Referendums express disagreements - they don't create them

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The UK’s PM has seemingly managed both to acknowledge that the UK Government has a duty under international law to call an Irish unity referendum under certain circumstances as part of the Good Friday Agreement, and at the same time to rule it out. Maybe he’s practicing political contortionism in readiness for his upcoming meeting with Trump, but as a way of trying to please everyone whilst actually pleasing no-one, it’s almost a master class.

The circumstances under which a referendum becomes unavoidable are vague, of course: the duty on the Secretary of State to hold a border poll if it appears likely a majority would vote for Irish unification is hardly clear cut, and what ‘appears likely’ to one person can appear very unlikely to another, particularly if (s)he chooses to ape Nelson and hold the telescope to a closed eye. Given the history and complexities of Irish politics, perhaps the circumstances could never be other than vague, and the dangers implicit in a narrow majority either way are obvious.

But it was the rationale for taking the option off the table which caught my eye. Referendums, according to Burnham, are inherently divisive, and he uses those on Brexit and Scottish independence as evidence to support the argument. It is a simplistic analysis, though. A referendum might crystalise and put arithmetical numbers to a divergence of opinion, but they don’t make that divergence appear in the first place. After all, if there’s no pre-existing difference of opinion, there’s nothing on which to vote. As a corollary, avoiding holding a vote doesn’t make the difference of opinion go away. Whether the issue is Brexit, Scottish independence, or Irish unity, there are strong and deeply-held opinions on both sides. Whether a referendum is the best way of determining a majority view or establishing the ‘settled will’ of a population is a valid issue for debate, as are the timing and circumstances of any vote. But denying a population any democratic means of deciding between two views, and insisting instead on adherence to the status quo (which is what Burnham’s appeal to concentrate on cost of living issues amounts to) carries its own dangers.

On constitutional matters (much like on economic matters), Burnham – despite all his rhetoric about change – seems deeply committed to a belief that the status quo is the natural and inevitable order of things. It’s a fantasy; in the real world, the long reach of history shows how human-made boundaries and institutions are constantly changing and evolving. Those who attempt to stand against the tide of history eventually get swept away by it.

Intergenerational fairness is a long term issue, not a short term one

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The idea that providing a decent income to pensioners is an example of intergenerational unfairness depends in large measure on the assumption that people will take a very short term view of the economics. The argument starts from the assumption that working people lose out by having to pay for pensions of those who have retired. Even assuming that the economic basis of that (i.e. that all the wealth created in society belongs only to those in work and those who own the capital) were correct, it’s still far from true. If the triple lock means that pensioner purchasing power rises at a faster rate than the purchasing power of those still in work, the wonders of compound interest mean that those who benefit most from the triple lock will be those who have not yet retired and are unlikely to do so for some time. The corollary is equally simple: if the purchasing power of pensioners is allowed to progressively decline instead, the biggest losers won’t be today’s pensioners, but those who retire in the future. Anyone currently in work who falls for the argument for reducing the proportion of GDP spent on pensions will give them a boost in the here and now is implicitly accepting that their own position as pensioners will be even worse than the position of today’s pensioners.

The questions which the politicians and economists seem unwilling to debate are simple ones: what is the ‘right’ level of the state pension in relation to earnings, how do we get there, and what mechanism should be used to maintain the relationship thereafter? At the ‘right’ level, there should be no need for anything like the triple lock; a straightforward mechanism for maintaining parity will serve the needs of all current and future pensioners. The reason for avoiding the question of the ‘right’ level is also very simple: the answer is likely to be along the lines of ‘rather more than currently being paid’. To the extent that they are willing to debate the issue at all, the debate normally starts with a question about how much pensioners ‘need’ to live on. It’s a question which carries within it a whole series of subsidiary questions and assumptions about the life style pensioners should be ‘allowed’ to lead. And the supplementary question raised is ‘what about those pensioners who get other income on top of their state pension’, but that’s an issue which a progressive taxation regime should deal with.

A properly working economy, serving the needs of the society in which it operates, should be able to provide a decent standard of living for all, without forcing people to reduce their standard of living when they hit retirement age. It is the neoliberal economics of the UK’s main political parties which perpetually seeks to divert attention away from that. To know why, we have only to ask the question which Roman senators were encouraged to ask: “Cui bono?”

Arbitrary priorities don't solve the lack of housing

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It might be best to simply ignore any half-baked policy proposals put forward by Reform Ltd, given their recent slide in the polls. But in the great political game of snakes and ladders, those who slide down a snake one day may yet ascend a ladder the next, and it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that the Farageists could still be in contention come the next UK general election. The Burnham Bounce may end up being followed by the Burnham Deep Dive – and probably will, based on recent political history.

The latest of the company’s policies is a proposal to give priority for social housing to young workers born in the UK. That appears not to be the only category given priority, though – they also want to prioritise “former military service personnel and married couples with children”. The implications are wide-reaching and not entirely clear. Where, for instance, do former military service personnel born outside the UK (and there are some) fit into the priority list? And if the aim of the last part is to support families and give children a decent start in life, what about non-married couples with children? Or young widows or widowers left to bring up children alone? Not only are they wanting, apparently, to set the state up in judgement on the marital (or not) arrangements of citizens, it seems that getting a decent start in life is to be reserved to those who pass the artificial morality test.

Imagine, just for a moment, the nightmare of managing a housing waiting list which has to hold information about the place of birth, marital status, and number of children of each applicant, and then set out whether an unmarried ex-serviceman born in, say, India, who has a partner and two children, ranks ahead of or behind a single male born in the UK. And what about a ‘worker’ who may be temporarily unemployed? Does someone who loses his or her job due to redundancy and struggles to find another then lose his or her home as a result? And does the ranking change depending on whether the available accommodation is a flat or a three-bedroom house? I was a member of a local authority housing committee for a number of years, and I know how fraught the process of determining priorities is when there is a long waiting list, without Whitehall setting out additional priorities to over-ride any carefully and painfully developed points system.

The worst part of all is that this is a blatant attempt to avoid doing the one thing which would resolve the shortage of social housing: build more. They have talked about building an additional 50,000 homes a year across the UK: an inadequate number with no indication of how it will be achieved. Both Reform Ltd and the Tories seem to believe that evicting foreign-born tenants from social housing will make the homes occupied by them available to their priority categories, but unless there is alternative accommodation available for the evictees, that merely shifts the problem to another part of the system. Assuming that they have enough decency not to simply turf people out onto the streets (and I wish it were possible to say that that is a reasonable assumption), what do they plan to do with those people who have been kicked out to make way for others?

The whole thing carries echoes, horrible echoes, of times gone by when those deemed undesirable were expelled to make way for the favoured. And I’m not sure that that is either accidental or down to a simple lack of awareness.

Why single out taxes?

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There have been reports that UK Ministers are planning to change the planning rules around pubs in order to make it harder to close them, with developers to be required to prove that there is no reasonable prospect of keeping a pub afloat before a change of use can be considered. Talking of the causes of pub closures, the Guardian says “Pub and restaurant bosses have blamed the employer national insurance increase, the higher minimum wage and food price inflation as well as high business rates”, the BBC blames “taxes and employment costs”, whilst the Sunday Times (paywall) says the closures are “largely as a result of rising costs from the increased rate of employers’ national insurance contributions … and high VAT and business rates”.

It’s true, of course, that if the costs of a business increase, it can be harder to keep that business viable without an increase in prices. That’s just Economics 101. The corollary is that if one element of those costs could be reduced whilst leaving all other factors unchanged, then the business will become more profitable. So, if the government stopped collecting taxes on pubs, those pubs would become more profitable. But it’s equally true that those same pubs would become more profitable if the breweries stopped charging them for beer, or the wholesalers stopped charging them for food. Taxes are just one element of the costs of a business, rather than some sort of special extra cost. The bottom line isn’t that taxes are causing pubs to shut, it is that the demand for the services of those pubs at the prices required to make a profit is insufficient. And the ‘rules’ of capitalism tell us that a business which cannot sell its wares at a price which enables it to cover its costs and make a reasonable profit is a non-viable business, which should close, with the demand then concentrated on a smaller number of businesses.

I wouldn’t actually advocate that – pubs perform useful social functions particularly in rural communities and there may be good reasons for subsidies or other forms of assistance to keep them open.

The point, though, is that blaming taxes tells us more about the ideological stance of those making the claim than about the economics of the pubs sector. Successful businesses depend on a supply of suitable trained and educated workers; they depend on those workers being healthy and fit for work; they depend on the infrastructure required to get their supplies delivered and the customers to their door. What, exactly, is the argument that those are not in themselves business costs, even if indirect? And a business which cannot pay its employees a living wage has no basis for remaining open anyway.

Government is hard

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Government is hard. And the transition from opposition to government is not a smooth one. Things which it is easy to oppose from outside become more problematic from the inside. We saw it when Labour replaced the Tories as the UK Government: one obvious example is the way that all those Labour candidates who gave such fulsome support to the WASPI women when they wanted their votes found themselves in a government which has done precisely nothing to remedy the injustice. We’re seeing it in Wales too, with the news this week that the Plaid Cymru Welsh Government is facilitating and participating in the sort of arms fairs which many of its members, when in opposition, would have attended only in order to join protests outside the venue.

It may well be true, as the government’s spokesperson effectively claimed in response, that ‘arms fair’ is an over-simplistic description of an event which also showcases, for example, civilian aerospace industries which provide good well-paid jobs for people in Wales, although that didn’t seem to stop party members from describing them as arms fairs when Labour were in government. It’s also true, of course, that the defence sector provides jobs and boosts the economy in the areas where it operates, but it isn’t the only sector which does so; there are other ways of creating jobs. It’s true, again, that Wales benefits less from UK defence expenditure than many other areas of the UK, and that if the industries aren’t located in Wales, they’ll simply be located elsewhere in the UK. But demanding that UK government expenditure should benefit Wales to the same extent as other parts of the UK economy doesn’t mean that the nature of that expenditure has to be the same. It’s how much is being spent in Wales which matters not what it’s being spent on.

Plaid has never been an outright pacifist party, although pacifism has always been an important element in the thinking of many of its leading figures – and opposition to war and militarism has been an even stronger thread in its history. There must surely be at least some amongst the party’s members who are feeling at least a little uneasy about their government’s stance. Perhaps they’re even beginning to understand how it has been possible for many Labour Party members in organisations such as CND to manage their consciences over the decades as their party has enthusiastically backed upgrading the UK’s nuclear arsenal.

Wales needs to grow its economy, it needs jobs, it needs investment and it needs the government expenditure which promotes all those things. There is, though, a moral dimension to that. Do we want jobs at any price, regardless of their potential impact, or do we want to apply a filter under which not all jobs are seen as being of equal value when non-economic factors are taken into account? We won’t all draw the line in the same place, of course, but I know that I’m not alone in feeling a sense of disappointment here. Government is hard, but taking hard decisions doesn’t have to mean taking decisions which will be unpopular with the base support and seem to be in conflict with past stances even if that’s the way it is often presented. The difficulties of government aren’t much of an excuse for throwing away the compass.

Diminished, maybe - but not down and out

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Sadly, seeing Farage go down to defeat against a pretend intergalactic space warrior with a bin on his head was never more than an outside hope, but the dream was pleasant while it lasted. For Farage himself, despite all his bluster about a resounding victory, and the people having exonerated him, he’s now back exactly where he was before he resigned, with a parliamentary enquiry into his amazingly generous, completely non-political ‘gift’ of £5 million now due to restart. Apparently, he didn’t even realise that resigning and getting re-elected wouldn’t make the investigation go away. Actually, perhaps there is a difference – there are more questions being asked about the source and legality of funding for his company, Reform Ltd, now than there were before he resigned. He may yet face another by-election, this time not of his choosing and against an array of political parties rather than the only credible one being our friend with the bin.

Although it may not have achieved much from Farage’s point of view, it may not have been entirely a waste of time. It has demonstrated how little he cares for the rules and regulations by which others are expected to abide, as well as a certain lack of attention to detail. And his statement last night that he missed the count not for the reasons being claimed by his company’s spokespersons, but because, as he put it, “I’m damned if I’m going to stand on a stage … and be demeaned and humiliated by nobodies” betrays a certain arrogance towards people he considers less important than himself (a category which increasingly seems to include almost everybody else). Election rules in the UK may well turn by-elections into a bit of a circus (I’ve been there myself, although not to the extent of metre long ballot papers with 34 names on them, having fought a by-election in 1989 which was also contested by Screaming Lord Sutch and Miss Whiplash, among others), but them’s the rules, and even if democracy sometimes works in mysterious ways, effectively challenging the right of people to spend their time and money on fringe campaigns has to be better than the alternative of candidates needing to be approved by the state before they can stand.

He will, no doubt, try to claim that getting more votes than in 2024 on a reduced turnout shows that the electors of Clacton aren’t interested in what he seems to see as arcane rules about political donations. Getting 63% of the vote on a 44% turnout means that only around 28% of Clacton’s electors felt strongly enough to go out and vote for him – but it is a quirk of the UK’s parliamentary election system that 28% of the total electorate across the UK on a normal turnout with multiple other parties standing would probably be enough for a party to win a resounding overall majority. I might believe – I certainly want to believe – that the by-election and his approach to it has led to him being a somewhat diminished figure, but we should not be complacent. An electoral system which works, after a fashion, when two large parties manage to gather 80% or more of the votes between them does not work at all well with 6 or 7 parties in the mix: the danger of electing a UK government which is even more unrepresentative of the population than the current Labour government is still present. Electoral reform is desperately needed, yet Burnham seems unwilling to address the issue with anything like the speed needed.

When will they take away his hammer?

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Last week, a Guardian columnist summarised Trump’s strategy by saying that “his own modus operandi, from his early days as a New York real estate investor onwards, has always been to simply do things that everyone can see are illegal … and hope that the other side will settle out of court or just live with a fait accompli”, adding “This method … of illegality – and hope for impunity – now characterizes almost the entire administration”. It seemed like a reasonable summary. I’ve never read Trump’s Art of the Deal, and can’t imagine any circumstances in which I might want to, but even without doing so, it’s probably safe to conclude that it doesn’t elaborate this particular element of his approach. With him having been a New York property developer prone to ‘unconventional’ approaches to legality, it’s not unreasonable to suppose that he will also have had dealings, consciously or not, with the mob, known for deploying violence, or the threat of violence, in gaining compliance; it’s another feature of his ‘career’ which is unlikely to have received much attention in his book.

Whether it’s an approach which has brought him success or not is a difficult question. He’s certainly had a long string of failures in both businesses and court cases, but like an inveterate gambler, he’s won enough to convince himself that he’s ahead, despite some analyses of his financial situation suggesting that he’d have ended up richer if he’d put his inheritance into a building society and spent his time cheating at golf. Up until his second inauguration, at least – during his second term, he really does seem to have monetised the presidency in ways which are unprecedented, even if not always entirely in accordance with what many others understand the law to be. But whether it’s actually been successful or not isn’t the point: he believes that a combination of illegality and violence has worked, and that belief is enough to encourage him to carry on.

He said recently that force is the only thing that the Iranian regime understands, but – in the sense in which he uses the word ‘understand’ – it simply isn’t true. They haven’t buckled in the face of repeated bombings, and there’s no sign that they’re likely to do so. All of Trump’s history suggests to him that they must inevitably do so eventually; it’s simply a matter of applying enough force. He cannot comprehend why things don’t happen in accordance with his expectations. He’s an extreme example of the old adage that when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. There are some signs that some of those around him are starting to realise the fallacy – but little evidence than anyone is yet recognising that they need to take away his hammer.

Why the emphasis on colour?

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If you start out with the ‘right’ assumptions and definitions, then you can ‘prove’ absolutely anything, but that ‘proof’ is, at best, only ever going to be as accurate as those assumptions and definitions. Sadly, when it comes to reporting on ‘research’ papers, the point that the media often miss out is to tell us what those assumptions and definitions are. And when it comes to politicians, they far too frequently rely on the media reports rather than even bothering to read the original report, especially if the conclusions just happen to reflect their own biases and prejudices. It’s a phenomenon which we’ve seen often enough in relation to the economics of an independent Wales: whether it would be a basket-case or a land of milk and honey depends entirely on the, usually unreported, underlying assumptions.

Sometimes, it can lead those who jump onto conclusions without understanding the way they’ve been reached into effectively supporting ridiculous non sequiturs, and thus it was with Rupert Lowe last week. In a bizarre section of an interview with Nick Robinson, he found himself unable to confirm that the King of England is, in fact, a White Briton. Lowe had been using a curious report (produced by the failed Reform Ltd candidate against the victorious Green Party candidate in Gorton and Denton) in which he argued that ‘White Britons’ were destined to become a minority in the UK by 2063. But the definition of ‘White Briton’ used included a stipulation that both parents were born in the UK – a stipulation that the current monarch is unable to meet, his father having been born in Corfu. On that definition, it is very clear that Charles is not a White Briton, a conclusion which Lowe was strangely unwilling to admit.

For most of thus, such a patently absurd conclusion would be enough to cast considerable doubt on some of the report’s other assertions, let alone the definitions on which they are based. What, for instance, does it even mean to be ‘white’? The definition seems to be based on what people say when they fill in the census form, which makes it largely based on self-classification. Some might argue that asking what does ‘white’ mean is a silly question, because it’s ‘obvious’. But is it really – and how far do we need to go back?

But the bigger question is whether it matters. Lowe was seeking to present a sensational conclusion as though it is somehow civilisation-threatening, and clearly, to his intended audience, it might well appear to be so. But if the institution at the very summit of the UK state has been able to accept and absorb successive waves of foreign influence – whether Greek, German, Norman, or Dutch – without becoming less ‘British’ in the process (or maybe changing what 'British' itself means in the process), why should that be so hard for the rest of society? And why the emphasis on skin colour – why assume that a person of foreign descent who happens to look different is more of a threat than one who looks the same? There is a valid debate to be had around assimilation and cultural change, but physical appearance is an irrelevance. Except to racists and those who encourage them.

NEETs are only a symptom of a much deeper problem

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It has been suggested this week that “Primary schools in England should be required to identify children at risk of leaving education at 16 without finding a job”, with a view to putting mentoring / tutoring arrangements in place for the children thus identified. Although the review is specifically about England, the same issue exists in Wales. There is something profoundly depressing about the idea that we can and should categorise children in such a way before they are even 11 years old - or even, according to the author, for pre-school children.

It’s not a new issue, and the links between deprivation in childhood and poor opportunity in adulthood have been well understood for at least 60 years – I read the seminal study on the issue by JWB Douglas (“The Home and the School”) back in the 1960s. Six decades later and we’re still only debating how to address the symptoms – because treating the symptoms is what the proposal for mentoring and tutoring is about. That’s not to argue that we should not be trying to treat the symptoms – any help that we can give the children concerned is to be welcomed.

But really, after all that time, we shouldn’t still be debating potential corrective actions at all – we should be addressing the underlying cause. It remains the case that the social class and financial situation of the parents are the factors with the greatest influence on children’s life chances. Even if we were to accept that the situation of the parents is down to their own choices in life (although I hasten to add that I don’t accept that things are as simple as that), that is no justification for restricting the opportunities open to their children. Yet, far from seeking to make the starting point in life less unequal, recent decades have seen a continued concentration of wealth and income in fewer and fewer hands – and the gap between the richest and poorest in society has grown, not shrunk.

Gross inequality isn’t the natural order of things, and life doesn’t have to be that way. It is the result of political choices made by UK governments, both Tory and Labour, over decades. And the most depressing part of the reporting on the pending review is that it doesn’t even seem to touch on that.

What is the UK for?

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The PM returned this week to an issue which he has raised previously, namely the need for the UK to have a written constitution. In principle, he’s right: the current approach is an antiquated patchwork of law, precedent, custom and practice, leaving the UK as an outlier in the world. The motivation for his latest statement appears to be based around the need to entrench and codify the relationship between the Westminster government and the regional mayors to whom he wishes to devolve more power. I’ve long supported the idea of a formal written constitution for the UK, and even more so for the independent Wales that I still hope to see one day. But the reasons for that support are precisely why I don’t think it can or will happen, at least until it’s time to write separate constitutions for England, Wales, and Scotland. There is a whole shop’s worth of cans of worms waiting to be opened once the suggestion gets serious debate.

Firstly, as the SNP have already pointed out, a constitution which defines and codifies the relationship between Westminster and English regional mayors will also need to define and codify the relationship between the constituent nations of the union. There are basically only two options as to how the UK can define itself – it is either a single unitary state, or else it is a voluntary union of nations. The former is likely to inflame Scotland in particular, whilst the latter must, by definition, specify the terms of that voluntary union, including how it can be ended. The opposition of devout unionists to formally documenting the nature of the relationship is based on more than tradition and inertia.

Then there is the question of sovereignty and who owns it. There are monarchies in the world which have written constitutions, of course, so it’s not impossible. But would it really be politically acceptable, in the twenty-first century, to write a formal document declaring that all power stems from god via the monarch, and parliament and the courts merely act as the monarch’s agent? The alternative view – that power belongs to the citizens and is delegated by them to parliament – would be a complete undermining of centuries of precedent and custom, to say nothing of a serious constraint on the royal prerogative on which much of the government’s activity depends.

Bigger than either of those, however, is the question of purpose. Defining what the state is for is no easy matter. The US Declaration of Independence talks about the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It’s a reasonable starting point, especially the bit about the pursuit of happiness, but it’s a bit wishy-washy: fine words which can be interpreted in different ways. A more comprehensive statement of purpose for a modern constitution might be something along the lines of ‘enabling all citizens to achieve their potential and lead fulfilling lives’. It is, though, the sort of aim which would have neoliberals (such as Andy Burnham) choking on their cornflakes.

I don’t seriously believe that a written constitution will happen under Andy Burnham or any currently conceivable successor. But we can perhaps hope that he will at least spark a discussion during which alternatives to the status quo can be seriously debated.

The issue over care should be about how it is delivered, not how it is funded

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The UK’s new PM talked a lot last week about care, and there’s no doubt that identifying what care is needed and how it is to be provided are significant issues facing us, particularly as the population ages. Sadly, though, the debate rapidly turned into one about how care is to be paid for, which is a completely different issue – and in some ways, irrelevant. The need for care is based on the aggregation of the needs of millions of individuals – whilst the level of provision might vary according to how much money is available or what budget is set, the need doesn’t change in response to the funding.

If we start from first principles rather than ideological views about money and the size of the state, the nature of the problem changes. One of the problems with neoliberal economic thinking is that it values only two things: labour and capital. The economy is seen as belonging only to those who supply either their labour or their capital – with a huge bias in favour of the latter. Everything and everyone else is then seen as a ‘burden’ on the productive economic activity of those groups, often with the implicit assumption that the living standards / purchasing power of those non-productive groups should be limited to the basics. But if we instead see the economy as a social construct, with the objective of serving all members of the society in which it operates, the picture changes completely. A successful economy needs to be able to provide a decent standard of living (leaving aside, for the purposes of the current argument, who decides what that is, and on what basis) for all its members – young, old, sick, and disabled. And, however defined, that ‘decent standard’ includes things like education, health – and care.

If ‘the economy’ is to serve all of us rather than only those supplying labour or capital, the question ceases to be about how much we tax to pay for x, y, or z, and instead becomes one of how we ensure that the level of economic activity is high enough to provide that decent standard of living – and what mechanism we use to share the benefits of that economic activity. Economic growth is important, of course, but once we accept the obvious truth that growth cannot be infinite in a world where resources are finite, we cannot use that growth – however much the politicians try to do so – as an excuse to avoid discussing the issue of distribution. But avoiding that issue, ultimately, is why the supporters of the current neoliberal capitalism reduce everything to a question of ‘how will you pay for it?’. Better – from their perspective – to turn people against each other over a question of taxation than to get to grips with the question of how wealth and income are distributed. All the debate around how care is to be funded - like the debate about the welfare bill, or the pensions triple lock – is about diverting attention away from the key question, which is about the distribution of wealth and income within society. And whose interests are served by that?

Burnham is making the problems worse by his adherence to self-imposed rules

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One of Andy Burnham’s ‘qualifications’ for the job of PM was that he was used to running a major public sector operation in the form of the mayoralty of Greater Manchester. It’s certainly a big job, and he will certainly have learned a lot from doing it, even if the degree to which he was successful is always going to be arguable, depending on one’s political perspective. There is a difference of scale, of course; but even more important is the difference in the constraints acting upon the incumbent. Manchester (like the Senedd here in Wales) has its powers and budgets circumscribed elsewhere. Westminster sets both, and the mayor (or First Minister) has no choice but to follow the statutory requirements laid down for him or her.

When it comes to running the UK from Downing Street, however, the situation is completely different. The Westminster parliament insists that it has absolute power – delegated to it by God and the Monarch – to do whatever it wants. Financially, the only real constraint is the capacity of the economy – the available resources, in short. Any other constraint is self-imposed: the so-called ‘fiscal rules’ are the invention of the government of the day which can change them at any time it wants to (and history shows that governments tinker with the rules regularly). There was no such thing before Gordon Brown invented them in 1997, and they were invented largely to ensure that the incoming Labour government followed broadly the same policies as the outgoing Tory government, in the belief that that was what ‘the markets’ wanted.

To date, Burnham has given no indication that he understands the difference – that he has moved from a situation where he has to obey rules laid down by others to one where he can make the rules. And all the neoliberal foundations and lobbyists – to say nothing of the financial ‘experts’ in the mainstream media – are only too keen to ensure that he doesn’t realise the extent to which he is imposing unnecessary constraints upon himself. There was a report today, for example, claiming that the PM “will have to raise taxes or cut spending” to meet his pledges and that “There's clearly no scope for increasing borrowing”. What they like to call ‘borrowing’, some of us prefer to call ‘accepting deposits from people looking for a safe home for their money’ – and the only limit on that is whether people have money for which they are seeking a safe home. Given the lack of worthwhile investment opportunities (which is a much bigger problem in itself), there’s no sign of any lack of deposits; and the choice posited by the first quote is solely a result of the fiscal rules.

One of the big issues which Burnham has highlighted this week is the question of social care. It’s usually presented as a shortage of money, but even if money was unlimited, there would still be a lack of qualified and willing carers, and lack of capacity is a much more important constraint than lack of money. But that lack of capacity is another self-imposed constraint – this time it’s arbitrary rules over numbers of migrants.

One point of similarity between the governments in Wales and Scotland, the mayoralty in Manchester, and the UK government is that they are all facing major issues. But only one of them is compounding the problems by using its unique position to be able to set its own rules in a way that exacerbates rather than alleviates.

Hard hats and graduate caps

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According to the PM, “From today, Britain will value the hard hat every bit as much as the graduation cap”. It’s a nice soundbite, but what does it actually mean? He’s not the first politician – or even the first UK Prime Minister – to talk about what has often been called ‘parity of esteem’: the idea that people with key technical skills should be as highly regarded as those with a degree. Few would disagree with the sentiment. And it’s certainly true that an academic degree, and the learning involved in gaining one, is not something which suits everyone, although we need to guard against the idea that making learning less academic also strips away the remaining vestiges of the notion that a well-educated populace is a good thing in itself.

But one of the other things that those who want fewer people to seek a degree are concerned about is the lack of what they call ‘graduate jobs’, which generally seems to be a euphemism for jobs which pay a higher salary, or graduate premium. There is an obvious conflict here: it is simply not rational to support the idea of there being a graduate premium whilst also demanding that other types of qualifications and learning should carry equal value. Having done a certain amount of graduate recruitment in the past myself for two different organisations, I’m not convinced that the requirement for a degree is, in many cases, much more than a filter mechanism enabling lazy employers to discard large numbers of otherwise suitable employees. There is, though, no real question that employers seeking only graduate recruits do find themselves obliged to reinforce the pretence by offering higher salaries.

Achieving real equality of value requires more than identifying which young people are more suited to a so-called ‘vocational’ route, providing the necessary places, and making airy statements about parity or equality. If I thought that Burnham was wanting to start a serious conversation about how we value and reward different occupations, his statement today would be very welcome. How do we determine the relative value of lawyers and nurses for example? Does the current difference in reward reflect that relative valuation or reverse it? I’m pretty certain, however, that that isn’t a can he proposes to open, and that what he’s talking about is more about persuading people to accept their station in life – and the level of reward which goes with that. His fine words are, in short, more spin than substance. Being better with words doesn’t change the underlying message.

When Labour's self-image clashes with reality

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Last week, the new PM instructed his cabinet to “stop assuming that decisions belong in Whitehall by default”, according to a Downing Street source quoted in the Times (paywall). The source went on to add, “Departments will now have to justify why a power should stay at the centre rather than being transferred to a local area”. Perhaps the new Secretary of State for Wales was asleep during that part of the meeting, but his statement that he is not yet "entirely convinced" of the case for giving more powers to the Welsh government, although he remains "open to the conversation" sounds an awful lot like an assumption that powers should remain where they are unless a convincing case is made otherwise – almost the exact opposite of his boss’s instruction.

It’s possible, of course, that Burnham never intended that his new policy should apply to the national governments in Wales and Scotland – for him devolution is all about the powers of local mayors; and his record to date of understanding the difference between those national parliaments on the one hand and regional mayors on the other is not good. It’s more likely, though, that we’re just seeing two different versions of the Labour Party. There is the image that they want us to believe: a party committed to localism, empowering communities and their representatives to take the best decisions for their areas, and then there’s the traditional version with which we are all too familiar in Wales: a centralised and centralising party which wants to keep all power in its own hands. Kinnock is simply presenting the well-established reality; those who fall for the Burnham rhetoric will inevitably end up disappointed.

The power has been retained at the centre all along

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The problem at the heart of devolution is, and always has been, that ‘power devolved is power retained’. It might be politically difficult for Westminster to deliberately and blatantly remove powers from the Scottish and Welsh parliaments, but it would be entirely legal under a constitution which assumes that absolute power is vested in the monarch by god and exercised by parliament through the gracious consent of the monarch. Devolved administrations are allowed to exercise such powers as the central authority decides in the manner, and for so long as, that central authority determines. The conceptual difference between that and a republican system under which power belongs to the people and is exercised by governments on their behalf and at their discretion – even if, in practice, the differences are not so great as they are in theory – is huge. The underlying difference of principle – whose power is it anyway – is fundamental.

Andy Burnham presents himself as a committed devolutionist, which might look like a big plus for Wales and Scotland compared to what has gone before. But, like all devolutionists, his starting point is that power is owned by the centre and may be shared at the centre’s discretion. It means that he can decide what is devolved and to whom, setting up a potential conflict with the administrations in Cardiff and Edinburgh as he probably seeks to devolve power to more local mayors. And it isn’t just powers currently held at Westminster that he might be seeking to devolve – it is also those currently exercised in Cardiff and Edinburgh that he is likely to want to devolve.

As a matter of pure principle, I would actually agree that devolution shouldn’t stop at the national parliaments of Wales and Scotland; it is a disappointment to me that Plaid’s long history of supporting decentralising power within Wales seems to have gone into reverse somewhat since the establishment of the Assembly/Senedd, as politicians came up against the harsh reality that seriously devolving power necessarily means that different areas will set different priorities. Leaving that issue to one side, the question is: ‘who decides?’. Many – perhaps most – in Wales, and certainly in Scotland, would argue that further devolution within those countries should be a matter for the national parliaments but, for devolutionists, the issue of which powers should reside where is a matter for central determination. Whilst we in Wales might think that we have a Senedd in recognition of nationhood, to a devolutionist, it doesn’t necessarily look that way at all.

Paradoxically, it could well be that it is a pro ‘devolution’ PM who poses the greatest challenge to what ‘devolution’ means for Wales. The power has indeed been retained from the outset.

One sector's boost is another sector's loss

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The slimmed-down Commonwealth Games opens in Glasgow today, featuring around half the usual number of sports, because Glasgow stepped in late in the day as host after Victoria, in Australia, pulled out. Slimmed down = less cost – a good thing, surely? Well that depends. Because slimmed down also = fewer athletes, fewer spectators, fewer hotel nights and meals, less of a boost to the local economy.

During the recent world cup, many pubs in England were allowed to open late, and enjoyed something of a bonanza as a result. Hard-pressed hospitality sector gets boost – a good thing, surely? Well, again, that depends. Where did the money spent come from? If it was money which would otherwise have been spent in the same pubs, but over a longer period, then it’s just a change in cash flow. If it’s money that would otherwise have been spent on other things, then a large short term boost for one sector probably equates to a smaller longer term reduction in spending in a host of other sectors. Maybe not even noticeable in the grand scheme of things, but there nevertheless.

The point is, as the wondrous invention called double-entry book-keeping tells us, that what looks like a positive entry to one party will always look like a negative entry to someone else. Unless there is an overall increase in the supply of money, it cannot be otherwise. And, as Richard Murphy pointed out a couple of weeks ago, there are only two ways in which the total money supply can be increased: deficit budgets by the government and commercial bank lending. In accounting terms, both end up looking like ‘borrowing’ to someone, although that’s an oversimplified view when it comes to the government. The questions to be asked are ‘which is better?’ and ‘for whom?’. Neoliberals (and that includes Andy Burnham, for all his rhetoric) will always favour commercial bank lending, which in turn always favours those who already own most of the wealth. It is not the option which is most favourable to the majority of us, but unless and until we break free of the assumption that it is always and inevitably ‘better’, we will never rebalance the economy in favour of the many.

Out with the old, in with the old

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So far, the Burnham rhetoric has been better than the Starmer rhetoric, but that isn’t exactly a high bar. The substance – to the extent that there is anything other than a superficial paint job – will emerge in the coming days and weeks. Later this year, there will be (we are told) a 10-year plan. In the light of the recent rate of turnover in leaders of the UK government, the degree of confidence that Burnham will still be around to see the plan published (it will, inevitably, be later than proposed), let alone to see it through to implementation, cannot be high.

Some of the signs are not good, already. Putting a man who resigned from government because the Treasury wouldn’t divert enough funding away from protecting people against poverty and ill-health into deterring imaginary Russian threats in charge of the Treasury doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence that the ‘change’ being demanded by Burnham will be quite the change that we need. Rhetoric about moving away from the neoliberal approach of the past few decades is utterly undermined by the statement that the arbitrary fiscal rules – only ever invented in order to entrench neoliberalism into the UK government’s economic philosophy – will be adhered to.

Scrapping the mad scheme for digital ID is a welcome step, but the mathematics behind diverting the uncommitted funding from that into a reduction in VAT on electricity costs are a little dodgy to say the least. Those paying the fuel bills – and especially those living in fuel poverty – will welcome any reduction, but when reduced to the level of ordinary household bills, the saving doesn’t look that large. £45 a year off the energy price cap equates to around 86p a week, strangely reminiscent of Gordon Brown's derisory 75p per week pension increase in 1999 - and worth rather less when inflation is accounted for.

We need more than a sharper rhetoric, a more developed sense of humour, and a bit of tinkering at the edges, but there are no signs as yet that Burnham is any more capable of envisioning a different approach than his predecessor. Being better at selling the same basic approach might buy him some time, but it will do little more than that.

Those with the vested interests aren't the ones who should be deciding the rules

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Back in April, Gianni Infantino, the head of FIFA, apparently demanded that the security arrangements for a visit to Vancouver should be at a level higher than that provided for Canadian PM Mark Carney, and at a level normally reserved for the likes of the US President or the Pope. Here in the UK, it seems that Farage has refused the security arrangements he was offered – which are equivalent to those provided for members of the Cabinet and the leader of the official opposition – as being inadequate, and said that his company would continue to provide his security instead. In the case of Infantino, it appears to have more to do with validating his own sense of self-importance than with security; perhaps there is at least an element of the same thing with Farage. Two entitled men with an exaggerated sense of their own importance, seeking special treatment. There is a valid question about what level of security is needed for people in the public eye and how should it be provided and paid for, but, even more importantly – who decides?

People who feel themselves to be under threat naturally want the best security they can get, but are probably the least appropriate people to decide what that level should be. But leaving it to the ‘experts’, which is the obvious alternative, depends on an assumption that those experts really are expert, and don’t make mistakes – an assumption which is necessarily flawed when we’re dealing with human judgement. There isn’t a simple answer (which is not to say that the government will not fall back on its usual simplistic answer to all issues – set up a review). I do wonder, though, whether Farage’s motives are as straightforward as he claims. After all, when public servants are providing security, they are subject to the normal scrutiny of public servants, and it’s more than possible that Farage wouldn’t want the security services, let alone various other authorities in the UK, to know where he was and who he was with at all times. And I really don’t believe that I’m just displaying a naturally suspicious mind by saying that.

He has attempted to turn the issue into a justification for the sort of large individual donations on which he and his company seem to depend. Without such large donations, he seems to be saying, Reform Ltd would not be able to afford the level of security which he deems necessary. It’s a complete non-sequitur – spending millions on security depends solely on the total amount of donations received, not on the amount of each one. It does, though, betray how dependent he is on a small number of enormous donations, underscoring that his company is struggling to attract the larger number of smaller donations on which other parties often depend. It is also, I suppose, possible that the widow giving her mite might just possibly be less happy than one of Farage’s fellow millionaires with her contribution being spent on security rather than electioneering. Or expelling foreigners. But here’s the thing: in the same way that people feeling threatened are not the best people to decide on what security they require, politicians dependent on the largesse of millionaires are not the best people to decide on the rules surrounding political donations.

Being against one thing doesn't mean you support one particular alternative

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One of the features of parliamentary process is that votes on legislation, budgets etc eventually come down to a straight ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Prior debate, both in committee and on the floor of the chamber, offers opportunity for parliamentarians to seek to amend and improve the proposition under consideration, but at the end of the process, nuance, subtlety, and the fact that there may be varied reasons why members choose to support or oppose the proposition are all erased in a simple binary vote.

Whether Labour made the ‘right’ call in this week’s Senedd vote on the supplementary budget is a matter of opinion, and depends on first asking the question ‘right for who?’; what suits the party’s needs may or may not suit the needs of the people. Maybe they were trying to put down a marker about not being taken for granted; perhaps they’re just struggling with the move from government to opposition. Whatever their logic, I’m amongst those who think that they called it wrong on this occasion. Whether the government should have made more effort to get them onboard is another moot point – just as former governing parties need time to adjust to being in opposition, so too former opposition parties seemingly need time to adjust to being in government.

The biggest disappointment for me, however, came not in the vote, but in the aftermath. Voting against the government is not the same thing as voting for the other opposition parties, and Plaid’s repeated criticism of Labour for voting ‘with Reform Ltd’ grates with me. It’s a tactic which has been used by Labour, in particular, against Plaid for decades, especially in Westminster, but it’s a kindergarten approach, and it’s disappointing, to say the least, to see the party which has been subjected to such an approach for so long trying to use the same approach against its former tormentors, rather than demonstrating that the grown-ups are now in charge. There are going to be a lot of votes in the Senedd during the current term, and the combinations of parties voting either for or against a proposition will also vary. Voting the same way as Party B doesn’t mean that the rationale for voting that way is shared, and the suggestion that it does is a dishonest way of avoiding the substance. Resorting to the ‘yah boo’ tactics of Westminster is not a good look.

Joining the Establishment is easy - it's staying out which is difficult

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One of Trump’s imaginary foes is what he refers to as ‘the deep state’, a vast conspiracy which he alone is capable of vanquishing. That there are shadowy forces at work in US politics pushing particular viewpoints is not a particularly remarkable claim, but the idea that it is a coherent and sinister organisation is much harder to substantiate. The biggest proof that it is not is probably Trump himself: he’s both still alive and still in office, neither of which would be likely to be true if the deep state was really all it is claimed to be. Unless, of course, rather than being its nemesis, he is actually its willing tool.

In the UK, we more usually refer to the ‘Establishment’, another shadowy creature, and Farage has chosen to paint himself as its enemy. Its membership is hard to define, but it certainly includes top civil servants, the military top brass, media proprietors, the old-boy network of certain private schools, and the aristocracy. There’s no formal membership, and no-one ever describes themselves as being part of it. It’s neither organised nor coherent, nor does it have a leadership. Traditionally, much of the interaction between its members would have taken place in the so-called ‘gentlemen’s clubs’ of London, in the way portrayed in the Yes, Minister series. Farage himself is a member of at least one such club and regularly uses others for meetings and events. Indeed, by almost any definition one would choose, he is an archetypical member of the Establishment – and the more he denies it, the more typical of its members he becomes.

There is one thing that the Establishment is very good at doing, and that is capturing and absorbing new blood, perpetually renewing itself in the process. People who start out claiming to be rebels or revolutionaries almost invariably end up becoming part of that which they set out to oppose. Titles, gongs, membership of boards and panels all help, but perhaps one of the biggest factors is that life is simply so much easier if people simply go with the flow. Membership – as Farage currently, and Tony Benn in the past have demonstrated – doesn’t require adherence to any particular political viewpoint; the Establishment can happily accommodate them all. It merely requires them to abide by a whole series of undocumented conventions and traditions, most of which serve to protect and prolong the status quo – especially for those who benefit from it. Farage doesn’t (and never really has) threaten any of that. Brexit may not have been popular amongst the Establishment, but it hasn’t threatened their entrenched position, any more than joining the EEC/EU did in the first place.

The challenge for those who seriously want to challenge the way the UK works – a group which most emphatically does not include Farage – is to recognise the ways in which they are likely to get sucked in and resist. The longevity of the Establishment shows how few have ever succeeded.

Could Farage be right about the people vs the establishment?

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Farage presumably thought that resigning and fighting a by-election in which he expected to vanquish all his foes was a wizard wheeze. But then the other parties decided not to play, leaving him to fight a campaign against Count Binface and potentially a few other fringe candidates. There’s something rather pleasing about the man who refuses to play by the rules laid down by others now complaining that the others aren’t playing by the rules he has attempted to set for them.

The pundits all seem to be expecting that he will win an easy electoral victory, albeit one that will prove nothing, and probably leave him facing the same jeopardy. I wonder, though. In the first place, turnout is likely to be low – without other parties campaigning at all, who will be working to get the vote out – and for what? Secondly, in a country where ‘the people’ chose to name a boat Boaty McBoatface rather than honouring official national treasure David Attenborough, is it really too much of a stretch to imagine a victory for Count Binny McBinface, especially if the latter opted for such a scotification of his name? Farage claimed that it would be a fight between ‘the people’ and ‘the establishment’, and maybe he’s right. It’s just that he doesn’t understand that in a fight between these two titans, he – a multimillionaire public school-educated city trader – is the establishment candidate, and McBinface the anti-establishment insurgent. Farage also said that it’s an opportunity for people to stick two fingers up to the establishment – is there anything more likely to have that effect than sending a bin-clad warrior to Westminster? If I lived in Clacton, I’d certainly be tempted – and on a low turnout…

For those of us who see Farage as a danger to community cohesion, bringing his political career to an end would surely be a cause for celebration. And could there be a better – or more humiliating – way of achieving that than seeing him turfed out by a man wearing a refuse bin on his head? Maybe the pundits will be right, but we can surely dream in the meantime.

What's so special about 2029? or 2030?

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There seems to be a quiet difference of opinion amongst those who want us all to prepare for war with Russia: will the apparently inevitable Russian attack come in 2029 or in 2030? Either way, the dates postulated by defence ‘experts’ are largely arbitrary, carefully selected to be close enough to provoke action, but far enough in the future for that action to be meaningful. The ‘action’ required, of course, is to divert resources from those things which benefit the population as a whole, such as education, health, and transport, into the development and acquisition of armaments. Two years from now, the difference of opinion over the assumed date of attack will be between 2031 and 2032. It doesn’t matter how much is spent, or what weaponry is ‘required’, the need to add to it, or replace it with even newer versions, will always be there in the minds of the warmongers, to say nothing of the arms manufacturers.

Why, precisely, Russia would want to attack isn’t debated as widely as it should be; after all, if the threat was genuine, we’d know why they might want to attack, wouldn’t we? I simply don’t buy the idea that world domination by force is the motivating factor. But there is just a big hole where that question should be, and a vague assumption that Russia simply wants to expand the territory which it controls. From what Putin has said, we know that he has some strange beliefs, based on his curious understanding of history. In his view, Ukraine is not a nation, and its people are just Russians with an odd dialect. He also seems to believe that countries previously ruled from Moscow are destined by fate to be so, and should be brought back into the fold. Whether those beliefs are the driver of his military ambitions, or just a story told to justify them is another question. Telling stories as justification isn’t a trait unique to Putin.

In reality, it is surely much more likely that he genuinely believed the other story that he has told, which is that NATO and ‘the West’ in general intended to surround and dismember Russia, and he was therefore acting pre-emptively in launching the invasion. The biggest reason for striking first is always likely to be a fear that the other side would otherwise do so, coupled with the belief that striking first confers advantage. All of that, combined with a misunderstanding of the extent to which Ukrainians, particularly in the east, wanted to be Russians, and an underestimation of the likely resistance might have made it all a huge miscalculation. But one doesn’t have to be a Putin supporter or apologist to wonder whether, from the perspective of the Kremlin, the threat might have looked very real. It’s a perspective which continued active preparation for war in three or four years’ time is more likely to reinforce than dispel.

The military build-up is always presented to us as ‘deterrent’; the idea is that being seen to have a greater capability to destroy and kill will ensure that the attack never comes. It could, though, simply provoke it. Whether carrying a big stick to ward off invaders actually works is impossible to know. The fact that the putative invaders don’t invade whilst we’re waving the stick doesn’t prove that it worked – they might never have wanted to invade in the first place. But finding bigger sticks every year might eventually convince those believed to be would-be invaders that they had better act before the stick is used against them anyway. Logically, what looks like a deterrent to one can always look like a threat to the other. Discussion and mutually-agreed de-escalation are always going to be the safer route. They also mean that resources can be used more beneficially - 'defence' is about more than territory, there are other aspects to building a secure future for the population.

Spotting the obvious isn't always easy

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One of Andy Burnham’s acolytes told us this week that people who are migrating to London from elsewhere in the UK are causing problems in London, and that Burnham’s policy of directing investment into all parts of the UK rather than concentrating it all in London would help to discourage such migration. It’s impossible to disagree with the proposition: if lack of opportunity in one area of the UK encourages migration to the wealthiest area, then the best ‘solution’ to the perceived ‘problem’ is to invest in creating opportunities elsewhere. I think we can reasonably assume that the relevant ‘elsewhere’ includes Wales and Scotland as well as the north of England, although that isn’t always clear when London-based politicians are talking. No doubt some conspiracy theorists will see the suggestion as being an example of the way governments are trying to restrict our movement, but the basic proposition – widening the geographic range of opportunity – is surely sound.

But, hold on a moment – there’s also a glaring inconsistency in that policy. When people from poorer parts of the world see the riches of the UK (and even the poorest parts of the UK will look rich to many) and seek to migrate to benefit from those riches, Labour and Tory alike tell us that the ‘solution’ is to cut the economic aid which might help to develop opportunities in their home countries, and divert the money to providing the migrants with temporary accommodation before deporting them. It’s strange how they find that which is blindingly obvious in one context so hard to discern in another.

Cutting benefits isn't as simple as they claim

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One of the metrics underpinning the argument of those seeking to reduce the costs of welfare benefits in the UK is that the number of people living in households which receive more in payments from the government than they pay in taxes has been increasing. The figures are available in this spreadsheet. There are, of course, a number of assumptions and estimates involved in any figures of this nature – how much any given household pays in VAT, for instance, is not a figure for which robust actuals exist, and can only be projected from such data as does exist. Accepting such inevitable limitations on the accuracy of the figures, the statistics show that the percentage of people living in such households has indeed risen from 37% in 1977 to around 53.3% in 2024. The simplistic conclusion that benefits are therefore too generous and should be reduced doesn’t follow, however.

Whether we should really count the state pension as a welfare benefit at all is a controversial question. Theoretically, it is (like an occupational pension) paid for by contributions from employers and employees based on salary. It is true that those contributions are not enough to pay for the pensions, and it’s also true that they are not put in a long-term fund in the same way as occupational pensions, but those are deliberate decisions taken by government – the beneficiaries can hardly be blamed for those. In any event, what the same statistics show is that over the same period, close to half a century, the proportion of pensioner households in that category of receiving more than they pay has barely moved at all. Whilst it has varied between about 84% and 94%, the net change over the whole period has been from 92.4% in 1977 to 90.1% in 2024. The two messages from that are, firstly, that the overall increase for all households referred to above is not down to pensions, and secondly, that despite the increasing prevalence of occupational pensions, pensioner households remain highly dependant on the state pension. What it is not, is an argument for reducing pensions.

It follows that the increase in the proportion of people in households which are net recipients relates to people below pensionable age. Some of those people will be employed, others will not be. The popular belief seems to be that the problem is that more people are choosing not to work but to live, instead, on benefits paid for by others. The data doesn’t support that interpretation either. In 1977, the proportion of the population of working age in gainful employment was around 71%. Since then, it has varied as the economy has been through boom and bust cycles, but it reached a high of 76.5% in the 2010s, and for the purposes of comparison with the benefits figures being discussed here, it stood at 74.8% in 2024. In global terms, that puts the UK above the OECD average. The obvious conclusion is that the growth in the benefits bill is not a result of more people choosing not to work – the popular myth is just that, a myth. Certainly, the UK could be higher up the table, but the extent to which government action aimed primarily at cutting the bill can achieve that is doubtful.

Where does that leave us? Well, part of the issue is clearly the payment of ‘in-work benefits’: topping up inadequate wages. A subsidy, in other words, to employers who are underpaying their staff. One really good way of reducing that part of the benefits bill would be for the employers concerned to pay decent wages in the first place. A company which cannot pay its staff decent wages is a company which is not economically viable. In more general terms, reducing the benefits bill doesn’t start with cutting the budget, it starts with understanding why benefits are being paid and reducing the need for them. It’s a far more complex task, which the financial axemen seem unwilling to address. Simple cuts will reduce living standards. The extent to which there is scope simply to reduce the level of benefits being paid to individuals therefore depends, ultimately, on a judgement about the living standards which we, as a community, want to set for benefit recipients. That’s a much more difficult conversation, and one which politicians seem keen to avoid.

Building for peace, not war

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The idea that ‘Russia’ has learnt nothing from its catastrophic losses invading Ukraine, and will shortly be poised to take on the even greater challenge of a direct attack on a part of the European Union seems to be gaining ground almost daily. The Conservative and Labour parties seem equally in thrall to the threat of the Russian menace and equally determined to divert resources from welfare to armaments to prepare to meet the threat. In the process, they and what increasingly seem to be their puppet-masters in the armed forces and the weapons industries seem to be making such a war more, rather than less, likely.

Yesterday, we had a report of a speech from the head of the UK Army, laying out his views of what is needed. Needless to say, the head of the army wants to build up the army, but it was the detail which struck me. “Only armies seize and hold ground”, according to the pre-release of his speech. It’s impossible to argue with that, but the question which needs to be answered is why, exactly, we would want to ‘seize ground’ in the first place. The questions posed by his statement were compounded by his argument that the UK needs to be able to ‘strike deep’ and ‘defend forward’, which seems to mean developing the ability to strike at the enemy’s resources deep inside their own territory before those resources can be used against us. To me, it sounds a lot like an argument that the best defence is attack – and from the Kremlin’s perspective, it will surely sound even more so. What reaction should we expect from a state which feels itself thus threatened, after having watched the UK (and other governments) portray it as an imminent threat to themselves? Do we expect them to just wait, and watch that capability being built for use against them?

For the military (and, apparently, most UK politicians), the natural instinct is to build ever stronger armed forces to deter an attack by the enemy, but surely the deeper issue is how to avoid an attack. Maybe 'deterrence' has a role in that, but the extent to which that is so in that is arguable: up until the point at which war starts, it is impossible to know whether the lack of war is down to deterrence or simply a lack of rationale for going to war. (For example, whether merging the French and German economies into a single economic jurisdiction prevented the two countries from going to war again (one of the original objectives of the EEC) or whether they would never have gone to war anyway is an academic question, to which there can never be a definitive answer.) What we do know is that one of the most likely reasons for going to war against any potential adversary is the belief that 'they' intend to attack ‘us’ and need to be stopped before they can build the capability to do so successfully. But why are so few able to understand that exactly the same consideration plays out on the ‘other’ side as well?

Where are the political leaders prepared to make the argument that if we want to build for peace we should avoid sending the message that we are building for war? Building for war has, instead, become the default position of the UK establishment. And those who build for war are likely to find themselves, sooner or later, fighting that war.

May was a near record month for UK saving

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The UK Government accepted a record level of deposits from savers during the month of May, the second highest total on record for the month of May. Savers (mostly pension and life insurance funds as well as some wealthy individuals) clearly recognised that saving with the UK government is one of the safest places for their money, because the UK government’s ability to create extra money as and when required means that they can never lose their capital. That’s one way of presenting the figures, but it’s not the way that most of the media chose to present the same information. Instead, the near-universal response (here’s one example) was to treat it as a disastrous increase in government borrowing.

The disparity serves to underline the simple and unavoidable fact that what looks like a debt to one party will always look like an asset to the other. It also underlines the way in which those who want to deliberately constrain or reduce UK government expenditure will choose to interpret the facts in the way which they believe boosts their perception – to say nothing of boosting their own financial interests. The willingness to deposit such large sums with the government suggests that the savers aren’t really against what they describe as ‘government borrowing’ at all – why would they be, when they’re the main beneficiaries? It’s more that they’re against the government spending money on services instead of cutting taxes. And – surprise, surprise – those who benefit most from interest payments on government ‘borrowing’ would also have the most to gain from tax cuts.

For the rest of us, the problem isn’t government borrowing per se, it’s the way in which paying for that borrowing ends up funnelling money into fewer and fewer hands, concentrating wealth rather than spreading it. Any meaningful attempt to decrease inequality must inevitably mean that we have to look at the way in which wealth and income are distributed within the economy. Understanding that one person’s debt is another person’s asset is one small step towards that.