Sajid Javid's uninspired whine

Sajid Javid is not a man who can craft words well. His sad little litany of complaint in the Commons yesterday demonstrated not only his unpolished am-dram rhetoric, but more importantly his utter lack of understanding of the central task of this government. It really is just as well he's no longer in office.

The clue is in Allister Heath's piece in the 'graph today -

Brexit isn’t enough: politicians need to take back control, to renew our democratic culture, reintroduce accountability and improve the quality of the state. They need to be forced to take responsibility even when they don’t want it. They must become their own masters, working on behalf of their electorate, not spokespersons for out-of-control departments. They need to relearn to be managers, moulding the system to their commands. They should hire their own people, not inherit hostile teams.

If politicians cannot make their minds up on an issue, they ought to call referenda, not abdicate decision-making to mandarins or judges. Our system of government is no longer fit for purpose: the old Yes, Minister civil service and its jobs for life and gongs for failure has run out of time; but so has the more recent technocratic and juristocratic experiment.

Javid's exhibition was not so much that of an extinct Ovine as that of a newly castrated goat realising he's missing something but not quite realising what. Ministers who gain their stature from a powerful and unelected undemocratic nomenklatura propelling them into cabinet should not be surprised that their bass has turned to treble, their rumble to a pitiable whine, when their civil service bollocks have been lopped off.

In this period of transition, in winning back the organs of the State for democracy from the unaccountable establishment that has captured them, the powers exercised by Number 10 are a necessary discomfort for ministers. And an opportunity to learn to grow a pair of their own. As Miss Patel is so competently demonstrating.

Budget briefing: Why Javid had to go

I think there are sound reasons why Sajid Javid had to go, not least of which was the damage he could potentially cause to the UK economy by allying himself with the Remainer doomsters and gloomsters at the Treasury. Allow me to explain -

UK public sector spend - Source: OBR

You can see that ever since the Thatcher government in 1979 (which was elected, remember, because Labour had so screwed the economy) Britain has had a sort of tax-take comfort zone which is somewhere between 35% and 40% of GDP. In fact what I've labelled 'taxes' includes both interest payments and interest receipts and dividends - so the official term is 'public sector current receipts'. Total spending is generally higher than current income - somewhere around the 40% mark.

Now to put some of the arguments within cabinet into perspective, 1% of GDP is about £22bn a year. So before rebates and tax-collection adjustments,this is what we will save by leaving the EU*. If we wanted to, say, increase total government expenditure from 39.3% of GDP to 42.5% of GDP (a fairly modest increase) this would give us an additional £70bn a year (plus £10bn EU leaving bonus) for investment. So even £100bn over 20 years - £5bn a year - for HS2 isn't such a big thing.

Of course this additional borrowing means we have to pay interest - but rates at the moment are close to zero. And investment borrowing - to up the nation's game, increase capacity, productivity and so on - also produces additional tax income and lower current expenditure on welfare. This is why it's particularly vital to invest in those parts of the UK that have been so long deprived of it, ever since the Callaghan Labour government started closing the pits and running down British industry in the 1970s.

Number 10 knows this. The Treasury doesn't. And Sajid Javid went native. He had to go.

* Yes it is. This is from the EU's own website from 2015 - I just had it on file - when the 1% figure was £20bn. After rebates and tax-offsets of course it comes down to £12/£13bn.