Tag: Europe

‘ELF AND SAFETY JOKE ANYONE ?

 

CHANGING TIMES.

The General Election result indicated a turning of a corner in the sentiment of the nation, the reaction to the dreadful Grenfell Tower fire, confirmed it.

The tide of anti-State, anti EU feeling is on the ebb. People are beginning to realise that a lot of “red tape” is there to protect people and keep them safe. I doubt if ministers will be calling for three regulations to be abolished for every new one in the future. That’s not to say business should not continue to identify silly or bureaucratic impediments to commercial transactions. But where regulations are in place to protect people, we should recognise their purpose and remember the poor victims of Grenfell Tower.

On Europe, a YouGov poll this month showed most people now think it was wrong for us to vote to leave the EU.

Tory and Labour politicians need to take this changing world into account. There are signs from the Queen’s Speech that the Conservatives will modify their austerity agenda and use some of the £23bn slack in the government coffers available to 2021 to fund schools and public sector pay rises.

It is going to be down to Labour to reflect the changing sentiments on Europe. Apart from that poll, there were two developments this week which show the stupidity of leaving the EU. On the very first day of the Brexit talks we had a taste of the EU’s strength. The idea that we could negotiate future trade in parallel with the divorce terms was blown out of the water. Then came the Queen’s Speech and the revelation that eight huge pieces of legislation are going to be needed over the next two years to implement this wholly negative exercise.

So, whilst we fail to deal with pressing issues like the future of social care, MPs will be up all night repatriating powers over nuclear waste or money laundering which having a glaring need to be done across the EU.

THE CROWNLESS QUEEN.

The low-key State Opening of Parliament seemed appropriate. The Queen didn’t ride to Westminster in her golden carriage and the crown rested on a table beside the monarch as she delivered the paired down proposals of the government. She looked as if she was being delayed in getting to Ascot and the whole occasion which usually anticipates a new government with interesting proposals was flat and dreary.

There is considerable anxiety that government momentum behind the Northern Powerhouse has drained away. We’ll get a better sense of that following an important transport conference in Manchester on Monday. But in the Queen’s Speech I only noticed a bill to extend HS2 from Birmingham to Crewe and a reference to the new industrial strategy.

Business needs to speak out about issues around skills, productivity and the Northern Powerhouse. I don’t know if bosses felt restrained by the election campaign. They shouldn’t have been because that is the very time to speak out. Anyway, the net result has been that business and the economy were topics that dare not speak their name.

Theresa May could stumble out of office at any time but I still think she’ll last two years. People who think Boris Johnson is the answer should listen to his car crash performance on “PM” on Radio 4 on Wednesday. His “wing it” approach to policy was effectively exposed. The nation should tire of this clown.

 

LAUGHING STOCK OF EUROPE.

 

THE WRECKERS: CAMERON AND MAY

 

David Cameron and Theresa May have reduced this country to a laughing stock in Europe. From being a leading member of an organisation of 500 million people, we are now reduced to being a disorganised beggar pleading for reasonable terms to leave.

Cameron called the referendum for narrow party advantage to fend off UKIP. May invented fictional opposition to her Brexit strategy to call an election when we all knew it was about hammering a Corbyn led Labour Party. They should never be forgiven for these actions.

I would like to claim that this result shows that the British people are thinking again about their decision to leave the EU, but voters have turned in greater numbers to Labour, who support Brexit, than the Lib Dems who offered a second referendum.

It is a fluid picture as I write but what sort of UK delegation will turn up in Brussels in a week’s time? The 27 are ready with their terms. What are ours apart from the fatuous mantra mouthed by the discredited May that “Brexit means Brexit”?

I suspect we will hear less insults hurled at our European friends as they present the departure bill and as the extraordinary complexity and difficulty of leaving the EU in these political circumstances become obvious even to Nigel Farage.

AUSTERITY BACKLASH: BUSINESS IMPLICATIONS.

Business was either ignored or threatened with higher taxes by all parties in this election. The fact that we have a huge deficit was also not discussed as we listened to a welter of promises of increased spending by all parties.

Jeremy Corbyn confounded my predictions as he benefited from a backlash against austerity, a poor Tory campaign and a surge of young voters. They were frustrated last year when the old took away their future in Europe and were determined to have a say this time.

But amid the Corbyn euphoria let us remember this is Labour’s third election defeat. They are still well behind the Conservatives in number of seats. Corbyn is claiming that he has reframed British politics. He means that there is an appetite for a high tax, big spending unilateralist government. I don’t believe it. This may be the maximum vote a fully socialist manifesto can achieve but Labour moderates are now trapped with Jeremy Corbyn as leader.

The net result is uncertainty at Westminster and uncertainty in the Brexit talks. The Confederation of British Industry chief, Carolyn Fairburn, said she was stunned.

LIB DEMS AND SNP.

The Lib Dems are in slow recovery. Tim Farron failed to sell the second referendum effectively and lacked the gravitas required. Vince The Cable is back in the Commons and should become leader.

One certainty in an uncertain world is that Scotland will remain in the UK. I’m a big admirer of Nicola Sturgeon but she misread the Scots appetite for a second referendum

“NOT ANOTHER ONE”!

I recall the famous Bristol lady’s reaction to May’s calling of this snap election as I wonder what her reaction would be to another General Election in the autumn.

There is already talk of another poll to achieve a government with an overall majority. I think that would be very unpopular with people who in various parts of the UK have been voting continuously since 2014.

Also let us remember 1974. The voters delivered a hung parliament in February and changed their mind very little in October when they gave Labour a majority of three. We have to try and make this awkward result work.

Follow me @JimHancockUK

ARISE THE SABOTEURS!

 

THE PURPOSE OF PARLIAMENT MRS MAY.

We really are in worrying times. I suppose I shouldn’t rise to the bait of the Daily Mail who have characterised this opportunistic General Election as an opportunity to “crush the saboteurs”. (That’s all of us who believe that Britain should remain in the EU and those who at least want the Single Market). After all the Mail has form. They recently dubbed judges “enemies of the people” for insisting Parliament have a say on Article 50. But in their dark past they published a headline “Hurrah for the Blackshirts”. That was a reference to Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts.

But if we can regard the Mail as being the mouthpiece of an ugly middle England which we rather didn’t exist, the really worrying development is the attitude of the Prime Minister to dissent. She is going to the country because the opposition parties in the Commons and Lords are doing their job in scrutinising the Brexit process. She says while the country is “increasingly united, Westminster remains divided.” The country is not united, 48% of us voted to remain and Westminster should be divided, it’s a place where parliamentary debate should be taking place for heaven’s sake.

Mrs May says Westminster is holding up her plans for Brexit. The last time I looked MPs gave Article 50 a thumping majority. Since then preparations were underway for the Brexit talks to begin.

All was calm until another set of opinion polls showing Labour in a dire state destroyed May’s claims to be a calm honest woman and showed her as a political opportunist. This election is all about cutting and running ahead of economic shocks ahead and a Brexit negotiation which will leave us with a whacking bill, immigration still high and a worse trade deal with Europe than we have now. Mrs May wants to be able to stay in power till 2022 to try and ride out the storm of unpopularity that will follow Brexit. That is why she has gone to the country now and that is why those who want to stop Brexit in its tracks now have a slim chance of doing so.

It is a slim chance because Labour are hopeless on this issue. Corbynistas secretly hold their 1980’s belief that the EU is a capitalist club. Labour moderates have failed to leave and form a pro-European centre party. Most Labour MPs have voted for Article 50 and the early General Election. There was a case to be made for the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. Do we really want to go back to the time when the final two years of a parliament is dominated by endless speculation about when the General Election is going to be held? Why didn’t Labour say this and speak up for the people who are sick of trekking to the polls?

We are told this is because they would be voting to prolong a Tory government till 2020. Well by voting for May’s cut and run they have probably extended Tory rule till at least 2022.

Only massive support for the Lib Dems can thwart May’s plan. Tim Farron’s party are the brave clear standard bearers for Europe but they have a huge task. Have memories of their time in Coalition faded? If so some Tories are vulnerable to them, not so much in the far South West which voted Leave but in the West country around Bath and South West London. The Lib Dems lost a lot of seats in Scotland but winning them back from the SNP who share their views on Europe is going to be very difficult.

BRING BACK MARTIN BELL!

And finally, did you notice that George Osborne has decided not to contest Tatton. I wonder how his local party, which only recently pledged their support for him, feel now? The constituency needs the return of Martin Bell. They voted for him twenty years ago.

COULD LABOUR HOLD ON IN BY ELECTIONS?

 

LABOUR COPING.

With the NHS at breaking point, our prisons in meltdown and the government’s plan to solve the housing crisis widely criticised, the Tories don’t deserve any success in next week’s by elections.

The fact that the seats of Copeland and Stoke Central are in play is due to the literally incredible Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. It’s all so different from twenty years ago, when Labour swept the Tories out of Wirral South in a by election which was a foretaste of the Blair landslide to come months later.

 Things have reached such a pass that two talented, but vastly inexperienced, Greater Manchester MPs are being suggested as successors to the hapless Corbyn. Shadow Business Secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey (Salford) and Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner (Ashton) have been MPs for less than two years and are virtually unknown on the national stage.

This speculation was provoked by a survey in Manchester that showed diehard Labour supporters giving Corbyn dire ratings. That supports what I am picking up from my sources within the party.

So why do I think Labour might hold on to both seats? The greatest threat to them comes in Copeland where Corbyn’s equivocal attitude to nuclear power and nuclear weapons is toxic in an area that depends on both for jobs. The Labour majority is slim. The seat includes the genteel town of Keswick as well as the more industrial coastal strip around Sellafield and Whitehaven and voters tend to punish parties when the sitting MP walks off the job as Jamie Reed did. That said the Labour candidate, Gillian Troughton, has made clear her support for all things nuclear, has distanced herself from Corbyn and is campaigning hard against plans to transfer maternity services from Whitehaven to Carlisle.

Theresa May visited the constituency this week. Prime Ministers don’t usually do that if they think their party is going to lose. That said Copeland/Whitehaven has been Labour territory since 1935 and they could cling on.

WHY VOTE UKIP?

Tristram Hunt was imposed on Stoke Central in 2010 when that was the way things were done by New Labour. It was no surprise when he found the attractions of the ceramics at the Victoria and Albert Museum more attractive than representing the people of the Potteries, who voted heavily to leave the EU. Hunt’s departure has given UKIP the perfect chance to show that they can appeal to Labour voters fed up with the metropolitan values of the Jeremy Corbyn Labour Party.

But there are big risks for UKIP. Their new leader Paul Nuttall has had to put his neck on the line and fight the seat when his inclination may have been to give it more time before trying for parliament. He has quickly found out that being a candidate leads to unwelcome publicity. So it has proved as it has emerged that he did not lose close relatives in the Hillsborough disaster. His brand is that of a plain speaking scouser which might not play well in the Potteries. UKIP’s main challenge thought is to offer credible policies for the working class on other issues than Europe. The government is forcing a hard Brexit on us, so what’s the point of voting UKIP?

It may be that the disillusionment with politics that was so strong last June will give UKIP their first northern seat, but Labour still have a chance.

Follw me @JimHancockUK