Dear Subscribers,
A leaked draft of the EU Commission’s “Competitiveness Compass” — a pet project of President Ursula Von der Leyen — has revealed plans for greater concentration of power in Brussels under the guise of ‘cutting red tape’. It calls for closer cooperation between EU institutions and private firms and for the integration of national capital markets through EU-wide regulation.
Ed Miliband has announced that the UK’s stockpile of spent plutonium will be buried under the sea, despite the possibility that it be used for fuel in cutting-edge reactors being built by British firms. The UK’s stockpile is the largest in the world, and has been called “a potential gold mine”. This seems to be the Energy Secretary’s latest attempt to make Britain reliant on intermittent renewables at home and expensive imports from abroad.
Red Ed sinks a “goldmine”.
The Chancellor has said that she is open to joining the Pan Euro-Mediterranean customs framework, saying that it may reduce barriers to exports for British firms. Fears that this would amount to a Brexit reversal are perhaps overblown — the PEM convention is mostly concerned with rules about determining the country-of-origin of goods — but all moves towards European regulatory alignment should be treated with caution.
The CIA has said that it believes the outbreak of Covid-19 was caused by a lab-leak, not by zoonotic transmission. For years, government officials in the US and other western countries ridiculed those who argued that the origins of Covid-19 were non-natural. If we can’t trust public bodies to tell the truth about the most significant global disaster in decades, what can we trust them to tell the truth about?
The Ministry of Defence has signed an 8-year, £9 billion contract with Rolls Royce to maintain and develop the Royal Navy’s submarine fleet. The firm was also commissioned to build a new fleet of nuclear-powered submarines for Australia as part of a defence partnership between the UK, the US, and Australia
The Rolls Royce of submarines
Media
Matt Goodwin on Reform leading the polls
Dominic Adler on the failures of Prevent
Blog
Were The Swiss Framed Or Caged By The EU? By Adrian Hill
Swiss resident and former UK diplomat in Berne, Adrian Hill, summarises the state of Swill public opinion on the recently concluded trade agreement between Switzerland and the UK.
The majority see the EU as a bureaucratic monstrosity that is denying Switzerland its right to have a say in how Europe is ruled and day to day managed. Respondent statements include: the EU is a bureaucratic juggernaut, it is not in a position to respond properly to the world’s major challenges and it is undemocratic.
Key Points
In Davos, Rachel Reeves said that Britain was being held back by overly burdensome regulation and could take inspiration from the Trump administration to promote economic growth. The Chancellor is absolutely right, but one can’t help but wonder whether she really believes it. With a huge majority in Parliament, the Labour government could have spent the last 6 months ‘going for growth’ by repealing whichever regulations it pleases. Instead, the government’s legislative agenda reveals its technocratic tendencies.
Take, for example, the government’s flagship Employment Rights Bill, which governs the interactions between the businesses Reeves wants to drive growth and those who work for them. The bill will effectively put an end to flexible, ‘zero-hours’ contracts, and entitle new employees to sick leave and family leave from their first day at work. A new agency, the ‘Fair Work Agency’ will enforce the new rules and monitor probation periods so that businesses comply with the government’s preferred rubric for new hires. These are just the kind of regulations which will prevent businesses from hiring more employees, putting a dampener on economic growth.
Or take the Renters’ Rights Bill currently going through Parliament. Once passed, private residential rented property will have to comply with the “Decent Homes Standard” enforced through new powers given to local authorities while tenancy disagreements will be overseen by a new Private Rented Sector Landlord Ombudsman. Meanwhile, negotiations over tenancies and the tenancy agreements will have to comply with new regulations. The Bill is almost guaranteed to discourage investment in residential property, at a time when the government acknowledges that there is a housing shortage.
The Chancellor might talk the talk on deregulation, but she and her party show no signs of wanting to walk the walk. The government’s legislative agenda is full of new rules and new agencies to enforce them. Nowhere to be seen are the pro-growth impulses that she touts on the international stage.
