The sadopopulist agenda behind brexit

The EU looked on last week with incredulity and disbelief, as an agreement they’d thrashed out with Theresa May, which would have settled the first round of brexit talks was torpedoed at the eleventh hour, apparently by the DUP, a small fringe party in Northern Ireland. As I’ve mentioned in a prior post, the UK’s reputation is taking a battering from these brexit talks. To many in the EU it seems like the country is unable to make any sort of decision, even when you’ve got the PM in the room (remind me, when exactly did we elect Arlene Foster as PM?). As one German newspaper put it “Brexit is the biggest political nonsense since the Roman Emperor Caligula decided to appoint his favourite horse as consul”.

The EU showed up for talks on day one with well thumbed piles of documents, the British have one notebook between three of them….

And meanwhile back in the UK we had a conclusion to a long running saga involving the brexit secretary Dave2, who has been charged with contempt of parliament, with calls for him to be locked in the tower. This may have gone under the radar of international news, but briefly for many months now MP’s have been asking Dave2 and his department for information on their planning on the impact of brexit on specific sectors of the economy. For example, I highlighted in a prior article how leaving the EU will mean the UK leaving the EU nuclear regulatory agency and open skies agreement (which technically means that as things stand, with no agreement with the EU, nuclear reactors might have to shut down and planes stop flying for several months after April 1st 2019).

But Dave2 kept giving evasive answers along the lines of, oh we’ve got lots of boffins working on this, don’t worry your pretty little working class heads, we all went to a posh boarding schools……and we smoke pipes. Naturally, this convinced many MP’s that these impact assessments might contain some very bad news, which the government was trying to cover up. So they pressed him further, calling for a parliamentary vote on the matter (requiring that the documents be handed over), which he lost. He then tried to stall for time, portraying the MP’s as 5th columnists working for the EU, which is kind of silly when one of those MP’s happens to Jacob Rees-Mogg (on the right of both the Tories and the brexiters).

Well finally this week MP’s managed to corner Dave2 and he revealed that actually he’d been lying there are no impact assessments. When he was stalling for time, it wasn’t to give him time to censor the reports and take out anything incriminating, instead it involved him and his staff rapidly cutting and pasting stuff off the internet to placate MP’s. Yes, a year and half after the brexit vote and the UK government still has no clue what the impact of it will be, nor how they are going to prepare for it. “Fu*ked if we know!” is the official government position on the impact of brexit.

Of course this shouldn’t be a huge surprise. Plenty of independent studies have been conducted into the impact of brexit, both before and since the referendum. Prior to the referendum the government commissioned its own studies, which were generally negative about the UK’s prospects post-brexit. Given that the circumstances haven’t changed much, its reasonable to assume that any impact assessments would show the same thing and it hardly helps the brexiters case for their own department to conclude they are cutting off their own nose to spite their face.

And there was worse to come. Philip Hammond, generally seen as the grown up in the room also revealed to MP’s that there had been no comprehensive discussions by the cabinet as to what the UK’s brexit strategy or final end state was going to be. It would appear the cabinet is split into two factions, with Phil and Amber in one corner rocking back and forward muttering OMG, while in at the other end of the room the brexiters have been jerking one another off as they watch the movie Dambusters over and over again as they dream of empire 2.0.

To say this is bad is an understatement. As the military say, its the Seven Ps of Planning: Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Pis* Poor Performance. Yet it is now clear that the UK has entered into brexit talks without any sort of plan. All this poker talk about noting wanting to reveal their hand to the EU has been bunk, the EU (and anyone with half a brain) has known all along what’s going on, the UK has no cards to play, they don’t even know what they want. The UK government’s official negotiating strategy for brexit involves screaming Leeroy! and charging into the room.

And worse still, good politics is about compromise and trade off’s. In politics nobody ever gets to have their cake and eat it. You want to restrict immigration? okay, but you do realise that’s going to curtail economic growth (by creating labour shortages), push up taxes and mean longer NHS waiting times. What to re-nationalise the railways (as Corbyn wants)? Yep, we can do that. But its going to take some time to implement, will be legally difficult (as the train companies might be reluctant to simply hand over their franchise rights and might fight the government in court). And there’s no point in going down this road unless you are willing to put the sort of cash into the railways to bring them up to European standards (which means again, likely you are looking at putting up taxes).

The problem from the start with the brexiters has been they don’t even seem to be aware of the idea that such trade off’s are necessary. The situation with the Irish border being a case in point. Any kind of change to the customs arrangements will mean a hard border between the UK and EU. Such a hard border would open a huge can of worms and it would not be popular abroad, notably with Washington, where opposition to a hard border has bipartisan support in Congress.

Once you accept this reality it leaves only two options. The UK stays in the customs union and becomes an associate member of the EU (meaning it can’t negotiate separate trade deals, indeed it will have no say whatsoever as to the terms of the trade deals the EU negotiates….and will have to keep paying into the EU budget). Or we put the border at the Irish sea and tell the DUP, well if you don’t like it we can have a border poll, would you prefer that instead?

Dumb and dumber, spot the difference

The brexiters don’t even seem to be aware, nor wish to even acknowledge, that such trade off’s exist, leads one to conclude that the Tory brexiters have to be the dumbest most incompetent bunch of clowns to ever be put in charge of a major government. I heard someone suggest the other day that they should do a brexit special addition of the thick of it. Actually, we are now at the stage where reality has outrun satire…..

Sadopopulism

……Or there is another explanation? The history professor Tim Snyder recently coined the term Sadopopulism to describe how the wealthy and the oligarch’s are dealing with the post-truth age.

Basically, the rich can’t rely any more on their traditional tactics of bullying centrist parties (via their control of the media) into adopting favourable policies. The deficiencies in those policies have been exposed, increasingly centrist parties are reluctant to play ball and they’ve lost a lot of support due to the blow back. The rich can’t rely on the extreme left (as they’d lock them up!), nor the extreme right. The fascists would shoot them all (then steal their stuff!) while libertarianism would likely lead to anarchy and possibly the rise of other oligarch’s who’d challenge them (then shoot them and steal their stuff!).

So instead, they rely on populism to target some easily identified scapegoats, the poor, migrants, ethnic minorities, Muslims, etc. They then undertake policies that are intentionally designed to cause harm (this were the “sado” element comes in). And to be clear this isn’t raising/lowering taxes kind of stuff, which makes everyone better off, other than a small minority (again, politics is about trade off’s). This is policies that will intentionally hurt more or less everyone (save the elites themselves of course!). They can then point out, ya you’ve got it bad, but its all the fault of poor people/migrants who are now even worse off. And after all some of those poor people did vote for Trump/brexit, so now they are being punished for that.

Its worth noting that this theory is backed up by studies into monkeys. In situations where other monkey’s were rewarded for effort that they put in, some actually opted not to reward, even those this decreased the changes of them being rewarded in turn. In other words they’d accept being worse off just to spite others.

So its possible, much like the recent tax cuts in the US, the answer here is the brexiters might be intentionally playing dumb. They know their negotiation strategy won’t work, they know they are committing an act of national self harm, that’s the whole point! Then while the country is reeling from the aftermath, they can slip through a few bills stripping workers of their rights and they’ll have the excuse to privatise the NHS (and sell it off to themselves). As the character Littlefinger on Game of Thrones put it, chaos is a ladder.

Why post-brexit immigration policy is doomed to failure

We’ve had two reports come out over the last week regarding the post-brexit impact on immigration. One warns that already skill shortages are creeping in and that these will inevitably impact on the economy. Another report predicts that the brexit bigots are in for a nasty surprise, as its likely that brexit won’t produce any meaningful cuts in UK immigration. It will make little difference overall and simply mean trading EU migrants who come in for shorter periods (which we want, as it means they pay taxes and leave before they become a burden on the state in later life). While in return we’ll be getting more older UK citizens moving back home, or longer term migrants from beyond the EU (both of whom are generally looking to settle permanently).

Surely both of these reports can’t be correct? Well yes they can be. Its just that both of them are feeling different parts of the brexit elephant at different times in the future. Inevitably the drop in the pound (which makes British wages less attractive), brexit uncertainty and the sharp rise in xenophobia all means that the number of Europeans coming in will take a knock. And, as noted, we are already seeing some of these effects. This will lead to labour shortages in many key areas. And a drop in people in work will eventually mean a drop in tax revenue.

Why can’t unemployed brits take up these posts? Well because in many cases they lack the skills and training required, or they live in the parts of the country where there aren’t labour shortages. At the same time, the low value of the pound makes wages in the rest of Europe suddenly seem rather attractive. So some of those with the skills we need, both British and EU citizens, might be tempted to move to Europe to take advantage of their now higher salaries.

On the other hand, as I’ve pointed out in a prior post, the representation of EU citizens in migration figures is often misunderstood by the brexiters. While yes, group together all of the EU countries their numbers look high, but we’re ignoring the fact that on a country by country basis far more come in from India or China than any EU country. And UK citizens and their families make up a very large chunk of net migration figures.

Also net migration figures represent just what they say – net migration, i.e. the turn over, those coming in minus those leaving. This is an important distinction because it means the numbers of people we are dealing with is a lot higher than many realise. You’ve got many UK citizens who travel back and forth for work related reasons, as well as seasonal workers who come into the UK to meet key skills shortages. The idea that all of these people are going to have to go through some sort of intensive screening and form filling is going to create a logistical nightmare.

We’ve had a taster of sorts of the chaos this will cause already. Some EU citizens have been thinking ahead and applying for UK residency. Note we’re talking about people married to British citizens, who’ve been here for 24 years. They get asked to fill out some Byzantine 85 page form, pay a few hundred quid in costs, surrender their passport for several months and then have their application rejected for no obvious reasons and get a letter back advising them to prepare to leave the UK.

The UK is lagging well behind taking in its far share of refugee’s.

Unfortunately, this is exactly the sort of crap that migrants from beyond the EU have had to deal with for years. It highlights something we’ve long had to cope with in the HEI sector – that the UKBA is one of the most incompetent and badly run government departments on the planet. They are a law onto themselves who are able to hide their ineptitude and stupidity behind a cloak of scary Daily Mail headlines. Regularly they’d impose all sorts of Monty python-esque like rules or dictates on us (or employers), rules they’ll often then re-interpret in a completely different way to what the law actually says….then ignore any information we send them. e.g. the one time we did have to report one of my students to the UKBA (she dropped out of the course), I was more than a little surprised to bump into her on the bus a few months later (and she got off at the same stop as the halls of residence, so I’m guessing she was still living in her term time address). Yes they had her name and address and several months later, they still hadn’t done anything!

If any other government department behaved like the UKBA they’d be spending half their budget just defending themselves from lawsuits and paying out compensation to those whose civil rights they’d violated, or the time of employers and universities they’ve wasted.

Now imagine what’s going to happen when a few million EU citizens in the UK all have to apply at once for residency. Throw in another 6 million for those of us of Irish descent (if for some reason our reciprocal rights are lost) and we’ve got a massive backlog (I believe they currently handle only about 100,000 a year!). The end result is something akin to the Clark County gaming commission. There will be a ten year backlog and as a result anyone who you would genuinely want to kick out (e.g. a Muslim jihadi, Romanian Gypsy criminal horse meat butcher….I’m trying to imagine the worse case scenario for a Daily Mail reader), it will take several years for his application to get to the front of the pile and thus for anyone to realise he shouldn’t be in the country. And when his number is about to come up, all he has to do is change his circumstances (e.g. change his name by deed poll, marry, divorce, have a kid, etc.) and his application gets moved to the bottom of the pile.

At this point UK immigration law becomes pointless, as one could live and die without it ever applying to you. This is why Australia, UKIP’s poster child, doesn’t apply the same rules for New Zealand citizens as it applies to those from Europe. Similarly Canada and America apply a much more relaxed immigration policy to each other than they do to those from further afield. Its simply not logistically possible to have everyone coming in from your nearest neighbours fill out an 85 page form and then pay some civil servant to read it. In short, the proposed immigration controls are just unworkable.

Clearly what these stories show is that there’s an urgent need to reign in and reform the UKBA. Keep in mind that this incompetence and mistreatment of EU citizens has already been noted by the EU and they will inevitably reciprocate post-brexit. So failing to reign the UKBA in will mean it takes 6 hours for UK citizens to clear customs post-brexit. Frankly whichever moron came up with this ridiculous 85 page form (so complicated that even the UKBA can’t seem to figure it out!), should be sacked on the spot. Ultimately for the sake of speed and efficiency, the UK’s immigration rules will require simplification. And even in the best case scenario, more border guards will still have to be hired to prevent any backlogs developing in the system. And that’s going to cost a few billion. Yet another of those many “hidden extra” costs (along with a few billion for the farmers, eight billion for university research, another eight for the car industry, etc.) that the brexiters forgot to mention on the side of those buses.

The UK border post brexit?

So the Tory policy on immigration is clearly unworkable, it would be difficult to come up with anything worse. But what is Corbyn’s response? Well he’s come up with some half baked plan to divert immigrants away from certain parts of the country that already have large numbers of migrants. To call this a massive misreading of the situation is an understatement. Migrants generally congregate in the parts of the country where there are labour shortages and thus jobs available. These areas tend to see very little support for either UKIP or brexit. By contrast areas with high unemployment and low rates of migration tend to be where the support for brexit was at its strongest.

There is an inverse correlation between leave voters and the number of migrants in their local area

It is in these areas with relatively low immigration rates where you’ll find UKIP bigots sitting on their arse whinging about migrants taking their jobs, when in truth there are jobs available, if they’d just get up off their arse and move somewhere where there is work (or perhaps retrain and gain the skills to get a job). And unlike the UKIP’ers, migrants have no interest on sitting around living on benefits. And how is Corbyn going to make them move where he wants them too? Is he going to have is own version of the stasi follow immigrants around?

EU citizens are a tiny portion of benefits claimants…..

Corbyn’s is basically proposing to pour fuel on the UKIP fire. It represents such a colossal misreading of the problem, that it clearly shows that he is even more out of touch on this issue than the Tories. And that takes some doing.

…..and far more Pakistani’s claim benefits anyway….so how is leaving the EU supposed to help?

Either way, all of this means that any hope of the brexiters for a points system and serious cuts to immigration is unlikely. But unfortunately, that’s not going to stop them trying. Hence why we’ll probably see them try to impose some Daily Mail friendly border controls. Of course once the UKBA ends up buried under a sea of paper work, many millions of the types they want to keep out, sneak in through the cracks, while a lack of skilled labour leads to factories closing, chronic NHS staffing shortages, crops rotting in the fields, etc. Finally at this point, there will be panic and they’ll have to roll back these restrictions.

In short, the UK will have voted for the worst of both worlds, loss of all of the benefits of being in the EU with none of the border controls that were supposedly the justification for brexit in the first place.

Now everyone’s been Trumped

Analysis
So its Trump, how can 60 million people be that dumb! Many are trying to put the spin on it, that it was working class Americans in rust belt states fed up with how they are treated in Washington that swung the election. Well no, the polling data (both before and after the election) shows the vast majority of Trump voters are middle class or upper class whites who generally have a better than average income. The majority of low income whites still voted for Hillary. Certainly some more of them than did vote for Trump than would normally be expected in an election, but in theory this was cancelled out (to some degree) by an increased level of turn out and voting for Hillary by ethnic minority voters.

Indeed its worth remembering that she carried the popular vote, Trump carried the key swing states by only a tiny margin. The reality is that a Trump victory should have been mathematically impossible had it not been for large number of both wealthy or middle class Americans turning out to vote for him. So Trump is on their head, they are now responsible for whatever mess he makes.

A more crucial factor was that the “never Trump” block within the GOP clearly dithered at the final moment. I mean Republicans are such hypocrites. They launch all of that assault on Bill Clinton and Obama, go around thumping their bible complaining about how America now has no morals anymore….then vote for “grab them by the pu%&X” Trump, who is worse than Bill and far more corrupt than any president or candidate has ever been (Trump university for example, shady deals, Mafia connections) and will be spending some portion of his presidency in court. He may actually end up being indicted on bribery charges before he takes up office. And we can’t just point the finger at white men, the polling data shows a majority of white women also voted for him in certain older age groups. And least we forget Trump is likely to run up a massive deficit, far larger than Obama, so all that BS from the GOP about the debt ceiling over the last few years was clearly just political street theatre.

One fact is clear, is that facts no longer matter anymore. We are truly in the post truth world. And don’t even take my word for it. The analysis of a neuroscientist of Trump supporters is that there’s something wrong with their brains. They have an enlarged and overactive Amygdala, which means they are much more likely to overreact to perceived threats (whether real or imagined). They also have demonstrated an inability to be capable of separating fact from opinion, a trend we saw over in the UK prior to the brexit vote. In short, they believe crazy things because they don’t want to look bad in the eyes of their peers and because they gain some sort of sadistic pleasure out of the fact that it winds up liberals when they do this. Many of these are also increasingly getting their news from Facebook, or Alt-right websites who have both been accused of polarising subscribers by only showing them web pages that won’t challenge their views in an effort to get up site hits.

And there is also the Dunning-Kruger Effect, by which many overestimate their own ability. I see this all the time as a lecturer. The people who will most overestimate their performance tend to the low achievers, who then can’t understand how it is that they failed (I’m not joking they’ll be on like 18% and want it remarked convinced that somehow we got it wrong). By contrast some of the high achievers tend to underestimate their performance (and come to me straight after the exam with the “well I know I’ve failed, what now?” line….when in fact they finished top of the class!). Or put another way, many Republicans don’t realise how dumb they actually are.

And finally there is the racism. As in the brexit vote, some will try to argue that Trump winning had nothing to do with racism. Actually no, it very much had everything to do with it. Again the polls show that. The two leading reasons given for voting Trump were terrorism and immigration (i.e. no more darkies). On economic issues, even with low wage blue collar workers, Hillary won out easily. The simple fact is that many Americans who voted for Trump were quite willing to sacrifice some of their economic well being to see the wall build and America become a more racist place. There’s no way to sugar coat it. What Trump shows is that America is a very racist and misogynistic place.

If Trump and his supporters aren’t fascist, why do they keep getting caught making fascist salutes

Which is hardly surprising given how the GOP have been pushing those over stimulated Amygdala buttons for many decades now. They’ve effectively brainwashed a large chuck of the US population to the point where they cannot separate fact from fiction and believe in new age myths over real data and statistics. Where some fantasy pedalling creationist, climate denying whack-job is given the same credibility as a Nobel prize winning scientist. In doing so they’ve done great damage to American democracy. I mean I was talking to someone from China the other day and enquired what he thought of democracy and he just laughed. I mean seriously, if you were Chinese, horrible thought the Communist party is, would you rather have a system that elects Putin, Trump or votes for brexit?

Trump’s other supporters
And then there’s the other group of Trump supporters, Jill Stein and Gary “Aleppo” Johnson voters. Let’s be clear, you effectively voted for Trump. Go through the data, you’ll see that in the 5 key swing states (any 3 of which would have handed the election to Hillary) and if only half of those who voted for Stein and Johnson voted for Hillary she’d have won (or if all those in 3 of those states who voted for Stein voted Hillary, she would have won).

When Jill met Putin…..

One can’t argue with the maths, Hillary is not the president thanks to these voters. In effect by voting for either of these candidates in a swing state was the moral equivalent of taking part in a firing squad, but convincing yourself that you fired the blank round every time. Trump is on your head as well. I hope you like him, because its now your fault as much as it is the Republicans.

Hillary robbed at email point

Hillary tries on her inaugural gown

And given how narrow the victory was one has to look back at the e-mail scandal and the FBI’s last minute intervention. This clearly had an impact, its difficult to believe it didn’t. Now while its clear the polling data was off, it still had Hillary in about an 8% lead prior to Comey’s letter. The final polls put Hillary about 4% up. So one assumes that it caused a 4% swing against Hillary, while the polls were actually off by about 4% as well. I’m reminded of this scence from the Simpsons where Mr Burns runs for office.

Hillary had a massive lead prior to the Comey’s intervention

While Hillary has to take some of the blame, she may not have been the best choice of candidate (recall I never said I liked her much myself, its just I could see the difference between her and Mr Disaster). And she lost this election more than Trump won it (she got several million less votes than Obama got, while Trump got less votes that Romney got!). But clearly she’s right in pointing the finger at the FBI’s intervention, noting that if true, then Comey broke a long standing electoral law and should, along with Rudolph Giuliani and Senator Chaffetz be subject to a criminal investigation. Of course with Mr stop and frisk now likely to be the attorney general, that seems unlikely to actually happen.

Bernie
Inevitably some of the Bernie brigade are chirping about how Bernie would have won it. And yes I’ve seen polls showing that. However we have to put this in context. He hadn’t just fought an election campaign and have baseless racist/sexist smears thrown at him by the GOP, with the direct assistance of the FBI. Yes, he might just have pulled it off (this election favoured the outsider), but equally its possible is that he’d have still lost, perhaps by a larger margin.

Most Americans are trained from birth to consider anyone calling themselves a socialist to be coming for their wallet, their gun and their bible,in that order. Now I know that’s BS, but that’s still what many think. And there are large number of Americans, including quite a lot in the electoral block that typically vote democrat, who will not vote for an atheist as president. Bernie may have tied down a bit more of the white working class vote, but he’d have seen lower turn out among ethic minority groups from strongly religious backgrounds. And Blomberg would have followed through with his threat to run as a 3rd party candidate.

Again, look at the demographics of those who voted for Trump (who actually voted, ignore this myth about angry blue collar voters) its difficult to see Bernie making a bigger dent. Yes he might have won, but it would have been close. Then again, technically Hillary won, it was only this dumbass electoral college system that stopped her.

Trump v’s reality
So what can we expect from Trump? Well he’s biggest opponent is likely to be this little thing called “reality” and he can’t build a wall around that. Take for example his plan to put a 45% tariff on China and 35% on Mexico. Ya, that’s the thing, stick it to the Chinese, that’ll show’em….hay why’s my I-phone now 45% more expensive? And gas prices just went up, and when I went to buy new tires for my buick they were 35%….oh wait, now I see!

The only thing protectionism will achieve is it will make everything more expensive. Now while that’s not a big deal for those who can afford to pay 45-35% more for everything, its not so great news for anyone on a tight budget. Yes some companies might move their factories into the US, but only those who exclusively sell to Americans. As other nations will retaliate with tariffs of their own, they’d be shutting themselves out of the international market by moving into the US. It would in short, make more economic sense for Apple to relocate out of the US and abandon the American market than lose the rest of its world sales. America simply lacks the economic clout to fight a trade war with China or the EU. Trump and his supporters might think its 1928, but its not.

Then he wants to build the wall and deport all of the immigrants. Now ignoring the engineering and practical problems with all of that, the enormous costs and the fact that the Wall has been obsolete since the Wright brothers invented this thing called “planes”. And who is going to do their jobs? Do you think unemployed people in the rust belt are going to trek halfway across the country to take up manual labour jobs picking crops and cleaning toilets in California or Texas for 6 months a year, then go home again? The end result of his policy will be labour shortages and crops left to rot in the fields. As a result of Trump’s policy we could well see queue’s forming outside shops, much like in Venezuela recently, as certain items become scarce.

Economists fear the US deficit exceeding 100%….

Then there’s the deficit, his plan is to run up a massive deficit, up to $5.3 trillion to $10 trillion. Certainly, he’d push America pass the long feared threshold of 100%, at which point its likely investors will start to panic, US debt will be downgraded and interest rates will soar.

…..because it raises the risk of national bankrupcty

Now Trump says, oh I’ll renegotiate the debt or print more money. Ya, and you do realise that will devalue the US dollar? Meaning beyond a certain point, he’s no longer a billionaire (because a billion bucks suddenly ain’t worth that much). And this would also have to push up salaries, including those of state employees. government contractors will start charging the state more for their services. Lenders will charge a higher rate of return, so again interest rates go up. In short economic meltdown.

Another member of the Billionaire’s club! Trump’s plans would make everyone a billionaire just like him!

Certainly the “print money” option is a good idea, in a crisis, as a temporary means of restoring order. But as a long term debt management strategy its the equivalent of buying Trump wine and mixing it with water and then trying to sell it, only nobody wants to buy it at the original price, instead they’ll only buy it at a discount price. Trump is basically trying to argue that he can still make money selling this diluted wine at a lower price than he buys it. And recall the largest holder of US debt is pension funds based in the US not China.

Trump v’s congress
The second problem for Trump is that a number of his policies will not last long in congress.

For example one of the first groups he’ll be upsetting with any trade tariffs will be the US automotive lobby. This is a cabal of car makers, fossil fuel companies, construction firms (who build and maintain roads) and auto dealerships. A lot of US auto parts are shipped in from abroad (most notably Mexico), as is lots of its fossil fuel supply. They will be more than a little upset at the thought that their cars should be more expensive and their profits should take a hit. And these are not the sort of people you want to mess with. Keep in mind the global warming denial machine is just one tiny part of this lobby group. At a local politics level, these guys wield a lot of power (as this Adam ruin’s everything mentions), typically 20% of local sales tax comes from automobile sales. Who do you think local politicians will listen too, Trump or the guys who fund their campaign and the main source of local tax revenue?

In short, Trump messes with these guys, and they’ll see to it that the GOP will get crucified in the mid-terms. And the GOP know that, so they ain’t going to endorse a lot of the things he’s proposed. Likely they’ll pick and chose. For example his tax cut plans, they’ll go for the idea of cutting taxes to the wealthy or getting rid of estate taxes, but likely leave out the bit about closing off loopholes. Which given how ruthlessly Trump has relied on those loopholes himself (he’s probably not paid any tax for 18 years), its likely he’ll go along with. This will, as noted, push up the deficit, leave many poor Americans worse off, while the wealthiest one % are much better off. As fo

The GOP will also go after various ideological issues that play well with their electorate, e.g. repeal Obamacare, ban abortion and gay marriage, deport migrants (although oddly enough not his wife!), make gun ownership compulsory (except for Muslims and minorities of course!), etc. The environment, well they’re pretty much going to ban that, with consequences much like in this Simpson’s sketch  (its scary how old Simpson’s episodes are starting to play out in reality).However, they will likely face Filibustering tactics from the democrats, who will effectively now try to shut down congress and count down the clock on Trump’s presidency. And the GOP can hardly complain as this was essentially their tactics under Obama. In short, its likely the log jam in US politics will get worse under Trump not better.

There are some positive policies that might emerge, the GOP and Trump being the hypocrites that they are, they can be prone to a strong element of “not invented here” syndrome. e.g. Obamacare. Mitt Romney was dead set against this, and I mean who the hell came up with this job killing idea?…Mitt Romney did, Obamacare was modelled along the lines of similar policies in various American states…including one brought in by Mitt Romney! This explains Trump’s dithering on repealing Obamacare. He’d be replacing it with something very similar, just a bit more expensive and not as effective.

Similarly he might get certain things passed, who knows maybe even some modest gun control measures, some job creation through another stimulus package (much of which will inevitably find its way into his and his supporters pockets of course), simply because he proposed these things rather than Obama or Hillary. But beyond that, I’d brace yourself for disappointment.

Trump v’s the world
Trump will also face opposition worldwide. Pulling back from the Paris climate deal is not that straightforward, its now entered into international law, he’s going to find it very difficult to pivot away without suffering blow back. And the deal explicitly states that a country must give 4 years notice before leaving, so that’s not even possible within his presidency.

He also wants to make friends with Putin and break with the NATO alliance. Ya, run that by your generals first! They would be appalled and point out the dangers in such a policy towards US interests. Most of America’s forward deployed forces are in Europe. They rely on European airspace to supply forces in the middle east, conduct intelligence in Russia and watch for possible missile launches. Losing that is simply not acceptable as far as his generals will be concerned.

And I take it he doesn’t want to get re-elected? You do know that one of Putin’s allies happens to be a little place called IRAN who took delivery incidentally of S-300 anti-aircraft missiles a few weeks back. These missiles effectively make it very unlikely that Israel could now carry out any attacks against Iran without losing a lot of aircraft. As one US general put it “Iran is now Israel proof”. Even the US forces would now have to accept causalities from any bombing missions against Iran. Which means Trump would upset the Israeli lobby by cosying up to Putin.

And it takes some doing to have the Israeli’s and the Arab world against you. Those Muslim’s he wants to stop from coming into the US happen to control over 50% of the world’s oil production and hold many strategic bases. They now might just go away and form an alliance with the Chinese.

More worryingly its very easy to see how Trump and Putin could get into conflict with each other. For example, egged on by pro-Putin rhetoric from Washington Putin goes into the Baltic states, much like how Saddam mis-read signals from Washington and went into Kuwait. NATO forces, including American forces respond. And note that US commanders in the field don’t necessarily have to call the president before opening fire. If US forces or civilians come under attack, (or NATO allies ask the US commander for assistance) they can respond without waiting for a presidential order. So Trump would have to explicitly order his forces to stand down, even if it meant abandoning American civilians and military forces to be shelled and bombed. He’d be committing the very crime that the GOP tried to claim Hillary committed with regard to Benghazi, except on a much larger scale. He would be vilified, even by his own supporters as a new Benedict Arnold and likely Congress will have him out of office so fast his wig will spin.

Wall street’s man
And the bad news for anyone who did vote for him because your angry about the elites in Wall street in congress, well your a moron, stay away from ballot boxes in future. One little feature of election night I noted, firstly the Asian stock market crashed, dropping 1000 points in a few hours (as you’d expect if you’d followed the campaign). So heavy were these losses that the Dow didn’t open the next day, as it had lost 5% as a consequence of these losses in Asia. Then when it opened rather than the expected falls continuing, instead it barely moved.

Then the Asian markets regained their earlier losses within 24 hrs. To me this indicates that Wall street insiders knew something the Asian stockbrokers didn’t know (but quickly worked out), the fix is in. This behaviour means one of two things A) Wall street knows that something’s planned, Trump will not be president, he’ll have himself a little “accident” in a few days time, the electoral college will vote for Mike Pence or Hillary instead, etc. Or B) He’s been fixed, they’ve got some dirt on him or bought him, he’s their man.

I’m tending towards the second option, given that he’s now talking of repealing the Dodd-Frank act, a key bill brought in by Obama to prevent another financial crisis. In short all that BS during the rallies about going after wall street and draining the swamp, no it was all lies. He’s going to do nothing of the sort. If anything he’s going to make it easier for Wall street to screw the little guy, not the other way around.

Either that or the first option is correct and he’s not going to be president for some reason.

Trump and the UK
There are some in the UK who cheered Trump’s election. Theresa May won’t have been one of those. Firstly, after going to all this trouble to get brexit to kill off UKIP it does not suit the Tory agenda to now have UKIP going around portraying themselves as the UK Trump party. Also there has never been any doubt the UK could get a trade deal from the US, the question was always how beneficial it will be. Its a bit like trying to buy a car. If you’re in a hurry you’ll get it if you pay more than its worth. You want a fair price it takes a lot longer. You may have to walk away from a few deals first.

And again, remember Trump will have to get the details of such a deal past Congress. Recall the US auto lobby. Recall May has essentially committed to getting tariff free trade for the UK car industry. Its not possible to square those two circles. If Trump concedes on this point, he’ll face massive opposition from a very powerful lobby group (who been trying to stop European made cars, essentially those owned by their bitter rivals in Japan, from gaining a foothold in the US market), with their fingers in many swing states (and the pockets of many politicians) and some of the very voters who put him in power work in this industry. If Theresa May concedes, she can be looking at hundreds of thousands of job losses in the lead up to an election. There’s a solution, but its not that easy, it will take time and careful negotiation.

And if the UK ends up part of some sort of transatlantic trading bloc, they could face sanctions and punitive tariffs from the EU and China. Given that the UK does more of its trade with the EU than America, if it has to pick a side, the logical thing to do would be to pick the EU (of course there I go with my “logic” and “facts” again). This is the whole reason why so many voted remain. The UK is too small to be a world power by itself anymore. Its option are to either pool its resources with the rest of Europe, or become a vassal state of an existing empire, literally the 51st state in all but name.

And another reason for voting remain, is that the fear of the UK becoming essentially airstrip one (of 1984 fame) if it leaves the EU. You may enquire what’s to stop the US moving its forces in Europe and stationing them in Britain. Well, firstly geography (the Middle East is too far away! And you’d still need overflight rights from the Europeans). Secondly, this would be political suicide for the Tories. All of that controversy back in the 80’s over US missiles in the UK would spark off again. This is exactly the sort of controversy that could blow the Scottish independence referendum wide open or give Corbyn a fighting chance in 2020.

Trump’s Impeachment
The GOP wanted to impeach Hillary “in her ball gown”. This does seem unlikely, most of the controversies she has been accused of were simply made up or over-egged. More importantly the GOP have now set the bar for what constitutes grounds for presidential impeachment so low, its basically a given that any president whom they don’t like, if they can get the necessary votes, he can be removed from office.

And Trump has been involved in numerous scandals already, as noted he will be spending quite a bit of time in and out of court as it is. Also there are already warning signs of where a possible future scandal will erupt. Making white supremacist Steve Bannon as possible white house chief of staff for example, or that odorous brown envelope distributing toad Myron Ebell as head of the EPA, appointing his own relatives to senior posts, yet they also are trustees on the trust fund that will manage his finances during the presidency. You could start a sweepstake on how long before the balloon goes up.

And the democrats show every sign that they are going to come out of the gate swinging on the 21st of January. They feel that they have been cheated out of the presidency and are likely out for blood. They don’t have a majority enough to start impeachment, but they can start making waves. The GOP will likely try to hang onto Trump, so long as he’s useful. If he proves himself to be the disaster many expect him to be, the democrats won’t have to try very hard to convince enough of the Republicans to back impeachment. Personally I reckon a Trump impeachment attempt (successful or not) is essentially a matter of when not if.

Rise of Fascism

Of course we are making a very dangerous assumption here. That all the checks and balances of the US government will work. But what if they don’t? G. W. Bush should have been at the least investigated over the Iraq war and those “black flights” but he wasn’t (even Trump agrees with this). Its quite clear that Trump and a number of his inner circle have fascist tendencies. The way he’s now flip flopping like John Kerry at a summer footwear convention does suggest that they regard their own supporters as sheep. Mindless drones in a cult of personality who are too be manipulated, control and where necessary betrayed.

Keep in mind that Hitler was helped into power by the very sort of people who helped Trump into power, because they saw him as a useful idiot, who could be used to keep the plebs in line, while they the establishment still secretly ran things. Of course they didn’t count on Hitler ending democracy and relying on his cult of personality to rule by degree. The checks and balances of the US state are about to be subject to destructive testing that will test them to their limits.

If they fail the consequences are pretty grim. As Obama pointed out, one has to worry about a vain insecure man like him, who can’t be trusted with a Twitter account, having access to the nuclear codes. We are very close to midnight I fear.

And if the checks and balances fail, let us remember who got us here. Republicans, (so called) conservatives, plus Jill Stein and Libertarian voters, this one is on all of you. Historians of the future may judge your actions very harshly. My own guess its we that Trump in power probably signals that the US has receded from its high water mark. The US has essentially voted to go backwards, to retreat from the world, to be a less progressive place, to be the new “sick man” of world politics (by putting a sick man in charge). And that is the real problem with this election result.

You’ve been Trumped too

All in all, I think Trump was summed up rather well by Michael Forbes, the farmer who opposes Trump up in Aberdeenshire. In the recent film you’ve been Trumped Too, he reminisced that when Trump came to Scotland half the country loved him (including Alex Salmond) and half hated him. Now everyone hates him as they realised he’s a complete con artist, who tells tall tales, never delivers, he just fills his own pockets and massages his own ego.

My guess is that this is the reality, Trump is out for one person – himself. He doesn’t care if the country falls apart so long as he comes out on top. And that’s who America voted for!

Slithering towards authoritarianism

If Corbyn had made an end of conference speech suggesting that he wanted to use the power of the state to make a better society, the media would quickly be rife with the usual “crazy bolshie Corbyn” articles, while half his MP’s would resign and sign a no confidence motion. But instead, Theresa May was the one who made the speech and instead she is praised as “taking the centre ground”. Well not quite!

A lot of people think politics is a linear one dimensional problem of right and left, when in fact it is at the very least a two dimensional issue of right and left but also liberal and authoritarian (one could argue for a third dimension to define scientific literacy, e.g. are you a global warming denying anti-vaccine type, or a hard science transhumanist, but that’s another days discussion). In effect what the Tories are now proposing to do under our poundshop Thatcher is to move diagonally, slightly to the left, but more upwards towards authoritarianism……the same spot currently occupied by UKIP…..and closer to Hitler!

And if that sounds like being a little unfair, we have Oberführer von Rudd’s “I’m not racist….but” speech, calling for business to be forced to say how much of their workforce is British. Thing is, for years campaigners for disability, women and minority rights have been calling for this sort of data to be made available, but the Tories has dismissed such a policy as “anti-business”. Yet we now have the Tories advocating just such a policy, as they attempt to out UKIP, UKIP. I mean how would they react if Nichola Sturgeon announced she’d make all Scottish businesses declare the numbers of English working for them? Next thing you know the Tories will have foreigners going around with little stars on their chests. And if some over enthusiastic Brownshirts patriotic Tory grass roots supporters should boycott some Pakistani owned shop, or break his windows, well the Tory party aren’t to blame, are they?

One wonders what Thatcher and her mantra of big government being more part of the problem than the solution, would sit with the current Tory party. Of government getting off the back of businesses, not lecturing them in how to do their job (or telling them who to recruit), keeping markets stable and basically not doing anything to upset the apple cart. Or that a British home is your castle…well not if we want to frack underneath it these days! If Thatcher had a grave, she’d be rolling in it about now. And if her ghost showed up at the conference she’d be called a bleeding heart liberal and told to take it outside.

And what about the deficit? The Tories came to power in 2007 on a ticket of deficit reduction, claiming the UK would lose its credit rating and be bankrupted by hyperinflation if the deficit wasn’t brought under control quickly. They ran in the 2015 election on a platform of finishing what they started. The Hinkley C project, talk of millions of homes on green field sites, a new runway at Heathrow, HS2 and much else, all paid for on the UK’s credit card does suggests that the Tories have essentially abandoned  their long held position of being the party of supposedly balanced budgets and prudent spending (actually they never really achieved this but they at least pretended to try).

As I highlighted in a prior post, the only people who don’t worry about the deficit are the sort of people who are bad at maths (that would be Hammond!), or think national bankruptcy holds some sort of silver lining (that would be Michael Gove!). It is important that governments balance their books. My main criticism of Osborne was how he was prepared to throw the very poorest in society under the bus to achieve his targets, while his lopsided policy ignored the need to raise taxes concurrently. Bill Clinton and more recently the Irish tackled their deficit this way, tax rises and spending cuts, but rises where people can afford it, cuts where it will cause the least harm. Indeed one was often forced to the conclusion Osborne’s policy was really just an excuse to gut public spending that did not benefit his class.

And speaking of which, why not roll back all of Osborne’s austerity measures? That would represent a move towards the centre ground, but like I said the truth is the Tories are instead slithering towards the Authoritarian right. Given labour’s move towards the hard left under Corbyn this actually means there is no major party of the centre ground in UK politics. For those who want someone to speak for the 67% of the electorate who didn’t vote leave, nobody now represents you, other than perhaps the lib dems (who have a single digit number of seats).

But spare a thought for traditional pro-business Tories or libertarians. They literally do have nowhere to go to now. Rather ironically some voted for brexit hoping it would mean a more free market libertarian Britain…LOL..😂..how dumb they must look now! Instead, much as I warned prior to the referendum (and indeed actual libertarians warned also), we’re looking at a UK split between the authoritarian right of UKIP and the Tories and a hard left labour party.

Some still cling to the belief that UKIP is a libertarian party, failing to understand that UKIP are in fact the ideological enemies of libertarians (calling ones self a “libertarian” was, a common dog whistle code word in the US, because showing up wearing your hood or calling yourself a fascist tended to get a negative reaction. Of course with Trump, they don’t need to do that anymore, and besides there’s an actual libertarian running now in Gary Johnson). So any actual libertarians in the UK have literally nowhere to go now.

So no, the Tories have not moved towards the centre ground, its just that “moving towards the centre ground” sounds a bit better than “becoming more like Hitler”. In the wake of brexit the centre ground has been abandoned, while the two major parties make their way towards the extremes.

Return of the Farage

I wonder why she left?

UKIP leader Diana James quit yesterday after less than 3 weeks in the job, forcing Farage to step back in as party leader….for the 4th time! In many respects this is not really surprising, UKIP has always been to some degree the cult of the Farage, so it is inevitable that anyone else seeking to take over would face problems.

However there is a more insidious matter it exposes. Ms James claims her reason for resigning was it became obvious that she would have very little authority to change anything. It is ironic that so many turn to UKIP because they don’t trust mainstream politicians, yet UKIP is ten times worse.

Behind the scenes is a shadowy world of hedge fund donors, washed up hacks, ex-national front (or BNP) fascists and other rejects from the mainstream parties. They hold much of the real power and decision making. These include the likes of Paul Nuttall, Roger Helmer, Martyn Heale and the king of sleaze celebrity moron Nigel Hamilton. None of them can be cast in the role of party leader because that would be complete unacceptable politically. The curtain would fall and the public would be able to see what lies behind it.

So UKIP needs a squeaky clean front person, to complete the illusion of them being the party of the little guy, rather than the party of the elites too corrupt or racist to join the Tories. And yes I know Nigel Farage was their leader for quite some time, that’s the point, he’s more palatable than any of the other Troglodytes within the party! Ms James obviously realised over the last few days that this was her expected role and not unsurprisingly quit.

So what now for UKIP? Well they might be able to pull things together, either under Farage or some other suitable figure. Or like so many parties on the populist right they might well now implode. Its a trend such parties go through, they are spectacularly successful for awhile, but then they just implode due to infighting.

Which is perhaps a point regarding the referendum. If the goal of the referendum was to kill off UKIP, then it was a waste of time. They were always going to do that all by themselves. It might have taken a bit longer, but it was (and is) going to happen eventually.

Why the Britannia’s not coming back….nor the Empire!

The Britannia….where the queen would wine and dine blood thirsty dictators so the UK could sell them weapons

Liam Fox, Boris Johnson and a number of the other Brexiters want to bring back the Royal Yacht Britannia. They fantasize about a future where they travel the world signing new trade agreements from its decks. Really?

Well the current yacht was built in 1952 and completely obsolete (it was declared as much when it was decommissioned 22 years ago). I mean there’s a long list of things it won’t have (such as this thing called “the internet”….Liam Fox might want to look that one up!) and you’d have to train an entire crew as to how to use it. One would have to question the logistics of bringing it up to speed and back into service.

Furthermore, its also way too small for modern trade negotiations. The days when a UK minister could settle an international trade deal with some tin pot dictator over a glass of sherry and a handshake are long gone. A typical trade delegation these days will consist of several hundred lawyers and negotiators (of which Britain currently employs…..none!). Such talks will typically take place over a good few months, with the politicians only flying in for the last few days to settle any sticking points and basically knock heads together where necessary.

So you’d need something a little bit bigger….as in like a cruise ship! And you’d probably want more than one. And just one of those will set you back about half a billion, with an annual running cost of about a tenth that. And that’s for a ship kitted out for budget holiday makers, crewed by staff mostly drawn from developing world shipping nations. A ship decked out to the sort of royal standards we are talking about, crewed by the Royal Navy, you’re likely thinking many times these amounts, probably a few billion to commission and maybe a hundred million a year to run. Perhaps more. So not cheap.

But we’d get value for money from all those trade deals and saving on flights & hotels, right? Well aside from the little niggle that its going to be difficult to negotiate a trade deal with China from this ship….seeing as Beijing is 150 km’s inland. Australia? Canberra’s now the capital and that’s about 200 km’s inland. New Delhi? Over 1,000 km’s inland. Ottawa in Canada? 400 km’s inland. Washington DC’s close to the coast, but you’re not going to get a boat that big up the Potomac. Moscow in Russia?…you get the idea. And let’s not even consider the gas and oil rich states of Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan.

Now I suppose the Brexiters will argue, oh but johnny foreigners will hop on a train and come to us. Ya and if Putin showed up in his yacht, moored it off Brighton and summoned the PM to appear before him, how would the brit’s react? Probably by telling him to get stuffed and get on his bike and we’ll see you in London.

Also one has to wonder how it would look to the locals with their minsters being wined and schmoozed on a luxury yacht by an ex-colonial government. Dodgy as hell one assumes. Again how would the tabloids react to news of one of the UK’s minsters attending secret meetings on a foreign head of states private yacht? These days politicians, even those in less than democratic countries, have to at least pretend to not be corrupt.

And as I pointed out in a prior post, the British have a very brazen view of the British Empire that is not shared by the rest of the world. To many in India or former UK colonies, the history of the British Empire, its oppression of native populations, the atrocities it committed, the Empire’s use of concentration camps, are listed in the same section of the history books as nazi Germany and its crimes. So to draw an analogy if Angela Merkel commissioned a Reichsyacht the SS Bismarck and sailed it into Southampton for a trade negotiation, how would the British react to that? Not well I expect! How do you think the Indians are likely to react to a royal yacht in their waters? My guess is you’ll get ten minutes to turn around before they launch the torpedoes.

And this is perhaps the real problem here – the warped fantasy world view of these Brexiters. They don’t seem to realise how much the world has changed in the last 60 years. Or indeed how much of history they were taught in their posh boarding school is at odds with reality. Hence why they don’t understand the consequences of trying to reset everything and pretend its 1950 again.

There is worrying talk that the hard Brexiters are winning the argument behind closed doors. What’s wrong with that? Well a hard brexit pretty much guarantees a harder landing for the UK. It would almost certainly lead to another independence referendum in Scotland. And furthermore the harder the brexit the more likely a yes vote in Scotland becomes. Also it could even be enough to provoke a border poll in Northern Ireland. So hard Brexit might well turn out to mean Engexit….as in it will be England essentially leaving the EU and the UK breaking up.

Also a hard brexit will have a much more significant impact on trade, given the inevitable link between trade and free movement. Already a number of universities are talking of setting up campuses in the EU, most likely shifting much of their research staff overseas. A number of high tech firms and banks are also talking about moving and again the harder the brexit the more incentive they have to push into Europe. And the head of Nissan has hinted that he will be expecting some sort of “compensation” from the government for brexit to maintain operations in the UK.

UK factories in the 70’s were a model of unproductivity, crap cars produced using outdated technology by work-shy strike-happy workers, companies that needed significant state intervention to stay afloat

Now while you could accuse Nissan’s boss of being a little cheeky, but back in the old pre-globalisation days many industries were given a large government subsidy, were state owned or their market share defended by punitive tariff’s against foreign competitors. Even Tory governments prior to Thatcher didn’t really question this, as it was understood that the UK’s industrial jobs won’t survive in a completely free trade environment without some form of protectionism or subsidy. As a consequence the ideological enemy right now of Mr Fox isn’t Jeremy Corbyn but his hero Thatcher, who would be rolling in her grave….if she had one.

Fox with his hero…and ironic ideological enemy…well at least that’s one positive thing we can say about him!

Now while rolling back Thacherism would have its advantages, but its cutting off your nose to spite your face to leave the EU to achieve this (it would make more sense to do it from within the EU by convincing the rest of the union to do the same). And its also throwing the baby out with the bathwater given all the other unintended consequences. More crucially however from a future British trade point of view, it is how much the global economy has changed since last trade deals were signed on Britannia’s decks.

Back then the UK went around the world offering to open its trade door a crack in exchange for full access to foreign markets for UK firms. Now the boots on the other foot. The Chinese economy is vastly larger than the UK’s. Many of the UK’s firms (about 52% in all) are foreign owned (Nissan, the country’s largest carmaker is a joint Japanese and French endeavour, Jaguar Land rover is owned by India’s Tata group, who also own…you get the message!). Instead the UK will be offering an access all areas pass to Indian and Chinese businesses, in exchange for slightly more favourable terms for the UK…sorry England…. to sell goods to them.

Global economies compared. Note how India’s will be 6 times bigger than the UK by 2050 and China’s 10 times bigger. Also note the above figures are in nominal GDP which arguably overvalues Western economies and undervalues developing ones.

And faced with tariff free competition from either Polish or Chinese made goods British manufacturing firms and parts of the service economy, will struggle to compete, especially against foreign firms based in countries not run by bigots who can recruit more freely. Its not foreigners coming over here and “stealing” your job people need to worry about, its foreigners staying at home and your job moving overseas. And the decision to sack British workers will be made in foreign board rooms.

The only many English companies could hope to survive in this environment is by essentially turning the country into France…..and I don’t mean today’s France, I’m talking about Mitterand’s France with massive levels of subsidy and state intervention. The recent Hinkley deal, which will be subsidised to the tune of 68.8% of the cost of every watt it generates, is likely to be the shape of things to come. Without this level of interventionism certain sectors of the UK economy will collapse, in much the same way some sectors collapsed when Thatcher took over.

The irony is, many of those who voted Brexit in the hope of seeing more control over foreign trade and immigration will likely see the opposite happening. More big government, more bureaucracy, more foreign goods coming in, less jobs for British people, with the UK more foreign owned and more dependant on foreign workers being brought in to meet temporary skills shortages.

And much of what any future UK trade delegation will be negotiating, likely from a hotel on the Beijing ring road rather than a royal yacht, will essentially be the orderly surrender and fire sale of what’s left of the UK economy.

Brexit betrayals continue

Before the referendum Brexit voters were warned that they were being conned. But Brexit was simply a means to an end for many in the leave camp, the goal being to further their own careers or line their pockets, they didn’t care about the consequences. They would betray the votes as soon as the referendum was over. And indeed time and again this has been proven right. The £350 million a week to the NHS claim didn’t even last 24 hrs. The vote leave website was shutdown and scrubbed clean within hours of the vote. And given the likely impact of Brexit on staffing and NHS costs, its inevitable the current problems in the NHS will only get worse post-Brexit.

One of the main issues during the debate was immigration. We’ll get a points system they were told. As I for one discussed sometime before the vote, no you’re not going to get a points system, because that would be silly and it won’t work. Low and behold, we’re now told we no there’s not going to be a points system. As I pointed out in a recent post, Theresa May has two choices, she can betray the UKIP bigot brigade and keep borders open, or she can betray the middle classes, pensioners and business tycoons who put the Tories in power, by leaving the single market. Given that its quite clear that the three Brexiters in her cabinet have no clue what to do about immigration, it seems increasingly likely she plans on betraying the bigot brigade.

Yes some window dressing will be applied, Theresa May has shown herself to be a masterful user of the so-called dead cat approach (see here and here). There’s talk for example of a rule that EU migrants will have to have job before moving over. Or in other words they do the job search over the internet, come over on a tourist visa for the interview (or do it via Skype) and then apply for residency. No doubt firms offering to “employ” migrants on a zero hours contract (for literally zero hours) for a fixed fee will soon spring up. The same way some fake colleges are being used to help non-EU migrants to come in. In short it will change nothing. In fact given that the UK leaving the EU will make it easier for genuine refugees from within the EU to claim asylum in the UK, and there’s a good chance of current customs arrangements ending in Calais. So its likely more will be coming in not less, post-Brexit.

And given that the UK will essentially be handing over sovereignty for a whole host of areas to the EU, as part of some Norway model plus, its difficult to avoid the argument that the UK will be worse off with less control over its trade policy. And keep in mind that one of the areas where the UK will retain some leeway is in areas such as employee rights. i.e. those pesky EU laws that stop your boss forcing you to retire because your seen as too old, or the laws protecting your right to strike or join a union, or guaranteeing you can’t be forced to work unreasonable hours. Its difficult to see a Tory government resisting the temptation to roll back these laws.

Farmers were warned that leaving the EU would mean an end to farm subsidies. The leave camp were very careful to say that they won’t end subsidies, or that they would, depending on which audience they were talking too. Well now its likely farm subsidies are going to come under a twin pronged attack. On the one hand there is the environmental argument that subsidies should only be paid out if they provide real environmental benefit. On the other hand, its difficult to see the government paying such generous subsidies to such a small group of voters. And wealthy landowners will be well aware that cutting this lifeline would present them with the opportunity to buy up small holdings and add them to their estates (then likely rent it back to the same poor sod!).

And what about those fishermen who sailed boats down the Thames? Well they’ve already been told not to expect any increase in catch quota’s post-Brexit. I was in Norway at the time of the vote and have been in Iceland before. Their main bone of contention with the EU is over fisheries, not because the EU is too strict but that it isn’t strict enough. And the expert advice is that UK fish catch levels should if anything, get cut.

In short, Brexit voters have been conned on a scale unseen in electoral history. Now politicians do tell porkies from time to time, but I’ve never seen such a outright and blatant betrayal of voters. What Brexit voters need to understand is that those when you saw those Tory placards saying “take control” that slogan wasn’t aimed at the common voter, but at other rich and wealthy elites who fund the Tory party, as Brexit is going to allow one of the biggest transfers of power and wealth within the UK for many generations.

Which brings us to the debate over the 4.4 million petition to re-run the referendum. In the absence of that I think it is fair to argue that Parliament should vote on the matter, prior to invoking article 50, it should be free vote, in both houses. After all this is the very job Parliament exists for, to stop the people being conned into doing something that is neither in their best interests nor the country’s.

The cult of Trump’s threat to American democracy

One of the problems with a cult of personality, much like the one growing around Trump (which appears to be in the process of merging with the cult of the Farage), is how any statement from the dear leader can be escalated to a whole new level by his accolades.

For example, Trump has long claimed at his rallies that he’s way ahead in the polls, even though the evidence points to the opposite being true. While he had a slight bounce after his convention (keep in mind the Bernie brigade were still in rebellion at the DNC at the same time), but since then his numbers have been in freefall. He’s also suggested that if he loses, it means the election is rigged.

Now its quite obvious what’s going on here, Trump is an egomaniac, he’s falling for the so-called crowd effect (he’s popular at his rallies, i.e. among the people who showed up to see him). Terrified of being branded a loser, he’s setting it up so that he can avoid that label by making excuses, ignoring the consequences for the country.

And of course this “grand pollster conspiracy” is just ridiculous. Why would pollsters, some of whom work for right wing think tanks, throw in with Hillary? And won’t it make sense for them to do the opposite? i.e. show Hillary as having a smaller lead. If Hillary does have a big lead, it suggests many in those in the anti-Trump brigade who also dislike Hillary, can safely vote for a third party candidate and Hillary will still win. So we must assume that there’s a massive conspiracy afoot whose goal is to jeopardise Hillary’s campaign just so they can hurt Trump’s feelings and offend his over inflated ego.

Certainly pollsters are open to the idea that they may be underestimating Trump’s level of support. But they are more convinced that if anything the opposite is likely to be true . Republicans have been doing very badly in recent elections with key demographics, ethnic minorities, women, younger voters, etc. However, Trump is doing exceptionally badly, he’s polling as low as 12-2% with some ethnic minorities and he has to content with a large “anyone but Trump” movement within his own party. Consider that he’s now even losing out to Hillary now among college educated whites (Romney won in this category….and still lost to Obama!). As a result its more likely that the pollsters are actually underestimating Hillary’s lead than overestimating it.

And while there’s been a slight tightening of the race recently, in the key swing states, Hillary is still well ahead. Indeed, adding up all the states expected to vote democrat in November Hillary already has the 270 electoral college votes she’ll need. And of the states on the margins (e.g. Florida and Ohio) she has a clear lead. While its a bit early to declare the race over, but the odds are clearly in Hillary’s favour.

US electoral College Map, 23rd of August 2016

Despite all of this its quite obvious that Trump and his inner circle exist in an echo chamber of self delusion, something which has led to some awkward moments with the media when they are confronted by this pesky thing called “reality”. But regardless of the facts, Trump’s comments have been taken up by his eager brown shirts (notably Alex Jones), who have decided to basically go off and invent polls showing him ahead…even in California! Trump’s also trying to create his own army of “election observers”, who will no doubt show up with their 45’s to see if they can intimidate ethnic minorities from voting.

In short he’s more or less guaranteeing violence either on election day, if not immediately afterwards, all for the sake of protecting his own fragile ego. The damage that he could well do to America, for petty narcissistic reasons is considerable.

UKIP going the full Donald

You would think that the one saving grace from the recent referendum was that it would mean the end of UKIP. Farage has gone and given that UKIP is basically little more than a cult of personality of “the Farage“, so its the end of them, right?

No. They have a leadership contest and the evidence would seem to be they are going the full Donald Trump. One candidate is talking about banning Burqa’s, Islamic schools, etc. Another wants to ban all sorts of things ranging from “sin taxes” to the abolition of green energy and environmental protection…..why am I reminded of a particular Simpson’s episode?

And with no hint of irony they talk about “cementing libertarianism” within UKIP. Yes, this bunch of authoritarian neo-fascist’s who want to ban everything under the sun, who want to end free trade, free movement of people and freedom of worship, think that they are libertarians. As I’ve pointed out before, UKIP is if anything the ideological enemies of libertarianism. They are a national socialist party, the successors to Enoch Powell and the black shirts (worth remembering Farage used to be close to Powell, many leading UKIP’ers were once members of the British National Front).

Cameron’s mistake was his belief that the EU referendum, an attempt to appease the right wing bigot brigade would make them shut up (and then all vote for moderate Tories again). Well no, instead its merely given them a platform. And much like how the Tea party took over the Republicans, its probable we’ll see a jump in support for UKIP next election.

News roundup

The 2nd longest suicide note in history

The Republican national convention is currently kicking off and things aren’t off to a great start. The cops are calling for the state’s open carry law to be suspended (after recent police shootings they’ve come to realise that the solution to a bad guy with a gun is and making sure he’s not armed, and not hiding in a crowd of 100 other armed nutters). And with the cult of Trump in town and lots of angry anti-Trump protesters, trouble is all but guaranteed.

Many leading republicans are skipping the convention (and probably with all the guns are very glad to do so!) as they want to stay well away from the train wreck otherwise known as Trump. As a result the roster of speakers at the convention is a little thin, even Trump’s wife and daughter is having to speak, oh and the boss of the Trump winery (presumably to help push Trump’s merchandise). About the only senior republicans speaking are Paul Ryan (who has to speak, someone from congress had to show up and he drew the short straw), Chris Christie (aka, Trump’s official sidekick) and Newt Gingrich (Trump’s wannabe sidekick).

Meanwhile the policy agenda that will be endorsed at the convention includes a number of extremely conservative positions. For example porn is labelled a “public health crisis”, they want to crack down of gays, introduce “gay conversion therapy” (I don’t know either, maybe get them to watch porn…oh no wait didn’t we just ban that?), banning abortion, etc. They’ve even managed to piss off the ADL. Although to be fair, as Israel is not a US state and both Trump and his supporters are clueless to anything outside the US, it would have to be pointed out to them on a map.

The GOP has avoided including such toxic policies in the past, because they know they would never get through congress (even some Republicans would vote against them!) and even then they would likely be struck down by the the Supreme court. All you’re doing is loading a gun with ammo for the democrats to blast away at them with for the next four months. Trump’s manifesto could well go down as the 2nd longest political suicide note in history.

Already comparisons are being drawn to the disastrous convention of 1992. Back then the GOP had spent several years trying to woo white evangelicals such as Jerry Farwell’s “moral majority” into the big GOP tent. Up till then many christian conservatives had not voted because the party of Lincoln was after all the party that freed the slaves, while the democrats had decided that minorities had all sorts of “rights” and you couldn’t like lynch em or burn crosses on their lawns no more (bloody liberals!).

Anyway this plan backfired with the Christian conservatives effectively hijacking the GOP policy committee and forced it to adopt various right wing policies, not unlike those Trump is now endorsing. This appalled many moderate Republicans, who took the view that the GOP was supposed to be the party of small government, not the party that advocates an authoritarian state that dictates what people do in the privacy of their own homes.

Consequently G. W. Bush, whose campaign was already behind due to a struggling economy, was from this point on all but guaranteed to lose to rank outsider Bill Clinton (whom most people had never heard of at the time). And lose by a significant margin he did, becoming one of the few US presidents in recent times not to win a 2nd term in office.

And to make matters worse for the GOP, the fall out from the convention led to a resurgence in support towards the third party campaign of Ross Perot’s. Now while this took as many votes away from Clinton as it did Bush, the fallout carried over into the 1996 election, where again Perot ran on a ticket appealing to small government moderate Republicans, the people edged out or booed off stage in the 1992 convention. And again, he cost the GOP precious votes all but guaranteeing Clinton a 2nd term.

So while this will be an awful sickening coronation of Trump, it also could well be a funeral of sorts for any hope of the Republicans winning diddly squat for a good few years.

Police shootings
Recent police shootings in America are cause for concern, although statistics do suggest that the overall situation isn’t quite as bad as might be thought. Cop killings have been steadily falling for sometime now.

However, certainly the toxic atmosphere of recent months means that the police forces in America are loosing public support. It is argued that the police are only police because we the public consent to them their authority to uphold the law. If this consent is withdrawn, well they ain’t much more than a rent-a-cop mall guard. And should any cops be wondering how to tell if you’ve lost the support of the community, well when they start shooting you just for being cops, that’s probably it!

But getting shot at is only the start. And to be honest tighter gun control would solve that problem. Its the inability for police to do their job that’s the danger. If the public don’t trust the police, they won’t rely on them in a crisis, they’ll turn to someone else, likely the local Mr Big. The rise of the Mafia in America, first the Irish mob, then the Italian mob, was borne out of the fact that these immigrant communities did not trust the cops. History is in effect repeating itself.

Trident vote

The UK is voting on Trident renewal. The Tories have been accused of only holding it now to help destabilise the labour party. And the price tag? A snip at £205 billion, or to put it in Brexit bus terms that’s £569 million a month for the next 30 years.

However, I cannot help but notice that if the vote were being held north of the border, the result would be very difference. Only one MP is planning on vote for Trident, (David Mundell, the only Tory MP in Scotland), all the rest are either abstaining or voting against it. Is this because the missiles are based in Scotland, while the armchair chicken hawks chatter about it in Westminster, or is it because Scot’s can add and subtract and realise its a complete waste of money?

Indy Ref2 next year?
Theresa May met with Nicola Sturgeon last week to discuss the consequences of Brexit and the possiblity of a further referendum (on the EU or Scottish independence). I assume it didn’t go so well, because within hours of it ending we were hearing murmurings of a possible 2nd Scottish independence referendum in early 2017.

Let us be clear about what is going on here. Yes the SNP want Scottish independence, but unlike Cameron they aren’t morons. Yes, the polls do show that the ground has shifted, with several polls now showing a clear (but sometimes narrow) lead for independence. But you can never guarantee anything leading into a referendum, not unless you are well ahead (and recall remain had a ten point lead at the start of the EU referendum). It would make sense for the SNP to wait as long as possible before calling a referendum. And they also realise that they have to explore every possible alternative before committing to one.

On the other hand, the Tories attempt to stonewall the Scot’s is making it very easy for the SNP. The Tories are trying to ignore this shift in the polls, ignoring the very narrow majority in the EU referendum, not to mention the fact that only 37% of the electorate actually voted for Brexit and many millions (EU citizens and British citizens abroad) were denied the right to vote, as were students not at their term time addresses. And of course an overwhelming proportion of Scot’s voted against leaving the EU.

Of course there’s an obvious horse trade here. The Tories allow the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish assemblies some input to the terms of Brexit. And furthermore, a requirement it is ratified either by all four parliaments, or via another referendum. However, the Tories seem to be ignoring this, same way they are ignoring the fact that the EU referendum result is not legally binding and that they may face obstacles getting it through Westminster. As a result the same Tory arrogance that led them into the first inde-ref (and the EU referendum) could well be their undoing this time around.

Vote leave bus rebranded by Greenpeace
Greenpeace have somehow managed to get their hands on the infamous Brexit bus with all of the misleading slogans on it. I was surprised by this, as I assumed that, like the Edstone, it would have been destroyed….ritually burned….presumably with Gove still inside!

Anyway, it would appear Greenpeace plan to “correct” the messages on it and drive around with it as a “vehicle for truth”.

The Tories thought that they could tell a few lies to the public, so that Boris could get to be PM, but what harm could it do, I mean who remembers politician’s promises? I mean remember when that Clegg fellow made that promise to students about fees, why they forgot about that within a week. No way this £350 million claim will come back to haunt them, next election, would it?….ah no!

The Brexit camp have created a enormous level of distrust by their actions. And yes, this £350 million claim did sway voters, and yes they expect it to be honoured, I had a conversation with someone who repeated the claim a few days ago (he seemed to think taxes were about to go down after Boris told em we’ll not be paying the £350 million anymore). Couple that with the fact that there will be little if any change to immigration rules and you could argue the Tories have made life very tough for themselves. Ironically there are worries for the future of NHS funding post-Brexit.

And if there is another indy-ref next year and project fear is resurrected, what’s the bet that the SNP counter is, these are the same people who told us we could save £350 million a week by leaving the EU. If you could write anything on the Tories party’s tombstone (well aside from ding dong the witch is dead!) it would be this £350 million a week claim.

Mrs Fracking
There are growing concerns about the axing of the DECC, which I discussed in a prior post. But worse the decision to hand over part of its responsibilities to Andrea “Fruitcake” Landsom has been called into question. She’s a pro-Fracking, climate Skeptic known for her extreme views. I could argue that its putting the fox in charge of the hen house, but actually she’d shoot the fox (she’s pro-fox hunting) and burn down the hen house to save it. She’s also on record as arguing against farm subsidies, which is obviously very worrying for farmers, who are already anxious over the consequences of Brexit.

I mean Tim Peake got back from Space, learnt about Brexit, Trump and all that’s happened since he left and tried to rush back into the capsule (okay, not quite!).