Speculation is growing about what will be in Rachel Reeves’ first budget as Chancellor. Tax rises seem inevitable, but it remains to see their scale and on whom they will fall. Ministers have reportedly written to the Chancellor in opposition to proposed budget cuts. The Labour Party came to power promising growth. If they put up taxes on businesses to splurge on the public sector, we will know that those promises are easily set aside.
The Foreign Secretary was in China this week, advocating a ‘stable, consistent and pragmatic’ approach to China. Some have seen the visit as a disappointing display of obsequiousness, but there is nothing wrong with talking to unfriendly nations so long as the government is alive to the threat that China poses.
Friends or foes?
North Korean troops are reportedly fighting for Russia in Ukraine. The Ukrainian government has called this ‘a huge escalation’. It is a sign that Putin is starting to run low on the human resources he needs to keep fighting. He has been reluctant to increase conscription amongst the general population, preferring to rely on convicts in the Wagner Group or mercenaries from Russia’s various ethnic minorities.
The government has said it plans to appeal a decision by a court in Belfast which says that legislation granting conditional amnesties from prosecution to ex-soldiers is incompatible with the ECHR. The legislation was intended to draw a line under historic prosecutions of soldiers who served during the Troubles, and would match the amnesty offered to Republican paramilitaries as part of the Good Friday Agreement.
The government was forced to deny reports that it was considering introducing a separate visa system for immigrants to Scotland, in an attempt to boost immigration north of the border. One Labour MP said that the Home Secretary is “determined” to introduce such a system, which is an idea first proposed by the SNP. The plans have been widely panned in the media.
No plans for Scottish visas, she says…
Media
Samuel Hughes on how to get Britain building again
- S. Lyons on the danger of copying China
Blog
A more broken India Part 1 by Ashoka Mody
Given the importance of India, and optimistic accounts in the British press of ‘the world’s largest democracy’, a future super-power, a key trading partner and a counterweight to China, BfB feels it important to publish this detailed warning from a leading Indian economist. On current trends, he warns, a social revolution looms.
The India hype, though, will linger, allowing domestic and international elites to deflect attention from real problems. This deflection is a serious moral lapse, but the greater failure lies in the continuation of unmitigated and worsening problems that hype seeks to hide.
Telling lies on Brexit by Catherine McBride and Graham Gudgin
Briefings for Britain has for years combatted the distortions and falsehoods of ‘Project Fear’, often propagated by those who repeatedly accuse the Leave campaign of being based on lies. Shoddy and misleading analyses continue to appear, are propagated by neo-Remainer media, and are seemingly swallowed by the ignorant and gullible, including those who should know better. The latest instalment is a report from Aston University. We have given the University and the authors of the report the opportunity to respond to our criticisms, and have undertaken to publish their response. They have preferred to stay silent. Readers may understand why.
In short, we have a Report that claims improbably that goods trade with the EU would have been hugely greater in the absence of Brexit, based on opaque statistical techniques which are hopelessly flawed. Hunches on why trade in individual commodities has changed overlook important alterations in data collection and classification. The successes of trade in services are omitted. What is really damaging, though, is the way in which the media latched onto this report without troubling to understand its data or methods. Where are the fact-checkers when you need them? Lazy anti-Brexit bias in economic reporting has been a fact of life for years, but rarely as blatantly as this.
Ed Miliband’s energy policies could bring the government down by Robert Lee
Labour’s election campaign promised that promoting economic growth would be its “number one priority”, buttressed by a restoration of political and fiscal stability. As Robert Lee pointed out in his last article, the reality is turning out very differently. Here, he suggests why energy policy could prove the last straw.
Every post-war Labour government has experienced a serious currency crisis on its watch. Since 1945 the Pound has depreciated by about 70% against the US Dollar. Virtually all that depreciation (net of the large cyclical swings of the period) took place while Labour was in office. I fear it is going to happen again. Even a government with a huge parliamentary majority could not survive such a calamity and Mr Miliband will be as culpable as anybody.
Key Points
For the first time in 19 years, Conservative Party members must choose who is to be the leader of the opposition. This fact has so far been overlooked by the leading candidates, who act as though the leadership contest is a preliminary stage of the 2029 general election. The final goal may be a victory in five years’ time, but there is a lot of work to be done in opposition before then, and the Conservative Party will not be well-served by a leader on a perpetual campaign footing.
The primary function of an opposition leader is to scrutinise and criticise the actions of the government. This is not a performance for the public or a vote-winning exercise — nobody will remember a particulary dazzling dispaly at the despatch box at PMQs in five years time. This is an essential preparation for any future government. The Labour party is a socialist party with a vision for society which the Conservative Party (at least purportedly) abhors. Any future Conservative Party needs to know what the current government is doing to make that vision a reality and how it is doing it, so that, once in office, remedial measures can be taken.
As well as working out what they are in opposition against, the leader of the opposition needs to work out what to propose in its place. The Conservative Party is, in terms of ideology, exhausted. It needs some new ideas before it can make a compelling offer for the 2030s. Candidates for the leadership should not pretend that they have all the answers already nor that they know where these answers should come from. Instead, they should show that they have the curiosity, the intellect, and the humility required to go out looking for a new way of doing things.
Neither Jenrick nor Badenoch seem concerned to show that they will be effective leaders of the opposition, instead they seem intent on proving their ability as campaigners. This gives members little to go off when trying to discern who will be better at the job which is actually on offer. Anyone who wants a right-of-centre government in the foreseeable future should hope that whoever does win turns their attention towards opposition before starting to fight the next general election campaign. If they don’t, the the Conservative Party will waste what could otherwise be a valuble 4 years discovering ideas that are fit for the future.
