Cadbury cremed by bad law

February 2, 2010 — admin

I’ve always been partial to Cadbury’s Creme Eggs and for the past two weeks, I’ve been buying boxes and bringing them into the office, exhorting my colleagues to “eat them while they are still British”. Alas, no more. At 1pm today, the iconic British company became the plaything of an American conglomerate whose trademark cheese products are, astonishingly, even less related to actual cheese than Creme Eggs are to eggs.

PM has been busy lately, launching a attempted decapitation strategy on DC yesterday in a speech filled with more chutzpah than a New York second-hand car dealership. Now he’s been to meet the Kraft CEO, who’s not averse to audacity herself on the evidence of this takeover, he is sagely warning that he’ll be looking for more detailed assurances in the coming months. I don’t think that’s going to worry Irene Rosenfeld much – she’s only 4% short of the shares she needs to take Cadburyoff the stock exchange altogether.

And what PM is less keen to let you know is that it was Labour, through the Companies Act 2006 that effectively removed the right of government to protect our long-established businesses from takeover. The act implemented the EU’s Takeover and Transparency Obligations Directives, which harmonise takeover law throughout the EU and prevent company boards from doing anything to frustrate takeover bids. But surprisingly, it’s not the EU’s fault.

Despite the obvious agenda of EU member states to fix takeover legislation to favour their own subsidised corporate environment (ever wondered why so many German, French and Spanish firms can afford to buy British companies and infrastructure?) the directive did leave EU governments free to restrict takeoever law in their states. Labour didn’t take that opportunity and so the government is now in a very weak position to do anything about Kraft or dictate terms to it once Cadbury is bought.

There’s nothing intrisically bad about large British companies getting taken over. It puts money into shareholders’ pockets and since many shareholders are pension schemes, it helps to boost flagging pension values. Certainly Kraft has chosen to pay well over the odds for Cadbury. But it is important that we have British companies continuing to develop and emerge on the global market as players.

And with little or no protection from foreign predators, that is less, not more, likely to happen.

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Gone to Iceland

January 5, 2010 — admin

Has the Icesave money been flushed down the waterfall?

Iceland is apparently a startling beautiful place. And up until quite recently, it was an attractive place to deposit money if you were a local authority. Indeed, the treasury included it on a list of, ahem, approved destinations for local authorities to save, such was the benefit of the interest rates on offer at places like Landsbanki.

Unsurprisingly, many local authorities did so – although not Woking – and when the whole thing went under in 2008, the price of local authorities’ silence on the Treasury’s advice was the government not blaming the councils themselves for incompetence. Many councils, in fact, sussed that there was something wrong in Iceland many months ahead of time but couldn’t get their money – tied in for periods of a year or more – out in time.

As well as councils, around 300,000 depositors in the UK, Netherlands and Germany had Icesave accounts that were guaranteed by the government – it is compensation for this bailout that is being questioned by Icelandic president Olafur Ragnar Grimsson. His government led by prime minister Johanna Sigurdardottir wants to do the right thing by paying back the British and Dutch governments nearly £3.1bn but he has decided the Icelandic people should have a say in a referendum instead.

They are likely to vote against because they believe that the country shouldn’t pay back the money to foreigners that its incompetent and dubiously run banks – the foreign debt of the biggest three was more than five times Iceland’s GDP – took from them in full understanding of their precarious position. The reducing value of the Icelandic currency was also to blame – somewhat more the fault of the people of Iceland than the people of Britain.

What this issue has to do with the people of Iceland is unclear. This is nothing less than nationalism being the last resort of a bankrupt nation and a president keen to gain some political capital out of his government’s stupid actions. Iceland has never been a centre of world finance and was scarcely able to sustain such highly leveraged financial devices – at least the City of London has that excuse.

If Iceland refuses to pay back what it owes to the people who lost out in Icesave, it will actually lose out further in the long term. It is difficult to see how it could ever enter the EU and investment in that country would be very, very hesitant in the future. Icelandic banks would remain a byword for loss and injustice along with the likes of BCCI and Barings.

Let us hope that the President and his people drop the patriotic ardour and start to understand the unfortunate consequences of neighbourly disputes.

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Don’t bank on it

December 2, 2009 — admin

While people decry banking bonuses, they are ignoring the real threat posed to our financial advantage by the appointment of Michael Barnier as Commissioner for the Single Market. I’m furious that for the sake of having some nonentity like Baroness Ashton appointed to a puffed-up, non-elected position mandated by a treaty that most of Europe wants to bin but is being denied the right to vote on, Labour has thrown the City of London at the mercy of the Franco-German EU axis that wants to get rid of it.

The City of London has been a barrier to French and German dominance of Europe ever since the Napoleonic Wars – once again, Labour has failed to understand the historical context of modern events and only sees the city in narrow political terms. It is, they reason, a bastion of public school wealth creation, a means through which the country’s wealth is manipulated from those who have earned it to those who control the City and its markets.

Of course, the reality is that the City is the difference – the difference between the UK and every other nation in Europe. It is a global, worldwide, established and mature marketplace that is one of the few reasons why our strained and fading nation still merits any kind of recognition on the world stage (along with Trident and our geographical locus). By handing the regulation of such an important asset over to its opponents, Gordon Brown has plunged it into a fight for competitive survival – one I’m sure it will win – right at the very time it needs to be focussing on helping Britain recover from the recession he helped to plunge us into.

He doesn’t realise the damage that threatening the health of the City could have. Company headquarters, overseas investment and many, many jobs could be at risk if the City is strangled or seen to be under attack. The problem with Brown, as we saw at PMQs today, is that he is suddenly receiving some vaguely sensible advice. But he’s too arrogant to admit it’s not his own doing and is starting to believe that he himself has aquired a Midas touch.

Not so, as I’m sure many city managers would be happy to tell him. Not that Labour listens to the City now that its political money seems to be going elsewhere.

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UKIP’s major point

November 28, 2009 — admin

An interesting story in The Times today about the relationship between UKIP and the Conservative Party, which threatens to become even more bitter than that between the Tories and the parties of the left.

The story says that UKIP offered to not fight the general election if the Conservatives gave a written guarantee (as opposed to a cast-iron one) that a referendum would definitely be held after the election and that its MPs would be given a free vote in a Commons ratification. He got no answer, although both the BBC and The Times say that Lord Strathclyde acknowlegdes the meeting have taken place.

In case anyone didn’t know, UKIP elected a new leader last week, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, to take over from Nigel Farage. This is obviously his attempt to make some headlines and announce his presence on the scene and that’s all fine. I’m glad that six months ago, the Conservatives had the foresight to see that Lisbon might be ratified ahead of an election and that this delicate siutation required careful planning, not more rash promises. In addition, a pact with UKIP endorses an openly Eurosceptic view, which may have caused further conflict within the party. We were right to reject their silly politicking.

What is interesting to me is the idea that, this one policy demand satisfied, UKIP was prepared to stand down from elections. In addition, Lord Pearson continued:

“And then when we had the referendum – which we believed we would win – we would then be out of the European Union and then at that point UKIP, well it would have been up to UKIP, but it would probably have disbanded because its major point would no longer be in existence.”

I thought this was a major party with policies on a range of issues. It appears, in fact to be a single-issue pressure group that stands for election and paradoxically ends up taking votes from the one mainstream political party that can deliver its single issue objective. It’s an incredibly short-sighted organisation.

If, as I hope it will, Britain ends its membership of the European Union within the next 10 years, there is a great deal that will have to be planned for to ensure that we remain competitive and politically engaged inside and outside the EU. For 35 years, our politics has operated on various fringes of Europe and to place ourselves outside that will require plenty of adjustments. Adjustments for the better, perhaps, but adjustments nevertheless.

But as soon as the exit from the EU is achieved, that appears to be UKIP’s tipping point to disband according to its new leader. Never mind the implications of the exit, never mind the work that follows it – we’ve got we wanted and now we’re off. This group doesn’t know the first thing about running a country – it’s only interested in tunnel vision politics and single issues. Successful politics understands that issues tend to happen simultaneously and everything, as Lenin once said, is connected to everything else.

So if you aren’t that keen on Europe and are thinking about voting for them in Woking or anywhere for that matter, try asking this of your UKIP candidate when they come knocking – what happens during life after the EU? Then ask yourself whether you really want people bought into a party with no concept of strategy to be your MP or local councillor.

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Enquiring minds

November 24, 2009 — admin
Sir John Chilcot

Sir John Chilcot

It’s not unusual for the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre to be full but perhaps rarely are events held there that cause a queue to overflow outside. This morning, the Chilcot Inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the Iraq War began with Tony Blair expected to be among those giving evidence.

Now that he can no longer expect diplomatic immunity from prosecution after his EU presidential bid failed, this must be a nervous time for Mr Blair. Several newspapers have run stories suggesting that the facts of the matter are at significant variance to the official account of events, including that Blair denied military options were being considered when in fact they were.

What I hope will happen as a result of this inquiry is that we will know:

a) Whether or not Blair and others deliberately manipulated evidence, parliament and public opinion to go to war

b) Whether or not his central claim of “45 minutes from destruction” was true and how it originated

c) Why there was a woeful lack of planning for what happened after the Allies controlled Baghdad – the clock to insurgency then started ticking

d) How much US policy dictated British strategy in Iraq

We all suspect we know the answers, or at least many of them, to these questions. The picture emerging six years after invasion was that politicians exaggerated and spun their way to public approval for a war that the Americans wanted and that there was a price for not following them into.

But let’s not forget that the cost of war in Afghanistan and Iraq has stretched to billions and billions of pounds that have be scraped away from areas such a local authority highways, Revenue Support Grant, policing and even the Armed Forces themselves. The person who approved every penny for this shallow, shambolic military intervention is now sat in No 10 Downing Street, all of 500m from the conference centre.

We should not forget his role in this. Yes, Blair wanted war. But he also wanted welfare reform, Euro membership and to follow Tory spending plans. Gordon didn’t seem to have a problem blocking these things – so why wasn’t he more vocal in his opposition of the war? His role in signing the cheques seems to have been swept under the carpet.

It is interesting to note, of course, that Woking MP Humfrey Malins voted against the Iraq War and resigned from his position on the shadow front bench in protest. How right he has been proven to have been.

Posted in American politics, Europe, Military. Tags: , , , , , . No Comments »

Blair ditches project

November 19, 2009 — admin
Herman's not a German but he's supported by them

Herman's not a German but he's supported by them

It’s okay, panic over – Tony Blair will not become President of Europe and we can all sleep a little easier. I don’t imagine for a second that the “winning candidate” – and I use the term advisedly given that I don’t remember receiving a polling card for this particular “election” – is going to do a vastly better job. Herman van Rompuy seems like a unpleasantly devout federalist who talks about standardised taxation and exectly the sorts of things that will have people running to UKIP.

It reinforces my belief that the UK and the EU are increasingly incompatible in terms of their future direction. What pro-EU Conservatives and Liberal Democrats don’t seem to get is that the European ideal is a Franco-Germanic concept designed to ensure those nations’ national interests remain predominant. I don’t blame them for that – for 200 years Britain pursued often brutal foreign policy to ensure our national interests were enforced – but we are surfing over a waterfall if we don’t recognise where the EU path is leading us.

The most scary thing for me is not the single currency, tax regime, foreign policy etc – it is the idea of Mr Rompuy being “named” as the EU leader and “chosen” by other leaders. This is exactly the kind of thing that the Politburo used to announce through Pravda and identical to the way that the Chinese president is “elected”. For me, the worrying thing about the EU is that it is sucking up the democratic mandate further and further from the people it seeks to govern. I can’t accept that this makes Europe safer, more harmonious or prosperous.

Tony Blair as EU President would have been a dreadful thing precisely because he holds the sort of centralising, anti-democratic tendencies that would re-inforce this worrying trend. Voting by region every five years is not democracy – no-one should sit in the European Parliament unless they have been directly elected by voters and I’m still not sure why if the European Commission is necessary it cannot be chosen out of the parliament in the same way as the cabinet in Westminster.

A separate EU presidential election ought to occur if we are to have an EU president. But since the chairman or woman of the EC ought to wield sufficient power, I cannot accept that a president is necessary in addition.

There is so much waste, so much interference and so much anti-democratic instinct in Brussels that DC should ignore it altogether for six years. Then, two years into his second term, he should hold a full EU membership referendum – once Britain has built up her economic and social strength once again – to settle this question once and for all. A strong Britain needs Europe and vice-versa – but my view is that leaving the EU would make us focus on what we as a nation want to be in 2050 and beyond.

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Post-Wall Europe

November 9, 2009 — admin
The Berlin Wall two years before its destruction

The Berlin Wall two years before its destruction

My memories as an 11 year-old of the Berlin Wall crumbling 20 years ago today are a little hazy but such was the importance of the event that it is difficult for anyone to have forgotten those television images altogether. Four years later, my history teacher posited that in the future we would talk about “since the Wall” in much the same way that his generation spoke about “since the War“.

He believed that it was as important a historical event that would shape the future of Europe. To a certain extent he was right; it has paved the way for a unified Europe but a unified Europe is not what everyone wants and hasn’t had the impact on the world that many people thought it would.

If anything, much of Europe has reverted back to its pre-First World War nationalism – Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and the USSR are previously communist nations that are now footnotes in historical atlases. We have seen the rise of nationalism in Germany once again, borne out of the realisation that unification was not the emancipation of which many in the East had dreamed. Romania and Bulgaria remain very poor and propped up by EU investment. Albania harbours ethnic and religious conflicts that fed into the Serbian War of 1999.

To me, it seems that once more the victors have written the history books. The end of the Cold War was not, I think precipitated by the victory of capitalism over communism but by a victory of nationalism over empire. I don’t believe that East Germans wanted to be neo-liberal – they wanted to be Germans. Yugoslavs wanted to be Serbians, Croats and Bosnians and Czechs and Slovaks wanted their own nations, not puppet rule from Moscow.

Capitalism and the western standard of living was a bonus, sure; but if that was what eastern Europe had really wanted, would they not have worked to gain that first? Perhaps if they had been better supported by the other nations of Europe, the unified Europe would be a greater force than it has turned out to be.

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Not even tea time…

November 5, 2009 — admin
It's been a busy day...

It's been a busy day...

…And already we’ve got the Bank of England demonstrating the state the economy is in by having to create another £25bn of wealth kick-start our growth once more.

Gordon Brown is obviously pretty determined that the UK needs to come back into overall growth as soon as possible to prevent more dire headlines and preserve the faint possibility of hanging onto his job. The threat of inflation should this process not be handled correctly is, in any case, a post-election problem. If the Treasury pushes us into inflation, it’ll be DC’s fault or if Labour somehow scrapes back into power via a hung Parliament, Gordon has got five years to sort it.

This isn’t leadership, it’s sabotage.

Elsewhere, those squeaky-clean alternatives to the Conservatives, UKIPpers, who have spent the day condemning the new Conservative policy on Europe, have had to face up to the reality that one of their former MEPs was siphoning off £2,500 each month from taxpayers in Europe.

Tom Wise claimed £3,000 a month to pay for his secretary and then gave her just £500, spending the rest of it on whatever he felt like. So this idea that UKIP is the perfect antidote to MPs’ expenses and will also provide a EU “in or out” referendum is total nonsense.

A vote for UKIP is a vote for the Liberal Democrats in Woking and Gordon Brown nationally. I will never understand the political reasoning of those that vote for them – why would you cast a vote out of dogma that will end up having the opposite effect to the one you want?

Finally, the French are so incredibly annoyed about the new Conservative Euro-policy that one of their ministers has had a moment of temporary madness. That’s what I call a positive outcome.

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Life after Lisbon

November 4, 2009 — admin

DavidCameronEuroWell, that’s it. The Czechs have signed and the Lisbon Treaty becomes law soon. DC has outlined his response, no doubt hoping to kick this into the long grass until after the election.

Unfortunately, I don’t think that will convince some of the more strident Eurosceptics, who will continue to call for a referendum on something, anything, to do with Europe. The thing about referenda is that there is a time, a place and more importantly a question, for them. We can have several referenda a week if we like but unless they are timely and relevant, they are a pointless waste.

Principled these people may be, but they are also myopic. They can’t see that a Conservative Party arguing over Europe is exactly the alternative to Gordon Brown that the public doesn’t want. They can’t see that having this argument amongst themselves now assumes we are going to win the next election – which is still a bold assumption. They can’t see that yes, the question of our relationship with Europe is the political question for the next 10 years; but it isn’t by any means the most important question on the ground in British politics at the moment.

Conservative MPs and PPCs should ask themselves how we are going to manage and reduce the overwhelming debt that Labour has built up and how our shattered economy is not only going to be re-built but re-modelled for a new economic era.

They should ask themselves how to address education, training and social mobility – let’s not pretend these are three separate things – and how to stop young people in many parts of the country growing up without opportunity or hope.

They should consider how they will deal with the question of our Armed Forces and the tough choices that are needed to define what we want from our military in the future.

They should look at our police force and emergency services – including the NHS – and try to understand how we can restore public trust in the police, reduce crime and establish proper administration and a sustainable future for the NHS.

They should think about our constitution and our relationships with our immediate neighbours and how we can work together to bring about prosperity and transparent government. Local government is another area where the Conservative Party desperately needs to inject vigour, a sense of purpose and efficiency.

Yes, some of these areas are affected by EU policy. But they are big questions that impact on people in Britain today, now. The European question won’t ride off into the sunset. The Lisbon Treaty makes exiting the EU easy if Britain should ever wish to do this. If it instead wants to attempt renegotiation, then it will be free to try that too – although I cannot see how it would be achieved.

The point is that this is not a fight that we need to have now, it is not a fight that will win any elections and it is not a fight that the British people, many of whom have suffered job losses and reduced household incomes on top of spiralling food and energy costs, want to have now either.

Eurosceptics, including myself, need to let it drop. Otherwise they will lose the public confidence and hand victory from the jaws of catastrophe to Gordon to have another five years. And we certainly won’t be attempting renegotiation under him.

Update 5/11: There is a convincing and slightly expanded version of the same argument I make at Ben Archibald’s blog. I think this sets out in detail the context in which we should all see the European drama.

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Referendum fever

November 3, 2009 — admin

Back in 2007, a Conservative leadership that badly needed to get back the support of The Sun newspaper made a “cast-iron” guarantee about holding a referendum on whatever treaty resulted from the negotiations at Lisbon.

Once the Czech president Vaclav Klaus signs his country’s ratification of the treaty (as looks imminent), it will become law across Europe and binding on all states. The only way out is to leave and the only way to “repatriate powers“  is to negotiate agreement from all 27 members countries, which will mean so much compromise as to be essentially impossible. In effect, the only way to renegotiate is to leave and try to rejoin.

I still believe that holding a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty itself is pointless. It would be an expensive way of guaging public opinion – I can predict with 90% certainly that around 65-70% would vote against the treaty and 30-35% for it. So what? There’s nothing you can do with that info except to figure that Britain is a broadly Euro-sceptic country, which we already know.

So DC’s promise has been overtaken by events and he knows it. His problem now is to reconcile his party between those who want a referendum and/or exit from Europe – and how to stop them voting for UKIPpers – and those who still see a future in a Europe of trading partners. It is unlikely that other European nations – particularly France, Germany and a Spain riddled with resentment over Gibraltar – will allow the UK to enjoy the benefits of economic community without the constraints of the social and political union.

So where does DC go? He promised a referendum but the one he promised is a dead duck. He has stated he “won’t let matters rest” but that could mean anything. The repatriation of powers is not going to find favour in Europe itself but he doesn’t want to advocate leaving the EU for fear of upsetting the One Nation Set, including Ken Clarke who is broadly seen by voters as moderate and electable.

Personally, I have always favoured a trading relationship with Europe without the political tie-ins. If this becomes impossible, I think preserving our political freedom is more important than trade and we should withdraw from the EU and manage our trade relationships accordingly. It’s not a one-way street; Europe also needs the UK – otherwise we become a very potent competitor.

My suggestion to DC was to let Europe take a back seat but he seems adamant on pushing it. Therefore I think we should have a referendum with four questions – yes or no to:

1) The Lisbon Treaty

2) Membership of the Euro

3) Inclusion in the Social Chapter

4) Membership of the EU itself

The referendum would cost the same amount of money – but will provide a government with information on the sort of Europe that its people want and allow it to go forward with negotiation on that basis.

Posted in David Cameron, Europe. Tags: , , , , , , . No Comments »
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