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?

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.

Rock, paper, scissors

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The Chancellor and Prime Minister seem to be increasingly fond of telling us that nothing will stand in the way of their ambition for growth. According to Reeves, “Growth trumps other things”, including the commitment to a net-zero economy. Leaving aside any questions about whether a commitment to net zero actually hinders growth in any event (there are reasonable arguments to be made that it can change the nature of economic growth rather than inhibit it, but that’s a subject for another time), the government’s own actions make it clear that there are some things which growth does not trump. The most obvious example concerns the UK’s relationship with the EU. One of the easiest things that a UK keen on economic growth could do would be to re-enter the customs union and single market. It's something which could be done without ‘betraying’ Brexit, given that prominent Brexiteers argued at the time that Brexit didn’t mean that we had to leave them in the first place. However, growth might trump net zero, but Brexit trumps growth. If only net zero could trump Brexit, we could play a sort of rock, paper, scissors game. A neat closed circle into which Starmer and Reeves could quietly disappear. But Starmer's much-vaunted 'reset' of relationships with the EU appears to be little more than a Labour version of cakeism, under which the EU gives the UK a better deal without the UK conceding anything.

It is being widely reported that Reeves will announce tomorrow that, in pursuit of that magical growth, the government will give the go-ahead to building a third runway at Heathrow. Or rather, they will give the go-ahead to starting a process which means that the third runway might be in place in about 10 years from now, assuming that the project goes rather more smoothly than any large UK infrastructure project in recent decades. In terms of her self-imposed and arbitrary fiscal rules, the operational ‘benefits’ from Heathrow expansion will start to flow only a decade hence, well outside the 5 year timescale of those rules, and only after at least two general elections have taken place. Since the planning phase is going to take a minimum of 2-3 years, there’s unlikely to be any sort of boost to the economy, even in terms of the relatively short-term construction phase, until after the current government has faced the electorate.

The argument for expansion is usually presented in terms of showing that the UK is open for business. It conjures up images of businessmen jetting off to far-flung places to sell their wares to grateful foreigners, or of rich foreigners jetting in to invest their fortunes in UK businesses (preferably without anyone enquiring too deeply about the source of those fortunes), and encourages us to believe that, if only there were an extra runway, more of both of those things would happen. It isn’t quite the reality though. Estimates of the proportion of business traffic passing through Heathrow vary. This one suggests it’s around a third of all passengers; other estimates put the figure as low as a fifth. Despite its carefully cultivated image, Heathrow is, first and foremost, an airport used for leisure travel. And many of the travellers come from elsewhere in the UK, not exclusively from the London area, even if that’s where the majority come from. There’s another aspect to that last part as well. Whilst it’s obviously true that an airport contributes to GDP in a variety of ways, including shops and restaurants as well as the jobs involved in processing passengers and planes, an airport which sucks in passengers from further afield than the local catchment area also concentrates GDP geographically around itself.

Like so much else of what the current government is doing, a decision to expand Heathrow looks largely performative. Taking – or, rather, being seen to take – tough decisions (a phrase which seems to be a euphemism for decisions which will upset as many potential Labour supporters as possible) has become an end in itself. The belief that doing so will somehow magically lead rich foreigners to pour their zillions into the UK is more an act of blind faith than anything else. But it’s not the sort of faith likely to survive contact with economic reality.

Chickens, eggs, and confused Chancellors

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There is a report today that the Chancellor is pressurizing the Office of Budget Responsibility to use planned but not yet implemented planning reforms to change its estimate of the rate of UK growth. If they agree, then she will be able to spend more money without breaking her own arbitrary fiscal rules. It doesn’t mean that there will actually be any more money, of course; merely a forecast of extra government revenue at some future date. If they agree to roll over and do as she asks, she will then spend that extra non-existent money on investment in the UK economy. Planning and implementing the spending will, as it always does, precede the actual receipt of the money (always assuming that it is eventually received), and in the short term, that spend will be presented in the accounts as though the money has been ‘borrowed’, even if it’s actually simply been created out of thin air by the Bank of England.

There’s nothing new or unusual about that as a process, it’s what always happens, no matter how much the politicians attempt to deny it. Government spending always precedes government revenue. But here’s the twist: spending the extra money will expand the economy (i.e. create economic growth), thereby validating, to a greater or lesser extent, the original assumption about higher growth. The cause of that growth may not be the one stated when it was first built into the assumptions. But in terms of the outcome, that’s unimportant. Government spending creates economic growth, which eventually leads to increased government revenue.

She could, of course, achieve the same thing by simply adjusting the arbitrary fiscal rules to which she is working. She is, however, too confused about the order of chickens and eggs, and too deeply imbued with Treasury and Bank of England orthodoxy. Maybe it doesn’t matter too much (unless the OBR refuse to play ball), because as long as she abandons her obsession with insisting that the income must precede the expenditure, she does actually stand a chance of achieving the magical growth on which everything, apparently, depends. Whether it’s the right type of growth, in the right places, is a question for another day…

Labour ministers encourage hostility to migrants

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Ministers in the Labour government have rightly condemned those who have been whipping up hatred against migrants in general and refugees and asylum-seekers in particular, especially on social media, but they seem to be completely blind to the effect that their own words and deeds are having. Their own words may not be as blunt and direct, but that simply makes them all the more insidious.

I cannot be alone in having noticed a recent increase in the number of memes circulating drawing comparisons between the cut to the winter fuel allowance or the failure to remove the two-child benefit cap on the one hand, and paying for food and accommodation for migrants on the other. It’s a silly comparison to make, of course; an economy like that of the UK can easily do both. But the government has made a deliberate choice not to do both, and in its insistence on the nonsensical household analogy for government debt has effectively encouraged people to believe that doing one thing necessarily prevents them doing another, because of a ‘lack of money’.

Cutting the state pension by at least 2.5% for most pensioners (which is the effect of the change to the winter fuel allowance) is a deliberate political choice. Keeping 300,000 children in poverty for at least a few months longer (which is the effect of failing to scrap the 2 child benefit cap, even if they change it in the budget) is another deliberate political choice. They weren’t forced to do either, but have chosen to do both because of a blind adherence to a fiscal rule based on Tory ideology about the size of the state and the protection of private wealth. But if you tell people often enough that the old and the young must suffer because of a non-existent ‘lack of money’, it should hardly be a surprise if some people draw comparisons with other items of expenditure and suggest cutting those instead. The result is that Labour’s dishonesty over government finances makes them as guilty as others of inflaming attitudes towards desperate people seeking a better life for themselves and their families. It doesn’t excuse the attacks on hotels, mosques, businesses or individuals – nothing can excuse that – but the false claim that the government ‘has no choice’ is an active encouragement to people to put the blame elsewhere. It turns out that divide and rule is an approach to government which isn’t ended by throwing out the Tories.

Painting the economy red, white and blue isn't the same as making it work better

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Labour’s leader is visiting the West Midlands today, and his speech has been widely trailed in advance. Apparently, he wants to see Labour running what he calls a ‘patriotic’ economy. It’s an interesting, if essentially meaningless, turn of phrase, but like most essentially meaningless phrases, it can be interpreted to mean whatever the listener wants it to mean. Starmer will probably be happy with that – and wrapping himself in red, white and blue is a tactic to which he increasingly turns.

It would be nice to think that what he is trying to say is that the economy should work for the benefit of all citizens, rather than the wealthiest few. It’s a sentiment that many, including myself, could readily agree with, but it does imply a recognition that ‘the economy’ is not some mysterious force which controls us, like Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’, but a system invented by humans, run by humans and regulated by humans. There are more ways than one of doing all of that: the ‘economy’ doesn’t have to work well only for some. That isn’t quite what he is saying though. His speech talks about an economy where “…Britain’s hardworking families reap the rewards”. ‘Hardworking’ is a phrase which seems to trip off the tongue of politicians – very few of them seem to be able to make a speech without using the term. But here’s the thing: every time I hear that phrase, I hear someone who is also saying that only working people count. The sick, the disabled, the elderly – few of the people in these categories fit any rational definition of ‘hardworking families’. It’s as though they really neither count nor matter.

The speech gets worse, because he then launches into the trope of what he sees as the “…core British value of working hard and getting on”. In itself, the phrase sounds almost innocuous, but it contains within it a deeply unpleasant suggestion that anyone who doesn’t ‘get on’ is simply failing to work hard enough, with the implication that poverty is thus the fault of the poor. As Yoda almost said, “The Protestant work ethic is strong in this one”. It’s based on the idea which has become central to Labour thinking – although it’s a long way from the beliefs of the party’s pioneers – that what is important is something called ‘equality of opportunity’ rather than economic equality.

It’s true, of course, that anyone can (theoretically, at least) establish a successful business and become a multi-billionaire, or walk into a highly-paid job if they have the necessary skills and attributes, and that education, alongside other policies, can help to develop those skills and attributes and theoretically make it possible for more people to ‘work hard’ and earn their fortune as a consequence. But it’s also true that, even if they have all the necessary skills and attributes, not everybody can do that. Simple mathematics tells us that extreme wealth is concentrated wealth, and concentrated wealth for the few necessarily requires a transfer of wealth from the many. More generally, ‘getting on’ for some requires that others do not ‘get on’, no matter how hard they work (and there are many people in poorly-paid roles who work a lot harder than some of those in well-paid roles). And despite decades in which ‘equality of opportunity’ has been the stated goal of governments of all parties, one thing we know for certain is that parental income is still the best predictor of outcomes for children.

Starmer had an opportunity to say that his government will ensure that the economy works for all, but he has chosen instead to talk about a few minor tweaks to an economy which is designed and run to do the exact opposite. That’s not to say that the tweaks are completely without merit, but transformative this is most definitely not.

Plans, plans, and more plans

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In response to yesterday’s publication of the latest figures for net immigration, the PM said simply that the numbers are “too high”. Without knowing why he thinks they’re too high or having any indication of the criteria he’s using to arrive at that assessment, it’s impossible to validate his claim, although the suspicion must surely be that ‘the right number is whatever number will buy the most votes’ rather than a thought-through assessment of the UK’s needs and interests. It’s not true however, as some have claimed, that the Tories have no plan to deal with the situation. They actually have lots of plans, even if some of them are mutually contradictory and incoherent.

It is, apparently, the ‘net’ number which is most important; the difference between those arriving and those leaving (although I have a suspicion that if 1,000,000 UK-born white people left each year to be replace by 1,000,000 entering the UK from Asia or Africa they would quickly find that the net number isn’t what those target voters are interested in at all). However, if we assume that they mean what they say about wanting to reduce the net number, then reducing immigration isn’t the only potential solution; we could also increase the number leaving. On this score, we can look to the lunatic fringe of the Tory Party, aka the deputy chair of the party, for part of the Tory solution: encourage republicans to go and live elsewhere. Strictly speaking, of course – and considering only quantitative issues rather than qualitative ones – it doesn’t matter whether those who leave are republicans or not, it just matters that people leave. Unkind souls might wish to point out that abolishing freedom of movement didn’t exactly help them achieve this objective – indeed, there is some evidence that Brexit and accompanying regulation has forced some of those who previously left to return to the UK, which is one of the factors leading to an increase in the net difference. But then coherence and consistency are not requirements for Tory policy.

Another two Tory plans revolve around reducing the number of jobs which migrant workers can do. The same fringe element at Tory HQ has in the past suggested forcing council tenants guilty of anti-social behaviour to live in tents in the fields, get up at six, pick fruit and veg all day, followed by a cold shower and lights out at six in the evening. It helped him get promoted to deputy chair. And moving people out of houses into tents might help to ‘solve’ the housing shortage as well, I suppose. Another Tory, a former cabinet minister, once proposed obliging pensioners to pick fruit and veg, but paying them less than the minimum wage because they’d be a bit slower collecting the produce. Oddly, that wasn’t the thing for which he ended up disgraced.

Yet other Tory plans turn on the idea of reducing what they like to call the ‘pull’ factor; reducing the reasons why people choose to come to the UK. One of those, obviously, is that English is so widely taught – when considering which European country might be a good place to live, knowing English helps to make the UK an attractive proposition. Reducing the funding for the British Council, the body charged with promoting the English language, is a small step, and will take time to have an impact, but, as a certain supermarket regularly reminds us, ‘every little helps’. Another pull factor is the perceived quality of teaching and research in UK universities. Opting out of European funding programmes, leading to researchers leaving in droves, is one small step in addressing that issue; restricting foreign students to those prepared to come without their families is another. Faced with a choice between allowing immigrants in and destroying the university sector, it is apparently preferable to encourage the brightest and best foreign students to go and study in those countries perceived as competitors to the UK. The reasons escape me but are obvious to those obsessed with migration. If the result helps bring about a financial crisis for tertiary education, well, having fewer universities offering fewer courses all helps to deter foreigners from coming here to study.

But the biggest pull factor of all is the persistent perception, despite all the government’s efforts to date, that the UK economy is one of the world’s richest and most successful. Not to worry – they have a plan to deal with that as well. Holding wages below inflation so that people, particularly in the lowest-paid jobs, become poorer each year, ensuring the weakest growth rate in the G7, forcing up interest rates – these will all help to deter people from coming here to seek a better life. (They might also, incidentally, help to encourage UK citizens to seek a better life elsewhere, bearing in mind the importance of that net number.)

Those who argue that the Tories have no plan to reduce net immigration are being utterly unfair. They have loads of plans, most of which they are busily implementing. It’s just that they have chosen not to explain them very well. It’s a bit like with Brexit: spelling out the implications for the UK is something best avoided if you want people to vote for you on the back of an anti-immigrant viewpoint. But, and this is also like Brexit, implications a-plenty there will be, and guess on which parts of the population they will mostly fall?

Splashing the cash

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From a republican perspective, the results of a poll showing that 54% of people in Wales would vote to keep the monarchy whilst 23% would vote for a republic is not at all a bad starting point on an issue which is barely discussed publicly and in relation to which the media and the main political parties relentlessly promote the status quo. And, interestingly, it’s far from clear that even all those who support the continuation of the monarchy are over-impressed by the cost to the public purse, with just over half saying that the monarchy should pay for the coronation out of their own resources. That said, it’s probably the case that attitudes to Saturday’s events probably reflect attitudes to the institution, and that the overall level of enthusiasm is rather less than the BBC and media would have us believe.

There have been some wild claims as to just how much of a boost the UK economy will get as a result of the jamboree, with the palace repeating claims that the benefit could be up to £1.25 billion. That looks a bit like a politician’s statistic to me (92.8% of which, like the figure of 92.8% itself, are made up on the spot to support whatever argument is being advanced at the time). It’s certainly true that a lot of tourists like to visit royal sites and palaces – whether that number would rise or fall if the occupants were cleared out and the whole of the building made available for public view is an open question. Royal history without the royals might turn out to be a surprisingly lucrative proposition.

One rather more specific claim has been that pubs will gain from a £120 million spending splurge over the weekend. The basis of that claim is uncertain to say the least – the workings haven’t been reported – but, for the sake of argument, let’s suppose that it’s true. The question, then, is ‘is that a boost to the economy overall?’, and the answer to that depends on where the money is coming from. If people are smashing open their piggy banks, or pulling the money from under the mattress or wherever else they’ve been hiding it, then the expenditure will indeed boost the economy overall. If, on the other hand, they’re merely spending money which might otherwise have been spent in the supermarket or on other leisure activities, then the ‘boost’ to one sector of the economy is matched by a hit to one or another different sector. In a time when people are struggling with the cost of living, the second scenario seems rather more likely than the first.

It has been reported that the cost of staging the event to the public purse will be around £100 million. Again, I haven’t seen the workings, but am prepared to accept the figure for the sake of argument. The same question arises – where does this money come from? Given that the government keep telling us that the cupboard is bare, it won’t be coming from Rishi Sunak’s piggy bank, or from under his mattress (although the tax authorities might usefully take a peek anyway to see what might be there and where it came from). And in the absence of any announcement of cuts elsewhere, it isn’t obviously going to impact other spending. In terms of the government’s overall spending, it’s a tiny drop in the ocean, but the likelihood is that it is effectively going to increase, marginally, the current year’s deficit. And that highlights one of the key differences between government spending and household spending – the government can, and almost invariably does, spend money which it hasn’t actually got. The result is that spending £100 million of extra government money on a coronation provides a real boost to the overall economy in a way which transferring £120 million of private money from supermarkets to pubs does not.

That doesn’t mean that I’m advocating spending £100 million on a pointless and archaic ceremony; I can think of plenty of better ways of spending that money. I’m more interested in the general lesson here, which is that government spending which increases the budget deficit boosts the economy; and its corollary, which is that ‘austerity’ (cutting government spending to reduce the deficit/debt) dampens the economy. That doesn’t mean that governments can or should run ever bigger deficits (there are other mechanisms, such as a lack of resources and a consequent increase in inflation which impose constraints on that, although despite all the posturing by politicians about percentages of GDP the simple truth is that no-one knows with any certainty where the limits lie). It simply means that when growth is weak, deficit-funded government expenditure can boost it, and that the time to reduce deficits is when growth is strong. There’s nothing new about that, it's something which has been known and understood for many decades. The tragedy is that we have a government which, for largely ideological reasons (and to protect the interests of the wealthiest, which may well amount to the same thing) tries to pretend that the opposite is true, and a main opposition party which is so keen to prove its fiscal responsibility that it’s even keener on taking action likely to dampen rather than promote growth.

Time to stop taking the medicine

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Folk memory tends to associate ‘snake oil’ with the Wild West but, whilst it’s true that travelling medicine men peddling their quack remedies lasted longer in the US than elsewhere, the idea of patent ‘cure-all’ medicines wasn’t limited to the US. The UK had its fair share too; indeed, it was in the UK that ‘patent medicines’ were first licensed. Although the idea of snake oil seems to have been imported from Asia, and China in particular, where oil made from snakes was indeed used in traditional medicine to cure specific ailments, the various concoctions sold in the US and UK rarely contained any snake products at all. They weren’t completely ineffective either, however – many contained doses of cocaine, amphetamines and/ or opium, which means that they may well have helped people feel better even if they did little to address the causes of any pain. And people bought them – what’s not to like about a medicine which cures all ills? The appeal is obvious: no diagnosis needed, no need to see a doctor, just keep taking the potion. Having sold their wares, the travelling medicine men moved on to the next town before the inefficacy of their remedy became too obvious.

One of the closest twenty-first century parallels is to be found in the swivel-eyed faction of the Tory Party, a faction which believes that tax cuts are the solution to all economic ills in all circumstances. If there is deflation in the economy, the solution, according to them, is tax cuts; if there is inflation in the economy, the solution is tax cuts; if there is low growth in the economy, the solution is tax cuts; and if there is high growth in the economy, the benefit should be shared out through tax cuts. They claim that it is about making people feel good (the equivalent of that opium and cocaine in that snake oil) because they will have more money in their pockets and therefore feel able to spend more, but that isn’t quite the whole truth, and doesn’t address the ailment. Another way of putting more money in the pockets of those who need it most would be by ensuring that wages, pensions and benefits kept up with prices. Apparently, however, giving people more money by increasing their pay is inflationary, but taking less from those wages in tax is not. It’s a form of magical thinking (it’s tempting to wonder whether they’ve been taking their own ‘patent medicines’ with who knows what ingredients). In truth, of course, the modern-day snake oil salesmen know full well that their product is inefficacious. It’s not about ensuring that ‘people’ have more money in ‘their’ pockets, it’s about which people and whose pockets. In practice, it’s a surprising and little-known fact (or so they hope) that the people who benefit most from tax cuts are the people who pay most tax. The sort of people to be found supporting that strange faction of the Tory Party, by sheer coincidence. And the people who benefit least are the lowest-paid and those on benefits. But then again, transferring wealth from the gullible poor to the exploitative snake oil sellers was what the industry was all about in the days of the Wild West. Not much has changed in the interim.

Sadly, however, there is one important difference. In the olden days, people eventually realised that the medicine they had been sold was worthless, and governments started to regulate the content of what could be sold (what today’s purveyors of snake oil tend to refer to as ‘unnecessary red tape’ preventing people from exercising their right to be conned). And having sold all they could in one town, the salesmen moved on to the next in search of a new set of gullible people. The modern equivalent seem determined to stay put. There is another custom from the Wild West which we might usefully deploy in the circumstances – driving the exploiters out of town. We just need to ensure that those who replace them aren’t simply selling another brand of snake oil in a different coloured bottle.

The real problem of innumeracy

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Despite deploying his very best efforts, even Rishi Sunak can’t be completely wrong about everything all the time, and this week he managed to get one thing at least half right in identifying that innumeracy among school leavers is a problem. His ‘solution’ (compulsory maths until age 18 for all English pupils), however, tells us rather more about his own tenuous connection with the meaning of numbers than it does about addressing the problem. The curriculum has probably changed since my school days, when taking double maths at A level was a soft option for someone like me who was lucky enough to have a fairly natural grasp of numbers and numerical operations: learning a few principles and formulae and knowing how to apply them was much easier than having to cram a whole load of facts into my head for examination purposes. A level maths was not the same thing as O level maths, however – I remember one maths teacher describing the former as ‘hard sums’ whilst the latter was ‘easy sums’.

It's not entirely clear what Sunak has in mind. I can’t believe that he’s stupid enough to believe it a good idea to put people who haven’t got to grips with ‘easy sums’ through the trauma of trying to learn how to do ‘hard sums’; and Calculus with its differentiation and integration doesn’t immediately strike me as being relevant to the future lives and careers of most pupils. But the alternative is that he’s planning the even stupider approach of forcing those who have failed to master ‘easy sums’ after five years of secondary education through another two years of the same. The logic of adding an extra 40% of input to a process which is clearly failing many pupils is ‘interesting’ to say the least, and demonstrates a lack of understanding of what it is that the low levels of numeracy are actually telling us - as well as a lack of the 'analytical ability' which he claims to be so important.

It's far from being the only example. Yesterday, he and other ministers were keen to tell us that the NHS has all the money it needs to solve its capacity problems. There’s some doubt as to whether that’s actually correct even in purely numerical terms, but let’s give him the benefit of the doubt for a moment at least. If the NHS lacks 10,000 doctors, and employing a doctor costs £80,000 a year, then chucking £800 million into NHS coffers does indeed ‘solve’ the problem. It is, though, rather divorced from the real life question of what that 10,000 represents, and assumes (in the manner of basic economic theory) that there are 10,000 doctors sitting on a shelf somewhere, just waiting for someone to offer them a job. In reality, there is a lengthy lead time involved in recruiting doctors with the right specialisations in the right locations – and an even longer lead time if they need to be trained first. That involves understanding that the 10,000 isn’t just a factor in an equation, it’s a symbolic representation of a serious problem. Such a simplistic mathematical response to the needs of the NHS is made worse when another department of the same government is performing its own mathematical computations to conclude that recruiting trained doctors overseas is ‘cheaper’ than training our own, and yet another department performs its own sums and attempts to reduce the number of overseas migrants.

It's an approach for which Sunak’s ‘financial’ background did much to prepare him. Bankers ‘know’ that if you can reduce the cost of production (X) and increase the productivity rate of staff (Y), the amount of profit flowing into their accounts (Z) will increase. But Z is the only factor which they have any ability to relate to the real world. The impact of job cuts for some and longer hours for others on people, lives and wellbeing – which is what X and Y actually represent – is beyond their comprehension. It’s all just mathematics. That really goes to the heart of Sunak’s category error in talking about levels of innumeracy among school leavers. The bigger problem is not that many do not have the ability to handle numbers well, it’s that some of those who can handle numbers well have lost all conception of what those numbers represent. And by some strange process, these are the people who end up in charge of the government and the economy.

Envisaging an alternative

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There is a spoof newsflash doing the rounds on social media, which claims that Priti Patel is setting up a taskforce to deport any EU lorry drivers who happen to be enticed by the option of temporary work in the UK on 24 December, when they will, according to the government, no longer be required. It’s almost credible; there does seem to be an attitude in government that the problem is not going to be attracting lorry drivers in permanent jobs to come to the UK for lower wages, worse conditions and a very temporary contract, but getting rid of them afterwards. I suppose that, for those who ‘know’ that the UK is the best place in the world, and that everyone everywhere else is desperate to come here, it is ‘obvious’ that getting them to go home on 24 December is far and away the biggest problem. The newsflash is a spoof, but that underlying attitude is very much in evidence, and the inability to understand why this amazing offer from the UK government really is not too good to refuse is the main reason why the scheme seems doomed to fail. And even if it were true, as they seem to believe, that EU lorry drivers will be queuing up (presumably not the ones who remember being on a certain disused runway in Kent last Christmas Eve) to come to the UK and take up the jobs, 5,000 for two months seems unlikely to make much of a dent in a longer term structural shortage of 100,000.

But that underlying attitude of the current government can also be generalised. Many of their policies clearly start from the assumption that ‘workers’ exist solely to meet the needs of ‘the economy’, where ‘the economy’ is a neutral-sounding term which is actually a euphemism for the interests of capital and those who control it. In policy terms, it means that the education system exists only to supply workers with the skills needed by ‘the economy’; the government response to a pandemic is governed first and foremost by a need to protect ‘the economy’ rather than people’s lives; people on benefits are expected to take whatever jobs exist, wherever they may be and regardless of personal preferences or find themselves without any means of support; and foreigners are expected to come here as and when required to fill any gaps and then depart promptly when no longer required. It is a world view which sees people as ‘resources’ and values them solely in terms of their economic usefulness rather than individuals with needs of their own, and which sees government as a means of facilitating that. It is a deeply ideological mindset, based around serving the interests of the few rather than the many.

It’s not the only possible view of the world, though. Imagine an alternative which sees ‘the economy’ as existing to meet the needs of people, education as a means of allowing people to seek knowledge and personal fulfilment, and government as a means of managing the economy towards those ends. The success of capitalist ideology is that so few seem able to envisage that alternative – even the official party of opposition. Much of what has come out of the Labour Party’s conference this week is about trying to put a very slightly kinder edge on the application of the ideology rather than offering any sort of alternative to it. But the truth is that the economic system under which we live is a human construct which doesn’t have to operate as it does. Humans built it, humans control it, and humans can change it. Just not the humans currently in control.

Where is the planning for change?

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Last week, the Tory MP for Monmouth accused those expressing anger over job losses at Airbus of ‘crocodile tears’ and argued that some people have “spent the last few years decrying the airline industry and talking about the climate emergencies and the rest of it… I hope they now realise that this is what they have been calling for”. It was a typically robust performance from a man not exactly known either for his sensitivity to the difficulties of others or for thinking about the consequences of his words. And I suspect that those Tories holding seats in the north of Wales – especially those who only won them a few short months ago – won’t be rushing to thank him for his intervention. But however poorly he expressed himself and however unthinking his comments, he does actually have a point. A reduction in flying will inevitably impact some jobs.

There was another, apparently unrelated, story in the Sunday Times a week ago in which a number of politicians, including Tory Theresa Villiers and Labour’s Andy Burnham, called for staff who have been working at home to return to their offices in city centres because the shops and restaurants there depended on their custom. Never mind that they have shown that they can work effectively at home, never mind that public transport is working well below normal capacity meaning that a return to city centre offices means an increase in the use of private cars with its accompanying congestion and pollution: shops and restaurants depend on their business so people should go back to what they were doing before.

The common theme is that those of us who want to build a different type of economy, one where people travel less and one which is less environmentally damaging and more personally fulfilling cannot legitimately also argue that all existing jobs must also be protected at all costs. A move to a different type of economy, to say nothing of the changes which automation and Artificial Intelligence will bring, necessarily requires some jobs to become redundant, and it is dishonest to pretend otherwise. If we get it right, of course, then they will either be replaced by other jobs and/or we will find other means of sharing out both the work and the rewards for doing it; that is all part of the alternative thinking that is required.

The immediate problem is that some of these changes are being forced upon us at short notice by unplanned circumstances. And part of the reason that’s such a problem is that, prior to the pandemic, governments have given far too little thought to how we manage the necessary changes over a longer period. Even during the pandemic, little thought has been given to whether some of the forced changes (such as more home working) might be beneficially continued for the longer term; the emphasis has all been on ‘returning to normal’. The Welsh government prides itself on some of the legislation it has passed, such as the Future Generations Act, and so it should. However, passing laws is meaningless and pointless unless the government also acts to bring about substantial economic change in a planned fashion, and the simple truth is that there has been little evidence of that happening. Ministers have, instead, used every opportunity to support what is rather than building what should be.

The loss of jobs at Airbus is a tragedy for those involved, their families and local communities, but pretending that the downturn in the aviation industry is something that will last a few short months, and seeking to find ways of maintaining the jobs over that period, is a sticking plaster approach. The combination of Brexit and the almost complete shutdown of aviation as a result of the pandemic have made it obvious for months that there would be a problem for Airbus. Where is the thinking about how those valuable skills can best be employed for the future, where is the thinking about how individuals, families and communities can be protected and supported through a period of change? I don’t really expect to see any of that from a Tory government in London but it’s disappointing, to say the least, that we’re not seeing it from the Welsh government either. Protecting existing jobs is no substitute for planning and managing a transition to a different type of economy.

Exporting a problem isn't the same as 'solving' it

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One of the problems with referendums is that, in reducing complex questions to very simple ones, they can lead to a situation where there may well be a majority for a particular proposition, but the reasons why that majority voted as they did are many and varied (and, of course, the same applies to the other side).  I don’t doubt that immigration and xenophobia were factors in the EU referendum, but even if most of those opposed to immigration voted to leave, it doesn’t follow that all of those who voted for leave are opposed to immigration.  The government, though, has chosen to behave as though they were, and instead of promoting a reasoned debate around immigration and the reasons for it, has opted to try and implement schemes which appear to be aimed at cutting the numbers.  I say ‘appear’; for all their bluster, I don’t think that people like Johnson are actually convinced that immigration is a problem, nor do I entirely believe that the proposed schemes themselves will reduce numbers – they just want to look as though they are doing something to appeal to that particular group of voters. 

It’s not an enormous surprise to be told this week not only that the EU has never prevented the UK from operating a ‘points-based’ system but also that the UK has actually been operating such a system for years.  Saying it out loud got the chair of the Migration Advisory Committee sacked, but hey, ‘taking back control’.  It’s possible, however, that simply making potential migrants think twice before seeking to come to the UK by increasing the number of bureaucratic hoops which need to be jumped through and tanking the economy will act as deterrents, but that isn’t quite the way that the policy is allegedly intended to work – and those things are likely to deter precisely those that the government says that it wants to attract.  Little will deter those who are simply desperate from trying all means.

I start from the position that, in principle, people should be free to travel, live and work wherever they wish and that it’s for governments to justify why that should exceptionally not be allowed.  (However, it’s clear that many others start from the principle that no-one should be allowed that freedom, and that it is for the individuals themselves to justify why they should be excepted.  The result is that many of those who supported Brexit are not just supporting, but actively demanding, the removal of their own rights.)   But support for the principle isn’t the same thing as arguing either for mass migration or for actively going out and seeking inward migrants.  If, given the freedom, people seek to migrate en masse, we should be looking at why that is the case, and the most usual causes are war, famine, persecution, and economic inequality.  It’s strange, but not really surprising, that most of those opposing mass migration also oppose doing anything about those causes.  Real freedom of movement depends on real equality of opportunity, and there is quite a large overlap between opponents of freedom of movement and opponents of equality.

I’m opposed to the way in which the government is seeking to recruit immigrants selectively to come to the UK, which they do for two reasons.  The first is that we need certain skills in larger numbers than we possess them – doctors, nurses, engineers, and so forth.  And the second is that, with an ageing population, we need more young workers to be paying taxes to support the older members of society.  But both of these point to failures of the economic system under which we live, and my real objection to filling the gap by recruiting migrants is nothing to do with the migrants themselves, it is that we are simply exporting the problem, often to countries which are already poorer than ourselves.  Taking the best-educated, the highest-paid, and the most productive in terms of their working age may solve some of our problems – in the short term at least – but it simply makes other countries’ problems worse.  And that is not good world citizenship.  It is, as Simon Jenkins argued this week, not ethical.

A rich economy which cannot develop the skills it needs amongst its own citizens, and which cannot support its own citizens without continued population growth (either from organic growth or from immigration) is an economy built on sand.  It is not sustainable in the long term, and we need to rethink the way we do things rather than seek to move the problem around.  It was disappointing this week to see the Scottish Government arguing for its own visa system, not on the basis of wanting to be fairer and to implement a different approach, but on the basis of addressing the perceived ‘problem’ of the falling Scottish birth rate.  That’s a ‘problem’ that we need more of, not one to be ‘solved’.  In a world where over-population is a serious and growing problem, a country with a low population density and a falling birth rate has major potential advantages – the question is how to adjust the economy to exploit that opportunity, not see it as a 'problem' to be fixed by moving it somewhere else.

Only part way there

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The Deputy Economy Minister has come in for a great deal of criticism by opposition parties for saying that the Welsh Government has only ‘pretended’ to know what it was doing on the economy, whilst also pointing out that its actions have actually made little difference.  I thought that it was, actually, refreshingly honest; my criticism would be aimed less at the fact that he’s come clean about the situation now than at the fact that he really doesn’t seem to be proposing much by way of an alternative.  Whilst Labour only pretend to know what they are doing, other parties (such as the Conservatives, here) only pretend that they have an alternative – and two of the opposition parties (Plaid and the Lib Dems) have been in coalition with Labour during the period concerned without making any noticeable difference.

Now I understand, of course, why governments want to take the credit for economic success when things are going well; and the problem isn’t unique to Wales - we see exactly the same phenomenon at UK level.  All governments claim to be succeeding when things are going well and try to blame factors outside their control when things are going badly.  And all oppositions claim that it’s the government’s fault when things are going badly and the result of outside factors when things are going well.  Economic well-being is so central to the interests of the population at large that parties want to be able to offer to improve it at election time.

But what if the truth is that the government really doesn’t have that much influence on the success or otherwise of the economy?  I don’t just mean, in the context of the Welsh Government specifically, that it doesn’t have the full range of economic powers available at UK level; I mean, more generally, what if government policy is actually only a minor influence on what happens in a global capitalist economy?  Politics might make it difficult for parties to admit that such might be the case, but an unwillingness to admit it isn’t the same as it not being true.  And if it is true, as I believe it to be, then the point which Lee Waters was making has much wider implications.  I don’t think that’s the conclusion he has reached, sadly; his talk about ‘trying a different approach’ suggests that, like the other parties in teh Assembly, he sees it as a simple question of looking for an alternative policy within what are in reality self-imposed constraints.

‘The economy’ is a human construct; it does not exist independently of human action.  The questions we need to be asking are about who controls the levers of that economy and in whose interests it operates.  There’s nothing natural or inevitable about the fact that real control lies with multi-national capitalists and not with governments, nor in the fact that it operates in the interests of a minority rather than the majority.  Collectively, even if unwittingly and unthinkingly, humanity has outsourced the control and management of wealth and economic success to a minority who control and manage it in their own interests and who have created an ideology around that which leads to a belief that it is a natural and unchallengeable state of affairs.  I don’t get the impression that either the Economy Minister or his detractors have even begun to get their heads around the scale of that challenge.

Spend and tax, not tax and spend

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At first sight, it sounded on Monday as though the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Prime Minister were directly contradicting each other.  The former was saying that a ‘no-deal’ Brexit could mean effectively tearing up his budget and starting again, whilst the latter said all the spending commitments in the budget would be fully protected, despite the certainty that Brexit will, overall, reduce government income, especially if it’s of the ‘no-deal’ variety.  But they’re not really in conflict at all – protecting the spending commitments in the light of changed circumstances merely means that they must be funded in different ways.  The total of the spending commitments, in itself, hardly represents a radical departure from previous policy; more fiddling at the fringes.  But the real news here, for me, was that the promise that the spending commitments will be honoured come what may is an open admission that the basis on which they’ve been telling us that public finances work is the big lie that many of us have long believed.

It is fundamental to much of what they have been saying that the government can only spend what it either raises in tax or is prepared to borrow; that the government’s income, in effect, determines what it can spend.  What the Prime Minister’s statement this week says is that the reality is exactly the opposite; the government can start by deciding what it wants to spend, and then decide later – even if circumstances change totally – how that will be financed.  Not so much ‘tax and spend’ as ‘spend and tax’.  It recognises the key fact that the government always spends money before it receives it back in taxes.  Effectively it creates money when it spends and cancels it when it collects taxes; any difference between revenue and expenditure represents either an increase in the amount of money in the economy or else is funded by ‘borrowing’ (or ‘saving’ as those of us who lend our money to the government through pensions etc prefer to call it).  If it weren’t so, where does the money to pay tax come from?

They’ve known this all along, of course, but have preferred to pretend otherwise for ideological reasons.  Pretending that they can only spend what they first collect in taxes is their excuse for not spending, justifying their desire to reduce the size of the state sector.  I think it’s good news that they’re recognising that the truth is rather different.  It would be a good thing if the opposition parties did likewise and dropped their own commitments to austerity.  The way things are going, the Labour Party is in danger of being caught out being more supportive of the ‘tax first’ mantra than the Tories, with their obsession with demonstrating how they will pay for their commitments and their demand that others do likewise.

Sharing the benefits

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It’s more than 60 years since Parkinson came up with his famous law that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion".  I’m not sure that it’s ever been scientifically ‘proven’, but for most of us it seems to have a ring of truth about it in many workplaces, in offices at least.  The underlying problem that it highlights is the difficulty in measuring the productivity of many activities.  In essence, productivity is simply output divided by input, and in a widget factory it’s fairly easy to measure both and thus assess productivity – it’s simply the number of widgets produced divided by person hours to produce them.  (In passing, it’s worth noting that that isn’t quite the way in which overall productivity of the economy is calculated, but that’s for another day.) 

In an office environment, however, measuring ‘output’ is a great deal harder to do, which is why many lazy employers don’t even try.  Instead, they put their efforts into managing the input side of the equation: controlling the hours put in by employees, managing sickness absence, dealing with a lack of punctuality.  There’s an underlying and unstated assumption that if they can maximise and control the input then the output will take care of itself.  It’s an invalid assumption, and in some cases over-controlling the input side of the equation leads to a disempowered, or even demotivated, workforce which feels, rightly, that management don’t trust them to get on with the job; and the probable impact of that on output (and thus productivity) is more likely to be negative than positive.

That’s something of the context within which the TUC this week called for a move towards a four-day week rather than a five-day one.  The BBC report tells the story of one company which switched to four-day working and found that they were achieving as much as they had before.  From simple observation over the years, I suspect that would be true of many workplaces.  ‘Presenteeism’ is a growing problem, and the number of employees who believe that they should be seen to turn up before the boss and not leave until after (s)he has gone home is far too prevalent.  It leads to some people working long hours involving what is often unpaid overtime, but I’m not at all convinced that it adds anything to output.  Instead, the Pareto Principle applies: staff achieve 80% of their overall impact in 20% of the available time; the remaining 80% of their time is taken up by often trivial activities having little overall impact.  Presenteeism merely adds to the time used for not particularly productive activity.

It’s not clear yet to what extent automation will replace much of the routine work undertaken by staff in offices.  Again, it’s easier to see the impact of automation in a widget factory.  I suspect, however, that most people are underestimating the extent to which technology will be able to replace much of the work currently done, as well as underestimating the rate at which that change will be upon us.  The TUC talk about sharing the benefits of technology with the workforce; reducing the length of the working week is one way of doing that.  It strikes me, though, as a wholly inadequate response to the impending changes which technology will bring.  The challenge is not just about sharing the benefits in the workplace, it’s about sharing those benefits more widely across society.  I suppose it’s close to inevitable that an organisation composed of the representatives of working people will be prioritising the interests of those working people; but there are a lot of people in society who aren’t in that category who will also be affected.  And that number is likely to grow.

Some politicians talk about automation as though it’s similar to changes of the past, as a result of which many jobs disappeared but were replaced by new jobs and new types of jobs which hadn’t even been imagined previously.  They may be right, and if they are I may be worrying unduly.  I have a feeling however that the change we are now facing is of a different nature – even if new types of organisation supplying new types of services emerge, the potential is there for many of them to be automated too.  In theory, those who own the machines can produce goods and services with little dependence on employees, and the benefits of automation accrue to the machine owners.

Things aren’t quite that simple, however, and the advance of technology highlights the underlying problem with the capitalist economic model.  For those organisations adopting the technology first and moving away from dependence on human employees there are potentially huge advantages.  But if everyone does it, and there are no employees left, who has the money to buy the goods and services?  What looks good for an individual capitalist simply doesn’t work when applied to the economy as a whole.  That has always been the flaw in the model but continued economic growth has disguised it.  I paint an extreme picture to make a point, but unchecked automation with all the benefits flowing to the automators ultimately fails.  The TUC are right to argue that the benefits of automation should be shared more widely; if anything, their proposals strike me as being rather timid.  What they are suggesting is in the interests of the capitalists as well as the workers, but I don’t expect the capitalists to recognise that just yet.  There is a wider political question as well – what are politicians going to do to ensure that the benefits are shared rather than accruing to one group alone in the short term?  Merely assuming that there will be new jobs to replace the old looks is not just complacent - it’s more a dereliction of duty.

Blaming the 'marginalised'

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The offensiveness and insensitivity of the remarks made by the Chancellor to the Treasury Select Committee yesterday mean that an important point about the way in which productivity is measured and its importance to the economy is in danger of being lost in a barrage of wholly justified criticism of Hammond’s choice of words.  Describing the disabled as a marginal group in society was an open invitation for the attacks to concentrate on the man rather than the message.

Productivity is a simple enough concept at the level of any individual enterprise – it’s a mathematical calculation of output divided by input, or in practice the value of the goods or services produced divided by the number of hours worked by employees to produce that output.  That doesn’t necessarily match what many might think of though.  Certainly it means that ‘productivity’ can be increased if the same output can be produced with half the workforce; but it also means that ‘productivity’ can be increased by simply upping the price of the product, as long as the labour costs remain the same.  But does that really mean (in terms that most of us can relate to) that the workers have suddenly become more productive?

Using the same measure scaled up for the economy as a whole brings other problems.  Dividing the GDP of the UK by the number of hours worked by all employees of all organisations certainly provides a ready measure of something, and if all countries are measured in the same way, it provides a handy basis for comparison.  But it does also mean that an economy which adds lots of jobs at low pay rates for small increases in overall GDP will appear to be losing productivity compared to other economies which do not follow that path.  It doesn’t matter that the overall GDP of the country has increased, whether measured in absolute terms or in terms of GDP per head. 

On this measure, it doesn’t matter that there are more people in work and fewer on benefits; a measure of productivity per hour worked will react in the ‘wrong’ way to an increase in employment in jobs which only add marginally to overall GDP.  Note that – and this is why the Chancellor was so wrong in the way he made his remarks – it doesn’t matter who the people doing those jobs are; it’s not that the people doing the work are in marginal groups, it’s the low-paid low-output nature of the jobs which are being created which is the problem. 

More important still is how we respond to the situation.  If productivity as currently measured is the prime driver, then it could actually be improved by closing down marginal enterprises, and cutting the numbers employed in the less marginal enterprises.  Total GDP would fall, and GDP per head in the economy would fall, but ‘productivity’ would apparently increase.  That merely underlines the fact that ‘productivity’ as currently measured is a poor tool for judging overall economic success.  None of that means that the low level of productivity in the UK economy compared to others isn’t a problem.  It means, rather, that we need to look at what else can be done to improve the situation, rather than blaming marginal groups or even marginal enterprises.  It's a question about what sort of economy we want.

We could start by looking at the performance of those companies which are sitting on large sums of cash rather then investing them.  I’m sure that some of them would argue that the uncertainty caused by Brexit is a reason to hold back on investment.  They’d be right up to a point – but this is a phenomenon which long preceded Brexit.  It’s a failure of capitalism to serve the needs of the community as a whole rather than the greed of the few.  But it’s much easier for a Tory Chancellor to blame those he regards as ‘marginal’ than to look a lot closer to home.

It's not just about economics

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On Friday, the Western Mail’s leader column pronounced in large bold letters that “Brexit must not hit our country's poor”.  As a statement of what most of us would hope for, it’s hard to argue with that.  But how widely held is that view in reality?

As part of the argument in support of its position, the opinion column went on to say “Regardless of how anyone voted in the referendum, nobody will want Wales to fall off an economic cliff in 2019 when the UK leaves the EU.”  I’m far from certain that that is a true or accurate statement.  I have the impression that a quick and total break is exactly what many want and thought they were voting for.  And it was, I thought, perfectly clear during the referendum itself that many of those arguing for Brexit wanted exactly that outcome, believing, in effect, that the ultimate gain from Brexit was worth the pain involved.  That may not have been – indeed was not - what they actually said, but there was enough information to the contrary available for people to understand the likely outcome.  But – as we all do, in our own ways – people chose to believe the ‘facts’ which supported their own predispositions in a classic real-world illustration of confirmation bias.

And from reports I’ve seen on opinion surveys since the vote, including those where respondents have said that the ‘benefits’ of Brexit are so great that they’d be prepared to see relatives thrown out of work in order to realise them, I’m not sure that opinions have changed very much.  Whether I like it or not, I cannot escape the fact that the majority of those who voted in Wales supported Brexit, nor the conclusion that by doing so they voted in favour (in the short term at least) of damaging the economy of Wales, in favour of ending the regional assistance from which Wales has benefited, and in favour of making themselves and the rest of us poorer.  The reasons for doing that are varied: perhaps a belief that ‘taking back control’, or reducing immigration were valuable ends in themselves, or perhaps in the belief that short term pain would lead to long term gain.  Whatever the reasons, they voted for leaving the EU with all its consequences, and much of what the Western Mail and Wales’ politicians seem to have been saying since amounts to an attempt to remain a member for as long as possible, but call it something different.

The desire for Brexit was never primarily an economic one; those making the case always knew that there would be an economic hit as a result.  It wouldn’t fall on the leading Brexiteers, of course; it was always going to be the poorer families, nations, and regions which would suffer.  In the same way, my own wish to remain was never primarily an economic one either; it was about Wales’ place in the world and how best to get there.  There are economic consequences, of course; there will be winners and losers, but over the long term, the economy will adapt – it’s what economies do.  Whether it will recover to the extent that it makes no difference over the very long term is an open question to which we can never really know the answer, since we only get to live through events once.  It’s a wholly unnecessary and self-inflicted pain in the interim but sadly it’s what people voted for, no matter how much the Western Mail and others may try to argue otherwise.

The real problem that I have with all the arguments about mitigating the effect and seeking a way through the mess which causes as little damage as possible is that they’re not tackling the underlying problem, and may be in danger of confirming rather than challenging the views of those who supported Brexit.  What was lacking at the time of the referendum – and is still lacking from our nation’s ‘leaders’ – was any attempt to make a positive argument for the European integration which brought the trade and economic benefits rather than a simplistic negative argument against losing those benefits.  Those who built the EU’s structures – just like those who argued for Brexit – never did so for primarily economic reasons.  It was always about a vision for the future of Europe.  There are flaws in the way that they have attempted to realise that vision, but that doesn’t detract from the fact that they had one.

Underlying the whole debate about Brexit and its consequences is a major gulf between differing views about what sort of Europe we want to see and what our role in it should be, whether as Wales or as the UK.  Treating it as solely an economic issue and concentrating the debate on mitigating the economic effects is ignoring that clash of world views.  It does no more to change the world view of those supporting Brexit than repeatedly telling them that they were duped and misled (even if that happens to be true).  But it is on the underlying conceptions of the world and the role of Wales and the UK in it that the debate needs to be centred if there is to be any chance of a change of attitude.  Changing course for solely economic reasons will only reinforce the belief that we are somehow being ‘dominated and bullied’ by ‘Brussels’ into doing what 'they' want.