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Meet the UKIPpers

British politics is a pretty unpleasant sight. There’s an anti-politician mood stalking the country. Jack Straw and Malcolm Rifkind are being hauled over the coals for things that aren’t against the rules, nor even against British interests. Rifkind especially should feel aggrieved that for offering to arrange meetings between a foreign firm and British diplomats, he should be accused of Sleaze. In this mood comes the “tax-dodging” witch hunt, where people’s perfectly legal and normal (for those with the cash) Tax planning is being called “tax avoidance”, which is being equated, and used interchangeably with “tax evasion”, which is a crime. People who’ve taken perfectly reasonable tax-planning steps, are being excoriated for things that are neither against the law, nor against the spirit of the law. The crime, in the rather envious eyes of the British electorate, is to have wealth and be involved in politics. And politicians are being assumed to be corrupt and on the make, with journalists happy to fuel the mood.

And the only politician to speak any sense on the subject of tax is Nigel Farage: “Of course people avoid tax, but they do so mainly for their Children“, before going on to talk about the UKIP policy to abolish Inheritance tax. And the media left it there. UKIP having a popular policy that isn’t bat-shit insane isn’t news. But they aren’t called on its implications, like a major party would be, not yet. The Tories, for whom Inheritance tax has also been a popular cut, would be asked “what would you cut/taxes would you raise?” And the policy of abolishing inheritance tax would immediately become about where the £3bn or so it raises each year would come from. Would farage make cuts, raise taxes, or borrow more? We do not know.
No ‘KIPper would consider, having found a policy that works, the potential downsides of abolishing inheritance tax. The long-term accumulation of assets in families for example. Inheritance tax is the only tax where the money raised is not its principle function. Mega-inheritance is not conducive to social mobility, and nor is it always good for the economy. Why is it fair that someone is able to inherit vast sums, tax-free where others are taxed through the nose for money they earn? For me,  if it’s a choice between cutting £3bn off inheritance tax, or taking it off income tax, I’d rather the income tax cut (and the Tories agree with me there…). Whilst I think Inheritance is mostly an iniquitous tax on the unlucky, or those unwilling to confront their mortality, it’s not a priority to cut right now, not when we still need to balance the books. The Tories have taken most ordinary people out of the tax, while leaving it in place for the very wealthy. When you think a UKIP policy through, quite often what sounds right, as a black and white abstraction, is often rather stupid.
But it’s refreshing to see Farage refuse to dance to the media’s tune, even if the average UKIP policy isn’t thought through at all. When asked where the £3bn would come from, you get boilerplate blather about “fully costed policies being in the [as yet unwritten] manifesto“. And the problem with UKIP is that vague grey area between idea, aspiration and policy invites ‘KIPpers to fill in the gaps. And they do, with abandon, but without any learning or understanding.
British politics is as refined a dance as a regency débutantes’ ball. And like the refined movements of the dances, they are designed to exclude those who don’t know the steps, and so utterly baffling to outsiders. UKIP, whose main dancing experience, if we’re extending the metaphor to breaking point, is in the Mosh Pit of a metal club, aren’t invited to a Queen Charlotte’s ball, because they haven’t got the right clothes, don’t know anyone there, what they’re doing or why. UKIP gatecrashing a Season ball will ruin it for everyone, and they will look stupid. Because UKIP aren’t prepared to answer the “so what…?“, they aren’t taken seriously: they haven’t bothered to learn the steps to the dance. They’re not even aware that such dancing exists and so they’re confused when they see it. 
Which brings us to Meet the UKIPpers on BBC2, which showed UKIP members filling in the policy gaps, with all the creativity and skill of a slow-witted four year old at a colouring book. Of course the TV show was superficial. Of course it was selective. But it was revealing. The utterly incompetent election agent, the Twitter question about the “mosque” (Actually Westminster cathedral…), the Creepy, inadequate couple who collect clowns, and the hilariously bigoted old bag who couldn’t see that she wasn’t kicked out for saying “negro” but for saying “I have a problem with Negroes with their Shiny skin, fuzzy hair and big noses” and who then went on to talk about “Jewish noses with a curve to them“, as if that was some kind of defence. This isn’t a one-off bad-apple spoiling the barrel. This is the mood-music of the UKIP. Janice Atkinson, a UKIP MEP described an Asian constituent as “…a ting-tong from somewhere…” (I find for some reason the indefinite article especially damning), while Mark Reckless actually thought UKIP policy was the forced repatriation of immigrants and was prepared to say so out loud and in public. Both survived in post.
This isn’t pogrom-inciting, paki-bashing racism that smashes people’s windows. It’s the quiet bigotry of profoundly stupid people, of a sort that you probably do get at every family gathering involving multiple elderly relatives. There’s always one who will openly opine about how terrible the country’s got since we “let the wogs in“. But the problem is, those nice, racist nans instil ideas into kids, who’ll become angry young men, who will then go out and set fire to a mosque. Which is why such racist talk has been ridiculed and shunned since Warren Mitchell invented Alf Garnet. UKIP is a party for people who haven’t got the joke in ‘Til death us do Part.
The same cavalier attitude towards policy that allowed Roseanne Duncan to riff freestyle on why she has a problem with Negroes while the cameras were rolling, allows the more intelligent UKIPpers to imagine their freestyling on tax, or immigration policy is Party policy. The reason ‘KIPpers are so certain the party agrees with them, is they’re quite openly making it up as they go along. UKIP agrees, because there is no policy, only opinion. The only “policy” is what Nigel decrees, and he’ll let ‘KIPpers hide behind the defence of “free speech” for any idiocies the media turns up. Yet even this “free speech” defence is idiotic. Of course Roseanne Duncan is entitled to her views. But the ‘KIPper view is that it’s all OK, so long as the media don’t see it. Which is why the ‘KIPpers were kept away from the news during the Rotherham by-election. There are a lot of racists in the party, and the party knows it. And why the “Meet the UKIPpers” filming was shut down after Ms Duncan went off-piste. UKIP is a party for stupid, bigoted people. Yes, the political elite has become too distant, the political dance has become too complicated and superficial. But UKIP is not the answer.
‘KIPpers will blame a media conspiracy for misrepresenting them. They will rant about LibLabCon “not listening to the views of ordinary people“, insulting “ordinary people” by the suggestion they’re like Roseanne Duncan. UKIP is not the answer to the problems that ail the UK, and nor will the “media conspiracy” make UKIP “more popular” as ‘KIPpers often allege. All it will do is taint the few good ideas it has, by association with people like Ms Duncan and Janice Atkinson, while bringing back a kind of low-level bigotry we’d once thought abolished back into political discourse. UKIP is poisoning the well of debate. But on the bright side, the more the views of ranty, stupid people whom the party has seen fit to put in positions of responsibility see the light of day, the less attractive it will become. These people are freaks to be pitied and laughed at, which is why they’re stuck in depressing shitholes at the end of the line, and working with UKIP not a grown-up party. Anyone with talent or drive has left, and UKIP’s South Thanet constituency branch is left with a detritus of lost souls, confused by the modern world, whom another party would happily let deliver leaflets, but whom they would calmly not call when they needed anything more serious doing.
Is there a media conspiracy against UKIP? Only insofar as the Body Politic needs antibodies to expel a parasite. Expect more revelations of nonsense from ‘KIPpers in the run up to the election. Expect scrutiny of candidates and activists in places where they might win. Only a loony could think this unreasonable. UKIP has drawn the bigoted, Euro-obsessed puss from the Tory wound, and will roll up the bigots and opportunists from other parties before destroying itself. The only question is how much damage it does to the country while this process goes on. UKIP are poisonous. But it will be fun to watch them tear themselves apart.
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The Triumphs of British Foreign Policy Are So Complete, We Take it For Granted.

The British Empire was founded on Trade, not conquest. We largely bought our empire, then co-opted its citizens by encouraging them to get rich and take up cricket. And then when they tired of the British Empire’s excesses, the Empire became too expensive to run, and we left. Trying, mostly with some success, to leave functioning democracies behind.

We left behind the world’s Largest democracy, India. And British ideas influenced the Second largest: The United States of America.

There are two models of democracy: Broadly the Franco-Yankish model with an executive president, and the British Parliamentary model. And of the two, the latter is much, much more stable, because it doesn’t concentrate power in the hands of a single individual with a personal mandate, and so the constitution is harder to abuse. The legislature finds it easier to hold the executive to account when the executive head is chosen from the legislature. But equally, there are fewer veto points, so legislative gridlock is less likely. (See this excellent essay by Fukuyama in Foreign Affairs)

The European Convention on Human Rights was written by British and American Lawyers, on British and American principles, and underpins the European Union, the enlargement of which to the East was a British-led project, against French wishes. The EU has strengthened institutions in Eastern Europe. Poland’s democracy was not a given when the Berlin wall came down. Thanks to the EU, Britain has a large, growing, increasingly prosperous ally in NATO, and the EU. Poland’s democracy is secure.

The World Trade Organisation seeks to Promote free trade, long a British principle. The EU is, thanks to Britain, a leading proponents of free trade in the Great councils of the world, something the French mutter about, but about which they cannot do anything. The Germans largely see it our way.

Across the world, the English Language is the language of trade, science and diplomacy. This is not going to change any time soon. We’ve exported our way of Government more successfully than the Americans, and not just to former colonies. And people yearn, across the world to be part of clubs we’re in. Georgia flies the European Union flag outside its new Parliament in Tiblisi

In Ukraine, the Eastern Quarter may have a majority which wants to be Russian. This is debatable, because no-one’s asked them properly. It’s probable a majority of Crimeans indeed want to be Russian. We’ll never know, because that referendum was neither Free nor Fair. The rest of Ukraine now looks firmly west.

Intelligent political commentators are overawed by the scale of Russia’s military spending, and the tactical subtlety of her annexation of bits of Ukraine. Yet mistake tactical for Strategic success. We have struggled, it’s true to come to terms with Russia’s doctrine of “information war”, as we cannot ascertain her goals. Meanwhile Russia is spreading disinformation, using extreme parties of the left (the greens are against Fracking which threatens Russia’s economy) and the Right (Jobbik, Le Front National and possibly UKIP which want to break up the EU) enjoy Russian support, and whose spokesmen turn up on Putin’s grotty little propaganda machine, Russia Today, with depressing regularity. Most of the people most enthusiastically backing Putin, and claim he’s winning, are on the loony fringes of politics.

Putin wants a Buffer between him and “the West” which he fears, because the west represents a threat to his power. It does, of course. Mainly because our world-view is better and more attractive than his. Putin has probably captured a wretched little  rust-belt, which will forever need his country’s financial support, while inviting the EU to his Border. Kiev will be an EU city within a decade, and there is almost nothing Putin can do about it. He could invade in a couple of weeks, but it would bankrupt him, and I doubt he could make it stick in the long term.

The fact is countries are clamouring to Join the EU and NATO, to exist under a security umbrella largely provided by the Americans, and to enjoy the institutional security of the EU, while more or less designing their democracy along British principles. Poland, for example has a Bicameral legislature, with a symbolic head of state, and the executive head of Government chosen from the legislature. Neither of the EU nor NATO are perfect, by any means. But to imagine the EU a greater threat to the UK’s interests than Putin’s Russia, as many ‘KIPpers do, is just insane. The EU ploughs mostly British Foreign policy in Ukraine, in the WTO and elsewhere. That foreign policy isn’t what ‘KIPpers think it should be, but it is consistent with 500 years of history.

The inhabitants of a damp, foggy archipelago off the north western coast of Europe, a medium-sized population, have nevertheless managed to shape the world in their image, and continue to do so, despite being overtaken by larger, wealthier powers. Somehow, it always goes Britain’s way in the end.

Real global great powers do not have trouble keeping their satellites in orbit. The West is built on British ideas, speaks English, and enjoys overwhelming economic, military and cultural dominance. The world watches English Football, listens to American and British music, and its most able people want to come to our cities, risking death and mutilation if necessary to do so. Compare with Russia, which will be just China’s petrol station in 3 years, lacking (our western) money, their military spending will be unsustainable. Russia’s people, as soon as they have money, leave. If the oil price stays low, Russia will be bankrupt in 3-5 years. Even China herself knows her power such as it is, is based on access to western Markets. The west, confident and united, can stand against any power, or combination of powers that could possibly be ranged against it. We can lose every tactical battle, Ukraine for example, and still win the war.

All it requires is that we don’t blink.

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Politicians with their own views, whatever next?

The normally excellent Tim Worstall (who is a UKIP supporter, see comments) succumbs here to one of his party’s central idiocies: That it is the job of the politician to reflect the views of the electorate.

I’m pretty sure, in this democracy thing, that a political leader is supposed to reflect the desires of the electorate, not mold them.

This is, for example why Douglas ‘Judas’ Carswell voted against gay marriage, despite being personally in favour. I am not accusing UKIP here of hypocrisy, just being wrong.

Running a country is complicated. The control levers available to Government are only loosely connected to the machine of Government. Much of the day to day control is in the hands of a cadre of long-term civil servants, whose job is to implement policy and who act as dampers on any control input. I think of it like a rowing galley, where the tips of the oars are hidden from the captain’s view. He’s trying to steer the galley by guessing the movement through the soles of his feet. Some of the the galley’s rowers can’t be bothered, and many of the rest, don’t want to go where it’s going, and so pull in the direction of where they want to go anyway, and the other half who are pulling in the direction the captain wants to go, aren’t much good. Ultimately the captain can barely see what difference his changes to the beat of the drum and nudges to the tiller make (especially as everyone’s free to choose their own tom-tom drum, and progress through the water is barely steering-way) until long after he’s been ousted by mutiny.

I like this metaphor, because the command economy, where the rowers are chained and incentiveised with whips, go much faster through the water to some direction chosen by the management, but the Captain still can’t see to the tips of the oars, and they inevitably hit the rocks.

Sometimes the people on the watch-tower (think-tankers, philosophers, policy analysts, economists) see a looming shape in the fog off the prow of the galley. They shout to the captain who’s only just in earshot. If he’s lucky, the captain can, with almighty heaves of the tiller and a bit of cajoling of the rowers down below (those who can be persuaded to agree with him anyway) avoid the rocks (Thatcher) Sometimes not (Blair).

This metaphor can be extended indefinitely.

Politicians are the people to whom we outsource political economy. This is every bit as sophisticated, with arcane knowledge as being a Gas engineer or Lawyer. And when a Gas Engineer starts looking at political economy, he’s staring at a fog of unknown-unknowns at least as complete as were Ed Miliband to have a go at servicing his own boiler. The difference is Ed Miliband KNOWS he doesn’t know what he’s doing. But EVERYONE thinks they’ve got the political answers. Everyone thinks their politics are “common sense”.  But if you don’t know what’s been tried, you’re going to come up with some ‘common sense’ which is already proven wrong. Rent control, for example which is the great, unflushable turd of political ideas, or Free Parking.

There is a particularly UKIPish line of thinking which runs thus:

  1. I am reasonable
  2. Therefore my views are shared by reasonable people
  3. Everyone I know thinks [x]
  4. Therefore everyone who doesn’t think [x] is by definition, not reasonable
  5. A not reasonable belief can only be held for malign reasons
  6. Therefore the Government fails to agree with me because of conspiracy or incompetence.
Go on. Go to a pub in London, and ask the punters whether rents should be controlled or whether parking should be free. Then go and find an economist who agrees. 
Of course 
  1. Everyone think’s they’re reasonable, but not everyone’s got the same information to be reasonable about. Even twins disagree on stuff.
  2. People seek out like-minded souls and avoid controversial subjects such as politics with people who’s views you don’t already know. Tories particularly sociable around the “sound”.
  3. This is called selection bias.
  4. This is an incorrect but common logical inference (the mistake, if you will in this chain of reasoning)
  5. Attribution of motive is pure projection, and particularly common on amongst the stupid, particularly by Labourites, who cannot grasp the more subtle cause and effect of  ‘right wing’ economics, and by UKIPpers who cannot grasp the right end of a shit-stick, let alone a political argument.
  6. This is the crowning idiocy of UKIP the sheer lack of belief that a reasonable person might not be in a frothing frenzy about EU fish quotas or the Bulgarian who moved in next door. The belief that policy is run for “their mates in big business” or the despicable EU cabal.
But there is no British Political Elite. It’s true the sons of politicians find it easier through name-recognition and nepotism to get a foot in the door, but they also have the benefits of experience gained through osmosis in how the controls to the galley work. This is why people from all walks of life often end up doing what their parents did. But if you really, really want to be Prime Minister, you need the talent, luck, charm, skill and so forth, and you go for it. No-one will stop you. It’s easier for sure, if you read PPE at Oxford, but there are plenty of MPs who didn’t.
If there was a British Political establishment, you’d expect to see it represented at the top.
David Cameron’s dad wasn’t an MP he was a stockbroker. Neither was Gordon Brown’s who was a minister of religion. Nor, for that matter Tony Blair’s who cavorted in fire with little horns on his head, a black cape and goat’s feet (Leo Blair was an actor – but he may have been cuckolded by Belezebub). Or John Major’s who was also on the stage. Margaret Thatcher’s dad was a Grantham shop-keeper. Jim Callaghan’s dad, also Called Jim, was a Chief Petty Officer in the Royal Navy. All of these people entered politics, not because they wanted to join a self-serving elite (anyone think someone like Cameron would settle for a measly £142,500 a year in any other job?) but because they thought they could do it, it interested them, they got the skills and qualifications and they took their chances. They sought a safe-seat. Then they waited for an opportunity, building a reputation, getting to know the means to climb the greasy pole, until there was a leadership election in their party. Then they went for it. Then we voted for them by the million.
That’s not to say everything’s perfect. I even agree with your average UKIPper on many individual issues. But the job of the Politician is to apply his judgement, experience and knowledge of his electorate, to try to be a man FOR them in the job, even if he doesn’t always do what a simple majority of the noisiest ones want. Representative democracy isn’t a tribal headcount, and it is not majoritarian tyranny. It’s at least as much about what the majority can’t do to a minority as it is reflecting 50%+1’s views. 
Worse: there was no local referendum that say Carswell vote against equal marriage rights for homosexuals, but rather by his own admission, a look the contents of his letter bag, from a collection of angry, poorly educated bigots living in his god-forsaken, depressing retirement home at the end of the line, and who’ve now gone over to UKIP with him. The people who write letters are not the cheerful, sound fellows you sometimes meet down the pub, but the sour and bitter old bags who complain about the noise. 
Is that who you want running your country, or do you want to have people who’ve at least tried to work out cause and effect before they pull on that tiller?
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Government and Mazlow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Life, even after a few years of falling wages, is pretty good in the west. Whatever the idiots of the left tell you, you need to pretty comprehensively screw your life up to be homeless in any developed western economy. Some people fall through the net, but they’re exceptions who’re often on the streets because they reject help. Starvation in the west, is almost always a result of mental illness, not want. This is why shroud waving about ‘the bedroom tax’ has fallen flat. It’s just contrary to what people can see with their own eyes.

So, unlike almost every society preceding it, the west delivers all the physiological needs of food and water to all of its people, with near 100% reliability. Most do a pretty good job of providing affordable healthcare too.

With the bare necessities of life secure, a place to live is fairly high on the list of requirements. And very, very few people have nowhere to live. Some fall through the cracks, and for too many it’s far too expensive to live reasonably near work. We build too few houses, and prices are too high for sure. But that’s a problem soluble within the present system. Unlike many economies on earth, however almost everyone in the west has access to a secure house.

Other elements in ‘security’ are amply provided by western societies. We enjoy secure property rights. Few of us die of violence. There is justice, imperfect to be sure, but there is a reliable dispute resolution process. We can travel freely, and seek to do business worldwide, and assume contracts are honoured. Regulations ensure our homes and workplaces are safe. None of these are perfect, but by with centuries of problem-solving, things get better, in fits and starts.

This is the bread and butter of politics. The steady, patient accumulation of good ideas, and the abandonment of bad ones. Free market, democratic capitalism has delivered material wealth unimaginable to our forebears, and will continue to develop improvements, and hopefully find ways to distribute them better. Regulation, and robust institutions to enforce them, are necessary, in part so people don’t have to re-invent the wheel every time they innovate. What works – from hard hats on building sites to banking capital adequacy is a reasonable function of government. And it’s pretty dull. Much of this is supranational trade regulation, outsourced to bodies like the WTO and EU to enable bigger, and therefore more efficient markets. Too much regulation, of course strangles the golden goose. But that too is tested world wide and locally. Bad ideas like marking-to-market are abandoned, good ideas which seem to work, spread. This is only possible because people are allowed to question our rulers.

From Magna Carta in 1215 (and similar ideas in the Islamic world at about the same time) which put rulers under law, imperfectly, and with many retrograde steps, the idea that Government should obtain their people’s consent gained traction. And because people are good at solving problems, the societies which governed by consent, and which broadened the stake in society, were far more successful than the autocracies with which they competed. We free people have seen off big, bad ideas: The divine right of kings, Bonapartism, religious absolutism, slavery, fascism, communism and we’re having another competition with religious absolutism now, but no-one thinks seriously that Radical Islamists pose any existential threat to western democracies.

We, broadly if not universally, won. And if the Koreans or Japanese have caught up, it is by taking up our good ideas and applying them to their society. They now compete to generate the new ideas which help society improve. As more and more countries join us on the technological frontier – the former soviet Eastern Europe is catching up fast, as is China, and so more and more of humanity’s creative endeavour will be applied to solving problems, creating solutions we can all share.

In politics, it’s tempting for politicians to rubbish others’ ideas and try to sell theirs as revolutionary. But because we’ve defeated all the really, really bad ideas, we’re now arguing about ever smaller and smaller problems. This, in turn makes politicians look small and petty. We’re no longer arguing about how to organise society, we’re arguing about distributing success. This requires managers, not leaders. And so turnouts fall worldwide and people shift from parties of government to single-issue pressure groups. We hanker for the old, simple, black and white questions were WE could broadly persuade ourselves that WE were on the side of Angels, and THEY were the bad guys. And if you grew up with the cold war, in the democratic west, we were the ones outside the wall, asking the others to tear it down. And now, the Green movement is on the side of the planet against big, bad business, which is destroying the planet. Or UKIP blaming everything on the EU and the LIBLABCON Westminster clique.

Feeling part of something, especially AGAINST something self-evidently wicked, is more important in many ways than material and economic security. These are the social, love and esteem layers of Mazlow’s Hierarchies of need. British elections in the 1980s were in part between those who sympathised with the communists, and those who identified with America. Parties were mass movements, and satisfying as a result. In success, politicians lost something to define themselves against, even as they maintain the forms of adversarial debate. When you’re discussing potential nuclear holocaust, or how to defeat fascism, this is fine. But if you’re trying to present £11 a week  off benefits as existential crisis, or a small change in tax-rates as a return to communism (guilty as charged…) you just look ridiculous.

While this was manageable during a long rise in living standards, it rapidly became less so when the great recession hit. Having got used to success, governments spent and spent to fund promises of ever greater services, and ever greater consumption. And eventually the money ran out. Insurgent parties then moved into the void across the world – UKIP, the Tea Party, Front National and others. Some more responsible than others, but each coming with their own comforting ‘Them and Us’ narrative.

Ultimately I think these parties, should they ever be confronted with the realities of Government will either end up looking exactly like the parties they claim to oppose, be absorbed by them, or will implode under the weight of their internal contradictions. The upper levels of the hierarchy of needs are not really deliverable by politicians. All they can do is promise to manage the ever shrinking portion of economies needed to deliver safety, security and possibly health to the people. It used to require the productive efforts of 95% of humanity just to provide food, a task delivered in the west by just 1% now.

People want to be listened to, as an inevitable consequence of having enough to eat and a place to eat it. But everyone wants something different. So we require a new politics, one that enables and facilitates, rather than seeking to impose a one-size fits all approach. Formal government needs to shrink, sharing, as David Cameron used to say in the good times, the proceeds of growth between tax-cuts and better services. This will leave people to seek the social, love and esteem without government interference, and with an ever-shrinking burden of taxation. You want freedom. Free people from want, let them feel secure, then watch our creative talents take man to the stars.

Yes, we (unfairly) despise politicians, because they have solved the major problems of life, and continue to do so. The answer isn’t to return to them-and-us politics, but with smaller questions; Instead we must take more questions out of the politicians’ purview. Their job is largely done, and they can recede, to be the people to whom we outsource the bin collections and sewage regulation. What they do is important. But it is now unglamourous.

One day perhaps we will give no more thought to the Government that delivers health services, organises some redistribution, funds education services and defends the realm than we do to the remarkable supply-chain that delivers our bread. Libertarianism will not come from destroying government, but by building on its successes something vaster and grander, and more satisfying to the people who live in it than any Government or bureaucrat could possibly imagine. Let us not despise democratic government, but reduce it over the next few centuries to the status of the monarchy in the UK now, a useful, decorative relic which doesn’t get in the way much, while the free people get on with delivering what people actually want from each other.

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On Being a “Real Conservative”

Tim Montgomerie, formerly doyen of Conservative home, now at the Times, has returned to his former bailiwick to explain why he’s not joining UKIP. Basically, they’re a bunch of clownish amateurs, however much he likes having his prejudices stroked by them. Despite not wanting to join them, he agrees with much of UKIP’s analysis.

I feel – as many Tories do – that there is a cuckoo in the nest at present and he will be gone on either the day after the next election or a year or two afterwards…

Cameron is, of course, a great deal more popular than his party. Or more accurately, in this current toxic anti-politics mood, less unpopular. Cameron isn’t the problem;  people like Montgomerie (and me…) are the problem. The parties, as they shrink are less the mass movements of ordinary people they once were, but clubs for political obsessives. The Tory fixation with Europe, or the endless Lib-Dem demands for PR as the answer to everything, or Labour’s wibble about predistribution could never happen in a genuinely mass party.

He blames Cameron for failing to win an election against Brown. The UKIPish nutters, obsessed by Europe are far more to blame than the Prime Minister for conservative failure to win an election. The sheer insane kamikaze disloyalty they have shown has crippled the party for nearly two decades.

David Cameron is not a terrible conservative. He’s a little bit conservative in every respect. A little bit of a fiscal conservative. A little bit of a Eurosceptic. A little bit of a reformer. A little bit of a hawk on foreign policy

Montgomerie appears to be complaining that the Prime Minister who has cut state spending faster than any administration since Atlee is not savagely partisan enough. Cameron doesn’t seem to enjoy being conservative enough. And that is the problem.  In the United states, the parties have become utterly polarised. Candidates must appear extreme to win nominations in primaries, then tack to the centre to win an election. Everyone ends up with something they didn’t vote for, which further feeds dissatisfaction with politics. American Politics is utterly toxic and totally dysfunctional as a result, yet too many Tories look at the GOP today, and think “Gosh, I wish we looked like that“.

As parties shrink, they become captured by vested interests: The Labour party is more in hock to the Unions than ever before, a wholly owned subsidiary of Unite. The Tories run the risk of being seen as being a subsidiary of their big-business donors. All this turns off the average voter, who feel, rightly at the moment that none of the parties speak for them. Hence the rise of UKIP, the SNP and the Greens who all have messages which are angry, clear, simplistic and wrong.

The activists, like Montgomerie have to realise it’s they (we…), not the much-derided “political class” who are the problem. Professional politicians have always existed, and the idea the country should be run by amateurs is laughable. Until activists can reach out in the spirit of compromise, seek to speak to people about what the people are interested in, not what the activists think the people ought to be interested in, politics will remain a minority pursuit. Most Tory councillors, who’ve experience of governing get this, but the activists, the enthusiasts, the door-knockers and bloggers who create the mood-music don’t. “How can he think like this? If only he’d be more extreme, then all would be well.“

How’s Ed Miliband’s 35% strategy working out?

Montgomerie blames Cameron for the rise of UKIP, which he says

is partly the product of both lousy party management and strategy by the current Tory leadership.

I think a better analogy is UKIP as the Tories’ Militant Tendency. As Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless have shown, the UKIPish backbenchers and activists are utterly unreconcilable – reaching out to them is utterly futile. They got the referendum they claimed to want, but it just encouraged them in to more tantrums of headbanging nuttiness A referendum in 2017? NO WE WANT ONE NEXT WEEK, WITH YOU CAMPAIGNING FOR ‘OUT’!. They have got into the habit of rebellion, and lack the discipline to want to run the country, preferring the masturbatory pleasures of opposition, even while sitting on the Government benches. Compromise isn’t unprincipled. Collective responsibility isn’t dishonest. It’s a recognition that there’s competing interests in the country, and no-one gets everything they want.

There are divisions across the Right in all parts of the world but the lack of internal democracy has forced Tory divisions into the open and many natural Tories out of the party… Robust systems of internal democracy might have meant certain policies that I, personally, support – including equal marriage and the 0.7% aid target – might have been blocked. I would have argued for them but party members and MPs deserve to be consulted more often than at a once-in-a-decade leadership election. Every MP in the next parliament should have a job (running the UK equivalents of Battleground Texas, for example (of which more on another occasion)). There should be an elected Tory board and Chairman with the responsibility to think about the long-term health of the Tory Party. The whole party apparatus should not be obsessed with helping the current leader survive beyond the annual electoral cycle. Fundamental change is needed in party organisation if it is to think long-term about rebuilding in the northern cities, changing the profile of party candidates and – the previous theme – remoralising the Tory brand.

There are some good ideas about decentralising the party, but the problem remains: Tory activists do not look like the country and remain unhealthily obsessed with Europe. The country is socially liberal, the party is (mostly) not. To give too much power to the current ageing activist base risks accelerating the party’s retreat from the electorate, and making it harder to govern – the one thing the electorate agrees on is it cannot stand a split party. The party must reach out first, try to make the activists look a little bit more like the country and learn to compromise again.

Purging the UKIPpers, who’ve been making Tories unelectable since 1992 is a good start.

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What Free Parking Tells Us About UKIP

In UKIP’s “policies for people”, I find two mentions of Free Parking. The first under “The National Health Service”,

“…UKIP will commit to spending £200m of the £2bn saving to end hospital car parking charges in England” 

The “saving” they’re talking about comes from not treating migrants, so the free parking at the hospital is paid for by dead foreigners. It’s a fantasy this money exists, that charging migrants would raise anything like £2bn, and in order to do so, you’d have to set up a payment collection bureaucracy, which cannot be had for £2bn. Do you really think the NHS, whose hospitals are often near town centres should be in the business of providing free parking? Now, there’s a case for providing free parking to some patients, but clearly not visitors, who’ll also “pop to the shops” after seeing granny. And this is why free parking doesn’t work. It’s abused.

The second is under “Employment and small business” where

“UKIP will Encourage councils to provide more free parking for the high street” 

There is no doubt this is popular. It’s a common complaint that parking charges discourage people from visiting the high street in favour of out-of-town stores because of the availability of parking. Parking fines make people angry. Some people feel  It’s all part of a “war on the motorist”. Free parking is a simple policy, easily sold. And massively, demonstrably counter productive. If you allow free parking, it will accelerate the decline of the High Street as a shopping venue.

UKIP is entitled to its own opinion, but not it’s own facts. And this policy, like so may others is based on beliefs that are to put it simply, false. Most business owners on any given street over-estimate the percentage of people arriving by car, often significantly. Retailers think car drivers are richer, and therefore more valuable as customers. They aren’t.  Business owners think people drive, park in front of their shop, get back in their car and leave. They don’t. People tend to park, mooch about, visit a number of shops, have a coffee, before heading home. Retail is a leisure activity on the high street. Retail in an out of town store is much more focussed. because who wants to go to the wind-swept car-park outside PC world and DFS unless you want a laptop or a sofa? Out of town retail is not a substitute for high-street shopping.

The key to making parking a part of a successful high street is turnover. A high street might contain parking for twenty or thirty cars. If those cars are there all day, the thousands who will be needed to keep those shops open will, if they are coming by car, find somewhere else to leave it, and in circulating to find a spot, will cause congestion. Parking charges are about valuing that scarce space, so that people come, for thirty minutes, or an hour or two, do their shopping and leave, freeing space for someone else to do the same. (This is also the logic behind encouraging cycling – twelve bicycles can be parked in the space occupied by one car) The first 30 minutes of most parking is nominal. The second hour might cost a lot more than the first. That is certainly the case with the town centre car-park where I live. And there is a vibrant high street here.

The key is to see what people do. If it is routinely “impossible to find a space” then the parking charges are too low or more parking needs to be provided (but who pays for this…?). If you can find a space easily, then they are too high and can be reduced. The other consideration for retailers is the leisure component of high-street shopping. The reason pedestrianisation works is because it encourages people to come to an area to spend time and money. Cars make an area hostile to people and leisure. Remove the cars, foot traffic increases, and business benefit. Of course people need to park, but most towns have multi-story car parks, which are out of sight. On-street parking impedes the flow of people. Remove the on-street parking (usually insignificant in towns with multi-story options) and it makes the area more attractive.

Why do people think free, on-street parking is so much more important than it actually is? The answer is the availability heuristic. Cars dominate our urban space. Most town centre streets are lined with them. Other people’s car journeys are more noticeable to us through noise, and time spent crossing roads (externalities) than are journeys by foot or bicycle. Everyone can recall the feelings of frustration in circulating to find a space. We do not recall the visits to the multi-story car park, where space is near limitless (how often have you parked on a roof?). Thus the importance of on-street shop-front parking is over-estimated, next to the paid, limitless off-street option. Count the cars parked down one high street. Twenty? Thirty? Then go to the multi-story behind the shops and look at the spare capacity. On-street parking isn’t necessary or even desirable for a vibrant high street, especially when it’s free.

The answer to high-streets is to provide the right amount of parking, in the right place, at the right price. This does not always mean less, or more expensive parking, but it does require thought about what has been tried, and what has worked elsewhere. Suggesting parking charges are part of a conspiracy to deny the people the use of their car is either dishonest, or stupid. And this is exactly what UKIP are doing. Their simplistic policies are clearly by people who have no interest in public policy beyond their own unexamined prejudices. ‘Free parking’ is a soundbite, designed to buy a vote from someone who’s never thought about the issue in detail, spoken by someone who isn’t interested in public policy and lacks the wit to find out. It might just be ‘Free parking’, but it demonstrates exactly why UKIP shouldn’t ever be allowed to get control of anything.

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Cameron’s European Immigration Gamble.

When Jean Claude Juncker was “elected” EU Commission president, he indicated he’d be happy to work with Cameron to renegotiate some powers. The one ‘Red Line’ he would not give is the free movement of people, enshrined in the Treaty of Rome.

There’s an unpleasant xenophobia in British politics at the moment, where immigration is seen as a terrible thing, the worst thing, rather than an answer to the question “who’s going to pay for your pension?”. Most people, the left hand tail of the bell curve, who are considering voting UKIP are horrified by stories in the papers of schools where 75% of children speak a different language. Not knowing what the “availability heuristic” is, UKIPpers then go on to consider this near-universal. Over half of children in inner london schools are by some measure children of immigrants. Is that because that’s the level of immigration, or because British people tend not to try to bring up infants in central London?

There is no doubt the foreign born population of the UK has expanded rapidly to around 12%. By far the biggest inflow is a half a million Poles who arrived between 2001 and 2011. Immigration from the Indian subcontinent continues at a steady trickle, tens of thousands a year. There’s remarkably little evidence that wages have been driven down by this movement of people, though the claim is often made, evidence has come from individual industries, but certainly doesn’t represent a widespread picture. If you believed the rhetoric, the 147,000 who came from Pakistan represented the majority. But the numbers are dwarfed by the Poles, whom no-one can accuse of scrounging, and who’re often spoken of in a positive light, before a tirade against “the muslims”.

Low skilled work is losing its value, and so low skilled workers are facing stagnating wages world wide, not just in the UK. It’s just comforting to those who are suffering the effects of globalisation and automation to blame the polish blokes on the building site, rather than impersonal economic forces and the relentless march of technology. Throwing up barriers to the Poles coming here won’t help Poland get richer, or improve the standard of living of British-born workers. It’s an act of spite, that demeans this country, and should be resisted.

Cameron for his part has staked a “solution” to European migration as part of his negotiating strategy. I cannot see how this could possibly benefit him, except in the narrow, tactical sense in so far as it gives some answer which the army of Conservative activists can give to on the doorstep, while to the voters of Rochester and Strood consider whether or not to vote for Mark Reckless. The free movement of people is so fundamental to the EU project that it cannot be offered as a bribe to keep the UK in. So Cameron is going to face a humiliating climbdown at some point. Being cynical, He probably expects to do this some time in 2015, after the election. Will it be enough?

UKIP cannot be appeased. They are a protest. They are angry, and giving them the policies they “want” won’t win them over. They will simply find something else to be angry about. Though it’s not said openly, anti-muslim sentiment is being mixed with anti-immigration rhetoric, to overcome the relatively positive image of the largest new immigrant communities, the poles have in the minds of much of the electorate. The people who’re considering voting UKIP don’t by and large, hate the poles. But they are becoming much more open in their dislike of Muslims. And UKIP is not afraid to allow the misconceptions, the disinformation and the outright lies to continue. Sometimes they get caught saying something outright racist. Most of the time UKIP keep the right side of outright bigotry, and let the xenophobic mood music do the work. This is “dog-whistle” politics.

It’s not policies UKIPpers want, it’s leadership they’re craving from Politicians. And on immigration at least, Cameron has failed the test. Having already made one promise, to reduce net migration to the tens of thousands, which he couldn’t deliver, is now doubling down. The political class, insofar as such a thing exists, has failed the test by failing to lay out why free movement of people, within the EU and from elsewhere will benefit everybody. The logic behind free trade – division of labour, comparative advantage and so forth is as true for where people live as it is for what we buy. In failing to point out where the electorate is wrong, as they are on immigration, politicians are failing in a duty to the people in a representative democracy.

Cameron’s gamble may pay off. But he either knows it cannot be delivered, in which case he’s lying, or thinks it can, in which case he’s putting political advantage ahead of the good of the country. Neither paints the Prime minister in a good light.

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On Representative Democracy

An individual is generally a pretty competent judge of his or her interests. We are pretty efficient at judging what’s best for friends and family too. And in certain cases, distributed decision-making is better than individuals, because a market price for example is the distilled wisdom of everyone’s knowledge. But democratic decision making is not like this. The questions asked are usually binary, but about issues that aren’t binary. Neither of the propositions makes any sense. Scotland’s independence referendum, or the referendum UKIP and Tory loons wanted so, so badly on the EU, but about which they are getting cold feet because they know they’ll lose.

Many Tories, and libertarians, like Douglas Carswell are attracted direct democracy, attracted by the idea of the wisdom of crowds. But they don’t take into account the extent to which the processes of such direct democracy tend to be in practice controlled by party machines, for whom politics is a profession, the art of the possible.
the route campaigns have taken over the years is 1) persuade a major party to discuss, then adopt a proposal 2) consider exactly what legislation would be necessary to get a proposal into law 3) find time in the legislative programme not taken up by rubber stamping minutiae, to get it through both houses of parliament. Because the demands are vague, everyone “passionately caring” about a given issue will have their own patchwork of loyalties and only sometimes will even complete acceptance of a group’s demands induce satisfaction.
The route now is to take up the anti-establishment cudgels, and demand politicians do 1, 2 and 3, immediately. There’s little engagement with the process which enables ideas to become legislation. This is the motive behind the rise of anti-establishment parties – and UKIP and the SNP use similar tactics. First play on people’s sense of entitlement. We live in a market economy in which everyone expects their demands to be met, and do not consider what is possible. This creates a sense of grievance. This is then exploited by expert demagogues who direct it at some ‘other’. UKIP have the EU, the SNP have cleverly turned the vicious anti-English hatred which burns in the hearts of many Scots into ‘anti-Westminster’ sentiment. 
Having persuaded the people an amorphous THEY is doing every bad thing to YOU, the Farage/Salmond present a simple solution, independence from THEM will enable YOU to realise your dreams. The people are persuaded, by this simple manipulation to equate THEM with everything bad, and the achievement of getting rid of THEM will create nirvarna. It’s a simple, attractive message, but ultimately guarantees dissapointment. No-one’s thinking about steps 2 & 3 and is unwilling to do the work. This school of demagoguery is also practiced by Labour: the rich, the bankers, the fat cats who’re profiteering at your expense. The Tories are guilty of holding benefits recipients to account for the deficit.
The problem is one of unreasonable expectations of an electorate which wants a government which does everything, but is unwilling to pay the necessary taxes. Just as the electorate expects democracy to work like a consumer business, they expect government services to do so. And here, the kind of solutions which are applicable through politics are not as efficient as those of the market. But with a single-funder, the market is unlikely to arise organically for healthcare services, so politicians still have a role in sorting out how the market should operate. Successfully in the example of utilities (fancy arguing I’m wrong, don’t bother, I’ll delete your comment) less so in the example of rail. But there is no doubt market solutions work better than state dirigisme, because of the wisdom of crowds.
Unlike market solutions, political solutions are manipulated by political parties into two competing sub-optimal camps, from which people must choose a mix of things they like and things they don’t. This is not a subtle decision-making and resource allocating process, and given the toxic iconoclasm pervading politics at the moment, it’s a recipe for disaster.
The solution isn’t more veto points, more layers of government all coming up with sub-optimal solutions to problems that may or may not be best out of government control. The solution is to devolve more power to individuals, whose decision-making process is not political. Decisions should be moved to the appropriate level of government. Usually this will mean moving it down.
Ultimately government should be made up of people to whom we outsource the management of dreary tasks like road-building, waste collection and dropping bombs on uncooperative foreigners. Because people aren’t by and large traffic-engineers, waste logisticians or in the military, we are not qualified to comment, but we can offer oversight, voting out people whose judgement on these issues we trust no more. It’s possible the Police and crime commissioners may become such a single-issue go-to for public concern. And in a representative democracy, they will have to learn to say ‘no’ to the electorate from time to time. Political processes cannot please all the people, all the time.
Ultimately the logic of devolution if it has any merit, ends up with individualism. And the best way for individuals to be able to balance the competing demands of modern life is for Government to get out of the way of his or her preferences through the action of markets. Government’s role is to regulate and oversee those markets. It’s difficult to see to what practical problem “leave the EU” or “Break up the UK” is a solution. But these are presented as solutions to people who don’t understand what’s wrong or how to fix it, and who frankly, have more important things to worry about, so we elect people to oversee the experts we hire to do the dirty work.
Constitutional change is political masturbation. It’s enjoyable for political wonks to talk about. But the people the demagogues have enthused, UKIPpers and YES voters will feel let down when the thing they desire doesn’t deliver their promised land. And a new bunch of political obsessives will find another issue to make political decision-making more opaque and less efficient when the solution is devolution of power to existing structures: local democracy and individual decision making through markets. The institutions of the UK work pretty well, and the unwritten constitution is remarkably flexible. There are structures which are best dealt with supranationally, nationally, regionally, locally and individually. Generally, decisions should be delegated down so ‘devo-max’ seems appropriate, but there’s little need for big changes, just Government that’s a bit smaller, more local, and less expensive. 
Politicians lie: governing parties lie by obfuscation because they can’t reveal their impotence in the face of democratic checks and balances. But parties which invite to point blame on “them”. Well we saw where that could lead 70 years ago.
If I was Scots (which I am, half, but no vote…) I’d still rather be part of a nation capable of putting a top-flight aircraft carrier or two to sea. And little England will find much less influence outside the EU than in. We cant escape the trade rules. I may be a libertarian in wanting people, not politicians to have power. That’s not in UKIP or the SNPs offer. I am also a conservative. I see no reason to make radical changes to solve problems that barely exist.
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Douglas Carswell, Direct Democracy and the Clacton By-Election.

When Quentin Davis defected to Gordon Brown’s Labour party in 2007, Matthew Parris remarked “when a Tory crosses the floor to Labour, the Average IQ of both parties goes up…” which is one of the most deliciously bitchy political insults of all time. Few called for a by-election. You had an opposition struggling for unity, facing a dying administration. The defectors, back-stabbing, politicking and so forth, like in the dying days of Major’s administration, is part of the theatre of politics. And vital to its function.

Defecting to another party not in a governing coalition or vice versa is called ‘crossing the floor’ and is also an important way by which the legislature (parliament and especially the commons) can hold the executive (the Government and its payroll vote) to account. If the executive cannot command a majority for at least ‘confidence and supply’ in the commons, you MUST call a general election. By leaving the Government over issues like the corn laws, or Europe, or civil liberties, you can prevent the Government enacting its program. You’re sending the strongest possible signal to your party’s leadership. And if it’s well timed, or comes in a large group, you can bring down a Government.

Or in Quentin Davis’ case, you can leap aboard a burning ship right at the moment a torpedo slams into the magazine, to the sound of Guffaws of “good riddance, you silly prat” from one’s former colleagues.

Which brings me to Carswell. If he had decided to stay in the commons, he would be able to support the Government in bringing the law calling for a 2017 EU referendum through parliament. He could have continued to support the government in rolling back some of the civil liberties that were taken by the Labour party in its 13 years of goose-stepping nanny-statism. He would have been able to do this as a UKIP member with a confidence and supply agreement with the coalition from the opposition benches. Much like the Ulster Unionists in 1995-7.

Instead he’s decided to take the Manor of Northstead (MPs can’t actually resign, they have to be sacked and the means by which this happens is to take a paid office of the crown incompatible with a sitting MP), and so trigger a by-election. This seems likely to set a precedent, and everyone’s applauding him for it. But if this becomes a convention that crossing the floor triggers a by-election, the executive will be significantly strengthened at the expense of the legislature, and this is not what Carswell claims to want at all.

“But it’s Democratic” people will say. “They elected a Tory, and a Tory they should have”. But we live in a representative democracy. Carswell is strongly in favour of direct democracy, so be clear, I am not accusing him of hypocrisy, just counter productive stupidity. For when an MP crosses the floor in a safe seat in future, the Governing party will be able to parachute a loyal apparatchik into the seat, and use the party machine to ensure victory. If a a sitting MP in a marginal constituency goes, electoral considerations, rather than the role of holding the Government to account come to the fore when deciding what to do on policy and law-making.

Carswell is strongly in favour of the right of recall too, which suggests a very different conception of the role of an MP to mine. Indeed, it is this issue that caused him to jump ship, not “Europe”, as much of the media will have you believe. I think we elect people of character to scrutinise legislation, and if necessary, kick up a stink, while trusting the electorate to judge him in the whole, every 4-5 years or so. Carswell thinks an MPs job is to reflect the brute and unexamined opinions of his electorate, and pander to their prejudices, which is why he voted against gay marriage (Which is also why I suspect this has been long-planned to occur up at a time to cause maximum damage to Cameron and conservative electoral chances). The state shouldn’t control our lives, but to the extent it does, it should be more than mob rule, which is why I am only half in favour of more direct democracy. Unfortunately, UKIP is all about mob rule, a bunch of pitchfork-wielding ignoramuses who neither know nor care what makes the world turn, or why.

The Tories will throw the kitchen sink at Clacton, and will probably be able to win (update: I no longer think the Tories will win, thanks to Lord Ashcrofts polling – when the facts change….), as local Tories are highly pissed off, and electorates don’t reward turncoats. The Tories will be able to mobilise an Anti-UKIP vote from Liberal and even Labour supporters as they did in Newark. I suspect he’ll look at the morons, bigots and buffoons ranting away with the certainty that only the truly mediocre mind can generate, and realise that he’s thrown away a seat at the top table and the chance to influence policy and drag the centre ground his way, for what? The leadership of a party which will never amount to anything, and which is the principle obstacle in the way of its own stated main aim. Carswell may just regret yesterday for the rest of his life.

But given UKIP is far more comfortable with the idiot certainties of opposition than in having a genuine platform for government, he may just fit right in.

 

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Britain in the EU after Juncker

Obviously David Cameron’s defeat over the Commission presidency is a disaster for him, right? Daniel Hannan wrote

The game is up. No one will now believe that the United Kingdom can deliver a substantively different deal in Europe. The FCO’s ploy of doing a Harold Wilson – that is, making some piffling changes and presenting them as a significant new deal – has been discredited almost before it began. If David Cameron couldn’t prevent the appointment of Jean-Claude Juncker as President of the European Commission, no one will believe that he can deliver a more flexible EU, with more freedom of action for its member nations

And he may have a point. But the problem is, I’ve seen no-one who isn’t already a Eurosceptic make the same point. Hannan thinks we should leave the EU. Nothing’s changed, and he’s found it easy to hammer recent events into his narrative. Obviously UKIPpers are cock-a-hoop. They’ve always said Cameron was “weak” and re-negotiation is a pipe-dream (comments saying this will be deleted as utterly uninteresting…). Fine. Certainly the election of the Luxembourgeois arch-federalist doesn’t directly contradict this narrative.

But I suspect reality may be more complicated.

The EU was never going to give Cameron much when there is a realistic prospect of a Miliband administration in 2015, to whom nothing would need to be given and from whom much could be taken.

But assuming Cameron is still Prime Minister in June next year, having thrown him under the bus, Merkel would be forced to give way on other matters in any re-negotiation she’s already admitted as such. Juncker’s red-lines are likewise reasonable. He says free movement of people isn’t up for negotiation, and nor will Britain have any veto over further integration in the Eurozone, but otherwise he’ll listen and is open to negotiation.

The “Spitzenkandidaten” system by which the commission presidency goes to the pre-chosen head of the largest “party” in the European parliament is a power-grab by the parliament against the heads of Government. Supposedly a response to the charge that the EU is undemocratic, but actually allows the Bureaucracy power over the process, it’s a form of cargo-cult democracy, aping its forms, but without any of the substance of democracy. This is why Merkel initially sided with Cameron in opposing Juncker. She too, along with most of the executive heads of Government in the EU oppose the Spitzenkandidaten system. She was effectively forced to back down by her own domestic party. If anyone’s “weak” it’s Merkel. Cameron stuck to his guns, not, I suspect because there’s anything wrong with Mr Juncker; no other candidate is any less federalist, but because failure to do so would mean the implosion of the Tory party.

If the EU bureaucracy sought to wound Cameron by publicly humiliating him, it is they who miscalculated.

As it transpires, near Isolation in EU summits is a very comfortable place for a Tory PM to be. He returned, defeated 26-2 in a vote, to cheers of support from the entire Tory party, including the awkward squad like Peter Bone. Far from having his tail between his legs, Cameron, by raising the prospect of the UK leaving the EU, seems to have taken the wind out of UKIP’s sails. It’s certainly not obvious the “defeat” has hurt the PM in the polls and may have even given him a boost. A UK PM sticking two fingers up to the Eurocrats is rarely unpopular.

Whatever Cameron gets by way of re-negotiation will be painted by Daniel Hannan as “insufficient”, making Britain’s exit inevitable. I think he, and UKIPpers can be ignored on the subject. Again, don’t bother commenting about what you think will happen in negotiation, if you think there’s no chance of success, I’m not interested.

For my part, the EU needs to be reasonable. It needs to acknowledge the UK’s history of independence and act accordingly. Unless there is a significant return of powers including some movement on the primacy of EU law, and the EU negotiating with respect with our elected head of Government, I will vote “out”. Cameron has relied on the conditional – “if there is significant movement, then I will say ‘in'” and this was taken as a clear and outrageous threat by the Eurocrats.

The UK is going to leave, unless the EU gives way, a lot, which it still might.

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