Did Farage, albeit accidentally, have a point?

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That Nigel Farage hates the EU and sees it as some sort of evil dictatorship which enslaves its member states is hardly news. He blames the EU for almost everything that is wrong in the world. Most recently that extends to being part, along with NATO, of what provoked the Russians into invading Ukraine by daring to expand what Farage sees as the EU’s empire into parts of Europe which Russia thought in some way belonged in its sphere of influence. The choice of words is important, though: what Farage sees as EU-driven expansion to incorporate more countries will be seen by others as a case of states which have newly regained their independence choosing their own future. Whilst there’s no doubt that the existing members of both the EU and NATO were keen to draw countries in the east of Europe into their ranks, agency ultimately lay with those new members in the first place, not with the EU/ NATO. Those states were, to put it another way, exercising precisely that national sovereignty which is, apparently, so important to Farage, just in a way of which he does not approve. It’s legitimate to question whether they were making the right/ best choices – especially so in regard to the military alliance rather than the primarily economic and political one – but not whether they had the right to make them.

If the alternative was to avoid ‘provoking’ Putin, that would imply either that the states concerned agreed never to seek EU/ NATO membership, or that the EU/ NATO declined to accept them. Or even a bit of both. But there is a corollary to that – it would also mean that those states agreed to accept the effective political, economic and military dominance of Russia over them for the foreseeable future. In other words, Farage seems to see it as ‘better’ that those states cede a degree of sovereignty involuntarily to Russia than that they voluntarily share some of their sovereignty with others. Superficially, his demand for absolute sovereignty for the UK whilst limiting the sovereignty of countries to which Russia believes it has a right looks inconsistent. But it really isn’t: English nationalist exceptionalism has long held that some countries are more equal than others. And it isn’t only English nationalists – Farage is just invoking the same attitudes which led to the Munich agreement or the Yalta Conference, where European ‘great powers’ thought that they had the right to dismember and determine the future of lesser states over the heads of the people who lived there.

Whether EU/ NATO expansion did actually provoke Putin is another question entirely. He has certainly said that it was a factor, and it’s not hard to see why expanding the territory covered by NATO in particular up to the Russian borders could look like a threat, but a man who believes that large swathes of Europe historically belong to Russia – and that Ukrainians are just Russians speaking a strange dialect – could always have found another excuse to justify fulfilling his dream of reviving the Russian empire at some point. Wars are rarely caused by a single factor or event, and interpreting that expansion as a potential future threat still doesn’t justify launching a war against a neighbouring country.

But raising the question of whether NATO really did pose a threat to Russia does mean that Farage has gone to the very heart of the debate about the role of ‘defence’ in the modern world, even if almost certainly unwittingly. The nub of the argument is this: do armed blocs act as a deterrent or a threat; do they make war more, or less, likely? Specifically, if most of the former Warsaw Pact countries had not chosen to join NATO, would Putin have been more likely, or less likely, to seek to annexe all or part of Ukraine? The answer is essentially unknowable, which probably helps to explain the absolute certainty which people bring to the table when the issue is debated. Those who would have us spend ever more on armaments argue that it’s better to be safe than sorry, but it’s entirely possible that what they see as being ‘safe’ is actually the direct opposite if it makes it more likely that those who are supposed to be ‘deterred’ feel so threatened that they decide to take the risk of striking first.

What we do know, with a reasonable degree of certainty, is that using Earth’s finite resources to build ever more weapons makes those resources unavailable for other aims, and also that the long term future of all of us depends on achieving a degree of civilisation which recognises the need to share and co-operate in the way we use the Earth’s resources. Somehow, I don’t think any of that was in Farage’s mind when he opened his mouth.

Oblivion Project back on track

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For a few days last week, Sunak’s Tory Oblivion Project was put on hold as he trotted off to a remote corner of Italy for a G7 meeting and then headed up to Switzerland for a meeting on Ukraine. In his absence, there was a serious danger that his project could stall, but he’s safely back in charge now, and making up for lost time. Losing his Campaigns Director to the already simmering betting scandal was a masterstroke. That should certainly help to ensure that his enemies within the Tory Party – the whole of the party, basically – don’t have much chance of derailing his project. It’s made him so “incredibly angry” – in his own words – that he’s going to do precisely nothing about the two candidates involved (so far; who knows what else is yet to emerge, given that the bets appear to have been part of a much larger surge) until after the election a probe by outside bodies is completed, despite the fact that a policeman involved was rapidly suspended in an unusually swift response from the Met. England failing to win a football match might have been outside his control, but was undoubtedly a lucky boost to his little project.

Finally this week came the news for which he has been anxiously waiting: the polling is now so bad that even his own seat could fall to the opposition. So far, it’s only one poll, and others are still showing that he might be put on the spot about his insincere pledge to serve a full five years, but there’s still almost two weeks left for the other polls to confirm such an outcome. He needs to get the final total below 53 seats to be reasonably certain of regaining his own freedom of movement across the Atlantic, although achieving his true target of zero looks as though it might still be just beyond his grasp. But there’s an increasing chance that the next Tory leader will be chosen by putting all – or maybe even just both – the remaining names in a hat and pulling one out rather than bothering with an election process. All in all, he’s had a good week. He can only hope that there are no further international distractions to take him away from the campaign trail during the limited time remaining.

Designing our own shackles?

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Perhaps it’s some sort of strange strain of the Stockholm Syndrome which has affected the Labour Party, and in particular its Shadow Chancellor. They know that they are captives or hostages, but end up developing an empathy with their captors which an objective observer would find it hard to understand.

The Office for Budget Responsibility was established by George Osborne in 2010, with the intention of setting a rigid discipline for public finances which would ensure that subsequent governments stuck to one particular version of financial orthodoxy. It was the same orthodoxy, with the core idea that government finances are just like those of a household so that governments can only spend what they raise in tax, which led to Osborne’s successive austerity budgets – and thus to the poor state of many of our public services today. Politically, the sub-plot was to ensure that a future Labour Government would be bound by the same constraints and thus unable to implement anything like a traditional Labour platform. They never expected that any Conservative government would run foul of its restrictions, but then no-one ever expected the ascent of Liz Truss. Not even Liz Truss.

In its political objective, it has succeeded beyond Osborne’s wildest dreams. Not only have Labour bought in, hook line and sinker, to the concept and the underlying financial orthodoxy, it was announced this week that Labour in government will actually strengthen and reinforce the system, making it even harder to escape the rigidity it imposes. Reeves’ delight in presenting this policy is a bit like a slave being pleased at being given the right to design and decorate his own shackles. It’s addressing the wrong problem: the issue isn’t that the shackles aren’t pretty or effective enough, it is that they keep the slave enslaved. The OBR doesn't need to be strengthened, it needs to be either abolished or else given a different remit.

The fiscal rule to which she intends to adhere is entirely arbitrary, as is the particular number attached to the inflation target, but the result of that rule, coupled with accepting the budgets for future years which have been set by the current government, is that cuts to public services have already been built-in to future forecasts. They may not have been explicitly identified, but they are there for anyone who looks to see. The combination of ruling out tax increases, sticking to a rule which requires current expenditure to be paid for out of tax, and increased expenditure in some areas makes cuts elsewhere almost inevitable. The only get-out is for the growth genie to emerge suddenly from the lamp and miraculously increase government revenue. The whole edifice of Labour policy depends on an assumption that by doing very little other than being a bit more competent, investment in the UK will magically increase. It’s an outcome that few serious economists believe is likely.

The comparison with the Stockholm Syndrome is based on an assumption that Reeves and Labour are the captives here, and have developed an empathy with the Tory captors who set the rules. There is an alternative theory though – Labour could be captors as well, just like the Tories. They really, truly believe this guff, and their manifesto is an invitation to the captives – the population as a whole – to participate in the design of our own shackles by voting for a different bunch of captors. In that scenario, it’s the voters who end up suffering from that strange version of the Stockholm Syndrome. History tries to tell us that some slave-owners were more ‘benevolent’ than others. It’s a disputed interpretation of history to say the least. And the bottom line was that the enslaved were still slaves.

Dealing with the lying liars

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Last week saw the publication of manifestos by most of the parties. On the basis of scanning them, it is clear that amongst his first acts, in the unlikely event of his being re-elected, Rishi Sunak is clandestinely planning to reintroduce workhouses, award Vladimir Putin a peerage, and start a war with France. His manifesto doesn’t say any of that, of course – but neither does it explicitly rule any of it out. Given that the Tory attack on Labour is now largely reduced to accusing them of planning a variety of tax rises on the basis that the Labour manifesto doesn’t explicitly rule them out, why shouldn’t the same approach be applied to their own manifesto? And why stop at taxes?

Objectively for those who take the trouble to assess the different party statements, it’s a pretty stupid and pathetic approach to electioneering, and it smacks of desperation. But the lesson that they have learnt from Sunak’s predecessor but one is that making stuff up and repeating it even louder when challenged can work. The hope is that enough people remember the lie and forget the detailed rebuttal to swing their votes in the desired direction, particularly if they really want to believe the lie. (Although why keep these aims secret? Who, among the target audience for the Tories, doesn’t secretly like the idea of a decent war against France? Even if that audience would probably prefer to take on Germany. Again.)

There are, as the saying doesn’t quite go, lies, damned lies and political manifestos. The idea that ‘politicians always lie’ is commonplace, and in the sense that what governments deliver isn’t quite what their manifestos said they were going to deliver, it has the ring of truth. And whilst that is sometimes down to lying, it’s more often a case of exaggeration and wishful thinking – and circumstances can and do change. But recent years – the Johnson/Trump era stands out as marking the transition – have changed the nature of political lying. It’s no longer ‘just’ a case of exaggerated promises, it’s now direct, repeated and deliberate falsification of objectively provable facts. The ‘alternative facts’ are actively promoted by partisan print media and grossly inflated by the echo chambers of social media. The BBC have a reasonably good fact-checking service, but in their caution they struggle to be as blunt in their assessment of lies as they could be – and even after demonstrating the untruth of any given statement, they seem quite happy to invite the liars back to repeat the same lies again the following day.

There was an attempt in the Senedd recently, led by Plaid, to criminalise lying by politicians. It was somewhat droll, to say the least, to see it supported by the Tories, given that they have been the main culprits in recent years. It probably underlines the fact, though, that they don’t really believe that the law can successfully be applied to what they have been doing. I suspect that their assessment of the probability of such a law being effectively used against a Johnson or a Sunak is accurate, implying that they want the kudos from being seen to oppose political lying but without any danger that it would actually restrict them from doing so. They would hardly have supported it if it really meant that they would no longer be able to refer to ‘blanket’ 20mph speed limits, for example. It’s a problem to which there is no simple solution. In an ideal world, the miscreants would be rewarded with ‘nul points’ when the votes are counted. Sunak might be doing his best to move his party towards such a scenario, but he won’t be around for long afterwards (his promise to serve a full five year term on the opposition benches should be treated as just another example of the genre) and finding a successor who won’t simply double down on the same approach is looking like an impossible task. It looks like a problem with which we’re stuck.

An unwelcome interruption

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It’s always the foreigners who mess things up.

Things were going swimmingly for Rishi Sunak and his project to annihilate his party. He’s always saying how strong his commitment is to serving the public, and this project, with all its benefits for future generations, is his way of demonstrating it. His definition of poverty as the unavailability of Sky television went down incredibly well with those who already wanted his project to succeed whilst also helping to move a few waverers across. Giving an aide who is unable to resist a flutter on political events enough nods and winks to make a decent stab at the date of the election days before he announced it was almost a master stroke. Making sure that it was duly drawn to the attention of the Gambling Commission might have been a little harder, but where there’s a will, as they say.

And then along comes a G7 meeting, forcing him to take two days out to swan around one of the most remote corners of Italy with a bunch of foreigners, creating the danger of a poll recovery in his absence. Worse still, his new best friend, the Italian PM best known for her extremist positions on just about everything, insisted on giving him a huge hug. In front of the cameras too – raising a serious threat that some of Nigel’s supporters might see him as being worth a vote after all. Fortunately for Rishi, he’s well blessed with aides and assistants capable of carrying on his project without him, albeit unintentionally. Grant Shapps, along with Michael Green, Corinne Stockheath and Sebastian Fox – four for the price of one – did a sterling job of reminding people just how utterly the Tories are going to be destroyed in three weeks’ time, although urging people to vote to avoid handing Labour a supermajority was a bit more of a positive message than he would have wished. There’s a danger that some might take it seriously.

He’s now itching to return to the fray. Only another three weeks to remind people, incessantly, that the next PM will be either him or Starmer, and that a vote for anyone other than him is a vote to turf him out of put someone else into Downing Street. Sometimes, the simplest message is all that it takes, and encouraging people to see it as a simple choice between him and somebody else – anybody, really – should be enough to finish the job. The hardest part will be finding enough time to campaign in his own constituency to ensure the right result. Failure to lose there could condemn him to weeks or even months more in Westminster when he could be reacquainting himself with his riches in California.

It's a hard life.

Labels don't help, even if they're valid

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A noticeable trait of some Tories – Sirjake is a classic example – is to avoid referring to ‘Labour’ or the ‘Labour Party’ and talk instead about the ‘Socialists’. The word is deemed to be, in its own right, sufficient condemnation of those to whom it refers with no need for further elucidation. In the milieu of those who do this, it might work, but it betrays an underlying assumption that what the speaker considers unspeakable is also considered unspeakable by most of those listening. It is, at best, a contentious proposition. There is a similar phenomenon in operation on what is loosely called ‘the left’, where the word ‘fascist’ is often used in a similarly abusive fashion, making a similar assumption that fascism is beyond the pale for most listeners. It’s lazy – and probably ineffective.

Merriam-Webster (other dictionaries are available) tells us that fascism is defined as: “a political philosophy, movement, or regime … that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition”. An objective consideration of the political programme of parties like Reform and the modern Tory Party, to say nothing of American Trumpism or a range of European parties, will end up ticking most of those boxes, and leading to the conclusion that a resurgence of fascism is a real and present danger. But the applicability of a logically justifiable label is a wholly unreasonable, not to say counter-productive, reason for applying it. The problem is, in essence, that when we start looking at the public reaction to the elements of the definition, it becomes obvious that many of them are popular. Fascist ideology speaks to a number of deeply ingrained prejudices and biases. Using a label is a wholly ineffective way of addressing those underlying beliefs.

The commemoration of D-Day last week has been seen by some as a timely reminder of the cost of suppressing the last major outbreak of fascism in Europe, with its presentation of ‘the war’ as a battle between two ideologies, conveniently labelled freedom and fascism. Not for the first time, I found myself wondering about the validity of that characterisation. I’m too young to have been around during the war years, but during a childhood in the 1950s I certainly remember what some of the adults around me said about it. The phrase, “The only good German is a dead one” is a phrase I remember hearing a number of times, and the words ‘German’ and ‘Nazi’ were often conflated. It was only much later that I learned that not all Germans were Nazis (and, in terms of their philosophical outlook at least, not all Nazis were Germans; some were very much closer to home). The war, from that remembered perspective, was not some great ideological battle for those who lived through it and its aftermath, but a battle between two states which had fought each other in the past. The enemy was Germany, a traditional foe and competitor, not Nazism. It’s an attitude which echoes still in the stupid chant by some Ingerland fans about “two world wars and a world cup”.

The desire to see the outcome of that conflict as a triumph for good over evil, where the men in white hats defeated the ones wearing black hats, is natural and understandable, but if that outcome is more generally and simplistically understood as simply the victory of one country over another, it can all too easily leave untarnished the political philosophy which led to so many deaths. The corollary of a belief that one group or nation is superior is that other groups or nations must necessarily be seen as inferior. That in turn leads seamlessly to a belief that some have more rights than others. Pandering to such views rather than challenging them serves only to validate them, yet it’s where the official UK opposition increasingly seems to be. It’s as dangerous as simply hurling labels around.

Will Sunak be remembered as a success after all?

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Beauty isn’t the only thing which lies mostly in the eye of the beholder. In generic terms, most judgements as to what is good, bad or indifferent depend to a large extent on our own perspective; we all have our own criteria against which we make that judgement. Take Prime Ministers, for instance. In recent years, the contest for the title of worst ever Prime Minister has become a crowded field, although there are people, not all of them currently in therapy, who sincerely believe that Liz Truss did a brilliant job in the role. Despite the strong competition from her predecessor, to say nothing of her successor, those making a judgement based less on fantasy and more on the lived experience of the majority are more likely to rate her as top contender for that title of ‘worst’. It’s a record with which it’s hard for Sunak to compete.

It follows that being regarded as the worst is a race to the bottom that Sunak has probably concluded that he can’t win, although his recent emulation of the Johnsonian technique of simply making it up as he goes along has convinced some that he’s still half trying. But all PMs who can see their time coming to an end start to worry about their ‘legacy’ – how they will be seen by future generations. As that reference to future generations suggests, the ‘legacy’ of any PM can only be properly judged after a suitably lengthy period of time has passed. Maybe Sunak isn’t aiming for the title of ‘worst’, but the title of ‘best’, and just knows that it will take time for people to recognise his outstanding contribution, and identify the correct assessment criteria.

There is still one thing that he could achieve in his remaining month in the job which history would view as a huge positive step to have taken, and that is this: the complete annihilation of the English Conservative and Unionist Party. It would be a truly stupendous achievement for any leader to take his or her party from overwhelming electoral dominance to oblivion in just five years, and even if we give his immediate two predecessors some credit for building the foundations for the Sunak oblivion project, it’s still a remarkable success story for him in the mere two years he’s had in charge.

Given that his own seat is something like the fiftieth safest for his party, losing that one, leaving him free to push off to California soon after, would also suit his own personal agenda as well as being a major step towards his own version of net zero. Some might see this as some sort of failure, but any balanced view of history is surely more likely to judge it a success. Whether he can actually drive the dial all the way down to zero is currently an open question, but no-one can accuse him of not trying. It may take time – not least to ensure that the beast is well and truly dead, rather than merely resting – but Sunak may yet end up being credited with the most significant political change in recent UK history.

The one thing that stands in the way of him getting the recognition he would deserve for achieving his mission is that the political gap is likely to be filled by another party moulded by its own current leader into a carbon copy of what Sunak’s party was a mere 14 years ago. It would perhaps be unfair for Sunak’s achievement to be sullied in such a fashion, but when did fairness enter the equation?

*Knowledge* that isn't

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One thing that economists *know* with absolute certainty is that every human will always act in a way which maximises his or her own financial position. It’s an assumption which underpins many economic theories – and, by extension, much of government policy. Applied to politics, and especially (although not exclusively) to conservative politics, it means that politicians *know* that people will always vote for the party which offers them the greatest personal financial benefit, regardless of the effects on others. Whilst some voters might actually tell the pollsters directly that they think a decent health service is more important than a penny or two off their taxes, the Tories *know* that those voters are lying, and that, in the secrecy of the polling booth, they will vote on the basis of personal benefit. And those who really depend on a public health service for their very lives aren’t in any of the target groups of voters.

It's what explains the Tory obsession with tax – whether talking about their own promised cuts or the other parties’ alleged increases – and why their tax promises are targeted at precisely those individuals and groups whose votes they are keenest to attract. They are convinced that recipients of tax cuts will vote for those implementing them. It also, in a roundabout way, goes at least part of the way to explaining the otherwise inexplicable decision of the PM to duck out early from the D-Day commemorations yesterday to do an interview with ITV in which he was talking about…er… tax. There is, to put it bluntly, no financial benefit to voters from his attendance at the commemoration, and it is therefore something which he doesn’t need to be concerned about. He really can’t understand what the fuss is about, or why others would be concerned – an attitude which shone through in his initial reaction to criticism, even if some slightly wiser head has since taken him to one side and drafted a more sincere-sounding apology for him to put out.

It is alleged that a firm in which he was a partner was one of those who was betting heavily against UK banks, and therefore a partial cause of the 2008 banking crisis. Whilst the extent of his own direct involvement is not entirely clear, the way in which such funds behaved at the time was a living demonstration of the idea that some people do pursue their own financial interests, no matter how damaging that may be to others, or even the country as a whole. It’s also of a piece with the acceptance of donations from dubious individuals. Everything is defined in monetary terms – even morality is subservient to money.

But here’s the thing. Those economists who *know* that we will all act at all times in our own best financial interest also know – or at least most of them do – that it’s really just a working assumption that they use to develop their theories and models. In the ‘real’ world, humans are complex creatures who don’t always behave as the models say they should, and those models can only ever give a sort of approximation to help understand the economic world. It’s a limitation on their *knowledge* which people like Sunak simply do not and cannot understand. And end up looking more than a little bemused at what they see as the stupidity of those who don’t behave as they are supposed to.

Protection from whom?

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Sunak’s claim about Labour’s tax policy has been widely debunked, and exposed for the silliness which it is. Whether the next government will actually increase taxes or cut services is an open question, however – doing neither whilst adhering to a stupid and unnecessary fiscal rule of their own invention is a logical impossibility, but exactly the same can be said about the Tories. His claim that he will protect pensioners from ever paying income tax on their state pension, however, enters a new world of unreality.

It is a fact that the default position, as of today, is that an increasing number of pensioners are going to end up starting to pay income tax on part of their state pension. That is the result – the inevitable result – of both freezing tax allowances and increasing the pension. The resulting effective increase in income tax doesn’t only affect pensioners, it’s just more obvious because the state pension has long been set at a level below the threshold for income tax. Sunak’s promise to increase the tax threshold, for pensioners only, to ensure that it always stays higher than the level of state pension will certainly do what he says – i.e. ensure that no-one pays tax on their state pension.

But he is effectively arguing that the best way to protect pensioners from the effects of Tory policies is to vote Tory. “Vote for me to protect you from me” is a novel – probably unique – election gambit.

So what's the 'right' number?

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From the data available, it’s not at all clear that migration is as salient an issue in the election as some politicians seem to believe. On the other hand, if they bang on about it long enough and often enough, its salience is likely to increase – that’s just one of the many ways in which Labour seem to be determined to validate, rather than challenge, the Tory agenda. Starmer told us yesterday that net immigration is ‘too high’ and that Labour will slash the numbers. One might think that someone who believed that a number was ‘too high’ might have at least a rough idea of what number would not fit that description, but it is another of those details on which he seems to be clueless. And even if he feels unable to be precise about a number, it would surely be reasonable to expect that he would at least be able to set out, in rough terms, what criteria he would use to determine an answer to the question.

Sunak says much the same thing, and is thrashing around for policies which will reverse current trends – my, will he be angry when he finds out who’s been in government for the last 14 years. Whilst he can offer potential ways of cutting the numbers, in public he’s remarkably sanguine about the effect of those ‘solutions’ on the finances of UK universities, to say nothing of the sustainability of the entire health and social care sector. Perhaps he really does believe that most older people – his only remaining target group of voters, apparently – really would prefer to die for lack of care than receive care from some foreigner. Farage’s suggestion that the answer is to reduce net migration to zero is even further detached from reality, but then, so is the probability that he’ll ever have to implement anything he says.

It's worth noting that some of those most keen on eliminating immigration are also arguing for UK families to have more children. Well, well-off families at least – they don’t really want the poorer to have any children at all. Traditionally, the argument against immigration has been that we don’t have the homes, hospitals, schools etc to support the extra people, but it should be obvious that an increase in population caused by an increased birth rate leads to exactly the same pressures on services in the long run. And if the Tory-Labour antipathy towards immigrants isn’t rationally based on that sort of argument, then on what is it based? It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the underlying basis owes more to vote-seeking than anything else. It means that the ‘right answer’ for net migration is whatever number they think will prevent them losing racist and xenophobic votes to the other party. And it’s why they can’t ever put a number on it, because their opponent will simply outbid (or should that be underbid?) them. It’s ultimately a race to the bottom, and a pretty shameful one at that, given that they both understand the economic and social impact of drastically cutting numbers but are too afraid to spell it out.

There is, though, another solution open to them. Since the debate is largely about ‘net’ migration (a numbers game which rather ignores the fact that much of their target audience is more concerned about characteristics such as skin colour and religion than numbers), they could simply introduce a scheme under which large numbers of UK citizens are persuaded to leave. It would need both a carrot and a stick, but they are largely implementing the stick part already – poor services and declining standards of living (one might even add a rejection of action to reduce the climate change which is leading to semi-permanent rain). Given a big enough carrot, I’m sure that there are millions who might be open to an offer to live a better life elsewhere. Compulsory French, Spanish and Italian in schools might turn out to be rather more useful than Sunak’s weird obsession with Maths.