Tag: referendum

DON’T RUSH THE NORTH MR CAMERON

 

 

REGIONAL ASSEMBLIES ARE THE ANSWER..

 

Has Alex Salmond really lost? Is the North going to stand idly by whilst promises made by a panicking government in the last days of the referendum campaign are now redeemed?

 

Before the end of this parliament the Scottish Parliament will have the power to levy lower corporation and income tax than us. They will get new powers to attract inward investment. They may even be attracting some of our air passengers from Manchester and Newcastle airports with lower passenger duty. This is not to mention free elderly care, university tuition and prescription charges made possible by the £1200 per head extra funding Scotland gets as compared to England.

 

Now it is our turn to demand change. However the rushed statement by the Prime Minister on the steps of Downing St on Friday morning is full of danger for those of us who want effective power devolved to the North. Mr Cameron is rushing things to appease his backbenchers. The North needs time to make its views heard. That cannot be done by the General Election. The Prime Minister made a brief reference to city regions, so it looks as if he is putting his faith in the Coalition’s patchwork of Combined Authorities, elected mayors, City Regions, Local Enterprise Partnerships and regional growth funds controlled from London. It is not good enough

 

We need Regional Assemblies. Not the weak structures that John Prescott had to offer when he was defeated by centralists in 2004, but real powerful assemblies for the North West, North East and Yorkshire. They would be funded by some of the excessive subsidy currently going north of the border and would have power over transport, economic development, strategic planning and health. These are functions which no city region can run on its own. Elected Assemblies would be able to begin the rebalancing of the UK’s economy and avoid the continued domination of the South East and a freshly empowered Scottish Parliament.

 

Before the anti region brigade bleat about an extra tier of politicians, I would propose the completion of the move to unitary local government, particularly in places like Lancashire, sweeping away hundreds of district councillors.

 

An English Parliament is emphatically not what we need, and Mr Cameron does not seem to favour it from his statement on Friday morning. An English Parliament truly would be a new tier of expensive politicians and such a body would usually be dominated by southern Conservatives. Scots must no longer vote on England only issues but that can be done by designating bills at Westminster. This proposal would present a problem for a Labour government who would usually face a blocking English majority but if real power was devolved to English Assemblies, the effect of this would be minimised

 

A CLOSE RUN THING.

 

After months of complacency, the Westminster establishment woke up just in time to save the United Kingdom. The last minute vow to give the Scots devo max after all might have made the difference. That casts doubt on the Prime Minister’s refusal to have a third question on the ballot paper which forced people who wanted more power into the “yes” camp.

But the main reason why Salmond lost was surely the unanswered economic questions. Whether George Osborne would have agreed to a common currency in the end we will never know. It seems unlikely as the pressure from his backbenchers would have been very much against it. But doubts about the currency to be used and how it might affect mortgages and pensions proved too much for most canny Scots.

 

Salmond was right on one thing. Uncertainty about Scotland’s membership of the EU is greater now than if Scotland was independent and eager to remain in or re-enter. Now they may find themselves taken out following the 2017 referendum if the Tories get back next year.

 

Where does the “no” vote leave our leading politicians? David Cameron held the union together but only after calling his own party “effing Tories” and having to make desperate last minute concessions of power to Scotland. These have made him even more enemies on the Tory backbenches.

 

Ed Miliband does not emerge from this very well. Large numbers of Labour supporters haemorrhaged to the Scottish Nationalists and Gordon Brown had to bail him out.

 

Alex Salmond has led his party brilliantly to get to this point but failing at the last hurdle will be a bitter blow. Calls to start a new drive for independence in 2030 will not go down well with an exhausted Scottish electorate.

 

The one politician to emerge with credit was Ruth Davidson, leader of the Scottish Tories. There may be more pandas in Edinburgh zoo than Scottish Tory MPs but her feisty performance in the Better Together campaign may give the Conservatives some hope of recovery in Scotland, especially if people start to ask “what is the point of the SNP?”

 

The lesson we in the north have to learn is that it is only by showing the Westminster elite that we are serious that we will get anything. Let the Campaign for the North begin!

 

 

 

 

SCOTLAND: THE GAME’S AFOOT!

Alex Salmond will be hoping that the Commonwealth Games now under way in Glasgow will help his flagging campaign for Scottish independence.

But just before the sporting contest got started I had a chance to catch up with him on his last foray into England before referendum day. Salmond seems to like Liverpool. Last year he got a great reception in St George’s Hall when he shamelessly played to Scouse antipathy to London by saying Scots and northerners all suffered from remote government from the capital.

He was at it again last week but the difference is the game’s afoot big time with the referendum now just eight weeks away. The Scottish Labour Party had brought down a red double decker bus with Vote No slogans all over it and parked it outside St George’s Hall. Batteries of TV cameras were in attendance along with BBC luminaries like Alan Little and Laura Kuenssberg.

He was speaking to a smaller audience of northern business people but the message was the same; Scotland and the North suffer economically from centralised government. He prayed in aid the former Liverpool Walton MP Eric Heffer who he claimed supported a young Alex Salmond in his efforts to get Scottish independence in the 1970s. Heffer’s successor Peter Kilfoyle seemed to be of the same mind. He told me he’d been on the Mersey Ferry earlier with Salmond who’d got a warm reception from the passengers. “If I was in Scotland, I’d vote for independence” declared Kilfoyle.

Salmond’s speech consisted of a battery of statistics designed to prove his case for independence but he also sought to address a growing anxiety that we in the North are going to lose out between a powerful Scotland and a dynamic South East of England. He had plans for high speed rail connections between the North and Scotland and wanted northern business people to cooperate in a cross border forum.

The Chancellor has made it clear that there could be no shared currency after independence. Salmond continues to insist that Mr Osborne is bluffing. It is the greatest weakness in his case and one that could be decisive for wavering Scots.

I have always believed that Salmond’s real project was to get the maximum amount of devolved power without full independence. I reminded him that he had wanted a third question on the ballot paper to accommodate this. He denied my suggestion that this showed a secret lack of confidence by the Scottish Nationalists that they could achieve the ultimate prize.

The three main UK parties have all promised further devolution of tax raising power if the Scots stay in the UK, so I suggested to Mr Salmond he would be a winner whichever way the vote goes. He replied that you can never trust the promises of English politicians.

The Commonwealth Games will fill the Scots with pride in what they can do for themselves. This will be followed by commemorations of the start of the First World War when Scots played a noble part in fighting alongside the other nations that made up the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Then the Scots will vote.

WELL DONE WIRRAL!

Over 200,000 golf fans attended the Open at Hoylake with Phil Davies, the leader of Wirral Council and the Liverpool City Region, telling me £75m had been spent in the local economy.

Wirral Council staff were busy lobbying international guests about economic projects ranging from offshore wind to the massive Wirral Waters redevelopment. They are hoping for a major announcement shortly about a car components plant at the end of the M53 to service Halewood, Ellesmere Port and Crewe.

Along with the International Festival of Business promoted by Liverpool Council, our local authorities have done their best to promote the city region to the world this summer.

UKIP ARE A PLAYER,SO HOW WOULD WE VOTE ON EUROPE?

As we’ve seen in the local elections, UKIP don’t have to win masses of seats to have a big effect on British politics.

 

Tory backbenchers are terrified of them and now want the European in/out referendum before the next election. They want legislation to trigger the vote in next week’s Queen’s Speech. Mr Cameron had tried to appease the Euro sceptics with a promise to put a renegotiated terms package to the people by 2017.

 

But there is no appeasing these anti EU fanatics, they will take the concessions and move on to the next demand.

 

How will the nation vote when actually faced with the consequences of coming out?

 

This week Downtown Liverpool held a debate and vote on this very subject. While it would be absurd to suggest the result is scientifically representative, nevertheless I think 17 for coming out of the EU, 21 against with a substantial 14 saying they don’t know feels as if it might be where public opinion is at the moment. In other words there is substantial support for withdrawal and a large number of votes to play for amongst people who choose not to obsess about Europe every day.

 

It was a lively debate, to be repeated in Manchester soon. I led off trying to cram too much into my allocated 5 minutes. I expressed my fear that Ed Miliband will be pressurised into supporting an in/out referendum, that the renegotiation will be unsuccessful, that nevertheless the three main parties will urge a vote to stay in and the British people will be swayed by the Murdoch press into voting to come out. I then foresaw a very difficult process of withdrawal with no guarantee that we could negotiate the same trade arrangements from outside the EU.

 

Dougal Paver, head of PaverSmith Communications Agency disagreed saying that it would not be in the EU’s interest to put tariffs on British goods. He also said that most of our trade was with the rest of the world now. He loved visiting Europe but didn’t want to be shackled by EU regulations on small businesses.

 

Kevin Doran is hoping to be elected as a Labour Euro MP next year and firmly wants to stay in the EU. He said David Cameron’s promise of a referendum had created uncertainty among long term potential investors in Britain. He also said it was unclear which powers Mr Cameron wanted to claw back from Europe.

 

The final speaker was Scott Fletcher, MD of ANS Group, who said the British people agreed to a European trade deal not the all singing, all dancing EU that we have got now. He said the way the EU was governed bore similarities to the old Soviet Union in terms of its unaccountability.

 

The vote was more or less a three way split and if that is where the UK is at the moment, pro Europeans are going to have their work cut out to prevent a disastrous no vote in 2017 whoever is in power.

CAMERON’S RECKLESS GAMBLE

This week France and Germany celebrated the 50th anniversary of their reconciliation after a century of war and carnage. Britain, which shed much blood to make peace possible, signalled that it didn’t want to retain its place in the triumvirate shaping the destiny of Europe. David Cameron prefers us to have a role yapping ineffectively on the sidelines.

 

The Prime Minister knows that he has unleashed a process that could do the most profound damage to Britain’s economy. He’s done it to appease his party that has become obsessed with the issue. It will do him no good. If he wins the next election, he will attempt to undertake a major renegotiation of our membership terms. He will substantially fail despite the German Chancellor’s conciliatory tone at the moment. However Cameron will pretend that the scraps that he gets are a good enough reason to vote yes in the referendum. He will be ridiculed by UKIP and half the Tory Party who will campaign manically for their once in a lifetime chance of getting a no vote. They will be egged on by the Murdoch press and I fear the British people will vote to come out.

 

Long before 2018 and the start of the vast and messy task of disentangling ourselves from the EU, the damage will already be done. Indeed it is probably starting today. In some boardroom in Europe or Asia a company will be putting on hold a long term decision to invest in or trade with Britain. They will be doing this because there is total uncertainty about what Britain’s business environment will be like by 2020, detached from Europe.

 

Great uncertainty surrounds Cameron’s shopping list but we can get a hint from looking at the demands of the influential Tory “Fresh Start” group. It includes the directives on working time, temporary workers, transfer of undertakings, health and safety, rights to information, parental leave, employment protection for part time workers and equal pay.

 

There are two big problems with that list. Firstly they are at the heart of the Single Market. They ensure that all members of the EU compete fairly. There is not a cat in hell’s chance that our partners are going to allow us to employ cheap labour on short term contracts to gain an advantage for British goods.

 

The second problem is this. Do you want Britain to return to a situation where hospital doctors work a hundred hours a week, you lose your job when one firm takes over another, where corners are cut on health and safety, where parental leave may be cut, where bosses are free to discriminate against women over pay and part time workers are exploited?

 

That’s often what is meant when people vaguely talk about “Brussels red tape”. What they really want is to return to the days when workers could be rampantly exploited. They cry that employers are reluctant to take on staff because of all this “red tape”. Really? Have you noticed this week’s employment figures?

Bosses seem to have weathered the recession and lived “the red tape” without unemployment going over three million.

 

I am not misty eyed about Europe. There is a lot that needs changing in the Common Agricultural Policy, fishing quotas, and strengthening the European Parliament. If Cameron wants to be really macho he should get tough on the ridiculous nonsense of the MEP s traipsing off to Strasbourg once a month.

 

The Tory Party will go quiet for a while on Europe, but UKIP will still offer the clearer path to leaving. The Lib Dems have offered an in/out referendum in the past but I can’t see them backing Cameron’s approach.

 

Labour worry me deeply on this issue. The pressure on Ed Miliband to offer an in/out referendum in 2015 will be intense. The confusion this week after Cameron’s speech was not good. The party should have the courage to say that while it will constantly look for reform, it would only offer a referendum if it was proposed to transfer new powers to Brussels. That legislation is already on the statute book.

 

It is clear David Cameron knows we need to stay in the EU but he is attempting to appease people who will never be satisfied until we are out.

 

It would now be best for Labour to win the next election and for the Tory Party to reform itself in opposition. The Eurosecpticshould join UKIP and the rest form a modern Conservative Party prepared to govern Britain playing its full part in the EU and eventually the Euro zone too.