Forgetting who did what

Tweet I’ve long nursed a healthy dislike for the Taxpayers’ Alliance and all their works.  The very name suggests that they are somehow a cuddly little organisation looking after the best interests of all those who pay tax – which is most of us.  But they are not; they are an ideological campaign against the public sector, and for the interests of the wealthiest few.

There’s been plenty of evidence of that in the past, but yesterday’s report on their meeting at the Tories’ conference was a gem even for them.  They don’t just think what is unthinkable to most people – they say it out loud.  They’ve called on the government to cut pensions now, and not to worry too much about the fall-out because many of the pensioners will have died off before the next election so can’t retaliate at the ballot box.  (And they didn’t add this bit, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were thinking it – the more the government cuts benefits for the elderly, the more of them will conveniently die off before they can vote.)

Mind you, there was one thing that he said that I can’t help but agree with.  Those who survive to vote in 2020 may well have forgotten by then which party cut their benefits – not because of age or feeble-mindedness, but because Labour and the Tories have been so similar for so long that it's become credible that anything done by one could have been done by the other.

My heart bleeds for the lawyers

Tweet The Secretary of State set out in some detail last week his reasons for pessimism about achieving agreement on the proposed Wales Bill.  No surprise at all that the fault for this is being placed squarely on the Labour Party’s reluctance to submissively sign up to exactly what the Tories offer rather than on any reluctance by his own government to negotiate seriously, or even honour the promises that they’ve made before.

His real objection to establishing a legal jurisdiction for Wales is probably based on his previous statements that he will do nothing which might conceivable make it easier for Wales to become independent, at some distant future point, if Wales ever had a political party arguing for such a step to be taken. 

But one of the reasons he gives is even sillier – it seems to boil down to a few lawyers from Wales who’ve had a successful career in London feeling that lawyers might not do so well for themselves working solely in Wales.  I suspect that it is probably true – but I also suspect that the career prospects for lawyers are not the top reason which many people would put forward as a basis for deciding how Wales should be run.

Mixing the missions

Tweet Jeremy Corbyn's mission to Scotland to try and recover his party's position there, coupled with the enthusiasm of so many of his party's MPs for possessing and being willing to use weapons of mass destruction must surely raise an interesting conundrum for him.  On the one hand, he wants Labour to defeat the SNP in Scotland, and on the other he wants rid of Trident.  But paradoxically, achieving the first of those makes it considerably less likely that he can ever achieve the second.

Given the statements he's been making in Scotland, and the extent to which he's already been equivocating over Trident to appease his MPs, it seems to be increasingly clear which way he'll jump.  A victory for Labour is more important to him than getting rid of nuclear weapons.  Sadly, but not unexpectedly, he'll turn out to be less different from his predecessors than many have been assuming.  Too many people are being taken in by his rhetoric - when push comes to shove, it will always be party over principle.

Attacking the wrong target

Tweet Jeremy Corbyn seems to have upset some of his shadow cabinet colleagues by saying openly and honestly that, if he were Prime Minister, he would not authorise the use of nuclear weapons.  Both Labour and Tory MPs - ably aided and abetted by the BBC who seem to have swallowed their argument hook, line, and sinker - have jumped on his words as an indication that the result will somehow be to weaken the UK’s defences.  The whole point of a ‘deterrent’, they argue, is that the unspecified ‘enemies’ out there have to believe that they would be used, otherwise they’re useless.

Some of us think such weapons are useless anyway.  It’s impossible to conceive of a situation where any rational person would authorise their use.  (But perhaps that’s my problem - expecting rationality in a politician?)  Possession seems to be more about being one of the big boys in the school yard than anything else – but it’s an awfully expensive way of getting one of the biggest sticks.

Seriously, even if Corbyn had answered the question in any different way, would he have been credible?  Labour’s warmongers seem to want him to say something like, “I’ve campaigned against nuclear weapons all my life, I believe that the use or possession of such weapons is morally indefensible, but of course, if I were Prime Minister, I’d be willing to use them”? 

One has only to ask the question to see the flaw in the argument that he could or should have answered other than as he did.  He would not have been in the least bit credible.

What would be far more useful and meaningful would be to ask all those who are now criticising him to explain, or to give one hypothetical example, how and when they would be willing to authorise the mass slaughter of hundreds of thousands of civilians in some distant cities.  I’m sure that they’d all respond by saying something along the lines of ‘not wanting to let the enemy know in advance what he could or could not get away with’.  But the fact that they’d all say that there are circumstances in which they would be willing to use such weapons tells us all we need to know about their moral compasses.

Corbyn isn’t the one who needs to defend his stance.

They just keep on digging

Tweet There’s a detailed analysis of the results of the election in Catalunya on Syniadau.  In essence the parties in favour of UDI won a majority of the seats but not of the votes; although if the votes of the pro-independence but anti-UDI parties are added in, there’s a small but clear pro-independence majority, even if there remains disagreement as to how it should be achieved.

The reaction of the Spanish central government has been disappointing, even if hardly unexpected – Spain is an indivisible whole and no change can ever be contemplated.  Formally, the judiciary and the executive in Spain are entirely separate, and the government deny any involvement in judicial decisions, but the announcement that the leader of the Catalan Government, Artur Mas, is to be charged and tried for organising last November’s ‘illegal’ referendum has come within days of the election results.  It may just be coincidence, but it doesn’t look that way.

The Spanish government’s position has been clear throughout.  The law about the unity of Spain (which dates from the days of Franco) is part of the constitution of Spain.  It is unchallengeable and irrevocable.  There can be no referendum on independence, nor can parties use an election victory on an independence platform to claim a mandate.  All routes forward are blocked, legally and for ever.

There are echoes there, albeit centuries later, of the way a small country much closer to home was incorporated “henceforth and for ever” into its larger neighbour; and the same problems arise.  Nothing, in the context of humanity, can ever be ‘for ever’; change is an essential element of human culture.  The rich and the powerful have always pretended that they can fix things in a certain way and keep them like that in perpetuity – but they simply can’t.  It’s an attitude which depends, ultimately, on the fiction that power belongs to the centre, not to the people.

In Spain, the view of the centre is based on an axiomatic statement that Spain is a nation and Catalonia is a region of that nation – a region with its own language and history, to be sure, but no more than a region nevertheless.  From that perspective, Catalans who believe otherwise are simply wrong.  But the fact that that that would still be ‘true’, even if every last one of them voted for pro-independence parties, underlines that such a position is ultimately unsustainable in a modern democracy, because there is no way of maintaining it against the will of the people other than by the use of force.

In the short term, I don’t doubt that the Spanish government will continue to use all the legal powers it can muster to resist and disrupt the independence movement.  That includes the use of criminal proceedings against people who dare to take a different view and try to pursue their objectives in a peaceful and democratic fashion.  But it’s ultimately counter-productive.  Winning a court case here or there might look like a victory at the time, but it simply builds the momentum for the change which now seems to be inevitable.

Could a more enlightened approach have built a negotiated settlement which led to more autonomy within a continued Spanish state?  Possibly.  Just as including a third option on the ballot paper in Scotland might have seriously blunted the independence movement there.  But that goes to the heart of the reason why the centralists will ultimately fail.  They only seem capable of taking a short term view.  Today’s victory is always enough, and they’ll worry about tomorrow’s battle when it comes.  The Catalans have always been playing a much longer term game.  And the end game is now approaching.

How long is long enough?

Tweet One of the leaders of the Conservatives in Wales has told us this week that five years is too long a term for the National Assembly.  But Andrew Davies hasn’t, as far as I can see, enlightened us as to how long the term should be.  Perhaps he hasn’t made his mind up on that one yet.  Or perhaps Stephen Crabb simply hasn’t told him the right answer yet.

It’s true, of course, that the extension from the previous norm of 4 years to the new one of 5 was more accidental than intentional, as an unthought-through consequence of the decision (by his own party) to move to fixed term parliaments for the UK, and the perceived need to avoid holding elections on the same date.  He’s not arguing with that decision, it appears, even though the effect of a move to a fixed term at Westminster has probably increased the average length of a Westminster parliament from around 4 to 5.  And he doesn’t seem to be arguing that the elections should, after all, be held on the same day.

I wouldn’t object to a shorter term, as it happens.  After all, from what I remember of history, ‘annual parliaments’ was a core demand of the Chartists.  Now that would be a neat way of keeping them on their toes, and getting rid of some of them a bit more rapidly.  It’s an entirely honorable demand to make – but something tells me that it isn’t what he means.

My real questions are:

(a)  how do we decide how long the term should be – he’s come up with a negative with no real justification to back it up and no argument for any alternative; and

(b)  why, if the issue is relevant for the Assembly, it isn’t also relevant for the Westminster and European parliaments.  What’s the difference?

It would be nice to be able to believe that he and his party see the Assembly as being the most important level of government; so important that we need to vote on its membership more often.  I rather suspect, though, that he’s coming at it from the opposite perspective.

Supporting British jobs

Tweet There seem to be few people in Wales supporting the construction of the HS2 rail link, most of them preferring to argue that Wales should have its share of the money and use it for other purposes.  I disagree – not because I expect Wales to get any benefit from HS2 itself, but because, unless we are going to prevent people from travelling at all, the alternative to better and faster rail links is more runways and aeroplanes.  So I’d prefer to see Wales making the case for HS4 (we’ve already missed the boat for HS3 which is likely to serve Scotland) so that we become part of the high speed network rather than whinging on the side-lines.  And the only way that HS3 and HS4 will happen if they are treated as part of a UK network rather than seeing the three projects as entirely self-contained.

Where I find myself more in line with mainstream opinion in Wales is with the idea that infrastructure projects (of which HS2 is one) are a good way of boosting a flagging economy, and that investing in them can create economic growth and jobs, as well as boosting skills and knowledge in the economy.  It was in that context that I was astounded to see that on his trade mission to China, the Chancellor has urged Chinese firms to bid for construction contracts on the project.

‘Scope creep’ is one of those things which can all too easily happen on any project, but for it to lead to the mission becoming the opposite of the original intention is a rare achievement.  Osborne went to China to drum up business for British companies, with the stated aim of China becoming the second biggest customer for British companies.  There is currently a significant gap between the level of the UK's exports to China (at around £16.7 billion), and imports from China (t around £37.6 billion) - see Figure 2 here, so his aim of increasing UK exports to China is a wholly reasonable one.   But, instead of that, he’s ended up trying to drum up business for Chinese companies in the UK.  Even if the Chinese companies would employ local workers to carry out the work, the profits (and the tax on them) would still end up being syphoned out the UK economy rather than reinvested here.

It’s another take on being ‘business-friendly’ I suppose – it’s just other countries’ businesses that he’s supporting.

All power to the Crabbs

Tweet The report published yesterday by Richard Wyn Jones and Alan Trench on the content of the new Wales Bill was damning.  An exercise which started out with the stated intention of clarifying and improving the devolution settlement in Wales, and moving to a situation which would be more workable than the present one, looks likely to turn out achieving almost exactly the opposite – adding to the confusion and even potentially rolling back devolution in some areas.

But perhaps the key word in the above paragraph is ‘stated’; sadly, it’s not always the case that the purpose stated explicitly by a minister is actually the real reason for the action proposed.  In what looked almost like a throwaway remark in response to the report – in the very last line of the Western Mail’s coverage of the news – was this sentence from a ‘Welsh Office spokeswoman’: “The Secretary of State has made clear that under no circumstances will he publish legislation that creates a pathway to independence”.  It clearly suggests that the real motivation here has less to do with the effective working of the devolution arrangements than it is with the fear of longer term aspirations, and the need to prevent their realisation.

‘Preventing any move towards independence at all costs’ is, of course, an entirely valid position for a die-hard unionist like Stephen Crabb to take.  And personally, I welcome the fact that he’s trying to achieve his aim in this fashion – not because I agree with his aim, but because I find it harder to think of a more cack-handed way of trying to achieve it.  With unionists like this, who needs nationalists?

It confuses process and structure with aspiration, and assumes that aspiration can be killed off by simply ensuring that the process and structure are ‘right’ for maintaining the status quo, and ‘wrong’ for moving away from it.  The parallel which immediately jumped into my mind was with Catalunya, where the Spanish government is trying to depend on laws made by the former dictator to prevent any move towards independence by simply closing all avenues that might lead to it, rather than engaging in an argument about its merits.  The result is that they are indeed making the path difficult but they are increasing the determination of those who want to take it.

And that’s the point, or it would be if there was a serious movement for independence in Wales.  Those who want to counter moves towards independence need to address the aspiration; they need to convince people that it’s the wrong thing for their country.  Simply trying to ensure that it remains unachievable in practice is ultimately counter-productive; it’s the battle of ideas that needs to be won, not the battle of structures.

Following this approach is even worse from his standpoint – because he’s actually winning that battle of ideas at present (even if that’s largely because the case for the other side isn’t being made).  He doesn’t need to keep banging on about preventing independence, because so few are arguing for it.  Being driven by a need to prevent something that so few of us are asking for merely puts that thing on the agenda in a way that its alleged proponents are failing to do.

So – all power to his elbow.  Let’s have more like him.

Frogs and princes

Tweet As a follow-on from yesterday’s comment about governments and business-friendliness, there’s another aspect about the way in which governments help businesses which means that they don’t always do the right thing.  Government ministers absolutely adore a good photo op, and it it’s associated with ‘creating jobs’ (or at a push merely ‘saving jobs’), so much the better.

As a result, much of the state aid to industry goes to larger companies with lots of employees: the bigger the better is almost the case, since more jobs can be ‘saved’ that way and the photo ops are better too.  But the biggest companies are often also the most ‘successful’ in terms of output and turnover, and therefore the ones which could probably most easily obtain additional funding on commercial terms.

Governments are also afraid of being associated with ‘failure’ – here in Wales, for instance, the opposition parties (the Tories in particular are guilty –“With almost a company a week shedding jobs – after previously obtaining a business grant – Labour ministers have clear questions to answer”, although not exclusively) are quick enough to criticise the government when any company which has received government funding goes belly-up.  This can lead to a degree of caution when providing aid to smaller, less well-established companies – which are often the ones which would struggle to obtain commercial finance.

But here’s the thing – anyone involved in start-ups and innovative products knows only too well that failure is frequently the result.  Governments have to be willing to kiss an awful lot of frogs before they find a handsome prince, and oppositions will seek the headlines every time a frog fails to turn into a prince.  Doing the investing at arm’s length, through an executive agency or a government-sponsored investment bank doesn’t get them off the hook either; the opposition parties will still blame the government of the day for exercising inadequate controls.

Is there a way out, which allows government to take more risks in the hope that the rewards of the few successes will more than make up for the failures?  I suspect that the answer is “not without more mature politics”, where parties stop trying to pretend to be business-friendly and do more to understand the way investment in businesses actually works.  That doesn’t mean not applying proper scrutiny to ensure that the decisions being taken are sensible and aligned with a transparent strategy, but it does mean not assuming that the strategy is failing just because many companies turn out to be frogs.  It means judging governments not on the individual decisions being made, but on the overall success of the programme.  I won’t hold my breath.  Headlines are too easy to come by.

Are businesses really business-friendly?

Tweet Politicians and parties often try to out-do each other as to which can be the most business-friendly.  And each party criticises the others for not being sufficiently business-friendly.  I wonder, though, what they mean, because there is a huge, and not generally understood, difference between being friendly to business in the generic sense and being friendly to existing businesses in the specific.

What I mean by that is that businesses, once established, will always seek to ensure that the environment in which they operate is the one which is most favourable to their interests.  Whether that be in terms of tax breaks, employment legislation, health and safety or environmental protection, they will lobby for the regime which most protects their interests.  And most politicians seem to see being business-friendly as doing what these lobbyists request and gaining their support and endorsement (and potentially, funding for themselves?).

But ‘business’ in the generic goes much wider than that.  It is an essential element of the capitalist system that some businesses will fail.  Creative destruction of some businesses as a result of innovation and change is one of the essential economic drivers.  Preserving ‘what-is’ in aspic, and supporting the continuation of existing businesses in the face of new challenges is potentially inimical to the interests of ‘business’ more generally.  The only reason that this isn’t a great deal more obvious is because economic (and political) power is wielded by existing businesses; those which haven’t even been imagined yet are, by definition, powerless and unable to lobby.

Sometimes, it may well be that those things which existing businesses lobby for would also benefit the businesses of the future; but that’s more by accident than design.  They’re really only pursuing their own narrow interests, even if they try and make it sound otherwise.  In that sense, even existing businesses themselves aren’t always business-friendly in the more generic sense.

Am I saying that business isn’t important?  Of course not; under the current economic system, it’s an essential driver of employment and economic activity.  But what I am arguing is that creating a climate which fosters that is not at all the same thing as assisting current businesses to carry on doing what they’re doing – assistance which may even, at times, prevent or delay innovation and change.  Yet that's often what politicians mean when they talk about supporting business.  In truth, their claims need to be scrutinised a lot more closely to understand whether that simply means that they’re supporting existing vested interests.