Political Economy

The people of Scotland have elected a government that, as part of its election manifesto, said that it would hold a referendum on Scotland leaving the UK. They should be allowed to do so unhindered by a panicking Westminster establishment.

However as everyone knows this referendum has no legal force. The legal locus for decision making in this respect is at the Westminster Parliament, created by the Act of Union in 1707 and the only body that can bring the Union to an end.

Should Westminster bring the Union to an end if the people of Scotland wish it? I believe that they should. We cannot talk about democratic government unless we allow “Government of the People”, which means “Government made by the People”.  In a democracy if the people of Scotland wish to change the form of their government then that democracy must allow them the right to do so.

However this split, if it occurs, will require a treaty, perhaps many treaties, to decide on many things. One of these things will be property rights, another will be the distribution of the national debt, another will be defence, yet another will be taxation and things like customs duties and so on.

All of these treaties will affect the wealth and future well being of the people of England and as a result not one of these treaties can be agreed without the agreement of the People of England through a, or a series of, referendums. If the People do not agree then the politicians will have to go back to the negotiating table. If there is no agreement then there will be no end to the Union!

Is this important? Are there likely to be areas of disagreement? Where are the sticking points?

The first one will be oil. Alex Salmond likes to claim that 90% of the oil is Scottish. As Robin Tilbrook pointed out in his blog “Some of it’s ENGLANDS oil” that, on the basis of international law, between 25% and 50% of the oil belongs to England and 100% of the gas is English. If Salmond is unable to agree a reasonable compromise of between 25% and 50% of the oil, and 100% of the gas, being English then the People of England should not approve the treaty.

Alex Salmond has refused to take on the £187bn of government exposure to the Royal Bank of Scotland’s bad assets. His claim is that as the regulation of RBS was in London it is London that must bear the cost. Now, the matter that brought down the RBS was the purchase of the Dutch bank ANB Ambro. Until that point the RBS was reasonably clear of toxic assets, clear enough certainly to be able to handle any problems with its own reserves. Who then encouraged this merger? Why the same Alex Salmond that refuses to take on the costs of his actions. The Financial Times (12/12/12) reports that in 2007 Mr Salmond encouraged Sir Fred to purchase ANB and wrote to him “It is in Scottish interests for RBS to be successful and I would like to offer any assistance my office can provide. Good luck with the bid”. In 2007 he also promised “a light touch regulation suitable to a Scottish financial sector”. As the Edinburgh MP, Alistair Darling, has said “The decisions that RBS made that got it into trouble were made in Edinburgh, not in London”. Any treaty on the breakup of the Union would have to transfer to Scotland 100% of of the £187bn exposure on RBS.

What else is there? One thing that needs to be examined are the payments to Scotland for running its affairs that have exceeded those made to England. This started in 1888! George Goschen, the then Chancellor, decided that Scotland should have its own source of funding. To begin with this was not a very good deal but as 1900 came and went the cash paid per head to Scotland exceeded that paid to England, very soon increasing to a fifth more and then to more than a fifth extra. Currently it is 19% more than goes to England. If Scotland has received, say, 20% more than England over, say, 100 years then it will have received a total of 20 times that given to England, in a year, during that period. Currently England gets £8,588 per head (2010-2011) so 20 times this is £171,760. There were 5.2 million (mid-2010) people in Scotland so this adds up to a total of £893.2bn in current money terms! Now Scotland’s population has been lower over the last century. If it has averaged half the current size then a fair estimate is £446bn in current money terms rather than £893.2bn. This is an enormous sum of money and over the years it has made Scotland the third wealthiest region in the United Kingdom. The poorer regions of England who have contributed to this Scottish wealth might reasonably think about the size of the dowry that Scotland is going to leave them.

The question of dowry leads us to the division of the national debt. this is probably fairest done by dividing it by population. To this should be added a portion of the £893.2bn identified above. What sort of portion. Well much of the UK’s debt is long term, which is why we are not worried about the markets attacking us. If this represent 12 years say, then it would be reasonable for 12% of the £446bn to be added to Scotland’s share, say £50bn. This could then be used to regenerate the North. It would be their dowry!

How much debt would Scotland have to take on? If that were calculated based on population then Scotland with a mid-2010 population of 5.2 million out of a UK total of 62.2 million would take on 8.4%, say £85 – £110bn of peak debt, which with the £5obn mentioned above could be £135 – £160bn

Clearly the English cannot leave it up to their politicians to put the interests of the People of England first. English politicians are so used to giving away the wealth, and the name, of England that they would even agree to give away England’s gold. Oops, sorry, they have already agreed to that haven’t they! So the People of England must start insisting NOW! that there will be no treaty agreed on any further changes to the constitutional set up in the UK without their agreement through a referendum.

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Seven score and eight years ago a man spoke to dedicate the cemetery on a battlefield which had seen over 46,000 casualties including nearly 8,000 killed.

He pointed out that the living could not dedicate that place since the dead had already consecrated the ground with their blood. The living, rather, had to dedicate themselves to the unfinished work for which the dead had died.

That work was to ensure “. . . that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

The man was Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America and the battlefield was that of Gettysburg, the key battle in a civil war that saw a total of over 210,000 killed in action so that his nation “. . . shall have a new birth of freedom”.

Lincoln was not the first person to enunciate such a  belief. In 1830 the Senator Daniel Webster in a speech described the federal government of the USA as “made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people,”

So freedom is protected by the correct form of government and Lincoln tells us how to distinguish such a government from others. Do we, the People of England, have such protection for our Freedom? The answer is not difficult to deduce.

Government of the People

Government “Of the People” is government “Made by the People”. It is government hewn from the people and it has in all times and in all places been a government that People have had to fight for.  In January 2007 a poll for Newsnight showed that 61% of the People of England wanted a devolved Parliament for England. In April 2010 an ICM poll showed that 68% of the People of England wanted a devolved Parliament for England.

Do we, the country where parliaments were invented. have a Parliament for England? No! Have the political elite in England said we will get such a Parliament? No! Do we have “Government of the People of England”? No!

Government by the People

“Government by the People” is the people governing themselves via the election of a representative that will do what the people want. Do we have such representatives? No! Why not? There are many reasons. The first and most important reason is that Edmund Burke, MP for Bristol, said in 1774 in a speech to the electors that he could vote in the House as he chose and not as they wanted, a vote mark-you that had been given him by those electors. Burke was hardly an objective observer in this and as a piece of self-serving claptrap this one has been religiously parroted by MPs ever since. Burke did not believe in democracy and is claimed as a founder of modern Conservatism.

Secondly few MPs actually have the integrity to vote according to their own opinions. Instead they hand their vote over to their party in return for a continuing flow of cash, perquisites and honours! Thirdly most MPs are not voted into office by a majority of those who vote. To get 40% of the vote is considered good and this of course usually represents less than 30% of the electorate.

Do we, in England, have MPs who represent their voters? No! Have the political elite in England said we will get such MPs? No! De we have “Government by the People of England”? No!

Government for the People

And so we come to the final act. I have already shown that in England we do not have “Government of the People”. I have shown that in England we do not have “Government by the People”. Do we have “Government of the People, by the People” in England? No!

So, do we have “Government for the People of England”?

In 1975 when the referendum on remaining in the Common Market was held I listened carefully, as did many, to the views expressed. We were told we needed to remain in the Market because of  trade despite the fact that we had a trade deficit with them of £2bn. Well now the Market is a Union and we have a trade deficit with the rest of the Union of £36bn. This deficit is equivalent to exporting some 1,000,000 jobs to Europe.

In the 13 years of Labour government from 1997 some 1.67 million jobs were created in the UK but 1.6 million of those jobs went to people with no prior connection to the UK. It appears therefore that the UK government has provided 2.6 million jobs to the world. The jobs that remain are increasingly part-time, minimum wage and unskilled. Recent data has shown the trend has continued and will continue, particularly since the coalition government has set no restrictions on the so-called Mode 4 immigration. This is where a company from another country is allowed to set up in the UK and bring in all its labour from its own country. These workers will be paid minimum wages plus a tax free living allowance. The Tory party will of course be the grateful recipients of political donations from these “UK” companies. UK workers will receive only the dole that has been much reduced by the Tories.

Will MPs work to protect and grow the number of meaningful jobs open to us? No! Will the political elite in Westminster allow us in England to get the jobs we need to lead satisfying and creative lives? No! Is this “Government for the People”? No!

A broken Democracy

In England we do not have “Government of the People”. We do not have “Government by the People”.  We do not have “Government for the People”. We live in a broken democracy where our freedom is compromised and not, as the Prime Minister would have us believe, a broken society where our property is compromised. Indeed the Prime Minister is currently driving this broken democracy deeper and further than anyone before.

Is it possible to fix the problem, to regain our freedom by instituting “Government of the People, by the People, for the People”? The answer is yes, but only if the a range of policies like the following are adopted. It cannot be fixed by adopting one or two of these policies, such as creating an elected upper chamber or adopting a parliament for England. It cannot be fixed by adopting policies but implementing them in such a way that they will not work. For example Cameron’s promise to make it possible for voters to recall their MP is going to be implemented by creating a committee of MPs to decide if one of them should be “thrown to the wolves”! Such a committee will only be used to punish an MP who has annoyed the party leaders!

So here is the list:

Government of the People

• A devolved Parliament for England with a government and First Minister.
• A smaller House of Commons and elected Upper Chamber to take on the role of a federal Parliament responsible for reserved matters.

Government by the People

• Power for the voters to recall a sitting MP for re-election
• Devolving additional responsibilities to the County level and its elected Mayor.
• Increased use of the referendum so that voters can decide what is done.
• Reform of the voting system to ensure that 50% is required for election

Government for the People

• A referendum on leaving the EU
• An end to mass immigration
• An immigration system that ensures that jobs are not taken from the People of England and that immigration is run effectively.
• Protection for companies from takeover and closure by foreign companies

A Party that Will

There is one political party that does have all of these policies, and more. It is the only party that has as one of its objectives the institution of “Government of the People, by the People, for the People.” That party is the English Democrats.

The Price of Freedom

Now here is the rub. It is your freedom and your government that I have been talking about. The good news is that you can do something about it. The price is your time and your interest. If you are concerned that your freedom is compromised then join the English Democrats, donate to their funds and get active in any way you can. There are a wide range of opportunities such as forming a county or constituency branch, or joining one if it already exists, leafleting, letter writing, standing in elections, writing articles or blogs, helping to run facebook, twitter and web sites. The list is almost endless.

Its Your Freedom. You Do Something About It.

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It isn’t just David Cameron schmoozing this idea. Now POWER2010 http://www.power2010.org.uk have jumped on the bandwagon whilst engaging in a very worthwhile exercise in deliberative democracy. That deliberative democracy is not the solution to our current woes, that it is not without its problems, one being the narrow basis on which policies are selected – a scientifically chosen sample of 130 individuals (my emphasis) – is clear from my rant below. However do not let this dissuade you from going to their site and voting on what you think are the most important issues for democracy today.

One question I would like to know the answer to is who was allowed to vote on this issue. If it was just the  “scientifically’ chosen English amongst the 130 then that is one matter. However if it was everyone then the vote is invalidated straight away – The English have never been allowed to vote on devolution in Wales, Scotland or N. Ireland!

How Power 2010 could have failed to select an English Parliament as one of their issues I do not know. Over 50% of voters in England regularly support the idea in opinion polls. They do so because an English Parliament gives the people of England  a government of the English, by the English, for the English, just as the Scots, Welsh and N. Irish have for themselves.

Having a glorified Commons Committee, subject to the other nations simply because it is a committee of the House, does not provide a government of the English, by the English for the English. And what will happen after the Commons? Will the bill go through to the Lords to be adjudicated on by the Scots, Welsh, and N. Irish?

Does this proposal require that Cabinet Ministers for devolved matters (Health, Education, Transport, Justice and so on) only come from English constituencies? And will these and only these Cabinet Ministers make decisions in Cabinet about English matters, sitting on the English, yet again, sub-committee?

A clearer example of confused thinking and poorly thought out logic is difficult to find.

Currently three, 75%,  out of the four nations, having 16% of the population, have their own government. In round terms 20% of the people have 80% of the democracy! This is a clear and absolute nonsense and no clearer example of Pareto’s Principle need be given http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto%27s_principle.

When Jack Straw (Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice in the Westminster government, that most racist of governments!) claims that the English cannot have a Parliament because they constitute 84% of the population he is not showing his ignorance of Pareto. Misquoting Pareto is a ‘cunning plan’ based on a clear assumption that the electorate are a bunch of ignorant idiots who will not recognise his statement as a misquote, but rather treat it as a clever analysis of the issue, which it is not.

Do not vote for this committee approach. It is disrespectful to the English, it makes the English less equal than the other nations, it is extremely unfair to the English and worst of all it will not work!  Better by far to have a Parliament for the English, an elected House of Lords and a House of Commons with, in total, no more elected representatives than currently are elected or debate matters. No extra cost and much greater democracy!

I suppose Power2010 will come up with the usual excuses for putting forward this idea, along the lines of “It wasn’t us gov.”, or “I was only following the rules” or “The committee we appointed made these decisions” -  (whine, whine, whinge, whinge). Shame on you! This is a disgrace!

David Cameron’s motive for putting the idea forward is clearer. He has already said that he does not want to be “Prime Minster of England”, conveniently forgetting, or perhaps never understanding, that the devolved governments are led by a First Minster and not a Prime Minster – not much respect for the English there, then. The real reason he made the remark is of course about Power. It is correct that most of the work of government occurs in the matters that are devolved; Justice, Health, Education and so on. This means that most of the key levers for getting re-elected or gaining the confidence of the electorate are in devolved matters. Given that 84% of the votes are in the 84% of the devolved English matters you can see how Cameron, Clegg and Brown (and Straw) want to keep these matters within reach of their sticky fingers, close to their greedy hearts and out of Control of the English for ever.

It might be of course that Cameron just wishes to distance himself from Bonar-Law an earlier Conservative Prime Minister, a Scot, born in 1858 in New Brunswick (the Canadian Confederation did not occur until 1867) but raised in Scotland, who referred to himself as the Prime Mister of England [The Making of the English National Identity by K. Kumar, ISBN 0521777364]. Bonar-Law became leader of the Conservative Party  after Aurthur Balfour (also a Scot) and became Prime Minister in 1922 but sadly had to resign in 1923 due to throat cancer. His was the shortest Prime Ministership of the twentieth century and he is known as the Unknown Prime Minister. A name Cameron will not want!

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What if the Law and the Constitution enshrine something that we know is morally wrong? What then?

In the Government of the People, by the People and for the People this question is  important, it is difficult and, in its propensity to bring about civil strife, it is dangerous. Abraham Lincoln asked this question and struggled with it for many years. His simple answer, that  no individual or community had the right to do what was wrong led to his selection as the Republican candidate for President. And as they say, “All the rest is history”.

For the rest of us the issues are never so great, but the result, when we fail to adopt Lincoln’s answer, can be just as significant in our lives as well as in the lives of others.

Two examples of a moral failure in this respect have recently been before us in the news. The first is the matter of MP’s expenses and the second was a the case of a man sent to a private clinic, by the National Health Service, for an everyday knee operation who died because the clinic had no blood supplies on hand.

In both cases the defence is the same, “I/We followed the rules. I/We are blameless”. Well, not if you are Mr Lincoln, you’re not, say the rest of us!

It must surely be obvious to the parties in cases such as these that if harm results then the excuse of following the rules is not admissible. The degree of accountability  depends on the degree of the error and the level of knowledge and responsibility at which the parties operate.

In the case of the MPs there had already been concern raised within the House.  The failure to recognise that, helping yourself liberally from the public purse is morally wrong, whatever the rules may be, is worrying. It points to our premiere legislative body consisting of people who, in the main, appear to be unable to make moral decisions. And if they cannot do this then they are not fit to rule us.

The case of the clinic is perhaps worse in that a man died, perhaps because of the clinic’s failure to put difficult moral questions to itself. The answer, to the reporter’s question that surely it should be obvious that if an operation is being carried out then blood may be required as a matter of extreme urgency, of “We followed all the rules”  is clearly a failure of moral sense. We expect the professionals who treat us to do so in a safe manner having regard to all the unfavourable events likely to occur and to the importance of the outcome. Surely death as an outcome is important in any moral society?

The willingness of what appears to be many important people, organisations and their leaders to act at all time, without respect to other peoples safety or their property, in other words to act without morality, is a cancer in the side of our present society. A cancer moreover inserted by those who far too frequently have been heard to make harsh judgments on other people, often poorer and less well educated than themselves.

The answer is to change the law, if indeed the law needs changing. We all need to know that the law requires of us to carry out, when the health and safety of others or their property is in question, at the level of competence it is reasonable to expect from us, an analysis of the  importance of outcomes and of their likelihood of occurrence irrespective of any rules or contractual agreements in force. If for some reason we do not like the answers or cannot implement them  then we should be expected to take the moral decision and not go ahead with what was intended.

In the meantime, whilst we wait for the civil authorities to make their minds up about wrong doing, we should surely expect those who have failed this moral test to do the moral thing. Apologise and make recompense!

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