Labour and the EU

Labour and the EU

I have written an emergency motion for Labour Party Conference, I have ’till noon on Thursday to get it submitted, so better get a move on, unfortunately doing this from a CLP is a bit tricky . I need to check if it’s on the Agenda but that’s a bit tricky, I am not sure they have published all the motions to hoi-polloi like me yet.

Conference notes the announcement by Liz Truss on 19th September that there will be no post Brexit trade deal with the USA, and that the Govt is once again postponing (16th Sept) the imposition of the agreed customs checks between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.is a bit tricky, made worse by the direction not fo

Conference further notes that the Tory ‘Hard Brexit’ has led to reduced foreign inward investment, a worsening balance of trade deficit, reduced employment, a labour shortage in many industries, most obviously in agriculture, hospitality and in the NHS,  jobs are being offshored to western Europe and sterling is at its worse exchange rate ever with both the dollar and the euro. The labour shortages are compounded by the xenophobia released by the referendum and the Tory’s “hostile environment”.  

Conference believes that these negative economic consequences of Tory policy are significant contributors to the cost of living crisis.

Conference believes that to start reversing the damage inflicted by the Tory ‘Hard Brexit’ Britain needs to significantly reduce the trade frictions it has imposed on its imports of goods, services and labour from its biggest trading partner, the EU.

Conference resolves that Labour will call for a closer relationship with the EU in order to alleviate the trade frictions the Tories have introduced, that we will seek to rejoin Horizon Europe and Erasmus+, and that we will repeal the cruel and intrusive hostile environment. …

A short note on FX & UK Trade

A short note on FX & UK Trade

Like many, I am considering the macro drivers of the cost of living crisis and I listened to the AEIP podcast with Gary Stevenson. He has an interesting view and argues that the QE funded furlough scheme was in fact a subsidy to the rich and that the fundamental imbalance in the country is the shift of wealth from poor to rich. It’s a version of the argument that the problem is insufficient demand being caused by the continued pressure on medium and low incomes.

He also argues that the massive QE efforts are an effective devaluation which given the relative stickiness of prices with wages being the slowest to change and everything that wages need to buy increasing will exacerbate the squeeze on spending. He also argues that given the choice between working and starving, people will work. The use of the word devaluation led me to look at the following charts

GBP:USD FX from Google Finance

The pound has been falling against the dollar all year, this makes imports, particularly of Oil, but also of Gas and food more expensive.

Balance of Trade: GBP millions

Here we see the balance of trade figures, a more traditional cause of devaluations. With the exception of two months, the UK has been in deficit for the last five years. There are those who contest the the balance of trade causes currency price movements and Sterling in particular is impacted by speculative currency flows. The key drivers of speculation are expected rate of return, which for fixed income assets is driven by the bank rate, and animal spirits about which I think it best not to comment.  …

Britain’s aircraft carriers, bought but not paid for yet

The Prince of Wales, the newer of the two aircraft carriers costing £3.5bn has broken down in the Solent. I had planned and still plan to write a piece about the 2020-21 Defence Reviews and have already written about it briefly on this blog.  

HMS Prince of Wales R09
HMS Prince of Wales, in Portsmouth, CC Rab Lawrence 2019 BY from flickr

These aircraft carriers, at 64,000 tons are three times bigger than their predecessors which were used to provide air combat capability during the Falklands War. I cannot see a need for such vessels, and it is my view they were authorised to create jobs in the Scottish dockyards that built them albeit under massive US pressure. They are calculated to cost about £3½ bn and the inconvenient truth is they are estimated to have £½m running costs/day!  That makes a fifteen year life time cost of £2.7bn and a full lifetime cost over 50 years of £9.1bn for each aircraft carrier. Over 70% of the whole lifetime cost of the aircraft carriers is running costs and yet to be incurred.

We should sell them, although who would want a ¾ size fleet carrier? Maybe we could sell one each to India and Pakistan, or maybe the Argentines would like one. …

Labour’s Money 2021

Labour’s Money 2021

The Labour Party posted ( mirror ) its 2021 accounts to the Electoral Commission site earlier this week. The papers, the Independent and the Guardian rapidly picked this up. They and Labour List focused on the first deficit in years and the loss of 91,000 members. I look at the numbers and and add the observation that individual donations are very weak, and donations as a whole remain dominated by Trade Union donations. I finsh with a series of questions I think need answering. For more, including charts, 'read more', ...

Energy Prices

Energy Prices

There is a consensus that Energy profiteering is at the centre of the OECD’s inflation crisis. This is exacerbated in the UK due to privatisation and asset stripping of the gas and water companies. Brexit hasn’t helped. This article reviews a number of policy options from left and right. For more, use the 'read more' button ...

What does ‘system update required’ say about Labour’s IT?

What does ‘system update required’ say about Labour’s IT?

As part of the ‘drains up’ undertaken after the 2019 General Election, a coalition calling itself Labour Together undertook a review of what went wrong and as part of that review commissioned an organisation called the "common knowledge co-op" to look at Labour’s IT and its management. They produced a report called “System update required”. (original | mirror ) What did it say? I think this is important, but like so many learning opportunities that challenge power and the bad behaviour of the powerful it seems to me to be dramatically under-valued.

When I first read it, I was outraged. I hoped to summarise it in a sensationalist fashion to see if I could interest someone who might pick it and make things better. What I have written is not that exciting and I suspect little will change because the Party doesn’t have the knowledge and experience and today is led by people who care more about their control and position within the Party than they do in winning an election and becoming a government. I mean they’d be happy to be in Government but it’s more important to them that they control the Party.

In summary, the report says, portfolio management was unacceptably poor and not accountable to the highest levels of management although they too didn’t have clue. There weren’t enough IT staff and the more numerous IT management layer wasn’t good enough. The report makes no mention of ‘requirements management’, nor of any benefits analysis tools to allow an understanding the effectiveness of the software applications provided. Labour’s voter ID/GOTV software is no longer the best. Local adoption of the IT tools is low, partly because of poor commitment to training, partly due to a high turnover of local activists and partly because the Labour machine didn’t care.

In the rest of the article, overleaf, these failings are explored in more detail. ...