Purnell turns on his master

I hope you all did your bit for democracy yesterday. I heard a few comments going around that abstention was the only way to register your protest with the system, with politicians, and while I understand their frustrations, I disagree entirely. Not voting, in my view, dishonours the sacrifices that went before you to allow you the ability to vote. Fair enough that you can argue those people fought and campaigned just as much for your right not to vote as your right to vote, but I think in those circumstances, with all the parties available to you, there must be at least one that represents your views enough for you to tick next to their name?

In most things I am somewhat libertarian in my views. Freedom is the highest and most sacred right of all, but sometimes, I think the Australians have got it right, making it a legal requirement to turn up to vote, even if you then choose to abstain. Of course, I disagree on general principle, but the idea holds a certain appeal!

Overshadowing the elections last night, however, was the resignation of James Purnell. I seem to recall a few favourable comments from some of the Labour crowd a few days ago, including some from LGBTLabour on twitter. I bet they're seething now... David Cameron carpe'd the diem with this:

David Cameron: Why we need a referendum on Lisbon

All the more reason to vote Conservative in the European Elections. UKIP aren't the answer (or WE-KIP, as Jury Team have dubbed them), Libertas seem pretty lightweight, and Labour as we all know don't think you deserve a choice in the matter. Let's not even mention the crazy neo-fascist left wing nationalist party. The signals coming from Hague and Cameron at the moment are the best I've heard with regards to Europe for some time now. Finally, some sense.

You almost had me...

Capitalists@Work have, I suspect, just played an almost believable one.

It is the 1st of April, right?

On Gilts, PMQs, and a good old-fashioned roasting

Is the end nigh?

Gordon's Gilt sale has failed to find any buyers out on the market. It can't have been helped by Mervyn King challenging further spending by the reckless Brown, plus the UK isn't the only Government issuing debt, but this ought to be scaring the bejeezus out of the Treasury. I don't see Gordon getting too worried, he is after all, off playing Superman, and will probably think of some excuse to console himself.

Meanwhile, Hattie was demolished by a laconic Hague and Cable in PMQs today. Shame that Hague didn't stick the knife in and twist with is usually rapier wit, even if he did score a few points. More telling was Hattie banging on about "do nothing Tories" and a "millionaire's manifesto". Though the informed (or remotely intelligent) will see through them as the utter fabrications that they are, the lowest common denominator has an uncanny knack for buying in to cheap soundbites. It worked for Tony long enough.

Speaking of demolishing people, Dan Hannan 1 - Gordon Brown 0. After his speech at the EU Parliament, the PM was skewered, basted and roasted in the space of three sweet and incisive minutes. I know I'm a little late to the party on this one, having been covered elsewhere, but if you fancy seeing an intelligent man dismantle a deluded one, click here.

Pour la France, les emplois

As a comedian and acquaintance of mine once flourished: “...the people who hate the French government most, are the French!”

Given the emotional story he had been telling about his voyage across the English Channel in a Thomas Crapper bathtub, rowing, no less, this punchline was the end to a running theme of obstructions he had faced from the French Coastguard and government, who had even changed the law in order to prevent his brave/insane/ridiculous/British venture.

If anyone doubted the veracity of this statement, I could point you to the French propensity for striking. Rightly or wrongly, they are not afraid of creating merry havoc if they don’t like what is happening. Even if their actions are misinformed or counterproductive. In Tim’s case, the locals had broken in to a French coastal installation to cheer him on as he rowed those painful last strokes to arrive on French soil. Authority? Ça ne fait rien! Hurrah.

Personally, I rather like France. It is a beautiful country, produces some marvellous wines (and Brandy, Cognac, Calvados, Armagnac...), and like anywhere, has some fantastic people. Some less fantastic people too, but you will find that anywhere in the world.

On the other hand, they have a worrying propensity for protectionism, and Nicolas Sarkozy, who should know better, is not helping. As outgoing President of the EU, he should be conversant with the single market, and ought to at least pretend to represent it. In deciding to prop up Renault and Peugeot-Citroen with a €6bn loan, he’s jumping aboard a bandwagon whose engine should never have been started, but in that there’s nothing particularly unique. What is very disappointing is that he has brazenly instructed the companies that they must make no redundancies at their French plants – instead calling for them to close their Czech and Slovenian plants.

Bald, blatant, naked protectionism doesn’t even begin to cut it. The bailout packages for the automotive industry are bad enough, with governments terrified of allowing a proud national institution to fail, but history or not, no industry should become subsidised, and propping these companies up does not solve the underlying problem; demand for cars has fallen, and these companies were trading on a false economic boom.

Mind you, given how the French benefit from the deplorable CAP, should we be surprised?

That kind of growth is not going to come back before the bailouts run dry, and jobs will still be lost. Rather than bail these businesses out with taxpayer money, why not give that money back in the form of lower taxes? That’s the kind of stimulus we need.

Sarkozy, like Brown, is proposing a vote winner, cheating at the expense of the taxpayer. While I was amused by the way the French President savaged Brown over his handling of the economy, I think he was way off the mark. The VAT cut was a ridiculous waste of time and money, but cutting taxes is the answer, not spending more as Sarkozy intends. It is time for lean government and smart thinking. On that count, neither Brown nor Sarkozy show any proclivity for either.

Protecting your own

Barely did his feet settle under the table of the Oval Office than Barack Obama has had the EU hounding at his door. As much as I may despair at the bureaucracy in Brussels, when it comes to making statements about free markets and trade, the EU is usually on the money.

The ‘Buy American’ policy the USA is proposing in their massive recovery package seems to be attracting a lot of fire, and echoes with our current ‘British Jobs for British Workers’ palaver. It’s not just the EU - the Canadians are antsy about it too, along with the best part of the participants at Davos. America In the World have suggested that 70% of Britons will be less favourable to Obama if he implements a protectionist policy; we Brits have good reason for feeling that way. America is a world leader, promoter of capitalism and up ‘til now, a shining example of the free market (at least on the surface). If anything, America needs to be defending those principles and seeking to restore our faith.

The critics are dead right. A protectionist policy would do more to harm the US and slow the global recovery than it would protect American jobs. Sure, in the short term it might sound like a great idea, but free trade works on the principle of swings and roundabouts – you may lose on one thing but you gain on the other. It forces companies and entrepreneurs to be better than their competitors if they want to succeed. Protectionist leads to ‘jobs for the boys’ and suffocates competition, which in turn stifles innovation, so on and so forth.

It’s a crowd pleasing idea that makes it sound like you’re standing up for the masses, when the reality is that in the long-run, you’re going to make things worse for them.

Sourcing from local suppliers isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and you may have ample justification for doing so, but it needs to be on sound economic terms and you need to encourage competition for that business.

I’m pretty sure I heard rumblings about this even before the ballot boxes in the US had closed. Obama is playing a populist card with his stimulus package, and I wonder if he’s getting a bit too caught up in playing to his electorate rather than doing what is best for them in the long run. The global effect is likely to be marked as well, and it sets an awful example for other nations. Tit will inevitably follow tat, and governments would end up subsidising local businesses and products produced nationally. This would be an utter disaster for the global economy.

The US has a massive budget deficit inherited from the previous administration and it has to deal with this. Any incoming government in the UK is going to have the same problem, but the US has an advantage we lack – it is a major exporter. Protectionism isn’t the answer – John Redwood nails it when he says that borrowing less and exporting more is.

Of course, given that about the only thing we export these days is Whisky, I’m not sure how we’re going to solve that particular problem any time soon.

Maybe we can just get the rest of the world drunk?

Sunday Indy Echoes of the Revolution

Just recalled the headline on yesterday's Independent on Sunday - "You can go and work in Europe, Mandelson tells strikers."

Anyone else think that sounds a lot like "Then let them eat cake"?

For the record, I actually agree with him. The whole point of a free market - and indeed the single market - is to ensure that provided you have the skills for the jobs, you can work anywhere there is an opportunity. In this case, the strikers may have a point - it seems very unusual in a project for all the labour to be sourced abroad, at least unskilled elements are usually sourced locally. While I don't think they're right to strike, I do think they deserve an answer. That Total have remained silent on this concerns me.

That aside, you can't say "British jobs for British workers", because that's discriminatory. What would be better said is "British jobs for the best skills". Now if the best skills aren't British, we really need to ask why. Maybe something to do with all those people who were sat on benefits instead of the Government spending the time and effort training them over the last ten years. Not that they're blameless, but the Government has helped to create this welfare culture, and in that they are culpable. For all their 'Education, education, education' spiel, New Labour have utterly failed to deliver.

EU Procurement law Vs. My taxes.

I received today an e-mail inviting me to attend a seminar on EU Procurement law. There have been rather a lot of seminars on this subject lately, but this one was going for an attention-grabber:

“The EU procurement rules are fraught with difficulty.

You are required to navigate between the black letter of the law and the commercial reality of putting together a procurement.

To manage the risk effectively you need rock-solid advice on what you can and can't do.”

It went on to list a number of the hurdles and complicated rules that can make a public sector contracting exercise something of a minefield, from when you can and cannot speak to suppliers during the process, when a framework is anti-competitive and thus non-compliant, and so on and so forth.

Normally these things get the ‘delete’ treatment without any further ado; however this framed the problem faced by contracts teams within the Public Sector very succinctly. Basically, there are so many pitfalls, red tape and ridiculous levels of bureaucracy designed at making the process as ‘fair’, ‘open’, ‘transparent’, ‘non-discriminatory’, etc, etc. as possible that it becomes an uphill struggle before you even get started.

I’m not saying that any of these goals are a bad thing. On the contrary, they are wonderful principles of a free market. Public money should be accountable, and we should not be awarding the contract to someone who isn’t going to offer the best value for money.

It’s also fucking difficult to argue against the rules. They make irritating sense to a free-marketeer. If followed, they stop protectionist policies and are intended to prevent sharp practice, all good things. In fact, you can’t even say that a public body should be able to spend its money in the local economy, because the whole point of the rules is that the best response to your tender will win the business.

In other words, if local suppliers want to win the business, then they need to up their game and improve. It also means that there should be no barrier to those local suppliers winning business elsewhere in Europe, if they decide to do so. Great, in theory.

So, does that mean I’m happy that my tax money is going to line a German, or Spanish company’s offers? Well the flipside is that their tax money could well be lining those of a British company, so you could argue that it will all come out in the wash.

What I’m trying to make clear here is that the spirit of the EU Procurement rules is something I agree with. My issue is more whether or not the sheer cost of implementing the laws, enforcing them, and even writing the damned things is actually delivering us any value for money, or if in fact is costing governments – and therefore you and me as the taxpayer – a huge amount of money that could be better off back in my pocket.

It also means that the UK Government can’t say to contracting authorities (basically a body spending public cash) that they should source locally and support the British economy. It has no say over where that public money will end up. Of course I should be happy that the most economically advantageous tender will win, therefore saving the taxpayer money. It’s very easy to end up in a circular argument on this.

When the House of Commons commissioned the construction of new offices for MPs, what was to become Portcullis House, the contract for the windows went to a British firm. The problem was that a French-owned firm, Harmon, had submitted the most economically advantageous bid. Someone at the House had decided we should buy British. Harmon challenged this under a breach of the EU Procurement rules and were awarded damages in court for £1.85m. There were other aspects they could also sue for, however the House of Commons settled out of court for an unspecified fee. So the taxpayer paid for the windows twice over, maybe more. Now, can you spell colossal waste of my fucking money?

Fine, you say, live within the rules. I question not the spirit of the rules, let me re-iterate that. What I do believe in is choice. The same choice afforded to the private sector, which has far more freedom to make decisions on where it spends its money. What I question is why that accountability seems to lie with Europe, and not with the UK taxpayer. Why the fuck are some overpaid bunch of bureaucrats allowed to tell our public sector that it can’t support local businesses if it chooses to do so? It may not be the right choice, but the point is that the public sector in the UK should be responsible to the UK taxpayer, not to fucking eurocrats.

I fail to see why we need another layer of bureaucracy on top of our own, trying to tell us what we can and can’t do – private or public sector. Big government is not a good thing. More big government above a big government is worse. We have enough crap from our own politicians, we really don’t need to be subsidising eurocrats as well, and we really don’t need more layers of red tape, processes and procedures that cost the taxpayer even more money.

Eurobarometer swings...

... Exactly where you'd expect it to, actually.

Just to crunch the numbers for you:

• 14% of UK residents questioned were aware that European elections will be held in 2009.
• 34% of UK residents questioned are even interested in said elections.
• 64% are not.
• 18 % of us 'would definitely vote'
• 28% of Brits have recently heard/seen something about the European Parliament on TV/Internet/Newspaper (the lowest of all members polled).
• 19% of us think we're well informed about European Parliament.

Oh, and apparently we have a European Anthem.

Anyway, the upshot of this would seem to suggest that the UK at large doesn't have much interest in Europe. The Czech seem to have noticed this.

To quote DK: "Can we leave yet?"

Hat tip to The Croydonian.