Save the alligators!

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Americans have a saying that when you’re up to your waist (although they generally refer to a similarly-located part of the anatomy) in alligators, it’s difficult to remember that your original objective was to drain the swamp. In less expressive language, sometimes, even if people start a project with a clear objective, the practical difficulties encountered along the way can assume such a significance that the aim becomes more of a distant aspiration: killing alligators becomes an end in itself.

To the surprise of no-one except the current and previous governments, reducing net immigration (assuming one thinks that to be a problem in the first place), turns out to be rather more complex than their rhetoric has ever suggested. ‘Stopping the boats’ is really just one – and not a particularly large one at that, in the scheme of things – element of the problem. Short of starting a war with France by forcibly landing people back on French beaches, deliberately killing the occupants of the boats, or simply ignoring international commitments and regulations such as the law of the seas, there isn’t actually any way of stopping the boats at all. Once they enter UK territorial waters, the UK government has a legal obligation to ensure the safety of the occupants, and prior to that point, the French government has a similar responsibility.

Sir Warmonger’s latest wheeze to address the issue is to make an agreement with France for a ‘one in, one out’ policy, initially capped at a maximum of 50 each way per week. The mathematically competent (a category which obviously excludes government ministers) will immediately note two things about this proposal. The first is that minus one plus one nets out to nil; the proposal would reduce the total net migration into the UK by precisely zero. And the second is that 2600 a year is around 6% of the total number making the crossing; a proposal to swap 6% of those making the journey for a different 6% is supposed to deter the other 94% from even trying, presumably by encouraging them to wait to see if they can get into the select 6% who will be allowed a safe crossing. Clearly, the PM hopes that those members of the electorate salivating over the prospect of deporting people in chains are as mathematically challenged as himself.

Interestingly, one of the main arguments put forward by those who think that the use of force, detention, and deterrence to stop people crossing is the wrong approach has been that a better alternative is to allow safe crossing and perform a proper assessment of asylum claims before deciding whether or not to deport. The proposal looks a lot like doing exactly that, except on such a small scale as to make no difference. It’s all a form of scope creep in reverse. Reduce net migration becomes stop the boats becomes stop some of the boats becomes swap some of those arriving by boat for some others who didn’t get in a boat. Then, it can be declared to be a huge success. Just about the only certainty is that absolutely no alligators get killed in the process. I suppose the animal rights lobby might be pleased about that, even if the alligators were only ever an allusion.

But who decides the selection criteria?

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Reluctant as I am to agree, ever, with anything which escapes the mouth of Nigel Farage, he does occasionally come up with half a good point. There was an example last week with his suggestion that it ought to be possible to appoint non-politicians to positions as government ministers if they have particularly relevant experience and knowledge, along with the corollary that the act of being elected to the House of Commons doesn’t magically confer relevant knowledge, experience, or even basic ability on those elected to the extent that they suddenly become capable of running a government department.

There are at least three reasons why it’s only half a good point, though. The first is that, if being an elected member of parliament for the majority party does not confer the necessary qualifications for becoming a minister, then being the leader of such a party doesn’t confer the necessary qualifications for becoming prime minister either – he is hoist by his own argument, which ends up sounding like an argument against democracy. The second is that governments can already appoint non-elected politicians to become ministers by the simple expedient of giving them a peerage. And the third is his counter assumption that being a successful business person somehow does confer the necessary attributes for becoming a minister. That overlooks the fact that there’s a huge difference between supplying goods or services to make a profit and supplying goods and services to meet identified social needs.

One of the theoretical strengths of the US system (although, as we are seeing currently, it’s more theoretical than actual) is the clear separation between the three branches of government – the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary. It’s a distinction which the vague and not fully codified constitution of the UK fudges, leaving us with a legislature full of people most of whom are, have been, or want to be part of the executive. It’s prejudicial to them delivering critical scrutiny. A clearer separation might well lead to better scrutiny and accountability – the idea that people have to sit in the legislature in order to be scrutinised and held to account might be familiar, but it is a strange one when analysed more carefully. And a legislature which focussed more clearly on its key role of legislating might do a better job of it than one where threats and blandishments ‘encourage’ people to toe the government line. Electing the executive and the legislature separately clearly has some advantages.

But, but, but… Holding a separate election for the head of the executive and then allowing him or her to select the best-qualified people to serve as cabinet ministers only works if the elected head of the executive him or herself has the necessary attributes for the job, including the ability to select the right people for other jobs. As the US is so amply demonstrating at present, electing a narcissistic criminal sociopath to the role can easily make things worse. If the head of the executive then puts total loyalty to him or herself as the main – or only – required attribute, it’s an understatement to say that it doesn’t necessarily lead to an adequate and able cabinet.

The basic point which Farage made – that governments should be able to choose people from outside parliament to run ministries – has a great deal of merit, especially where the legislature is small, such as in Wales (a Senedd where the number of members from the party or parties forming the government is unlikely ever to exceed 50 by very much, and where all of those have been selected on the basis of an internal party popularity contest, doesn’t exactly provide a large pool from which to recruit ministers; and the more powers the Senedd gains over time, the more obvious that will become). All the objections about scrutiny and accountability of people outside parliament can be overcome if the will is there – partly perhaps by giving the legislature a strong role in confirming appointments and the right to dismiss ministers as the ultimate sanction. The problem with Farage’s proposal, however, is that it doesn’t really overcome the perceived problem of appointing people not up to the job, because it doesn’t address the key questions, namely who decides who is suitable for the job, and what criteria do they use? It would be a mistake to completely dismiss the point which Farage has raised; but as it stands it’s over-simplistic, with little sign of any intention to fill in the gaps. But then, over-simplifying complex issues is something of a stock-in-trade for him.

How many people is too many?

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Politicians are increasingly worried, it seems, about the low birth rate in the UK – a situation mirrored in many other developed countries. For some of them, there’s an element of racism in the argument: they are concerned that if we don’t have a locally-born workforce, the gaps will be filled by migration. The 20-year plus lead-time on sourcing new employees by increasing the birth rate is a bit of a problem, of course, but one they largely seem inclined to ignore. The other motivation is an economic one – a concern that a falling birth rate coupled with a rising population of older people means that fewer people are working to support more who are not. But the extent to which that is a ‘real’ problem, rather than one based on a particular ideological construct about economics, is a question which largely goes undebated.

There are various theories around about how many planets’ worth of resources would be needed if we were all to live at the standard of, say, the UK in 2025. There are problems with the detail of all of these, dependent as they inevitably are on a series of assumptions and guesses. The basic underlying point, though, is almost certainly true: the resources of the Earth, as currently being utilised, are inadequate to support extending the lifestyle of the richest countries to all humans. Increasing the population will only make that worse, and inequality is the inevitable result. The sort of inequality, in fact, which is one of the biggest drivers of migration.

There is an article on the Guardian’s website by Larry Elliott which challenges the prevailing consensus that a falling birth rate is necessarily a bad thing. It even suggests that a falling birth rate could be a good thing. He sets out some economic theory behind that: whilst a falling population might reduce GDP in total, it could increase GDP per head, a much more useful way of measuring economic performance as it affects individuals. He also suggests that it would require policy changes. I agree, but I’m not sure that changing a few policies such as getting more people into work will be radical enough. We also need to rethink what the economy is and how it works.

Capitalist ideology posits that there are only two productive forces at work in the economy. The most important (and therefore the one to be most handsomely rewarded) is capital itself, and the second is labour (which is what actually creates value). The political parties don’t often put it in such stark terms, but the persistent references to ‘working people’, as though the rest of us don’t count, are more than a minor clue. In such an economic system, those who provide neither capital nor labour – the young, the old, the sick, the disabled – are a ‘burden’ on those who do, who must give up part of ‘their’ wealth or income to support the non-productive.

It isn’t the only way of looking at an economy, however. An economic system is a human construct, not the result of some divine law. From an alternative perspective, the question is not how we maximise the return for those who supply capital and labour, and squeeze the living standards of everyone else to achieve that, but how successful an economy is in serving all members of the society which hosts it. If the output of an economy ‘belongs’ to all, then tax is not an imposition taking money away from those who’ve ‘earned’ it, but a mechanism for sharing and distributing the rewards of economic activity within the society. ‘Tax’ might not even be the best word to describe that. In such a scenario, a change in the age balance of the population doesn’t require a higher birth rate: that’s an answer to the wrong question. The question we need to be asking is how we shape an economy and share the benefits in such a way that it meets the needs of all. Productivity and equity are more important than demographics, but few seem to be asking the right questions based on that.

It's all about adjusting the variables

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Some websites have slider tools on them where the user can adjust one or more variables and the clever computer will calculate the value of another variable as a result. Things like loans, for instance: you adjust one slider to show the amount required, another to adjust the period over which you wish to repay and the computer tells you the monthly payments. Sir Starmer seems to be using a similar tool for what he rather dishonestly calls welfare ‘reform’.

In his case, the variable he adjusts is the number of people pushed into poverty as a result of any given proposal, and the output tells him the size of any saving to the Treasury and the size of the majority in favour in the House of Commons. He started out with a $5 billion saving, and the first answer it gave him was 250,000 more people pushed into poverty. Sadly – for him, if not for those affected – the second part of the result saw the majority slipping deeply into negative territory. He duly adjusted the slider so that ‘only’ 150,000 more people would be pushed into poverty. The savings came down by about £3 billion, but yesterday morning it became clear that the majority would still be negative. Having run out of time to play with further values in order to assess the outcome, he kicked the ball into the long grass and decided to conduct an in-depth study into possible reforms and their impact. Cue huge sigh of relief from those being dragooned into voting for the bill, and a significant majority in favour of a bill which now has a net saving of around zero – or maybe even a slight net cost.

The issue hasn’t gone away, though. And nor has the basic approach. Whatever fine words are spoken, they’re still asking the same question, which is, in essence, ‘what is the maximum number of people which we can push into poverty and still ensure that enough Labour MPs will vote for it to get it through the House of Commons?’ The review is little more than a cover for spending more time playing with that slider. It’s just going to take a little longer to discover the tipping point of the conscience of individual Labour MPs.

Benefit cuts are not really about country vs party at all

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There is a mantra much-loved by politicians about ‘putting country before party’. It sounds pretty lofty and principled, but when broken down is ultimately meaningless, as we’ve seen over the benefit cuts being proposed by Sir Keir Warmonger’s government. The claim is, in essence, that the party doesn’t want cuts, but the country requires them because of the allegedly parlous state of the national finances. The reality is that Sir Warmonger is motivated first and foremost (like all PMs that I can remember) by what he thinks will win him the next election. His definition, when push comes to shove, of ‘the national interest’ is the continuation of his government. And for all the apparent disagreement with his own backbenchers, they also are motivated by the same thing. I’m prepared to accept that they honestly and sincerely believe that a Labour government is better for the UK than a Tory government, but in that sense, the interests of party and country, in their eyes, will always coincide.

The debate isn’t about any conflict between party and country, it’s about which approach is most likely to see the return of another Labour government at the next UK election. In that sense, party always comes first. That doesn’t mean that there is no serious disagreement, it just isn’t really about the substance of the proposals, it’s about their impact on voting intentions. The PM and those around him really seem to believe that their best hope of winning involves appealing to those who think anyone receiving benefits is a shirker and layabout, and are happy to see such people be pushed deeper into poverty as a result. The revolting backbenchers think that their best hope of winning involves placating those constituents who are besieging their offices and mail boxes with complaints about the proposed benefit cuts.

Whilst there’s surely no doubt that what the rebels are saying is closer to what many would see as traditional Labour values, it doesn’t necessarily follow that it is those values which are motivating them rather than a desire to save their own electoral skins. It’s a tragedy for the Labour Party that debate about visions for a better future has been replaced by venal considerations about which particular cohort of electors they need to attract. It’s an even bigger tragedy for those who will lose out that the proposed compromise isn’t about whether they’ll lose out or not, but which of them will lose out and by how much.

What makes a target meaningful?

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There is a mantra in management circles that anyone who has more than three priorities actually has none. ‘Three’ is entirely arbitrary, of course, but the basic point is that having too many priorities makes effective management impossible. We can substitute ‘targets’ for priorities, and the same mantra applies. Yet governments love setting targets, preferably for other people, as a means of measuring something or other, but it’s far from clear that they are actually measuring what they think they are measuring. Targets can often provoke behaviours which are more about demonstrating success than about achieving the aims underlying those targets.

I once sat through a meeting which was led through a spread-sheet detailing 93 key performance indicators for an organisation. Some were being met, many were not, and one or two were even being exceeded. Since the purpose of the discussion was to identify ‘efficiency savings’, part of the discussion turned on those targets which were being easily surpassed. It was an obvious opportunity: reducing performance down to the target level would lead to a saving in money and resources. On another occasion, I heard a suggestion in a discussion on primary school league tables that schools could improve their overall attainment levels in standard assessment tests by identifying the small number of individual pupils who were just below the target score and investing more time and effort in helping them. Two classic cases of the way in which setting targets can sometimes encourage the ‘wrong’ sorts of behaviour.

Those examples came to mind when I read Farage’s comments about scrapping the Welsh Government target for one million Welsh-speakers by 2050. He surely has a point, doesn’t he, when he talks about many government targets being meaningless and never being met? Both the date and the desired number of Welsh-speakers look to be essentially arbitrary numbers. In truth, the million Welsh-speakers has always looked like more of an aspiration than a target: a worthy aspiration, of course, but unless backed up by a detailed and achievable plan with adequate resources set aside over the next quarter of a century, it will be little more than a stick with which opposition politicians can regularly beat the government of the day for its lack of progress. And I see no sign to date of a plan which might actually stand a chance of delivering.

The first problem with Farage’s words comes not with his proposal to abolish what he, and many others, might legitimately see as a meaningless and arbitrary target, but with the lack of any meaningful alternative. His vague words about protecting and encouraging the Welsh language are even more meaningless than the target he seeks to abolish. He has no plans, and no interest in the matter. The second problem concerns the extent to which his aversion to targets is specific or general. It seems unlikely that he is going to abandon his own targets for zero net migration (or zero net migration of poor people anyway; the rich are, apparently, welcome). His aversion to targets seems to relate only to things that he doesn’t like. The Welsh language is clearly one of those.

Not so very different after all

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They told us that it would be so different. After the chaos and confusion of a series of Tory PMs who all seemed to think, to a greater or lesser degree, that compliance with the law was optional (especially in the case of Johnson) the new Labour PM was a completely different animal. A man with a long and honourable background as a human rights lawyer, a man for whom the rule of law was part of the very essence of his being. The promise didn’t age well.

When it came to denying power, water and food to the people of Gaza, his initial response was that Israel had a right to self-defence, and he swatted away any suggestions that that right did not extend to mass killings of non-combatants, including children. Perhaps it stems from that other attribute of an experienced lawyer, obliged by the rules of his profession to take on either side in any case, and find the way of prosecuting or defending which gives his client the best chance of winning. From that perspective, whether or not what Israel is doing in Gaza amounts to genocide or not is a matter of opinion which can only be settled by a court case; whether bombing of hospitals was deliberate or not (and therefore whether it amounts to a war crime) is just an allegation until proven at a trial which is unlikely to happen any time soon. For a good lawyer, there is almost always some wiggle room in law, even if not in morality.

When we come to the bombing of nuclear installations in Iran, however, it’s difficult to see how any reputable lawyer could find a way to argue the case in favour of Trump and the US. The prohibition on attacking nuclear installations is there, in clear terms, and the miscreants have actively boasted that the targeting was entirely deliberate. There simply is no wiggle room; it’s a war crime, pure and simple. The government’s attempt to avoid answering the question as to whether they believe it to be a criminal act or not is shameful. The statements by Sir Warmonger after the event, claiming that the outcome (preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, even though there was no real evidence that they were trying to do so) is a good thing is not so much a legal argument as an ‘end-justifies-the-means’ argument.

Even if it were true that preventing one insane man from joining the club of other insane men who already possess such weapons is such a good outcome that it justifies a blatant breach of international law, we don’t know – and won’t for some time to come – what the real outcome of Trump’s decision is. The destruction of the bombed facilities, even if it’s as complete as is being claimed (and the history of previous military adventures suggests that might turn out to be a dubious claim at best) is only one, short-term outcome. Nobody knows what comes next, but the idea that a single military attack can be considered and judged in isolation from both what went before and what will come after is just another form of madness.

It seems that even a long career upholding the rule of law doesn’t prevent a lawyer who transitions into politics abandoning that commitment in pursuit of the simplistic goal of not upsetting His Orangeness. The rule of law turns out to be considered optional after all.

Chickens, eggs, and overseas aid

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A number of different versions of the saying, “There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader” have appeared over the years. It’s usually attributed to Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin, although it’s unclear whether he actually said it or not. Its origin isn’t really important, but it does express a particular political issue very well. Is it the job of politicians to follow, or to lead? One of the attributes of populist politicians is that they attempt to discern what people think, and reflect that back to them (albeit frequently in a distorted or exaggerated form) in an attempt to gain and exercise power, which is really their only objective. Politicians who are part of a movement seeking to change society are more inclined to set out their beliefs and try to persuade people of their merits. But parties don’t stay in one place, and the Labour Party is a classic example. Founded to change the world, it has ended up meekly following whatever it believes the latest trend in public opinion to be.

There are few things for which I’d give Blair, Brown, or Cameron any credit, but the move to boost overseas aid to 0.7% - set as a target by Blair/Brown, in accordance with international targets, and achieved and legislated for by Cameron – is one of them. To their shame, both parties have been equally complicit in reversing the decision – Sunak took it down to 0.5%, and Sir Warmonger has further reduced it to 0.3%. And both have diverted significant sums from the overall total to expenditure within the UK on handling refugees and asylum-seekers. Both blamed a ‘lack of money’, and in both cases that was based on the fallacious argument that there is a finite amount of money available, and we have to make choices about how to use it.

Today, a Labour Trade Minister has told us, by way of justification, that the public no longer supports the idea of foreign aid. It’s a chicken-and-egg question, though. Have the public spontaneously turned against the idea of providing foreign aid allowing the politicians an excuse to cut funding, or is the change in public attitudes a result of years of propaganda telling people that the UK ‘cannot afford’ to help others? It’s probably best described as a vicious circle, with the original driver as unclear as whether the chicken came before the egg. The notable thing, though, is the lack of any effort by self-styled ‘progressive’ politicians to attempt to break out of that circle by showing some leadership. Following public opinion is just another excuse.

Making people poorer really isn't 'compassionate'

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There is a traditional image of a vicious headmaster, about to deliver a good thrashing to one of the boys in his ‘care’, declaring that ‘this will hurt me more than it hurts you’. It’s not true, of course; and it looks like an effort to turn the abuser into an unwilling victim of circumstance, in his own mind at least. I doubt that any of the recipients of such ‘loving care’ ever believed it, and if it doesn’t work on terrified boys, there is no reason to believe that it will work on adults. It is, though, the chosen strategy of the Labour Government when it comes to welfare cuts. They want us to believe that driving people deeper into poverty is something that they really and truly don’t want to do, but are left with no choice because … well, because of an arbitrary financial rule which they themselves invented, and which magically doesn't apply to spending on weapons and destruction.

This week, the Work and Pensions Secretary told us that reforming the welfare system is an act of ‘compassion’, which will restore ‘opportunity and dignity’ to those relieved of benefits to pay for their food and housing. She also told us that, “Unless we reform [the social security system], more people will be denied opportunities, and it may not be there for those who need it”.  In plain English, which it’s easy to understand why she would want to avoid, that amounts to saying that the government will deliberately choose to see some people going without the basics of life in order to save money on the budget. There is nothing inevitable or pre-ordained about that; driving more people into poverty is a wholly deliberate choice that the government is willing to make.

There is nothing wrong with some of the specific elements of the proposals: helping more people to find suitable work and easing the transition from benefits to employment are sensible investments, although they don’t differ greatly from what governments of all colours have been claiming to have been doing for years. But what previous efforts have taught us is that it isn’t as simple as looking at numbers in a spreadsheet might suggest. People have complex needs, which are often only obvious when looking at individuals, and looking at individuals rather than numbers is not what governments do. There’s also an element of distraction: the changes to Personal Independence Payments have little or nothing to do with getting people back into work, yet government statements seem to be deliberately conflating the two.

It would be hard to fault a government which came up with serious and specific proposals to reduce the need for welfare payments by matching more people with suitable and worthwhile employment, and which was prepared to follow through on those in the hope that the welfare bill would be reduced in the end. That isn’t what they are doing, however: they are starting with an arbitrary target for the amount of savings that they want to make, building those savings into their forward budgets, planning to cut payments to achieve that, and then assuming that enough people will either move into employment or be deprived of the essentials of life. Maybe they have polling evidence telling them that such an approach would be ‘popular’, but when Sir Warmonger talks about doing the ’right’ thing, it’s not at all clear that he understands that there is a difference between the two words.

Trump will look after his friends - until he doesn't

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It’s probably better for the UK to have a trade deal with the US than not, even if the deal isn’t as good as some of its proponents like to claim. Still, there’s something of an achievement in finalising a deal of any sort with Trump, so Sir Starmer is probably right to feel at least a little pleased at getting the thing formally signed yesterday.

Given Trump’s propensity to change his mind without even waiting to drop a hat, there is an obvious question mark about how long the deal will last before Trump decides that he wants more. From a Trumpian perspective, any deal concluded quickly probably doesn’t extract as many concessions as he might get by reneging on it later. Assuming that he will honour his word would be very silly, and even Sir Starmer is surely bright enough to understand that.

What should particularly concern Sir Starmer were Trump’s own words about why he was doing a special deal for the UK: “The UK is very well protected, you know why? Because I like them. That’s their ultimate protection.” History shows that Trump always looks after his friends right up to the point where he decides they’re not his friends after all. As his former ‘first buddy’, Elon Musk is only too well aware. There seems to be a prevailing belief amongst the echelons of the English Establishment that Trump is so besotted with the English Royal Family that he has a soft spot for the UK. One of the reasons why they find it so easy to believe that is that it fits their own preconception of English exceptionalism. The more sceptical amongst us might just conclude that, however much he likes the odd royal (and some of them are very odd), when push comes to shove he likes money even more.

Unilateral actions can have global consequences

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In defence of his decision to launch a series of attacks on Iran, Israel’s Prime Minister has said that, by preventing Iran from ever possessing nuclear weapons, he is acting not only in the interests of Israel, but also in the interests of the world as a whole. There’s an obvious attraction in that statement: the world would indeed be a better place if a deranged old man who is crazy enough to use such a weapon is prevented from having access to one. There is a certain flaw in the logic, though: Khamenei isn’t the only leader of a state for whom the description ‘deranged old man who is crazy enough to use such a weapon’ might be appropriate. And they are not all orange-hued either. Indeed, there’s even a reasonable argument that words like ‘deranged’ and ‘crazy’ could legitimately be applied to anyone who even wants to possess such weapons, let alone solemnly announces a willingness to use them, as Sir Keir Warmonger has done in the past.

Even if we disregard such caveats and accept the basic truth that a nuclear-armed Iran is generally not a brilliant idea, on what basis should an individual state – especially one which is itself widely believed to have illegally developed its own nuclear weapons, and which (unlike Iran) refuses either to sign the non-proliferation treaty or to allow inspections of nuclear facilities – be free to decide to act unilaterally? Whilst the theoretical answer might reference international law and treaties, the de facto answer is much simpler – whenever the US government sees fit to allow it. It’s not much of a basis on which to build a peaceful rules-based world, and underlines humanity’s collective failure to find a way of living together on a shared planet. And, whilst Netanyahu couches his justification in terms of acting on behalf of the world, most observers suspect that it has more to do with his own political survival. Venality usually seems to trump humanity.

Leaving all of that aside, and abandoning principle for practical efficacy, the biggest question is the simplest of all: will it have the desired effect? On that, there is no consensus. For every ‘expert’ who claims that it will set Iran’s nuclear programme back years and deter it from ever seeking a nuclear bomb in the future, there is another who claims it will actually accelerate Iran’s progress in that regard, by encouraging a belief that only the possession of, and threat to use, an atom bomb will deter Israel (or anyone else) from attacking again. I don’t even pretend to know which analysis is correct; worse still, I don’t believe that anyone else ‘knows’ the answer to that question either. It’s all opinion and conjecture. The more certain someone is about the answer, the less I trust their judgement. What I am certain of is that the outcome of a unilateral action will be significant way beyond the boundaries of the state undertaking it, for people and countries given no input into the decision.

Even if Netanyahu’s opinion of the effect on Iran turns out, with the benefit of hindsight some years from now, to have been correct, it cannot be acceptable for one leader of one country to imperil so many with no input from those who might be affected. For that reason alone, Israel deserves to be sanctioned by the rest of the world, but the chances of that happening are vanishingly small. Humankind still has a long way to go to achieve real civilisation.

The Chancellor's double ended telescope only produces mirages

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When, as a child, I first discovered the wonder of telescopes, it was like a form of magic. Making far away things seem closer, or small things look bigger, was fascinating enough, but then to discover how the opposite happened when I looked through the ‘wrong’ end of one of these marvellous devices was an added bonus. But nothing that I ever discovered about telescopes could have prepared me for the amazing lenses possessed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which were on display yesterday as she announced the outcome of the spending review. She – and, apparently, most of the others around her – are in possession of a device which enables them to look through both ends simultaneously, magnifying those things which she wants to magnify, and minimising those which she would rather forget.

There can surely be no-one, not even the Chancellor herself, who seriously believes that the nuclear power station which she announced (or should that be ‘re-announced’?) will be built in anything like the costs or timescales quoted. One doesn’t need to be some sort of Nostradamus to be able to predict, with a degree of confidence indistinguishable from 100%, that the eventual costs and timescales will be higher, and considerably so, than any figure which escaped her lips yesterday. The degree of confidence that the sums quoted for all the other infrastructure projects announced yesterday will be exceeded might be slightly lower, but still a pretty safe bet. All the timescales and costs announced yesterday have been examined through the wrong end of the telescope.

When it comes to the advantages, however, the right end of the telescope has been deployed with a vengeance. The improvements to people’s standard of living, the number of jobs created: these are things which have been miraculously magnified. There will be no surprise if, like another announcement from recent years, they are quietly revised downwards in due course.

Some of the government’s over-excited comments on the flood of electricity which the new power stations will generate come close to the promise in the 1950s of electricity ‘too cheap to meter’. Even if the phrase has been misunderstood, and its original author was actually talking about fusion rather than fission, the phrase was widely used at the time – including by proponents of nuclear expansion – to describe an impossible energy utopia. In yesterday’s announcements, the costs of decommissioning the stations at the end of their lives, and of handling and storing the radioactive waste seem to have been subjected to their customary level of examination: none. Those issues remain where they have always been – a problem for future generations. Unlike the national debt, however, these are foreseeable liabilities which are not balanced by matching assets; they really are a financial black hole. Throwing good money after bad on nuclear power might look good on a spreadsheet keeping a running total of ‘investment’ spending, but the real cost is in not doing the other things that could be done instead. And probably more quickly.

If I had to pick a stand-out impression of what the government had to say yesterday, it would revolve around that timescale issue: it’s all jam tomorrow, with the lack of butter today being glossed over. The timescales – let alone the consequent benefits – of the capital spend are largely beyond the event horizon for the current government. If there’s one thing that’s almost as certain as the cost and timescale over-runs which are going to occur, it is that future governments (even if, by some miracle, of the same party) will delay or cancel some or all of the projects for which funding was announced yesterday. None of that means that some of the announcements are wrong in themselves: both Wales and the UK need the investment in infrastructure such as rail, for instance. But the belief that promising such investment over a lengthy timescale will somehow persuade people to tolerate the austerity measures baked in to yesterday’s review suggests a complete lack of connection and empathy with people who need relief today.

Rachel Reeves is no Dick Barton.

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It was 45 years ago that the Commercial Union insurance company used the slogan “we won’t make a drama out of a crisis”. In fairness, given that she wasn’t born until 1979, the Chancellor of the Exchequer has a plausible excuse for not remembering the slogan. But not being old enough to remember the advert is not much of an excuse for not understanding the meaning of the message. The handling of the winter fuel allowance (WFA) for pensioners has now gone beyond simple drama, and is rapidly becoming a long-running soap, with a cliff-hanger at the end of every episode as viewers attempt to work out how on earth she will extract herself from this week’s latest plot twist. Where’s Dick Barton’s “one bound” when you need it?

Her reluctance to give a handout to millionaires is understandable in principle, although her initial attempt to prevent that by limiting the payment to only the very worst off pensioners was something of a sledgehammer approach. Her latest approach – setting the cut-off at £35,000 a year – isn’t a whole lot better. Given that the average full time earnings before tax in the UK are a little over £37,000, the new cut-off point is going to exclude a lot more people than those who are really millionaires – unless the definition of ‘millionaire’ is now being changed to include everyone on average earnings or above, a definition which will come as something of a surprise to most working people, let alone pensioners.

In order to implement this ‘new improved’ version (as the advertising companies would surely try and present it), she’s inventing a whole new tax rate of 100% which only applies to a tiny part of people’s incomes and which comes into effect at a completely new threshold, unused for anything else in the tax system. It’s hard to envisage any approach she could have taken which would be more complex to implement, and probably end up costing a significant chunk (in terms of staff and IT costs) of the claimed savings to implement – as well, potentially, as requiring a couple of million extra pensioners to file annual tax returns which someone will then need to process.

I’ve never been a fan of the WFA anyway; it’s always struck me as a bit of a gimmick. Simply adding £300 a year to the state pension (even if paid once annually rather than as part of the weekly pension) would mean that those who most need it get it tax-free, whilst pensioners with other income would effectively pay tax on it at up to 45% anyway. It’s true that ‘millionaire pensioners’ would still end up pocketing 55% of £300 (£165), but it would be a great deal easier and cheaper to administer using existing systems. I don’t know how many ‘pensioner millionaires’ there are, but given that a cut-off at £35,000 (well short of millionaire status) will only exclude around 2 million people, we can reasonably assume that it’s a lot less than 2 million. Even 2 million net payments of £165 would only cost £330 million – a drop in the ocean for the Treasury. And lower administration costs reduce that further.

Still, for fans of long-running dramas, where the heroine of the piece finds herself tied in ever more complex knots at the end of every episode, why cut the serial short when the pain and agony can so easily be prolonged?

Debt, per se, is not bad

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There was a story a month ago about a report from the Institute of International Finance that the total amount of global debt had reached a record height of $324 trillion. It’s a huge sum, so large as to be beyond comprehension in terms of our own daily interactions with money. It’s an estimate, of course. It could not be otherwise; human record-keeping is neither precise nor transparent enough to know for certain. Let’s just accept that it’s a very, very large number.

Whether we should be worried about it or not is another question. Since all money owed by one person or body is owed to another person or body, it is inevitably the case that a total financial debt of $324 trillion is precisely matched somewhere by a total financial asset of $324 trillion. It’s just that the debt and the asset are in different hands. And whilst estimates of how much money exists in the world vary significantly, one thing we can say is that, since ‘money’ is, in its very essence, simply a way of denominating and trading debt (“I promise to pay the bearer on demand” etc.), the amount of money in the system must match, if accurately calculated, the amount of debt. An over-simplification, for sure, but if every individual and organisation were to repay all their debts tomorrow, the world would indeed be debt-free – but it would also be money-free. There would still be a pile – many piles – of physical notes and coins somewhere, but they’d be essentially worthless. And the economy would grind to a halt. Asking how much debt is the ‘right’ amount for the world economy is like asking how much money should exist. It’s a question which has no correct answer; the only thing we know is that, as the world’s population grows and becomes more affluent, the amount needed will increase. Worrying about how much debt there is, and by how much it is increasing, is focussing on the wrong question.

The right question is about who is in debt and to whom they are in debt; it’s about the underlying economic power relationships. The reason that it worries some is not the existence of debt, nor the amount of debt, nor the increase in that amount: it is about potential default – whether those in debt will be able to repay their debts. It is a concern by the rich that the poor will not be able to continue transferring their few assets to the rich, because (almost by definition) much borrowing is by those who have no money from those who have lots. What concerns politicians about the debt mountain facing the poorest – whether individuals or countries – should not be whether they are taking on debts that they can’t cover, but how and why the need for them to do so arose in the first place. And since that inevitably leads to discussion about how resources and wealth are distributed in the world, it’s easy to see why they prefer to avoid it.

Starmer is playing with fire

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The new submarines announced by Sir Starmer yesterday are obviously a new form of stealth weapon, since no-one will be able to see them for a decade or two. Although the announcement covered 12, it turns out that seven of those are replacements for existing obsolete boats, so only five are additional. They will start rolling off the production line in the late 2030s (let’s say 2038 for the sake of argument), and will be launched at the rate of one every eighteen months. So, by about 2056, the Royal Navy will have a whole five additional submarines, built to a 30 year old specification, in its fleet.

Sir Starmer says this will ‘send a message’ to Putin. Leaving aside the huge cost of that ‘message’, the thing about messages is that the ones received may not precisely match the ones sent. In this case, telling Putin we’ll be just about ready to come for him in 30 years’ time, assuming that the schedule doesn’t get delayed and that the boats actually work when delivered (two caveats which past military procurement exercises suggest might be ‘challenging’) is more likely to lead to laughing-into-cornflakes than quaking-in-boots.

The submarines were only part of the announcement, of course. There were also the announcements about wanting to fit nuclear weapons to aircraft and resurrecting some sort of citizen’s army. But the theme running through seemed to have two main elements: how much the UK is going to strengthen its armed forces, and how slowly it’s all actually going to happen. And that matters in terms of Putin’s potential motivation (for it is surely only Putin and Russia who are the targets of all this). If one imagines Putin as some sort of Bond villain, sitting in the Kremlin stroking his cat, then all bets are off. No-one can plan to deal with insanity on that scale, although fiction might suggest that all it takes is one man with a licence to kill. If, however, we treat Putin as being a rational actor – and even if the premises of his rationality don’t always match our own, they can still be identified and planned for – then there is one, and only one, plausible reason for his wanting to start an all-out war with NATO. At its simplest, that reason is a belief (whether right or wrong doesn’t matter: he only needs to believe it) that NATO is gearing up to attack Russia, and that his best chance is to attack first, before NATO has reached full readiness.

All the talk among UK politicians and military types about being in a ‘pre-war’ stage, and needing to be ready to fight an all-out European war within the next few years might be intended to send a message of deterrence, but it’s easy to see how, from a different perspective, it might look like preparing the population and economies of ‘the west’ for an invasion of Russia. And the closer any army is to a state of readiness to fight a war, the more likely it is that that war can start by accident, or by a simple misjudgement. Reducing the time available to make a rational assessment by positioning troops and weapons close to a border increases the probability of a ‘use it or lose it’ mentality taking hold. We might indeed be in dangerous times, but Sir Starmer seems intent on increasing, rather than decreasing, the level of danger.

Perhaps I misjudge Sir Starmer. Maybe his announcement really has nothing to do with war at all, but is really about trying to sound strong, play the patriotic card for reasons of internal UK politics, and impose his own militaristic definition of Britishness on the population. After all, everything else he does is calculated and calibrated in terms of its expected impact on voting behaviour. But expecting Putin to read between the lines and understand that Sir Starmer doesn’t really mean what he’s saying at all is a big ask of someone who is more than a little paranoid to start with. Sir Starmer is playing a very dangerous game, either way.

Using all the available talent

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Underpinning the Trumpian aversion to diversity programmes (DEI) is the belief that people are being appointed to jobs for which there are better quality candidates available, purely because those being appointed happen to be members of one or other under-represented group in society. It’s a short step from there to concluding that anyone who isn’t a white, heterosexual, Caucasian male is only in post because of their skin colour, gender or sexual orientation. And that seems to have been behind a number of sackings of senior people from posts under Trump’s reign. It’s no surprise to see Farage mimicking this attitude. It ought to be a surprise to see elements in the Labour Party going down the same track, but sadly it isn’t.

The issue is wider than recruitment, of course, but concentrating on that one aspect, opponents of DEI policies usually claim that they want to see appointments based purely on ‘merit’, ignoring all other considerations. Actually, so would I. The point of contention, however, is really about how we define and assess that thing to which we give the short-hand term, ‘merit’, because the observed practical outcome of an entirely ‘merit’ based system is the domination of white heterosexual Caucasian males. It’s easy enough for racists, misogynists, and homophobes to justify this – they simply choose to believe that ‘merit’ is more prevalent amongst that group. And, in a curiously circular argument, the evidence for that is that people from that group are most likely to be appointed. For those of us who take the view that ability is more likely to be evenly distributed than that, there has to be another explanation. It could be in the way that ‘merit’ is being defined or measured, but it’s more likely that there is unconscious prejudice operating, even if only of the ‘soft’ sort which leads recruiters to appoint those who are most like themselves, an almost guaranteed route to perpetuating any lack of diversity.

If it is right to say that ability is fairly distributed regardless of gender, race or sexual orientation, and given the obvious truth that that is not reflected in the outcome of appointment processes, then we are, as a society, missing out on the ability of a sizable section of the community. (Whether DEI programmes are the 'right' or even 'best' way of addressing that is a matter of opinion. I'm open to arguments in support of alternative approaches which can be shown to be effective.) That, ultimately, is what DEI programmes are about – it’s not about appointing second-rate people because of their characteristics, it’s about not discarding first-rate people because of those same characteristics. It’s a simple enough concept, but politicians who prefer to pander to prejudices are ducking their responsibility to explain that. In the case of Reform, one might expect that: playing to prejudice is what Farage does. By aping that approach, Labour would not only be ducking the responsibility, they would also be reinforcing and legitimising that prejudice.

Principles and pragmatism

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One of the big claims – perhaps the only big claim – for the difference between Sir Starmer and what went before is the idea that policy is based not on any sense of ideology or principle, but on pragmatism. As Sir Starmer himself put it, “I don’t have any ideology at all. There’s no such thing as Starmerism and there never will be.” Instead, each and every decision is to be taken by considering only one thing – ‘what works?’.

It leaves undefined the question about what do we mean by ‘works’? The only sensible interpretation of the phrase is that it means that any decision will achieve what it sets out to achieve; there is an objective and that objective is fulfilled. He hasn’t always – or maybe ever – been entirely clear in setting out in plain language what the objective is, but over the last week or so, the debate over cuts such as the winter fuel allowance or the two-child cap have revealed what that objective is. Such policies are not to be judged as to whether they reduce pensioner poverty or child poverty; those are not the objectives. The only factors to be considered are  a) how much does the policy cost, and b) how many votes does it deliver for Labour. There’s a brutal honesty about the underlying calculation: the only objective of government policy is to ensure that the current government remains in office after the next election.

Knowing that the only factor that they are even thinking about is how many votes it will deliver helps to explain what their definition of ‘pragmatism’ really embodies. It almost even makes sense of some of their decisions. Whether the calculation is being done correctly or not is another question. Mathematical and psephological competence cannot be assumed, and maybe any given policy will win fewer, or maybe more, votes than the government thinks. But all those who thought that turfing out the Tories would bring a kinder, more principled approach, or a genuine interest in reducing poverty are being shown very starkly that the question is not whether we live in a fairer society nor whether we reduce child poverty, but whether either of those things will deliver more votes to Labour. And since we know that the least advantaged in society, those most likely to be suffering the greatest pain, are also those least likely to vote, Labour’s willingness to ignore them becomes a lot easier to understand. There was a time when Labour believed in social solidarity and doing the right thing for all citizens. It’s a concept which is totally alien to Sir Starmer’s party.

Taxes and violins

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In its reporting (paywall) on the publication of the annual ‘Rich List’, the Sunday Times told us that some ‘business leaders’ are unhappy with the Chancellor’s proposals to impose tax on the transfer of shares in ‘family businesses’ to the next generation. Apparently, some family businesses don’t have the cash available to pay such a tax, which means that the individuals might need to sell some or all of the business to someone else in order to pay it. It would be cruel, but wholly true, to point out that exactly the same is true of anyone inheriting anything from a large estate: if the estate does not include enough cash to pay the tax, then assets would need to be sold. Whether the shares are in a ‘family firm’ or merely shares in a random company doesn’t look to be an entirely relevant distinction: the fact is that assets are being inherited and that tax falls due on an estate.

Those impacted are arguing that ‘family firms’ provide a lot of employment and contribute to the UK’s economy. It’s true, of course, but it fails to explain why that would not continue to be true if the company were no longer to be owned and run by the same family, and that the damage would be such that giving family members an effective subsidy to continue their ownership delivers more benefit to the economy. No-one has yet identified a genetic basis on which the descendants of the founder are somehow better equipped to run a company than anyone else. Experience shows that whilst such a company often continues working as well (or as poorly) under the next generation, sometimes a member of the next generation proves him or herself to be highly successful and turns a sleepy company into a giant, and sometimes those of the next generation taking over prove to be utterly inadequate at the job and end up destroying the company. None of those outcomes is pre-determined by breeding or genetics; inheritance does not presuppose merit. In short, there is nothing about inheriting a family company which distinguishes its future prospects from those of a company which is bought by an outsider.

What inheritance does do, however, is ensure that wealth created by one generation passes to the next generation and is kept within the family. Meritocracy it ain’t; and tax concessions are a direct subsidy which enables families to hold on to wealth amassed by their ancestors, regardless of any talent or ability that they themselves might possess. There are those who argue against the whole principle of an inheritance tax. There is a coherent argument to be made for such a proposition, although it’s not one with which I would agree. But there is no rational economic basis for distinguishing between wealth held in a company which some ancestor founded and wealth invested in a publicly quoted company. The sympathetic violins for the poor hard-done by descendants can be safely stood down.

Colonialism doesn't always involve invasion or conquest

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Sir Starmer’s speech on immigration earlier this week had obvious echoes of the words of Enoch Powell more than half a century ago, and repeated attempts to pretend that there is no similarity between the words used by the two men look like simply digging an already big hole a bit deeper. I accept that it was almost certainly unintentional. Starmer would have been about 6 in 1968 when Powell delivered his infamous speech, and the coterie of advisers and speech writers around him probably even younger. Lack of a direct memory of Powell’s speech – or even of the man himself – is understandable, even if it demonstrates a certain lack of knowledge of political history. The bigger problem isn’t about whether he was or was not aping an odious politician of the past, deliberately or otherwise – it’s about the extent to which what looked like extreme views in 1968 have become part of the political mainstream, not just for Reform Ltd but also for the Tories and even Labour. Starmer’s words would have been anathema to Wilson and the Labour Party back then, yet their modern-day counterparts are falling over themselves to justify and amplify them.

There is another unpleasant aspect to the words used by UK parties when referring to migrants, which is that it sees them largely in terms of their value (or cost) to the UK economy. So, low-paid (which isn’t the same as low-skilled, although one would be hard-pressed to glean that from Starmer’s words) bad, high-paid good. Rarely do any of our politicians seem to see migrants or would-be migrants as human beings with aspirations and needs. There’s also an interesting paradox in the fact that the low-paid are doing work for which it is proving difficult to recruit UK labour, whilst at least some of the higher-paid jobs are easier to fill locally. Who is ‘stealing’ whose jobs? Whether the higher-paid jobs can or cannot be filled locally, and whilst bearing in mind the caveat that high-paid isn’t always the same as high-skilled, attracting what are seen as being the ‘brightest and best’ from elsewhere has an inevitable knock-on effect on the society and economy of those countries losing those people to the UK. It’s a modern form of colonialism.

Even amongst those brave souls in the Labour Party who are speaking out against the proposed changes, there is a degree of objectification of the people involved. Take the words of a former adviser to Mark Drakeford, quoted here: “To have a sustainable indigenous population requires a fertility rate 2.1. The UK rate is 1.4. This means our indigenous population is shrinking and aging and we are completely dependent on immigrants to remain a viable country”. What could be more neo-colonialist than outsourcing the responsibility for maintaining population levels (even supposing that to be a good thing anyway, but that’s a subject for another day)? And where is the consideration of the impact on those other countries of losing the people of an age group likely to be child-bearing? Moving a perceived problem elsewhere doesn’t ‘solve’ it.

Migration is a complex issue which involves real people living real lives. Reducing it to a cost-benefit analysis, and treating migrants as units of economic production is dehumanising. But it’s what we get when politicians decide that playing to prejudice is more likely to win them votes than attempting to conduct a serious conversation around the issue. Starmer is part of the problem, and what he has to offer is no solution.

Imposing sanctions in baby steps

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The UK and EU are seriously discussing further packages of sanctions against Russia over the invasion of Ukraine, and trying to pressurise Trump into implementing further US sanctions as well. There does seem to be a feeling that the US Congress might be willing to impose further sanctions, although there is considerable doubt as to whether Trump will support it. Sir Starmer is doing his best to sound tough as he talks about ‘ramping up’ (one of his favourite phrases) economic sanctions against Putin and Russia. But hold on a minute. Over three years into a disastrous war in which hundreds of thousands have died, and there are still more sanctions which haven’t been applied yet? When he says ‘we will apply more sanctions unless you…’, what I hear is ‘we haven’t yet done everything we could’.

How effective sanctions have been – indeed, how effective they can ever be – is a question which people who can’t think of anything else to do don’t really want to discuss. The reasons for that are entirely understandable: if countries are unwilling to move to direct military aid of Ukraine, and if sanctions don’t force Russia to back down, then all that is left is a negotiation which will inevitably make concessions to Russia. It represents neither fairness nor justice, but if all that we can think of are sanctions, then we should seriously have been applying them to the maximum already. Tough talk without tough action simply condemns more Ukrainians to fight and die.

But here is the truth that they can’t or won’t admit: sanctions aren’t forcing Russia into backing down and probably never will. Telling members of the Russian regime that they can’t come to London (one form of sanctions which has been applied) isn’t actually the sort of punishment which makes them quake in their boots, and they are still obtaining most of the goods they require by other routes. There are three main reasons why sanctions are probably doomed to failure.

The first is that Russia is big. It has an abundance of natural resources, and is able to produce much of what it needs; maybe not in the cheapest or most efficient way, maybe not always to the same standards, but a big country will always be more resilient in the face of sanctions than a smaller one.

The second is that they are not being universally applied. There are still plenty of countries (including, of course, China) willing and able to supply Russia with the goods it needs. That actually reflects a deeper problem, which remains unaddressed: not all countries see the Russia-Ukraine conflict in the same simple terms as the EU / UK, namely an unprovoked invasion of one country by another. That’s not to say that they’re right in coming to a different interpretation, but whether they’re right or wrong is irrelevant to the ground fact that they are continuing to both buy and supply goods which are subject to sanctions by others. Many of us might regret that the world does not have an effective means of disciplining a rogue state, but regret doesn’t change the facts.

The third reason is that sanctions hurt the economies of those applying them, so companies are finding ways around sanctions. As trade with Russia has dropped, demand from countries aligned with Russia for the same goods has miraculously increased. Some of those countries are landlocked and the goods can only reach them by traversing Russia. The idea that they all get to their planned destination, or even that they all stay there when they arrive, is for the birds. Western companies are supplying sanctioned goods to Russia and pretending not to know, and their governments are pretending not to notice. And the capitalists make their sales and take their profits.

That sanctions will not, and probably cannot, achieve their aim is a dismal conclusion to draw, but if it’s what we are going to depend on, then implementing them in packages over a period of years and turning a blind eye to alternative supply routes doesn’t cut it. Sir Starmer’s projected strength is actually a cover for weakness.

Ends and means

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The letter sent by the Trump administration to the authorities in Stockholm instructing them to drop all schemes related to diversity, equity and inclusion, or else explain themselves to US federal lawyers, was mildly amusing to start with. It appears that the US Embassy has occasionally needed permits from the authority for building activity, there is a fee involved, and the only way of paying such a fee is to set the authority up as a supplier (and thus payee) on US systems. A simple case of someone pressing a computer button to send a letter to all payees without giving the matter any real thought. It’s hardly as though the US can simply ask someone else to give it the relevant building permits (although it’s possible that some members of the US government don’t actually realise that).

It isn’t just an amusing little gaffe, however. What it reveals is that the US government is attempting to force any organisation which receives any money, for whatever purposes, from the US government to drop any attempts at building a more balanced and representative workforce, not just in relation to the specific US government related activities, but to all its activities, world wide. There is room for some doubt as to whether the presidential directive is entirely lawful when employed solely to US companies operating solely in the US, but the idea that it can be extended to any activity carried out by any organisation anywhere in the world just because they might be in receipt of a small payment for goods or services supplied to the US government is a dramatic piece of over-reach. It assumes, for example, that US law and Trump’s authority automatically over-rides the laws and mores of whichever country in which an organisation might be based. We’ve already seen some UK companies start to remove all mention of diversity from their websites, and one wonders how many others are quietly complying without making any public statement, as though – heaven forfend! – having a diverse workforce was never really important to them, but was seen as a means to present themselves in a good light and thus make money in a particular marketplace (the UK/EU).

The reaction of some of Trump’s UK acolytes in the UK, praising his actions despite their impact on UK companies, betrays a belief that ends are more important than means to them. The much-vaunted ‘sovereignty’ to ‘make our own laws’ that they sought through Brexit is only important to them if it delivers on their agenda. Who’d have thought it?

Short term wins aren't always victories

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The precise details of the ‘trade deal’ agreed between Trump and Sir Starmer are less than entirely clear at present, but it appears that the UK has conceded rather more than it has gained, in order to get back to a position which is not quite as bad as the current one, but not quite as good as the one which pertained before Trump started his tariff campaign. I was rather taken by this description from Gaby Hinsliff in the Guardian:

“This has been less a trade deal between allies – a process of give and take that in the long run hopefully leaves both sides better off – than a hostage negotiation. Pay Trump what he feels he’s due, and you get your economy back in roughly the state it was before, though missing a few fingers and probably traumatised.”

The bigger question is how long it will last. With someone as fickle as Trump in charge, today’s best deal ever can easily be redefined tomorrow as the work of a complete loser, and it will all be the fault of the groundwork that the Biden administration carried out. Sir Starmer is in a bind, even if he doesn’t realise it yet. The more he proclaims it as a good deal for the UK, the more His Orangeness will think that he didn’t demand enough – and reneging on deals that he himself negotiated and signed is always an option, as Canada and Mexico have already discovered. Bullies who think that they can get more will always come back and try for it. Assuming that your negotiating partner is honest and trustworthy simply doesn’t work with someone like Trump – and there are plenty of victims willing to attest to that.

Is it better to have done a deal than not done it? In principle, yes, of course. Being slightly less worse off is obviously an improvement – for an individual participant. Whether allowing and facilitating a strategy of divide and conquer is better than forming alliances with a bloc (the EU), which has rather more clout, to deal with the orange menace collectively is a much harder question to answer. The impact of the deal, when we know the detail (which will have some good things and some bad things in it), will be relatively small in economic terms. The bigger significance is whether it encourages or discourages Trump’s approach of bullying his way around the world. I suspect the former is more likely than the latter.