There's no better reason than this for a Clean Brexit

Well, we've all been expecting it for some time. Now it seems it is upon us.

"Something Biblical is approaching"
2019 has started more calmly after a very volatile year-end in the markets. Focus has been on the trade deal between China and the US and the words of the central bankers, most notably those of Jay Powell. However, this is all just a distraction, a side-show. The market volatility was only the first sign of an approaching global economic crisis, as we warned in December 2017.

As the recent PMI figures across the globe show, a global downturn has started and the world is utterly unprepared for it. The global imbalances that have been growing for years cannot lead to anything else than a global crisis . However, there are different paths the crisis could take.

Here, we present three scenarios that the global economy is likely to follow, when the global downturn morphs into something much more sinister.

We’ll start with the most likely scenario: Global Depression.

That from Zerohedge. And from Matthew Lynn in the Telegraph, 'The next Eurozone crisis has already started'

The numbers coming out of all its main economies, from Germany to France, Italy and Spain, are relentlessly bad. What does that mean? Far from winding up quantitative easing, the European Central Bank will be forced to step in with emergency measures to rescue a failing economy – but it may well prove too little, too late.

It's becoming increasingly clear that May's deal is like nothing more than clutching tightly to a man just about to jump off a bridge, whilst the EU is of course keen to pocket Britain's £39bn as rapidly as possible and ensure we go down in the Brussels Götterdämmerung. 

It would be a short-sighted and foolish government indeed that would want to lock the nation into a restrictive, destructive and harmful treaty at such a time. Britain is better placed by far to weather the coming storm alone and unencumbered, with our resources in the bank and trading on WTO terms. Those global corporates of the CBI and ERT that May is working so hard to please will be critically injured and many may not survive - so why shackle the people of Britain to their failure?

One thing is certain.The world economy that emerges with shredded sails and fractured spars from the storm will not be the same as today. Now is therefore actually the least favourable time for the world's fifth largest economy to seek to lock itself into trade deals. Germany is effectively a monoculture, the entire nation and economy geared to late 20th century metal bashing. It is at great risk from the downturn. 

The fight for a Clean Brexit is a fight to free us to take advantage of the post-crisis world - a world of AI, of managed worldwide migration flows, a world in which Internationalism justly defeats Globalism. With a Clean Brexit, and when the seas are calming after the storm, Britain stands poised to rise from the wind-piled spume around our Isles cleansed and renewed.  

For the nation's good, May's treaty must fall and we must leave the EU on clean terms.

Plans and Lies - the long betrayal

Back in the early 1970s, prior to the last EEC Referendum in 1975, Britain's ministers and civil servants were fully aware of the loss of democratic power they were signing up to. They were also concerned to hide the truth from the British public. From a secret Foreign Office file - FCO 30/1048 - the truth is even now emerging. Just one single paragraph -

26. To play an effective part in the Community British members of the Commission and their staffs and British officials as negotiators will necessarily assume more political roles than is traditional in the UK. The Community, if we are to benefit to the full, will develop wider powers and co-ordinate and manage policy over wider areas of public business. To control and supervise this process it will be necessary to strengthen the democratic organisation of the Community with the consequent decline of the primacy and prestige of the national Parliaments. The task will not be to arrest this process, since to do so would be to put considerations of formal sovereignty before effective influence and power, but to adapt institutions and policies both in the UK and in Brussels to meet and reduce the real and substantial public anxieties over national identity and alienation from government, fear of change and loss of control over their fate which are aroused by talk of the "loss od sovereignty"

To translate into modern vernacular, 'Unelected officials will assume more power. This is needed to allow the EEC itself to develop new powers in new areas. Power will flow to the Commission and its officials from national democratic Parliaments. We mustn't stop this, for it would hinder the Community's expansion into a Superstate. We have to control the public's reaction to their losing real and democratic power'

They knew. They've always known. And they lied and they lied. 

Government deception exposed - the great betrayal

The whole point of Brexit

This is going to be a difficult post to write. I was challenged yesterday to demonstrate the benefits of Brexit for Remainers. Good idea. Let's look at their concerns and counter them, was my initial thought. The arguments against Brexit fall largely into two sorts; first is the stance of a privileged elite of achievers, who argue on economic, trade, legal, philosophic and rational grounds, argue that sovereignty is silly poo-poo and that glorious globalism is the only sensible way ahead. Well, we've argued all those points to death, and only actual Brexit will prove who is right.

The second sort of argument is that which one hears constantly on social media, on MSM interviews with the young, with students and travellers, with EU workers in Britain, from metropolitan remainers, and is far more personal and self-concerned. It is that Brexit will constrain their rights, their freedoms, their free stuff. Erasmus, free rail passes, EU subsidies for universities sending students to study in other nations. The more hysterical will howl that Brexit is stopping them travelling to, living and working in Europe. One can argue, demonstrate and reason that Brexit will have little effect on any of these rights - but will probably curtail the hidden subsidy paid by UK taxpayers for some 'free' stuff such as medical treatment. This is one of the most heinous costs. The UK charges the EU27 for medical treatment for EU citizens in the UK, and the EU27 charge the NHS for treatments provided in Europe to Brits. It's what the EHIC does. Except we pay the EU about £775m a year but the NHS only collects £50m a year.

I could have gone on but would have been wasting my time. Figures and facts and lists won't counter the injury the second group have received - which is to their sense of entitlement. Their outrage is due to their deep sense of entitlement to ease, comfort and convenience having been offended. We're taking away free stuff. Facts and reason can't counter that.

Then I watched 'Brexit: The Uncivil War' again and was reminded what we are fighting for; people.

If you pop into Dot's in Jaywick fairly early, you may be surprised to see the quality 'broadsheets' amongst the piles of tabloids. Nowhere, not even Jaywick, is a stereotype. Although the ONS tells us that 50% of residents here have no qualifications at all, 7% have a degree and 4% a professional occupation. I know this to be true. I used to sail these waters and know people. One such who helped me with great kindness lived not in Jaywick but in a caravan at nearby St Osyth. He had a degree from Edinburgh and could crack through the Times crossword, but drink had cost him a life, job and marriage. When you look at pictures such as this and wonder who lives in these places, don't make assumptions.

Independent, bloody-minded but poor retired people who shun Council or sheltered accommodation. Long-term sick and chronically disabled. And if you've seen Ken Loach's film, here live the Daniel Blakes. Maybe a third of residents have some sort of work, but those in full time employment get out whilst they can, to addresses not on credit blacklists, away from the pervasive sourness of quiet desperation.

Jaywick is not somewhere known to the rich middle-class kids ligging taxpayers for their Erasmus holidays, fleecing taxpayers for their medical care when they fall off their skateboards in Ibitha. Their new iPhones cost ten weeks income for many Jaywick residents, their trainers a month's food. And their concerns for the people who live in these places? They want them to die, to reduce the Brexit vote.

When I watched these scenes in the C4 dramadoc I felt anger, compassion, frustration and pride in equal measure. We are either One Nation or we are nothing. We either spurn selfish grasping privilege or we are demeaned. When did sharp-elbows and rapacious self-interest become middle class virtues? When was it OK to discard whole cohorts of people such as these? If I voted Brexit for anything, it was to win back from the globalists, from the bureaucracy of the unelected elite, from the fat, corrupt and uncaring establishment, some measure of redress, some correction to these imbalances.

And yes, there is one over-riding and critically important thing that Brexit can do for Remainers. It is to show them that their fellow man is not just the native they met on their gap year in Thailand, but the older bloke in the TKMaxx trackies in the Co-op queue at home counting the coins in his palm.

Designer primrose vests and obscene imprecations

There is a new suggestion going the rounds from the Remainers - that they should stage a Remainer 'General Strike' in the event of Brexit happening. The chaos, of course, would be appalling.

Schools and universities would be short-staffed as teachers would leave their posts to enjoy a strike day, some in London no doubt headed to Borough Market for a day of browsing and grazing. But Borough Market, like much of Hoxton and Spitalfields, would have come to a halt. The artisanal yoghurt-makers would be striking, as would the sour-dough bakers and vegan-rennet Islington cheese-makers. The Feng Shui carrot stall would be deserted, the hipster porridge and Quinoa bars empty and dark, and the cute bistrot start-up using roofer's nailbags as plates forlorn.

In Farringdon, Exeter Market would be empty. The app design studios, the organic health workshop in which Guardian hacks have their feet nibbled by fish to the sounds of whalesong, the myriad colour consultancies and the interior design practices they serve all dark. Only St John, the coarse eaterie feeding ruddy Leavers with offal, would remain open.

Across London traffic would flow freely as TfL's traffic consultants took a strike day. Black cabs would enjoy a near monopoly - Remainers preferring Uber - with drivers explaining the perils of Qualified Majority Voting to imprisoned fares. The trains would be blissfully empty, and best of all the streets clear and safe from the swarms of lycra louts on their £3k death machines.

The BBC would broadcast Ealing comedies and 1950s war films non-stop as eight out of ten staff would not have turned up. James O'Brien (Ampleforth, LSE) would be lunching with David Dimbleby (Charterhouse, Oxford, Bullingdon Club) and Adam Boulton (Westminster, Christ Church, Oxford) at Le Gavroche whilst assistants covered their shows.

And outside Parliament, a score of Remainers in plastic vests specially designed in pastel and primrose shades by Stella McCartney would howl vile and obscene imprecations at SPADs and researchers they mistook for MPs.

What's not to like?

Reform and renewal - new forms of democracy

In the days following the 2016 referendum result, I posted the meme below on Twitter. It reflected the shocked reaction of the political establishment that we had not done as we were told, despite them having spent twice as much as the 'Leave' side on campaigning. It was meant as a joke - but too many on the establishment side have taken it as received wisdom. Leavers are too ill-educated, too ill-informed, too plain stupid to be entrusted with a vote on a matter as complex as EU membership - we've heard that so many times in so many variations not to understand that they actually believe it. 

Our system of representative democracy allows us to elect MPs and Councillors as representatives, not as delegates. Our representatives are independent. Parliament is supreme. Our strength comes from having universal suffrage, the secret ballot and the right to associate and campaign for political change. There's a saying that hard cases make bad law; using the Brexit mess to force changes to an essentially sound democratic system would be a mistake. Nonetheless, there are moves on both sides to do so. 

We have already looked at options to strengthen Parliament in holding the government to account, and as uncomfortable as it seems, the protracted Brexit approval process is actually an effective Parliament in action. Let's then look at the main contenders to augment or replace our current system of representative democracy

Deliberative Democracy
This is the favourite of the Remain side, who think that voters in their natural state are not fit to make important decisions. The schemes on offer vary, but all involve some sort of 'sortition' - the use of a voters' panel, a bit like Blair's focus groups, to make decisions on behalf of the rest of us. But only of course after being lectured by experts on the right choice to make. The experts would be neutral in the same way that the BBC is neutral. 

To me, this all sounds too much like the pointless design Charettes I have encountered. The architect generally conducts them to convince planners / clients that his or her ideas have community support. They involve the architect talking to a room of people for a very long time with tons of slides and display boards and then asking them at the end which shade of Farringdon Grey, of the three offered, they would like as a finish to the front door?

Direct Democracy
This is essentially about referendums. Referenda are valuable democratic tools that can engage the attention of the public in deciding important matters that have a binary choice. The Swiss in particular use them at all three administrative levels, national, cantonal and municipal. Swiss electors can challenge new Acts of Parliament in two ways, either by gathering 50,000 signatures out of 5.4m registered voters (0.93% - equal to about 420,000 signatures in the UK) or by 8 Cantons protesting. However, referenda in Switzerland - which I think work well -  are clearly intended to augment and scrutinise the normal system of representative democracy, not to replace it. The political power able to be exercised by the people is enhanced, not transformed. 

I really cannot imagine that a constant process of referenda on every matter that must be decided by local authorities is in any way feasible. School admission arrangements, planning consent for a chip shop, capital expenditure approval for a new public lavatory. A dozen referenda a week. You simply can't replace Councillors and a system of representative democracy by anything that doesn't degrade and lessen our democratic power. 

Referism
This is Richard North's idea for an annual, national referendum on the government budget. He's right in seeing that a government can't function without money - taxes - and wants to move the approval of that money from Parliament to the people. 

Simply, my problem with this is that the budget cannot be a simple binary choice. Only binary choices are referendable (if there's such a word). Public expenditure is too complex and priorities too personal to make this a helpful or constructive option. 

Power of Recall
Brexit has brought to the fore the problems of a Parliament based on representative democracy now we have moved to fixed-term Parliaments. Many constituencies are now faced with representatives in Parliament who vote precisely the opposite way to the majority of their electors, and there's nothing that voters can do about it for five years.

When I think of the options, I think about capital punishment, to which I am personally deeply opposed, but which I know would probably be approved by a national majority. MPs, as representatives, have consistently acted in opposition to the national mood in banning it. However, the bar would need to be high to enable a constituency's voters to unseat their MP on such a difference of opinion. 

On balance, I favour a Power of Recall, on the simple basis that 'The voters of xxxxxxx have lost confidence in the ability of xxxxxxxxxxxx to represent the constituency in Parliament'  BUT with a high enough bar to exclude vexatious motions.

Internet voting
Those of you reading this will by definition be part of a group able to use the internet to access democratic options and make choices. As a way of augmenting our fundamental democratic rights, the internet is invaluable. However, to extend it to replacing those rights is simply not possible. On just the matter of the secret ballot, how do you ensure secrecy in a household with just one computer? Or how, as a member of such a household, can someone explain that they want to walk down to the local primary school to cast a secret vote rather than click an on-screen box with the rest of the family? Think Tower Hamlets. 

Finally, the Power Inquiry pleads for the nations'  Electoral Quotients to be brought into line with the minimum standard for developed nations of + / - 5%. This was a problem in 2004, and it's still a problem. The nation has been here before; there was a time at which Oxford University elected two MPs but not a single one was returned by the whole of a newly-industrialised and vastly grown Manchester. The problem is the Labour Party - the Oxford University of the 21st Century - which will simply not relinquish its corrupt and anti-democratic seats. In its refusal to do so it insults British voters and degrades our democratic institutions. 

Recommendation 21: Text voting or email voting should only be considered following other reform of our democratic arrangements.

Recommendation 22: The realignment of constituency boundaries should be accelerated.

Reform and Renewal - party funding

Two more posts to finish this re-examination of the 2004 Power Inquiry, then back to real-time. Today, Party funding. Tomorrow, new forms of democracy.

I think sometime around 2010 - 2012 was the nadir for UK party memberships, the total number of members combined for the three largest parties having fallen below 1% of the UK electorate. Fewer than 450,000 members between them. With Labour dependent on Trade Union money, and the Conservatives dependent on wealthy donors, we looked as if we heading for a political duopoly of two central, Statist, metropolitan parties with money but no members. The Lib Dems were already in trouble, and paradoxically had depended on the state funding they got as an opposition party. From 2010, in coalition, they would actually be worse off, though party luminaries with their bottoms in government such as Vince Cable got a chauffeured Jag as a consolation prize. 

From 2007, first under Hayden Phillips then under Christopher Kelly in 2011, the political establishment - the grey men who really run the central state - sought a way to nationalise the two traditional parties, to convert them from democratic concerns run by their members into quasi-constitutional organisations. They could see clouds on the horizon; for Labour, a grassroots groundswell out of tune with the corrupt fraternity of fat officials, elsewhere the rise of UKIP, signs of dissatisfaction and a potential populist uprising. Both Phillips and Kelly pushed the same deal; a cap on both Union donations and large private bungs, and in place of those a State subsidy of up to £3 per year per vote won in the previous GE, provided the party had at least 1 MP in the Commons. It was a clever way to institutionalise incumbency - only Labour, the Conservatives and the LibDems would be effectively funded, and they would be secured for ever as the semi-official Parties of State. It's the job of the grey men - a self-appointed task - to create what they see as political stability. And bugger democracy. 

The Irony of course is that had the original Phillips / Kelly proposals gone through in time for the 2015 election, UKIP would have gained State funding of £12m a year - Douglas Carswell's defection in 2014 providing the single critical sitting MP to qualify. The final published version raised the bar to two sitting MPs.

However, things don't stand still in politics. The insurgency feared by the grey men is happening, Parliament is in turmoil and critically unstable, Labour has increased its membership to around 550,000 whilst the Conservatives and LibDems level-peg with about 120,000 each. The battleground has shifted to social media, the role of the printed press in kingmaking has become marginalised and circulations are crashing. 

It is not a good time for the central State establishment to relaunch State funding for a third try. 

I wrote to Kelly in support of Recommendation 20 from 'Power' in place of his own blatantly unbalanced suggestion. They rejected 'Power' on the grounds that having two forms / two votes in the polling booth would be too complex for most voters. This after the 2004 elections in which most voters in London had coped with three forms for five votes (first and second preference) for Mayoral, Assembly and Euro elections. 

I still think Recommendation 20 is the best and fairest suggestion if there is to be any State funding; it allows those opposed to public funding to withhold their £3 a year, and for voters to vote for one party whilst granting money to another. It achieves in other words exactly the opposite of what the grey men want to achieve.

Recommendation 19: Donations from individuals to parties should be capped at £10,000, and organisational donations should be capped at £100 per member and subject to full democratic scrutiny within the organisation.

Recommendation 20: State funding to support local activity by political parties and independent candidates to be introduced based on allocation of individual voter vouchers. This would mean that at a general election a voter would be able to tick a box allocating a £3 donation per year from public funds to a party of his or her choice to be used by that party for local activity. It would be open to the voter to make the donation to a party other than the one they have just voted for.

Reform and Renewal - Voting

This is the section of the Power Inquiry that gives me the greatest problems. In the 2015 GE, UKIP came in third, with 3.89m votes, 12.6% of the votes cast, and won not a single seat. The injustice of this was felt not only by the millions who had voted for the party - including me - but many non-voters and supporters of other parties. It seemed an incredible outcome to those in other nations, but was just one of the anomalies of the First Past the Post system in the UK. However, the shock of that 2015 result catalysed Cameron into enabling the 2016 referendum - so UKIP actually won it for us, after all.

And it's not as if the voters of Britain didn't have a chance to change it; a referendum in 2011 proposed going over to an Alternative Vote system. It was defeated 68% to 32%. And coincidentally also has its own 'Remainer' movement in the Electoral Reform Society; the majority against AV in 2011 didn't dent their commitment one iota, and they campaign today as though the vote had never happened. 

Recommendation 12 was about a change to a Single Transferable Vote system, and was overtaken by this poll seven years after Power was published. 

Recommendation 13 would prevent national parties from parachuting candidates into constituencies to receive safe party-based votes - and thus would reduce central Party power and increase local power. Why wouldn't we support it?

Recommendation 15 is an early example of virtue-signalling. Yes, we can all agree that the Commons should better reflect our wider society; cohorts of chums from the top public schools, of men and women who have never had a real job other than politics in their lives, of self-selecting self-servers and narcissists who want to be MPs for what it can gain them are all shiny arses we would want reduced as far as possible from the Commons chamber. But more important than colour or gender (silly, superficial and irrelevant characteristics) we should encourage more men and women of virtue, humility, talent, altruism, passion and ability to enter parliament. These are the qualities most obviously lacking in the present make-up. 

Recommendation 16 is about reducing voter age. Its effect would be to create a more credulous voter base, one less capable of balanced judgement and one more likely to be swayed by unicorn promises. Why would we want to do that?

Finally, since the report was published in 2004, we have made great strides in clearing-up a corrupt and third-world standard voter registry. Michael Pinto-Duschinsky estimated that before the changes, there were 3m on the electoral rolls who should not have been there and 3m missing who should have been. IVR and stricter controls for postal voter identity, together with voter ID at elections, should be very effective in restoring the probity of the national electoral register to first-world standards. We should do nothing that would degrade the probity of the register.     

Recommendation 12: A responsive electoral system should be introduced for elections to the House of Commons, House of Lords and local councils in England and Wales.
Recommendation 13: The closed list system to have no place in modern elections.
Recommendation 14: The system whereby candidates have to pay a deposit which is lost if their votes fall below a certain threshold should be replaced with a system where the candidate has to
collect the signatures of a set number of supporters in order to appear on the ballot paper.
Recommendation 15: The Electoral Commission should take a more active role in promoting candidacy so that more women, people from black and minority ethnic communities, people on
lower incomes, young people and independents are encouraged to stand.
Recommendation 16: Voting and candidacy age should be reduced to sixteen (with the exception of candidacy for the House of Lords).
Recommendation 17: The introduction of automatic, individual voter registration at age sixteen. This can be done in tandem with the allocation of National Insurance numbers.
Recommendation 18: The citizenship curriculum should be shorter, more practical and result in a qualification.

Reform and Renewal - Localism

This is the most understated section in the Power Inquiry, and I have omitted number 11 as it deals with our membership of the EU, which is simply no longer relevant. 

The excuse most often made for the shape of British government - a highly centralised State that determines 96% of all taxes, a lower tier of government tasked with the rationing decisions of a proportion of those taxes on local services (determined centrally), with the poorest rate of democratic representation in the developed world - is that it is both efficient and effective. Utter spew. 

The central power grab is just a century old, born of emergency war powers that were never reversed. Before 1914 just about everything - water, power, gas, health, hospitals, almshouses, welfare, roads, lighting, transport, planning, public health, licencing, education and policing - was taxed, designed and managed locally by democratically accountable members and bodies. 

Arguments about economies of scale - that a public body can only economically collect waste, police the streets, licence building and so on at a certain size is an absolute fallacy. My own small gemeinde here provides 2,500 souls with water and sewerage at a quarter of the cost I paid in London for those services. Look back in this blog and you will find a similar analysis of the small town of Vail in the US, which maintains its own police force in addition to providing all local services. Cheaply. There is no objective, scientific reason for the shape of local government in the UK except for the convenience it offers to its masters in Whitehall.  

Once you accept that arguments for scale are pretty much spurious, and accept also that all public administrative functions should be carried out at the lowest level possible in order to maximise democratic control and accountability, you cannot excuse the gross insult to democracy that exists in the British structures. 

As we all know, in Switzerland, functions are split roughly into thirds between the central State - including the army, air traffic control, law and justice and suchlike, functions that can only be done nationally - and the Cantons and Municipalities. Each tier has independence in levying and collecting tax for its functions. If the UK did the same, we could shrink Whitehall and the Treasury by two-thirds and remove an irrelevant burden from the hands of our national legislature and its unaccountable NDPBs and fake charities. 

The phrase 'postcode lottery' is a quite brilliant con perpetuated by globalist sympathisers seeking to impose a homogeneous system of taxation, spending and services across all lands and peoples. UK Corporation Tax lower than France's? Postcode lottery! they cry - the EU must impose a harmonised rate of CT across the Union, to make things 'fair'. It's rubbish. It's fallacious. It's risible nonsense. And yet it's one of the excuses that Whitehall globalists make to justify their own existence. If my gemeinde, unlike others in the area, wants to impose a local and punitive tax on certain types of commercial activities that its voters find undesirable, it's not a postcode lottery, it's democracy.

The 'Big bang' decentralism required in the UK to free our nation from the malign grasp of the Whitehall authoritarian central Statists is far, far beyond the feeble recommendations made in 'Power', but here they are nonetheless:

Recommendation 6: There should be an unambiguous process of decentralisation of powers from central to local government.
Recommendation 7: A Concordat between central and local government setting out their respective powers.
Recommendation 8: Local Government to have enhanced powers to raise taxes and administer its own finances
Recommendation 9: Government should commission an independent mapping of quangos and other public bodies to clarify and renew lines of accountability between elected and unelected authority.
Recommendation 10: Ministerial meetings with representatives of business including lobbyists to be logged and listed on a monthly basis.

Democratic reform and renewal - Parliament

Back to the key heads for the reform of our damaged democracy. Firstly, Parliament. If the Brexit process has shown nothing else, it has exposed the confusion that exists in exactly where responsibility lies in our constitutional system for international treaties. May's government had wanted to proceed on the basis that all such business was the prerogative of the executive - but was challenged both in court and by Parliament itself. Even now as we approach the 'Meaningful Vote' - Parliament's approval of the most important post-war treaty in our lifetimes - the HOC seeks to explain the constitutional anomaly

"Although foreign affairs and treaty-making is normally the preserve of the Government under the Royal Prerogative, it holds that position by virtue of commanding the confidence of the House of Commons."

The Power Inquiry made the following recommendations -

PARLIAMENT  
Recommendation 1: A Concordat should be drawn up between Executive and Parliament indicating where key powers lie and providing significant powers of scrutiny and initiation for Parliament.

Not a written constitution, note, nor a radical overhaul of Parliament.

Recommendation 2: Select Committees should be given independence and enhanced powers including the power to scrutinise and veto key government appointments and to subpoena witnesses to appear and testify before them. This should include proper resourcing so that Committees can fulfil their remit effectively. The specialist committees in the Upper House should have the power to co-opt people from outside the legislature who have singular expertise, such as specialist scientists, when considering complex areas of legislation or policy.

Again, these recommendations were written when Brexit was not on the horizon; last year we saw select committees with a Remain chair and and and overwhelming Remain bias seeking to use their powers to sabotage Brexit. If select committees are to have greater powers - and it's not a bad idea - then impartiality becomes absolutely critical. Select committees embody the powers of the British people in a small group of their representatives and already have extraordinary reach - it is absolutely essential that select committee chairmanships and memberships are not abused for Party or Personal interests.

Recommendation 3: Limits should be placed on the power of the whips.

This is inextricably entwined with the role of political parties. The role of whip is not a constitutional office, but a party appointment. If all MPs were independents, there would be no whips.

Recommendation 4: Parliament should have greater powers to initiate legislation, to launch public inquiries and to act on public petitions.

Government sets the business of the House, but there is always room for Private Members' Bills. Likewise, the parliament petitions website came into effect two years after 'Power', in 2006. So far the most popular petition debated was in opposition to the Trump visit, garnering over 1.7m signatures. Again, 'Power' was written at a time when Blair's War was an unhealed wound - the Chilcot Inquiry did not start until 2009. I'm neutral on  recommendation 4 and can be swayed either way.

Recommendation 5: 70 per cent of the members of the House of Lords should be elected by a ‘responsive electoral system’ – and not on a closed party list system – for three parliamentary terms. To ensure that this part of the legislature is not comprised of career politicians with no experience outside politics, candidates should be at least 40 years of age.

Brexit again has brought Lords reform to the fore. At the time of 'Power' the upper house was perceived as a Tory stronghold, liable to sabotage the actions of a Labour government. It's now seen as a stronghold of the patrician establishment, pro-remain and determined to frustrate the will of the British people. I agree wholly to the desperate need now to reform the upper house - though I'm not committed to any one solution. I do know, however, that the hereditaries are an undervalued resource - and would like to see any reformed house retain around 100 of their number, selected amongst the hereditary peerage by themselves.  

UFOs, scared Septics and Anglo-Saxon ghosts

I had intended to post about rebalancing political power this morning. No longer. It's not often that a story in which one was personally involved drops into one's lap, but today we have one. A story in the Telegraph  has just explained for the first time an old event about which I have been feeling a little guilty for many years.

First my tale. It was 1980. We were a small group of lads in our early 20s from southern Suffolk, scattered around Ipswich but meeting frequently to carouse and take fun. One Saturday we decided to make a lunchtime session at the Queen's Head in Erwarton, a cosy waterside pub in a small village looking southwards out over the mouth of the Stour into darkest Essex. A friend of a friend had just taken the lease, and we were trying our chance at discounted beer.

In the bar we quickly made friends with a young American Air Force Lieutenant, who like many from the nearby USAF cold-war squadrons was living off-base in a rented cottage and had immersed himself in English village life. The pub was now his local - and he loved it, and his status there, with his own pewter beer jug and folk that knew his name.

Of course we knew the USAF bases well. We would talk our way in usually claiming to be brothers-in-law to Airmen married to Brit women. They were like small bits of the Midwest transported by tornado into ancient East Anglia, with black and white Dodge police prowlers on the gates and cops with pistols on their hips. They had Main Street shops and outlets, and importantly a PX and American bars. The PX provided pints of vodka (bought by a compliant serviceman with ID) at a fraction of their UK price, and the bar provided a truly authentic American drinking experience. One needed dollars for everything, of course - and all of us carried them.

I was also at that age, not far from my pubescent Airfix model days, something of an expert in US aviation kit, as only the sponge-minded young are. I could not only identify an approaching low flying aircraft as a F4 rather than an A10 or rarely then as a Lightning from engine noise alone but could tell you which models of F4 were stationed at each base in Suffolk, their range, weapons payloads and more.

We were keen, as the young and foolish are, to let the young Loot know we were chums and that we knew all about his world and we thought it cool. The young Loot, for reasons I had not fully understood until this morning, felt obliged to report to his CO on the Monday following an encounter with some young Brits who knew a helluva lot about their base and aircraft. The result we heard from our mate's landlord mate a week later; the base security people had thrown him into jail and subjected him to three days of  'enhanced interrogation' by teams who had flown in from the States, extracting from his tortured mind every single word exchanged in the Queen's Head.

We weren't that worried. We hadn't done anything wrong and we believed ourselves untouchable. We put the experience down to many Septics being arseholes (let me tell you another time about being chased around the Three Tuns by an obese puce-faced Tech Master-Sergeant for tearing up a dollar bill into a bar ashtray ...). However, the Loot was a nice young man, albeit a silly one for reporting our encounter, and I've always held myself a bit responsible for his three days under torture / interrogation back in 1980.

Now of course it's clear that his action and their reaction was around the time of the SAS fooling the poor Septics with fake UFOs in Rendlesham Forest. Made believable by long local tradition of the ghosts of the ancient Anglo-Saxon court of King Raedwald haunting the plantations, the king whose 'palace' (read big hut) was located in that place. 

Thirty-eight years on, it's good to know it wasn't really my fault.

Have a very happy New Year's eve all and drink a dram for me. And one for the Loot.

Power Inquiry re-visited

One of the most seminal documents in the formation of my political outlook - which I guess one could describe as democratic libertarian conservative - was the Power Inquiry, from the earliest years of this century, cross-party and chaired by Helena Kennedy QC. The launch of the report in 2004 at the QE conference centre in Westminster was my first encounter in the flesh with a young politician with whom I was impressed - David Cameron. Alas, his commitment to all the good things he espoused back then soon disappeared, and he's since departed into history as one of Britain's most dilettante PMs. 

One has to remember we were in those days pre-Facebook and Twitter, and blogs were just emerging. People weren't used to exercising democratic opinion and even power online. Politicians regarded the Internet as just another 'push' medium, for their use and benefit in broadcasting their messages. They certainly weren't used to people answering back, responding as equals on platforms to which they had equal access, with no cost barriers to keep the young, the poor or the regional away. Cameron, like May, was one of the old school; it was his job to speak, and our duty to listen. He would transmit wisdom, we would receive it. The poor dears have had a dreadful shock in the intervening fourteen years and their world has been turned quite upside down. But how well has the Power Inquiry itself endured?

It's available online for anyone interested, and in the days leading up to the Meaningful Vote I'll try to look at the recommendations, starting with 'Rebalancing Power'. The report found:-

- The Executive has become more powerful at the expense of MPs in the House of Commons. In particular, the Prime Minister’s Office and whoever the PM decides to gather around him or her, has become the most powerful political institution in British politics.

- Central government departments have also become more powerful at the expense of local government over the last two to three decades.
 
- Appointed authorities – quangos – have gained extra powers, particularly at the expense of local councillors. 

- Supranational bodies and processes of international negotiation such as the European Union have gained extra powers and influence at the expense of nationally and locally elected representatives.

Well, the first two are as true as they were. The third is much worse than it was then; now called NDPBs rather than Quangos, there is a gradual melding between a growing number of these semi-detached Agencies and government funded fake charities, none of which are under direct democratic control and all of which are exercising even more anti-democratic power. As for the fourth, well, we are dealing with the EU. Just the UN and the rest of them to go. 

One final comment. Back in the days when I burnt the midnight oil taking a part-time Masters, we enjoyed a lecture given by a respected economist. He took a question from one of my colleagues that contained the word 'power'. 'Power' he responded 'is not an economic concept. We leave that sort of thing to the sociologists'. It was a neat put-down, and understandable given the efforts of economists to convince us that they are scientists, or at least more scientific than sociologists. But untrue. Understanding power is the point of understanding economic behaviour.

EU VAT grab - It's all about Ireland

The Telegraph leads with a story today on the EU's proposed reduction from next year of the EU-wide maximum VAT threshold from £85,000 (€95,000) to £76,700 (€85,000). The UK uses the maximum, and has the highest VAT registration threshold in Europe (good for small service businesses). The paper is correct in identifying two effects; first, that under the Robbins Treaty, all firms in the UK will have to comply for the next two years, and second that under the backstop arrangements, the requirement could be permanent in Northern Ireland. Not only would thousands of UK businesses now trading just under the VAT threshold be caught in an onerous EU net, but the change would cause irrevocable harm to Northern Ireland.

Imagine a situation under May's treaty if, in two years, without a trade agreement having been concluded, the UK decided to abolish VAT. Although we would be free to do so in England, Scotland and Wales, all shops, supermarkets, pubs, trains and aircraft and all other businesses selling in Northern Ireland would still have to charge VAT. 

The paper doesn't mention VAT competition between the UK and Ireland. Most VAT thresholds in Europe are substantially lower (Belgium €25k, Germany €17.5k, Lux €30k, NL - nil) but two nations closest to Britain have had to carry split high thresholds - Ireland with €75k for goods and €37.5k for services, and France with €82.8k for goods and €33.2k for services. 

Without a UK veto, the EU can progressively decrease the threshold in Northern Ireland down to about half its current level, allowing the Irish government to increase its tax-take. May's agreement would prevent Northern Irish businesses from taking advantage of any reductions in VAT rate or increase in thresholds in mainland Britain after Brexit. 

Just another trap set by the EU and willingly incorporated by May's muppets in Team Robbins. 

However, it would all go to buggery if we left without a deal in March. We could then abolish VAT if we wished across the whole of Britain - including Northern Ireland. The DUP would have to be literally insane to move even a millimetre in placating May's government on the Robbins treaty.

Britain - Not a Bumblebee but a Hornet

Without a deal, without a Norway / Canada / EFTA / EEA framework, without subjecting the nation to the hand of trans-European bureaucracy, we are told, our nation is a Bumblebee. The world's top scientists have proven that it is quite impossible for a Bumblebee to fly; the body is too large, the wing area too small. Like the Bumblebee, we are told, the UK will be earthbound, crawling about like a beetle, unless we imprison ourselves in some version of benign State framework. 

But now right at the end of the year, other news is reaching us. The pharma industry has already sorted itself for a no-deal exit, as has the financial sector. Airlines check - now there's time to do the paperwork. Ports OK, with mothballed ports ready to re-open and existing ports upgrading capacity. Bit of a problem with cars, but hey, that's a German worry. 

Even on an individual basis, folk across Europe are sorting themselves out. Well, except for the more hysterical, who tend to be Remainers, and can't think of anything else to do but post increasingly deranged nonsense on Twitter. I've swapped my UK driving licence for an Austrian one; painless. Twelve minutes in a local office without a queue and with a real human on the counter. New one arrived two days later. So I can drive in both the UK and EU for free and without bother and without an additional document or cost. 

The other untruth we are being told is that unless the UK leaves with a formal divorce treaty, the regard in which our nation is held will plummet globally. Our rep will be dust. Britain's good name will be ruined. Total bollocks.

Just as long as we show that we've made adequate preparations to leave on 29th March and go straight to WTO terms, that the Cassandra Remainer media have little red meat to whine about, and that we make a decent fist of a complex and adverse situation, the success with which we leave may actually increase the regard in which we're held. I suspect the news now emerging is that the real Britain is now far better prepared than is the government. And not only prepared to fly like a Bumblebee, but to seek novel and rewarding opportunities across the oceans, to transform the world's fifth largest economy from a satrap State enchained to a sluggard dullard of a failed Federation into an international Hornet. 

No. The only cohort who fear leaving without a deal are the establishment; the political and mandarin elites. Their failure to secure a deal will show the world that neither are any longer fit for purpose. It will be a failure of the Central State, the failure of a grasping power-hoarding Whitehall, the failure of Big Government that sets the statutory calorie value of every fast-food hamburger and legislates to control the size of BBQ sauce portions. It will, with a shove, precipitate the sort of Localism that we desperately need, and force the root and branch reform of our failed senior civil service.

It's been a long year

It's been a long year.

As my old governor used to say, we are where we are. With Gina Miller to thank for the Commons 'meaningful vote' in January, it's now panning out that there are three not improbable options. Either the Commons accepts the Robbins Treaty as is, or the EU scrap the 175 pages that deal with the backstop and the Commons accepts a modified treaty, or they reject the whole thing and we leave on 29th March. All other options - a new referendum, withdrawing Article 50 - are less probable, though still of course possible. Apropos the post below, let's hope that the time that most MPs will spend away from the febrile atmosphere of Westminster and back home in 'Leave' Britain will help them flush the baleful elitist poison from their systems. 

And now for a day or two I'm going to forget Brexit. The gallon of Zwetschke Gin I made with Tanqueray back at the end of August is now being served to visitors with great effect; it's really no different to Sloe Gin, but a novelty to the locals, for whom Gin based tipples are something unknown. 

So once again my most heartfelt good wishes for Christmas and the New Year to you all. Eat, drink and for those of you so inclined, skin-up. Have a good one, all.

Last Christmas (for many MPs?)

Ipswich used to have an MP called Ken Weech, whom despite being a Labourite was generally held in some regard by the whole town. He was not ambitious, never aspired to the ministerial ladder, was happy on the back benches and was known as a fair-dealer without pronounced views. Every year on this weekend, after Parliament had risen, he'd spend two or three hours just standing about on Cornhill, outside the Town Hall, on his own, just shaking hands and making friendly small-talk with constituents. He was rarely unengaged - no-one was deterred from approaching him, he wasn't scary or pompous and he consequently generally had a constantly shifting audience of two or three around him. 

He had a smooth way with the occassional pest who wanted a disputatious monopoly of his time - he'd just turn slickly to a passing shopper, smile, extend his hand and freeze the pest over his left shoulder. Likewise, he'd be gone before the customers of Mannings and the Golden Lion on the adjacent side of Cornhill spilled out after lunch, neatly avoiding the drunks. 

We used to sit in the front window seats at Mannings and watch him at work. He was a pro - it was a joy to see. People were genuinely happy to meet and greet their MP, and the brief encounters enhanced a tedious pre-Christmas shopping scramble for many. It was one of those little social happenings from which everyone got something. All credit to him. 

I'm sure he's not the only MP to have done this, or who will contemplating doing similar today. Except that many will be facing constituents for whom Brexit has been an enforced diet for months, and many, particularly from my own Party, will be facing constituents anxious to hear their MP's reasons for not supporting the constituency's Leave vote in the Commons (or, more rarely, Remain vote).

I suspect there's going to be a lot of Westminster flu about this weekend (like diplomatic flu, but the virus only becomes active outside of SW1). Which is a shame - as if there's a GE before next Christmas, it may have been their last opportunity to do so.

Gatwick Drones - a gross failure of government

London's second airport has now been closed for 24 hours and responsible ministers are running around like headless chickens. They don't know how many drones there are, where the operators are, when they will appear next and certainly not how to get them out of the sky once they are up. 

This didn't come out of left field. This whole thing was entirely predictable; a universally available technology with no restrictions, a known vulnerability, the risk events with potentially catastrophic consequences. There is NO excuse for the police and security services not to have formulated a response which should have gone into effect last night. This is a gross failure of government, a sackable omission for senior responsible officers and an embarrassment for the nation. Heads MUST roll.

If they're still out there waiting for a little Remainer with a joystick to launch the next one, or have set up their signal jammers, they may be disappointed. Drones can be pre-programmed with course and altitude; there's no reason why the perp didn't leave a dozen drones on hidden rooftops around Gatwick a week ago, each in sequence taking off, flying over the runways a bit and then ditching itself in a body of water.  All preset within the drone and no signals to jam. They've no idea how many there are to go or what the launch frequencies are - will another six take-off on Sunday? And they can be initiated either with a mobile phone call or an inbuilt timer.

One thing's for certain. Our police and security services had better get their acts together pronto - their failure to date is simply not acceptable. 

Update - Friday am
=================

Perhaps ill-advised for PTSD Adonis to post thus on Twitter - I understand he's already been reported to the police for a 'glorification of terrorism' offence. He talks bollocks, too;

LATEST GOVERNMENT PETITION FIGURES

No Deal Brexit - 263,365 growing
STOP BREXIT - 101,143 sclerotic 

In fact the Adonis option has actually been overtaken by a petition to "Make grey squirrel rescue exempt from Invasive Alien Species Order 2019"

2nd Update - 8.53
================
Yes! The boss of Drone Defence, UK's premier drone countermeasures company, has just been interviewed on R4 'Today' and said in his expert view (1) more than 1 drone was involved - probably several and that (2) they were likely to have been pre-programmed.

Just as we posted over 12 hours ago. Raedwald  - Truth First.
And a special prize to Jack the Dog - the responsible Minister, Grayling, has just made a statement saying that 'Lessons have been learned'. As predicted. 

Globalism is dead - the future is Local

Belgium faces a snap general election in January as the country's Prime Minister, Charles Michel, was forced to resign for signing up to the UN's Migration Pact. The UK's signing-up to the pact has been lost in the noise of Brexit, but the US, Italy, Hungary, Austria, Poland, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Australia have rejected it which means it has now become just an empty gesture, a crumbling pillar barely sustaining the globalist entablature. Peter Sutherland, the Godfather of Globalisation, died earlier this year having already seen his dream of a world without borders, in which benign global corporates reduced the world (except for the elite 1%, natch) to an equality of semi-poverty, shattered. Sutherland happily accepted that the price for raising billions out of absolute poverty would be the pauperisation of Europe, the US and the old Commonwealth, the hollowing out of the old middle classes. When he appeared before a House of Lords select committee in 2014 he was quite explicit - the EU had a mission to undermine the cultural identity, the congruence, of nation states, and millions of migrants was the way to achieve it.*

My loathing, resentment and anger is reserved for Peter Sutherland and those of his kind, and so should yours be. Sutherland, ex-Chairman of Goldman Sachs, ex-EU Commissioner, ex-Irish government minister, typified the symbiotic links of a corporatist-governmental complex working to impose globalism on unwilling peoples.  

It's important to understand that the antonym of globalist isn't nationalist but internationalist. 

Macron and his fellow globalists make silly speeches in which they denounce nationalism as an impractical sole alternative to globalism. It's a false comparison. The practical alternative to globalism is internationalism - independent, sovereign nations trading with eachother, exchanging knowledge and skills, agreeing common standards where these offer common advantage, maintaining flows between universities and research institutes, and above all acting in restraint of sovereign or territorial aggrandisement of a sort that causes war. 

Churchill was aware that neither France nor Germany were capable in the long term of being responsible internationalists. Both had cursed Europe with war for two hundred years, and neither can still be trusted alone to act in the common interest. Tying them together in a political-economic compact is a very effective way of protecting the world from their malign tendencies - even it it means for them a sclerotic economy, reduced growth and potential. For seventy years this has largely worked - bar a few war-fomenting behavioural lapses in the Balkans and Ukraine. The mistake, the error that should never have been allowed, was to tie the UK into this harness. 

Macron is terrified that a France and a Germany independent of eachother will revert to their old ways. His fears are justified. This is why he's so terrified of nationalism - and so uncertain about the EU's ability to be an internationalist player. For Macron it's globalism or chaos. 

So let us be aware that just as we are at last rectifying the mistake and resuming our place in the world as an international player, we must work equally hard to preserve an EU that keeps France and Germany shackled to eachother - for Britain's long term national security lies in keeping these beasts chained. 

The Elephant - Peter Sutherland's godchild

* https://www.parliament.uk/documents/lords-committees/eu-sub-com-f/GAMM/EvidencevolumegmmFINAL.pdf Page 263

Raab wants to throw UK taxpayers' money at Airbus and Renault

There's a half decent article in the Telegraph this morning by Dominic Raab (£) in which he sets out many sensible measures we should be taking in advance of a clean break with the EU in March. However, he ruins it with an ill-considered and ill-disguised suggestion of a massive bung from UK taxpayers to the global corporates, including Airbus, Renault, VW and Fiat;

Third, the Treasury must prepare a Brexit budget to identify businesses – including ‘just in time’ manufacturers – most at risk from a departure on WTO terms. We should cut business taxes to boost them as they transition, and offset the cost from the £39 billion the UK would have paid the EU.

It's disingenuous and mendacious.

First, the UK will not avoid having to make a very large payment to the EU. It may not be in 2019 with a clean break, and it may not be as much as £39bn, but even if we kick it over to the International Court in the Hague, I suspect we may have have to end up paying as much as half, say £20bn. 

Second, compensatory tax measures should be limited to UK owned and headquartered firms. We know Airbus, whose aircraft wings are made here, is not one. Nor should we compensate any EU firms with satellite plants in the UK - it has been the EU's bloody minded intransigence that has precipitated a clean break scenario. 

Raab's Telegraph piece appears to have been co-ordinated with the global corporates, who are this morning whining at full chat and demanding taxpayer cash to enable them to continue paying multi-million pound bonuses to their bosses, or they sack Welsh workers. 

My own view is that in the end we won't get a Clean Break Brexit. May's government is now orchestrating a full scale national panic - the end play of Project Hysteria - that will act to terrify the Commons into submission early in the new year. Some minor concession from Brussels and MPs, and the symbiotic Axis pact between government and the big corporates will continue - and bugger the people of Britain.

Loss and anger

Before summing up, I had intended to pen a post today on cultural loss and cultural identity. However, I've had more trolling and attempts to hijack the blog agenda over the past few months than I've had in years, so I'm going to skip that one. The challenge is to recognise the reasonable concerns of people about rapid changes to the nation's demography without sinking to the loathsome hate-filled victimisation of the immigrants with which many have become complicit, even only as fellow-travellers. I've posted many times before like a broken record, don't blame immigrants for immigration.They're just doing what is economically rational and best for themselves and their families - they are no different from you or I, no better and no worse. If you're upset about the extent of immigration - as many of you are, and with some justification, then direct your ire against the politicians who enabled it. It is NOT the fault of the immigrants. 

WE started with common factors that characterised the roots of the anger, frustration and hunger for change that has gained much traction not only in the UK but across Europe; 

• Increasing inequality
• Living standards down
• People excluded from decision making
• Decline of working class power
• Globalism / AI causing disempowerment
• Cultural loss - damage to cultural identity

Inequality is not just the Gini coefficient and the wealth of the top 1% but a fundamental inequality between an urban, graduate, adaptable, agile and equipped cohort who earn their living with their minds rather than their hands and who will gain from AI changes, and those otherwise situated who will not, and also inequality between my own cohort of older, asset-rich, pension endowed beneficiaries of decades of economic advantage and whole younger generations for whom such financial comfort is beyond reach. 

The impacts of managerialism and the reach of the corporates into our lives - enhanced by our own unelected officials 'gold-plating' the raft of petty restrictions from those other unelected officials in Brussels mean that a way of life passed from father to son in years past is now gone. I can recall being quite used to removing the cylinder head of a Ford 105E at the age of 13, cleaning the pistons and replacing the bolts in sequence to the right torque before coating the engine bay in Gunk and hosing it clean. Now not only is it not possible for people to service their own vehicles, but the EU wants to prohibit it in law. 

It's this combination between technology that deliberately excludes its owners and government regulation that enables the power of the corporates to capture consumers economically, a combination between an oligopolistic service and infrastucture economy that creates dependence on private firms for the basics and essentials of life and disables citizens from self-reliance, and parallel government regulation that gives private firms a  quasi-official status. This is all also part of a loss of control that people feel, part of a perceived exclusion from decision-making. Personal car leases, the 'cloud', firms that hold DVDs and CDs and even software that you 'own' digitally and remotely for ransom - at least when I buy my real CD I'm not obliged to remain a customer of the bloke who sold it to me for eternity in order to be able to listen to it.   

It may be a generational thing. Certainly the young people I know seem unconcerned at being 'captured' and 'owned' by the dominant corporates, and are simply happy to comply with new laws compelling them to buy LED lamps. Looking at the live video feeds from the Gilets Jaunes in Paris one sees many grey heads as well as many people dressed for middle-class petty posing rather than for the tear gas, suggesting that those on the street come from the full spectrum of the C-E social classes and of all ages, in other words the huge cohorts of the population most affected by negative change. 

There are those - mainly amongst the elite establishment, but also amongst those young metropolitan elites who are happy to see 'Leavers' die - whose response to the current and forthcoming plight of those bearing the brunt of change is to leave them to it, and do nothing that might worsen their own wealth or privileged position. I cannot express how vile and repugnant I find this attitude.  

As a nation we're all in it together. That's what being a nation means - we share risks, rewards and a common cultural congruence and responsibility. We also owe a duty to our fellow Britons to ensure not only a safety net but, in Australian terms, 'A Fair Go' to allow them to participate in a new economy. It is simply not acceptable in any form for either the deeply selfish old privileged establishment or the deeply selfish young metropolitan elite who will do well from globalism and AI to shrug off a responsibility for those not so advantaged.  

The Parties are struggling right now with novel alignments. I will mark my ballot for whichever party stands for justice, freedom, equity, our nation as One Nation, internationalist not globalist, and above all with a vision that Britain can be a exemplar to the world of how to manage stupendous change with care, compassion, dignity and national determination. 

And if a 16 year old were to ask me what best to do in life, my advice would be to train as a chef with a good Bangladeshi restaurant - our demand for good curries won't decrease, but the loophole that has allowed the import of curry-house cooks rather than training domestic young people is closing. Avoid the iron slave-collar of student debt. And one of the few things that AI will never be able to displace humans in doing is flame-range cooking with complex combinations of heat, spice, meat, and skill. 

Democratic robbery

The UK has the worst level of democratic representation in the developed world. I've just checked again our lowest level of democratic representation; we have 45m voters and 21,000 local councillors. That's 2,143 voters for each lowest tier elected politician. In France it's 100, Germany 250, Italy 400 and Spain 600. Here in Austria our gemeinde of 2,500 souls has its own Council, Burgermeister and Town Hall - with eight full-time officers delivering waste, refuse, street cleansing, street lighting, snow clearance, water, sewerage, parking, building control, planning, registrar, business licencing and regulation and so on.

The problem is compounded by our own ignorance - every idiot who cries "no more bloody politicians!" is cutting-off his or her own foot. Instead of politicians we get unelected officials, little jobsworths and prodnoses who can't be kicked out at the next election, can't be harangued at public meetings and in many cases don't even live in the same community as we do. I'm even more astonished about those who have spent the last decade fighting the unelected officials in Brussels who then resist more robust representative democracy in their own communities. The truth is that the 1974 local government reorganisation is now unfit for purpose, past its sell-by date and in urgent need of reform, but every government in recent history has been unwilling to touch it. There are no votes in LG reform - but it's something that's desperately needed. 

We can't leave it up to Whitehall. Their sole instinct is to centralise control and weaken local democracy; they would halve the number of councils (and councillors) on the grounds that it would save money. It's not something one can expect folk to come out on the streets for, but the truth is that we need far greater local control - over both tax and spend. Switzerland splits tax-authority three ways; the central government taxes about a third for national institutions and infrastructure - the army, air traffic control and so on. The Cantons tax another third, and the local municipalities the final third. In the UK, 95% of our tax-take is decided, rationed and distributed solely by central government.  

Of more fundamental concern is that the establishment have turned their attention to our most fundamental democratic rights. I made the meme above in the week after the 2016 referendum result, and I am now scared at just how prophetic it was. Intended as a joke, we've instead been hearing for the past two years proposals to reform our democratic systems from those who really, truly believe that the parodies above constitute responsible public policy. 

The usual suspects the Electoral Reform Society have been punting alternatives to the FPTP system to which I've always said I'm opposed. I was one of the 4m who voted for UKIP in the GE, without a single MP resulting. On the face of it it seemed grossly unfair - now less so with the passage of time. Imagine a Parliament in which Gerard Batten and his Muslim-baiters shared opposition benches with the Antifa Party and the Muslim League. No, the AV system and PR is loved by the little radical parties of the far right and far left but isn't good for British political stability. 

More worrying are efforts by respectable bodies such as the RSA that in effect act to undermine those most fundamental rights, the secret ballot and universal suffrage. They're proposing something called 'Deliberative Democracy' designed to prevent 'stupid' people from majority voting; under it, a special citizens' panel would be lectured first by 'experts' on the subject under vote, then deliberate collaboratively to reach an outcome amenable to the facilitators. Various versions of this are being punted by academic institutions, think tanks and other establishment dag-clumps, all designed to prevent, as my poor joke had it, the 'wrong people' from using democracy. 

Direct democracy also has a place in our system, but not so great a place as some radicals from the far right and far left would wish. Representative democracy provides the best default outcomes, at both national and local levels, but there will, from time to time, be decisions at both micro and macro level to be taken that cross all boundaries - such as the 2016 referendum. Direct democracy is in such circumstances can be the most appropriate tool. But for normal, routine governance and administration, plenaries of elected representatives have proven themselves most capable. Polls should also be available, as in Switzerland, for matters raised by the public - but with a correspondingly high bar. 

But one strength, one freedom of which we should never lose sight, never relax our grasp is the protection we get from our system of universal suffrage, the right to associate and to form political parties and above all the right of  every adult man and woman in the Isles to cast a secret ballot.  

Update
=======
Deliberative democracy and the notion of Sortition had an outing on R4 Today in the context of a way in which a new referendum question could be decided. I told you they were serious. The problem is of course that the one thing a truly representative citizens' panel set up to decide the Referendum Question couldn't conclude is that, erm, there shouldn't be a second referendum. 

The Irish establishment have used this method to get both gay marriage and abortion through the referenda process - I don't disagree with the outcomes, but for a critical response to the 'means' rather than the 'end' see Dr Mathew Wall's blog entry here