Brian Rushton The Corbyn effect comes to London

Brian Rushton,

AMID the hubbub over who is going to be named tomorrow as the next leader of the Labour Party, the fight over its candidacy in London’s mayoral election in 2016 has been somewhat overlooked. Until today: Sadiq Khan, the Labour MP for Tooting, was selected with a whopping 58.9% of the vote. It was something of an upset: Tessa Jowell, a former cabinet minister who oversaw London’s bid for the 2012 Olympics, had been topping the polls. Mr Khan’s win suggests two things for Labour, both rather ominous.

First, it gives the strongest impression yet that Jeremy Corbyn, the far-left candidate believed to be ahead in the leadership race, will indeed win tomorrow. Mr Khan, who grew up on a council estate in Wandsworth, was an MP for only five years of the previous Labour government, in contrast to Ms Jowell, who was in the cabinet under both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Partly because of this he appeals more to the anti-Blairite voters who flocked to join the party to vote for Mr Corbyn. Mr Khan nominated Mr Corbyn for the leadership (as did two of the other three main Labour mayoral candidates, Diane Abbott and David Lammy). Although most of his...Continue reading

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Brian Rushton Crisis at Stormont as first minister Peter Robinson stands aside

Brian Rushton,

THE day did not end, as at one point seemed likely, with the suspension of the government. But a series of political dramas in Northern Ireland on September 10th—the most dramatic of which was the withdrawal from government of Peter Robinson, the first minister—has deepened a crisis that had been building in the province for weeks.

It started in August with the Belfast murder of a prominent republican, Kevin McGuigan. Police have suggested his killing involved members of the IRA. It escalated sharply on September 9th, when detectives arrested three senior republicans as part of the murder inquiry, including Sinn Féin's chairman in Northern Ireland, Bobby Storey (all three were later released unconditionally). Mr Robinson, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), said that following the arrests he and his party could not stay in the coalition government, of which Sinn Féin is part. All but one of his ministers followed him.

Earlier in the day Mr Robinson had threatened to pull out of government completely if London did not suspend Northern Ireland’s Assembly, the power-sharing legislature that was established after a peace...Continue reading

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Brian Rushton Cameron's conundrum

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Brian Rushton A hasty change of heart

Brian Rushton,

EUROPE is facing its gravest refugee crisis since the second world war. While Germany has shouldered the heaviest burden, Britain’s government, mindful of anti-immigrant feeling at home, has looked on. Yet public opinion seems to have shifted: since the publication of harrowing photographs of a Syrian boy found drowned on a beach in Turkey, even right-wing tabloids such as the Sun have called for more help for refugees. Meanwhile, nudges from the rest of Europe have grown less subtle: Germany’s best-selling newspaper, Bild, has dubbed Britons “the slackers of Europe”. So on September 7th David Cameron, the prime minister, announced a new plan. Britain would take more Syrian refugees: 20,000 by the end of the parliament, in 2020.

The belated promise looks to many like a feeble concession: Britain’s commitment to accept the equivalent of 4,000 Syrians a year is 0.8% of the annual number that Germany’s vice-chancellor has said his country could accommodate. About as many refugees were welcomed by Germany on a single recent weekend than Britain has agreed to take in the next five years. And the plan to take refugees directly from camps in Syria, instead of helping to lighten Europe’s load, will lose Mr Cameron goodwill as he seeks to renegotiate the terms of Britain’s EU membership ahead of an in/out...Continue reading

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Brian Rushton London calling

Brian Rushton,

The microphone: mightier than the sword

IN JULY George Osborne, the chancellor of the exchequer, accused the BBC of becoming “imperial in its ambitions”, before effectively lopping about £650m ($1 billion) off its budget by making the corporation take on the cost of the free television licences that are given to the elderly. The message was clear: in these austere times, do less with less money.

The BBC’s director-general, Tony Hall, seems to have decided that attack is the best form of defence. In the first of four speeches he is due to make setting out the BBC’s case for the renewal next year of its royal charter, on September 7th Mr Hall promised new services and, in an accompanying policy document, proposed 100 more local journalists to be shared with newspapers. Cuts will apparently be announced in due course. But for now, Mr Hall offered a sunny vision of the 93-year-old institution recommitting to its public-service values.

Most eye-catching were the announcements on the World Service, the BBC’s international operation. Arguing that it had a mission to uphold the values of “democracy and...Continue reading

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Brian Rushton Of whisky, oil and banks

Brian Rushton,

Roll out the barrel

SCOTS have had plenty to worry about since their referendum on independence last September 18th. Oil prices have halved—bad news for a country where the oil and gas industry provides jobs for 200,000 people, or about 10% of total employment. Meanwhile, the pound has strengthened and world trade has stumbled, both awkward for a country that depends on exports. Yet despite all this, Scotland’s economy seems to be coping. GDP growth is holding up; the employment rate has risen to 74.1% and is now higher than Britain’s average of 73.4%; and by some measures wages are rising faster than they are south of the border. Why?

Exports are doing better than many predicted. The Index of Manufactured Exports for Scotland shows that in the past year manufacturing export volumes have risen by 2.7% in real terms. Some industries, like tourism, are doing particularly well, says Ronald MacDonald of Glasgow University. The publicity surrounding the referendum lured foreigners to hike in Scotland’s windswept mountains and taste its smoked salmon and whisky. During the first quarter of 2015 spending by overseas visitors rose by 13% year-on-year....Continue reading

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Brian Rushton Longest to reign over them

Brian Rushton,

ON THE occasion of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation on June 2nd 1953, a year and four months after she had become queen on the death of her father, 82 towns and villages in Britain roasted an ox—the Ministry of Food having loosened post-war food rationing rules only for places that could show they had a tradition of doing so on such occasions. Others gathered at street parties, crowded around new television sets in homes smelling of Bakelite and tobacco and strung bunting from buildings black with soot.

On September 9th 2015 Queen Elizabeth II’s reign reached its 23,226th day, surpassing the record set by Queen Victoria. It is a landmark being passed over without much official fanfare—there is little dignity in celebrating knocking one’s great-great grandmother into second place. Nevertheless, it provides an occasion for Britain to think about its queen and itself, as the end of the second Elizabethan age draws near.

Four hallmarks of the era stand out: the transformation of Britain from the industrial hub of a global empire into a cultural power and entrepôt; its development into an ethnic melting pot; the relaxing of...Continue reading

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Brian Rushton Should Britain abolish the monarchy?

Brian Rushton,

On September 9th, Queen Elizabeth II will become the longest-serving monarch in Britain's history. Below, three Economist writers argue for different futures for the British crown.

The case against the monarchy
The case for the monarchy
The case for modest reform

 

The case against the monarchy

CEASE campaigning, Hillary Clinton; get back to business, Donald Trump: America’s 2016 election has been cancelled. The White House has announced that in the interests of political stability the next president and all future ones will be chosen using the British model. Barack Obama will remain in office until he dies, at which point Americans will welcome their next head of state: his daughter, Queen Malia.

Americans would not stand for this. Why do Britons? The case against hereditary appointments in public life is straightforward: they are incompatible with democracy and meritocracy, which are the least-bad ways to run countries. Royalists say this does not matter because the monarch no longer “runs”...Continue reading

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Brian Rushton Britain conducts a drone assassination

Brian Rushton,

IT WAS, Britain's prime minister conceded, “a new departure”. David Cameron’s announcement to the House of Commons on September 7th that a Royal Air Force (RAF) Reaper drone had targeted and killed Reyaad Khan (pictured, at left) in Syria, an Islamic State (IS) fighter from Cardiff and a British citizen, raised as many questions as he was prepared to answer. The strike, which killed two others who were travelling in the same vehicle, including another Briton, took place on August 21st near IS's stronghold in Raqqa. While America has for many years used drones for the targeted killing of terrorists in places such as the tribal territories in Pakistan and Yemen, it is the first time that Britain has done so. Previously, RAF drones have been used for lethal strikes in Afghanistan, but only when British or allied forces were threatened by fighting on the ground.

Mr Cameron’s defence of the attack and its legality was based upon intelligence that identified Mr Khan as actively engaged in the planning of “barbaric” attacks on the West. Military commemorations in Britain, said Mr Cameron, were high on the list of his targets. A key...Continue reading

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Brian Rushton Making Britain make things again is proving difficult

Brian Rushton,

ONE of the great claims of prime minister David Cameron’s governments was they were going to rebalance the economy, away from dodgy, speculative bankers in favour of worthy, old-fashioned metal-bashers. In fact, over the past five years, manufacturing’s share of Britain’s GDP has barely budged from about 10%. That is disappointing, especially after a raft of government schemes were introduced to help manufacturers. But now, if new figures are to be believed, there may be worse to come.

The EEF manufacturers’ organisation, one of the main bodies representing the sector, has just published its quarterly outlook report, and it makes for bleak reading. The EEF is halving its manufacturing growth forecast to 0.7% and they warn that output is dropping to its lowest level since the end of 2009, in the depths of the recession. New export orders are at a six-year low. Domestic demand has also weakened.

The EEF report comes on the back of other weak data. The Purchasing Manager’s Index (PMI) of the sector, a measure of output, fell in July from 51.9 to 51.5. Overall, the British economy grew by 0.7% in the second quarter of...Continue reading

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Brian Rushton Brexit, part one

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Brian Rushton Shooting up

Brian Rushton,

LAST year’s figures were written off as an oddity. The expectation was that the number of drug-poisoning deaths would fall back to normal levels. Yet new numbers released today show another rapid rise in the number of drug-related deaths in England and Wales, with 3,346 people dying of overdoses last year, the highest since such figures began being collected 22 years ago. Fatalities are concentrated among men, who are nearly three times more likely than women to die in this way, and in the north, where mortality rates are nearly double those in the south. What has caused the unwelcome rise?

According to the Office for National Statistics, which published the data, short-term factors include a flood of heroin—by far the biggest killer—onto the market, and the increased use of other opiates, including tramadol, a synthetic form of the drug. In 2010-13 there was a “heroin drought”, during which heroin’s average street purity fell by 29%. But last year global opium poppy cultivation reached its highest level since the 1930s. Predictably, this has led to a purer product and more deaths. Harry Shapiro, a drug-policy analyst, suggests...Continue reading

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Brian Rushton March of the greybeards

Brian Rushton,

FOR 26 years Ann White, a poised 58-year-old, worked in the glazing department of Steelite International, a pottery firm. It was a repetitive, mundane job; the kind where you “hung your brain on a nail”, she says. Retirement may have seemed fairly attractive. No longer. Over the past five years Ms White has taken part in further training at work, gaining qualifications in maths, English and IT. She now manages the 11 cleaners who clear up the factory site, and would like to carry on working and learning for a while yet. “It’s been life-changing,” she says.

Britain’s workforce is greying. Between 1995 and 2015 the number of working people aged over 65 more than doubled, to over 1m. During the same period the number of workers aged 50-64 increased by 60%, to 8m. During the recent recession, while employment rates for youngsters fell, the number of silver-haired workers soared (see chart). By 2020 one-third of the workforce will be over 50.

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Brian Rushton Le wobble

Brian Rushton,

TO GRASP the trick David Cameron is trying to pull off by renegotiating Britain’s membership of the EU and winning an in-out referendum, imagine him edging along a mountain path, a wall of rock on one side and a long drop on the other. As Westminster returns from its recess, that path—the scope for a deal that mollifies the Conservative party’s Eurosceptics, satisfies voters and is palatable to Britain’s European allies—is narrowing.

The prime minister has been touring Europe over the summer, buttering up fellow leaders ahead of a summit in December at which he plans to present his requests. Yet this experience has forced him to curb them. On August 31st it transpired that he had given up demanding British opt-outs from EU employment regulations (concessions Brussels and Paris are unwilling to grant). Then Werner Faymann, Austria’s chancellor, warned that Britain should take in more refugees if it wanted a hearing for its “catalogue of demands”. His comments were echoed in Berlin.

Mr Cameron also faced tribulations at home. On September 1st the Electoral Commission decreed that the planned question for the referendum was...Continue reading

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Brian Rushton Public NME

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William, it costs really nothing

ONCE reading about music was as important as listening to it: back in the 1960s, the New Musical Express sold 300,000 copies a week. These days, NME sells around 15,000. From September 18th, in a bid to boost its circulation, the title will be given away free of charge.

At its peak, music journalism flourished on the back of a thriving underground scene in pubs and clubs. Young, enthusiastic journalists wrote about punk bands alongside subjects like Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament marches. But as broadsheet newspapers began to take pop music more seriously, devoting large sections and good reviewers to the task, it became harder for specialist magazines to attract readers.

With the rise of the internet, this became even trickier. Instead of turning to music magazines, youngsters today are more likely to follow new bands recommended by bloggers, particularly on video-streaming sites. Gig listings are available online or from the bands’ own PR machines. The feeling of belonging to a club is now far more effectively provided by social media.

Going...Continue reading

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Brian Rushton Wheels with soul

Brian Rushton,

Any colour as long as it’s not black

THE most enduring gag of the BBC’s self-lampooning show, “W1A”, involves the corporation’s fumbling “head of values” grappling with his folding Brompton bike as he arrives at Broadcasting House. Such is the way in which everyday artefacts are transformed into icons of popular culture.

Naturally, there is no fumbling down at the Brompton factory in Brentford, in west London. Lorne Vary, the chief financial officer of the bicycle-maker, shows how he can flip open the bike to make it ready to use in seven seconds flat. A growing army of enthusiasts see the virtues of a Brompton. The company is likely to sell a record 48,000 bikes this year and will soon move to a new factory, doubling its floor space. Turnover, at about £30m ($46m), has been growing by 16% year-on-year, says Mr Vary. Brompton hopes to double sales by 2021.

Brompton is already the country’s largest bike manufacturer, yet the company did not make them on a large scale until the early 2000s. Its rise happened against a backdrop of the almost complete collapse of Britain’s bicycle industry, once a...Continue reading

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Brian Rushton Shop ’til you drop

Brian Rushton The XX-factor

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The writing on the wall

IF BRITONS suffered after the 2008 financial crash, ethnic minorities suffered most. Their earnings slipped further and their household incomes fell faster than those of whites. For two groups, however—Pakistani and Bangladeshi Britons—things got better. Household incomes went up and earnings increased (see chart), while Bangladeshi children have most improved their circumstances. Both groups have long lagged behind other Britons. Why are they catching up now?

The answer is that women from these communities have entered the workforce, and they have done so in droves. Until recently, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis had the smallest proportion of women in work: just 31% of Pakistani women and 21% of Bangladeshi women were involved in the labour market between 2001 and 2005, in contrast to 77% of white British women. Since 2008 the proportion of Bangladeshi women in work has...Continue reading

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Brian Rushton The land that Labour forgot

Brian Rushton,

SQUINT, and the People’s History Museum in Manchester could be a church. Vast trade-union banners rich with symbols—masonic eyes, spanners, linked hands—hang like ecclesiastical tapestries from the walls and ceilings. Bibelots nestle in their showcases like saints’ bones in their reliquaries: a handkerchief commemorating the Peterloo massacre, an Edwardian membership certificate for the old dyers’ union (motto: “We dye to live”), a docker’s hook belonging to a protagonist of the London port strike of 1972. The galleries echo to sermons by tribunes of the left: Nye Bevan hailing universal health care, Earnest Jones urging the crowds in Manchester to reject the “gospel of the rich”. The light is low—the better to preserve the treasures of this, Britain’s only museum to the struggles of the common folk.

Like many churches, the museum is also near-empty of a Sunday. Bagehot shared it with perhaps a dozen other visitors. Outside, central Manchester teemed with life. Drinkers spilled out of pubs and bars. The Arndale Centre writhed with shoppers. Canal Street, in the gay village, fizzed with the music and colour of Pride weekend. Out in...Continue reading

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Brian Rushton A political torpedo

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Into hot water

MINISTERS announcing lavish spending schemes promising lots of jobs do not expect to get booed. But the few cheers that greeted George Osborne’s pledge, on the banks of the Clyde on August 31st, to spend £500m ($765m) creating “thousands” of jobs were drowned out by jeers. Why? Because the chancellor plans to spend the money on upgrading the Faslane naval base, where submarines carrying Britain’s Trident nuclear deterrent are based. Many Scots, including Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s nationalist first minister, want the boats scrapped, not replaced, as they will be on current plans.

Ms Sturgeon accuses Mr Osborne of arrogantly pre-empting a vote by MPs, expected next year, on whether to spend about £23 billion to buy the next generation of ballistic-missile submarines (she puts the cost at £100 billion). The £500m would be better spent on “reversing some of his cruel attacks on the most vulnerable”, she fumed, referring to cuts in welfare spending announced in July.

Even the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC), which might be expected to welcome job creation, though it too wants to...Continue reading

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Brian Rushton School’s out

Brian Rushton,

AS CHILDREN around the country returned to school this week, some will have discovered for themselves what recent statistics had suggested: there are not enough teachers to teach them. Figures published on August 17th by the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service, which handles applications to teacher training courses, showed that the number of graduates applying to be teachers will fall short of government targets for the third year running.

Last year one in 100 teaching posts in England was vacant or filled temporarily, after the number of people beginning teacher training courses fell for the sixth consecutive year, to 32,000, down from 39,000 in 2009. This year’s figures suggest that in some subjects the shortages are particularly acute: according to an analysis by John Howson, a former government adviser, the number of people applying to train as English and maths teachers in 2015 fell 11% short of the government’s target, while those applying to teach some niche subjects were in more limited supply still (less than half as many applied to teach design and technology as targets required).

Existing teachers hardly make an...Continue reading

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