Where is the strategy to get the British economy growing?
Since 2004, China's economy has grown by 126 percent. India's by 90 percent. Brazil's by almost 40 percent.*
Over that period as a whole, the UK economy has more or less flat lined. The downturn has taken us pretty much to where we were. About the only double digit growth has been in our levels of public debt - which continue to soar.
Is this all an unavoidable consequence of a crisis made in America the banking sector the Eurozone?
Or a result of what happens when you stick to a high tax/spend orthodoxy, keep throwing cheap credit at a problem caused by a glut of the stuff, and don't have any new ideas to set wealth creators free to make wealth?
(* - Measured in national currency GDP terms, in US$ terms the growth is even greater)
Posted on 3 February 2012 by Douglas Carswell
Margaret Hodge MP is right
That is not something I ever expected to write about the uber lefty Chairperson of the Public Accounts Committee.
But in the struggle to ensure democratic oversight of the Whitehall mandarinate, she is spot on.
For years, regardless of which party sat on which side of the Commons chamber, most key public policy decisions have been taken by a remote mandarinate. This cosy clique of erudite, Oxbridge-educated officials ran government - with only a few ministers occasionally able to shift established priorities.
As far as the Whitehall grandees were concerned, squabbling parties competed to provide the different departmental spokesmen. The views of the vast bulk of MPs were irrelevant. Those of the voters that elected them, comprehensively ignored.
From immigration policy, to Europe policy, to endless defence procurement cockups, failure went unchallenged. Discredited orthodoxy – in the Treasury and education department in particular – went unchanged.
Thanks to the internet - and the MPs expense scandal - deferential democracy is dead. People are demanding more accountability over their MPs.
As a consequence, MPs are starting to demand accountability from government. Elected by the whole House, select committee chairmen have taken to asking the mandarinate what it is that they are doing for the rest of us - rather than churning out patsy reports as they used to.
Unsurprisingly, Sir Humphrey doesn't like it. He prefers to hide behind the fiction of accountability via ministers instead.
So, in time honoured Sir Humphrey style, he has briefed a friendly journalist, complaining via Sue Cameron in today's Telegraph.
“That Margaret Hodge is being beastly”, Sir H whines, after Ms H rather wonderfully made one particularly evasive official promise that he was not lying. Having served on the Public Accounts Committee, my sympathies are 100 percent with Margaret Hodge. Even when it was embarrassingly clear that the officials giving evidence in front of us had presided over one hopeless cock up after another, we met only evasion and bull.
The permanent secretaries are, according to the briefing, "outraged" at the way these impertinent elected MP johnnies have taken to asking questions. Some top officials threaten that they might even - shock, horror - "walk out". Good. Off you go.
Today's briefing will only strengthen calls for proper Parliamentary oversight over Whitehall. More and more MPs in all parties are starting to recognise that we need a system of confirmation hearings to make top Whitehall officials answer outward to the people, rather than to one another.
Posted on 2 February 2012 by Douglas Carswell
Facts of the day
£7.5 billion - amount India is spending on new French-built fighter jets
£10 billion – size of latest shortfall in UK defence budget
126 – number of French-built fighter jets India will receive
0 – the number of aircraft able to fly from British aircraft carriers this side of 2019
£2.9 billion – UK aid to India between 2005 - 2009
£120 billion – the amount of extra money UK government will have to borrow this year
23 percent - India's external debt to GDP ratio
476 percent – UK’s external debt to GDP ratio
Discuss.
Posted on 1 February 2012 by Douglas Carswell
View from Westminster
Coming into work this morning, I saw this great mass of journalists and photographers outside the Supreme Court entrance on the other side of Parliament square.
I wonder what judgement is due? What ruling are the guardian council handing down from on high this time?
No doubt it will be in the papers and news bulletins over the next few hours.
Posted on 1 February 2012 by Douglas Carswell
Where did our veto go, Prime Minister?
I'm sitting in the Commons listening to David Cameron explain how the Euro club rules have been changed very significantly - despite the so-called veto.
He said the new arrangements would not be administered by the EU institutions. Turns out they will be. By the government's own admission, they are not satisfied having the European Court adjudicating. The new set of "non-EU" rules will be presided over and administered by EU institutions.
So how did this happen?
I suppose if you;
a) believe that proping up the Euro with British billions is in our interests
b) take the view we must remain in the EU on any terms
c) listen to the advice from the Europhile Whitehall mandarins over and above your elected MPs ....
.... you kind of end up where we are today.
A mess. More or less where every Prime Minister these past forty years has ended up.
Posted on 31 January 2012 by Douglas Carswell
When is a veto not a veto?
In December, we vetoed the other EU member states proposals to draft a new set of treaty rules that would have turned the EU in to the FU – or Fiscal Union. If you want to be part of a Fiscal Union, we said, go make your own separate arrangements by forming a different Euro club, not converting the existing one.
A few weeks later, after the Whitehall mandarins have been left in charge of the small print, we give our tacit support to the creation of a new FU arrangement. In return for our mandarins getting back at the top table not much.
So despite us saying “no” to the rule changes, the rule changes take effect within the club of which we are a part – and without our approval.
It is not only the veto that has been circumvented. What assurances do we have that Euro club cannot now make yet further changes without our approval?
It is not only Greek government bonds that have a credibility issue.
Posted on 30 January 2012 by Douglas Carswell
What happens when you leave Euro deal making to ministers and mandarins
For the past forty years, we have left Europe policy to the politicians.
Just look at the mess they have made of it: a common fisheries policy that has failed to conserve fish. Financial regulation suffocating the City. A large bill to bailout a currency we did not even join. Talk about deregulation that is only ever talk.
Now it appears that vetoes
one month unravel the next.
With ministers and mandarins left in charge, we have lurched from one disastrous Euro deal to the next.
Worse, many of the key decisions that affect our lives are no longer taken by the MPs we elect, but by remote and unaccountable officials in Brussels.
Over 70 percent of our laws now come from the Brussels machine. EU regulations are often drawn up in the interests all kinds of corporate lobby groups - but rarely ever in the interests of the British voter.
It is time for the people to take back control. We must stand up and demand that the political class give us the EU referendum that all three parties promised us before the last election.
Today the People’s Pledge are launching the biggest ever all-party ground campaign to give us back control of our country.
Already the People’s Pledge has almost 100,000 committed supporters. Whatever your politics, log on to http://www.peoplespledge.org/ now and join our campaign to ensure that those we elect, not the Whitehall mandarins nor the failed Euro elite, decide what is best for Britain.
Over the years, many MPs from all parties have managed to duck the Europe question by pretending that it does not really matter to folk outside Westminster. Join the People’s Pledge to show all MPs in every party that the question of whether we are a self-governing democracy matters to you - and to many people across the country like you.
Like everyone else in this country under the age of 55, I have never been given a direct say over Britain’s EU membership. Even those who were old enough to have voted in the 1975 referendum tell me that they thought they were being asked about a Common Market, not a Euro super state.
For that reason alone, I hope that every MP will welcome the People’s Pledge grass roots campaigning in their constituency. Please sign the People’s Pledge now.
Posted on 30 January 2012 by Douglas Carswell
Yet more Euro wrangles mean we must let the people have their say
Several journalists have asked me what I think of the news that the European Court of Justice might preside over the new European Fiscal Union (FU).
Part of me wonders if it might not actually be a good thing. If the FU becomes a kind of spin off from the EU, and crucially, does not involve us, the why oppose it? The FU could then take the Euro institutions with it, and be the main fulcrum for European integration – minus Britain. What would there be not to like?
We would find ourselves in a dead husk of the EU, making it much easier to then extricate ourselves entirely.
On the other hand, if the new FU rules are wrapped up in to the EU by 2017 – as some suggest - it would be a disaster. The veto would have proved worthless, and in effect we would have a new arrangement with the Eurosystem without having had a referendum.
But the key point in all this is not what I think. Nor what other MPs think. Nor, despite the way the BBC insists on covering the story, is this about the Tory party.
What matters is what millions of British people think.
Which is why I will be at the People’s Pledge launch this morning helping to pile of the pressure for a referendum.
Regardless of all these endlessly complicated Euro wrangles in Westminster and Brussels, sooner or later there will have to be a referendum on the EU. Help make sure there is by joining our campaign today - sign up here.
Posted on 30 January 2012 by Douglas Carswell
How's our top EU negotiator doing?
One of the consistent themes of this blog is that Britain gets disastrous deals from Europe because of the Europhile dealmakers we have negotiating on our behalf.
Erudite and intelligent, Britain's top EU mandarins see their role as splitting the difference between what ministers want and what the Euro system will allow. And because they only answer to other Whitehall mandarins, they can ignore what the voters think.
With all that in mind, how has the decision to appoint Gordon Brown's top EU adviser, Jon Cunliffe, as the Coalition's top EU negotiator worked out?
Last year, as we all know, David Cameron vetoed the new Fiscal Union treaty. Three cheers! He made it clear if the rest of Euroland wanted a Fiscal Union, they should set up seperate arrangements outside the EU. Bravo!
But since then, the small print deal making was been left to Cunliffe and co. Oops.
Tomorrow, I gather, we will discover that the Fiscal Union rules must be incorporated into the EU rules by 2017. So not really a veto at all, then eh.
Sounds like Sir Humphrey intends to get his way. Or is it too late for Parliament to sack Sir Humphrey?
Posted on 28 January 2012 by Douglas Carswell
Continuity Brown must end before the economy can recover
Despite all the talk of change, when it comes to economic policy the current government has pretty much carried on where Gordon Brown left off.
As Fraser Nelson puts it in his brilliant article in today’s Telegraph “The list of undead Brownite policies lingering in the Treasury is long and ignominious.”
The Coalition – despite the spin – continues to borrow on a Gordonian scale. "A Government that is widely regarded as radical, and hawkish on the deficit, is making virtually no economic progress, while running up the debt like there’s no tomorrow”. Indeed. During this Parliament, we will borrow more than the last Chancellor managed over thirteen years.
Under this government, just like the last, the Bank of England has been encouraged to print money recklessly and conjure up candy floss credit. The sugar rush has yet to produce real growth.
The economy is flat lining as though Gordon Brown was in charge because the economic thinking from his era still pervades the Treasury.
“Where are the Conservative ideas?” asks Fraser.
Too often, ministers have simply looked to the Treasury mandarinate to provide them with the range of policy options from which they then make choices. Instead of bringing change, they have become spokesmen for failed Treasury thinking.
There are new ideas out there, but the Coalition provides a ready-made excuse to ignore any of the suggestions that we might do things differently.
So where is the supply-side boldness? Where is the growth strategy? Where is the strategic radicalism, rather than the tactical tinkering?
Instead of ministerial mangerialism, the Treasury needs to get much bolder. They won’t be until they start doing more than simply recycling failed Treasury thinking.
Posted on 27 January 2012 by Douglas Carswell