Saturday 2 April 2016

Leaving the EU is only the beginning. Westminster doesn't work.


The battle over Port Talbot is now officially a douche-off between know-nothings. On the one hand we have leftists saying we should nationalise it or bail it out and on the other we have libertarians with the usual "do nothing" approach.

It always has to be binary doesn't it? Never any careful examination of the constituent issues. No real thinking as to what we want to achieve and how or what any of the prohibitive factors are. Nobody wants to be sullied by details.

Those who want to bail it out or nationalise it don't think of the wider consequences. Propping up one failing primary industry means propping up all the dependencies as well. That's a big chunk of the economy to be employing inefficiently. That is not going to come without real consequences. Does anybody really want to pay more for our ships, military vehicles and nuclear plants? It has to be paid for somehow. It will mean yet another hike in our energy bills.

But then the libertarians aren't thinking either. If they really do object to taxation and state intervention why are they not demanding local control and tax exemption? There are other avenues to explore. In this we have an immediate problem in that we bump into our commitments made at the international level. There is zero chance we can call a summit in order to renegotiate the bone-headed commitments made by our ruling class. 

Because of this I reluctantly lean toward letting Port Talbot die. We have left it too late and I no longer think that rational, workable options are open to us. We should have seen this coming and acted far sooner. But since it is our own MPs who did this to us there is no reason to believe that they would have acted. More to the point, they will do nothing to prevent this happening in future. Does anybody see an emergency review of the Climate Change Act on the table?

The bottom line is that our politicians have placed priority on their political vanity over jobs and industry. They have bought into the delusion of renewable energy and the green economy. Far from using a rational policy of phasing out carbon intensive industry they have opted for "swallow the lot and swallow it now" - with precisely nothing in place to mitigate the fallout.

In this, both the Tories and Labour are equally complicit. Our political culture has become twisted and warped. There is nothing left to do but purge the system. Leaving the EU is only the beginning. Westminster clearly doesn't work.

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