UK General Election : The Clown vs. the Cold Warrior

I've only just moved from the UK to Australia, but I spent 14 years living there and so have been through three general elections, and the EU referendum.  The 2019 general election wasn't meant to happen, but it was inevitable after the 2017 general election that didn't need to be called, because the 2015 general election gave the Conservatives a majority for the first time since 1992 and the UK has five year electoral terms.

Most coverage will claim that this is a Brexit election, and although it is a major factor, for me it isn't the number one factor.  Sure, if you want Brexit done you'll vote Conservative (except for a tiny handful of seats where the Brexit Party has a much better chance than the Conservatives), given Labour is campaigning on a second referendum (where it will negotiate a different deal with the EU, and then Corbyn will be neutral on it) and the Liberal Democrats are campaigning on remaining in the EU.

However, to me although that is important for many reasons, it is much less important than what SHOULD be the biggest issue of this election - stopping the election of a hardcore socialist and his team, who are fundamentally opposed to capitalism, individual freedom, property rights and highly sceptical of the values of the Enlightenment and Western liberal democracy.

I wont say much about Boris Johnson because I don't like him.  He's a flake, a showman and a clown.  He is enthused about vanity projects (there were plenty when he was Mayor of London) and when he isn't interested in anything he wont worry about detail and wont focus.  An entertaining raconteur and journalist, a great philosopher he is not.  He lies and obfuscates, and changes his position to suit whatever is popular.  There are many reasons why he didn't proceed to be a candidate for leadership in 2016, but he is the man of today - and he is beyond doubt profoundly preferable to the entity on the other side.

Corbyn is a mediocre mild-mannered pathetic little man, who has surrounded himself with sinister flunkies who range from the moronic to the despicable.  His record on openly supporting the IRA, including inviting senior members to Parliament days after the Brighton bombing, is well known.  You can almost guess his position on every single international conflict and issue by working out which side is supported by the West and be sure he is on the other side.  He did shows on the Iranian propaganda TV channel Press TV, his first instincts are always to believe the side that isn't a member of NATO, which isn't a Western liberal democracy and always isn't Israel.  He even backed General Galtieri - the Argentinian military dictator - over Britain in the Falklands War. 

His most senior advisors are not just Cold warriors but actually pro-Soviet and in one case pro-North Korea Marxist-Leninists (Seamus Milne and Andrew Murray).  He himself bemoaned the fall of the Berlin Wall because of the loss of the "achievements" of the German Democratic Republic (not those shot dead trying to cross the Berlin Wall of course).  Corbyn cheered Venezuela's Chavez regime as being a model for the world, and he openly celebrated the Cuban regime as well.  This was quaint and vile as the MP for Islington North, as potential PM for the world's fifth largest economy, NATO's second most powerful member and a nuclear power, it's simply scary.

The anti-semitism is well known, as his Labour Party has sheltered and selected candidates who have openly anti-semitic views.  At best he has a blind spot and doesn't know what is anti-semitic, at worst he simply thinks Jews aren't an oppressed group because, of course, they tend to be wealthy and successful, but worst of all, Israel - a country he has spent his political life campaigning against.

Beyond that are the policies his Labour Party are promoting this election.  Not just higher taxes and more spending, but a quantum leap in spending every year.  Some of the more sinister policies include requiring all businesses with 250+ employees to hand over 1% of the company shares to employees each year, over ten years.  Effectively a form of confiscation of the business.  There are mass nationalisations, with the Government deciding how much it will pay for them, no negotiation, effectively a third world style confiscation of businesses (and the reasoning behind it being that they are "profiting too much" from consumers, except that energy prices are capped, water prices are regulated by Ofwat and rail prices are determined by the Minister - none of the nationalised sectors bear much resemblance to a free market).  Labour wants to exchange shares in private businesses for newly issued public debt - because that's what you want, a promise from a socialist government with its heavily devalued currency, to pay you. 

For those who say there is nothing to worry about, let's be clear what a vote for Labour is in this election.   It's a vote to say:

• Capitalism should be overthrown;
• Private property rights are worthless, the state can take businesses off you to give to whoever it wants or take for itself;
• The Government should monopolise education (no private schools)
• Businesses should get permission from government to open (any business with at least 50 employees will need state certification for being gender neutral)
• The media to be "fairer" to the policies, politicians and opinions of the Labour Party and its ginger groups;
• Israel shouldn't exist;
• Russia, China and Iran are morally equivalent to the United States at best, and morally superior at times;
• State control of prices is good for everyone;
• Calls for Islamist government aren't to be feared (just blank out the misogyny, homophobia and anti-semitism)
• Identity politics is central to public policy (all business will have to report their sex and race pay gaps and explain themselves to a bureaucracy why they are apparently sexist and racist)
• Jews should just put up and not complain, because the anti-semitism they say they get is just because they back Israel (which is an apartheid state little different from Nazi Germany).

I didn't mention Brexit because honestly, it pales into insignificance.    Yes it is an opportunity to free the UK from the EU's overweening control, and its commitment to a fortress against free trade from the outside, and protection of sunset industries.  However, as good as that opportunity is, the UK doesn't have a major political party willing to take advantage of much of that, in fact the Conservatives are promising to maintain and enhance labour and environmental laws, and beyond opening up trade to the world, there is little sense of the opportunity to liberalise domestic laws outside the EU.

Moreover, the Conservative Party under Boris Johnson is centrist, it is promising to spend billions more and has abandoned fiscal discipline in favour of trying to compete modestly with Corbyn's absurd levels of promises of spending.   Anyone who claims Boris and the Conservatives are far right, are either ignorant or just revoltingly minimising what actual fascism is - because there is little difference between the Conservatives and Blair's Labour - the main difference being the end of the EUphilia of the Blair era.  The Conservatives are still regulating the energy market to raise prices for a transition away from fossil fuels, they are still planning to ban the sale of fossil fuel powered motor vehicles and they are unrepentent about supporting more money for the world's biggest civilian bureaucracy - the NHS.

Yet don't think it can't happen that Corbyn can win.  He raised Labour's vote in 2017 to 40% from 30.4% in 2015, primarily by raising turnout.  The great failure of the Conservatives (and indeed the Labour right) has been to not confront, challenge and undermine the philosophy of socialism and Marxism, in fact the UK education system has been a vehicle for some to promote it, and this has been reinforced by the broadcast media (especially Channel 4 and the BBC, both state owned) and universities.  The Conservatives, by and large, don't push more trust in individuals and markets, they embrace interference, tax, spending and regulation.  So why be surprised when the party that BELIEVES in central planning, control, socialism and a big state is more convincing, especially to the young.

Realistically if Boris doesn't win, it is more likely the UK has some cobbled together coalition of the left, with Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the SNP and a handful of others maybe able to create a majority government (but they wont get support from any Northern Irish MPs, because Sinn Fein refuses to sit in the House of Commons - that so many of its members at one time wanted to blow up).  If it does, it will be because of Boris and because of a long legacy of failure to communicate and present a clear choice.  In 1983 Margaret Thatcher took on Michael Foot's socialist Labour Party, and won convincingly, because it was a fight between a similar level of Marxism as Corbyn, and Western liberal capitalist democracy.  Sadly in this election, Boris is no Margaret Thatcher and more frighteningly Corbyn is no Michael Foot (at least Foot was no anti-semite)

Brexit: The incompetent, the cowardly and the unprincipled

Almost all of UK politics has been about Brexit.

Yes, it's all been about Brexit and it all still is.  As a believer in free markets and smaller government, I supported Brexit, not so much about ending freedom of movement of people (although there is a strong case to have limits on convicted criminals crossing borders in the EU), but about escaping the high wall of the EU Single Market and Customs Union.  This is where the lazy nonsense from both left and right about Brexit being akin to Trump's success falls rather weak.   For a start, the mandate for Brexit was much greater than the one Trump got.  Trump lost the popular vote, but won the electoral college, whereas Brexit won the popular vote (although the attempt by some to balkanise the UK by saying London voted to "remain" as did Scotland misses the point, it was a UK wide vote on UK foreign policy, which isn't a devolved matter).  Moreover, Trump is a protectionist and an idiot on economics.  Brexit has never been about little Britain or fortress Britain, and virtually none of those who advocated Brexit saw it as the UK turning in on itself, but rather breaking free of the EU to be open to the world.   Indeed, even those who wanted Brexit to enable restrictions on immigration saw it as an opportunity to treat EU citizens on a par with those from the US or India and the like. 

The absolute political abomination around it comes from a whole host of sources which have been undermined by a Prime Minister who neither lack the intellectual nor visceral fortitude to advance in a way that would maximise the interests of the UK and indeed the EU as well.  These include:

• A loud vocal and substantial number of MPs, mostly Labour, but also some Conservatives (and certainly all Liberal Democrats and nationalist MPs) who want to over turn the referendum result with their banal call for a "People's Vote" (apparently the last referendum wasn't so honoured with such a title).  Virtually everyone calling for a second referendum didn't like the result of the first one, and I doubt any of those calling for it would have supported a second referendum if "Remain" had won.  
• A deeply divided Conservative Party that doesn't have a clear vision of what it wants from leaving the EU.  It should want maximum market access, it should want control over domestic regulation and regulation of trade with other countries.  However, some want to leave without a deal, some want to leave with a deal that makes leaving conditional on the EU supporting it, and some don't want to leave at all.  The PM wants to leave with a deal that the EU demanded, which some who voted to leave regard as worse than staying in the EU,
• A deeply divided Labour Party, which ranges from a significant rump who want to remain, a small group who strongly support leaving, and the leadership which isn't keen on committing to anything, primarily because the Trotskyite Jeremy Corbyn has spent most of his life thinking the EU is a capitalist conspiracy for free trade and investment across Europe which interferes with his desire for large scale nationalisation of industry, ending competition in many areas and supporting subsidies for failing industries.
• A civil service which is oriented towards the status quo, which means not leaving.  David Cameron told the entire civil service not to plan for leaving the EU, so it is lost and trying to work out what it would all mean.  The Foreign Office mind you is in its normal state of affairs, which is not to upset anyone overseas.  It's not at all interested in playing tough with the EU.

The EU has played the UK government like a tune.  It disgracefully raised the issue of the Irish border, despite explicitly statements from both the UK and Irish governments that neither would reinstate a hard border if there were no deal.  Why should they?  The UK does not seek to hinder movement of people or goods from the Republic of Ireland, and the Irish Government has no interest in doing so either (indeed the goods flows across the Irish border are insignificant, being mainly fresh food and road gravel).   What is going on is that the Irish Government, having changed part way through the negotiations on Brexit, to be a minority government with Sinn Fein support, has been seeking to build support by supporting the EU beating up the UK.

This is what is fundamentally problematic with the "deal" Theresa May wants support for.  It includes a "backstop" that would mean a customs border in the Irish Sea that places Northern Ireland within the EU Customs Union.  By no means should the EU (or the UK Government) do anything that essentially undermines the territorial integrity of the UK and the Good Friday Agreement itself as part of the withdrawal agreement.   A stronger PM would just have dismissed this, pointed out how neither side wants a hard border and the UK has no issue with EU goods and people travelling across the Irish border, and leave it to the EU to ask Ireland what it would do in return.   Understandably, the Democratic Unionist Party threatens to bring down the May Government if it persists with this, as it should.  Notwithstanding that the DUP is effectively a "blood and soil" unionist party that is akin to Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland, the whole matter of the future of Northern Ireland should be up to the people who live there.

So it was defeated by the House of Commons early in the year, but since then there have been subsequent votes including the so-called Brady amendment, which called for the PM to negotiate for removal of the Irish backstop.

The EU's response has been "we wont change", but time is ticking, as it is fewer than 50 days away from the UK leaving the EU, without a deal.  What does that mean?

• The EU stops getting money from the UK (don't underestimate what that means, it is around £173m per week in net terms);
• The EU can choose to impose its standard tariffs on imports from the UK (under WTO rules, it is the Most Favoured Nation tariffs), and the UK could reciprocate (they would be the same as the UK has EU tariffs at present), or either or both could refrain;
• The UK no longer has a role with any EU organisations.

It could be highly disruptive to trade, but it is entirely up to both sides.  Hysteria over food shortages and the like is entirely up to the UK to avoid, because it could simply maintain existing trading conditions unilaterally.  However, I would expect the EU to want to impose tariffs or worse (bans or limits on imports), as "punishment" because of its protectionist instincts.  The UK could respond in kind of course, but it would be a trade war started by the EU - which despite the culture war in the UK over Brexit, is not open and not globalist at all.

The EU wants to make it uncomfortable for the UK, it really wants it to be painful to leave its club.  It wants to make an example of the UK, so that others don't want to leave the project.   The majority of EU Member States receive money from the European Commission, so it is unlikely they would leave, but the richer members, such as the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Finland are different.  They are not net recipients, but they are also not beset with the war guilt and fear about fascism that binds Germany (and to a modest extent Italy) to the EU.   However, the UK is still the second largest economy in Europe.  It is entirely in the economic interests of all EU Member States that the UK trades as freely as possible with them, for both goods and services.

On freedom of movement, the UK faces an ongoing dilemma.  There is a lot of support for restricting immigration more generally, but this is primarily due to concerns over housing prices and overcrowding of public services.  There are also concerns about some cultural aspects of migration (particularly high concentrations of Pakistani Muslim migration given the Rotherham scandal), but this is mainly historic in locations where there has been poor assimilation and integration.   Most of those migrants never came from the EU.  Yet when the EU faces a crisis across its members it has proven itself to be inept and incapable of responding.  It was paralysed when European countries (yes the EU is NOT Europe) engaged in a genocidal war in the early 1990s in the Balkans.  It has been paralysed when hundreds of thousands fled the war in Syria (which it, of course, didn't dare want any intervention in).

Leaving the EU does put the UK at risk of one eventuality, a socialist government led by Jeremy Corbyn wouldn't be constrained by EU rules requiring competition in various services, such as energy and transport.  However, leaving the EU will break the UK away from being bound by rules imposed by Brussels and Strasbourg that it cannot escape from.  This is why small authoritarian parties, such as the Greens and the Liberal Democrats are so enamoured by the EU - it imposes legislation (directives!)  that could never be passed by the UK Parliament.   Although it might be argued that the EU Parliament could get more attention, quite simply the EU Parliament does not have the authority to introduce legislation or repeal directives.  The European Council has the sole authority to propose bills to the Parliament, including bills to repeal directives.

Leaving the EU is a liberal venture, it is one that opens the UK to the world, that breaks it out of the sclerotic protectionist trading bloc that isn't interested in tax competition or indeed in allowing the rest of the world to trade using its comparative advantages.   It does not remotely resemble the aggressive protectionism of Trump, and by wanting to put all UK immigration on a similar basis, it doesn't resemble the spectre of xenophobia that many think it does.

However, it has divided the UK like few issues have in recent years.  The various groups are:

• Continuity Remain: Those who reject the referendum result, reject having a referendum and are viscerally true believers that EU membership is economically, morally and spiritually virtuous.
• "People's Vote" Remain:  Those who say they support the referendum result, but say everything has changed now, so "the people" should have a chance to reverse it.  None would have called for this had the vote gone the other way.
• Soft Brexit Remain:  Those who say they want the UK to leave the EU, but stay in the Customs Union (meaning it can't negotiate separate free trade agreements with other countries) and the Single Market (meaning it has to follow Single Market rules for its own market).  Essentially being an EU rule taker without a say on the rules.
• EFTA Leave:  Those who believe the UK should leave the EU, but simply join the European Free Trade Agreement, which means remaining in the Single Market for trade with the EU, but outside the Customs Union.  Effectively a stepping stone either to remain or to leave in full.
• May's Deal Leave:  Those who support the PM's deal, which is to leave, but have a backstop so that Northern Ireland remains in the Customs Union if no free trade agreement is agreed with the EU.
• FTA Leave:  Those who want a much looser deal, negotiating a simple free trade agreement, but leaving the EU in every sense, they are often part of....
• No-Deal Leave:  Those who just want to leave, unconditionally and THEN negotiate a deal with the EU.

My bet is that the UK will leave, but will negotiate a temporary deal to buy time for further renegotiation.  If it doesn't leave, the Conservative Party will implode and it wont be over.

For me, I'll just be glad when the culture war over Brexit is over.

Brexit: An opportunity that could be wrecked by politicians

So the UK votes to leave and the PM decides to leave, but not now.  The Chancellor of the Exchequer hides, and beyond the Bank of England printing a few billion, nothing else happens.

The EU has already decided to play tough and has its own position, which is essentially "fuck off, the walls are going up, deal with it".  Although Germany is being much more nuanced.

The Conservative Party has to find a new leader, and from that a new Cabinet and a policy on negotiations.  Labour meanwhile is going the same way.  It is likely a new Conservative leader/PM will call a General Election on a manifesto of leading the UK into a new open, free-trading world with a new free trading relationship with the EU.   Leaving the EU requires the UK to initiate it formally, which the EU is begging for, but the Government would rather delay because it changes its bargaining position.

Yet that could be problematic, not least because a key plank of those fighting to leave the EU is to end free movement of people with the EU, and all countries in the EU Single Market (including non-EU Norway and Iceland) all have signed up to free movement, and even non Single Market Switzerland has, although it does have extensive restrictions on new residents having access to any government provided services.

Meanwhile, leftwing nationalists have jumped on an opportunity.  Sinn Fein wants a referendum on Irish unification, but the Northern Ireland First Minister has said no.  Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is flailing about wanting a second referendum on independence, but wont discuss:

1. The EU only lets non-members join, not current members split into joining and non-joining;

2. Joining the EU means joining the Euro;

3. 90% of Scottish trade is with the UK, Scotland in the EU would mean any EU trade barriers with the UK also apply to Scottish trade with the rest of the UK.

Spain, showing it really hasn't turned as far from Francoism as it would have liked, is demanding co-sovereignty over Gibraltar.

Meanwhile, the young leftwing social justice warrior types (Generation SnowFlake some have called them, for their "safe spaces", being "triggered" by hurt feelings and constantly protesting about what is offended) feel "betrayed" about the old "ruining their futures".  However, the truth is that the majority of the young didn't care enough to vote as revealed by Sky News below.

% who got through our final #EUref poll turnout filter by age group:

18-24: 36%
25-34: 58%
35-44: 72%
45-54: 75%
55-64: 81%
65+: 83%

— Sky Data (@SkyData) June 25, 2016

Whinging about democracy when it doesn't go your way, whilst embracing it otherwise, is beyond the pale, as are some of the hate filled attacks on older votes coming from those whose own identity politics is supposed to decry hate speech.  The truth being that the so-called liberal leftwing anti-hate, anti-violence activists are full of hate and quite happily embrace violence to get their "own way".  It's emotion laden petulance, of the kind you would have only seen from the fringes of the far-right and conspiracy theorists had the vote gone to Remain. 

So what should happen now? (notwithstanding who the PM and Government is)

1. The Government should announce the key planks of a new relationship with the EU around trade, investment, movement of people and co-operation, that it seeks to adopt.  It should clarify to the entire country that it is not going to be a UK of isolationism, but one of openness.

2. The Government should make it clear to all EU passport holders in the UK that no-one will be deported, except under existing arrangements for threats to national security or criminals.  No EU residents need fear this, nor will their property be affected or businesses, and if anyone threatens them they should go to the Police.

3. The PM should make it clear that there will be no referendum on Scottish independence this side of Brexit, but that the Government will consult with the Scottish government and parliament on the deal it seeks with the EU.  It is precipitous to talk about Scottish independence until Scotland sees the new deal negotiated with the EU.

4. The PM should make it clear that there will be no referendum on Northern Ireland joining Ireland unless the preconditions of the Good Friday Agreement are met, but that equally it cannot happen until the new deal with the EU is negotiated AND negotiations are concluded with the Republic of Ireland.

5. The PM should go to Dublin and discuss the future relationship and reassure that no border controls will be reinstated.

6. The PM should go to Germany and talk, extensively, about how to make this work, and then go to all other EU Member State capitals, and the EFTA Member States too. 

7.  The Government should go to the WTO to discussing reviving membership.

8. The PM should visit USA, China, Japan and other trading partners and say that it wants to have open, freer trading relationships and the UK will be open for business and people.

9. Finally, the PM should make it clear that there wont be a second referendum on membership and that those who want to claim it is unfair, that this is democracy and the task now is to bring the country together and work for a new relationship with the EU and the world that demonstrably proves the claims of the Remain activists wrong.

Oh and ignore Nicola Sturgeon.  The Scottish Parliament can't "veto" the British Government any more than Lambeth Borough Council can stop the UK having nuclear weapons.

EU truths and untruths

With the UK now voting as to whether it remains in the EU or stirs up what has been described as "the biggest change in European politics since the fall of the Berlin Wall" (although the war in Yugoslavia and the first genocide since the Nazis ought to come close), I thought I'd run through some of the claims of both sides that are intellectually dishonest.

Remain

3 million jobs are linked to trade with the EU: Well yes, but then nobody is saying trade with the EU will end and nobody campaigning to leave wants inferior trading conditions.  The European Free Trade Association provides free trade with the EU, with Switzerland, Norway and Iceland all members.  The idea that leaving the EU means 3 millions jobs are at risk is a gross exaggeration.   However, if the EU is bloody minded and puts up tariff barriers equivalent to what it does for the rest of the world. it is a 4% average tariff on UK trade to the EU, which is negative for jobs, but hardly a huge risk. 

If the UK leaves the EU, you might need a visa to visit the EU: Nonsense.  You don't need a visa to visit the EU from the US, Canada, Australia, NZ or any of the EFTA member states.  What would change is having the right to live there.  Given those wanting to leave mostly want to end the free movement of people, that could be a concern for some. 

Leaving the EU will create a recession: No it wont.  The worst estimates are a small reduction in economic growth, but the long run estimates are a 6% long term slowing of growth if the UK gets the most inferior trading conditions likely with the EU (and assuming the UK has no free trade agreements with any other countries, like the US, Japan and China).  It also assumes the UK does not cut any EU regulation out at all.  In short, the Treasury estimates used by the Government of a recession are based on leaving the EU, and not taking advantage of the new freedom to trade and freedom to relieve the economy of EU Directives that impose costs on growth.

The EU means food, petrol, flights, energy and mobile phone charges are lower: Unmitigated rubbish, quite the opposite.  The EU Common Agricultural Policy inflates the price of food in the EU by 17% over market prices.  The EU legally requires all Member States to tax petrol by at least around 32p/l (but the UK government taxes it at 80% more than that).  The Single Aviation Market goes beyond the EU, with many non-EU countries as participants.  Norwegian Airlines has grown rapidly in the past couple of years, expanding long haul flights between the UK and US.  Norway is not in the EU. The EU inflates energy prices, by requiring minimum levels of taxation on gas and electricity bills, and imposing renewable energy obligations on member states.  Yes mobile roaming in the EU is lower than it would have been had the EU not enforced it, but it's clear EU protectionism and "normalisation" of regulations imposes costs on consumers. 

The £10 billion paid into the EU is "returned' many times over: No it's not.  What is returned is free trade, which should never be at the cost of paying for farming subsidies or infrastructure investment in other countries.  Leaving the EU doesn't mean an end to trading with the EU. 

The EU has 50 trade agreements we lose access to:  Many of which are with micro-states/territories, like San Marino, Andorra, Liechtenstein, Faroe Islands, Guernsey.  The only significant economies with deals are Mexico, South Africa and South Korea.  The UK could readily negotiate during the transition deals easily as good or better, as the main forces for protectionism in trade are the likes of France.

Staying in means reform:  That's highly unlikely.  David Cameron couldn't even get all the reforms he asked for with a threat of Brexit (which clearly the EU saw through as being unlikely), why would it happen after a vote to Remain?  The UK holds 9% of the MEP seats in the European Parliament, and although it is a significant contributor, reform is sclerotic.  The EU hasn't significantly cut back any of its activities and always finds new ones.  It is a political project of integration, and shows little sign of ever caring what is thought of it.

David Cameron's deal means unemployed EU migrants can be deported:  No, they can't. EU citizens can't be deported from Member States unless they are a threat to national security or criminals.  

Leave

Leaving the EU will fix the immigration "problem":  Assuming the problem is too many immigrant, and the failure of the Government to cut annual immigration to less than 100,000 people, leaving the EU will enable the UK to ration EU immigration like it does for non-EU.  However, non- EU immigration is already over 150,000 per annum.  Nobody is saying Brexit means deporting immigrants (thankfully).  Most concerns over immigration are perceptions about access to taxpayer provided services, and more often than not reflect the bankruptcy of the world's biggest health bureaucracy, which is treated as a religion never to be reformed (NHS), the bizarre legal obligation of all local authorities to ensure anyone who lives in the UK has housing (including rooms in hotels paid for by taxpayers), the open access to compulsory education and the sclerotic way the UK restrains supply of housing and roads.   Leaving the EU wont solve any of that, but then those wanting to stay in the EU are also devoid of responses to what are more fundamental problems.  

Turkey is joining soon: No it's not.  Notwithstanding David Cameron's hypocrisy over the issue, it is difficult to see Cyprus accepting Turkey until there is settlement over northern Cyprus, or Greece accepting Turkey until Turkey secures its southern borders with Syria and Iraq.  However, Serbia, Montenegro, FYR Macedonia and Albania will all likely be members within 10 years.

Money saved will be spent on the NHS:  Well the half that is a rebate and is current subsidies wont change, although there is a chance to make some serious saving there.  The rest?  Well it can go on many things, but there is a case for simply cutting the deficit by £10 billion a year.  After all, despite George Osborne's platitudes, the UK government is still overspending.  What happens with the money is up to the government.  The Leave campaign is not the government.  Yes leaving the EU wont save £350 million a week, more like half that, but the rebate is not set in a treaty, and the spending 

UK will be drawn into the Euro and ever closer union: The UK has a treaty opt-out of the Euro and has to agree to treaties for ever closer union, but it wont mean it doesn't face the costs of ever closer union.  That will depend on future negotiations.

The UK can get trade access as good as the Single Market without free movement of people:  This is unlikely, simply because it would mean the Single Market is undermined and would be a massive backtracking of the principles of the EU.  Signing up to EFTA or the EEA will mean some compromise on this.

NZ Herald wrong about EU referendum

The NZ Herald has decided that it thinks the UK should stay in the EU, but its editorial on the issue is  woeful, it misses the point and is dotted with errors.  There is nothing in the editorial about the key problems with EU membership, around how EU laws are developed undemocratically (introduced by the European Council, MEPs can't introduce legislation), how the EU is inordinately wasteful including on policies that harm New Zealand's economy (including the Common Agricultural Policy) and harm developing countries.  Nothing about the protectionism of the EU slowing the ability of the UK to trade freely with growing economies in Asia and Latin America.  

New Zealand has full control over its trade policy, its domestic regulations and immigration policy, but the UK does not have the same at all.

It's not true that no country has ever left the EU, Greenland did.  Now that's not anything remotely on the scale of the UK.  Of course, neither did the NZ Herald point out that Switzerland, Norway and Iceland all have thrived outside the EU.  The EU is not Europe as much as it likes to think that it is.  

It's true that Brexit could encourage a break up of the EU, but is that necessarily a bad thing? An unwieldy arrogant technocratic organisation that failed miserably to deal with the refugee crisis, was paralysed by the breakup of Yugoslavia, unable to agree on acting until the US intervened to stop Serbia deporting Kosovan Albanians.  The spectre that European countries will wage war on each other when they have functioning liberal democracies with extensive trade and travel with each other. 

Yet the Herald editorial paints the picture that Brexit somehow increases the chance of Russia invading the EU? Why?  NATO provides the security guarantee for its members, it isn't weakened by the UK leaving the EU - at all.  Why would it matter?

The claim that Scotland will leave the UK after a Brexit vote is also rather fatuous.  Polls on Scottish independence still say 55% would vote to stay in the UK, and there is little reason why the UK Government would hold another referendum on Scottish independence.  It's highly presumptive to think Brexit means Scottish independence.

Finally, yes it is immigration that is motivating many voters to want to leave the EU, but not immigration from outside the EU, it is concern that free movement will overcrowd the country, keep down wages and overwhelm government provided services. 

However, for me, it is because the EU is a sclerotic unaccountable project that keeps the UK in chains, it also subsidises unfair competition to New Zealand producers in world markets and restricts sales of many NZ products into the EU.

The case to leave the EU is about openness, tolerance, kindness and freedom

The shocking murder of Labour MP Jo Cox may well prove decisive in the referendum on EU membership.   Tommy Mair appears to have repeatedly shot and stabbed the MP and for all we now know, when asked for his name he shouted out “Death to Traitors, Freedom for Britain", but Mr Mair doesn't believe in freedom.

It appears he is a fascist, and so of course, the new narrative has been that “politics are too angry” and that the anti-EU campaign has “fuelled” this murder.  Of course, those claiming the hate tend to be on the left/Remain side, like legendary leftwing polemicist Polly Toynbee, who once claimed Conservative welfare cuts were like The Final Solution for the disabled.  You can’t do much more in hate than accuse your opponents of being Nazis can you?  Of course Labour is led by a man who used to go to the funerals of IRA terrorists and invite their leaders for meetings, all the time it was waging war against the UK public and UK government (and had killed several MPs).  Corbyn’s statements against hate and violence are as duplicitous as they are disgusting.  The late Jo Cox had a range of views across the spectrum, including a belief that the world shouldn't let Assad barrel bomb and drop chemical weapons on civilians, which saw her be damned by the mediocre "Madame Mao" Labour front bencher Diane Abbott as a "warmongering Tory".  She faced a campaign for de-selection, which Labour has carefully airbrushed away, as her tragic murder becomes politicised.  She did support remaining in the EU, quite vehemently, so it has become easy to claim that the other side were opposed to her.

Yet, the narrative that links the murder to leaving the EU may well stick among undecided voters, especially as polls have been close throughout the campaign, and most recently have put Leave ahead by a few points.  

It’s grossly simplistic and opportunistic to claim, as Remain advocates are, that their side is about kindness, tolerance and openness, when the EU is neither open, nor particularly tolerant and kind with its trade policies, or indeed with diversity of opinion about itself.

The EU isn't open when it maintains a fortress around it trading with the world, especially on services and agriculture.  It has been a force for openness in trade within with enormous resistance from one of its founding members, France, which sees the EU as a tool for "solidarity" - code for spending ever more taxpayers' money on its dirigiste vanity led economic nationalism and absurd profligacy for 19th century farming enterprises.

The EU isn't tolerant when it ignores referenda in France, Ireland, the Netherlands on EU Treaties and simply demands their governments ignore them.  It isn't tolerant when it says that it wont allow "extremists" to be in government in Member States even if democratically elected.

The EU isn't kind when it continues to flood world markets with subsidised agricultural produce, undermining exports and domestic production in developing countries, and so impoverishing poor country producers, whilst funding subsidies for Prince Charles's farming empire.  

Do I think leaving the EU will mean the UK will embark on some free market libertarian revolution of less government?  No, not really.  However, within the EU the only certainty is that there will be growth in EU spending programmes, growth in regulation and ever less accountability for the new laws and spending from Brussels/Strasbourg (don’t forget the EU has two locations for its Parliament, because France wanted an impoverished area to get a boost, so monthly the entire Parliament relocates between cities, at a cost of over €330 million annually).

For all of the relatively mild rhetoric about immigration, the Leave campaign is led by politicians who have mostly been sceptical about government power and all are advancing an agenda of more free trade, more openness to the world and greater engagement with the world.  Leaving the EU is not the fascist/socialist vision of a self-sufficient island that waves a flag and shuts out the world (although those who hold those views want to the leave the EU because its own internal market is an anathema).

I don’t doubt a vote to leave the EU will be a shock, initially to financial markets, more fundamentally to the EU and to the UK Government.  However, the shock need not last for the UK, when there are many years to negotiate leaving the EU and a new trade relationship.  It wont give succour to Putin, nor will it mean a loss of influence for the world’s fifth largest economy.

The Spectator’s lead story this week is about how it is advocating for the UK to break free from the EU.  

Given that the EU has proved that it is structurally incapable of reform, we now have a choice. Do we cave in, because we’re too scared to leave? Or do we vote to retrieve our sovereignty, walk away from the whole racket and engage with the world on our own terms? A vote to leave would represent an extraordinary vote of confidence in the project of the United Kingdom and the principle of national self-determination. It would also show reform-minded Europeans that theirs is not a lost cause. And that we stand willing to help forge a Europe based on freedom, co–operation and respect for sovereignty.

It isn't a vote for UKIP politicians, for leaving the EU will put most of them out of a job.  Nigel Farage isn't even an MP, and the one UKIP MP, Douglas Cardwell, is very much a libertarian.

I urge all those in the UK eligible to vote, to Vote Leave.  It is time to break free, for a more open, a more tolerant and a kinder UK. 

Libertarian position on the EU Referendum

On 23rd June, the UK will vote on whether to remain in or leave the EU.  I'm voting to leave the EU, and believe that, on balance, those who believe in individual liberty including free trade should strongly support leaving the EU.

Bizarrely, Prime Minister David Cameron, having campaigned for a referendum, is now claiming that a vote for the UK to leave would trigger recession, economic catastrophe and even risk future war.  He’s been asked why he bothered putting the UK through such a risk, particularly since only months ago he said the UK would “do ok”.    Now both the Tory Government, most of the Labour Party and virtually all Liberal Democrats, Scottish and Welsh Nationalists and the Greens are all campaigning to remain in the EU, whereas the campaign to leave is led by Boris Johnson,  Michael Gove, nearly half of Conservative MPs, a handful of Labour MPs and UKIP.

The two main planks of the Remain camp are first that leaving the EU Single Market would damage the economy, and they cite many economists, the IMF, World Bank and OECD who all support this, along with some major business leaders and companies.  The second claim is that leaving the EU “lessens Britain” and isolates it, and means the UK loses influence. 

The Leave campaign has a few key messages.  One is that it will save £350m a week from not contributing to the EU (although that excludes receipts from EU programmes to the UK and Thatcher’s rebate, which could be removed at any time).  Secondly, is that leaving the EU will return sovereignty to the British Government, rather than the EU, which passes laws, even if all British MEPs oppose them, imposing them on the UK.  Thirdly, is concern that immigration cannot be effectively controlled whilst there is free movement and full rights for all EU citizens to reside in the UK.

For a libertarian, the EU referendum does mean a trade off.   Indeed, the only two elements of the EU that are pro-freedom are the single market and free movement of people.

EU Membership does provide a single market of over 550 million people, for goods if not for services.  However, it is a customs union that is highly protectionist, and has for decades been one of the biggest objectors to global free trade in agriculture and in many services at the WTO, particularly because France is consistently resistant to trade liberalisation.   Much is made of the EU signing “trade deals” with other countries, but it rarely includes services and never includes agriculture.   Nick Clegg likes to describe the many years and reams of paper needed for the EU to reach trade agreements with the likes of Canada, as if this is the norm (and a burden the UK would have to bear with other countries if outside the EU).  Yet this is quite unnecessary.  New Zealand and Australia agreed on free trade (CER) in less than four years, with a relatively simple agreement.  The only reason free trade agreements become complex is when one of the parties wants exemptions – not actually wanting free trade. 

The second libertarian element of the EU is the free movement of people.  The ability to cross borders virtually unimpeded is of significant value, but it is unconditional.  No EU Member states have the ability to shut out other EU citizens if they have been convicted of any serious offences.   I am not from the camp that believes that free movement within the EU is inherently bad, but I do believe countries should be able to exclude foreign nationals who are proven violent criminals.  The UK's immigration problems are in part, its own fault.  Its health system is the world's biggest civilian bureaucracy that makes feeble attempts to restrict non-national usage and asks nothing of users in terms of financial contributions.  Anyone with legal residency in the UK has access to the welfare state (including generous tax credits for low income workers and child benefits), to taxpayer funded education for their children and access to publicly subsidised housing (indeed there is a "legal right" to housing in the UK, paid for by others).   

In short, the UK has a welfare state edifice that is attractive to migrants with low skills, especially coming from much poorer countries with inferior health, education and housing provision.   If it wants to reduce immigration, it ought to look in the mirror.

Furthermore, as journalist Rod Liddle said at a Spectator hosted event on June 13th, eastern Europeans don't pose an existential threat to western civilisation or to the values of individual freedom that give cause to be concerned about Islamism.  As much as some are concerned about Polish migration to Britain, they integrate, they embrace the values of a developed Western liberal democracy, they set up businesses, they are not demanding media not offend them with threats of violence. Notwithstanding the distortions caused by the UK's wider welfare state, I am not concerned about migration from eastern European, as long as prudent measures are made to exclude convicted violent criminals.

However, the freedom of movement and freedom of trade within the single market do not, for me, outweigh what's wrong with the EU:

- It is a massive exercise in regulation and legal control on almost all areas of the economy.  The EU has over 10,000 Directives on anything from standards for fruit and vegetables, to blowtorches, to light bulbs, to employment.  It is a huge corporatist system that imposes major compliance costs on businesses, restricting new entry and restraining innovation.  Most explicitly, the EU has prohibited the use of genetically modified organisms in agriculture, ensuring that research and development of GM technology outside laboratories is based in the US and Asia, not Europe.

- Its budget is dominated by the protectionist racket known as the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).  The CAP inflates the price of food for Europeans by heavily restricting imports from more efficient producers from many countries, including New Zealand, and subsidises overproduction in Europe which is then exported undermining market prices in other countries including poor producers in developing countries.  The CAP impoverishes farmers in poor countries, whilst the EU engages in pious virtue signalling about how much it cares about inequality.  The CAP itself isn't even equal in Europe, as it would have gone bankrupt had eastern European producers been subsidised at the same rates as those in western Europe, so perversely farmers in the EU's poorest countries (e.g. Bulgaria) receive subsidies one-third lower than those in its richest countries (e.g. Luxembourg).

- The EU takes £10 billion a year of British taxpayers' money more than it returns (and most of what it returns is to prop up farmers, to fund research projects or pious regional development projects).  That is money currently borrowed from future taxpayers.  It should end to help balance the budget.  The ludicrous idea that this is the "price for accessing the single market" is absurd.  Free trade does not need to be accompanied by massive subsidy schemes for small parts of the EU economy or politically motivated infrastructure, research or vanity projects (such as Galileo - the EU's complete duplication of the US GPS system, under the nonsensical basis that the US might "shut it down one day").  Furthermore, the majority of EU Member States are not net contributors, and until the past three years neither was France (primarily because it takes so much back in subsidies to prop up its 19th century farming sector).

- The EU is fundamentally authoritarian in instinct, having contempt for the democratically expressed choices of EU Member State voters (the EU President recently said that certain political parties would "not be allowed" to have power if they won elections in EU Member States, such as the Freedom Party in Austria).  The EU's utter failure to provide any discipline on spending in some Euro-member states and contempt for popular revolt at the resulting economic collapse reflects its distance from the concerns of Europeans.  Notably, it has taken few steps to address Hungary's creeping authoritarianism as its government subverts much of its media to support its own propaganda.

- Members of the European Parliament have no powers at all to introduce new legislation including legislation to abolish existing Directives.  Only the European Council can introduce draft legislation into the European Parliament, and the Council is comprised of people appointed by Member State Governments.  The closest the EU gets to accountability is that MEPs can vote to oppose the passage of draft directives, but none can propose their own new legislation.

- The European Commission budget has been found to be materially in error every year for the past 18 years, most recently by 3.9%, or around €5 billion.  This is in part because of the complexities of its spending programs there is considerable scope for fraud and mistake.  Never mind, the EU just keeps asking for more money.

- The EU never cuts its budget, ever.  Every year it asks for more and more, it never ceases to undertake any functions, it never seeks to hand back powers to Member States.  It grows inexorably.  Ten years ago it didn't have a common Foreign Policy, it is now discussing haviuniong an EU Army.  Bear in mind this growth continues in spite of it telling the likes of Greece and Spain that they need to cut spending to balance their budgets.

- The EU falsely claims it is responsible for peace in Europe amongst its Member States, ignoring not only the role of NATO in deterring war with the Soviet Union, but also the more fundamental principle that liberal democracies don't go to war with each other.  The EU got in the way of addressing the war in the Balkans in the 1990s as it opposed letting the Bosnian Muslims arm themselves to respond to the Serbian ultra-nationalist genocide being led by Radovan Karadzic, it has been divided over Ukraine.

- The EU attracts mediocre political appointees to have considerable power over us all.  The UK supplied the second Foreign Minister, Catherine Ashton, a Labour Party member, unionist and former peer (i.e. never elected) who had no foreign policy background.  Failed UK Labour Leader Neil Kinnock built a long career for himself and his family in the EU.  

- The EU has attacked free speech by requiring Google to remove content from searches that EU citizens specifically request as being the "right to be forgotten" .  More recently it has sought to have a common approach to "hate speech", including a call to restrict "disrespectful public discourse".  Fuck off you arseholes.

- The EU project's ultimate end game is a European superstate with power over taxation, national budgets and a massive programme to "harmonise" the regulation of all industries and sectors as one.  This superstate will not be interested in reducing what it does, granting more freedoms to its citizens and reducing its burden on taxpayers, rather the contrary.

Supporters of the Vote Leave campaign have produced this movie below, which is being freely distributed.

I have already cast my postal vote to leave and no, I don't take the views of President Obama, John Key, the IMF, World Bank,  UN Secretary General or others into account.  I don't expect any government or any international organisation to risk their own trade and relationships with the world's largest economy (the EU) by supporting the UK leaving.   Most bizarrely, it is odd that President Obama would ask the UK to stay in a political union that the US itself would never bind itself to even if it could, given the US itself refuses to sign up to many international treaties because it doesn't want its sovereignty restrained.

However, let's be very clear what leaving the UK does not mean:

The campaign to leave the EU is not led by those who want the UK to be isolated and protectionist: Unlike the opposition to the UK's original EEC Membership in 1975, those who lead the campaign to leave the EU now are not primarily socialists who feel threatened by foreign competition.  They are advocates of free and open trade with the rest of the world.   They are dominated by concerns that UK's national sovereignty is eroded by the EU and that the EU is wasteful, sclerotic, inefficient and dismissive of individual freedoms and people's concerns about it.

Leaving the EU is not "ending co-operation": Over 160 countries in the world co-operate on a vast number of matters.   Switzerland, Norway and Iceland are not in the EU, all trade freely with it and work with it and each other and other states, without being tied to the EU project.

Leaving the EU is not racist:  By illiberal-leftwing standards, the EU itself may be deemed racist with its trade policy that harnesses protectionism and European taxpayers' money to harm producers in developing countries.  Those advocating for Brexit want an immigration policy that does not favour EU citizens from non-EU citizens, which would appear to be anything but racist.

Leaving the EU is not "leaving" or "turning our back on Europe":  The EU is not Europe, it is a political-customs union project.  The UK has been at the heart of advocating values of freedom, civil liberties, liberal democracy, rule of law and separation of powers in Europe for much longer than any other countries in Europe.  It is understandable why some countries with recent totalitarian pasts would see the EU as a project that may enable them to move on from unspeakable horrors and oppression, but the UK does not have such a path.  UK outside the EU would trade, travel and work closely with European countries, with continued migration and investment, it simply wouldn't be shackled to how the EU wants Europeans to interact.

Leaving the EU is not seeking a return to a "golden age": Far from it, it is seeking to regain full sovereignty over UK laws to create a more dynamic, outward looking Britain that isn't dependent on the EU for freer trade with the rest of the world.  No one harks back to Empire, some say Brexit will enable trading relationship with the Commonwealth to be revitalised, but few see a future of self-sufficiency and exclusion.

So I have voted to Leave.  I know if it happens, the pound will drop, the FTSE100 will drop and there will be panic.  I also know that there are strong calls for Brexit to mean a significant toughening of immigration policy, which I largely oppose.  I also know there is chance the UK will be blocked from the single market for some time, as the EU and major EU Member States seek to punish the UK for leaving, rather than look at themselves as to why that might be.

However, I am also hopeful and optimistic that the world's 5th largest economy can be more outward looking, can liberalise its economy, can reprioritise its net contribution to the EU by cutting its budget deficit and replacing the subsidy programmes it receives now and phase them out.  I am hopeful that the UK can show the EU that it should be more dynamic, open and prosperous, stimulating the sort of reforms EU Member States desperately need.  I am also hopeful that the charlatan, the PR spin doctor Prime Minister, David Cameron, can finally retire, and the UK can have a government that doesn't look like the Labour Party stayed in power after 2010.