If
America had a parliamentary system, Donald Trump … would already be
facing a vote of no confidence. But we don’t; somehow we’re going to
have to survive four years of this.” Thus wrote the Nobel prize-winning
economist Paul Krugman in the New York Times recently.
Unfortunately, although we in the UK do have a parliamentary system –
indeed, the “mother” of them – the signs are that the majority of our
parliamentarians are prepared to go along with the prime minister’s plan
to invoke article 50 of the Lisbon treaty.
It was Edmund Burke who, in his celebrated address to the electors of
Bristol, said that MPs should regard themselves as representatives of
their constituencies, not delegates. As far as one can gather, although
Conservative Brexiters such as John Redwood and Iain Duncan Smith make
all the noise, the majority of MPs think Brexit is a crazy idea, with
the potential to do enormous harm – and last a lot longer than four
years of Trump.
The supreme court has now given our sovereign parliament the chance
to derail Brexit, and has done so for good constitutional and legal
reasons. But the odds are not good.
The Liberal Democrats are playing a blinder in their opposition.
Unfortunately, they are a tiny minority. And my old friend Ken Clarke
constitutes an even tinier minority, being reportedly the only Tory
intending to vote against article 50, although a lot more of his fellow
Tories are said to agree with him privately.
As for the Labour party, it is running scared of Ukip, especially in the north, but at least more than one Labour
MP is prepared to stand up and be counted, in the belief that the
national interest should be put above prejudice against immigrants in
determining the country’s future.
Now, we have heard a lot recently about “post-truth” – that is, lies –
but the Trump team’s “alternative facts” have certainly captured the
public’s imagination. There is of course nothing new in all this:
Thucydides and Herodotus were on to the story in ancient Greece, and
George Orwell more recently. But the phrase calls to mind the way that
Boris Johnson and his Brexit bus were touring the country not so long
ago and undoubtedly persuaded some of the electorate to vote Leave as
they proclaimed a false prospectus of, well, “alternative facts”.
David Davis, who goes by the Beachcomber-like title of secretary of state for exiting the European Union,
managed after the supreme court had pronounced to stretch the meaning
of language by proclaiming “this judgment does not change the fact [my italics] that the UK will be leaving the European Union”.
Well, if he, Mrs May and their band of Brexiters have their way,
Brexit may well become a fact: but so far it is merely a prospect – and a
distant one, destined to take many gruesome years.
Although some prominent Brexiters go on about regaining sovereignty
and escaping the European court of justice, it seems to be widely
accepted that the Leavers would not have won if they had not made such a
fuss about immigration. They want us to sacrifice the future prosperity
of this country, with implications for the government’s tax take that
will almost certainly exacerbate the social problems associated with
austerity, in order to regain control of immigration. Yet, as
commentators have pointed out, immigration from non-EU countries, over
which the government already has sovereign control, exceeds immigration
from the EU. This is a shambles.
As Clarke points out in his brilliant memoirs: “The creation of the
European single market was probably the biggest single boost to economic
modernisation, investment, trade and jobs in the UK that the Thatcher
revolution produced.”
Another, connected, achievement was the way that government persuaded
Nissan and other Japanese companies to make the UK the base for their
European operations – entirely because we were members of the EU.
Thus in 1980, several years before the single market came into
operation, Sir Keith Joseph, secretary of state for industry – and not
previously known for his belief in an industrial strategy – wrote a
memorandum marked “secret” to Margaret Thatcher in which he stated: “If
we were outside the [European] Community, it is very unlikely that
Nissan would have given the United Kingdom serious consideration as a
base for this substantial investment.”
His memorandum has finally been released to the public as part of the
Thatcher papers. The timing is coincidental with last week’s
announcement of the May government’s plans for an industrial strategy: a
departure from the previously fashionable Tory approach of “leaving
things to the market”.
In another paragraph of his memorandum, Joseph (or his private
office, but with his approval) wrote: “Nissan would bring
high-technology production methods and successful managerial techniques
to this country and could help to demonstrate that high productivity can
be achieved in the UK environment.”
This was prophetic, and quite a U-turn for Sir Keith, who had once
been so anti-interventionist that he thought the department for which he
was secretary of state ought to be abolished.
But we have reached the stage where the Japanese, among many others, are very concerned about Brexit, and Nissan is already having doubts about what was understood to be an earlier post-referendum commitment to keep investing in the UK.
The sad, indeed potentially tragic, thing is that, while it is
welcome that the May government avows belief in an industrial strategy,
any good from it will be threatened by Brexit.
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