When the clocks change each year in Scotland each spring,
I am able to see more of it. The weather may vary, but the daylight doesn’t and
by June we have so much light that it is possible to go almost anywhere and get
back in the same day. I take my own coffee and buy sandwiches in a supermarket
so the only significant cost is the petrol. This year it is more expensive.
The political issue that matters most to each of us is
having a job and how much of our wages go on necessities and entertainment. Gaining
or losing a job changes our lives far more than anything a political party can
do. The cost of living changes what we can and cannot do more than any
political manifesto.
What really matters is disposable income. If we have
to spend so much on heating, fuel, and groceries that we have little left at
the end of each month then it becomes ever harder to do the things we like
whether that is driving to the Highlands or flying away on holiday. But there
is minimal serious debate about these issues. Instead, we debate trivia such as
whether Keir Starmer drank beer and eat curry or Boris Johnson attended a party
during lockdown.
The cost of living is higher now because of Covid and
the war in Ukraine. The Conservative Government is not responsible for either,
but it is responsible for some of the choices that it made.
We are now living quite well with Covid. I don’t wear
a mask and indeed I don’t think about Covid at all. There is a risk of catching
it, but I no more think about it than I think about catching any other contagious
illness. We could have learned to live with it sooner.
When we chose to respond to the pandemic with lockdown
and restrictions on working and education it was not clearly explained that
this would have an economic cost. We are paying that cost now. You cannot stay at
home for two years not working with the Government paying your wages and expect
this to change nothing anymore than if you were made unemployed.
The debate we needed to have in 2020 was about risk
and reward. Were you willing to risk your standard of living and perhaps your
job in order to protect society from a relatively small risk of dying for each
of us and a rather larger one for the elderly? Public opinion was overwhelmingly
in favour of restrictions, but I think this is because it thought staying home
and doing nothing would be cost free in the same way that it thinks that the
NHS is free.
The cost of energy is partly due to war, but it is
also because successive governments have failed to develop our own oil and gas including
from fracking. We have not built reliable alternatives to fossil fuels such as
nuclear reactors. It means that we are overly reliant on renewable energy which
given our climate is intermittent, forcing us to buy oil and gas from abroad
which is now expensive.
It is sensible to become less reliant on fossil fuels.
They frequently come from unpleasant parts of the world and the price has often
been very high in the past. But we all need cheap energy to maintain our
lifestyles and it is folly not to do all we can to make Britain self-sufficient
in energy.
I would be happy to drive an electric car, but at the
moment they are too expensive and it would simply be impossible to drive to the
Highlands and back in a day. There is no point for a government to pursue Net
Zero if it will turn huge numbers of British people into paupers. We won’t vote
for it.
The response to the cost of living crisis must be to
explain to the British people that your lifestyle depends on British prosperity
and that the only way to achieve this is to cut public spending, cut taxes and
pursue free market economic strategies to the fullest extent possible.
I voted for Brexit because I believe in free trade. Leaving
the EU gave us the chance to develop free trade with the rest of the world,
because the EU applies the Common External Tarriff on everyone it doesn’t have
a trade deal with. Leaving also gave us the chance to undercut the EU by
binning EU rules and regulations that were costly and unnecessary. We could
make it easier for the rest of the world to trade with us and we could become
more efficient and productive.
But the Government has increased taxes, it has failed
dismally to reform public services like the NHS, because voters refuse to allow
it. Public spending has increased massively including paying people to do
nothing and there is no movement at all towards lowering public spending or
making it provide better value for money. No wonder we are poorer. The paradox
of free money is that it makes you poorer.
If you get free paracetamol on you your free prescription
it will cost you more in taxes (if you pay them) than it would to buy the
packet from the supermarket for forty pence. The same goes for all other free
goods and services.
The Conservative Government has moved so far towards
the Left that it might as well be led by Tony Blair. But the Tories are still treated
as being as much wicked right-wingers as if they actually had right wing policies
so where is the political benefit? But while social democracy might work a
little better than socialism in a society like Britain it will make us poorer
in the short term and much poorer in the long term. It will be popular because the
instincts of British voters are mostly in favour of free things and not
working, but they will punish you eventually for making them all poorer.
Capitalism is unpopular. We like the Nanny State. We
are delighted to be locked up at home watching TV and would be happy to be
there forever so long as we got free ready meals and alcohol. It may seem
clever for the Conservative Party to try to attract centrist and left-wing
voters by adopting the policies of New Labour, but it is actually rather thick
if those same policies impoverish Britain. It also means that the Government is
wasting its 80 seat majority and failing to make the changes that would make it
still more popular.
The only way to increase the prosperity of most of us
is do what Margaret Thatcher did in part in the 1980s. She made Britain more
efficient. She made us work harder and she got rid of industry that was unprofitable.
The result was a massive increase in our standard of living. She was hated for
it.
Boris Johnson must begin to do something similar or
else he will deserve to be kicked out. The response to an increase in the cost
of living must be to make work more efficient, goods and services more profitable.
Our wealth depends on our productivity and our trading as freely as possible
with as many other countries as possible. Tax and spend makes us poorer.
The Conservatives Government must dig up as much oil
and gas here as we can while at the same time increasing renewable energy and nuclear
power. It must reduce taxes on oil gas and petrol and lower duties on flights
while investing in the next generation of power development so that we can all
heat our homes without thinking about it and drive our cars wherever we please.
But none of this will have any point if we are all either
blown to bits by nuclear weapons or if the world climate becomes so unpleasant
that it is no longer worth visiting. I want the Scottish scenery I love to
remain as it is. I don’t want it to be polluted or spoiled.
The only response to Russia’s continual and lurid
threats is to take them seriously. We must work towards defeating Russia to
such an extent that it never again will be able to threaten either its
neighbours or us. There is a chance to do this now. It is the best chance for
one hundred years and may not come again for another. If Ukraine can defeat
Russia in the field and better still recapture the territory that it has lost,
it may just be possible to negotiate a peace settlement with a future Russian
leader that leaves Russia as unable and unwilling to threaten its neighbours as
Germany and Japan in 1945. “Carthaginian Peace” could then be known as “Russian
Peace.”
The price of peace with Russia and the normalisation of
relations must be the territorial integrity of Ukraine including Crimea plus
the repudiation of the idea that Russia can continue to behave like the Soviet
Union in its attitude to the rest of the world. If that is not acceptable to
Russia then we must continue sanctions indefinitely and treat every Russian
citizen as a pariah. Don’t give them visas, don’t let them visit don’t sell
them anything. Let them eat Kasha, until they change their own regime.
But if Ukraine has the right to defend its territorial
integrity so too obviously does the United Kingdom. The British Government
should no more accept trade barriers between Britain and Northern Ireland than
Ukraine should accept trade barriers between Crimea, the Donbas and the other
parts of Ukraine.
The problem with Northern Ireland is not the Protocol.
The Protocol is a symptom of the UK’s long-term failure to assert that Northern
Ireland is UK territory and will remain so until and unless it is captured by
war. The same obviously applies to Scotland.
Just as Ukraine does not allow separatists in Crimea
or the Donbas to threaten the legitimacy of its territorial integrity nor
should we. Just as there is no democratic right to leave Ukraine, so there must
be no democratic right to break up the United Kingdom.
We are very good at defending other countries, but rather
poorer at defending our own. We allowed the Republic of Ireland to so interpret
the Belfast Agreement that it made the Protocol inevitable. We encouraged the IRA
to believe that what it could not win with bombs it could win with votes.
It is as if we Ukraine made a peace treaty with Russia
that said whichever bits of Ukraine you want you can have so long as you win a
border poll.
The UK must assert its territorial integrity as a principle that transcends all other agreements and treaties, if necessary, in a constitution. There is little point in developing policies that increase the prosperity of country if it can be voted out of existence. This is what Ukraine is fighting for. We should fight for no less.
