Monday 30 March 2020

Tory stupidity in spades


John Stuart Mill, one of the founding fathers of modern liberalism, famously identified the  Conservative Party was the ‘stupid party’,  If that was true of the nineteenth century Tories  than the the Johnson Tory party, dominated by the arch-Brexiteers, is surely the stupid party in spades.

Before the coronavirus crisis dominated the news channels sharp observers noted the following:*


  • the government has decided not to participate in the Unified Patent Court, which is not even an EU body;
  • nor the  Early Warning and Response System (EWRS) , a web-based platform linking the European Commission, ECDC and public health authorities in EU/EEA countries responsible for measures to control serious cross-border threats to health, including communicable diseases;
  • nor the European Arrest Warren system , even though it already has several non EU members, as some Brexiteer campaigners pointed out, giving the impression that we should continue to participate in it;
  • and not  to remain members of the European Aviation Safety Agency, (EASA) but to develop our own national system at a cost of between £30m and £40m.  Our contribution to EASA has been £3m add £4m per year;
  • and to leave REACH , the  European Union regulation concerning the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation & restriction of chemicals;
  • and to leave the European Medicine Agency.  Not  only that, the EMA has already left us. Its headquarters were in London and provided jobs and thousands of poftitable bed-nights in London hotels;
  • and we're leaving EURATOM,which, among other things, supplies the stuff that makes our X-ray machines in our hospitals work;
  • along with, probably, the Erasmus system which provides students and apprentices with support if they take the opportunity of studying an an EU country other than their own.  (Full disclosure: as a mature (indeed post-mature) student I benefited greatly from this scheme);
   It can be argued, and probably will be by enthusiastic Brexiteers, that some of these are EU instutions and we must make a clean break.  But, as pointed out, they are not all, an even those that are often have non-EU participants. 

 It seems that, if the word European appears in the title, we are out.  Shooting yourself in the foot and cutting off your nose to spite your face just don't describe the half of the stupidity involved.

The implications of some of the above will not become evident until the long run, when maybe we''ll all of us be dead.

But there is one idotic omission which may very easily affect the very soon to be dead.  

That is the decision, or rather non-decision, not to participate in the European initiative for the procurement of ventilators and protective equipment to counteract the effects of the coronavirus.

The EU has made it clear hat the UK, still in the transition period, was perfectly entitled to be part of it.  Our  govermnet's astonishing excuse is that it either didn't know, through a "communications problem," or didn't notice the date.

A letter in yesterday 's Guardian from Martin McKee and two other scientists sates clearly that the initiative had been well publicised, that they themselves had written an article about it in  the British Medial Journal  on the 31st January, and that the EU Commission had announced it  at a press conference on the 17th March, which was widely reported in the continental  press. 

As the scientists  aptly point out, this is an example o placing "Brexit over Breathing."

"Stupid" doesn't describe it

Criminal negligence is more apt.

As fellow humans we must be sypmpathestic to  Mr Johnson, Mr Hancock and any other member of the government who may be suffering fom the virus, but this piece of ideological obstinancy occurred when they were all fully functioning.

This appalling piece of ideological obstinacy over their duty of care to wards the people for whom hey are responsible should not be forgotten or buried under a tsunami of other detail.

They must be held to account. 

I am indebted to my friend John Cole, another former economics teacher, and also for  for 16 years a highly respected Liberal Democrat on Bradford City Council, for compiling much of the following.

15 comments:

  1. What exactly would the advantage be of participating in this scheme? Yes, the EU might be able to use its size to place larger orders; but on the other hand presumably the equipment bought through the scheme will have to be shared out among the member states according to some criteria which are either arcane and obscure or don't even exist yet.

    Whereas if we source our own then we get 100% of what we order.

    It seems unclear to me that buying through the EU scheme is guaranteed to end up with the UK getting more equipment, in raw absolute numbers, than souring our own. Do you have any evidence for thinking that would be the case?

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    1. Bulk buying, economies of scale.

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    2. Right yes that's what I covered by 'the EU might be able to use its size to place larger orders'.

      But on the other side, 'the equipment bought through the scheme will have to be shared out among the member states according to some criteria which are either arcane and obscure or don't even exist yet'.

      That is, the EU might be able to buy more stuff; but there's no guarantee, that I can see, that of that stuff, more of it would actually get to Britain than we culd get by operating as a lone agent and snapping up everything we can exclusively for our own use.

      So is it really guaranteed that if the UK went through this scheme it would end up with more actual equipment than if it operates on its own? Are there figures for that? Has it been worked out?

      Or are you just taking it as an article of blind faith that anything it the letters 'EU' in it must be better? Is the EU simply your religion at this point?

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    3. And do you have any guarantee that the UK buying on its own can get more than its share would have been if it went in with the EU? Or even if it adopted a dual strategy of going with the EU, and buying its own on the quiet?

      Or are you just taking it as an article of blind faith that anything it the letters 'EU' in it must be worse? Is the EU simply the anti-Christ to your religion at this point?

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    4. And do you have any guarantee that the UK buying on its own can get more than its share would have been if it went in with the EU? Or even if it adopted a dual strategy of going with the EU, and buying its own on the quiet?

      No, I don't. But I'm not the one claiming that:

      '"Stupid" doesn't describe it

      Criminal negligence is more apt.'

      I think the UK government has made a reasonable decision to go it alone. It might be the wrong decision; it might be the right decision. No doubt there will be an inquiry in due course and this will be one of the things it looks at.

      It's a reasonable decision on the face of it and it's not obviously the wrong decision. It's not obviously the right one, either, I admit. In any situation like this, where unprecedented decisions must be made at speed and without full information, mistakes are bound to be made. This might turn out to be one of them. But it might not.

      However the original article is claiming that it's not only obviously the wrong decision, not only a 'stupid' decision, but actual '[c]riminal negligence', and if you're going to make a claim like that I think you should have some pretty strong evidence to back it up.

      So what is that evidence?

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    5. Is the EU simply the anti-Christ to your religion at this point?

      And also, no — we should decide on areas of co-operation with the EU not based on any dogma, pro- or anti-EU, but entirely based on a transactional calculation of where the benefits outweigh the costs. So for example some security and intelligence co-operation would be good, but we are well shot of the European Arrest Warrant, based as it was on the fiction that all EU countries operate justice systems which are of the standard of ours, and which therefore opened British citizens up to the possibility of corrupt foreign courts demanding their extradition without anything the British courts could do about it -- see for example the case of that poor girl who was raped in Cyprus, bullied by the police into withdrawing her complaint, and then prosecuted herself for false reporting. If we were in the European Arrest Warrant system then even if she had made it home she wouldn't have been safe from persecution because if the Cypriot courts had lodged an EAW the UK would have had to hand her over. Once we're out then we can tell such corrupt systems to go jump.

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    6. Rational decisions are surely made on past experience and the considered views of practitioners. On the basis of these, through bulk buying buyers have the advantage of greater market clout, and sellers gain the advantages of large scale production. It may well be that plucky little Britain on its own could get a better deal than the mighty weight of the EU, but it's hard to discern any rational reason why.

      We shall see.

      As it says in the small print of the investment advertisements, past experience is no guarantee of future performance. and it's true that, had we participated in the EU scheme we should have to share out the products. That in my view is the civilised way of going about things, much to be preferred to: "snapping up everything we can exclusively for our own use."

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    7. That in my view is the civilised way of going about things, much to be preferred to: "snapping up everything we can exclusively for our own use."

      Wait, so you're actually saying that that you think the UK should participate in the EU scheme even if that results in us getting less equipment overall?

      So you are explicitly putting your pro-EU ideology above saving British lives?

      That's up to you of course but I don't think it's a view that will get much traction with the electorate.

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    8. Not at all. I believe that by participating in a collective effort we should get a slice of a bigger pie, and that slice would be greater than the mini-pie we could obtain on our own. If that is the case, then it's anti-EU sentiment that is putting UK lives at risk. Time will tell if the facts are not obscured by biassed reporting.

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    9. I believe that by participating in a collective effort we should get a slice of a bigger pie, and that slice would be greater than the mini-pie we could obtain on our own.

      Okay, and that's a reasonable position. But surely you agree that the other position — that getting the whole of a smaller pie might be bigger than our smal slice of the bigger pie — is not obviously stupid and certainly not 'criminally negligent'?

      After all we currently don't even know (as far as I'm aware) either how big the EU's pie will be, or what rules will be used to share it out. Presumably each member state will be fighting for its own interests, which in this case means a bigger share of the pie. Until we know the outcome of that massive bunfight, how can we know for sure which route will end up with us getting more stuff?

      And you would agree that if it were to be the case that going our own way would end up with us getting more equipment then that's what we should do? That is, we both have the same aim — getting the maximum amount of equipment for the UK — we just disagree on the best way to achieve that?

      I was just confused because 'had we participated in the EU scheme we should have to share out the products. That in my view is the civilised way of going about things' made it sound like you thought that we should participate in the EU scheme as a matter of principle because it's civilised', rather than simply because you pragmatically think that is the best way for Britain to get most equipment, which is at this point what matters.

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  2. I believe that co-operation is not only more civilised but also more efficient than the opposite. See Andrew Cuomo's "fury over scramble for ventilators" in the US (Guardian 1st April) as all 50 states and the Federal Government compete to buy ventilators, thus bidding up their price,

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    1. I believe that co-operation is not only more civilised but also more efficient than the opposite

      You haven't yet provided any reason for anyone else to believe it, though. I mean it's plausible that operating within the EU scheme might get the UK more equipment than going it alone; but it's also plausible, as I have explained, that it might not. We just don't know.

      So how can you be so certain? Is it just that you have total faith in the Holy EU, and Our Lady of Brussels, Ursula von der Leyden?

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    2. See Andrew Cuomo's "fury over scramble for ventilators" in the US (Guardian 1st April) as all 50 states and the Federal Government compete to buy ventilators, thus bidding up their price,

      Hang on — you're an economist, and you think the supply of ventilators is fixed? Do you believe in the lump of labour too?

      Delete
  3. It always slightly puzzled me that while numerous reports on the NHS Trusts constantly criticised them for not amalgamating for the economies of bulk buying, somehow Brexiteers didn't feel that this fairly obvious stratagem didn't apply to our EU membership and that we would somehow be better off negotiating deals on our own.

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