Marking Rupert's homework

Rupert Lowe tweets “Let’s take a look at just some Restore Britain policies, and you tell me if these make us nazi monsters” - then proceeds to list the usual lazy right wing populist tropes. The only thing more tedious than this is the article I’m about to write about it.

For the purposes of this article I’m leaving out what he’s written about immigration because I’ve addressed much of it elsewhere, and I can at least give Restore some credit for having given it more thought than Reform. They have at least published a paper (even if most of it is padding and waffle about ECHR legalities).

What one immediately notes is that Lowe doesn’t understand the difference between aspiration and policy. What we’re getting here is more of the same vague bullet point aspirations, with no detail, no creativity and no stress-testing. It’s the sort of garbage that Restore/GBPAC’s “policy” consultation exercises produce, which they should already have been able to list of the tops of their heads without even trying. Whatever they call it, though, it’s not policy, and it’s not serious. Let’s take a look…

- An overhaul of British agriculture that puts growing and farming at the heart of any policy for rural Britain. Food security is national security. Slash red tape, simplify payments, ease planning laws, encourage farm diversification and more. Crucially, help youngsters into agriculture. We will ensure a level playing field for British farmers.

- Restore Britain will force the British public sector will buy British - it will support British farmers, producers and small businesses.

Nobody disagrees that British agriculture needs an overhaul but every party says this. I want to see specifics. Just for once I’ll spare you from my usual local slaughterhouses hobby horse because there’s a lot more to be said about the state of the industry. There are a lot of lessons to be learned here from Brexit.

I recall during all the discussions about potential port logjams there was much concern about the import of fresh produce from southern Spain. I took a deeper look int this to discover that it’s actually a rotten industry based out of environmentally unfriendly greenhouses that depends on high levels of Moroccan slave labour.

As such, it occurred to me that there’s no real reason why we can’t produce fresh seasonal produce here in the UK. This is where we could join up energy with agriculture and water policy, building SMR nuclear desalination plants in East Anglia and East Yorkshire, to produce the heat, electricity and water needed for greenhouses, which could be state of the art facilities that use robots for harvesting. This could even make Britain the agriculture IP development capital of the world. Certainly, a nation surrounded by water should invest quite heavily in desalination.

As for slashing red tape, this is a meaningless trope. Red tape is the regulatory overhead, which relates to everything from customs paperwork through to animal disease surveillance and food hygiene controls. The “red tape” is a product of the regulatory systems, most of which are necessary, and in fact, facilitate a lot of commerce. Farmers might complain about it, but animal disease surveillance systems are preferable to periodically having the national herd wiped out by an outbreak of FMD. Maybe some of it could be streamlined, but you would have to take a more of an interest in how the systems actually work - which populists never do.

Meanwhile, the real reform we need to see in agriculture is measures to address the disparity between what it costs to grow food and what farmers are paid for it. Farmers enjoy little or even zero share of any profit – typically just 0.03% of the retail price. By comparison, processors were found to be receiving 10 times the profit. I have some thoughts on what is going wrong and how it can be fixed, but that would make this a balls-achingly long article.

The point for me is that you can bleat about farm diversification but the bulk of the trade will always depend on supermarkets and that’s the core problem that needs our attention.

As to forcing the public sector to buy British, everybody likes this idea until they see the bill for it. As to, creating a level playing field for British farmers, I don’t know what Lowe means by this but he’s presumably talking about trade policy. Does this imply strategic protectionism? If so, how does he square this with his previous enthusiasm for a WTO Brexit? If it doesn’t mean that, what does it mean?

Up next, he moves on to education…

- We will encourage and fund youngsters to take up apprenticeships and learn a proper skill instead of some bullshit university degree. Teach children at school the life skills they will actually need in modern Britain.
- An education system that teaches, respects and celebrates British history and the triumphant contribution our little island has made to the world.

Again, few would disagree that we need to see a rationalisation of higher education. Personally I favour a reversion to polytechnics, but I would go as far as challenging the entire basis of formal educational establishments.

The best change we could make is to invest heavily in the Open University. The internet opened up a galaxy of possibilities for distance learning, and in many ways, the cuts to middle-ranking universities have degraded the university experience to such a degree that they might as well be distance learning courses. I favour a cumulative “build-a-bear” technical degree, where elective modules can add up to a recognised qualification. It does away with Mickey Mouse degrees and allows students to tailor their learning to their interests and ambitions.

Open University should absorb most, if not all, general courses as the main provider, so that most other institutions can drop them and focus on their specialities. Southampton is known for Maritime and Aero Engineering courses, for example. Where skills gaps exist in the engineering and technical sectors, the DfE should subsidise companies to establish paid apprenticeship programmes, as opposed to channelling this funding through universities. Students at 16 must also be more informed about alternatives to university.

There’s a lot more a creative mind could say about this, but Uncle Rupe is content with sloppy bullet points.

As to “- An education system that teaches, respects and celebrates British history and the triumphant contribution our little island has made to the world”, this is a noble aspiration, but how do you make that a reality? It’s not happening unless you have a policy to restructure teacher training and vetting, and to take on the teaching unions.

For my part, I would be looking at making it easier for peope to change careers into teaching to ensure there are more teachers with real world experience, and insist that nobody can enter the profession without evidence of three consecutive years in full time private sector non-education work.

Moving on we get to regulation…

- Businesses freed from crushing regulation, red tape and tax. Reward hard work. Let entrepreneurs enjoy their success.
- Lowest corporation tax in Europe. IR35 scrapped. VAT threshold doubled. HMRC brutally slashed back. Dividend thresholds raised.

Right wing slop merchants love to talk about deregulation but there’s a reason why it hardly ever happens. Even bad regulation exists for a reason, and unpicking it is far harder than it looks. Brexiteers always imagined that Brexit would lead to a “bonfire of regulations” but it turns out that most regulatory frameworks are necessary. They’re not invented for shits and giggles.

I’m not going to say that small businesses don’t need greater freedom from regulation and onerous HMRC paperwork and taxes, but deregulation often causes as many problems as it solves. This is where you need policy, not vague aspiration. Usually it requires re-regulation on a sector by sector basis.

Moving on…

- High streets restored. Safe, secure and welcoming. Business rates for small businesses abolished. Turkish barbers, vape shops and other suspicious businesses investigated. Graffiti cleaned, litter picked. Pavements fixed. We will make Britain clean again, and we will take pride in our communities again.

Again this is aspiration rather than policy. As I’ve pointed out before, civic pride has to be built in at all levels of policy, not least housing and regeneration. That necessitates a broader vision and principles such as “gentle density” and traditional architecture standards in public spaces.

Addressing this means looking at ways to bring older buildings back into use, and making town centres liveable spaces again. Unless you can give places a renewed purpose, they will remain derelict slums even if you kick the Turkish barbers out.

Then we get to another empty slogan…

- Fly-tippers will be crushed under the law. It will not be tolerated. Foreigners indulging in the destruction of our countryside will be deported.

Nobody is going to argue that Britain isn’t increasingly squalid. But the issues identified here actually call for three strands of policy. Firstly, waste disposal needs a compete overhaul, repealing the Waste Framework Directive, removing the carbon tax on waste, and repealing the ban on landfill. This goes a long way towards ending the blight of fly tipping. When it comes to roadside litter, it calls for more modern lorry parks with proper amenities so drivers don’t end up clogging up laybys when the tachograph tells them to. Again, you need actual policy.

Moving on…

- Put pro-family policy at the heart of everything we do. If British families want to have more children, let’s use the power of the state to enable that. Make childcare more accessible and more affordable.

This, frankly, is drivel. It’s not even close to policy. For starters, you have to look at why childcare got so expensive in the first place. From 1997 onwards we started to see the professionalisation of childminding, requiring qualifications, certification and vetting, and the requirement for premises to be inspected and insured. There’s no reversing that. Sure, you can remove some of the more onerous requirements and liberate the sector so more volunteer groups can spring up (which can be tied to repurposing old empty buildings such as derelict Carnegie libraries etc), but the models of yore were contingent on the high trust society we used to have. It may be the intention to rebuild that high trust society but that’s going to take decades.

Ultimately, if we want peope to have more kids, you’re going to need an employment and industrial strategy, a housing policy and (where zoomer right wing men are concerned) a better attitudes towards women.

For the sake of brevity, I’m going to skip a few now because I’m sure you’re as bored of reading this as I am of writing it…

- Restore Britain will make Britain safe again. No-nonsense policing that does what it needs to do. Widespread stop and search back - accusations of racism will stop nothing. Brutal sentences for carrying a knife. Foreign criminals deported, third world sex pests removed before their feet can touch the ground.

It’s really quite pathetic that this is all that populists have to say about policing and crime. There is much more to be said.

- Welfare radically slashed back. Those who can work, will work. Litter picking, graffiti cleaning, whatever else. Don’t like it? No benefits. That simple.

This is peak boomer-slop policy. Roadside litter picking has been ventured in parliament before, but the Highways Agency views it as impractical to have reluctant compelled workers performing what is quite a dangerous role. Forcing benefit claimants into it would likely cost more in training, equipment, and supervision than the labour is worth. Rupert might shrug off health and safety but picture the headlines if a young single mother gets killed on the A14 doing forced roadside work: “PM Lowe sends single mums to their deaths.” Optics disaster.

Next up is defence…

- Rebuild and rearm Britain. We will have a big stick, and we will wave it when we want.

This is clearly isn’t a policy.

- Restore Britain will reverse the creeping islamification of Britain - no burqas, sharia courts, halal slaughter and so on. Cousin marriage will be banned. If you want to sleep with your family, this is not the country for you. This is Britain, we do things our way.

I’m in favour of a burka ban and ending Sharia courts etc, but a ban on halal is a dumb idea. A ban is valueless virtue signalling unless you are also going to commit to setting up the necessary legislative and enforcement infrastructure. That is going to be costly and resource-intensive.

I’ve skipped a few more now to round off this piece. I don’t have all day, and neither do you. I may revisit some of them.

- Free car parking for NHS staff, patients and visitors on tight permits. We all pay for the NHS, we shouldn’t be ripped off for the sodding parking too. Especially medical staff.

They haven’t thought this one through at all.

- Reclaim our fisheries - take back our seas and take back our fish. We will take back control. Finally.

Oh really? How? Are you going to walk away from the TCA? If so, what the trade contingency plan? Are you going to blow up our main trade relationship for a £1bn industry?

- The quangocracy will end. Power will be returned to the people through their MPs. Parliament will be empowered.

- Restore Britain will crush the parasitic state. It will all be hacked back in the most spectacular fashion. Unlike anything Britain has seen before.

This is the ultimate in lazy right wing slop. Our rules and regulations are what distinguish us from a third world country. A first world country requires extensive governance. We have things like the food standards agency, the air accident Investigation branch, the arts council and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority for a reason.

Looking down the list of arm’s length bodies, most of them serve a function, and the more obscure ones actually chew up very few resources. The right’s war on quangos is all predicated on the presumption that they do nothing of value, and that somehow they would be more efficient were they amalgamated into the kind of sprawling ministries we had back in the 1980s.

Conclusion

Lowe’s list of “policies” are vague headings that actually require some in-depth thought and some structured, joined-up thinking. This is activity that they should have undertaken months ago. But as it stands, all we have to go on by way of policy is a collection of Lowe’s tweets and a few pub bore rants. He keeps showing us that he has no idea what actual policy is. As Rupert Lowe once said of Reform… “I simply cannot endorse a party that has put so frighteningly little thought into what it would actually do with power”. This most certainly isn’t a serious party. Rupert Lowe is a hypocritical slop merchant.