Understanding the difference between an office and a museum

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Just as ‘retaining the pound’ has more of an emotional appeal than a rational one, the same is true of certain historical buildings. It emerged yesterday that some staff in Downing Street (with or without the knowledge of their then master, Keir Starmer) have been thinking about moving the office staff out of the Number 10 rabbit warren and into an open-plan office round the corner. The idea of abandoning three converted and merged dwelling houses comprising more than 100 separate rooms which have been used as the Prime Ministerial residence for almost 300 years seems to be something of a touchy subject, from the tone of the report.

The sensitivity is on a par with the dithering over the refurbishment of the Palace of Westminster, a project which will take a decaying building utterly unfit for purpose and turn it into a less-decaying building which is equally unfit for purpose, in this case for anything up to a mere £40 billion over 61 years. Some even seem to see it as a bargain. There is, of course, merit in preserving architectural heritage, and in celebrating the history of buildings (although there are elements of the history of both that some of us might prefer not to celebrate).

But preserving heritage does not have to mean forcing people to work in unsuitable accommodation, nor – in the case of the Prime Minister – to live in a flat which (s)he would probably never have chosen as a home were it not for the job. There is no particular reason why the PM has to live above the shop. Tradition and history have their place in society, and are part of what makes us what we are – but we don’t have to be their prisoners. It may be true that there are some decisions made in Downing Street where it might be advantageous for them to be hindered and hampered by poor working conditions, but that’s a cynical view; on the whole, I’d prefer to have a government staffed by people who have the facilities and accommodation they need to be effective and efficient.

So, an agenda to give traditionalist politicians a heart attack: turn Downing Street into a Museum, turn the Palace of Westminster into a tourist attraction, and build a new parliament somewhere else – maybe not even in London. One with enough seats for all the members would be a good start.

Preparing for the Euro

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It’s reasonably well-established that Brexit was, overall, negative for the UK economy. There are those who still argue otherwise. There are also some people who believe the Earth to be flat. In both cases, their faith is touching, but it doesn’t change the facts. Honest Brexiteers accept that there have been at least one or two economic negatives, but claim that the non-economic ‘benefits’, such as that magical thing called ‘sovereignty’ outweigh the negatives. It’s an arguable case, but unwinnable by other side because it depends on how much value we place on those non-economic benefits – a highly subjective consideration.

In purely economic terms, there is little doubt that the UK would have been better off without Brexit, and it’s equally clear that developing a closer relationship with our continental neighbours would also be a positive, which is why the PM is keen to have a more reasoned discussion about the options. Whether rejoining the EU is a realistic possibility, however attractive it might appear, is a much harder question to answer.

In theory, it should be easy enough to accomplish. After all, the UK has not strayed so far from EU rules as some of the Brexiteers might have wished, and it should be possible to undo those changes which have been rolled out in the six years since actually leaving in a similar timescale. What is a great deal less certain is whether the UK would be able to enjoy the same terms on rejoining as it enjoyed at the point of leaving. The bespoke budget rebate is one obvious example. Another is that new members must agree to ditch their own currency and join the Euro. In reality, committing to join the Euro at some unspecified future date isn’t quite the commitment as which some wish to paint it – as several of the existing members have demonstrated. That won’t stop the vague and effectively unenforceable (not to say currently unenforced) 'requirement' becoming a central element in any future anti-EU campaign.

I’ll admit to mixed feelings on the subject. As a tourist, being able to use the same currency over a wide area without the faff and bother of exchanging it at the border is attractive. For businesses buying and selling within the EU market, having a single currency is an advantage, and it also reduces the need for them to buy and sell currency as a side hustle. It does, though, mean a restriction on the ability of individual states to set some aspects of their own economic policy. A country which controls its own currency and whose debt is largely denominated in that currency has rather more freedom to set policy than one which does not. From a purely Welsh perspective, historically the decisions made (such as interest rates, for example) by the Eurozone would often have suited Welsh conditions better than those made in London (although that’s not necessarily the same thing as agreeing with those Eurozone decisions). On balance, I feel that UK membership of the Euro would probably be better for Wales than the continuation of sterling, although I’d accept that not all economists would agree with that.

The problem we face, though, is that if push does come to shove and we find ourselves in a debate around rejoining the EU and the possibility of eventual membership of the Euro, that debate is unlikely to revolve around economics. It’s much more likely to be an English nationalist debate about keeping the British Pound; more emotion than reason. As the Brexit referendum demonstrated, whilst those calling a referendum might be clear about the issue to be debated (although even that isn’t necessarily so), they will not end up setting the terms of the public debate which follows. Any proposal to rejoin needs to be preceded by a great deal of ‘pitch-rolling’ – including preparing people for the eventual adoption of the Euro – if it is not to be derailed by jingoism. And I see zero acknowledgement of that to date, either in Wales or in London.

Was it Bill or was it Ben?

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In an age where there are hundreds of television channels, coupled with the ability to watch most of the programs at a time of our choosing, most of those alive today have no memory of the time when there was only one channel, broadcasting for limited hours, with viewing restricted to the actual time of broadcast. Like others who were around at the time that ITV started in 1955, I can remember our tiny television being sent away to have a tuner fitted so that we could watch both channels – although I never really understood why it had 13 numbers on the dial, only two of which actually did anything.

Anyway, in those halcyon single channel days, pre-school children’s television consisted largely of a 15 minute slot (weekdays only) under the generic label ‘Watch with Mother’. (Fathers were assumed to be out at work.) One of the slots (Wednesdays, as I recall) was given over to the Flowerpot Men, two talking assemblages of flower pots called Bill and Ben, who were always up to mischief. The denouement always consisted of a little ditty about which of them had committed this week’s mischief – “Was it Bill or was it Ben?”.

What brought it back into the mind this week was the deliberate action of someone in turning off the Starlink system used by Ukraine as a key part of its defence against Russian drones and missiles. Reports say that Bill Trump denied all knowledge and said it must be Ben Musk, who in turn said that the order can only have come from the White House, so it must have been Bill. Subsequent reporting has suggested that Ben pitched the proposal to Bill who, at the least, didn’t demur. Ben then took the nod and wink as an instruction and ordered the slowdown. Both the co-conspirators have enough leeway to have a degree of plausible deniability of ultimate responsibility.

This isn’t, though, about a childish prank which the gardener might not like. This was a real world decision which led directly to real world deaths in a country under relentless attack from Bill’s current bestie, who is considerably more malignant than Slowcoach the tortoise. It’s a world in which neither Bill nor Ben have, or are able to develop, any sense of morality or empathy with the lesser mortals whose lives their decisions impact or even end. Sucking up to Bill, and allowing Ben to continue to acquire ever more wealth and power are not a basis on which to build anything. European states can, of course, do little about what happens in the US, and reducing our dependency on both the US and the services provided by Musk and others like him is a medium to long term project rather than a short term one. But recognising it as an essential project, rather than a short term holding operation until a hoped-for change in 2029, would be a good start.

Jackdaw is the wrong decision

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There is a certain superficial logic in the government’s argument in approving the exploitation of the Jackdaw field that, if we are going to burn natural gas, there is an advantage in burning domestically-produced gas rather than imported gas. Whether the quantity of gas being supplied is really enough to make a significant difference to the UK’s energy security is another question, however. It’s a relatively small proportion of the UK’s gas consumption, over a relatively short period. And we already know that, even if it marginally reduces the risk of supply disruption due to war or other factors outside our control, and despite the rhetoric coming from some quarters, it will not have any impact on energy prices for the consumer.

Whether it will really add £2.9 billion to the UK economy is another contentious statement – it really depends on what the resources being deployed or retained in the gas industry might have been used for otherwise. An equivalent investment in renewables or energy conservation would add more to GDP – and it would certainly add more jobs to the economy.

In environmental terms, some have tried to present it as being in some sense ‘neutral’. The UK will end up burning the same amount of gas overall, it’s just using gas from  a different source. That is, though, taking a narrowly UK-focused view. The bigger question, in terms of climate change, is whether exploiting this new gas field will replace gas which would have been produced elsewhere, or whether it will add to the world’s total gas production. In the former case, if that gas from elsewhere is no longer extracted, then the decision could indeed be neutral overall. The only safe way to reduce fossil fuel use is to leave some in the ground, and in global terms, it doesn’t matter a lot which is extracted and which is left below ground; it’s the total which is important.

But how likely is that? It is far more likely – a certainty, many would argue – that the decision taken today by the UK government will lead to more gas in total being extracted and burned. There is a sense in which the government is probably right to say that “the Jackdaw project will not prevent the UK from being able to meet its legally binding limits on carbon emissions and achieve net-zero by 2050”, but that depends on taking a very narrow view of the UK government’s responsibilities in relation to climate change. Taking a wider view, outside the UK the result of today’s decision is that there will be more gas available for others to burn. For those who believe that man-made fossil-fuel-driven global warming isn’t real, that isn’t a problem. But the UK government doesn’t put itself in that camp, and a global problem demands a global response, not just a localised one.

Today’s decision places the UK government in a position of directly undermining its own stated position. It isn’t the only government doing that, of course. And other governments are doing far worse things by actively seeking to ramp up the use of fossil fuels. That is no excuse, though. The government has today placed itself – and the UK – on the wrong side of the debate about the future of the planet.

Of handbags and asteroids

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The issue of how value is created and measured is far from being a simple one. For early economists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo, it was labour – the work done on raw materials – which created value. The Labour Theory of Value was used and built on by Karl Marx as a core element of his own political economic thought. It seems reasonable enough, and in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, most would probably have accepted it without a great deal of thought. But late stage capitalism raises issues which should cause us to rethink whether things are really that simple.

Take designer handbags as an example. Given two almost identical bags, one with a prestigious label on it and the other without, the price difference can be enormous. The bags perform the same function, are probably made of the same material, and even if a little more skilled labour has been expended on making one than the other, the difference is never going to account for the scale of the difference in price. Yet there are people prepared to pay tens of thousands of pounds for an item which is functionally and visibly indistinguishable from one costing a couple of hundred. Except for the label. It is clear that, for some things at least, price is determined more by scarcity and demand than by labour expended.

There was a report some years ago now of an asteroid orbiting between Mars and Jupiter which contained so much metal that it would be worth $10,000 quadrillion if those metals were here on Earth, or 70,000 times the entire world economy. The report suggests that, if the metal could be brought down to Earth, every human being on the planet could be $1.3 billion richer. Except we wouldn’t be, would we. Leaving aside the fact that most of the value would be captured by those already rich beyond the wildest dreams of most of us, the ‘value’ of the metals contained in the asteroid would plummet if that much extra metal were to become available. We couldn’t use it, no-one would buy it, and the value of the same metals already on Earth would drop to near-zero in consequence. $10,000 quadrillion would just disappear in a puff of rocket smoke.

In common parlance, we often use the words ‘price’ and ‘value’ as though they are interchangeable, but price is really just a way of assigning a financial number to the value of an item. And because we live in an economy dominated by the idea of financial wealth, there are a lot of things which are of value but to which we don’t really assign a price at all. We can, for instance, calculate the cost of providing (or choosing not to provide) healthcare for all, but we can’t easily assign a price to good health itself. Then we measure ‘success’ by adding up the ‘value’ of all those things to which we can assign a monetary number, and calculate the increase or decrease over time. And call it GDP or GVA.

There’s no divine law which says things have to be this way. The American Declaration of Independence talked about ‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’ as being its key drivers. A society based around those goals, which measured its success based on their achievement, would look rather different to what we have. That we don’t have that is another of those political choices which have been made for us by those who own and control the financial wealth. It doesn’t have to be this way. And handbags don’t need to cost tens of thousands.

A brief history of time?

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It was Harold Wilson who declared that a week is a long time in politics, but other units of political time have been invented in the subsequent years. A couple of years ago, there was the Truss, equivalent to 49 Earth days. The unkind amongst us might equate one Truss to half-a-lettuce, but that would be unfair, since the lettuce didn’t make its appearance until close to the end of the Truss. More recently, we had the Scaramucci, equivalent to 11 Earth days, and then last week, we had the Zacharia, equivalent to 5 Earth days. It demonstrates how changing the units of measurement can appear to change the perspective: Truss lasted for almost 4.5 Scaramuccis, or a whopping 9.8 Zacharias, both of which sound rather more impressive than a mere 1 Truss.

Inventing new units to measure the passage of time doesn’t change the objective reality – 49 days is still 49 days. However, as Einstein told us, time is also relative. 49 days would look like a very long time to the average lettuce if sentient enough to care, but for the brief occupant of Number 10, it was probably not even enough to change the curtains. The more important question is what was achieved by those who have time periods named after them – and what we have learned.

The Truss taught us that presenting a dogma-based budget bypassing the ‘independent’ scrutiny put in place by one of her predecessors, and without having a clue about the likely consequences, is a really bad idea. The problem is that she’s not the one who learned that lesson, and as for those who did, it simply turned them into even more zealous supporters of neoliberalism rather than encouraging them to challenge orthodoxy in a more constructive way. The Scaramucci taught us that, in the court of King Donald, being seen to be brighter than the king is a career-limiting move. At least, that’s the way he seems to put it in a show of modesty which is ‘interesting’, but even if true it wasn’t exactly a high bar to jump. And the Zacharia taught us that choosing someone because the king thinks she looks good on TV is not the best way to hire the most talented people. It’s not at all clear that the one who most needed to learn that lesson has actually learnt anything remotely like that.

The common thread is that all three were the wrong people for the job in which they found themselves. The good news is that all three were found out fairly rapidly. The bad news is that there are probably many more who simply haven’t been found out yet. Not having a period of time named after you might turn out not to be a glowing endorsement.

When rogue is a better word than erratic

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‘Erratic’ is an accurate but wholly inadequate word to describe the approach of the current US President to world affairs in general and the war in Ukraine in particular. He’s technically correct to say that Zelensky could easily end the war, although that does rather skip over the fact that the way of doing so would amount to complete surrender. To the extent that Trump has any sort of coherent view of the world, it is that ‘might is right’; the most powerful countries have the absolute right to dominate the rest. It was well put in an article in the Guardian this week about the EU by Rafael Behr, when he said: “It is as obvious to Trump that Moscow has a seigneurial right over Ukraine as it is that he should be allowed to decide who governs Venezuela and who sells its oil”. And while Trump’s ideology beyond that might be non-existent, revolving as it seems to around the goal of self-enrichment, the same doesn’t necessarily follow about some of those around him. As this report suggested, Trump’s Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, was this week extolling the virtues of ‘Western civilisation’ and effectively arguing that we should rediscover the values of exploration and conquest, and that the powerful have the right to exploit resources and conquer others.

Underpinning the alleged ‘special relationship’, and indeed the whole idea of a US-led alliance of ‘the West’ is the claim that we have a set of ‘shared values’, although it isn’t always clear to me whether the ‘values’ driving UK governments are those precious shared values or some other set of unique and special British values. Or what the difference is. Part of the reason for confusion is that whichever it is, those values are rarely spelled out in words, probably because if they were set out in black-and-white on a page, it would rapidly become obvious that they were not actually the driving force behind anything. A rhetorical appeal to a vague set of shared values turns out to be a great deal easier than defining what those values are. Who’d have thought it?

The bigger question is whether, and to what extent, continuing to pretend that the rest of the western world at some level shares the same values as Trump is helping or hindering world peace. Those who maintain the pretence – assuming that they’re intelligent enough to admit to themselves that it is a pretence – would probably argue that they need to do so in order to try and retain some degree of influence. They assume – or merely hope – that it will all be over in another 2 years or so, and we have to ride the storm in the meantime. Such motives would be honourable, even if misplaced. At what point, though, do we simply admit that the US has gone rogue, and that it is likely to continue to be rogue under Vance, Rubio or another Trump? And having admitted that it has gone rogue, what do we do about it? I don’t have answers to any of that, but I don’t see answers coming from anywhere else either. Worst of all, I don’t see any serious debate about how to develop a response, in the absence of which we are doomed to live in a world where might rules.

When to hold a referendum

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There have been suggestions recently that Labour under Andy Burnham could put a commitment to rejoining the EU in its next election manifesto and that, if they were to be elected, that would constitute an adequate mandate for the government to act without any need for a referendum. The Brexiteers are unsurprisingly less than happy at such a prospect, but legally and constitutionally, those making the suggestion are entirely correct: there are no circumstances under which the unwritten constitution of the UK requires a referendum to be held. Indeed, by way of precedent, there was no referendum held when the UK joined the EEC back in 1973. The ‘confirmatory’ referendum held in 1975 following a change of government was always more about politics (and internal Labour politics at that) than the law or the constitution. Actually, it doesn’t even follow that a manifesto commitment is required either (although as it happens the then-Tory government had included the commitment in its 1970 manifesto). Had it not been for de Gaulle’s veto, the UK might have joined when it first applied in 1961, and there was no commitment at all to such a course of action in the 1959 Tory manifesto – indeed, the emphasis had been on the alternative, EFTA.

Ultimately, it’s a question of politics, not law. Would it be wise for any UK government to take the UK back into the EU without holding a referendum first, especially if such a government were to have been elected on a minority share of the vote under the UK’s antiquated electoral system? Unless it could be clearly and unambiguously demonstrated that public opinion was overwhelmingly supportive of membership, the answer surely has to be a firm ‘no’, not least because a parliamentary majority one way could be reversed at the following election, turning the UK into a sort of hokey-cokey member of the EU.

Much the same arguments also apply to the question of Welsh or Scottish independence. No referendum is required, either in domestic law or in international law: all that is required is that the countries have effective governments which are actually are in control and that independence is recognised by the international community. As with EU membership, that’s not to argue that there should not be a referendum. It is merely a recognition that, whilst holding a referendum which produces the ‘right’ outcome might help in gaining that recognition, it is in itself neither an essential nor a sufficient condition. And, if Burnham finally climbs down off the fence in relation to Proportional Representation, we will also face a similar question again.

Whether holding a referendum which reduces complex issues to a simple yes or no is ever the best way of taking a decision is an open question, although there are certainly circumstances where it might be the least worst option. But leaving the decision as to whether one should be held or not to politicians sometimes seems to be an even worse option than electing them to take the substantive decision themselves – their decisions generally seem to be based on the arbitrary question of whether they think they will win or not. The simplest objective rule to employ would be that a referendum is required when, and only when, it is proposed to change the constitution. But as long as we don’t have a clear one of those, that doesn’t help. I don’t doubt that an independent Wales or Scotland would rapidly write a formal constitution – I have no idea what, if anything, would ever push England in the same direction.

What's in a name

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The English bard told us that “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”. Technically, he was correct – changing the name to something like ‘stinking lavatory flower’ would not change its smell one iota. It might, though, change our perception of the smell. Smell, after all, isn’t just the chemicals released by the flower; it is also the brain’s interpretation of those chemicals, and that can be shaped by language. (S)he who controls the words we use does exercise a degree of control over our perceptions as well.

Changing the names of things doesn’t always get taken to the excesses of Saparmurat Niyazov, the former leader of Turkmenistan. He abolished the Turkmen word for bread, replacing it with his mother’s name, and also renamed April after her as well as renaming January after himself, and various cities, airports and schools after members of his family. Trump hasn’t quite gone that far yet, although if he does get round to it, he’s fortunate to have a son called Eric, after whom he could name anything, even a fish such as halibut, in Pythonesque fashion.

Renaming the Gulf of Mexico, or Lake Ontario (or even an ocean or two) isn’t just about the words used; it is about projecting a certain image, or even (as in the case of Denali/Mount Mckinley) a particular view of history. What appears to be only a superficial change can, if maintained for long enough, imprint preconceptions on those who never knew anything different. Closer to home, that long term imprinting of ideas (a much wider question than names or language, of course) is part of what drives sentimental rose-tinted views of ‘the Empire’. It’s doubtful that Trump has given much thought to such considerations – like Niyazov, he just likes exercising his random power to do things and seeing his own name wherever he goes – and, in any event, deep thought and Trump aren’t words that normally fit in a single sentence.

Niyazov was clearly bonkers, but enjoyed a firm enough grip on power to silence any disagreements. Until he died, after which his successor quietly set about reinserting the word bread into the dictionary and reverting place names to their previous form. That’s another two parallels (being bonkers and his successor undoing his excesses) with Trump, I suspect. Provided, that is, that he actually leaves the White House in 2029 in accordance with the constitution, and that his successor is not also called Trump, neither of which are currently looking like entirely safe assumptions. If only the other damage he’s doing were as easily reversible.

If war 'breaks out'

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There was a suggestion last week that the UK should launch a 21^st Century version of the ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign which saw gardens and parks turned over to food production during the Second World War. Given the threats from climate change and extreme weather, increasing food production in the UK is not a bad suggestion – and there would almost certainly be some health benefits as well. That wasn’t the stimulus suggested by the proposers, who were more concerned about the apparently  impending war with Russia, but the mere fact that it was a reaction to the wrong stimulus shouldn’t lead us to reject the idea itself.

What caught my eye, though, was to do with the stimulus rather than the proposal – or rather the terms in which it was couched. As the headline states, it was seen as part of preparation to boost food supplies “… if a war with Russia breaks out”. It’s a turn of phrase which is increasingly being used, but my issue with it is the implicit denial of agency. Wars don’t just ‘break out’; they are started by deliberate decisions. Trump and Netanyahu started the war against Iran; Putin started the war in Ukraine. The decision might rarely be mutual, but there’s always a decision taken by someone, somewhere to fire the first shot. Denying agency, with its implication that a war is completely beyond our control, is all part of the softening up process to prepare opinion for the war which some people on both sides seem to be actively seeking. But here’s the thing: if all wars are ultimately started by human decisions, the humans who take those decisions could equally decide not to take them. All wars are preventable. And as humanity never seems quite able to learn, not starting one is easier than stopping one after it has started.

That Putin and some of the people around him harbour a dream about restoring the Russian Empire to its greatest extent is probably true. That means he has a somewhat romantic and idealised view of the past. But, unless we believe that he is also incredibly stupid, he will surely have learned something from the war in Ukraine about the limits of raw military power. That doesn’t mean that he won’t continue his efforts to weaken and disrupt what he sees as an anti-Russian alliance through cyber attacks, election interference, and maybe even sabotage, particularly targeted at disrupting support for Ukraine. It is not, however, something which more guns, tanks, planes and ships is going to be much of a defence against. If we assume instead that he is reasonably intelligent and able to calculate the risks, benefits and relative strengths before taking any course of action, then the two likeliest reasons for him to launch an attack are either a miscalculation of those risks, benefits, and relative strengths or (much more likely) a belief (misplaced or otherwise) that ‘the enemy’ is preparing to attack him and that his best defence is to strike first.

From ‘our’ perspective, a belief that ‘we’ are preparing to attack Russia looks like nonsense, but the more politicians, generals and others talk up the prospect of war, the more threatening it will look to the Kremlin. They tell us that the best way to prevent a war is to prepare for it. I’m not at all sure that history concurs with that.

How do we decide who to subsidise?

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There is not a tax-paying business in Wales (or in the wider UK come to that) which would not instantly look more profitable if it didn’t have to pay tax (with the caveat that abolishing tax on that business or that class of business is the only change). However, it does not follow from that assertion that tax is the 'problem', holding business back by making them unprofitable. Yet that often looks like the conclusion that politicians draw, when they demand that taxes be reduced on one or other type of business. The latest example a few days ago was from a Plaid MP in relation to beauty salons; but there are plenty of other examples of MPs in other parties demanding similar concessions for other businesses. But the bottom line is that, in simple terms, a business which cannot sell enough of its goods and services at a high enough price to cover all its costs (including tax) and make a profit does not have a viable business model in a capitalist economy.

The bigger problem, though, is that cutting a tax here or there to make a business viable is a micro-economic approach to a macro-economic question. Even supposing that it were possible to isolate a single tax change, a tax cut in one area might increase the spending power of individuals or businesses in that area, but for those who believe that any changes must be ‘fully-funded’ based on the household analogy (a category which seems to include most politicians in most parties), there needs to be a corresponding tax increase in another area. Overall spending power in the economy then remains unchanged – it’s just that spending power has moved from one group to another.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Using taxation policy to encourage some types of economic activity and discourage others is an entirely valid, not to say sensible, approach. Governments trying to determine which businesses should succeed and which should fail at a company level isn’t exactly a policy with a good track record, but identifying that deploying resources into certain types of activity serves the economy and society better than deploying them into others is a worthy aim. And if the limiting factor on growth is, in fact, not a lack of money but a scarcity of real resources, encouraging particular uses of those resources is essential to any policy aimed at achieving higher value growth with better-paid jobs.

Without disparaging in any way the training, skill and professionalism of those working in any particular sector or business, and with no particularly strong view on whether beauty salons per se (or whatever particular type of business for which an MP advocates) do or do not justify special treatment, when I see a call for special treatment – by any MP, for any business – the question I ask myself is whether or not that is the type of economic growth that we want for the Welsh economy, or whether the same resources could more usefully be employed in other activities. Building a strong Welsh economy might just require a certain hard-headedness and, if we’re going to call for subsidies (and that's what selective tax cuts are), maybe we should start by identifying what activities we most want to see increasing, rather than simply responding to those which say they are struggling.

National identity cannot be imposed

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Once upon a time, the statement ‘all swans are white’ would have been regarded in these islands as an inalienable truth – being white was part of the definition of the species. Then some black ones were discovered in Australia. At that point, there were only two possibilities – either the new birds weren’t swans, or else the definition of a ‘swan’ was wrong. Sensibly, humanity settled on the second option. With hindsight it was obvious – but changing a definition in the face of a deep-held belief isn’t always as straightforward as that.

A week or so ago, Tory/Reform politician Suella Braverman declared that she isn’t and cannot be English. She got a lot of criticism in response, but based on her own definition of Englishness, it’s impossible to argue with her. It’s her definition that is dubious, not the conclusion which she draws from it, and her position underlines the difficulty people sometimes have in changing a definition which is deeply-believed. She has struggled – or more accurately, refused – to set out more precisely what her definition actually is, but it seems to be that she regards Englishness as an ethnicity into which one has to be born, whereas Britishness is a ‘mere’ nationality, a matter of legality rather than identity.

Her definition is problematic, and not just for those of a darker hue. Whilst it might be more ‘obvious’ that some people have non-English ethnicity somewhere in their family history, it has a wider effect than that. On her definition, someone born to a Welsh mother and an English father (such as myself, to select a random example) can never be either English or Welsh: they can only be British. Under that definition, I am left wondering just how many people she would really consider to be English (or Welsh, or Scottish) at all, no matter how much their outward appearance might match the ‘norm’ suggested by that definition.

How she defines herself is a matter for her, and I really don’t care. The problem arises not with how someone defines him or herself, but when they try to apply that definition to others. It’s a problem which I’ve encountered many times in ‘nationalist’ circles, and is part of the reason that I prefer the term ‘independentista’. There are those who insist that British is not a nationality at all, or that, if it is, one cannot be both British and Welsh at the same time, and must choose between them. But an objective definition is hard to find. History, language, culture, birthplace, ancestry might all be elements, but ultimately, national identity is a highly subjective concept. It’s possible for someone to identify as Welsh and wish to maintain the United Kingdom, and it’s possible (albeit less likely) for someone to identify as British and wish for Welsh independence.

There is little point in arguing with Braverman over her own self-identity – it’s not a winnable argument in any event. There is every reason to reject – and forcibly – any attempt to impose an identity on others. And I have little doubt that raising it in the way she did was an attempt to do precisely that.

Striking a chord

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The big policy announcement in Badenoch’s speech to the residual faithful yesterday concerned changes to Inheritance Tax (IHT), as a result of which half of those currently paying would end up paying nothing, and the other half would end up paying significantly less. Since only around 4-5% of estates attract the tax currently, it amounts to a tax cut for the very wealthiest in society. It went down well at the Tory conference – whether that’s because they think it objectively a brilliant idea or because their chief donors - and maybe even many of those faithful themselves - are among the main beneficiaries is an unanswered question.

IHT is often described as the most unpopular tax according to surveys. Google’s AI search tells me that “multiple regular surveys by organizations like Hargreaves Lansdown, Opinium, and the TaxPayers' Alliance place IHT as the most hated or unfair tax, with around 24% to 46% of respondents ranking it worst ahead of income or council tax”. My suspicious mind wonders about the methodology and participant selection being used by organisations which start from a predisposition against the tax, but YouGov surveys have also consistently shown a predisposition amongst UK electors for the abolition of the tax, so let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. The question to which I’ve not seen a satisfactory answer is why so many are so opposed to a tax which affects so few, when so many recent surveys seem to show popular support for wealth taxes. It seems that many people whose estates will never come anywhere near the threshold still, somehow, believe that they will have to pay the tax.

It may be, of course, that the industry which has sprung up around methods of avoiding IHT is disguising the true scale of the number of estates which ought to be subject to the tax if those owning large estates had not taken action to avoid it. That doesn’t quite work for me, though: in the first place, the idea that more like a quarter to a half of all estates should really be paying the tax doesn’t pass the ‘feel right’ test for all mathematically-derived answers, and in the second, I’d expect a tax which was so easy to avoid on such a large scale to be more, rather than less, popular than other taxes.

Maybe it’s the power of repeated propaganda. The media moguls who own the increasingly concentrated media are certainly amongst those expecting to pay the tax, and at least some editors and experts in the field might be similarly liable. It would certainly be no surprise if their coverage might not be entirely objective and balanced.

The extent of the disparity still puzzles me though. Widespread support for a policy which deliberately shifts taxes from the few to the many (which is the unspoken implication of cutting IHT) is a strange phenomenon, but one on which she might just have struck a dishonest chord.

Who creates wealth - and who benefits?

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There’s something very American in the idea that a politician seeking high office should publish a book setting out his or her core beliefs. And in the case of Kemi Badenoch’s effort, the content appears to be quite American too. Her call for the deployment of ‘common sense’ as a core principle is superficially reasonable; the problem is that, in the real world, much of what passes for common sense, particularly amongst politicians, is either untrue or else based on unstated preconceptions and ideology.

Take, for example, her statement – absolutely central to her proposed economic strategy – that “business, not government, creates growth”. It sounds obvious, it is widely believed – and it’s total claptrap. At its simplest, economic growth is just a way of describing an increase in economic activity, or GDP. There are three common but different ways of measuring GDP – they all produce (or should, within the bounds of the assumptions and estimates used) the same answer. One starts by measuring output, another by measuring expenditure and the third by measuring income. All three are ‘blind’ to the question of whether that output, expenditure, or income are in the public or the private sector. And it takes only a moment’s thought to understand why that should be. If only the private sector added to GDP, then the act of nationalising a train company or a water company, for instance, would mean that suddenly all that economic activity vanished from GDP calculations – and vice versa, the act of privatising a company would instantly add to GDP. It’s obviously nonsense. Since all spending by one person or organisation ends up as being income to another person or organisation, it follows that on both those measures, every penny spent by government adds to GDP – and an increase in government spending adds to growth. Badenoch’s core tenet is simply wrong: complete and utter tosh.

There is an argument, of course, as to whether government spending is the best or most efficient way to increase GDP. The UK’s history of publicly-owned enterprises isn’t an entirely positive one, to say the least, although whether that’s an inevitable concomitant of public ownership is a question too complicated to be examined in a few words. That isn’t the argument she’s making, though.

She’s not alone in her belief. As suggested above, there’s a fairly widespread belief that somehow the private sector creates wealth and the public sector consumes it. I’ve long wondered whether, or to what extent, that belief is based on confusing two different meanings of he word ‘wealth’. But the private accumulation of wealth and the creation of new wealth in the economy are not at all the same thing; the first might be measured by looking at the bank balances and assets held by individuals, the second is measured by GDP. It is perfectly true that the private sector does more to achieve the first of those, but it’s also true that wealth can be accumulated by some with no overall increase in the total GDP. That goes to the heart of the current economic malaise felt by the many – wealth has been concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. It’s also true that an increase in GDP – the measure by which many politicians, including those in the Welsh Government want to have their success measured – doesn’t always make the many any better off.

The measure on which we should be assessing the economic success of a government is neither the increase in private wealth, nor the aggregate increase in national wealth (GDP), it is the extent to which the wealth generated by economic activity adds to the economic well-being of the population as a whole. Dogmatic assertions about how wealth is created aren’t the right starting place.

Recognising a mandate

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The central flaw at the heart of the whole concept of ‘devolution’ under the English constitution is that power devolved is power retained. All the powers devolved to the Senedd or the Scottish parliament can be withdrawn at any time should the English parliament so decide. Legislating to give the Sewel convention (the idea that the English parliament will not legislate on devolved matters) the force of law proved to be a complete farce. And in a parliamentary system which starts from the assumption that all power resides in the Crown to whom it was given by God, it could never be otherwise, despite the attempts of politicians to claim otherwise using whatever form of weasel words comes to mind at the time.

For all his talk of empowering mayors, Labour under Burnham remains as wedded to that centralism as it always has been. He has talked about devolving a share of income tax to mayors, leaving them free to take spending decisions in accordance with what they see as the priorities for their areas. It sounds reasonable, but it seems that much of the debate between announcement and implementation is going to be about how those mayors can be constrained from doing anything with which Westminster might disagree.

The justification for this approach sounds superficially reasonable: “It would be reckless to hand out new powers without ensuring there are transparent mechanisms to hold mayors to account for their decisions”. What’s noticeable, though, is that all the mechanisms being touted to improve scrutiny and accountability involve Ministers in the English Government, and parliamentary committees. Increasing their answerability to central government isn’t really devolving powers to local politicians at all.

It is, perhaps, easier to understand in the context of national parliaments, like those in Wales and Scotland, than it is when discussing regions in England, but the underlying issue is the same. In a centralised unitary state like the UK, there is not, and never has been, any real recognition of the fact that elected officers and bodies outside the Westminster parliament have their own democratic mandate. Such recognition not only includes the right to do different things, or to do things differently, but also the right to be judged, first and foremost, by those who gave them that mandate: the people who elected them.

More than a slip of the tongue

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Perhaps he misspoke, or maybe it was just a slip of the tongue, but when the Secretary of State for Wales said this week that “Devolution has to do what it says on the tin, which is, it’s up to the Welsh Government to deliver the policy”, I tend to suspect that it was an honest expression of his view about devolution. Insofar as devolution was ever in any sort of tin, delivering policy made by our masters in London is not the label it would have been given, and it isn’t what most of us understood devolution to be. It probably is, though, an expression of what anti-devolutionists wish that it was – a localised way of delivering, rather than making, policy.

In the context, setting up a National Care Service isn’t exactly the hill one might choose to die on; declining to improve care services in Wales might be legally within the purview of the Senedd, but deliberately setting standards lower than those in England would not be a wise choice for a serious Welsh Government. What Kinnock could (and should) have said is that the setting up of an English National Care Service would lead to a Barnett consequential which he hoped would lead the Welsh Government to set up a Welsh National Care Service, the details of which might be different if the Welsh Government saw Welsh needs as being different. It’s impossible to read into his words that he intended anything remotely like that.

It’s a strange thing to pick a potential fight over from his point of view as well – after all, it was his party, when in government at the Senedd, which ensured that the Welsh approach to care was more generous than that adopted in England. Maybe he’s afraid that the Welsh Government might embarrass the English government again: being more generous than a Tory government in London might be OK, but doing the same thing to a Labour government is another kettle of fish entirely.

We don’t know the details of the proposed new service in England as yet, and it looks as though we might not get those details until the next election campaign starts. There’s been enough said already, however, for me to believe that the issue is being seen primarily as a financial one – how much care is to be funded and how the money will be found – rather than looking at the resources and structures required. And that makes it more about protecting the inheritance of the English middle classes than about meeting care needs.

Whilst we shouldn’t set out to be different for the sake of being different, Wales has demonstrated the advantage of being able to do things differently to a degree, even within the limited funding allowed to it by Westminster. It would be a significant setback if the ability to do that were to be undermined by an obsession with standardisation around whatever England decides to do. Yet that is the impression created by the minister’s words.

Abolishing the triple lock avoids the issue of setting the level for pensions

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The pensions triple lock was originally introduced (by a Tory-led government) in 2010 to repair some of the damage done (by another Tory government led by Thatcher) in 1979. Prior to 1979, state pension increases were linked to wage increases, meaning that the basic pension more or less kept pace with increases in earnings. Pensioners’ financial position didn’t improve particularly, but then neither did it worsen. At that point (as this article highlights), pensions were equivalent to around 26% of average earnings. By the time the triple lock was introduced, the state pension had fallen to around 16% of average earnings. Amazingly, Thatcher’s deliberate assault on pensioner living standards didn’t stop pensioners from voting, in large numbers, for her party.

If the moral case for restoring some sort of link was clear to Cameron, it was over-ridden by financial considerations, and rather than immediately addressing the disparity, he put in place a gradual process which would eventually restore the value of pensions. It has worked, to the extent that the basic state pension today is worth more like 30%. In simplistic terms, it looks like job done. There are caveats, though. The pensions system has changed; whilst that 30% ratio might hold for those who reached state pension age after April 2016, those who reached retirement age prior to that date have been left behind on a lower pension which will permanently lag behind the new rate. Only some unfairnesses are worthy of action, apparently. There are also a number of assumptions and calculations in the figures for average earnings, which complicate the situation.

Let us assume, though, that the figure of 30% is broadly correct. Under Burnhams two-and-a-half times lock, that relationship will be maintained by adding an additional (so far unexplained) mechanism to be applied in the event that wages growth powers ahead of both price increases and the 2.5% uplift. Without saying so much in transparent terms, it is clear that Burnham has decided that the ‘right’ level at which to set the state pension is 30% of average earnings. He has produced no explanation as to how he’s reached that figure; he simply expects us all to be happy with a number which exceeds that which applied before Thatcher’s attack on pensioners. It’s easy enough to see why he’d want to avoid a debate on that – much more straightforward to justify having exceeded the pre-Thatcher level than to justify setting a pension level which remains significantly below the annual government-set minimum living wage for a full-time employee.

There is a sense in which it can legitimately be argued that the triple lock has done its intended job (for those on the new state pension at least). What is still lacking, though, is any meaningful debate about the ‘right’ way of setting pension levels. It’s an issue which Burnham, like all his predecessors, seems determined to avoid.

Why wait for electoral reform?

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It might have been a low bar to jump, but Burnham demonstrated yesterday that he can craft and deliver a better speech than his predecessor. And it seems to have cheered up the members of his party, so his immediate mission has been accomplished. How much it means for the rest of us, however, is rather less clear. All his biggest promises are slated for delivery after the next election, and are thus predicated on the assumption that Labour will win that election. It might, of course, happen before the scheduled date in 2029, but if we assume that Burnham is sincere in saying that there will not be an early election, then the programme for government for the next three years, based on his speech yesterday, looks a little thin, to say the least.

Both before and after that election, he seems to have committed himself (again) to sticking to the so-called ‘fiscal rules’ – a wholly arbitrary device which outsources government financial policy to the money men in the City of London, whose main objective is to protect and grow the wealth of the few. It keeps debate exactly where the neoliberals want it to be – arguing about false choices around tax and spending rather than about meeting people’s needs by putting available resources within the economy to good use. It's not a good start.

The dependency on winning another election before beginning to implement the ambitious programme he set out is another wholly artificial constraint. There is no requirement under the English constitution for a party to have mentioned something in its manifesto before doing it (which seems to be the basis for prevarication). If there were, no government would ever be able to react to unforeseen events or changes in the political or economic situation, and no government would ever be able to do anything which was not specifically mentioned in its manifesto. (As an aside, it would also make coalition governments, or minority governments depending on ‘arrangements’ with another party problematic, because literally nobody would have voted for that precise programme.)

Specifically, in relation to yesterday’s speech, there is nothing which prevents the introduction of proportional representation before, rather than after, the next election. Labour has a massive majority in parliament, the Lib Dems, SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Greens all support such a change. Even Reform Ltd have made supportive noises in the past (although whether some of the polls showing the possibility of an overall majority under First-Past-The-Post might cause them to waver is an unanswered question). The only committed opponents are the Tories – and they have only 20% of the seats in the House of Commons. It should take months, rather than years, to get a consensus amongst the other parties, even if Reform Ltd do fall by the wayside on the issue – and such a consensus should sail through parliament. There is time to do this now, and have the next parliament elected on a proportional basis, rather than run the risk – albeit apparently receding – of a Farage-led government in 2029, an eventuality which would kill off most of Burnham's other proposed reforms.

Given that no recent polls show Labour even near an absolute majority on its own, much of what Burnham laid out yesterday would probably be easier to implement under a proportionally-elected parliament which normalised agreement and coalition. So why wait?

Social care - the problem isn't money

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Yesterday, Andy Burnham laid out his ambition for a National Care Service which would provide care free at the point of use to all who need it. His proposal related only to England, but the underlying problem which it seeks to address is a problem in Wales as well, and we face the same issues, probably more so with an even more ageing population than England. There’s a little bit of the ‘jam tomorrow’ about the promise, given that it seems to be little more at this stage than a pledge to put the issue in Labour’s manifesto for the next English / UK General Election. And until we see the detail, it’s hard to be certain whether the ‘problem’ he’s seeking to address is really about care at all – for some, it seems to be more about protecting middle class inheritances.

The political and media response has largely centred on the question of ‘how will you pay for it’ (and the consequent suggestion of tax rises), as though the problem is first and foremost a financial one. It’s completely the wrong question to be asking. The much bigger and more important question is whether the resources are available, or can be made available. Let’s just consider one type of resource – labour. There’s already a shortage of carers, meaning that they are providing what is generally understood to be an inadequate level of care today. And, in typical left-hand-right-hand manner, government obsessions with migration numbers are constraining one of the key ways of increasing the supply. It’s not enough to simply look at the number of vacancies (now and under a better system) and the number of people unemployed and match the two numbers; there are also issues around geographical location, skill sets and attitudes. Maybe attitudes aren’t important to economists looking only at numbers, but to those whose relatives are receiving care, having people committed to providing a client-centred service in a friendly and empathetic way rather than simply going through the motions does actually matter. A lot.

Increasing the wages and status of the job might help to attract more of the ‘right’ people, but that’s about method rather than objective. Whether we use that mechanism or another, the objective of getting more people into a professional career as carers implies a willingness to divert a potentially scarce resource – suitable employees – from other economic activity into providing care. And it is that question, of determining how resources should be deployed in the economy, which is the central one, rather than how it is to be paid for.

It’s a question which isn’t unique to the issue of social care. What sort of economy we want and whose interests it serves are key questions – another example is this story today about campaigners calling for investment in socially useful activity rather than armaments factories. Treating the provision of social care as simply a matter of finance is missing the point, to say nothing of missing an opportunity to push back against the prevailing view that everything revolves around money. Without addressing that issue, tomorrow’s jam might turn out to be rather less palatable once the jar is opened.

Understanding compounding

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There is, apparently, no hard evidence that Albert Einstein ever described compound interest as the eighth wonder of the world, although the quote is widely attributed to him. Whoever did or did not say it, there is an underlying truth about the power of compounding. It is not well understood however. And pensions is a case in point. The pensions triple lock is an example of compounding in action – at least, in the years where both wage and price inflation are below 2.5%. In those years, the third element of the formula – the increase by 2.5% – increases the spending power of the state pension (albeit by a small amount) compared to inflation, but because that increase is a permanent increment to the pension, it is part of the sum on which the following year’s uplift is calculated. Over time, it will serve to increase the spending power of pensioners – which was, of course, the original intention, following the years of decline in pensioner spending power after Thatcher broke the earnings link.

What it means, though, is that those who benefit most from a long term implementation of the triple lock aren’t today’s pensioners, nor those close to retirement age, but those furthest away from retirement age, giving the power of compounding time to work its marvels. It’s strange how poorly understood this is.

This report from Saturday, tells us two things about Generation Z and millennials. Not only are they worried that their state pension will be worth less when they eventually retire than it is today – they are also the group most keen on abolishing the triple lock. On the other hand, those keenest on retaining the triple lock – existing pensioners and those about to retire – are the groups who stand to gain least from it. It's an inversion of the reality.

It highlights a lack of understanding of the basic mathematics of compounding, certainly. But it also highlights two other things. The first of those is an essentially short-term outlook on finances. And the second is the power of relentless propaganda telling us that a slow increase in pensioner spending power over the long term is somehow unfair to those who are working and paying taxes today, ignoring the fact that they will be the beneficiaries. As ever, the questions we should be asking are firstly, what is the ‘right’ level at which to set the state pension, and secondly, who benefits from the abolition of the triple lock. The first is a difficult question; it’s easy to see why politicians and governments try to avoid answering it, because the answer is almost certainly going to be ‘significantly higher than today’s level’. As for the second, well, as long as politicians and governments continue to promote the household analogy for government finances, those who benefit from reduced government spending (and a consequent reduction in taxation) will always be those who hold the most wealth and the highest incomes. What a surprise.

Why do we have to be the greatest or best?

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The distressed band of Reform Ltd members of the Senedd seem almost to have been competing with each other to sing the praises of the British Empire during the debate on whether the constitutional future of Wales should be a matter for the people of Wales or not. It goes without saying that their answer was ‘or not’.

There are a number of fallacies and false assumptions in the line of argument for those who claim that the Empire ‘gave’ people parliamentary democracy, common law and the industrial age. The first is that it assumes that these outcomes are axiomatically better than anything that the conquered peoples already had or might have developed for themselves, the second is that it overlooks what was taken away in the process (such as native cultures, languages, traditions), and the third is that it judges the impact only by outcomes, not methods, rather forgetting that what was achieved was the result of invasion, massacre, oppression, and large scale theft of wealth and resources. But then, taking a more holistic view of history isn’t what Anglo-British nationalists do. There’s no point arguing any of that with them; once someone has decided that his or her nation is “the greatest nation in the history of the world”, there’s not a lot of scope for debate.

What interests me more if the ‘why?’. What is it that compels some people to want to believe that their nation is the greatest ever, rather than accepting that history is messy, and that past rulers might done some bad things along with the good ones? What’s wrong with just being normal, average, or run-of-the-mill, good at some things, bad at others? And the even bigger question, in the context of the debate in the Senedd, is why past greatness (even if it were true) somehow means that what exists today can never be changed in the future. It’s a complete non-sequitur, yet absolutely central to the world-view of these nationalists, and utterly impervious to logic.

What we know from history is that ‘nation’ is something of a fluid concept – as must inevitably be the case for something which is essentially subjective in nature – and that geographical boundaries of nations have rarely been fixed for long. Just about the only constant is change; sometimes by military means, other times by democratic choice. The British Empire was built by conquest, and then torn down by new or historic nations gaining their independence, whether through conflict or negotiation. The boundaries of the new emerging countries were set largely on the basis of imperial administrative boundaries rather than what might be called ‘nations’ – as a result, the legacy of conquest has often been further conflict and wars – a legacy which has to be weighed up alongside any ‘good’ left by the period of empire.

It’s not unreasonable for some to argue that Wales should not seek independence, and even to believe that Wales’ best interests are served within the UK. I disagree with them, but it is at least possible to debate the question. Arguing that Wales cannot even be allowed to debate the issue, based on some notion that the UK is an eternally indissoluble whole and better than any other country that exists or ever has existed is simply dogma based on a lopsided and incomplete view of history. Yet that’s where around 40% of the members of the Senedd seem to be.

Guns or butter?

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The idea of setting an ‘ethical framework’ for investment in and support of ‘defence’ industries sounds very noble. The devil, of course, is in the detail, and we’ll have to wait and see what the Welsh Government actually comes up with. The language being used to date doesn’t fill me with optimism; even if the words come from the mouth of a minister, they sound more like the sort of civil-service-ese which ends up justifying just about anything. For example, the meaning of “It’s important that we recognise legitimate ethical concerns while supporting a focus on high-quality jobs that the sector sustains in communities across all parts of Wales” isn’t exactly definitive. I suppose it will eventually come down to what is or is not considered ‘ethical’; but it’s hardly a standard which can be defined in entirely objective terms.

Opposition politicians have been raising questions as to whether introducing ethical considerations might lead to a loss of jobs, with the implicit suggestion that maintaining and increasing employment is more important to them than any ethical considerations. Maybe this is simply circling back to the essential subjectivity of any definition of ‘ethical’, but I cannot think of any framework which I would consider to be ethical which would not have, as a central aim, a reduction in the total production of armaments; and fewer armaments necessarily means fewer jobs producing them. However, the scope for Wales to pick and choose which armaments it will or will not produce is probably limited in any event.

Governing is hard, and it involves choices. Moving the Welsh economy away from any dependence on armaments to an emphasis on building for peace and prosperity would be a huge achievement. From their statements, it is clear that the opposition parties (including Labour) are saying that jobs trump ethics, even if some are using slightly more nuanced language. The challenge for a Welsh government which comes from a tradition of opposition to war and militarism is to come up with a framework which actually changes anything, rather than being a fine-sounding jumble of meaningless words. Because if it doesn’t change what is done in the armaments industry in Wales (and that implies an acceptance of the resultant possibility of losing existing jobs – or simply failing to attract new ones), what exactly would be the point?

Coincidence, not quid pro quo

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It remains to be seen whether the large donations given to Reform Ltd by two economic migrants a week or so ago will still be legal when legislation going through parliament is actually enacted. Although the government was very clear in advance that the legislation would be backdated to the date it was announced, the level of detail needed to know whether a particular donation would or would not be legal was not provided. We do know that Farage and his team have said that the economic migrants concerned have asked for, and will get, nothing in return. Their donations might help to elect a government sympathetic to their modus operandi, but that will just be a fortunate (for them) coincidence.

One of the things that the money will be used for, according to the company, is the development of policy. Whilst the donations won’t determine the nature of the policies developed, it is not entirely unreasonable to suppose that the donors are unlikely to want to fund the development of policies which might impact them financially in a negative way. Again, that will just be coincidence, not cause-and-effect.

We’ve had a taster of the sort of policies which might emerge in this report today. We don’t know who has funded the work – ‘think-tanks’ are notoriously shy when it comes to financial transparency concerning their own activities. The organisation is described, though, as being “linked to Reform”, a formula (not unique to Reform Ltd; most parties seem to use similar mechanisms) which frequently allows policies to be floated with a degree of credible deniability should that be felt necessary.

Amongst the policy proposals are the abolition of capital gains tax and inheritance tax, along with a number of pension schemes enjoyed by public servants, including teachers. Oh, and the abolition of the state pension, which would be reduced to a means-tested benefit available only to the very poorest of pensioners. It doesn’t take a lot of thought to work out who might be the beneficiaries of such a policy. Those who see paying pensions as “unaffordable” seem to see reducing taxes on the wealthiest as entirely affordable. I can’t imagine a couple of billionaire economic migrants being exactly displeased if their donations were to lead to such policies. It would, of course, be another of those amazing coincidences rather than any form of quid pro quo.

Who loses when people don't vote?

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The hoary old chestnut of compulsory voting raised its head again this week, with Labour peer Lord Kinnock publicly backing the move. He’s not alone; a number of academics are also writing to the PM supporting the proposal, arguing that “Inequalities in turnout mean those who do vote do not reflect the wider population, but are richer, older, whiter, and more economically secure than the UK public at large”. They’re not wrong about that, but I’m not at all convinced by the implicit suggestion that forcing poorer, younger, more diverse and less economically secure people to cast a vote will produce the more left-wing skewed result that they seem to assume. At least some of those categories are fertile recruiting territory for the racist right.

In any event, is the assumed impact on the overall result the ‘right’ criterion for deciding whether to follow that route or not? It’s always seemed to me that the only safe assumption which can be made about the feelings of people who decide not to vote is that they are content for the government to be chosen by those who do vote. Sort of a mass proxy vote without naming the proxy or instructing him or her how to vote. The reasons for that attitude might vary – they might genuinely not care, or not believe that it will make any difference, or simply be too consumed by day-to-day pressures to take the time out to think about voting, let alone actually doing so. Looking at the record of UK governments, and the way in which the first-past-the-post voting system has traditionally created large numbers of ‘safe’ constituencies (although they may be breaking down now), it’s hard to argue with many of those who say that their vote won’t make any difference. I know – I’ve tried it often enough. It is surely for the politicians to demonstrate, by actions as well as words, that there is a genuine difference between them, and persuade people of the merits of that difference, rather than simply obligate them to go to a polling booth and complete a ballot paper. I certainly believe that people should engage with the process and that they should go out and vote, and it’s something that I encouraged throughout my time as an active political campaigner. And like most candidates, I would have been grateful to have been spared the effort of going round knocking doors of supporters on election day to remind them to go out and vote. But should they really be compelled to do so, and fined for not doing so?

My real objection to compulsory voting is based on the nature of the relationship between the people and the state. Does the state serve the people, or do the people serve the state? Forcing people to do something they don’t want to do looks more like the latter than the former. Now, of course, living together in a society means that we have to have rules, those rules are made by the people we elect to parliament as our representatives, and choosing those representatives is a serious matter. Freedom to choose which side of the road we drive is no freedom at all and freedom to kill infringes the right of others to live; restrictions on freedom are a key part of a civilised society, especially when those restrictions protect the freedoms of others. But whose rights and freedoms, exactly, are threatened by those who choose not to vote? It’s not only not obvious to me that the result would change, it’s also not obvious that anyone loses anything as a result of a non-vote. If the only losers are lazy and uninspiring politicians, which is what I suspect, there is no justification for compulsion.