Political Observer, considers Mr. Colvile, on the Economic/Political Moment, as it passes away…

MAY 14, 2023

Imagine the ‘memos’ that Mr. Colvile’s staff must provide to their boss? In an instructive reversal, might an American think of Woodward’s staff of writers, turning his raw notes into readable chapters? Or is Trollope’s Palliser Novels, in a more vulgarized form, a more apt recreation of a political past/present?

Mr. Colvile’s opening paragraph of this essay demonstrates that he might be a political satirist, of a kind?

Last week the Tories went bananas over Brexit. Bendy bananas, rather. Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary, announced that the Retained EU Law Bill would be scrapping only 600 EU rules straight off, rather than the promised thousands — with the rescued laws including the notorious regulation on the “abnormal curvature” of a certain fruit. Backbenchers drew angry comparisons with an advert from Rishi Sunak’s leadership campaign in which a white-shirted office drone fed piles of EU rules into a shredder while Ode to Joy blasted out on the soundtrack.

With this near comic opening, Mr. Colevile then ascends to High Thatcherite Politics:

The row wasn’t just about a clash between pragmatism and principle. It reflected a growing concern among Brexiteers that the government hasn’t done enough to pinpoint areas in which Britain can steal a march on the EU.

There is a slightly farcical element to this — not least the idea that you show virility and purity through the sheer number of rules you axe, never mind the actual detail. But those MPs do have a point. Post-Brexit regulation has been a policy merry-go-round, subject to endless changes of personnel and approach. It wasn’t until years after the referendum that a specific unit was created to marshal progress, and it was pitifully underpowered compared with, say, the legions working on the Cop26 climate conference. Yes, there has been good work done, such as the Edinburgh reforms to financial services. But even then the EU may actually beat us to reforming the Solvency II insurance regime, which has been weighing down our investment prospects.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/as-we-squabble-over-bendy-bananas-and-bash-big-tech-investors-are-quietly-slipping-away-t0xb6t6cw

Its ‘as if’ Mr. Colvile had missed Bernard Connolly’s 1995 best seller ‘The Rotten Heart of Europe The Dirty War For Europe’s Money’.

Yanis Varoufakis in this YouTube video, exposes two kinds of corruption, relevant to the questions of the long forgotten Virtuous Norther Tier vs. The Profligate Southern Tire of 2014. That asks/answers relevant question, that Mr. Colvile’s scolding of the un-enlightened dare not consider.

The post war Collectivism of Monnet’s Coal And Steel Cartel as a bulwark against Soviet revanchism – (incidentally the product of Yalta Conference that ‘surrendered’ Central Europe to Stalin) that then evolved into the Common Market and the EU.

The expansion of the political/economic actors, who opine on British dwindling economic prospects

…

There is a far broader concern — forcefully expressed by Sir James Dyson in The Times yesterday —

…

In 2012 the economist Andy Haldane gave a speech highlighting the increased scale of financial regulation.

…

In other words, the number of regulators may have quadrupled in just over a decade. Likewise, the average FTSE 350 company report is 64 per cent longer than it was five years ago, because of all the extra reporting requirements — which helps explain why so few companies are listing here.

…

This isn’t just about finance. As Dyson says, it often feels as if the British state is doing more to deter growth and innovation than encourage them.

…

There was a lot of scoffing about post-Brexit Britain becoming “Singapore-on-Thames”.

…

In France global chief executives are whisked to the Élysée Palace.

…

Leaving the EU was always going to hit the economy.

…

And indeed on pretty much every axis we have done scandalously little to adjust. We have raised corporation tax, sharply.

…

I voted Remain, largely because I didn’t trust the British state to get Brexit right. But after the Leave vote I thought it would at least respond to the brute necessity to compete.

…

Here, Mr. Colvile reaches full screech:

Instead, the headlines are filled with bosses such as Dyson and companies such as Revolut and Johnson Matthey bemoaning Britain’s attitude to business, or national champions such as ARM listing their shares in New York because they feel London is becoming a backwater. We are about to bring in the world’s most prominent piece of tech-bashing regulation, the Online Safety Bill, and are threatening firms with multibillion-pound fines across several pieces of legislation. Meta is threatening to pull WhatsApp from British phones because of our insistence on breaking end-to-end encryption as part of the bill. Microsoft is furious that our competition authority blocked its attempt to buy the maker of Call of Duty — which, irrespective of the merits of the arguments, surely has very little to do with us, as they’re both American firms.

…

This, indeed, is our core Brexit delusion: that we can still carry on as we were, that the world still owes us a living, even as the terms of trade have changed.

…

But only £1.6 trillion was invested in this country. And the proportion of share portfolios devoted to UK firms had fallen from 37 per cent to 23 per cent in just a decade.

…

Put simply, the smartest investors in the country think we’re a bad long-term bet.

…

Badenoch’s package of announcements had good things to say on regulation as a last resort, and on getting regulators to consider the growth impact of their decisions.

…

A decade ago David Cameron tried to popularise the idea that Britain was in a “global race”. We still are. And it would help an awful lot if we put on some running shoes.

…

The toxic mirage of ‘Growth’, via the utterly exhausted Hayek/Thatcherite Model, within the stark reality of Global Warming, renders Mr. Colvile’s political intervention as antique as Trollope’s political fictions? Though a work of literary art, has value as descriptive of a political time, place and sensibility, not speak of the various moralities of its characters.

Political Observer