Is the end of Sturgeon the end of separatism?
Future of the Union; bumper week for wonks; industrial policy; local politics; Channel crossings; semiconductor strategy; land taxes; mental health; American working class; grooming gangs
We think conservatives need to talk more and get better at sharing ideas. So here we share the best newspaper columns, policy reports and books that will stimulate thinking and promote new ways of doing things.
The Conservative Reader is published every Friday lunchtime, so please do look out for it. And expect plenty of content about the things we think make conservatism such a compelling body of thought: identity and belonging, community and commitment, market economics, national resilience and good government.
You can find more about what we think on Twitter here and here.
Best wishes, Nick and Gavin
Towering Columns
On UnHerd, Tom McTague says Scottish nationalism will survive Sturgeon:
Brexit has made Scottish independence a far more complicated prospect than it was before. It is now possible that we will look back on the referendum in 2014 as the moment Scottish independence made the most sense. Fair or not, Brexit means that Scotland cannot dilute the dominating reality of England simply by leaving the union and joining the rump UK in a wider EU. If anything, Brexit has made England’s hulking presence next to Scotland even more pronounced, while demanding answers from the SNP that it does not seem ready or able to provide. What happens at the border with England? Will Scotland introduce the euro? Will Holyrood accept common European debts? Will it rejoin the Common Fisheries Policy? For the SNP, Brexit has turned out to be both the casus belli for its second push for independence and a strategic disaster. The best thing that could happen to Scottish nationalism would be for Britain to rejoin the European Union.
For unionists, however, Brexit might be an unexpected weapon in their constitutional arsenal, but it is one whose very existence is a reminder of the union’s inherent Englishness. Today, it is impossible to escape the reality that the UK has ceased to function in any meaningful sense as a unified British state; it now operates as an incoherent and imbalanced union of separate entities whose English character has not been softened by devolution, but incalculably sharpened. The fact is, the more Holyrood dominates Scotland’s national life, the more English the actual national parliament in Westminster becomes. This is a hole in the national barrel, draining the legitimacy of parliament and in time the union itself. The irony, then, is that just as Brexit acts as both an irritant and a salve to the threat of Scottish independence, devolution itself is a prime source of the union’s instability, the unbridgeable fault line in the body politic which no-one in Westminster is prepared to confront.
On ConservativeHome, Paul Goodman ponders the consequences for Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister who might just have saved the Union:
… the torch of unionism burns brighter this morning than it has done for some time. One response would be to argue that Sunak has had his first stroke of real political luck since he entered Downing Street as Prime Minister. His friends may claim that there is no luck to what happened at all: he simply made the right decision. His enemies will counter that Sunak, far from having fallen on his feet, has landed on his head – because the most likely consequence of SNP losses in Scotland are Labour electoral gains. Much depends on how the electoral cookie crumbles. A falling SNP vote could deliver the Tories 2017 general election-type gains, even if the latter’s share is nothing to write home about.
However, Labour will start the next election campaign from second place in more SNP seats, need smaller swings to win their SNP-held marginals… and could power through from third place in some seats if the rise in their vote is big enough. Luck is as luck does – if there is such a thing, and if you make it yourself. Maybe Sunak, having seen off the Union’s most formidable enemy on his watch, will now start to gain a reputation for luck, and success will duly follow. Is this likely? No. Will Starmer be a bigger winner? Probably. All the same, while what’s good for the Union may not ultimately be good for the Conservatives, capital C, it’s certainly so for conservatives, small c – if they’re unionists, at any rate, not English nationalists.
In the Daily Telegraph, Juliet Samuel says we need an industrial strategy or the EU, US and China will carve up the future of growth while we sit on the sidelines:
Chunks of Silicon Valley, Korea’s nuclear programme, Taiwan’s semiconductor industry and Japan’s robotics manufacturers have all benefited from huge amounts of state support. No one would label them dinosaurs. The common thread is that they have avoided becoming captured by producer interests and remained focused on their task: competitive, cutting-edge production. It should not be beyond the wit of the British state to follow these examples. We cannot afford to sit on the sidelines. In the last year, the US has passed three acts, targeting infrastructure, semiconductor production and “inflation” (this last was in fact mostly about green energy) that will funnel a staggering $2 trillion over ten years into an array of domestic production and research…
[After Brexit] we have an opportunity to be faster and more effective than our competitors. We have huge existing strengths in artificial intelligence, electronic chip design, life sciences and various green technologies. There is no reason why the UK cannot carve out a lucrative niche in the new global economic model being built around us, allowing us to benefit from cheap products produced by subsidies spent elsewhere while also competing in high-value fields where we have the advantage.
Theory aside, interventionist industrial policy is already happening, says Ricardo Hausmann on Project Syndicate:
Such policies have existed since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. In recent decades, however, economists have questioned their usefulness. Governments should not be picking winners, the argument goes, but rather let the market allocate resources across industries in a way that reflects consumer preferences and technological possibilities. By the same logic, policymakers should intervene in the market only when they have sufficient information that some externality is causing the market to malfunction. And even then, the detractors would say, governments might make matters worse by adding their own failures – for example, policy capture by rent-seeking players – to those of the market. With the Reagan-Thatcher revolution and the emergence of the so-called Washington Consensus in the 1980s, these arguments became enshrined in a new orthodoxy.
But economic theorists have since come around to recognizing the value of industrial policies. We now know that there are many cases where government intervention is justified. The question, then, is not whether industrial policies should exist, but how they should be managed.
…Market power is another imperfection that requires government intervention. To that end, the CHIPS Act enables the US to counter China’s dominance. The fear is that China can use this dominance as an economic weapon, in the same way that the US uses its dominance of the financial system and certain technologies to sanction other countries. The CHIPS Act seeks to reduce the American economy’s vulnerability to Chinese pressure.
In The Times, James Kanagasooriam argues that politics is becoming more local:
Although our politics has become less local during the past 20 years, there are signs this trend is abating and may go into reverse. Localism struggles to elicit the same passions as Brexit, the culture war and other political earworms. However, the election of mayors such as Labour’s Andy Burnham in Manchester and Conservatives Ben Houchen in Tees Valley and Andy Street in the West Midlands show that authentic local voices can carry a premium which sees them outperform the party nationally. (This is notably not the case with London’s Sadiq Khan.)
These mayoral elections saw strong leadership trump demographics. Burnham’s performance in the Tory-leaning parts of Greater Manchester and Street’s in Labour-leaning Sandwell show clear appetite for a local champion equipped with substantial powers and funds, rather than voters repeatedly restating a national creed at multiple levels. These results articulate a more latent feeling that politics should be more local again. Polling showed that 64 per cent of voters think their MP standing up for the local area was the most important aspect of their job — over and above representing a belief or set of values.
With Conservatives and Labour both showing a desire for more devolution, Britain’s architecture may shift to create more favourable conditions for local representatives. Our pessimistic national story might be beginning to fragment into a thousand more positive local ones.
Wonky thinking
In a bumper week for wonks, Richard Ekins and Sir Stephen Laws made proposals for Policy Exchange to stop the Channel crossings:
The Government should propose, and Parliament should enact, legislation that will require the Home Secretary to remove from the UK persons who have entered it unlawfully on a small boat. The legislation should mandate removal to a country where the person is not at risk of persecution, within the meaning of the Refugee Convention 1951. The legislation should also provide that no person who enters the UK unlawfully on a small boat from a safe state will ever be permitted to settle in the UK and, save in the most exceptional of circumstances, will never be permitted leave to enter the UK. The legislation should rule out domestic legal challenge against removal. Speedy and predictable removal is essential if the policy aim is to be achieved – the aim of making clear that crossing the Channel on a small boat without entry clearance is not a viable route for entering the UK with any expectation of remaining here. So, the legislation should also address the serious risk that the European Court of Human Rights will intervene in order to frustrate removals.
For the Centre for Policy Studies, Gerard Lyons and Zachary Spiro set out a possible British strategy for semiconductors:
The UK has a nascent semiconductor sector, although it is not currently a major player in traditional silicon chips. It is extremely unlikely that the UK Government could select and nurture a home-grown champion to displace the likes of Taiwan’s TSMC, or match that firm’s $36 billion in annual capital expenditure. Even the US’s huge investment in the sector, not least the billions in subsidies given to TSMC’s new fabrication plant in Arizona, is expected to leave it trailing a generation behind the cutting-edge fabs in Taiwan. But the UK does have areas of strength in the semiconductor sector, some of which are world leading. If we were to double down on our existing advantages, including early-stage R&D, basic IP, chip design, and create a conducive environment for next-generation semiconductor technologies, we could capture billions of additional GVA for the economy, in a sector for which trade was worth $1.7tn globally in 2019. By working with our allies, we would also boost our collective resilience in a sector that is fundamental to economic stability.
A group of writers from the Centre for Economic Policy Research argue that shifting taxes onto land would allow for radical income and capital gains tax cuts:
In the US, shifting taxes from labour and capital onto land (and consumption) can continue to finance existing levels of spending and debt while providing a massive boost to output. The reasons are that the tax base for a land tax is very large, and that the taxes on the incomes of labour and capital that are replaced by a land tax are very distortionary. Given that the US land share is not unusually high, similar results are likely to hold in most other economies. Furthermore, as we discuss in more detail in our paper, the number of net winners from this reform would far exceed the number of net losers, who, if necessary, could be exempted or compensated at little budgetary cost. The winners would even include almost all of the very rich, who not only hold the vast majority of US land but who as a rule are also very well diversified, with land only accounting for a small share of their portfolios. They would benefit greatly from the countervailing cuts in labour and capital income taxes.
Lucy Foulkes and Jack Andrews suggest that mental health awareness campaigns are contributing to mental health problems:
We present the hypothesis that, paradoxically, awareness efforts are contributing to this reported increase in mental health problems. We term this the prevalence inflation hypothesis. First, we argue that mental health awareness efforts are leading to more accurate reporting of previously under-recognised symptoms, a beneficial outcome. Second, and more problematically, we propose that awareness efforts are leading some individuals to interpret and report milder forms of distress as mental health problems. We propose that this then leads some individuals to experience a genuine increase in symptoms, because labelling distress as a mental health problem can affect an individual's self-concept and behaviour in a way that is ultimately self-fulfilling. For example, interpreting low levels of anxiety as symptomatic of an anxiety disorder might lead to behavioural avoidance, which can further exacerbate anxiety symptoms. We propose that the increase in reported symptoms then drives further awareness efforts: the two processes influence each other in a cyclical, intensifying manner.
Book of the week
This week we recommend Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance, who was elected as a Senator for Ohio last year. His memoir provides a study of the values and challenges of the American white working class.
We’re more socially isolated than ever, and we pass that isolation down to our children. Our religion has changed - built around churches heavy on emotional rhetoric but light on the kind of social support necessary to enable poor kids to do well. Many of us have dropped out of the labour force or have chosen not to relocate for better opportunities. Our men suffer from a peculiar crisis of masculinity in which some of the very traits that our culture inculcates make it difficult to succeed in a changing world.
When I mention the plight of my community, I am often met with an explanation that goes something like this: “Of course the prospects of the working-class whites have worsened, J.D., but you’re putting the chicken before the egg. They’re divorcing more, marrying less, and experiencing less happiness because their economic opportunities have declined. If they only had better access to jobs, other parts of their lives would improve as well.”
…not having a job is stressful, and not having enough money to live on is even more so. As the manufacturing centre of the industrial Midwest has hollowed out, the white working class has lost both its economic security and the stable home and family that comes with it.
Quick links
The Prime Minister is in Northern Ireland as a deal on the Protocol nears.
Charlie Peters released his GB News documentary on the grooming gangs scandal.
The average household in Hartlepool pays nearly 30 times the level of council tax as a proportion of the value of their home as in Kensington and Chelsea.
There is demand for one million square feet of lab space between Oxford and Cambridge, but planning laws mean availability is closer to 10,000 square feet.
In Japan, 8.5 million houses, 13 per cent of the total, are empty.
Germany is considering sending refugees to Africa.
Only one in five Scots supported Nicola Sturgeon’s gender bill.
The Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner said UK police forces are “shot through” with Chinese camera technology.
A popular claim that Brexit has cost every British household £1,000 was debunked.
38% of the British population agrees that “the world is controlled by a secretive elite.”