LIVINGSTONE, HISTORY AND "MASS KILLINGS"

Ken Livingstone and Adolf Hitler (International Business Times)

The political storm created by the former London Mayor, Labour MP and Leader of the Greater London Council's suggestion that Adolf Hitler was a Zionist shows little sign of abating. This post offers a guarded defence of Mr Livingstone, a long-time controversialist, whose comments have prompted some much needed historical and international discourse in British politics, without, however, supporting his version of history.

Ken Livingstone was suspended from the Labour Party as a result of his clumsy attempt to disentangle Anti-Semitism and Zionism. He was previously expelled from the party by the New Labour government and stood as an independent in the first election for a London Mayor in 2000 in which he won a decisive victory. He was later re-instated by the party and stood as a Labour candidate in 2004. On both occasions, London's ethnic minority communities were a key constituency for Mr Livingstone, along with other groups who felt under-represented in, or let down by, mainstream politics. Perhaps more than any other politician, Ken Livingstone has led the transformation of the UK's capital in to a multi-cultural global city, and compromised his left-wing credentials along the way. It is not without irony that Mr Livingstone - for his detractors one of the founding fathers of modern British political correctness - can be quite politically incorrect himself.

The reason for this, and indeed for Ken Livingstone's political success, is that he is in many ways the quintessential post-war Londoner. The "Life of Ken" is worth reading up on, not least because it has caused much more controversy over a similar time period than Monty Python's "Life of Brian" . Nevertheless, the notion that Mr Livingstone is in some way a Nazi apologist is completely absurd, nor in my view, is he Anti-Semitic.

What Ken Livingstone always has had, along with his onetime arch-enemy Margaret Thatcher, is a highly selective version of events (historical and contemporary), with a possibly even greater tendency to be over-influenced by particular advisers and intellectuals without giving full and proper attention to those with different views. In the present furore, Mr Livingstone has cited the work of the American Jewish Marxist historian Lenni Brenner as evidence of Hitler's early support for Zionism.

However, the wider historical consensus on Nazi policy towards the Jews is very different. For instance, writing in today's Independent on the subject of "Hitler and Zionism" Professor Rainer Schulze points out that:  "Claims that Hitler was a Zionist, or supported Zionism, before his anti-Jewish policies turned into murder and extermination flare up at regular intervals. They usually cite the controversial Haavara Agreement (Transfer Agreement) of August 1933 as the most potent evidence of a wilful cooperation between Hitler and the Zionist movement. When viewed in a certain way, this deal does superficially seem to show that Hitler’s government endorsed Zionism – but just because it was a mechanism to help German Jews relocate to Palestine it does not imply it was “Zionist”. Professor Schulze is General Editor of "The Holocaust in History and Memory" a research project led by the University of Essex and his article originally appeared in "The Conversation".

Returning to Mr Livingstone, his unwary, shorthand view of history has, nevertheless, unwittingly contributed to the Labour Party's new "Big Conversation" on the relationship between the past and present. As my own contribution to this discourse, I would strongly recommend that the former London Mayor, together with Labour's present Leader and his colleagues add to their summer reading - if they have not read it already - a recent book by the historian Timothy Snyder, "Bloodlands"  The subject of this book is "a zone in Europe where the Soviet and Nazi powers overlapped" and where at least 14 million people, mainly civilian or non-combatants, were "killed by purposeful mass murder associated with the above regimes" during the period 1933-45. Snyder purposely uses the term "mass killing" instead of "genocide" to describe the atrocities of the Bloodlands, of which the Jewish Holocaust is the most infamous.

Yet, as Snyder also points out: "During the years that both Stalin and Hitler were in power, more people were killed in Ukraine that anywhere else in the Bloodlands, or in Europe, or in the World". Indeed, Ukrainians have their own expression - the Holodomor - to describe "the greatest artificial famine in the history of the world" that killed between 2.5 and 7.5 million people in the period 1932-3 alone.

The term "Holodomor" is, however, little known outside Ukraine, currently engaged in both a "history war", and a real one, with Russia, and this points to a fundamental problem of modern history itself: that it can sometimes be as selective in its version of events as Ken Livingstone. Much of Timothy Snyder's work is based on "new" archive material that became available to North American and Western European researchers after the collapse of the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc in the early 1990s. However, the partial narrative of mid-century European history also occurred because Russia became a Western ally after 1941, and it suited the allies to emphasize the Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany rather than other mass killings that occurred in the Bloodlands between 1933-45. Of Snyder's estimated 14 million victims, "more than half died of starvation", yet as he also admits, the "Great Chinese Famine" of 1958-62 greatly surpassed even this figure.

When Labour's John Mcdonnell presented Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer with a copy of Chairman Mao's Little Red Book last year he was making a serious point: "...We must not pretend to know what we do not know" By this action - which was misunderstood and much derided at the time by Britain's ignorant political classes - Mr Mcdonnell meant that George Osborne , who studied modern history at Oxford University, should seek to understand what the possible implications of an increasingly close economic and financial relationship with the communist People's Republic of China might actually mean for the UK.

I no doubt risk being ridiculed like John McDonnell in conflating the power of contemporary China with the problems of its quite recent past. However, the lessons for both George Osborne and Ken Livingstone, another Sinophile, is the perennial one of needing to understand the past in order to know the present. Unfortunately, we live in an age where the "New Opium of the People"  is  the promise of a digital utopia in which cheap, plentiful and high quality consumer goods continue to be supplied to Western and other consumers by the new Workshops of the World, particularly China. The shallow and materialistic lifestyles to which the post-WII generations - from Baby Boomers to Millennials - aspire has conspired to support an elite dominated by techno-optimist groupthink. It is hardly surprising that in such a millieu histories are often forgotten, spawning an ill-educated social discourse in much of the new and conventional media. So finally, let's thank Ken Livingstone for helping to rectify this, albeit unintentionally.

Postscript: May 2018 - Mr Livingstone has now resigned from the Labour Party.

DECONSTRUCTING OSBORNE'S STATE CAPITALISM

Going Underground: George Osborne and Boris Johnson (Mirror)

Some where along the line, British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne became a state capitalist and so, arguably, did outgoing London Mayor Boris Johnson. In Osborne's case, this ideological acquisition may have been due to indoctrination during a gap-year visit to China as a young man, and/or the subsequent influence of Maoist - in their own words - Liberal Democrats like former Business Secretary Sir Vince Cable during the UK Lib-Con Coalition Government of 2010-15. In the case of Johnson, the embrace of state capitalism is more opportunistic, like the taking of a concubine who might be retained or discarded according to political expediency.

State capitalism, it may be argued, is the political expediency of the present economic age. Only yesterday, a Financial Times article entitled "Japan Inc: Heavy meddling" quoted the former head of the Tokyo Stock Exchange as saying: “The important thing about the rise of China is that most developed nations have seen that pure market-based capitalism sometimes cannot compete against the Chinese state."(1). However, Mr Osborne's enthusiasm for state capitalism goes beyond expediency and has more than a whiff of ideological fanaticism about it, although this may have something to do with the Chancellor of the Exchequer's austere dietary regime (2).

So it was a proposed "Sugar Tax" on soft drinks in yesterday's Budget to encourage the nation to downsize after the fashion of  "Little George", as former larger-than-life Chancellor Ken Clarke sometimes calls his Conservative successor, that most caught the attention of the British media (3). In fact, this budgetary item might be compared to the evanescent fizz in a large tumbler of lemonade given to the infants of the national press whilst the real business took place elsewhere.

As Sky news had noted on the eve of Osborne's Budget: "Infrastructure Giants Line Up For New UK Fund" in the form of a "British Infrastructure Club‎, which will seek to replicate the track record of leading state-backed investment funds." The report also points out that "the Mayor of London has been a staunch advocate of the creation of a UK sovereign wealth fund with sufficient firepower to invest in British transport, housing and other critical national infrastructure."

Someone called "Zzz" (apparently used to mean sleepy, bored or tired, or the sound of a person snoring) and the sole commentator on the Sky report astutely remarked: "Cut through all the distracting rhetoric, Osborne is setting up another quango to spend the tax payers money on vote catching political projects." So there we have it. The state capitalism of George Osborne and Boris Johnson is deconstructed in a sentence, or is it? According to The Economist's "crony-capitalism index" of "the countries where politically connected businessmen are most likely to prosper", the UK was ranked 15th in 2014 and 2007 (5). This seems to be an area in which the economy has consistently performed well, for politically well-connected business people at least.

References 

(1). http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0118e3a6-ea99-11e5-bb79-2303682345c8.html#axzz43A0DYjHa
(2). http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron/11370930/David-Cameron-praises-George-Osborne-for-his-weight-loss.html
(3). http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3495160/George-Osborne-shocks-Britain-including-sugar-tax-Budget-sends-soft-drinks-shares-freefall.html
(4).  http://news.sky.com/story/1660464/infrastructure-giants-line-up-for-new-uk-fund
(5). http://www.economist.com/news/international/21599041-countries-where-politically-connected-businessmen-are-most-likely-prosper-planet

MOOCS: NEW CHANNELS FOR BIG CONVERSATIONS

Mooc = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_open_online_course

Like UKIP, the Mooc is a so-called "challenger brand" - http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/news/1296571/ - of the kind described in a Campaign magazine article on the former. UKIP seems to be having a more real "Big Conservation" with the British public than New Labour achieved a decade ago. This is because the latter party and, indeed, the current political ruling coalition, treat a conversation with the electorate as a consultation. In many ways, UKIP has emerged as the antidote to managed politics of the kind most associated with the old New Labour brand.

The Massive Open Online Course model could now be used to facilitate a moderated big conversation around key issues facing individual countries, such as Britain, or geopolitical regions like Europe. Whilst I am a fan of Moocs and have completed a wide range of courses, one of their main shortcoming for me tends to be the dominance of a single viewpoint: ie the host instructor or institution has a particular narrative which is then supported or challenged in the discussion fora. Whilst some subjects lend themselves to this approach, where issues are clearly contested it would be preferable for two or more points of view to be represented by those running the course.

An obvious case is that of migration to the UK and within the European Union. Fact-based arguments for and against the present situation can be made. However, much of the big conversation is unsatisfactory, whatever your view on the issue. A good - or bad! - example of the poor quality of discourse is provided by the Secretary of State for Defence's comments of yesterday and the subsequent reaction to these - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-29784486 Rather than such ad hoc outbursts and counter-blasts, far better to have a structured national debate on migration and population change hosted by a reputable institution. A mooc would provide a good starting-point.

MIGRATION AND POPULATION CHANGE IN BRITAIN

As the debate around net migration to the UK grows, it is important to focus on the facts of population change around Britain. A good place to start is the Office for National Statistics Population and Migration page from which the above graphic is taken -  http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/compendiums/compendium-of-uk-statistics/population-and-migration/index.html
The UK is forecast to become the most populous country in Europe by 2035 - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/8851902/Migrants-to-send-Britains-population-soaring-to-largest-in-EU.html - largely as a consequence of migration from within and outside the European Union. This has led to a growing number of calls for the impacts of migration and population change to be better understood, as well as reports questioning the sustainability - environmental, social, economic and cultural - of existing and predicted increases in Britain's population. Such critical reports include work commissioned by the think tank Civitas - http://www.civitas.org.uk/pdf/LargescaleImmigration - and the campaign group Population Matters - http://www.populationmatters.org/documents/myths_migration.pdf

Population forecasts have a level of uncertainty as acknowledged by ONS. What is needed are future scenarios based on lower and higher level projections and descriptions of their potential effects on key areas of concern. The UK government should have the intellectual and technological resources to do this and to engage the British public in an objective national discourse about migration and population. However, the traditional parties have hitherto eschewed such a "Big Conversation" - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3245620.stm - apparently preferring to accept that an already "Big Society" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Society -
- is just going to get bigger regardless of the consequences. The recent award of a peerage to Sir Andrew Green, founder of Migration Watch - http://www.migrationwatchuk.org - for his work  "to improve public understanding of the impact of the very high levels of net migration" appears to indicate that the factual component of a popularist "big conversation" on this subject should now be supported in the managed political process.

TRANSPORT: FINANCIAL TIMES CHANGES PLATFORM

According to the print edition of today's FT, "..HS2 should reach Birmingham in 2016", although the same report in the paper's online version - http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4c7f36aa-5883-11e4-942f-00144feab7de.html#axzz3GyGfswxp - states that: "Ths article has been change to reflect the fact that HS2 should reach Birmingham in 2026, not 2016". As someone prone to typos, I can take a little satisfaction that the mighty media also occasionally fall victim to these.

However, the article also suggests that the FT may have changed platform on HS2, and this report is somewhat more circumspect than last week's as the following extract shows:

"Martin Blaiklock, a consultant on infrastructure and energy project finance, said the extra capacity needed could be built more cheaply. “[HS2] is very high-risk. There may well be alternatives available. The public are not convinced as to benefit of HS2. It is a gravy train for consultants, involving banks, lawyers and government officials,” he said.

The article also points out that:

"Northern councils have their own £15bn road and rail plan to better connect their cities and want it delivered before HS2. It includes a new high-speed line between Leeds and Manchester. Journey times across the North are twice as slow as those into London. 

The government wants to create a “northern powerhouse” to rival London by improving links between the biggest cities in the region. Jim O’Neill, the economist, who coined the term, “ManSheffLeedsPool”, told the FT: “For people to have to wait for HS2 to do that, I don’t see the logic. And I think and I hope that the people who sponsor it will have accepted that principle.”

Not content with an article on the transport shortcomings of "ManSheffLeedsPool...the inelegantly named northern region running between Liverpool to Hull..", today's FT also has an editorial entitled "A modest proposal to get Britain's cities moving" which identifies investment in the Trans-Pennine express rail link as a key project for the Chancellor's "Northern Powerhouse", along the lines of a Centre for Cities report published last week.

Transport is indeed a subject that keeps the commentators peddling. However, as many policy-makers still live in the kind of alternative universe where HS2 trains could be scheduled to serve Birmingham ten years in advance of the construction of the necessary rail infrastructure, and without all the necessary development consents in place, I remain to be convinced that a high-quality rail network and sustainable transport system within and between English regional cities will arrive on time.

TRANSPORT KEEPS THE COMMENTATORS PEDDLING

Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne (Getty Images)

There are three articles on transport in today's Financial Times headlined as follows: Cost of congestion takes toll on economy; Contest starts to win £10 billion of contracts to build HS2 line; and, East Thames targeted for regeneration.

The first article reports Edmund King of the AA as saying that "infrastructure investments such a the new high-speed rail link would have "minimal" effect on future UK road traffic increases (or rail congestion, I would add). Meanwhile, congestion in the United States, which has embraced the car more enthusiastically than perhaps anywhere else in the world, is forecast to pay a higher price for congestion than perhaps any other country by 2050.

Although the precise aims of the proposed HS2 remain unclear, it would according to the second article, "provide a lifeline for the construction industry". Indeed, this seems to be the main purpose of the project which is still some way from having all the necessary development consents, although the state-owned company behind it has already "spent £3 billion since it was set up by government in 2012". The total cost of HS2, including trains, is estimated to be in region of £50 million, "making it one of the most expensive railway projects in the world".

Finally, the FT reports that "four river crossings should be built between east London and Kent" at an "estimated" cost of £3-7 billion according to the Centre for London think-tank. Presumably these are also lifelines for the construction industry, as again the precise rationale for them is unclear. I speak as someone who attended two major planning inquiries into an East London River Crossing and then a Thames Gateway Bridge between 1985-6 and 2005-6 respectively.

The UK currently likes to flaunt its economic superiority to France, yet the government seems intent on pursuing precisely the same "grand projet" in the transport and energy sectors which do not seem to have served the French very well. Having been involved in English transport planning for nearly thirty years, much of what I now see is regressive, rather like reality television.

ENGLISH PARLIAMENT: THE CASE FOR NATIONALISM

Public Entrance to the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh (opened in 2004)

One consequence of the Scottish Independence Referendum is a re-galvanising of the case for an English Parliament, as recently voiced by the veteran Conservative MP John Redwood - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-29203693  However, whilst Mr Redwood suggests that the House of Commons could double up as an English Parliament, this post makes the case for a completely new institution based outside London, accompanied by a  "Great Cull" (humanely executed, naturally) of Westminster bureaucracy. The argument for this might best be summed up in the expression Democratic Sustainable Development.

The so-called United Kingdom has one of the most centralised state bureaucracies in the world. Whilst the previous New Labour administration adopted a policy of "Regionalism", this applied democratically only in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. In England, "regionalisation" manifested in the creation of  Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) or Quangos. Indeed "Quangoisation" (see Note) of government was a salient feature of the New Labour state. The Regional Assemblies which gave the RDAs some small measure of public accountability were abolished by the administration between 2008-10 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_assembly_%28England%29

In 2010, a Conservative-led Liberal Coalition Government was elected and set about destroying all vestiges of "regionalisation" - which became a sort of Orwellian banned word - in England, with the stated aim of replacing this with "Localism". In effect, this has meant replacing regional quangos with local ones, including the state-funded Local Enterprise Partnerships. There has also been a re-centralisation of policy-making, notably in the area of spatial planning where English local authorities now have to adhere to a National Planning Policy Framework, which is just as top-down as the Regional Spatial Strategies which it replaced (after much legal wrangling).

Having experienced both discredited "Regionalism" and "Localism" in the past 15 years, the only real option left for England is "Nationalism". This seems to be working very well in Scotland, where record voter turnout in the Independence Referendum gave the birthplace of democracy what seems like a democratic second-coming. I am sure that the prospect of an English Parliament - let's say in Birmingham - in conjunction with down-sizing of the Westminster Elite would have a similar effect. This could leave London with a city state model of government, something that should help overcome the Capital's growing social inequalities.

If all this sounds like it could lead to "Federalism", so much the better. A federal United Kingdom might well be the best way to preserve the Union in the longer-term. It would also provide some justification for the retention of a solid rump of London-based national government. However, the strong likelihood that increased English Nationalism would empower the dreaded  F-word in British politics will ensure that people like are current prime minister and his political cronies (elected and unelected) will do everything in their power to ensure the talk is of a "family of nations" which is run by a parental union of Big Money and Big State (just as it was under the previous government).

Note
1. When I google "Quangoisation" one of the first entries to emerge is a Chinese translation - http://dict.cn/quangoisation - perhaps because it is also a key feature of the State Capitalism model of political economy: one towards which the so-called UK has increasingly moved.

UK GREEN POLITICS AMOUNTS TO LOTS OF HOT AIR

Outgoing and incoming Environment Secretary: Owen Paterson and Liz Truss (Telegraph)

George Monbiot on Twitter - "Oh bliss it is to wake this morn And hear that Paterson has gorn".

A war of words has broken out between the former UK Environment Secretary and various green Non-Governmental Organisations following an article by Owen Paterson in The Sunday Telegraph - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10978678/Owen-Paterson-Im-proud-of-standing-up-to-the-green-lobby.html

In his article Paterson refers to " The Green Blob...the mutually supportive network of environmental pressure groups, renewable energy companies and some public officials who keep each other well supplied with lavish funds, scare stories and green tape...". He goes on to say: "Local conservationists on the ground do wonderful work to protect and improve wild landscapes, as do farmers, rural businesses and ordinary people. They are a world away from the highly paid globe-trotters of the Green Blob who besieged me with their self-serving demands, many of which would have harmed the natural environment...".

However, anyone who hopes that a more nuanced and robust debate on the environment and green politics - including how we respond to climate change - may emerge from this outburst and counterblasts from the so-called "Green Blob", is very likely to be disappointed. Yet, although I've never warmed to Owen Paterson, there is a modicum of truth is what he has to say.

As someone who has been an environmentalist since the 1970s, I do find much of the contemporary UK green movement, including those worthy "conservationists" as well as the "environmental pressure groups", more akin to campaigning brand managers than organisations primarily concerned either with the natural environment or our built heritage, but then brand management is really what modern politics is all about.

Postscript : Monbiot's riposte to Paterson's "Green Blob" article -  http://www.monbiot.com/2014/07/22/bone-china-tea-party/

THE SOCIAL OCCULTATION OF NEO-MATHUSIANISM

I recently came across the expression "social occultation" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_occultation - and suggest this applies to the subject of Neo-malthusianism - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism - in contemporary UK public policy making (and probably elsewhere). However, difficult issues which are suppressed tend not to go away and David Cameron and colleagues should consider this recent publication on "Malthus: The Life and Legacies of an Untimely Prophet" for their summer holiday reading. A review of this book can be found at http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/books/malthus-the-life-and-legacies-of-an-untimely-prophet-by-robert-j-mayhew/2013388.article

BATTLES LOST ON THE PLAYING FIELDS OF ETON

Although "the famous quote attributed to Wellington" - "the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton" - "was probably apocryphal" according to Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterloo_in_popular_culture - David Cameron might like to reflect on whether his defeat in Europe yesterday was lost in the same place.

For our prime minister seems to lack a fundamental grasp of the history of the so-called European Project, which his predecessor Margaret Thatcher actually understood much better. As I pointed out in a post of last year - http://janetmackinnon.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/the-iron-ladies-thatcher-and-merkel.html - whilst Mr Cameron "may privately regard himself as "the Heir to Blair", it is surely the German Chancellor who is heiress of the original "Iron Lady's" drive for democratic liberation of the former Communist Europe where Angela Merkel spent her earlier life..." 

Thus the most significant event in Europe yesterday was not the UK's failure to influence the appointment of the next President of the European Commission, but the signing of a trade agreement between the European Union, Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova; http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-28052645 Moreover, without wishing to appear politically incorrect or incite old enmities, the concept of so-called "Lebensraum" or "Living Space" - http://www.historytoday.com/martyn-housden/lebensraum-policy-or-rhetoric - has always been an important aspect of Greater European Politics, something Russian President Vladimir Putin knows only too well.

Yet the prime minister and his government seem to have no grasp of wider European geo-politics at all. The fact is that the EU can well afford to lose Britain in the long term because the Ukraine - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine - as the largest country in Europe, and one of the few places in the world with surplus agricultural land resources, represents "Lebensraum". Although use of this expression  may be construed as anti-German, British colonial expansion was also strongly motivated by the political aim of increasing land and other natural resources available to a small nation state.

With this in mind, Mr Cameron might like to reflect on last week's figures from the Office of National Statistics which saw the UK population increase by the size of Scotland's, or about 5 million people, in the period between 2001-2013 - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2670751/Number-people-UK-smashes-64million-one-biggest-population-increases-Europe.html?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490 - together with a report by the University of Cambridge and the National Farmer's union which identifies a "significant" shortage of UK farmland by 2030: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-28003435

When I attended a Welsh comprehensive school in the 1970s, both "Lebensraum" (which I studied for my history O level) and Malthus - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus - whom I studied as part of my geography A level, were fairly key curriculum subjects. I do sometimes wonder what Mr Cameron and his friends learnt at school, apart from how to advance their own careers. However, this problem of the British elite is not new, as George Orwell, also an Eton school boy, wrote: "Probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there."

THE UK'S PROPOSED NEW EU REGIONAL AID MAP

Map A - Proposed UK Regional Aid (Assisted Areas) 2014-2020

Map B: Assisted Areas (excluding Northern Ireland) 2006-13

On 20 April 2014, Business Minister Michael Fallon announced a proposed new regional aid package for the UK giving potential access to European Union funding - http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmhansrd/cm140430/wmstext/140430m0001.htm The Minister's announcement included the following comments:

"The Commission’s regional aid guidelines (RAG) define the parameters for assisted areas for 2014 to 2020. Under the guidelines the UK’s overall regional aid coverage may cover a maximum of 27.05% of the UK population, an increase on the 23.9% coverage in 2007-14.

Working within the guidelines, assisted areas coverage has been granted based on the potential to use regional aid to encourage economic growth through levering private sector investment, as well as the economic need of the locality. A strong principle underpinning the map is for coverage to focus on areas that are able to use the flexibility provided: many parts of the UK do not have the scale of industrial or development sites necessary to exploit assisted area status.

There was a high level of demand for assisted areas status, and given the limited population coverage available, we have targeted those areas that can benefit most. The UK’s industrial heartlands are central to the map, and a wide range of different sized manufacturers are included, from the high-tech sectors at the core of our industrial strategy to the more traditional industries that still provide vital employment to many communities. Support will also be available for additional disadvantaged coastal areas. Sites and businesses that can support growth in less advantaged localities have been included, as well as many that will make significant contributions to growth at a regional and national level."

The devil, as they say, is in the detail and included amongst the proposed areas identified is a greenfield site to the north-east of Worcester, near Junction 6 of the M5 motorway. A technology park proposal for this location was refused a £18 million grant from the Department for Business Innovation and Skills Regional Growth Fund last year following due diligence. The project is a controversial one which has been opposed by local communities because of its environmental impact and by Birmingham City Council and others because of its potential for undermining economic regeneration at Longbridge and elsewhere in the West Midlands conurbation.

With this "case study" in mind, and when comparing the UK Assisted Areas Map (A) for 2014-20 with than of the period for 2006-2013 (Map B), it does seem that the industrial regeneration impetus of regional policy which favoured older urban areas with major brownfield sites is being eroded in favour of promoting greenfield development, whether this represents sustainable value for money or just the present geography of political influence is a subject to which I shall return.

NUCLEAR POWER: IS THERE NO TURNING BACK?

The above graphic is taken from an article on the Aljazeera website this week - http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/04/antagonising-iran-strategic-mis-201442161724450258.html - by Seyed Mohammad Marandi, a professor of North American Studies and dean of the Faculty of World Studies at the University of Tehran. This came to my attention, incidentally, via Iranian Vice President Massoumeh Ebtekar's "Persian Paradox" blog yesterday (please see my earlier post). Aside from offering an interesting back story to the present controversy surrounding Iran's civil nuclear programme, the article has a wider relevance for international energy policy in an age of so-called transition to sustainable development.

Professor Marandi's article opens as follows:

"Even though it was a major exporter of crude oil and held some of the world's largest natural gas reserves, Iran made a compelling case over half-a-century ago that it needed, almost immediately, to produce an additional 20,000 megawatts of electricity by constructing 23 nuclear power plants. At the same time, Iran's government made the case that the country needed to acquire the capacity to enrich uranium in order to fabricate the reactor fuel for such an ambitious programme.

Western governments eagerly endorsed these arguments, praising Iran's then Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's ambition to rapidly modernise Iran while overlooking the reality that he was presiding over a ruthless dictatorship and diverting much needed capital to purchase massive amounts of weapons from the US and other Western countries. And so, during the 1960s and 1970s, billions of dollars were invested in establishing an Iranian nuclear programme and training thousands of Iranian nuclear experts in the West - until Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution replaced the monarchy with an Islamic Republic..."

In short, Iran's energy pathway has very much reflected that of Western nations, although a number of these, including the United States and, most recently, Germany, have moved away from civil nuclear power in the period since the 1980s for reasons of cost and safety associated with both generation and waste disposal. Meanwhile, other countries, notably Russia and China, have forged ahead with nuclear development programmes notwithstanding major accidents at Chernobyl in the Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union) during 1986 and Fukushima in Japan following the earthquake and Tsunami of 2011. It should be noted that Iran is also located in a major earthquake zone:  http://www.ibtimes.com/iran-earthquake-strikes-near-bushehr-nuclear-power-plant-1489402

The current popularity of nuclear power has much to do with the need to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide that are the major contributor to the green house effect associated with global warming. However, the nuclear option also offers the prospect of national energy security for countries increasingly concerned about their dependency on foreign gas supplies. Whilst Iran, "with the world's second-largest proven reserves of natural gas", as Professor Marandi notes in his article, does not have such concerns, much of Europe is reliant upon Russian supplies, and this is a key factor in the current Ukrainian crisis.

Nevertheless, it should be remembered that the accident at Ukraine's Chernobyl plant was probably the single most important event in turning the world against nuclear power in the last decade of the twentieth century. Moreover, the former Soviet regime's attempt to cover up the seriousness of this incident is widely cited as a major contributory factor in its demise only five years later. The problem with nuclear energy is that the conseqeunces can be very serious indeed if things go wrong. Iran, along with the rest of the world, would be wise to remember this.

BRITAIN NEEDS NEW LAND USE PLANNING REGIME

UK Prime Minister with troops on recent floods tour of duty (Source: Number 10 Twitter account)

The UK Government's response to the flooding crisis followed a typical sequence: inadequate action (crisis, what crisis?), followed by that sinking feeling, panic and blame allocation, and, finally, a sort of belated event management exercise with the army called in to help out. Such criticism may seem unkind, but it should be remembered that since coming to power in 2010 Mr Cameron and his colleagues have conducted a ruthless offensive against the planning system: one of the key mechanisms for reducing the impact of extreme weather events associated with climate change.

In short, Britain needs more and not less planning, and in Southern England, most especially, a return to comprehensive and integrated land use management of the kind found in other densely populated countries like the Netherlands is required. I'm delighted that Mr Cameron has called upon Dutch engineers for advice in dealing with the current floods. Now he and his colleagues should ensure that the best environmental practice from North West Europe is adopted in the English planning system. If current ministers and civil servants are incapable of rising to this challenge, they should be replaced.

UK GOVERNMENT'S LITTLE LOCAL DIFFICULTIES

Image: flood warnings across southern Britain

David Cameron is a modern British leader - in his own words the "Heir to Blair" -  who likes big ideas and dislikes bad news. Like Blair, his government is filled with a monstrous regiment of yes-people, who eshew common sense policies in favour of those which appear to proffer personal advancement. It is no surprise, therefore, that Britain is currently beset by what "One Nation" - now the brand of Ed Miliband's Labour Party - Conservative Harold Macmillan called "little local difficulties."

Foremost of these is "Floodgate". Climate change is not official Conservative Party policy, and, alas, Mr Cameron, along with many others, now finds himself in the position of early medieval English (and Scandinavian) King Canute who famously "set his throne by the sea shore and commanded the tide to halt and not wet his feet and robes. Yet "continuing to rise as usual [the tide] dashed over his feet and legs without respect to his royal person. Then the king leapt backwards, saying: 'Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings (and ill-founded government policies), for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws" according to chronicler Henry of Huntington  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cnut_the_Great#Ruler_of_the_waves

Then there is the prospect of a Disunited Kingdom, and according to the Guardian newspaper today our Olympian "Prime Minister David Cameron will use the scene of Team GB’s success at London 2012 as the backdrop for his warning against Scottish independence."All this, as Russian President Vladimir Putin opens the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi: an event which Mr Cameron will be not be attending. Nor will he attend to calls from Scottish leader Alex Salmond and his colleagues to engage in a debate north of the border. For in the great modern line of political actor-managers, namely Blair and Heir, Mr Cameron will never place himself in a position where he is likely to be upstaged. For whom "The Scottish Play" will prove unlucky is, of course, another little local difficulty.

NEW PARLIAMENT OF THE EUROPEAN PEOPLES

Awakening towards the end of 2013, I realised that a certain political correctness had afflicted me in recent months, repressing my spirits and satirical proclivities. To set me to rights, I was later visited by the spirit of the seasonal e-pantomine who advised me to set down the following synopsis.

The events of this tale occur at an unspecified time in the future. Former British prime minister Tony Blair and Lord Peter Mandelson have acquired a mysterious life-prolonging elixir and now co-habit the Palace of the Parliament http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_the_Parliament - in Bucharest. Formerly the seat of Romania's Soviet-era president Nicolae Ceaușescu, the world's largest civilian building now accommodates the eastern head quarters of the European Union, including a unified presidency that has taken over the role of EU Parliament supremo. To add to this, President Blair is also a cardinal of the Roman Catholic church with ambitions to de-secularise the European Project and create a new Holy Roman Empire. Fortunately, however, these aspirations are beyond the scope of this particular synopsis.

Readers are no doubt wondering how the events I have described came about, and the story is marvellously straightforward. Awakening one morning a British prime minister of the near future took it upon herself to transform the country's unsustainable welfare state and wider public sector. Her government went, somewhat like the Starship Enterprise, where no recent British administration had dared go before and dismissed vast swathes of the kleptocracy, including those on the payroll of the state media, which had grown obese at the public expense. In short, the nation's finances were radically over-hauled, along with the benefits system. The effects of this were nothing short of miraculous. Seeing their mistress and her comrades living within their means, the British public soon followed suit. Those unaccustomed to such a lifestyle started to migrate in vast numbers - a subject I shall deal with later - and the country assumed a state of good governance never before experienced in its history. In short, a London banker's word was his bond, and not someone else's.

Unfortunately whilst Albion was liberated from financial repression and the other ills of a nation living beyond its means, the so-called "New British Problem" was exported to other parts of Europe as the engine of the unreal economy, with its propensities for public maladministration, property speculation, booms and busts, and labour market distortions relentlessly moved eastwards. Soon the citizens of Eastern Europe were complaining of similar evils to those their British counterparts had once done, including mass migration by Western Europeans, particularly from over-crowded areas in Southern England, and accompanying benefits tourism. Meanwhile, a Campaign to Protect Rural Eastern Europe, or CPREE, was established amidst clamorous support for wholesale importation of the early 21st century British planning system.

At this point, a spiritually ascended cadre of enlightened European leaders, including Vaclav Havel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A1clav_Havel , took it upon themselves to instigate the second coming of Angela Merkel, who restored order and admitted Ukraine to the greater EU family.

CHINESE NUCLEAR POWER?: NO THANKS!

 A recent BBC satirical panel show hosted by Rory Bremner asked the question: "Who owns Britain?" The answer was largely foreign companies and governments. One wonders then why there is so much fuss about European Union regulations. Personally, I would prefer the country was run from Brussels than Beijing. Moreover, if the name Angela Merkel was ever to appear on my ballot paper, I would certainly vote for her ahead of any serving British politician, even the Green MP Caroline Lucas.

For whilst the German Chancellor has managed to preside over her country's phasing out of nuclear power, following the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan, the British government has carried on regardless with the promotion of new reactors. We now learn that Chinese companies are to be allowed to hold a majority stake in these. Surely some mistake? When George Osborne and Boris Johnson descended on Beijing this week, many people thought their mission was to increase UK exports, following the example of Germany (who export more than they import from the Chinese). Instead, it seems that London is to become a Chinese off-shore zone and British energy policy - or that of England, Wales and Northern Ireland anyway - is to be run from Beijing.

What this demonstrates is that our Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Mayor of London are a pair of political opportunists par excellence. However, if anyone is looking to a change of UK government for national energy security and sustainability, there seems to be little prospect of this short of direct rule from Berlin. In the meantime, Britons may wish to ponder how they can prevent a couple of political Beau Gestes like Osborne and Johnson from ever becoming prime minister.

LABOUR'S NEW OUTBREAK OF COMMON SENSE?

I've enjoyed reading the early conspiracy thrillers of Eric Ambler over the summer. A twentieth century novelist of the sensible Left, Ambler writes in straightforward and unpretentious style which may be one of the reasons why his work is experiencing a comeback.

Ambler's novels are full of shysters - defined in the Wikipedia as "someone who acts in a disreputable, unethical, or unscrupulous way, especially in the practice of law, politics or business." This may be another reason why his novels speaks to the present age.

This brings me to the subject of the British Labour Party. The biggest challenges for Ed Miliband, I would suggest, will be to demonstrate that he also belongs to the sensible Left and that he can keep the shysters at bay. Labour also needs to encourage a straightforward and unpretentious public discourse, even if this has become alien to modern British political culture.

Although it is still early days, there seems to be some evidence that the party could renew itself along these lines. On the national scene, recent straight-talking on the proposed high speed rail link between London and the north of England, notwithstanding that Labour came up with this idea in the first place, is to be applauded.

Similarly in my local area of Worcester, a Labour-run coalition involving the Lib-Dems and Greens has started to make sensible-sounding proposals to re-prioritise urban regeneration and sustainable transport planning. Let's just hope the shysters don't derail these!

Returning to the novels of Eric Ambler, these have another lesson for the contemporary British Labour Party: the need for an objective national understanding of international politics, particularly those of Europe. I may be over-optimistic, but it strikes me that this is something which a Labour-led coalition government might just be able to deliver.

PS. Since my posting, a fellow participant in the recent Coursera Introduction to the Law of the EU The Law of the European Union: An Introduction | Coursera has provided the following link to an article in the New York Times about Britain's relationship with Europe: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/23/opinion/cohen-britains-brussels-syndrome.html?hp&_r=0

"BRITAIN'S BIGGEST ECONOMIC DISADVANTAGE - OUR PROPERTY MARKET"

The following views are expressed by John Stepek in today's Money Morning, the daily online newsletter of Money Week magazine.

The Governor "and other members of the Bank of England have warned that the Bank isn’t going to rush into printing more money in November. And it’s not just because of the GDP bounce. It’s because he’s not sure it can solve Britain’s problems. 

King reckons – and I wouldn’t disagree – that the basic problem is the banks are still sitting on too much bad debt. The debt needs to be recognised and its value written down (or written off). The banks then need to be patched up. All that needs to happen before banks are willing to lend again.

“In the 1930s, faced with problems of sovereign and other debt similar to those of today, the pretence that debts could be repaid was maintained for far too long. We must not repeat that mistake.”

However, we are repeating it. The trouble is, the “significant writing down of asset values” that King refers to, would involve allowing house prices to fall. In Britain, house prices are the single most important economic indicator, politically speaking. When house prices are falling, governments lose elections.

It’s why public policy, the tax system, and central bank activities, are all horribly skewed towards propping up the property market. Yet with the banks aware that they are over-exposed to an over-valued sector of the economy, they aren’t going to be keen to lend more until the risk is no longer so high.

This unravelling could take a very long time to play out. We can’t expect rampant global growth to help us out. So the Bank of England will continue to have to walk the line between allowing ‘too much’ inflation to get into the system, and keeping rates low enough to cushion those with large debts. That leaves Britain vulnerable to nasty external shocks."

THE EUROPE 2020 COMPETITIVENESS REPORT

The World Economic Forum's Europe 2020 Competitiveness Report, published last June, makes for some interesting reading.

Planners and environmentalists should take heart in its advice to the UK, ranked 7th overall but only 12th against green criteria:

"Finally, in order to ensure a more harmonious development process, greater focus should be placed on several dimensions supporting environmental sustainability".

David Cameron and colleagues please take note!

THE PROBLEMS OF BRITISH POWER POLITICS

Several years ago I went to a very good conference on the potential for renewable energy development in Britain. However, whilst broadly sympathetic to renewables, I still had some hard questions to ask, and, because this was a conference for the converted, I felt regarded as the enemy. Fast forward to the present, and I recently attended an equally good economics discussion. On this occasion, it was my use of expressions like environmental advocacy and planning that seemed to cause a noticeable tremor in the room. Nevertheless, the company was rather better tempered.

The major similarity between the two events was a poor understanding of the role of spatial or land use planning, as distinct from Soviet-style centralised economic or energy planning. Now, as someone with an MSc in Urban and Regional Planning Studies conferred by a university economics department, with over twenty five years' experience of spatial planning and project development, I feel reasonably well equipped to explore this important difference. So let me start with land use planning.

In fact, land use planning in the UK - outside Scotland where its strategic importance is still acknowledged - has been largely abandoned in favour of regional spatial strategies (RSS) and local development frameworks. The RSS are also now in the process of abolition. Incidentally, I support the retention of regional planning albeit with a lighter touch. Meanwhile, council-led local planning has become an essentially administrative process, with the hard skills once identified with the land use planner's profession, including architecture, urban design and engineering, largely outsourced to other agencies and, particularly, consultants.

This erosion of planning by successive governments has led to the increasing inability of local plans to fulfil their most important purpose: to direct development to the most appropriate locations relative to its type and scale whilst having regard to existing infrastructure, or probable investment therein, and comprehensive environmental impact assessments. Such direction is, I would argue, especially important for energy planning, and it is the weakness of the spatial planning system and associated environmental regulation in England, most particularly, which has acted to inhibit the development of renewable energy.

To turn now to centralised economic and energy planning, most ordinary people recognise that, notwithstanding the British - or rather English - political penchant for free market rhetoric over the past thirty or so years, this actually disguises an equally strong commitment to central government control, regardless of which parties happen to be in power. The case of nuclear power illustrates this situation very well, for there would be no development of new capacity if this were left to market forces alone. The recent history of nuclear development in the United States shows that strong government financial support is essential.

However, it is not my intention here to consider the pros and cons of different forms of power generation, but to argue that a spatial plan, ideally encompassing the whole of the British Isles and international connectivity, is needed. By such connectivity, I mean a plan which recognises current supply lines and potential future developments, notably international energy super grids. Such a plan would, of course, have to recognise the vital principle of subsidiarity in order to encourage regional and local ingenuity. Similarly, a coherent and long term national regulatory and incentives-based framework would need to be in place to support appropriate investment.

Is an integrated - economic and spatial - planning scenario for energy generation and supply in Britain of the kind I have described a realistic possibility? Perhaps a better question is: can the UK for reasons of economic security as well as environmental sustainability afford not to take this approach? For the "business as usual scenario", where our national politics of power are essentially left to the power politics of day, is no longer viable in an increasingly internationalised energy market where the forces in operation may not always espouse freedom.