Laser-focused complacency might not help

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In Blazing Saddles, Cleavon Little’s Sheriff holds a gun to his own head and gets out of a sticky situation by telling the townsfolk that “The next man makes a move, the n***** gets it”. In the real world, Trump’s approach to Iran seems to involve telling them that he’s going to bomb them for another two to three weeks, and if they then agree to his terms, he’ll walk away and reserve the right to bomb them again whenever he feels like it, but if they don’t agree to his terms, he’ll walk away anyway and reserve the right to bomb them again whenever he feels like it. He doesn’t quite seem to realise that he isn’t creating as much fear as he thinks, merely telling them that they just have to hold on for another two or three weeks. When Boris Johnson kept threatening to walk away from EU talks unless they gave the UK everything he wanted, the EU’s response was along the lines of “bye!”. That sheriff had no real power to compel anyone to do anything, but it was a comedy, and in fiction, characters will do whatever the scriptwriter tells them to do. While there are undeniable comic aspects to both Trump and Johnson, their lack of control of the script meant that neither could compel their interlocutors to do what they wanted – and those interlocutors weren’t playing it for laughs either. Trump, in business as in politics, has always over-stated the strength of his own hand and depended on bullying, violence and threats to obtain compliance; Johnson was just a typical English exceptionalist.

Talk of English exceptionalists brings us to the current PM, Keir Starmer, who tried to tell us yesterday that the UK is somehow uniquely well-placed to weather the current economic storms resulting from an ill-thought-out war. He has a plan, he told us, although detail on the content of said plan was remarkably short. From what little he did say, it seems to consist mostly of being laser-focused on waiting to see what happens and then being resolutely determined to do as little as he can get away with. The picture of the UK being painted by some others, i.e. as being perhaps more vulnerable than others to some shortages, seems not to have penetrated his laser-focused complacency. Maybe things won’t turn out as bad as some of the doom and gloom merchants are prophesying; maybe Trump's expressed admiration for Charlie Windsor will lead him to moderate his behaviour rather than add a king to the list of those publicly humiliated by him, but neither seem to be the soundest of foundations on which to build any sort of strategy. As a work colleague of mine once observed, ‘if you can keep your head while all around are losing theirs, you probably don’t know what’s going on’. A message intended to reassure, from someone who seems not to know what’s going on, doesn’t exactly hit the target. Even if the target is laser-focused.

Pressing concerns of the aristocracy

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As the world stands on the brink of an economic disaster brought about by the deranged occupant of the White House, and we ordinary mortals contemplate even further pressure on the availability, let alone the price, of essentials such as food and fuel, spare a thought for the trials and tribulations of that far from ordinary band known as the English aristocracy, the last of the hereditary members which are now, at last, being expelled from their cosy sinecures as part of the legislature of the United Kingdom. My thoughts lie particularly with the 7th Baron Carrington who was apparently disturbed by the possibility of losing his esteemed slot as the Lord Great Chamberlain, a post whose responsibilities include such important matters as 'attending upon' the sovereign and members of his family if they are ever present on the parliamentary estate, and organising the state opening of parliament (although I have a sneaky feeling that the actual ‘organising’ might just possibly be done by minions rather than by the noble lord in person).

It is obvious to all (well, all those who count, at least, including the Prime Minister who has agreed that the role should continue to be hereditary even if it is no longer accompanied by a seat in parliament) that the best way of choosing someone to fill this role is for the incumbent to inherit it from his (I believe that it’s still always going to be a he) forebears rather than to conduct any sort of assessment of their skills and abilities. The UK is, after all, a very special sort of meritocracy, in which merit is imparted by breeding. With a huge sigh of relief, the Baron can now be certain that the position is secure for himself and his descendants for generations to come.

Well, not exactly. The role might be hereditary after a fashion, but it’s shared between three families, passing from one to another whenever the sovereign changes. And one of those families has a 50% share, meaning that they get the job with every alternate sovereign, and the other two families have 25% shares, meaning that they only get the job once in every four sovereigns. Worse (if you happen to be a Carrington) is that the Carrington share is split 11 ways between different members of the family. What that means in practice is that the current incumbent has only been in post since the death of Elizabeth, and if Charlie Windsor pops his clogs tomorrow, no Carrington will hold the post again until Charlie’s first (currently unborn) great, great grandchild ascends the throne (if the monarchy lasts that long) in a century or more’s time. Even then, it may not be a descendant of the current incumbent, since the descendants of the 11 members of the family who jointly inherit the quarter share of the job will need to agree which of them should take the job.

Still, securing that somewhat tenuous privilege is clearly more important than the sort of thing which concerns we lesser souls.

War and its beneficiaries

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The dire warnings about the impact of the war in the Middle East on the global economy are mostly valid, and the fault lies squarely at the feet of Trump for failing to foresee the obvious consequences of his actions. The longer it continues, the more we will all suffer. In strictly economic terms (a very important caveat), however, it isn’t all bad news. Capitalism thrives on destruction – using up all those munitions generates orders for replacements; every aeroplane lost requires a new one to take its place; violent demolition creates opportunities for redevelopment. I’m not suggesting that any of this is a good thing for humanity, it’s just that there have always been some who benefit from war, and current wars are no different. The euphemistically-named ‘defence’ industries and their owners will be amongst the beneficiaries, obviously.

For the rest of us, though, it underlines the folly of looking at anything in ‘strictly economic terms’. Production of munitions will certainly generate employment and economic growth, as will the rebuilding programs which will be needed after any war. But pure economics ignores the human and moral aspects. There’s a lesson there as well which goes much wider than a specific military conflict, or even war in general. Government and politicians who bang on about growth and jobs invariably ignore other aspects in pursuit of increased total material wealth (which inevitably accumulates in the hands of the few). Mechanistic economics pays too little attention to questions about the non-monetary value of activity, let alone the morality of it, and whether it really serves the needs of humanity.

There’s nothing mystical or divine about an economy – it’s a human construct, designed by humans and operating in accordance with rules laid down by humans. It’s our collective choice whether we design economies to facilitate the accumulation of wealth by a few, or to meet the needs of all. It’s our choice whether decisions are made on purely economic grounds or whether they’re made after considering whether humanity as a whole benefits. It’s a mark of the extent to which a social, human construct has been captured and placed at the service of a tiny minority that we live in the world we do. And it’s a measure of the success of the ideology underpinning it that so few understand that it is not the natural order of things, but the outcome of that capture.

Taming the markets

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It is a given that Trump’s statement about talks with Iran is a lie. Working out which part of his rant is the lie is much harder – maybe there are no talks at all; maybe there are some sort of indirect talks taking place through an intermediary; maybe (as Trump himself has hinted) the talks are taking place with someone who has no authority to hold them (and therefore to implement any agreement), and whose life is under threat if the regime currently in power find out he’s talking to Trump; perhaps he’s even talking to the late Shah’s son in the mistaken belief that he can put him back on the throne. With Trump, any or all of these are possibilities: the nearest thing to a certainty is that the statements coming from the regime in Iran are more likely to be true than anything Trump says. Only time will tell which lie he is telling.

Meanwhile, one of the apparent certainties is that the words emanating from Trump’s phone fingers can and do move markets. As a direct result of Trump’s claim about talks, conveniently issued shortly before markets opened, oil prices fell and stock market prices rose – two of the outcomes most highly valued by a man who measures the success or failure of everything in terms of increasing the wealth of himself and his billionaire friends. Superficially, it’s a puzzle as to why this happens. After all, those involved in the markets know as well as I do that the truth is a stranger to Trump’s lips, and that whatever he says now will probably be reversed in days, if not hours. What makes them place such trust in his words?

The answer to that lies not in what any of those involved in speculative buying and selling themselves believe might or might not be true, but in what they think that other speculative traders might or might not believe. If you believe that everyone else is going to be selling oil (pushing the price down) or buying stock (pushing the price up), then it becomes a race to sell or buy before everyone else does so in order to turn a quick profit. (And if you can get hold of some advance information, speculation – or even simple betting – becomes easier. It’s an obvious hazard when dealing with a ‘leader’ who sees personal and family enrichment as an entirely legitimate goal.)

That brings us to the problem with markets. As a mechanism for matching genuine sellers with genuine buyers, markets are an extremely effective process. They have, though, been largely hijacked by people who have no interest whatsoever in the ‘things’ they are buying and selling; it is the process of buying and selling in itself, with the prospect of turning a quick profit, which attracts them. Commentators describe volatile markets as a ‘problem’, but that’s only true for those genuine buyers and sellers. For speculators, volatility equals opportunity. The consequences of that volatility are felt in the ‘real’ economy by all of us, whilst a minority redirect wealth to themselves. For as long as legislatures allow this situation to continue, markets and the economy they support end up controlling us, when they should be serving society as a whole. Where are the politicians willing to tackle this scourge?

Trump can't make all the rules

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When I was a child, the kids from our street used to go into the fields at the end of the road and play commandos. Well, it was the 1950s, and ‘the war’ might not have been a memory for us, but it was still fresh to our parents’ generation. It was a game which would often dissolve into acrimony as debate raged over whether one or other of us was ‘taking his shots’; a debate in essence as to whether the imaginary bullet had hit or missed its target. Even the world’s best ballistics expert would have been unable to answer the question – tracing the trajectory of an imaginary bullet fired from an imaginary gun is no simple matter. And we didn’t have such an expert on hand anyway.

It was a childish debate, of course – but then we were children and children are allowed to be childish. But it seems to me that Trump – a man-child if ever there was one – has got to a similar stage in his war against Iran: the Iranians are just not taking their shots. He believes that he has ‘won’, but the loser is declining to oblige him by meekly accepting defeat. Six decades ago, we children learnt that no matter how determined any one of us might have been to set his or her own rules for the game, it only worked as long as the rest of us agreed to be rule-takers. It's not a lesson that everyone learns.

Trump has lived his entire life believing that he alone sets the rules, and that rules set by others can be ignored. Mostly, he’s had that stance validated by the behaviour of others, even if that behaviour has been the result of threats, bullying and aggressive law suits which many of his targets have chosen to settle rather than drag out at huge cost. And now he’s got himself into the most powerful position on the planet, with huge resources of weaponry at his disposal, and he’s encountering more push-back than he’s ever encountered before. Iran might be the bloodiest and most obvious source at present, but it’s also increasingly coming from other governments, which he sees as vassals, declining to prostrate themselves before him and do his bidding without question.

His instinctive reaction has been to fall back on the learned behaviour which has served him so well in the past – turn up the volume on the threats, insults and bullying. If – when – that doesn’t work, what will he do next? The world’s best hope is that he falls back on his other standard ploy: lie and claim victory. Repeatedly. Whether the other players will let him off the hook so easily remains to be seen. Not taking their shots can be habit-forming.

Avoiding the real issue - again

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Last week, this blog referred to the question of a falling birth rate, and the alleged ‘problems’ it creates. The Sunday times (paywall) carried an article this week about a new report from a think tank calling itself the Centre for Social Justice on the same issue. The report itself, Baby Bust, is available here. The main factor on which it alights is that it is all the fault of immature men, who are entering the adult work force later and thus deferring parenthood for men and women alike. But it was the ‘solutions’ which caught my eye.

Leaving aside the socially conservative proposals about incentivising marriage and encouraging mothers (not fathers, note) to be stay-at-home child carers, moving to ‘household’ rather than individual taxation – all massive steps backwards, particularly for the status and role of women in society – it was their proposals for education which leapt out at me:

“Reduce the school leaving age and get most young people into the workplace as early as possible”, and

“In a similar vein, we should drastically reduce the numbers of 18-year-olds going to university.”

They didn’t suggest to what age the school leaving age should be reduced. I suspect that they don’t want to go back to sending 8 or 10 years olds down the mines (or aren’t prepared to say so), but it seems clear that they want to at least reverse the increase from 16 to 18. They also want to increase the retirement age to qualify for the state pension. My interpretation of it all was that their idea of ‘social justice’ seems to mean that working class boys, and women in general, should know their place and understand their station in life, as though the 1950s was some sort of golden age. It was a depressing read, and no surprise to find the foreword written by a Tory Shadow Minister.

But, to return to last week’s post, what it’s really all about is looking for a ‘solution’ to a ‘problem’ in a way which avoids the need to look at how the economy serves society, and above all at wealth distribution within society. ‘Social Justice’ which protects the wealthiest at the expense of the rest is an Orwellian use of language, to say the least.

Davey has right diagnosis, but wrong cure

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There are few government policies that are so financially ruinous that they cannot be made more so by a determined politician. And this weekend, it was Ed Davey’s turn, for the Lib Dems. His diagnosis – that the US is no longer a dependable ally and relying on them to allow the use of missiles which are leased from the US may make them potentially unusable – is accurate enough. His cure, however – that the UK should develop a completely new set of missiles on its own – would add vast amounts of additional cost to a programme which is already hugely expensive. It would also have a lengthy timescale before it could be ready for use, and one of the known unknowns is whether the US will remain a hostile actor for the whole of that period.

Whether it would make the weapons any more usable is another open question. Their value as a deterrent has always depended on a series of assumptions. That the UK has the ability to fire them at all without US permission is certainly one of those, but there are others: that ‘the enemy’ will simultaneously be mad enough to launch a strike which will incinerate millions and make large areas of the earth (maybe even all of it) uninhabitable and sane enough to be deterred by the thought of millions of their own citizens being incinerated in return; that the orders given to the submarine commander instruct him to launch in certain circumstances and that the commander, contemplating the scale of destruction already wreaked on the planet, would follow those instructions; and that the enemy would not already have located and destroyed the submarine. That’s a whole load of caveats, without even considering whether the system would actually work anyway.

All of that matters only if the possession of nuclear weapons had anything at all to do with war, peace or deterrence. If, as many suspect, it’s actually more to do with a post-imperial mindset amongst UK politicians – Labour, Tory and Lib Dem alike – that still doesn’t accept the reduced status of the UK in the world and clings to the belief that what the UK PM thinks is of any importance, then whether they work or not is largely irrelevant; the important thing is whether the UK is accepted by other states as being what its leaders think it is. It fails, though, even on that level. One of the consequences of diverting so much resource into a single weapons system is that the UK doesn’t have the sort of forces which can actually be of use, leading to boats spending three days bobbing about in the English Channel. Some of us might think that’s a positive, of sorts – but I doubt that it’s what Davey had in mind.

Lack of money isn't the problem

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It has long been understood that the one thing that governments can always find money for is war. War is undoubtedly costly, as the US is currently finding out. It is not really, though, a financial problem. As Professor Richard Murphy points out today, the real constraint isn’t financial, it’s about the availability of bombs and missiles and the ability of even the US economy to replace them at a fast enough rate. The US will run out of Tomahawk missiles because it can’t manufacture them with sufficient speed, not because it can’t pay for them. Similar considerations apply to Iran, of course – although an economy using lower cost, easier-to-produce weaponry can to some extent compensate for its relatively smaller size.

There is another corollary to this as well. There is talk that reducing the level of sanctions enforcement on Russian oil and gas to mitigate the economic impact of the war in Iran will enable Russia to prolong its own war in Ukraine by increasing the flow of money into Moscow’s Treasury. It’s true in only one important respect: to the extent that Russia needs materials, components etc from outside its own economy, increasing its flow of foreign exchange will assist it, but to the extent that it can meet those needs internally, then, just like the US, it won’t be a lack of money which constrains it.

Russia is vast; it has a huge range of raw materials available to it. It’s also a dictatorship: switching the use of its natural and human resources from peace time activities to war time ones is a lot easier than it is in a supposed democracy. Much of the response from ‘the West’ to the war in Ukraine has been based on the assumption that economic sanctions will reduce the sums available to the Russian government to spend on armaments and eventually force it to stop its aggression. But if those sanctions only impact Putin’s ability to make purchases outside the Russian economy, and Russia can meet most of its own needs within that economy, then the assumption is invalid. Russia can never run out of money, and can continue its war as long as it has the resources to do so available within its economy.

That’s not to argue that sanctions should not be applied, even if we know that they are widely being broken by back door transactions. It does, though, suggest that merely cutting off economic contact with a country with access to such vast resources of materials and labour will not bring that country to its knees any time soon. It’s more tokenistic than effective. It’s not a new lesson – Iran, for example, has been subject to severe sanctions for decades, and is still able to produce drones not only for its own use but also for export. The mistaken belief that money (or lack thereof) is a constraint on action by sovereign governments running their own currency has a lot to answer for.

The issue of distribution isn't going to go away

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The view that a falling birth rate is a ‘problem’ which needs to be addressed might be being expressed most forcibly by the political ‘right’, but it isn’t confined to that wing, as evidenced by this article last week from Polly Toynbee in the Guardian. Whilst (justifiably) demolishing the arguments of some Reform Ltd figures, she ends up agreeing with the objective (increasing the birth rate) but giving a different rationale.

There is a fringe element amongst those who support increased birth rates which is tinged with both misogyny (men controlling the fertility rate of women) and racism (a belief that the ‘solution’ to the economic drivers of immigration is to produce more native-born workers). Given the roughly twenty-year lead time involved in producing more workers, the latter is economic nonsense, but then racism and xenophobia have never been about logic or economics.

More seriously, the economic case for increasing birth rates revolves around the fact that the ratio of ‘productive’ to ‘unproductive’ adults is changing as the population ages. In an economy built around the assumption that the product of economic activity belongs to those engaged in it rather than to society as a whole, the fact that there is a problem is undeniable. Fewer workers supporting more non-workers – with no other changes to the economic model – will clearly lead to difficulties. Rebalancing the ratio by increasing the supply of people, even if we ignore the 20-year lead time, turns it into something of a Ponzi scheme, in which any increase in life expectancy (generally a good thing) has to be balanced by an increase in population size (not such a good thing in a finite world where resources are already being exploited unsustainably). Another solution, pursued in the UK by governments of both colours, is to reduce the number of non-workers by making people work longer. That would certainly rebalance the ratio and cut the cost of maintaining retirees: fewer pensioners = lower pension costs. But it also makes retirement (and even more so, a lengthy and healthy one) increasingly a privilege for those who have good occupational pensions and are not doing physically demanding work. It’s a ‘solution’, in short, which favours the better-off at the expense of the less well-off.

There is another approach, but it involves a change in paradigm – a shift away from seeing the output of economic activity as belonging only to those actively engaged in economic activity. If, instead, we see the ‘economy’ as being something which belongs to the whole of the society in which it operates, then the question becomes one of how the output of that economic activity is used within that society. A properly functioning society (including the economy which is part of it) needs to meet the needs of all its members – old, young, sick, and disabled members as well as productive workers. The idea that we only need to worry about how big the pie is, rather than how it is shared, has validity only so long as any increase in the size of the pie is both sustainable in terms of its use of finite resources, and equitable in terms of how the extra pie is used. Falling back on ‘growth’ in the abstract – the default position of Labour, Tory, Lib Dem and Reform Ltd politicians alike – is thus no solution at all if, as is the case at present, that growth is not only not sustainable within the resources available, but also the benefits are overwhelmingly captured by a tiny proportion of the population. We cannot simply avoid indefinitely the question of distribution.

Raising money for war

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As the warmongering rhetoric of the UK’s traditional parties (Tory, Lib Dems and Labour), along with newcomer Reform Ltd, ramps up, suggestions have been floated that the UK should start issuing war bonds, a method of borrowing from the public which was used to fund both World Wars. One of those floating the idea is Lib Dem leader, Ed Davey, and the call is also being supported by an alliance of defence industry bosses. The keenness of the armaments industry for the government to raise more money to divert into their pockets is understandable – arms manufacturers are the only consistent winners from warfare. Surprise, surprise – arms manufacturers support a plan to transfer other people’s money to themselves!

Even if we assume, for the purposes of argument, that spending more on armaments is a good thing, there is a big question over whether the government actually needs to borrow money to achieve that aim. The constraint isn’t about money – the government can always create money to fund whatever it wishes – it is about real resources in the economy. Are the raw materials, labour, energy etc to produce more armaments actually available, or do they need to be redirected from other economic uses? The way in which they are financed is a separate question entirely. On the scale on which our politicians apparently wish to manufacture armaments, it is likely that diversion of resources from other activities will be required – and which economic activities are selected to suffer the effects of that diversion is a far more important question, even if not one that any of them are in any great rush to answer.

Those advocating war bonds as a means of raising finance seem to think of it as an opportunity for ordinary people to come together and loan their pennies to the government in a great patriotic outpouring, as happened in the two world wars. Except it didn’t happen; it’s a false memory of events seen through biased lenses. And that little dampener eliminates the need to even consider whether the UK’s population would suddenly be overcome by the jingoistic fervour which the proposal presupposes.

In both world wars, the bonds were overwhelmingly sold not to ordinary individuals in the street but to a small number of wealthy individuals and to companies and institutions, unsurprisingly concentrated in London and south east England. The scheme launched in the first world war was actually a spectacular failure, with the Bank of England being forced to buy many of the bonds itself (an early example of what would probably be called quantitative easing today), hide the assets in its accounts, and then lie about having done so. As the government increased the interest rate in an increasingly vain attempt to attract more money, many of the new bonds were purchased by holders of the existing bonds converting them into the new higher interest bonds instead. As might be expected by any rational observer, the motivation of capitalists was more about making money than saving the country.

That highlights one of the issues with governments issuing bonds – they benefit mostly the wealthiest in society. By treating tax and ‘borrowing’ as alternatives, the rich end up keeping their capital and earning interest on it rather than paying tax. It’s also a double whammy – when the government spends the money into the economy, it overwhelmingly flows upwards into the hands of the wealthiest, through profits and dividends. To the extent that even a small number of ordinary people respond to the call, they end up reducing their own spending power as the flow of capital increases social inequality. It's not quite the wizard wheeze as which its advocates seem to see it. Unless you're an arms manufacturer.

The ultimate unwinnable wager

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There was a report a few days ago about the possibility that there had been some insider trading on a web betting – sorry, ‘prediction’ – site where some individuals may have made a killing by correctly ‘predicting’ either the attack on Iran or the death of the Ayatollah. It may, of course, be the case that the involvement of a Trump in the company hosting the ‘prediction’ market is a complete coincidence and/or that one Trump knew nothing about what another Trump was about to do. Perhaps there should be a market in predicting whether Trumps will gain financially from US government actions.

It is, apparently, possible to put money on a ‘prediction’ of almost anything. It seems that the same company hosting the bets on those ‘predictions’ also briefly ran a market in predictions of nuclear Armageddon. That market has subsequently been pulled, apparently because some felt that an attempt to make a bit of money betting on the deaths of millions of humans might be considered a little distasteful. To a compulsive gambler – sorry, ‘predictor’ – there is nothing that’s off limits when it comes to placing a bet, but the company running the market probably considered that whatever it had by way of a reputation would probably not be helped.

I found myself wondering, though, what sort of person would bet money on such an event. If the event happens, then the chances of the gambler being alive to claim his winnings are slim, to put it mildly. The chances of the company still being in existence to take the money from the losers and pay it to the winners are even lower. And what would the winners do with the money if there was no longer a functioning economy in which to spend it? Maybe those betting on nuclear destruction believe that nuclear Armageddon would not be so bad after all. The individual might survive a nuclear war, the company might still be able to organise the pay out, and the money would still be useful. But in those circumstances, the company would be able to argue, justifiably, that what just happened wasn’t nuclear Armageddon after all; and if the event didn’t happen, then those ‘predicting’ that it would happen would neither win nor receive any payout. It’s an essentially unwinnable bet for those predicting that outcome. There were some, apparently, willing to make the bet anyway. Even if they had advance knowledge that someone intended to start the nuclear war, it’s still a pretty stupid bet. As well as being tasteless.

Judge them by thir actions, not their words

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The Home Secretary has announced that because people from certain countries who come to the UK as students are more likely than those from other countries to then apply for asylum, she will ban anyone from those countries coming to the UK on a student visa. She could just as easily – and just as truthfully – have said that students coming from a country where there is conflict are more likely to apply for asylum than those from countries where there is no conflict. Who’d have thought it? It’s almost as though people coming from places where they have genuine reasons to seek asylum might be more likely to seek asylum.

Treating people on the basis of being able to place them in a certain category rather than looking at them as individuals is always going to be problematic. I’m pretty certain that people with dark skin coming to the UK on student visas are more likely to apply for asylum than people with fair skin, although I’ll admit that I don’t have hard evidence to back that up, other than the entirely coincidental fact that it is true of all the countries she has selected. If the Home Secretary banned all those of a darker hue from applying for student visas, she would be more roundly condemned than she has been. Her announcement yesterday was not as overtly racist as that would be, even if the effect might end up indirectly discriminating on race. It is, though, much the same thing – treating people on the basis of a collective attribute rather than their individual circumstances.

It is essentially a lazy response to a complex issue. “Some of that group might apply for asylum, so we’ll ban all of them from studying here” might attract a positive headline from the right wing media, but it doesn’t reflect any sense of fairness or compassion. Insofar as I understand ‘traditional British values’, it’s also deeply un-British. But then again, I’ve long stopped trying to understand those values in terms of what people say they are – actions tell an entirely different story.

Hooray for English culture...

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‘Culture’ is hard enough to define; it’s even harder to prescribe it. Yet that, apparently, is what the Tories under Badenoch are proposing to do. If only a single, universalised form of British culture could be inculcated into young people, the British nation would be more united, resolute and generally happy than it is today. Allegedly. How this would be achieved is not entirely clear, but there would be something called an ‘integration and cohesion plan’, and schools would play a role in teaching a single ‘national story’. I’m struggling a little, though, to distinguish between what she is proposing and what Russia is doing, not only in its own territory, but also in occupied areas of Ukraine.

It is, of course, heavily Anglo-centric. Whilst the culture warriors of Britishness are generally keen on promoting Shakespeare and the benefits of Empire across the whole of the UK, they’re not usually so keen on introducing Dafydd ap Gwilym or Robert Burns to English pupils. It also takes us into the realm of those ‘great British values’ which distinguish – in their eyes – the people of these islands from everyone else in the world. Things like deference to the rule of law (except international law, obviously, given Badenoch’s complaint yesterday that Starmer was too slow in supporting Trump’s illegal war against Iran). Things like parliamentary democracy (unless ‘silly people’ in parliament might dare to vote the wrong way). Things like due process (unless that process gets in the way of the government doing whatever it wishes).

Harri Webb’s somewhat irreverent caricature of English culture (“tuneless songs and tasteless jokes and blowsy bags undressing”) was not particularly complimentary; nor was it the sort of language a serious politician would use today. Refuting it, though, requires a definition of what exactly English culture is, and that is something which sound-bite Badenoch hasn’t even attempted. We shouldn’t be surprised, though. Defining culture is hard – and it’s a moving target, because no culture stands still. That statement might, however, go to the heart of the problem with Badenoch’s proposals. It’s a good rule of thumb that any politician seeking to inculcate a particular view of the world – whether it be based on values, culture, history or whatever – is usually espousing an idealised or romanticised version of how things were in some unspecified golden age in the past. Invariably, it wasn’t even accurate then.

Dealing with rogue states

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As an approach to winning the Nobel Peace Prize, starting an illegal war is certainly a novel one. Maybe Trump has abandoned all hope of ever winning the prize, or maybe he thinks that by starting a war which he can end at any time he chooses, he will shortly have another war to add to the list of the ones he’s personally ended. He certainly talks and behaves as though he assumes that no-one will remember what he did or said yesterday, never mind last year, so by the time he ends it, no-one – in his mind – will ever believe that he started it.

There is a huge difference between the world views of the late Ayatollah and Trump. On the one hand, the Ayatollah believed that he was god’s servant, doing god’s will by imposing his version of religion on the people of Iran and the wider world whereas, on the other hand, Trump believes that he was sent by (the same) god to impose divine will by the use of whatever force is necessary. The main lesson from that is that people in a position of power who believe that they have a unique ability to interpret god’s will, and a duty to impose that will on others by whatever means necessary, are inherently dangerous to the world. It’s not a particularly new lesson, sadly.

Trump’s actual motives are as clear as mud, and seem to change every time he opens his mouth. Preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon by destroying facilities which Trump told us had already been completely obliterated last year; revenge for terrorist acts (allegedly) carried out by or at the behest of the Iranian government; pre-empting an attack by Iran for which there was no credible evidence; ‘justice’ for the thousands of protestors killed on the streets of Iran and preventing the regime from carrying out further such killings; revenge for Iran being named in some utterly incredible conspiracy theory as being in cahoots with Venezuela to steal the 2020 election. Take your pick – any, all, or none of the above. But, to consider just one of those: killing hundreds of civilians to stop the Iranian authorities from killing civilians is a strange proposition to many of us, although as Stalin may or may not have said, “a single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic”. As Trump’s rather offhand dismissal of the deaths of US service personnel to date demonstrated, for someone so lacking in human empathy as him even a single death (as long as it isn’t his own) is merely a statistic.

Underlying it all, though, there is a very serious point, which an arbitrary attack on Iran does more to disguise than to reveal. There are regimes in the world which are a danger to their own citizens and the citizens of other (mostly neighbouring) countries, and it is a mark of failure for the international order that humanity has no effective way of dealing with them. Having international laws and rules is the easy part; enforcing them is quite another matter. It’s easy enough to identify Iran, North Korea and Russia as dangerous states, but dealing only with the one which does not currently possess nuclear weapons is about the best incentive I can think of for further nuclear proliferation. And then, there’s the even bigger question – who decides what is or is not a rogue state where regime change is required for the good of humanity? I named three above, because they’re reasonably uncontroversial. But what about Israel, for instance, with its creeping annexation of the West Bank and the tens of thousands of civilians killed in Gaza? What, indeed, about the USA under its current administration? Kidnapping people off the streets, disappearing them, ‘repatriating’ them without due process to places they’ve never visited, interfering in the affairs of other states both politically and militarily, blowing up boats in international waters, threatening to seize territory by force, kidnapping one national leader and assassinating another? Which characteristic of a rogue state has the US failed to meet?

There is no easy or simple solution to the problem; humanity has some way to go before we recognise that we are one species sharing one planet and need to co-operate, share, and live by a common basic set of rules. It’s much easier to say what the solution isn’t than identify what it is – but it definitely isn’t allowing the biggest and most powerful to take whatever arbitrary decisions suit its own selfish interests, or those of its rulers. Trump is taking the world backwards – and the UK’s Labour government now seems set on enabling and supporting him in that endeavour.

Who split which vote?

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When the dust settled, the ‘too-close-to-call’ by-election in Gorton and Denton turned out to be no such thing, and the Green Party gained a very clear victory. That is good news, of course, but even though the margin of victory was solid, the winner only got 41% of the vote. Under a more proportional system of voting, that means that second preference votes would have needed to be counted, and the mathematician and amateur would-be psephologist in me speculated about how the result of that might look.

Of the 11 candidates, eight (accounting for 1892 votes in total) would have been eliminated fairly rapidly and, unless we choose to believe that they would have overwhelmingly (including the 706 Tory votes) gone to Labour, the second choices of those voters would have made no difference to the order of the first three candidates. The final stage of counting would thus have seen the Labour candidate eliminated as well, meaning that there were then 11,256 voters whose second choices would have determined whether the victor was the Green Party or Reform Ltd. With a margin of 4402 between those two parties, those 11,000 votes would have to split something like 2.3:1 in favour of Reform Ltd for their candidate to overtake the Green Party’s candidate and seize the seat. We don’t know, of course, how they would have split in practice. Unless and until someone does some detailed research, it’s all speculation. But the key element of that speculation is a very simple question: of those who voted Labour, despite everything that has happened since the last General Election, would they have tended towards the Green Party or towards Reform Ltd?

Those who cling to the notion that the Labour Party is still a progressive force, and that its supporters are committed to a progressive platform (whatever the word ‘progressive’ means) will be utterly convinced that they would have gone with the Greens, leaving the outcome unchanged. I’m not at all sure that they’re right. Much of the support which Reform Ltd have picked up over the past few years has come from Labour – amongst Labour voters, there is a deeply conservative streak when it comes to issues such as immigration. I don’t think it at all impossible that Reform Ltd would have won the seat in that scenario. (That doesn't make me reconsider supporting Proportional Representation - we need to win the arguments against the likes of Reform Ltd, not rig the voting system to keep them out.)

That brings us to an interesting alternative view of the ‘vote-splitting’ concept. The worry of some before the election was that the Greens and Labour would split the ‘progressive’ vote and allow Reform Ltd to win. What if the real story here is that Labour and Reform split the reactionary, neoliberal, authoritarian, anti-immigrant vote and thus allowed the progressive candidate to win? Those who are still clinging to the idea that Labour is somehow on the side of the good guys might be blinding themselves to the true extent of the danger.

Cutting wages is no solution

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As a simple fact of mathematics, any organisation which can cut the salaries it pays to its employees will ‘save’ money. Whether it’s a sensible thing to do, whether it’s the right thing to do, whether the employees will calmly accept the reduction without resorting to industrial action – none of those things affect the simple mathematical truth that reducing salaries means the employer spends less to achieve the same result. For those of us lucky enough to be part of an occupational pension scheme (which is most people by now, even if some of the schemes aren’t particularly good), the employers’ contribution to those schemes is part of the overall remuneration package: it’s a form of deferred salary. Cutting the amount employers pay for pensions is, therefore, a wage cut by another name – it’s just that the impact won’t be felt immediately.

One of Reform Ltd’s latest wheezes to ‘save’ money involves doing just that – cutting back on the benefits paid out in pension schemes, and thus reducing the amount of the deferred salary due to employees. It’s a not very well disguised salary cut. Whether it’s quite the pain-free saving as which it appears in the short term is another question, however. Reducing the incomes of future pensioners will reduce their retirement standard of living. By how much depends on the circumstances of the individuals, but we can be certain that at least some will end up applying for extra benefits as a result, and it will also reduce the amount of income tax collected from pensioners – it’s not a ‘no-cost’ proposal. Looking at the wider economic impact, people with less money spend less as a result, and that in turn reduces demand in the economy.

The fact that none of this is immediately obvious to many is down to the fact that the real impact won’t happen for years – or even decades – when those with a reduced pension reach retirement age. Maybe those proposing it believe that it will be so effective in deterring people from retiring at all that the impact will be insignificant. In a world which increasingly treats only ‘working people’ as having any validity whilst all others are to be regarded as a ‘burden’, that’s a perfectly possible interpretation. It’s a view of the world which isn’t restricted to Reform Ltd – it will probably be mainstream Labour-Tory policy in a year or two. It highlights a feature of politics – and indeed, the capitalist economic system – which is the increasingly short term views which prevail. A society which works for all people throughout their lives has to take a long term view, considering the first 18 years of life, as well as the last 20-30, when people are likely to be ‘unproductive’ in economic terms, but are still part of the society in which they live. Squeezing out costs in the short term might be good micro-economics, but it’s lousy macro-economics, quite apart from being a lousy way of treating individual members of society. It’s a distinction which those who benefit directly from the short term gains are unable – or, more likely, unwilling – to understand.

It's not true that 'all votes count'

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The new electoral system coming into effect for this year’s Senedd elections is a step forward from first-past-the-post, but is still less than perfect. The main criticism levelled at it by many is that it means that electors cannot choose individuals, only parties. Personally, I’m relaxed about that aspect – decades of door-to-door campaigning taught me that (other than in local council elections, where they may know the individuals) most people vote on party lines anyway, and pay little attention to the candidates. For me, the bigger criticism has always been that there is no opportunity for people to express a second or third choice, so that anyone voting for a party which wins no seats has effectively had no say in the outcome. It was, though, the best outcome that was possible given Labour opposition to STV, and it would be churlish not to recognise that.

As campaigning ramps up, however, the failings of the selected system are becoming more obvious, with Labour and – if anything, even more so – Plaid suggesting repeatedly that a vote for anyone else will split the anti-Reform vote and hand seats to Reform. Leaving aside the essentially negative message of that proposition, encouraging people to vote against one party rather than for another, it isn’t the sort of behaviour a properly proportional system should be encouraging. It’s an admission, in effect, that the chosen system is sub-optimal, giving the lie to the oft-repeated claim that 'all votes count'.

It opens the question, though – will the new Senedd change the decision and opt for a proper STV system? Officially, Plaid support STV (although they haven’t always looked exactly enthusiastic about doing so in the councils they control), as do the Lib Dems and the Greens. The last time he opined on the matter, I’m sure that Farage also supported STV (although all Reform Ltd polices have to carry the caveat that they are subject to sudden and arbitrary change). The only parties dead set against it are Labour and the Tories. The opinion polls could all be wrong, of course, but if the general trend of the polls were to be true, current projections would give supporters of STV a clear super-majority in the Senedd, enough to push through such a change if they wished to do so. If they can summon the courage to act, it might even become the most lasting legacy of a change of government in Cardiff.

Undermining the hereditary principle

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In 1900, there were around 160 monarchies in the world compared to a mere 43 today (and of those 43, 15 are reigned over by a single monarch, namely the King of England). Whilst there are rare instances of a republic reverting to a monarchy (such as Spain, post-Franco), the trend is overwhelmingly in the opposite direction. It isn’t so clear cut as a choice between heredity and democracy, though: Putin and Xi may not be hereditary monarchs, but that doesn’t mean that they can be removed through a popular vote.

Despite the UK being firmly in the minority in global terms, there are many who seem unable to conceive of the idea that the head of state should be an elected post rather than a hereditary one. In reality, the UK monarch isn’t fully hereditary either; in some ways, the monarch is more like an indirectly elected president, where heredity is the default rather than the sole basis for selection. There have been times, albeit infrequent, when parliament has changed the order of succession and/or decreed that certain people (Catholics for instance) may not ascend to the throne, no matter how strong the bloodline claim might be.

If parliament can remove the eighth in line from any chance of succession (which seems likely to happen shortly) then it can also remove the seventh, or the sixth – or even the first. Indeed, in 1701, parliament removed around 50 people from the line of succession at a stroke. Maybe parliament does not actually elect the monarch, but it can veto some candidates and/or redefine the candidate pool, and has done so on several occasions. For those who cling to the official notion that the monarch’s family was selected by God to rule over us (because, presumably, God identified something very special about one particular blood line), deleting people from the line is a power which can only be used sparingly if at all, since declaring that one of the family might not be so special after all somewhat underlines the alleged legitimacy of the whole process.

Perhaps, though, it also offers a glimpse of a gradualist approach to introducing a presidential system. After all, if parliament can shrink the pool of possible candidates, it can also expand that pool. Deciding that parliament should choose the next head of state (an approach followed by a number of other countries which indirectly elect their head of state) is a smaller change than outright abolition. And if there’s one certainty about constitutional change in England (and this is, ultimately, an issue for England mostly) it is that they will never make a large change if a smaller fudge is available.

Experience is often over-rated

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‘Experience’ is an odd qualification for anything. It’s often assumed that someone who has a lot of experience at doing a job is somehow better qualified to do it than someone with less. It depends, though, on the nature of that experience and what people have learned from it. I once interviewed someone for a job who claimed to have 20 years’ experience of doing the job, but on more detailed questioning, it turned out that he had one years’ experience, repeated twenty times. Length of experience isn’t the same as depth – and experience of failure isn’t the same as experience of success. Contrary to popular belief, people don’t always learn from the former, and the latter can breed complacency and inflexibility.

This week, Farage announced his shadow team – or four of them anyway – and part of his justification for two of the selections (and indeed, for accepting the continued outflow of failed Tory politicians) is that they have experience of government. However, his faith in the value of their experience apparently didn’t extend to allowing them to answer any press questions, a job which he firmly restricted to himself. Given the roles that Braverman and Jenrick performed in a succession of Conservative governments, they certainly have plenty of experience of what failure looks like, although it’s hard to identify any particular success with which either of them were associated during their ministerial careers. Whether they have learned anything from their failures is a matter of opinion, but insofar as we can believe a word they say, or use their words as evidence, that evidence is more negative than positive.

The wider question, though, is whether, or to what extent, ‘experience’ of government is relevant to the potential success of anyone taking on a ministerial job. There are plenty of examples of people who have such experience going on to fail – and equally of people who have no such experience turning out to be rather successful as ministers. And it is almost a given of the UK system that any party entering government after a long period of opposition is likely to be short on people with ministerial experience. I think it’s true to say that, if the polls turn out to be right and the next Welsh government turns out to be either a Plaid minority government or a Plaid-Green coalition, it is probable that there will be only one MS in the governing party/coalition with any experience of government at all. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing can only be a matter of opinion at this stage; a judgement based on actual performance will have to wait. I tend to the view that what’s more important than experience of being a minister is experience of doing other things outside politics, and being able to apply that experience in the new context. Time will tell, but returning to Farage’s experience fetish, it’s not clear that his so-called ‘experienced’ hires have a huge amount of useful experience built up in any non-political roles either.

‘Experience’ in any role, without assessing how good it is, or what’s been learned from it, is over-rated as a qualification, but Farage isn’t the only one to make the mistake of assuming that it is a key attribute.

What are we proposing to defend?

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Labour’s warmongers are at it again. On the basis of absolutely no evidence that they are willing to share, they have declared that “the threat of a Russian attack on the UK grows”, and that the UK therefore needs to spend vastly more on new weapons in order to repulse such an attack. I don’t know whether Putin is really planning to launch an attack on the UK, but – despite his obvious desire to reinstate what he regards as being the right of Russia to control certain territories – he isn’t obviously a stupid man. He is, for instance, perfectly capable of extrapolating from his difficulties in conquering Ukraine to the likely consequences of attacking any of the major NATO states, and concluding that it is probably not a battle Russia would be likely to win. He also understands at least a little about geography: Ukraine is close to Russia and shares a long and eminently invadable land border, whilst the UK is further away and any attack beyond an aerial assault would require the use of air and sea transport for a large number of forces.

The military clearly want more weapons, but then the military always do, regardless of the assessed scale of any threat. The real beneficiaries of the proposed increase in military expenditure are the arms companies (and their shareholders), companies which are already profitable and seem to have a knack of ending up invariably charging much more than the price initially quoted. The losers – in a situation where Labour are hemmed in by their own blind commitment to neoliberal economics and wholly arbitrary fiscal rules – will be the population of the UK, and especially those most dependent on the state finances and services which will be cut to pay for weaponry.

The first question we need to be asking is what exactly is it we are proposing to defend? And that raises the question of what sort of society we want to be. If the only way to ‘defend’ citizens is to impoverish and marginalise ever more of them, and prepare them to give their lives in order to do so, there is a danger that the ‘cure’ is worse than the disease. Defending the interests and wealth of the wealthy isn’t serving the population as a whole. The interests of most of us have more in common with those of the ordinary citizens of the 'enemy' state than with the interests of the elites who run the states on either side.

The second – and even more important – question is about how we prevent war in the first place, rather than merely setting out to ‘win’ it. War only becomes inevitable when government on both sides becomes captured by people who think it to be so, and much of what looks to be defence preparation to one side will look to be threat of an attack to the other. The most likely cause of any further attack by Russia is a belief that ‘we’ are preparing to attack them. Building up military forces, with more weapons and more powerful weapons, especially when more of them are stationed close to their borders, isn’t exactly the best way of dispelling that belief.

We need to retake control of the economy

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Figures announced this week show a rise in the level of unemployment, with young people being particularly hard hit. The government has responded in the way that all governments do, by talking about ‘helping more people into work’ (often a euphemism for cutting benefit payments) and inventing more, sometimes dubious, apprenticeships as a back door way of subsidising employers. The opposition has responded in the way that all oppositions do, by blaming government policies, especially those relating to wages, tax and regulation. The assumption underlying both of those positions – even if it drives them to propose different solutions – is that rising unemployment is a cyclical problem, which will be resolved if only we can get that magical growth they keep talking about.

It’s possible that they’re right; but it’s also possible that they’re wrong. What if, rather than growth and innovation solving the issue, that same growth and innovation, powered perhaps by AI, compounds it? There is a certain complacency surrounding that question. In a sense, it’s entirely natural – history shows us that the initial response to innovation and increased productivity is a loss of some jobs, which is usually followed by the appearance of new jobs, sometimes of a type and nature which nobody had foreseen. Maybe the same will be true of AI, and it’s overly pessimistic to believe that the job losses will be more permanent and generalised than we’ve seen in the past. It’s clear that the workers likely to be displaced by AI will include those in more technical and high-paid jobs than previous rounds of innovation, but the fact that the nature of any resultant replacement jobs is not currently clear doesn’t mean that there won’t be any. But the statement that ‘there always have been’ in the past can’t be taken as a certainty for the future either.

One junior minister in the UK government has already suggested that part of the response to the growth of AI might be the introduction of some sort of Universal Basic Income (UBI), although even he seems to be talking abut it as a temporary response, allowing people to retrain for the jobs of the future, whatever they may be. And there’s no doubt that any sort of UBI would be enormously expensive: even an income set at the less than adequate level of Universal Credit would be likely to carry a price tag of some £200 billion per annum. But what is the alternative that those objecting to the cost would propose in a situation where most work is done by automatons or AI? Are those people who have been displaced to be treated as disposable, and left without food or shelter as a result, whilst those lucky enough to still have work continue to live as normal (and those who own the machines and the software continue to accumulate wealth well beyond their capacity to spend it)?

It’s a scenario which raises questions about what an economy is for. Forget ‘invisible hands’ and market spirits – an economy is a social construct, and it’s up to the society in which it operates to determine how it works, who benefits from economic activity, and by how much. If an economy cannot supply at least the basic needs of all the people in that society, than it’s not performing its social function. From that perspective, tax is not some burden placed unfairly on those who own the capital or provide the labour, it is merely the mechanism by which the outputs of economic activity are used for the benefit of all. It is, in its very essence, a mechanism for redistribution. For the last four or five decades, we’ve increasingly lost sight of that and allowed the economy to be captured by a few, and corrupted to serve only their interests. If the resulting gross inequality hasn’t been enough to force a rethink, perhaps the impact of AI will be.

Will Farage let me drive on the right if I want to?

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Whether the 20mph default speed limit in built-up areas is a good thing or a bad thing is obviously a matter of opinion, depending on whether we prioritise reducing casualties or convenience and speed. The statistics show that it has reduced the number and severity of casualties on the roads, although a thorough evaluation might need a few more years to assess whether it is really working as well as it appears to be. On the downside, experience suggests that it has led to an increase in aggressive driving and risky overtaking manoeuvres, especially by those vehicles whose drivers are exempt from the law. I can’t find a definitive definition of exempt categories in the legislation itself, but simple observation over the past year leads me to conclude that it includes taxis, white vans, and BMWs.

Farage told us last week that it is a ‘looney’ policy, and went on in a Q&A session to describe it as being an example of government telling people what is right for them, adding "It is typical of control, control, control". In essence, his view seems to be that it has nothing to do with safety, and that the Welsh Government have introduced it solely with the aim of controlling what people may or may not do. It’s a particularly silly argument – if it applies to the 20mph limit, then it also applies to the 30mph limit, or to any limit set at 40, 50, 60 or 70. All of them control what citizens can and can’t do. Come to that, why should the government control on which side of the road I should drive? All laws set limits on what we can and can’t do, they all ‘control’ us to a greater or lesser extent. The question is – or ought to be – about where we draw the line, and how we balance safety against speed of travel – or, more generally, personal advantage against collective advantage. ‘Not liking something’ is not enough to distinguish between an arbitrary control of behaviour and a sensible safety measure.

Reasoned debate is not, though, what Farage and his ilk want. Their aim is to appeal to people whose minds are already made up, and to strengthen those existing prejudices. Not that reasoned debate would ever help anyway. No-one who has not arrived at a particular view in the first place through a careful and rational study of the evidence is going to be persuaded to a different view by a careful and rational study of that same evidence. And that doesn’t only apply to the question of speed limits. Believing that evidence can and will shift an opinion which was never evidence-based to start with is a mistake which many of us make. Overcoming prejudice and a willingness to disregard mere facts is more of a long term project, which involves teaching critical thinking as a key element of education. There is a reason why Farageists and their fellow travellers are hostile to the idea of an educated populace.

Who's going to check? And when?

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Whether the newly appointed leader of Reform Ltd in Wales actually lives in Wales or not appears to be an open question at present. It’s a question which Martin Shipton, at Nation.Cymru, is doggedly pursuing. If it’s really true that he doesn’t, then both he and Farage have been more than a little foolish in putting forward a story which falls apart after one day of scrutiny. Maybe they really are that stupid, but it’s more likely that they believe that they can game the system.

The requirement that candidates for May’s Senedd election should live in Wales, and be registered to vote in Wales, is entirely reasonable, especially after the experience of a predecessor party to Reform having had a resident of Wiltshire as its leader in the Senedd. It’s something of a departure for UK electoral politics, though: there is no requirement, for instance, for any candidate for Westminster to reside in the UK. They merely have to state that “they are at least 18 years old and be either: a British citizen, or a citizen of the Republic of Ireland, or a citizen of a commonwealth country who does not require leave to enter or remain in the UK, or has indefinite leave to remain in the UK”. They also need to provide an address where they can be contacted. But as far as I’m aware, there is no requirement for the returning officer to verify the information provided. Verifying the veracity of the information provided by candidates has never been part of their role; they merely verify that the relevant boxes on the form have been completed properly. It seems probable that the same approach will apply in the case of Senedd elections: if the candidate provides a valid Welsh electoral roll number, and gives an address where (s)he claims to live, is it any part of the responsibility of the Returning Officer to check that those details are true?

It is perfectly legal to be registered to vote at two different addresses (it’s not usually legal to vote at both, although there is no check on that), and the definition of ‘main residence’ is not as straightforward as it might sound. Reform Ltd may be about to ‘test the system’ by putting forward as a candidate an individual who may not meet the legal requirements. It’s not at all clear that there is any process in place to challenge the information provided by candidates, let alone pro-actively verify its veracity, other than by a court process after the election. Relying on ‘the law says’ amounts to assuming that all candidates are honest people of good faith. It’s just possible that some might not be.

Is poverty really the right way to save pubs?

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Not so long ago, I wondered whether capitalists and supporters of capitalism really understood the way it worked, a theme picked up again in relation to pubs in this post. Pubs, in particular, have been back in the news again over the last week, with Farage’s proposal that impoverishing 450,000 children and redirecting the money saved into pubs could knock 5p off the price of a pint and save thousands of pubs, and the suggestion from the First Minister, Eluned Morgan, that people should stop drinking wine and watching Netflix at home and get down to the pub instead. The opposition’s response to the First Minister was, sadly, more Farage than Morgan, claiming that the problem was for the government rather than citizens to solve, and lies in the system of rates and taxation. Both Farage and the opposition in the Senedd seem to be starting from the wholly unrealistic proposition – albeit a basic tenet of classical economics – that all consumer decisions boil down to cost comparisons. Under that tenet, people choose wine and Netflix over beer and pubs purely on the basis of relative cost.

Like much of theoretical economics, it’s utter nonsense. It is an established fact that young people, overall, are drinking less and that traditional pubs are considered increasingly unattractive to many of them. Cutting the price of a pub visit so that more people go, or encouraging people to drink more when they get there – which is what subsidies, whether direct or in the form of tax concessions, actually set out to do – might delay the inevitable, but if supply outstrips demand by an increasing margin, and if that falling demand is the result of demographic change rather than price considerations, then capitalism decrees that the supply should fall. Put another way, closing pubs is the natural and rational outcome of a change in consumer choices.

Whether that’s a good thing or not is another question. I’m certainly not a fan of leaving all decisions to the dictates of capitalist markets. There are some pubs – particularly, but not exclusively, in rural areas – which also provide a sort of community hub, and act as a centre for other (not necessarily alcohol-related) activities. There is a case, in terms of social cohesion rather than dry cost-benefit analysis, for government action to keep such places open. That, though, requires rather more effort in identifying criteria and assessing locations against those criteria than some sort of blanket aid to the sector (which is what changes to the taxation regime provide). Setting out to save all pubs may be popular with those who use them, but it’s not good policy, and nor is it a good use of resources. And proposing to impoverish children to achieve it is about the best illustration one can think of as to why it’s wrong.

It shouldn't be down to the wrongdoer to take action

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It’s unclear whether Mandelson has committed any crimes or not in relation to his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, although – to date, at least – I’ve seen no serious suggestion that he has. Folly, yes, plenty of that. Failing to declare income to parliament, maybe: he says that he can’t remember receiving money from Epstein, and it’s just about possible that there’s some other explanation for the relevant lines on bank statements. Lobbying other ministers to reduce the tax bill for a friend, yes, that seems pretty clear cut. Leaking sensitive government documents to his friend, again, yes that also seems pretty clear cut. None of it, however, appears to be criminal. It’s enough, though, for people to be demanding that he should be stripped of his peerage as well as standing down immediately from the House of Lords.

It is a ‘feature’ of the English system of governance that people appointed to the Lords cannot easily be stripped of either their membership or their title. Apparently, it requires a specific act of parliament in each and every case, and Sir Starmer appears to have concluded that that is just too much trouble and is instead simply appealing to Mandelson to voluntarily relinquish his seat, and voluntarily stop using his title, while formally retaining it. It’s the sort of compromise and cop-out which bedevils a constitution which assumes that all parliamentarians, in whichever House, are inherently honourable people.

It’s a silly assumption to make – and it’s not as if there haven’t been previous cases to underline the point. The one which immediately leaps to mind is, of course, Jeffrey Archer. Unlike (so far) Mandelson, Archer really did commit criminal acts and was sentenced to four years as a guest of Her Majesty as a result. On his release in 2003, and although not a very active member, he remained a member of the House of Lords until he voluntarily stepped down in 2024. He remains a peer today.

It’s true that the law was subsequently changed – but it took more than ten years, until 2014 – to make it easier to sack a member of the House of Lords for serious crimes (although being sentenced to prison for less than twelve months, which one might think is still rather more serious than anything Mandelson has so far been found to have done, is still considered insufficient grounds for expulsion). The point here is not to defend Mandelson – on the contrary, he deserves to be kicked out. It is, rather, to highlight the arbitrary and inconsistent way in which things work, and the laziness and incompetence which means that successive governments would prefer to leave things alone than address an obvious failing. Demanding that the man accused of poor behaviour takes action himself rather than ensuring that he could be dealt with swiftly and effectively is a less than honest political response.