “intensify the dialogue and co-operation and promote gradual convergence in the area of foreign and security policy including the common security and defence policy”. Whilst I have no time for illegal military actions by Russia, I can understand why Russia thought this Agreement provocative. Some Netherlands voters were clearly concerned that the EU is over reaching itself in making financial and military commitments to Ukraine, and saw that this very Agreement is part of the important background to the civil war in Ukraine between pro Russian Ukrainians and pro EU Ukrainians.

The sad deterioration in the Ukraine and the split of the country with Russia taking Crimea has come about against the backdrop of the EU making overtures to Kiev to strengthen ties between Ukraine and the EU. Maybe voters thought this a bad idea. They also had doubts about regulation of standards in Ukraine in areas like keeping chickens, and worried about any possible future relaxation of border controls between the Ukraine and the EU.

Mr Juncker now needs to tell us how he will handle the “crisis” he forecast. In the meantime apparently the Netherlands government has been asked to suggest a way forward.I would have thought the answer was obvious. The Netherlands cannot have its name on the Agreement. The people have spoken.

On Tuesday night I was asked to speak at a dinner to commemorate the partnership of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. I spoke as usual without notes or text, but seek to recreate some of that speech here.

Our two countries are united by our history. Together and sometimes apart, usually in concert but sometimes at odds with each other, our two nations have pursued liberty. First England established rights to a fair trial, equality under the law and habeas corpus through Magna Carta. Next we established Parliamentary control over the Crown through the Restoration settlement and the Bill of Rights. At the end of the eighteenth century America took up the pursuit of liberty, and through her War of Independence produced some of the great literature of freedom and the immortal words of the US Constitution. In tandem in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries both nations pushed on to votes for all adults, a wider range of civil liberties and more general tolerance for how citizens chose to live their lives.

As an Englishman I admire the achievements of the leaders of the US War of Independence as I do of the Parliamentarians in England who over centuries made royal power more accountable. Britain was wrong to treat the American colonists as she did.

Each generation has to fight for freedom, for there are always siren voices wanting government to take back power from people, and there are always enemies of freedom in tyrannies around the world. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher won the Cold War. Their resolve and Mr Gorbachev’s vision made possible the liberation of Eastern Europe from communism without a shot being fired.

Our generation in the UK has to win back our democratic independence from the EU.

To our guests from America I say try to explain to your President that we are fighting our war of Independence. Fortunately we don’t have to fight our EU war with muskets and cannon . We are fighting it through this referendum and we wish to have our democracy back. Our right of self government has been gravely damaged by our membership in the European Union. Those rights that we thought were inalienable and are part of the pursuit of happiness and the development of freedom have been taken away from us and given to Brussels bureaucrats. As proud inheritors of the English speaking tradition of freedom under the law and accountable government through elected assemblies we now need to resume our rights to govern ourselves in the UK.

We presently have to broker our laws with 27 other countries. We now have to send large sums of money to the European Union we don’t get back which they choose to spend. We run a kind of overseas aid system to rich countries on the continent of Europe. Why are we doing that? We would like to spend that money ourselves on our priorities. We are very conscious our defence alliance needs America and needs NATO and not the European Union which is trying to supplant it is part. It is in danger of creating a wedge between natural allies across the atlantic who have often made common cause.

To Americans who say we should stay in the EU I ask this question. If making laws by agreement with the neighbours is such a good idea, why doesn’t the USA merge with Cuba, Mexico and Canada and show us how it can be done easily and in a democratic manner? If sharing revenues and expenditures with other countries is such a good idea, why doesn’t the USA has a common budget with Cuba and Mexico?

It is time once again to defend our freedoms, restore our rights, and keep in mind that shining light of liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The biggest success of the advocates of UK membership of the EU has been to perpetuate the myth that we need to be in the single market to trade with the rest of the EU, when the rest of the world trades quite successfully with the EU without being members. If being in the single market were just a case of accepting consensus or majority views on the regulations affecting goods and services then there might be a case for accepting it all. Instead the EU has used the cover of the so called single market to enact a wide range of measures that are now binding on the UK that have nothing to do with trade. The German view is the single currency is an integral part of the single market, and they think the UK is lucky to enjoy what they hope and expect to be a temporary exclusion of the UK from the Euro. The single market already encompasses freedom of movement of people, health and safety, transport and aspects of criminal justice which makes it so much wider in scope than a normal trade agreement.

The worst the proponents of continued UK membership can do is to take individual features of the single market that they like and ask us how we could possibly manage without them. This way of arguing ignores all the extra costs and baggage that the EU’s wide definition of single market leaves us with. It also ignores the fact that many of the trade features of our EU membership will continue because they are in the mutual interest of both parties. Many are guaranteed by our membership of the World Trade Organisation.

I spent part of Monday afternoon being interviewed by the BBC for a programme they are making on sovereignty. Much of the extended interview – not all to be broadcast I assume – was designed to try to get me to say that for example the EU anti state aid rule was a good one and we should be prepared to sacrifice the right to make some of our own decisions in order to get a common approach to state aids amongst the EU members.

Two things struck me forcefully about this line of questioning. The first was the Remain side have managed to persuade the BBC and others that EU membership is just about the narrow definition of the single market. As far as I am concerned the EU referendum is about getting our £10bn a year net contribution back to end austerity and spend the money at home. It is about making our own laws across the board instead of having to broker deals with 27 other states to make or amend a law. It is about controlling our own borders and granting our own citizenship under rules we approve. The Referendum debate should be more about the big issues than the minutiae of trade rules.

The second thing that impressed me was the idea that having some influence over the conduct of 27 other European countries mattered more than influencing the 160 plus countries that are not in the EU, including the three largest markets of the world, the USA, China and Japan.

The third thing was the misunderstanding about how best to negotiate. If we leave the EU we will get our veto back over all matters governing our relationship with the EU.That gives us more influence. Today we can often be outvoted so we lack influence on many crucial matters.

As always it was important to explain again the confusion some want to create between power and sovereignty. A country is sovereign when its people and Parliament can take any decision they wish without a foreign court and other institutions limiting their rights and choices. It does not make any country, not even the USA, all powerful. Each country has to live within the checks and balance of international politics and finance. I dispute that we are more powerful by being in the EU given our lack of influence over important issues.Of course large countries with more wealth, income and weapons are more powerful than smaller countries, but that does not mean small countries are wrong to wish to be independent. The UK is far from being a small country.

It was good news to read over the week-end that the UK government has not given up on the UK steel industry. The industry and others including me have long been explaining that very high energy costs and business rates are big handicaps to the UK industry. It has also been well known that there is massive overcapacity worldwide, led by the large investments in steel in China, which has slashed prices for the product. If the UK persists with much dearer energy than leading competitors it will be our industry which closes, whilst the CO2 will be produced elsewhere with the jobs and the profits.

The Chinese currently account for around one half of world steel output. They have announced plans to cut up to 150 million tonnes of annual capacity, almost as much as the entire EU industry makes each year. Such reductions will make a big difference to future prices as they are implemented. It could mean that the current low level of steel prices will be temporary, with prices rising again as capacity is reduced. World demand for steel is likely to rise from here as advanced economies gradually recover from the slump of 2008 and as more emerging economies raise living standards. As they do so more people want and can afford cars, domestic appliances and other products with a steel content.

The issue is how will the UK manage to get its energy costs down to assist the industry? Can it do so enough to make a material difference? The government is talking of subsidising the energy costs more, as it has started to do. It’s not an ideal solution, but given the large interventions made in our energy markets to push prices up it may be the only short term fix. The government will of course need clearance from the EU to do so.

Government is in a stronger position when it comes to business rates and other domestic impositions. There it could take some action to allow the industry to keep more of its revenues.

The government has pledged to buy more UK steel as part of UK public sector contracts. Several of the large infrastructure and equipment programmes have a substantial steel content.

It may also be necessary to help create cheaper energy on a longer term basis if the work to save steel is to endure. I have often written on how this could be done, after two decades of expensive interventions the other way. The sooner we do this the better. It is our only hope of keeping and expending our industry.

Germany’s large trade surplus with much of the rest of the EU is doing much harm.

Countries in the Euro in deficit have to borrow from Germany. As countries borrow more from Germany so they become more dependent on the German view. Germany says that she will only lend to other countries in the Euro in return for their acceptance of EU/German discipline over budget deficits, public spending and general economic policy. Germany sees her loans as a way of extending control over the policies of the countries that are borrowing. It results in an EU view of benefits, pensions, general public spending, taxation and deficits becoming official policy in the debtor nations.

In the case of Greece the borrowings have become so big that the country has reneged on its private sector debts and is looking at ways of cutting the amount of interest it has to pay on its borrowing from other EU states and hoping for debt extension or retirement. The Euro area is learning the hard way that if a debtor gets too heavily into debt the creditor may have to forgive some in order to get a bit more of their money back. Bankrupting the debtor nation may not be a good idea for the creditor, and it is certainly bad news in the short term for the debtor. In Cyprus bank depositors had to take a hit when the system was overborrowed.

This conflict between the German view of the need for discipline and the view of many in the debtor countries that they need a different economic approach to lift people out of unemployment and poverty has spawned new parties and political movements to try to shift the German position. So far challenger parties have been able to do well and even take government in Greece, but they have been quite unable to alter EU policy which remains under the strong influence of the German state as bank manager.

Some senior Germans think the UK should join the Euro if we stay in the EU. They see allowing the value of the pound to change as a way of escaping the disciplines of EU/German economic policy which they regret. In the meantime the large UK deficit on balance of payments means that German investors can buy into UK private sector assets and companies, and start to exercise more control over our economy through private sector ownership.

I fully understand the German view that they work hard and manage well to produce a surplus, and they expect others to do likewise. There is nothing wrong with a modest surplus. The problem is when a country runs a persistent and high surplus it means others are running a persistent and high deficit. This can become unsustainable, and is ultimately damaging to the surplus country as well. The first round bad effects are recession or no growth in the customer economies, leading to less business for the main exporter. Second round effects can be reneging on debt, as we have seen with Greece, or nationalising assets acquired as sometimes happens in emerging economies without such a strong rule of property law.

I have always thought the UK’s balance of payments deficit is a bigger problem than the state deficit, though the two are in part related. I have spoken about it often here and in Parliament. The reason is the longer we run a large balance of payments deficit the more money we will owe to foreigners, and the more of our industry and property will be brought up by overseas investors. Progressively a country loses economic control as it sells many of its assets and mortgages the rest.

A larger state deficit can in some circumstances be financed at home by lending to ourselves. We do not necessarily lose overall control of our destiny, but switch money and assets around amongst ourselves. The state can always repay the debt, though if it overdoes the borrowing it will end up repaying in devalued pounds, partially reneging on the debts through inflation. The state will pay for itself at the expense of domestic savers or by taxing productive people more to repay the debts. Done to excess it makes us poorer. A large state deficit may also mean having to accept loans from abroad. These are more difficult. These usually require repayment in someone else’s currency , so we do not have the power to simply print that. If we borrow in foreign currencies the debts may get bigger and more onerous to repay if and when our currency falls in value.

The EU model put out by the Remain campaign is a model for economic dependence. Taken to extremes it leads to bankruptcy as we have seen in Greece and Cyprus. They say they want to attract more overseas investment. They welcome more purchase of UK companies and assets by French nationalised industries or by German shareholders. That means running a bigger balance of payments deficit and placing ourselves more and more in hock to overseas investors. They do not come here out of charity or kindness. They come to earn a return, to make a profit and to take money out of our country from their activities. One of the main reasons our balance of payments has been deteriorating so quickly is foreign investors are now taking much more out in terms of profits, dividends and interest charges.

The Remain model welcomes German investors taking majority voting control of our Stock market, and accepts we will import German steel rather than make our own. They welcome large imports of German cars and French food products. They do not tell us the truth, that the UK has to compete to maintain and improve our living standards. We cannot afford to allow too many industries and services go uncontested. There are limits to how many activities we can give up doing altogether or can sell to overseas buyers.It is interesting that Tata wants to exit all steel making in the UK and also wants to invest in German steel making. By doing so it accepts the EU logic that Germany should as the creditor nation keep on strengthening its industrial base to export to the other states. They in turn become more dependent economically on Germany. We see the dangers of going too far down that road when you see what happen to an economy like Greece which is now very dependent on the goodwill of Northern European creditors led by the German state. The creditors forced a 25% cut in Greek incomes as they tried to rebalance their books.

Let us draw an analogy with an individual household. It is true that you can boost your spending power above your income for a bit by borrowing more to buy new things . You can also boost it by taking out a loan on your home or selling some of your furniture and other assets. Done in moderation you can buy assets on borrowings which go up in value and make you better off. Done to excess you can end in grave financial difficulty. You find out that you then have to work harder and earn more just to pay the interest on the extra debts. If you are not careful you will reach the position where the interest charges take up too big a percentage of your income and your living standards fall as a result. You eventually reach the end of your ability to borrow more. You also run out of assets to sell. You can only sell your house once to spend the proceeds.

I want the government to curb the national deficits. I want us to generate our own power, make our own steel,produce more of our own cars. I believe we can do this. It requires taking back control from the EU, cutting energy levies and prices, and redoubling efforts to create good conditions at home to produce and sell our goods and services. Leaving the EU will immediately improve our balance of payments deficit and give us back more of our own money to spend on our priorities as I have pointed out from my analysis of the balance of payments deficit. At the moment we are being made to borrow to send money to rich continental countries to spend on what they want.

According to the Remain campaign, if the pound falls against the dollar that shows investors have fears about Brexit. In recent days the pound has been rallying against the dollar. They have gone quiet. Is this a reappraisal by investors, who now see the substantial gain to our balance of payments from leaving?   The pound fell from $1.47 to $1.38 between January and the end of February, but has since improved to $1.44.

If we take up the Remain view that investors are mainly moved by Brexit considerations and have been so far this year, then we can see that investors have some good thoughts on the advantages of Brexit. So far this year the number of jobs is up, vacancies are up, and a record number of people are in work. The Remain fears that Brexit worries would damage the jobs market have so far proved inaccurate.

The cost of government borrowing has gone down since the end of last year. The cost of borrowing ten year money has fallen from 1.99% to 1.4%. Why don’t the Remain people hail this as a substantial improvement, and see that implies investors are positive about Brexit? The US in contrast has to pay 1.8%a year  to borrow for ten years.

Then there is the prediction that inward investment will dry up. At a time when German investors are keen to take a majority share in a merged company with the London Stock Exchange ahead of the vote, it is difficult to sustain this argument. Various industrial businesses with five year investment programmes have confirmed they are not going to cancel if we vote to leave.

I think the Remain campaign exaggerate the impact of Brexit on the economy and on markets. Sterling has been falling against the dollar since last summer, as have other currencies, mainly on forecasts of rising US interest rates. The pound fell from over $2 in 2008 to $1.4 in 2009 when we were firmly committed to the EU, so we know other influences can generate large sterling movements. Whilst I would like to claim hopes of Brexit as the main cause of lower interest rates it is as difficult to do so as to claim Brexit caused the fall in sterling. Advanced country bonds have generally been rising in price with the European and  Japanese authorities both heavy buyers of their own paper.

In January, the last month for official figures, the UK imported £202m of steel from the rest of the EU and only £80m from the Rest of the world. The way EU energy, regulatory and procurement policies are enforced in the UK versus the continent allow much more steel to be produced in the rest of the EU than here. This should be one of the prime issues.
As the government looks for a buyer with Tata it should also evaluate Tata’s closure costs so a buyer can have a realistic negotiation over a dowry for the plants.