Category Archives: Economics

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland spending much more on public services than they collect in tax

Robert Henderson

The Office for National Statistics (ONS)  has produced  its first regional analysis of UK  public spending  and tax collected. The ONS describes the statistics as experimental and the methodology can be found here at the beginning of the analysis.

The data  shows  the public spending of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland considerably exceeds  the tax collected those countries.

Per capita their overspending is as follows in the latest year calculated (2015/16)

Scotland    £2,824

Wales         £4,545

N. Ireland £5,437

The total overspend in each country  calculated  by multiplying the per capita sum by the population of each of the three countries  gives these figures:

Scotland £2,824 x 5,373,000 (population)   = £15,173,352,000

Wales  £4,545 x 3,099,100 (population)       = £14,085,409,500

N. Ireland £5,437 x 1,851,600 (population) = £10,067,149,200

Total of public service spending by Scotland, Wales and N Ireland  over and above the money collected in those countries is £39,325, 910,700

England spends only  £599 per capita more than it collects in tax.

The population of England is 54,786,300

The excess  of spending over revenue in England is s £599 x 54,786,300 = £32,816,993,000

Total excess of UK spending  over revenue is £39,325,910,600 + £32,816,993,000 = £72,140,190,600

England has 86% of the UK population and 44% of the excess of spending over revenue

Scotland, Wales and N Ireland have 14% if the UK population and 54% of the excess of spending over revenue.

Population Estimates for  England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are taken from the  Office for National Statistics

Public spending per capita  in the four home countries

“In 2015/16, public spending per head in the UK as a whole was £9,076. In England, it was £8,816 (3% below the UK average).  This compares with:

Scotland: £10,536 (16% above the UK average)

Wales: £9,996 (10% above the UK average)

Northern Ireland £10,983 (21% above the UK average).”

Article 50 is a poisoned chalice – Don’t drink from it

Robert Henderson

Those who think that British Europhile politicians   will  play fair if Britain votes to leave the EU in June will be horribly disappointed. The public may think that if the British people have voted to leave the EU and that is an end of it regardless of the wishes of the Government.   Sadly, there is every reason to expect that Brexit will be anything but a clean break from the EU.

To begin with there has been no commitment by Cameron to stand down as PM if the vote goes against him.  Quite the opposite for he  has publicly stated several  times that  he will stay on and many  Tory MPs, including some of those in favour of leaving like Chris Grayling ,  have said that he must remain in No 10 whatever the outcome of the referendum .

If Cameron stay on as PM after a vote to leave Britain would be in the absurd position of having a man in charge of  Britain’s withdrawal who has shown his all too eager  commitment to the EU by the feebleness of   the demands he made during  his “renegotiation” and his regularly repeated statement before the conclusion of the “renegotiation”  that he was sure he would get new terms which would allow him to campaign for Britain to remain within the EU.   

A post-referendum   Cameron  government entrusted with negotiating Britain’s departure from the EU would mean that not only the  PM  but  the majority of his  cabinet and ministers below  cabinet  level  will  be  drawn from the same pro-EU personnel as he has today.  In those circumstances Cameron and his fellow Europhiles would almost certainly try to stitch Britain back into the EU with a deal such as that granted to  Norway and Switzerland. If that happened Britain could end up with the most important issue in the British  public’s mind –  free movement  of not only labour but free movement of anyone with the right to permanent residence in the EU – untouched .

But if Cameron leaves  of his own accord soon after a vote to leave Britain could still end up with a Europhile  Prime Minister and Cabinet.  Why? By  far the most likely person to succeed him  is Boris Johnson. If he  does become  PM there is every reason to believe that he will also do his level best to enmesh Britain back into  the EU.  Ever since Johnson  became the Telegraph’s  Brussels correspondent in the 1990s he has been deriding the EU, but until coming out as a supporter of voting to leave in the past week he has never advocated Britain’s withdrawal.  Johnson also gave a very strong hint  in the  Daily Telegraph article in which he announced his support for leaving the EU that his support for Britain leaving the EU was no more than  a ploy to persuade the EU to offer  more significant concessions than those offered to Cameron. Johnson has also been a regular advocate of the value of immigration.

The scenario of Cameron or Johnson deliberately subverting the intention of a referendum vote  to leave are all too plausible. There has been no public discussion let alone  agreement by leading  politicians over what the British government may or may not negotiate in the event of a vote to leave.   Nor has there been any suggestion by any British politician or party  that whatever the terms offered by the EU the British public will have the right to vote on them in a referendum.  Britain could be left  with  an agreement decided by the British Government and the EU which might do nothing of what  the British public most wants and  has voted for, namely, the return of sovereignty and  the control of Britain’s borders.

Then  there is Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty.  Both Cameron and Johnson are committed to doing so within the terms of the Lisbon Treaty of  2009.  Far from a vote to leave in the referendum putting Britain in the position of a  sovereign nation engaging in a negotiation for a treaty with the EU  it traps  Britain into an extended period of negotiation whose outcome is dependent on the agreement or non-agreement of  the 27 other EU member states and the  EU Parliament.  Let me quote  the Article in  full:

Article 50

  1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.
  2. A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention. In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union. That agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 218(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It shall be concluded on behalf of the Union by the Council, acting by a qualified majority, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament.
  3. The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question from the date of entry into force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notification referred to in paragraph 2, unless the European Council, in agreement with the Member State concerned, unanimously decides to extend this period.
  4. For the purposes of paragraphs 2 and 3, the member of the European Council or of the Council representing the withdrawing Member State shall not participate in the discussions of the European Council or Council or in decisions concerning it.

A qualified majority shall be defined in accordance with Article 238(3)(b) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

  1. If a State which has withdrawn from the Union asks to rejoin, its request shall be subject to the procedure referred to in Article 49. (

Article 50  means that Britain could spend two years negotiating and get no treaty because the Council of Ministers could veto it through Qualified Majority Voting (QMV) or the European Parliament reject it. Britain would then have the option of either asking for an extension (which could be indefinite because there is no limit mentioned in the Article) or leaving without a treaty.  There is also the further complication that if a treaty was agreed by the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament it would still have to be agreed by 27 EU member states,  either through Parliamentary vote or  in the case of a few including France, a referendum.  Moreover,  even if a treaty is agreed and accepted by all EU member states, this would leave  Britain up in the air for what could be a considerable time as each of the 27 members goes through the process of getting  the agreement of their Parliament or electorate.

The OUT camp must make it clear that  it would be both damaging and unnecessary for the UK to abide by this Treaty requirement. It  would allow the EU to inflict considerable damage on the UK both during the period prior to formally  leaving and afterwards if  the price of leaving with the EU’s agreement was  for  UK to sign up to various obligations, for example, to continue paying a large annual sum to the EU for ten years . It would also give  the Europhile UK political elite  ample opportunity to keep the UK attached to the EU in the manner that Norway and Switzerland are attached by arguing that it is the best deal Britain  can get.  If there was no second  referendum on the  terms  negotiated for Britain leaving the government of the day could simply pass the matter into law without the British voters having a say.

The Gordian knot of Article 50 can be cut simply repealing the European Communities Act and asserting the sovereignty of Parliament.   No major UK party could  object to this on principle because all three have, at one time or another,  declared that Parliament remains supreme and can repudiate anything the EU does if it so chooses.

If the stay-in camp argue that would be illegal because of the  treaty obligation, the OUT camp should simply emphasise  (1) that international law is no law because there is never any means of enforcing it within its jurisdiction is a state rejects it and (2) that treaties which do not allow for contracting parties to simply withdraw are profoundly undemocratic because they bind future governments. There is also the fact that the EU and its predecessor the EEC has constantly breached its own rules, spectacularly so in the case of the Eurozone.  Hence, for the EU treaties are anything but sacrosanct.

Britain will vote to leave the EU if the public message is right

Robert  Henderson

One thing about the coming EU referendum is certain: it will be a much fairer fight than that which occurred in 1975 when  the  stay-in camp had captured most leading politicians including all the party leaders,  all  the mainstream media and most of big business . In addition, the stay-in side then had funding which utterly dwarfed that of the get-out campaign and, not content with that advantage,  used the  government machine to  produce its own pamphlet on the renegotiations to go alongside  those of the stay-in and leave campaigns.  Perhaps most damaging was a lack of preparation for the vote by those who wanted to leave the EEC.

Today we have an established mainstream party  Ukip  unequivocally urging a vote to leave,  substantial support within  both the Tory and Labour parliamentary parties, including frontbenchers  and senior backbenchers. In addition influential business voices such as Lord Bamford of JCB Ltd and business groups  such as Business for Britain are raising their voice to both allay fears that  the British economy  would collapse  in a heap if we left the EU and advertise  the considerable  costs,  both economic and political,  which membership of the EU entails. There are even signs that the unions may be turning against the EU with the leader of Britain’s largest union Unit, Len McCluskey, suggesting that Britain might have to pull out if the EU’s labour  legislation is watered down as a result of Cameron’s renegotiation.

There is a further  important difference between 1975 and now.  In 1975 Britain had been in what was then the European Economic Community (EEC)for  less than three  years.  There was little for voters to go on to say  whether the EEC was going to be a good or bad thing.  Nor was the EEC anything like as intrusive as the EU is now.  Today the British people  know that the EU has not turned out to be the  driver of economic growth that was promised in the 1970s,  but a supranational  entity in  which the Europhile  political elites  are willing to ruthlessly enforce their will to achieve their end of a United States of Europe (is the only honest interpretation of the Treaty of Rome) regardless of the effects this has on  ordinary people, something of  which  the people of Greece are now only too savagely aware.

It is true that David  Cameron is  doing his best to fix the result. His government has announced that the civil service will not have to cease publicly commenting on the referendum  for the last four weeks of campaigning before the referendum  and the proposed referendum question  –Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union? –  is clearly biased because it emphasises  membership as the status quo  and gifts the YES vote to those who want to remain in the EU..  Perhaps most importantly, the spending rules in the referendum are slanted to favour those parties which will be likely to support a vote to stay in. But none  of these disadvantages are set in stone and   could be challenged  as the European Referendum Bill makes its way through Parliament or  by judicial review.  Moreover,  even if  all these pro-stay-in pieces of jigger-pokery remain unchanged  they will not be insuperable obstacles to a vote to leave because our circumstances are so  very  different  from those of 1975. .  There is also a possibility that Cameron will carry through his threat to insist that  all  those in his government  must  support whatever terms he decides to put to the country or resign. However, that would backfire if many did leave the government or  Cameron backed  down on his threat.   Either way he  would look weak and  strengthen the impression that leading  politicians are increasingly wanting to leave the  EU.

It is vital not to panic over polls which show that a majority will vote to stay in the EU.  Since Britain joined the EEC the polls have  regularly swung violently. The determining factor will be  political leadership or perhaps more exactly what the British elite – politicians, mediafolk, businessmen, academics –  say in public .  The vast majority of electors do not make their decisions by careful unemotional analysis of abstruse economic data or ideological belief, but on basic emotional responses such as fear and hope.   If there is support for leaving the EU, or even just an acknowledgement that leaving would not be a disaster for Britain,  from a broad swathe of those with a public voice,   enough of  the general public are likely to be persuaded to vote to leave to  win the referendum.

At the heart of the OUT campaign  must be Britain’s  complete inability to control her  borders while we remain in the EU.  Polls consistently show that immigration is one of the  major concerns of the British public and,  when the politically correct inspired terror of speaking honestly about race and immigration is taken into account, it is odds on that immigration is the number one issue by a wide margin.  A British Future report in 2014 found that 25% of those included in the research wanted not only an end to immigration but the removal of all immigrants already in the UK and a YouGov poll commissioned by  Channel 5  in 2014 found that 70% of those questioned wanted an end to mass immigration.  If  Britain leaves the EU it will not only allow the legal control of EU migrants but also removes from  British politicians any excuse for not controlling immigration generally.

Putting immigration at the heart of the OUT campaign would also have the bonus of appealing to the Scots through  a subject on which they feel  much the same as the rest of the UK, that is they are   opposed to mass immigration.  That is important because the SNP are trying to establish grounds for Scotland having a veto over the UK leaving the EU if Scotland votes to stay in the EU and either England  or England, Wales and Northern Ireland  vote to leave.  The larger the vote to leave the EU in Scotland is, the less moral  leverage they will have for  either a veto over Britain leaving  the EU or another independence referendum.

The other central plank to for the campaign should be the fact that it does not matter what Cameron obtains by his renegotiation, because whilst we remain within the EU any concessions given now may be reversed at a later date by the EU, most probably  in cahoots with a British government consisting of Europhiles. “Legal” guarantees such as Britain’s opt-out for the Social Chapter  were rapidly undermined by using EU workplace health and safety rules to impose much of the Social Chapter.

Nigel Farage does not need to be the campaign’s  sole leader , but he does need to be a very  prominent part of the leadership. If he does not take a lead role the OUT campaign is likely to end up in the hands of people who have bought into the politically correct view of the world. That would mean the immigration card will not be played with the vigour it demands or even played meaningfully  at all.

More generally, what this campaign needs is emphatic, unambiguous and above all honest  unvarnished explanation of what the EU represents,   It needs  Farage at the forefront of the OUT campaign  to set that tone.  No one else will do it.

Britain will vote to leave the EU if the public message is right

Robert  Henderson

One thing about the coming EU referendum is certain: it will be a much fairer fight than that which occurred in 1975 when  the  stay-in camp had captured most leading politicians including all the party leaders,  all  the mainstream media and most of big business . In addition, the stay-in side then had funding which utterly dwarfed that of the get-out campaign and, not content with that advantage,  used the  government machine to  produce its own pamphlet on the renegotiations to go alongside  those of the stay-in and leave campaigns.  Perhaps most damaging was a lack of preparation for the vote by those who wanted to leave the EEC.

Today we have an established mainstream party  Ukip  unequivocally urging a vote to leave,  substantial support within  both the Tory and Labour parliamentary parties, including frontbenchers  and senior backbenchers. In addition influential business voices such as Lord Bamford of JCB Ltd and business groups  such as Business for Britain are raising their voice to both allay fears that  the British economy  would collapse  in a heap if we left the EU and advertise  the considerable  costs,  both economic and political,  which membership of the EU entails. There are even signs that the unions may be turning against the EU with the leader of Britain’s largest union Unit, Len McCluskey, suggesting that Britain might have to pull out if the EU’s labour  legislation is watered down as a result of Cameron’s renegotiation.

There is a further  important difference between 1975 and now.  In 1975 Britain had been in what was then the European Economic Community (EEC)for  less than three  years.  There was little for voters to go on to say  whether the EEC was going to be a good or bad thing.  Nor was the EEC anything like as intrusive as the EU is now.  Today the British people  know that the EU has not turned out to be the  driver of economic growth that was promised in the 1970s,  but a supranational  entity in  which the Europhile  political elites  are willing to ruthlessly enforce their will to achieve their end of a United States of Europe (is the only honest interpretation of the Treaty of Rome) regardless of the effects this has on  ordinary people, something of  which  the people of Greece are now only too savagely aware.

It is true that David  Cameron is  doing his best to fix the result. His government has announced that the civil service will not have to cease publicly commenting on the referendum  for the last four weeks of campaigning before the referendum  and the proposed referendum question  –Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union? –  is clearly biased because it emphasises  membership as the status quo  and gifts the YES vote to those who want to remain in the EU..  Perhaps most importantly, the spending rules in the referendum are slanted to favour those parties which will be likely to support a vote to stay in. But none  of these disadvantages are set in stone and   could be challenged  as the European Referendum Bill makes its way through Parliament or  by judicial review.  Moreover,  even if  all these pro-stay-in pieces of jigger-pokery remain unchanged  they will not be insuperable obstacles to a vote to leave because our circumstances are so  very  different  from those of 1975. .  There is also a possibility that Cameron will carry through his threat to insist that  all  those in his government  must  support whatever terms he decides to put to the country or resign. However, that would backfire if many did leave the government or  Cameron backed  down on his threat.   Either way he  would look weak and  strengthen the impression that leading  politicians are increasingly wanting to leave the  EU.

It is vital not to panic over polls which show that a majority will vote to stay in the EU.  Since Britain joined the EEC the polls have  regularly swung violently. The determining factor will be  political leadership or perhaps more exactly what the British elite – politicians, mediafolk, businessmen, academics –  say in public .  The vast majority of electors do not make their decisions by careful unemotional analysis of abstruse economic data or ideological belief, but on basic emotional responses such as fear and hope.   If there is support for leaving the EU, or even just an acknowledgement that leaving would not be a disaster for Britain,  from a broad swathe of those with a public voice,   enough of  the general public are likely to be persuaded to vote to leave to  win the referendum.

At the heart of the OUT campaign  must be Britain’s  complete inability to control her  borders while we remain in the EU.  Polls consistently show that immigration is one of the  major concerns of the British public and,  when the politically correct inspired terror of speaking honestly about race and immigration is taken into account, it is odds on that immigration is the number one issue by a wide margin.  A British Future report in 2014 found that 25% of those included in the research wanted not only an end to immigration but the removal of all immigrants already in the UK and a YouGov poll commissioned by  Channel 5  in 2014 found that 70% of those questioned wanted an end to mass immigration.  If  Britain leaves the EU it will not only allow the legal control of EU migrants but also removes from  British politicians any excuse for not controlling immigration generally.

Putting immigration at the heart of the OUT campaign would also have the bonus of appealing to the Scots through  a subject on which they feel  much the same as the rest of the UK, that is they are   opposed to mass immigration.  That is important because the SNP are trying to establish grounds for Scotland having a veto over the UK leaving the EU if Scotland votes to stay in the EU and either England  or England, Wales and Northern Ireland  vote to leave.  The larger the vote to leave the EU in Scotland is, the less moral  leverage they will have for  either a veto over Britain leaving  the EU or another independence referendum.

The other central plank to for the campaign should be the fact that it does not matter what Cameron obtains by his renegotiation, because whilst we remain within the EU any concessions given now may be reversed at a later date by the EU, most probably  in cahoots with a British government consisting of Europhiles. “Legal” guarantees such as Britain’s opt-out for the Social Chapter  were rapidly undermined by using EU workplace health and safety rules to impose much of the Social Chapter.

Nigel Farage does not need to be the campaign’s  sole leader , but he does need to be a very  prominent part of the leadership. If he does not take a lead role the OUT campaign is likely to end up in the hands of people who have bought into the politically correct view of the world. That would mean the immigration card will not be played with the vigour it demands or even played meaningfully  at all.

More generally, what this campaign needs is emphatic, unambiguous and above all honest  unvarnished explanation of what the EU represents,   It needs  Farage at the forefront of the OUT campaign  to set that tone.  No one else will do it.

Devolution and an in-out referendum Part 2 – The hard facts to be put before the Celts

Devolution and an in-out referendum

Part 2 – The hard facts to be put before the Celts

Posted on October 5, 2014 by Robert Henderson in Editorial, Elections // 1 Comment
In part 1 I looked at the UK electoral arithmetic which suggested that England might well  vote to leave the EU  while one or more of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland would vote to stay in the EU.  I then proposed a strategy to diminish the stay-in vote in the Celtic nations. This was to bring home the realities of life in and outside the UK for Scotland, Wales and N. Ireland.
The primary matters the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish should be reminded of before they vote to leave the UK are:
  1. Wales and Northern Ireland are economic basket-cases which rely heavily on English taxpayers to fund their public expenditure. To lose that subsidy would cripple them both. Nor would they get anything like as much extra funding from the EU – assuming it would have them as members – as they would lose from the end of the English subsidy.
Scotland is in a better position because it is larger and has, for the present at least, significant oil revenues.  But it is a very narrow economy relying very heavily on public service employment – a significant part of which deals with the administration of English public service matters – while the private business side of is largely comprised of oil and gas, whiskey, food, tourism and financial services.
The figures below are the latest official estimates of the tax raised in each of the four home countries to the end of the 2012/13 financial year. These figures should not be treated as exact to the last million because there are difficulties in allocating revenue to particular parts of the UK, for example, with corporation tax, but they are broadly indicative of what each country collects in tax.  I give two sets of figures to show the differences when oil and gas is allocated on a geographical and a population basis.
Table 1 Total HMRC Receipts (Geographical Split of North Sea Revenues), £m
2012-13
UK                England    %           Wales      %       Scotland   %        Northern Ireland %
469,777   400,659 85.3%    16,337 3.5%   42,415 9.0%       10,331   2.6%
Table 2 Total HMRC Receipts (Population Split of North Sea Revenues), £m
469,777   404,760 86.2%    16,652 3.5%   37,811 8.0%        10,518    2.6%
Compare this with public spending for each of three small home countries in the calendar year 2013 (I was unable to find expenditure figures for the financial year but they would be little different) :
Scotland      £53.9 billion  – difference  of £12 billion approx. between tax raised and money spent
Wales            £29.8 billion   – difference of £13 billion approx. between tax raised and money spent
Ireland         £19.8 billion   – difference of £9 billion approx. between tax raised and money spent
NB differences between tax raised and money spent are based on Table 1 figures which give the most favourable interpretation of Scotland’s tax position.
The three smaller countries are accumulating debt at a much greater rate than England.  In addition, small countries which go independent would find raising the money to meet their overspends would be much more expensive than the cost of financing the debt as part of the UK
  1. The vast majority of their trade is with England. Barriers created by England’s departure from the EU could have very serious economic consequences any of other home countries remained within the EU.
  2. Much of what they export to countries outside the EU has to pass through England.
  3. All three countries would be net takers from the EU budget not contributors. The EU is unlikely to welcome with open arms an additional three small pensioner nations. There would be no guarantee that the EU would accept any or all of them as members, but even if it did the terms they would have to accept would be far more onerous and intrusive than they experience now. In particular, they would almost certainly have to join the Euro as this is a condition for all new members.
  4. An England or a reduced UK outside the EU would have to impose physical border controls because any part of the UK which seceded and joined the EU would be committed to the free movement of labour within the EU (more exactly the European Economic Area – EEA). That would mean any number of immigrants from the EEA would be able to enter either England or a reduced UK via whichever part(s) of the UK had seceded and joined the EU.
  5. Being part of the UK gives the smaller home countries great security because the UK still has considerable military clout – ultimately Britain is protected by nuclear weapons – and the size of the population (around 62 million and rising) is sufficient in itself to give any aggressor pause for thought. The proposal for armed forces made in the SNP sponsored White Paper on independence recommended armed forces of 10,000 regulars to start with rising to 15,000 if circumstances permitted.   That would be laughable as a defence force for a country the size of Scotland which has huge swathes of land with very few people on that land.  An independent Wales and N Ireland would be even worse off militarily.
  6. They could not expect to walk away from the Union without taking on a share of the UK national debt and of taxpayer funded pension liabilities proportional to their population, have a currency union to share the Pound, have UK government contracts for anything or retain the jobs exported from England to do administrative public sector work  for England, for example, much of the English welfare administration is dealt with in Scotland.
If this is done, with any luck the enthusiasm for leaving the UK to join the EU if England or England plus one or more of the other home countries has voted to leave the EU will diminish sufficiently to make a vote to remain in the EU unlike or at least reduce the vote to stay in to level where there is not an overwhelming vote to either stay in or leave.

What the British people want from their politicians … and what they get

Robert Henderson

What do our politicians think of the electorate: precious little. All the major mainstream parties either ignore or cynically  misrepresent  the issues  which are most important to the British – immigration, our relationship with the EU, the English democratic deficit,  foreign adventures , the suppression of free speech and the precarious state of the economy. . These issues are  not addressed honestly because they either clash with the prevailing internationalist agenda or because to address them honestly would mean admitting how much sovereignty had been given away to the EU and through other treaties.

This antidemocratic failure to engage in honest politics is an established trait. The wilful removal from mainstream politics of vitally important issues has been developing for more than half a century. The upshot is that the British want their politics to be about something which is not currently on offer from any party with a chance of forming a government. The British public broadly seek what these days counts as rightist action when it comes to matters such as preserving nationhood, immigration, race and political correctness, but traditional leftist policies on items such as social welfare, the NHS and the economy (has anyone ever met someone in favour of free markets and free trade who has actually lost his job because of them?).

The electorate’s difficulty is not simply their inability to find a single party to fulfil all or even most of their political desires. Even on a single issue basis, the electorate frequently cannot find a party offering what they want because all the mainstream parties now carol from the same internationalist, globalist, supranational, pro-EU, pc songsheet. The electorate finds they may have any economic programme provided it is laissez faire globalism, any relationship with the EU provided it is membership, any foreign policy provided it is internationalist and continuing public services only if they increasingly include private capital and provision. The only difference between the major parties is one of nuance.

Nowhere is this political uniformity seen more obviously than in the Labour and Tory approaches to immigration. Labour has adopted a literally mad policy of “no obvious limit to immigration”. The Tories claim to be “tough” on immigration, but then agree to accept as legal immigrants more than 100,000 incomers a year from outside the EU plus any number of migrants from within the EU (350 million have the right to settle here). There is a difference, but it is simply less or more of the same. Worse, in practice there would probably be no meaningful difference to the numbers coming whoever is in power. The truth is that while we remain part of the EU and tied by international treaties on asylum and human rights, nothing meaningful can be done for purely practical reasons. But even if something could be done, for which serious party could the person who wants no further mass immigration vote? None.

A manifesto to satisfy the public

All of this set me thinking: what manifesto would appeal to most electors? I suggest this political agenda for the What the People Want Party:

We promise:

1. To always put Britain’s interests first. This will entail the adoption of an unaggressive nationalist ethic in place of the currently dominant internationalist ideology.

2. The reinstatement of British sovereignty by withdrawal from the EU and the repudiation of all treaties which circumscribe the primacy of Parliament.

3. That future treaties will only come into force when voted for by a majority in both Houses of Parliament and   accepted in a referendum . Any  treaty should be subject to repudiation following  Parliament passing a motion that repudiation should take place and that motion being ratified by a referendum.  Treaties could also be repudiated by a citizen initiated referendum (see 29).

4. A reduction in the power of the government in general and the Prime Minister in particular and an increase in the power of Parliament. This will be achieved by abolishing the Royal Prerogative, outlawing the party whip and removing the vast powers of patronage available to a government.

5. That the country will only go to war on a vote in both Houses of Parliament.

6. An end to mass immigration by any means, including asylum, work permits and family reunion.

7. An end to all officially-sponsored political correctness.

8. The promotion of British history and culture in our schools and by all publicly-funded bodies.

9. The repeal of all laws which give by intent or practice a privileged position to any group which is less than the entire population of the country, for example the Race Relations Act..

10. The repeal of all laws which attempt to interfere with the personal life and responsibility of the individual. Citizens will not be instructed what to eat, how to exercise, not to smoke or drink or be banned from pursuits such as fox-hunting which harm no one else.

11. A formal recognition that a British citizen has rights and obligations not available to the foreigner, for example, the benefits of the welfare state will be made available only to born and bred Britons.

12. Policing which is directed towards three ends: maintaining order, catching criminals and providing support and aid to the public in moments of threat or distress. The police will leave their cars and helicopters and return to the beat and there will be an assumption that the interests and safety of the public come before the interests and safety of police officers.

13. A justice system which guards the interests of the accused by protecting essential rights of the defendant such as jury trial and the right to silence, whilst preventing cases collapsing through technical procedural errors.

14. Prison sentences that are served in full, that is,  the end of remission and other forms of early release. Misbehaviour in prison will be punished by extending the sentence.

15. An absolute right to self-defence when attacked. The public will be encouraged to defend themselves and their property.

16. A general economic policy which steers a middle way between protectionism and free trade, with protection given to vital and strategically important industries such as agriculture, energy, and steel and free trade only in those things which are not necessities.

17. A repudiation of further privatisation for its own sake and a commitment to the direct public provision of all essential services such as medical treatment. We recognise that the electorate overwhelmingly want the NHS, decent state pensions, good state funded education for their children and state intervention where necessary to ensure the necessities of life. This promise is made to both reassure the public of continued future provision and to ensure that the extent of any public spending is unambiguous, something which is not the case where indirect funding channels such as PFI are used.

18. The re-nationalisation of  the railways, the energy companies, the water companies and any  exercise  of the state’s authority such as privately run prisons which have been placed in  private hands.

19. An  education system which ensures that every child leaves school with at least a firm grasp of the three Rs and a school exam system which is based solely on a final exam. This will remove the opportunity to cheat by pupils and teachers. The standards of the exams will be based on those of the 1960s which is the last time British school exams were uncontaminated by continuous assessment, multiple choice questions and science exams included practicals as a matter of course. .

20. To restore credibility to our university system. The taxpayer will fund scholarships for 20 per cent of school-leavers. These will pay for all fees and provide a grant sufficient to live on during term time. Any one not in receipt of a scholarship will have to pay the full fees and support themselves or take a degree in their spare time. The scholarships will be concentrated on the best universities. The other universities will be closed. This will ensure that the cost is no more than the current funding and the remaining universities can be adequately funded.

21. A clear distinction in our policies between the functions of the state and the functions of private business, charities and other non-governmental bodies. The state will provide necessary public services, business will be allowed to concentrate on their trade and not be asked to be an arm of government and charities will be entirely independent bodies which will no longer receive public money.

22. A commitment to putting the family first. This will include policies which recognise that the best childcare is that given by the parents and that parents must be allowed to exercise discipline over their children. These will be given force by a law making clear that parents have an absolute right to the custody of and authority over their children, unless the parents can be shown to be engaging in serious criminal acts against their children.

23. Marriage to be encouraged by generous tax breaks and enhanced  child allowances for children born in wedlock.

24. Defence forces designed solely to defend Britain and not the New World Order.

25. A Parliament for England to square the Devolution circle. The English comprise around 80 per cent of the population of the UK, yet they alone of all the historic peoples are Britain are denied the right to govern themselves. This is both unreasonable and politically unsustainable in the long-run.

26. A reduction to the English level of Treasury funding to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. This will save approximately £17 billion pa because the Celts receive overall approximately £1,600 per head per annum more than the English.

27. An end to Foreign Aid. This will save approximately £11  billion.

28. A written constitution to ensure that future governments cannot abuse their power. This will be predicated on (1) the fact that we are a free people, (2) the belief that in a free and democratic society the individual can be trusted to take responsibility for his or her actions and to behave responsibly and (3) that politicians are the servants not the masters of those who elect them. It will guarantee those things necessary to a free society, including an absolute right to free expression, jury trial for any offence carrying a sentence of more than one year, place citizens in a privileged position over foreigners and set the interests and safety of the country and its citizens above the interests and safety of any other country or people.

29. Citizen initiated referenda shall be held when ten per cent of the population have signed a petition asking for a referendum.

Those are the things which I think most of the electorate could embrace, at least in large part. There are also other issues which the public might well be brought to  support if there was proper public debate and a serious political party supporting them such as the ownership and bearing of weapons and the legalisation of drugs.

The positive thing about such an agenda is that either Labour or the Tories could comfortably support it within the context of their history.

Until Blair perverted its purpose, the Labour Party had been in practice (and often in theory – think Ernie Bevin), staunchly nationalist, not least because the unions were staunchly protective of their members’ interests and resistant to both mass immigration (because it reduced wages) and free trade (because it exported jobs and reduced wages).

For the Tories, the Thatcherite philosophy is as much an aberration as the Blairite de-socialisation of Labour. The true Tory creed in a representative democracy is that of the one nation nationalist. It cannot be repeated too often that the free market internationalist creed is the antithesis of conservatism.

The manifesto described above would not appeal in every respect to ever member of the “disenfranchised majority”. But its general political slant would be palatable to that majority and there would be sufficient within the detail to allow any individual who is currently disenchanted with politics to feel that there were a decent number of important policies for which he or she could happily vote. That is the best any voter can expect in a representative democracy. People could again believe that voting might actually change things.

What a true assessment of the economic costs of mass immigration would include

Robert Henderson

The politically correct never cease to tell us that mass immigration is a net benefit to Britain. By this they mean that immigrants pay more in taxes than they cost in publicly funded services. To make such an assessment the following statistics would be needed:

1. The amount of income tax and National Insurance paid by immigrants.  Because of the type of work involved – seasonal, work offered by foreign gangmasters and so on –  it is reasonable to assume a  disproportionately  large proportion of those working in the black market are immigrants. There is also a practice of immigrants working and paying tax until they exceed the single person’s tax allowance in a tax year, ceasing to work in the UK for that tax year and then reclaiming all the income tax paid at the end of the tax year. That rebated tax  needs to be deducted from the tax paid figure held by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC).

2. The costs arising  from the native population who are denied jobs which immigrants have taken. This will involve the benefits native workers have to collect because they cannot find a job, the costs of having to move to a new area to either seek work or because  the new benefits cap will not meet their rent and the costs of having to take children out of one school plus the costs of registering with a new GP because a family is forced to move .

3. The cost to the native population of a reduction in wages caused by immigrants increasing the pool of labour. This will mean  less tax paid and more in-work benefits

4. The cost of  benefits drawn by immigrants when they are not working.

5. The cost of benefits drawn by immigrants when they are working, for example, working tax credits, housing benefit.

6. The cost of NHS care given to immigrants.

7. The cost of education given to immigrants, this to include the additional costs arising from those with poor or non-existent English.

8. The cost of benefits, education and NHS care for the children of immigrants born in the UK.

9. The costs of benefits paid to immigrants to support children born abroad and living abroad.

10. The inflation of  housing costs caused by immigrants and their children born in the UK increasing the demand for housing.

11.  The costs involved in a decline in the quality of NHS care and educational standards because of the pressure placed on the NHS, schools and higher education by immigrants.  The inadequate English of many immigrants employed in the NHS in particular must reduce the efficiency of the service and increase the likelihood of error. The difficulty of teaching in schools with huge numbers of pupils lacking English as a first language speaks for itself.

12. The costs involved  in the British economy generally from a loss of efficiency through the inadequate English of immigrants and their lack of understanding of British customs. It may be cheaper for an employer to employ an immigrant in terms of wages,  but,  especially where the immigrant is dealing with the public, there must be a substantial the loss of efficiency in terms of  extra time taken to conduct conversations with customers, misunderstandings of what is wanted and an inability to explain  to customers what is on offer.

13. The loss of expertise to Britain of skilled Britons who seek work abroad because of opportunities the UK being blocked by immigrants, for example,  newly qualified British doctors and nurses have encountered difficulty in obtaining British posts despite the frequent claims of NHS staff shortages (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9272640/New-doctors-will-face-unemployment.html),  while positions at British medical schools are cut and large numbers of foreigners recruited (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2407585/NHS-recruits-thousands-doctors-Third-World–limits-places-deny-British-students-chance-study-medicine.html)

14. The costs – which can be lifelong –  of the loss of work experience for Britons  unable to get work at all, whether skilled or unskilled.  This is particularly important for the young.

15. The costs in terms of wear and tear on the roads because of increased traffic arising from immigrants.

16. The cost of criminal activity amongst immigrants.

17. The cost of criminal activity amongst the descendants of immigrants.

18. The costs of guarding against Islamic terrorism.

19. The costs of the remittances made by immigrants and their descendants to their ancestral countries.

20. The costs of meeting the requirements of the “anti-racist” legislation which puts considerable burdens employers. These are  particularly severe for any employer who is funded in whole or part by the taxpayer.  Such employers have to not merely be non-discriminatory,  but they have to prove that is what they are as a result of the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/34/pdfs/ukpga_20000034_en.pdf). The police are particularly keen to show how PC they are (http://www.acpo.police.uk/documents/edhr/2010/201001EDHREDH01.pdf)

21. The cost of dealing with visa requests, asylum claims,  claims regarding family reunions  and claims based on compassionate grounds. The costs include employing civil servants to process claims to stay in the UK, the cost of staffing of immigration tribunals, the costs arising from the court time taken by the cases  which go to the courts, the  legal costs of those trying to stay in the UK (which are normally paid by the taxpayer), the cost of running immigration detention centres and the cost of removing people from the UK .

22. The ongoing cost of the descendants of immigrants – potentially through many generations – of racial and ethnic groups who continue to display high levels of unemployment, high benefit dependency,  low-skills,  poor educational attainment, low payments of tax and  abnormally high levels of criminality.

I defy anyone to find a piece of research which comes close to including all those costs or even a majority of them.

Of course the economic arguments are not  the most important thing about mass immigration which is that it changes the nature of a society because immigrants arriving in large numbers from the same country will invariably colonise parts of the country and resist assimilation.  Nonetheless, it is important to thoroughly examine the weaknesses in the economic claims made by the politically correct because it is their favoured ploy to try to pull the wool over the public’s eyes.

The costs fall most heavily on the poor, the rich being, as yet, largely untouched because they arrange their lives so that they do not encounter the supposed joy of diversity and have no need to seek work in a competitive situation.