And reactive spivvery from Labour is less than useless

A brief look at the main econo-political news from this morning’s papers offers a mountain of evidence about why Britain keeps getting policy by injection rather than commonsense direction

The complete inability of Whitehall to keep a handle on any budget large or small is there for all to see yet again: the cost per UK aircraft carrier has risen to an eye-boggling £6.2bn. And an additional £800m will be added to the cost of landing systems for these UK flagships.

Except that they are in reality a cross between a white elephant and a struggling dinosaur. Aircraft carriers are the weapons a rich world power would use to advantage 70 years ago. In 2013, it’s not an effective defence expenditure, we aren’t rich any more – and we barely have a Commonwealth, let alone an Empire. Britain needs flexible troops that can be moved quickly to defend near-at-hand danger, and troop carriers that can be heavily defended from the air in that near-at-hand. We most emphatically do not any longer need an intercontinental physically deliverable defence force. We are not a world power.

What we need above all (as William Hague made brutally clear in the Spring) is a rapid spurt up the learning curve of defence against cyber-war. Another piece this morning reveals that iPads have been banned from Cabinet meetings due to fears of foreign intelligence agencies bugging them with ease. That is an unbelievably damning verdict on our defence capabilities. But no, the Government would rather GCHQ spent £13bn on watching us rather than our enemies.

Another thing the Coalition likes is The Big Wheeze. But a Whitehall analysis gives David Cameron a redder face than usual  this morning, as it up and confirms what most sane folks already know: the economic benefits of HS2 will be lower than rival schemes to upgrade lines between London and the north. Anticipating this finding (aka, already knowing it) Cameron has tasked the new boss of the HS2 rail link with finding ways to cut the estimated £50bn cost. Which equals almost exactly eight aircraft carriers, if you don’t include being able to dock the bloody things. And assuming costs don’t rise, hahahahaha.

It has in turn been an obvious imperative for nearly a decade now for Britain to exit the EU: this one foot in one foot out nonsense benefits nobody, and as many predicted (including Francois Hollande, as it happens) the euro has become a gigantic millstone nightmare around Europe’s neck. But the CBI doesn’t see it like that: it says Britain must remain part of the European Union, because otherwise every roof in the land would be blown away by the wolf, or some other such dreamed-up piffle. It wants, however, Britain to be “more central” to things there. It also wants firm clamps on further intrusion into national affairs, the return of 8-track in-car entertainment, and visiting massage parlours to be free on the national health. (I made the last two up)

CBI leaders said today that Prime Minister David Cameron should oppose the “creeping extension of EU authority”. What the Employer organisation spectacularly failed to point out was (a) why in Earth France and Germany would want to make us more central (b) why every attempt to stop the steamroller has so far failed dismally, and (c) why on Earth it thinks intrusion into British affairs is the only problem. A month ago we were all given quotas for women on company boards (a law), a Bill to confuse free speakers and restrict liberties (to be debated imminently by MEPs), and the ECHR allowing a jahadist murderer to appeal against his UK sentence.

Anyway, the week hasn’t started well for the CBI: under new European Commission (EC) ‘ecodesign’ regulations, any new vacuum cleaner exceeding 1,600 watts of power will banned within four years. Overhead own-goal scissor kick there from famed Belgian striker Chips Mitalles.

Unemployment and immigration are not unrelated, no matter how often the up is down and green is red merchants try to persuade you otherwise. Some will take jobs Brits won’t do (like the Poles did), but many will also work on the black (no tax income there) or fill skill-holes our pathetic education system didn’t tackle during sixteen years of a 2:2 in Media Studies. It now emerges that migrants (the new pc-approved word for immigrants) are filling a fifth of jobs in key industries because of a lack of skilled British workers. As we have all known this for at least five years, (a) where is Vince Cable re this one [Minister for Business Efficiency & Skills] (b) why have we not by now left the EU and simply closed our borders without exception for the time being? and (c) is Gove’s new Higher Education shambles remotely fit for this purpose?

You tell me, I’ve no idea. What do they do all day, we wonder aloud. Well, one thing our MPs do is keep jolly warm. Some 300 MPs expensed £200,000 in gas and electricity bills last year, it now emerges. I know around £700 per head isn’t much these days, but three points here. First, how many people earn as much as our legislators? Second, why are we paying the bills and they’re not? (I know they ‘need’ second properties to work in London, but they knew that when they applied for the job: why can’t the industrialists, banks, political Parties and Trade Unions/Coop movements cough up for that?) And third, if your energy bills come heavily subsidised, call me cynical here, but it doesn’t exactly motivate a chap to get uppity about energy company profiteering, does it?

But it’s all part of government’s new drive to cut expenditure on us, and throw the stuff at themselves. As The Slog revealed recently, the Sir Humphrey numbers actually increased during the recent Whitehall seal-cull, and despite endless attempts by Osborne to salt the leaches, the MoD top fatties remain firmly in place….ordering aircraft carriers we don’t need at prices far higher than we were told.

But fear not – at least we have privatisation which has cut costs for taxpayers, if not for rail travellers. And indeed, our rail fares are so expensive under private ownership, foreign state-owned operators have used high fares in the UK to compete. As they have in Gove’s brave new University world, in energy production and water production, and as they will in mail delivery before too long. Yes, it’s yet another advantage of being in the EU, but chiefly it is what the objective of the strategy was always meant to be: pushing government costs onto the taxpayer, but in another form. Up to but not including smaller government, lower taxes, lower trade deficits, and watchdogs with teeth.

So then, in the face of all this muddle, how is your average plucky Brit responding? Well, a lot of them eat pizzas and watch crap telly, and larger numbers of them work harder for less. Overall, a study published today shows that we are turning to cheaper, unhealthy food, because the inflation in the price of what we eat is rising faster than cost of other goods. Every Lidl helps, you see.

The main thing the British are doing, of course, is becoming unemployed. David Cameron insists this “simply isn’t true”, knowing as he does full well that the newly employed are working shorter hours for less money per hour. In a hilarious moment of wide-boy lightness of weight yesterday, Dan Hannan tweeted a graph to show unemployment going through the roof since the institution of the minimum wage. Sadly for him, it contradicted his boss completely.

But what none of mainstream Britain is becoming is more radicalised. They’re as cynically uninterested in politics as they’ve been since 1980, but also more tribal: the slave-labour class is going back to Labour, and the Tory braindead-middle are sticking with Conservatism. The fact that neither Party is doing anything to tackle their core voter’s problems is merely another of those anomalies that occasionally makes the open mind wonder what the advantages of democracy are any more.

But in just over 18 months now, the MPs will have to go back and get another pile of undeserved votes to keep on justifying their existence. Half the population – which gave up long ago – doesn’t vote at all. Russell Brand thinks this is an excellent thing, Jeremy Paxman things it’s a terrible thing, and The Slog Says “If they had a clear alternative that was focused more on the citizen, many of them  would both starting voting, and change their voting habits”.

So what are the Establishment Parties doing to try and break the mould, and get back to fresh ideas, decency and being honest with the voters>

Well, David Cameron announced last night that he has signed up truth-challenged Aussie strategist Lynton Crosby to work full time on securing a Tory majority; and of course earlier in the Term he put Grant Shapps in charge of driving up the Conservative vote. So then, more tabloidist spin and more lies.

Labour’s Ed Miller Band, on the same other hand, is offering a temporary range of pick-and-mix price freezes and income top-ups….but no coherent economic, constitutional, trade or social policy. The two Eds remain the Focus Groupies they have always been: reactive only, and no sign anywhere of strategic innovation.

So to sum up then, a lightweight and controlling Executive is all over the place while being consistently proved wrong (consistency while weaving directionlessly is a tough act to perform) and the spiralling cost of their endemic incompetence is being increasingly lumped onto the backs of the citizens. More dazed, distracted and poor than they were, Middle England is getting more tribal, and the near-destitute-to-dependent Underclass plus most intellectuals have given up completely. The only alternative available to get us out of the cess pit is a Labour Party that is equally opportunist but even more lacking in any kind of steering gear.

Loyal Slogger OAH says he’s now so depressed by The Slog, he’s going to Hong Kong. So with his mental health in mind, I leave you with this curio from today’s early Twitter columns:

“@LabourStudents pls retweet, we are selling a signed Tony Blair Autobiography raising money for East Kent Rape Line”.

There is no comment I can make upon that one without getting sued. Enjoy the week.

In the Weekend Slog: New discovery as Globalist neoliberalism revealed to be 50% money and 50% water