EU sidelining on track

At the CBI conference today our political elite were clearly lining up with the CBI to shunt the EU problem into the sidings and ensure it does not become a serious issue. LIBLabCon are much happier to have their stereotyped party fights on Health, Schools and other such anodyne issues and ignore the EU elephant in the room. The CBI are clearly on board for this just as they were gung ho for ERM entry  which was a disaster, cost the UK a huge loss of reserves to George Soros (Is he a CBI member?) and ended in the UK having to leave the ERM and a subsequent election loss by the Tories in 1997. Leaving the ERM cost the reserves £3.4 bn because it was so badly handled by our political leaders but was the foundation of our economic growth in the late 90s.

This will be repeated if we leave the EU. Freed of the dead hand of EU bureaucracy our country will return to growth once more, our children will be able to get jobs and young couples buy their first house. The CBI does not speak for the people of the UK. It lobbies and represents big business, big bosses and international corporations who see people as an input to their money making machine, a facor of production as the economists say.

All their arguments about it being good for business boils down to good for them and the top bosses. The EU is great for them because with our flexible labour laws they can switch production and jobs to other cheaper countries with less workers rights. It also means they can play one country off against another to get the best deal for their corporation. This could happen outside the EU as well but the EU makes it easy for them to retain their intellectual property rights, distribution networks and tax minimisation schemes with minimum disruption to their business. Its a capitalist's wet dream.

Alan Walters, Thatchers economic adviser and our best UK political economist in my lifetime, was vehemently opposed to the ERM and was proved right. He was also proven right on the Howe Thatcher budget of 1981 which was opposed by 364 allegedly great economists including the current BoE governor the dosastrous Mervyn King in a letter to the Times. So much for great economists. I can name 4, Keynes, Galbraith, Friedmann and Alan Walters whom I knew as a North London neighbour. The rest have inflated ideas of their own abilities.

Alan came from a humble Midland'sbackgroud. He could communicate with ordnary people. He was never taken in by the EU flannel and indeed stood as a Referendum party candidate in the 1997 general election. Our current crop of economists like Mervyn King can only communicate with other economists. Thank God the current favourite to be next BoE governor, my old boss Paul Tucker, is not an economist but a central banker.