Personal Blogs

The Times reports today that chancellor Rachel Reeves will, in the run up to the budget, seek to 'use Brexit blame game to defend budget tax rises' and I have to say that this highlights what is wrong with our political class.

The Chancellor was elected as MP for Leeds West and Pudsey in 2010. She was a Member of Parliament throughout the run up to the EU referendum campaign and the interminably long Brexit process itself. She was there and she consistently voted for Remain and for continued alignment with the European Union. There is nothing whatsoever that is wrong with that, she is a veteran MP with established views.

So it is particularly disappointing to read in The Times that "Reeves is attempting to blame the way in which Brexit was implemented under Boris Johnson's deal rather than Brexit itself. The chancellor is treading a delicate line as she tries to avoid the impression that she is blaming voters."

The Times goes on to say "There is evidence that the Bank of England and the OBR are prepared to support the government's narrative."

The point is this. There is an increasing body of evidence that shows Brexit has been damaging to our economy. In this the voters did get it wrong. The voters are not always right.

But instead of a politician of principle saying this clearly, Ms Reeves chooses to dance on the head of a pin.

The chancellor's popularity ratings are already monumentally bad and they are unlikely to turn round.

She would have far greater credibility with those who agree with her for being honest in who is to blame on an issue like this and to point out that she was right all along. It might not make her position any more secure but it would show she is a politician of principle.

And that is the problem with our current political class. There is too much triangulation of competing views, rather than honestly held ones. And it is the major reason why voters are being successively lured by Nigel Farage, they believe - right or wrong - he will tell them exactly what he thinks.

On that the voters may be right.

As a Conservative party member, Association Chairman and member of the National Conservative Convention I've always believed there is nothing more important than the rule of law. If, as an increasingly global society, we don't have a set of rules to abide by, then what do we become?

It's for that reason I warmly welcome the words of Labour's new attorney-general, Lord Hermer KC who has called on the new government to take "immediate steps to restore the UK's reputation by abiding by international conventions, courts and championing international institutions."

There has been a tendency amongst some in Britain in recent years to distance ourselves away from the supranational bodies that for the most part sprang out of the global wars of the first half of the twentieth century, because we don't like some of the decisions they arrive at. "We want our sovereignty." "We want to take back control from these shady, non accountable organisations."

For some that step away from international cooperation came with Brexit, for others the mad conspiracy theories about both our path into and out of the pandemic. But the truth is that each step away from international working and towards national insularity will never be enough for the subscribers of isolationism.

With the Conservative leadership election underway we hear - from one of the candidates at least - that the answer to 'stopping the small boats' is leaving the European Convention on Human Rights.

Of course it won't be. Instead we will take another step away from the international norm - and internationally agreed human rights - to being at risk of becoming a petty outlier.

And when leaving the ECHR doesn't happen, what then?

There will always be someone a little more extreme, and with an audience of similarly desperate like-minded folk, to say this time its the Commonwealth, the IMF, NATO, or maybe the United Nations.  

For the most part, for the better part of a century, supranational bodies have been drivers of peace, security and economic growth around the world.

With cooperation comes a degree of giving up ones sovereignty, it's the price that we pay for the benefits we receive.

And, no matter what a Tory leadership contender says to you, we will never have sovereignty unless we leave every one of those supranational bodies because there will always be decisions we don't like, and leaving will always be the answer given to those out of step with the complexities of reality.

We've seen the difficulties that leaving just one of those bodies has brought, why would we think leaving more would make things better?

Instead it will leave Britain alone and isolated, away from international partnership. 

Thank heavens, at least when it comes to the Government's law officers we appear to have a grown up in charge.