BREXIT

'We need to remind ourselves that we are running a 6.9 per cent of GDP external account deficit, and that has to be funded somehow. It has been funded by an extraordinarily successful run of foreign direct investment into the UK – more than into any other country in the European Union. That has slowed as uncertainty around the referendum has been created. We now need to generate the confidence to allow it to resume.'

- Philip Hammond, Chancellor of the Exchequer, speaking yesterday in reference to the Japanese takeover of ARM, Britain's last major technology firm, a world leader in the design of silicon chips and responsible for more patents being lodged each year than most of Britain's major companies (including BAE and GlaxoSmithKline).


A spokesman for Theresa May has said: 'This is clearly a vote of confidence in Britain. It will be the biggest-ever Asian investment in the UK. This is good news for British workers, good news for the British economy'.

Hermann Hauser, a founder of ARM, said: 'This is a sad day for technology in Britain … the determination of what comes next will not be decided in Britain any more, but in Japan'. ARM was one of three major technology firms based in Cambridge. The other two firms have likewise been taken over by foreigners in recent years (one takeover has already gone sour).

The argument is being advanced by the ARM chairman, Stuart Chambers, that since half of ARM's shareholders are already foreigners then it does not matter if the firm is put under foreign control. Stuart Chambers, as chief executive, sold off the firm Pilkington Glass to the Japanese ten years ago. Pilkington Glass has had both its production and workforce decimated since the takeover. The buyers of ARM have made some promises about keeping the firm's headquarters in Britain and that they intend to double the workforce over the next five years.

Meanwhile, the Chinese have bought up the Odeon and UCI Cinemas Group, and the Poundland stores chain has been sold off to a foreign firm. The sale of the London Stock Exchange to the German Deutsche Boerse is proceeding.

Not only do the shareholders and directors stand to make a windfall from these foreign takeovers, so do the banks. The sale of ARM is expected to result in banking fees totalling £90million. The sale of the London Stock Exchange is set to result in banking fees of no less than £235million. It is the directors and bankers who do best out of these deals, as the shareholders are selling shares in return for cash; they have more cash but lose the current and future value of the shares. The directors and bankers are manufacturing fees and commissions etc. They do not lose anything and stand to make massive profits.

On another issue, the new Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, has watered down the Tory commitment to reduce immigration. She has said that it needs to be reduced to 'sustainable levels' and this was her 'aim at the moment', pointedly refusing to commit to the previous target of reducing net immigration to the tens of thousands. Immigration was a major issue in the EU referendum.

Theresa May has moved swiftly and decisively to change the government into a creature of her own making. She has rightly sacked Osborne and rooted out a number of his cronies. She has reorganized the departments, in particular with a new department to focus on leaving the EU. Brexiteers have been tasked with realizing Brexit.

However, nothing has been done to actually get out of the EU. Despite being able to assume the premiership two months sooner than expected, still there remains an insistence that Article 50 will not be triggered until next year. They are stalling. Meanwhile we keep making payments to the EU and the trade deficit continues – month in month out.

Regarding immigration, it is mass immigration as usual and there is no drive of any description to get it down – from either the EU or the rest of the world. The talk is still of 'controlling free movement' of immigration from the EU.

Regarding trade, the stance of Philip Hammond, demonstrated by the quote above, is that the government will continue selling off assets and borrowing to fund an ongoing balance of trade deficit. There is no recognition that this is unsustainable. There is no attempt to pay for imports by selling exports. The trade issue is restricted to airy talk of free trade deals.

Throughout the EU referendum the English Rights Campaign blog focused on the ruinous nature of the Osborne national bankruptcy model and how the post-Brexit policy needed to be one of balanced trade. The trade deficit with the EU is massive. Brexit offers the opportunity to deal with this problem. Instead, the May government in its entirety is immersed in the mantra of free trade. A free trade deal with the communist Chinese is being touted, despite the illegal and highly protectionist nature of that regime; a free trade deal with China would not be worth the paper it is written on and the huge deficit with China would balloon.

Despite the victory for Brexit in the referendum, the Ponzi Class have retained control. The May government is determined to adhere to Ponzi economics. Consequently, the Brexit policy will be a missed opportunity. Despite the reorganization of personnel and departments, the ideology remains unchanged. Political correctness remains supreme. Failure is therefore inevitable. Britain's decline will continue.

QUOTE OF THE MONTH

Declaring America's Economic Independence

It is great to be here. I'd like to thank Alumisource and all the amazing workers here for hosting us.

Today, I am going to talk about how to Make America Wealthy Again.

We are thirty miles from Steel City. Pittsburgh played a central role in building our nation.

The legacy of Pennsylvania steelworkers lives in the bridges, railways and skyscrapers that make up our great American landscape.

But our workers' loyalty was repaid with betrayal.

Our politicians have aggressively pursued a policy of globalization - moving our jobs, our wealth and our factories to Mexico and overseas.

Globalization has made the financial elite who donate to politicians very wealthy. But it has left millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache.

When subsidized foreign steel is dumped into our markets, threatening our factories, the politicians do nothing.

For years, they watched on the sidelines as our jobs vanished and our communities were plunged into depression-level unemployment.

Many of these areas have still never recovered.

Our politicians took away from the people their means of making a living and supporting their families.

Skilled craftsmen and tradespeople and factory workers have seen the jobs they loved shipped thousands of miles away.

Many Pennsylvania towns once thriving and humming are now in a state despair.

This wave of globalization has wiped out our middle class.

It doesn't have to be this way. We can turn it all around - and we can turn it around fast.

But if we're going to deliver real change, we're going to have to reject the campaign of fear and intimidation being pushed by powerful corporations, media elites, and political dynasties.

The people who rigged the system for their benefit will do anything - and say anything - to keep things exactly as they are.

The people who rigged the system are supporting Hillary Clinton because they know as long as she is in charge nothing will ever change.

The inner cities will remain poor.

The factories will remain closed.

The borders will remain open.

The special interests will remain firmly in control.

Hillary Clinton and her friends in global finance want to scare America into thinking small - and they want to scare the American people out of voting for a better future.

My campaign has the opposite message.

I want you to imagine how much better your life can be if we start believing in America again.

I want you to imagine how much better our future can be if we declare independence from the elites who've led us to one financial and foreign policy disaster after another.

Our friends in Britain recently voted to take back control of their economy, politics and borders.

I was on the right side of that issue - with the people - while Hillary, as always, stood with the elites, and both she and president Obama predicted that one wrong.

Now it's time for the American people to take back their future.

That's the choice we face. We can either give in to Hillary Clinton's campaign of fear, or we can choose to Believe In America.

We lost our way when we stopped believing in our country.

America became the world's dominant economy by becoming the world's dominant producer.

The wealth this created was shared broadly, creating the biggest middle class the world had ever known.

But then America changed its policy from promoting development in America, to promoting development in other nations.

We allowed foreign countries to subsidize their goods, devalue their currencies, violate their agreements, and cheat in every way imaginable.

Trillions of our dollars and millions of our jobs flowed overseas as a result.

I have visited cities and towns across this country where a third or even half of manufacturing jobs have been wiped out in the last 20 years.

Today, we import nearly $800 billion more in goods than we export.

This is not some natural disaster. It is politician-made disaster.

It is the consequence of a leadership class that worships globalism over Americanism.

This is a direct affront to our Founding Fathers, who wanted America to be strong, independent and free.

Our Founding Fathers Understood Trade

George Washington said that "the promotion of domestic manufactur[ing] will be among the first consequences to flow from an energetic government.”

Alexander Hamilton spoke frequently of the "expediency of encouraging manufactur[ing] in the United States." The first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, warned that: "The abandonment of the protective policy by the American government… must produce want and ruin among our people."

Our original Constitution did not even have an income tax. Instead, it had tariffs - emphasizing taxation of foreign, not domestic, production.

Yet today, 240 years after the Revolution, we have turned things completely upside-down.

We tax and regulate and restrict our companies to death, then we allow foreign countries that cheat to export their goods to us tax-free.

As a result, we have become more dependent on foreign countries than ever before.

Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s time to declare our economic independence once again.

That means reversing two of the worst legacies of the Clinton years.

America has lost nearly one-third of its manufacturing jobs since 1997 - even as the country has increased its population by 50 million people.

At the center of this catastrophe are two trade deals pushed by Bill and Hillary Clinton.

First, the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. Second, China's entry into the World Trade Organization.

NAFTA was the worst trade deal in history, and China's entrance into the World Trade Organization has enabled the greatest jobs theft in history.

It was Bill Clinton who signed NAFTA in 1993, and Hillary Clinton who supported it.

It was also Bill Clinton who lobbied for China's disastrous entry into the World Trade Organization, and Hillary Clinton who backed that terrible agreement.

Then, as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton stood by idly while China cheated on its currency, added another trillion dollars to our trade deficits, and stole hundreds of billions of dollars in our intellectual property.

The city of Pittsburgh, and the State of Pennsylvania, have lost one-third of their manufacturing jobs since the Clintons put China into the WTO.

Fifty thousand factories across America have shut their doors in that time.

Almost half of our entire manufacturing trade deficit in goods with the world is the result of trade with China.

It was also Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, who shoved us into a job-killing deal with South Korea in 2012.

As reported by the Economic Policy Institute in May, this deal doubled our trade deficit with South Korea and destroyed nearly 100,000 American jobs.

As Bernie Sanders said, Hillary Clinton "Voted for virtually every trade agreement that has cost the workers of this country millions of jobs.”

Trade reform, and the negotiation of great trade deals, is the quickest way to bring our jobs back.

To understand why trade reform creates jobs, we need to understand how all nations grow and prosper.

Massive trade deficits subtract directly from our Gross Domestic Product.

From 1947 to 2001 - a span of over five decades - our inflation-adjusted gross domestic product grew at a rate of 3.5%.

However, since 2002 - the year after we fully opened our markets to Chinese imports - that GDP growth rate has been cut almost in half.

What does this mean for Americans? For every one percent of GDP growth we fail to generate in any given year, we also fail to create over one million jobs.

America's "job creation deficit" due to slower growth since 2002 is well over 20 million jobs - and that's just about the number of jobs our country needs right now to put America back to work at decent wages.

The Transpacific-Partnership is the greatest danger yet.

The TPP would be the death blow for American manufacturing.

It would give up all of our economic leverage to an international commission that would put the interests of foreign countries above our own.

It would further open our markets to aggressive currency cheaters. It would make it easier for our trading competitors to ship cheap subsidized goods into U.S. markets - while allowing foreign countries to continue putting barriers in front of our exports.

The TPP would lower tariffs on foreign cars, while leaving in place the foreign practices that keep American cars from being sold overseas. The TPP even created a backdoor for China to supply car parts for automobiles made in Mexico.

The agreement would also force American workers to compete directly against workers from Vietnam, one of the lowest wage countries on Earth.

Not only will the TPP undermine our economy, but it will undermine our independence.

The TPP creates a new international commission that makes decisions the American people can't veto.

These commissions are great Hillary Clinton’s Wall Street funders who can spend vast amounts of money to influence the outcomes.

It should be no surprise then that Hillary Clinton, according to Bloomberg, took a “leading part in drafting the Trans-Pacific Partnership”.

She praised or pushed the TPP on 45 separate occasions, and even called it the “gold standard”.

Hillary Clinton was totally for the TPP just a short while ago, but when she saw my stance, which is totally against, she was shamed into saying she would be against it too – but have no doubt, she will immediately approve it if it is put before her, guaranteed.

She will do this just as she has betrayed American workers for Wall Street throughout her career.

Here’s how it would go: she would make a small token change, declare the pact fixed, and ram it through.

That’s why Hillary is now only saying she has problems with the TPP “in its current form,” – ensuring that she can rush to embrace it again at her earliest opportunity.

If the media doesn’t believe me, I have a challenge for you. Ask Hillary Clinton if she is willing to withdraw from the TPP her first day in office and unconditionally rule out its passage in any form.

There is no way to “fix” the TPP. We need bilateral trade deals. We do not need to enter into another massive international agreement that ties us up and binds us down.

A Trump Administration will change our failed trade policy - quickly

Here are 7 steps I would pursue right away to bring back our jobs.

One: I am going to withdraw the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which has not yet been ratified.

Two: I'm going to appoint the toughest and smartest trade negotiators to fight on behalf of American workers.

Three: I'm going to direct the Secretary of Commerce to identify every violation of trade agreements a foreign country is currently using to harm our workers. I will then direct all appropriate agencies to use every tool under American and international law to end these abuses.

Four: I'm going tell our NAFTA partners that I intend to immediately renegotiate the terms of that agreement to get a better deal for our workers. And I don't mean just a little bit better, I mean a lot better. If they do not agree to a renegotiation, then I will submit notice under Article 2205 of the NAFTA agreement that America intends to withdraw from the deal.

Five: I am going to instruct my Treasury Secretary to label China a currency manipulator. Any country that devalues their currency in order to take advantage of the United States will be met with sharply

Six: I am going to instruct the U.S. Trade Representative to bring trade cases against China, both in this country and at the WTO. China's unfair subsidy behavior is prohibited by the terms of its entrance to the WTO, and I intend to enforce those rules.

Seven: If China does not stop its illegal activities, including its theft of American trade secrets, I will use every lawful presidential power to remedy trade disputes, including the application of tariffs consistent with Section 201 and 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 and Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962.

President Reagan deployed similar trade measures when motorcycle and semiconductor imports threatened U.S. industry. His tariff on Japanese motorcycles was 45% and his tariff to shield America’s semiconductor industry was 100%.

Hillary Clinton, and her campaign of fear, will try to spread the lie that these actions will start a trade war. She has it completely backwards.

Hillary Clinton unleashed a trade war against the American worker when she supported one terrible trade deal after another – from NAFTA to China to South Korea.

A Trump Administration will end that war by getting a fair deal for the American people.

The era of economic surrender will finally be over.

A new era of prosperity will finally begin.

America will be independent once more.

Under a Trump Presidency, the American worker will finally have a President who will protect them and fight for them.

We will stand up to trade cheating anywhere and everywhere it threatens an American job.

We will make America the best place in the world to start a business, hire workers, and open a factory.

This includes massive tax reform to lift the crushing burdens on American workers and businesses.

We will also get rid of wasteful rules and regulations which are destroying our job creation capacity.

Many people think that these regulations are an even greater impediment than the fact that we are one of the highest taxed nations in the world.

We are also going to fully capture America’s tremendous energy capacity. This will create vast profits for our workers and begin reducing our deficit. Hillary Clinton wants to shut down energy production and shut down the mines.

A Trump Administration will also ensure that we start using American steel for American infrastructure.

Just like the American steel from Pennsylvania that built the Empire State building.

It will be American steel that will fortify American's crumbling bridges.

It will be American steel that sends our skyscrapers soaring into the sky.

It will be American steel that rebuilds our inner cities.

It will be American hands that remake this country, and it will be American energy - mined from American resources - that powers this country.

It will be American workers who are hired to do the job.

We are going to put American-produced steel back into the backbone of our country. This alone will create massive numbers of jobs.

On trade, on immigration, on foreign policy, we are going to put America First again.

We are going to make America wealthy again.

We are going to reject Hillary Clinton's politics of fear, futility, and incompetence.

We are going to embrace the possibilities of change.

It is time to believe in the future.

It is time to believe in each other.

It is time to Believe In America.

This Is How We Are Going To Make America Great Again – For All Americans.

We Are Going To Make America Great Again For Everyone – Greater Than Ever Before.

Thank you.

 

- Donald Trump, speaking recently


This is an excellent speech. The Donald's approach is relevant to the current post-Brexit fallout in Britain, and is far more robust in its defence of the national interest than what is currently being offered in Britain.

TORY LEADERSHIP ELECTION

Theresa May has emerged as the favourite to win the Tory leadership contest. She has managed this by steering clear of controversy during the referendum campaign (she declared for Remain, but then stayed out of the debate), and by attracting support from both sides subsequently. The Remainers, despite losing the referendum, are rallying around Theresa May in the hope of keeping one of their own in charge.

Theresa May sounds good on a superficial level: 'First, Brexit means Brexit … the public gave their verdict. There must be no attempts to remain inside the EU, no attempts to rejoin it through the back door, and no second referendum. The country voted to leave the European Union, and it is the duty of the Government and of Parliament to make sure we do just that.' She further rules out a general election, advocates business as normal, but says that Article 50 will not be invoked 'until the British negotiating strategy is agreed and clear', and that this is unlikely to be 'before the end of this year'. Meanwhile, there is no change. She is advocating that nothing is done and is stalling.

As with most of the Remainers, Theresa May believes that 'nobody should fool themselves that this process will be brief or straightforward'. It could take 'several years to disentangle our laws, rules and processes from the Brussels machinery'. She proposes to create a new government department, led by 'a senior Secretary of State' who she proposes should be someone 'who campaigned for Britain to leave the EU'.

Theresa May says that 'there is clearly no mandate for a deal that involves accepting the free movement of people as it has worked hitherto … But I want to be clear that as we conduct our negotiations, it must be a priority to allow British companies to trade with the single market in goods and services – but also to regain more control of the numbers of people who come here from Europe. Any attempt to wriggle out of that – especially from leadership candidates who campaigned to leave the EU by focusing on immigration – will be unacceptable to the public'. The key terms are 'as it has worked hitherto' and 'regain more control'. Despite her superficially tough rhetoric, she is equivocating. Her opening negotiating stance betrays a fudge and a willingness to give the EU a say in who lives in Britain. That is her opening stance. The EU has already made it clear that they will insist on free movement in return for free access to the Single Market. This rigid condition is to be met, under Theresa May, with a fudge and a willingness to give concessions from the outset. She makes no mention of the balance of trade deficit.


Theresa May sets out her stall: 'The process of withdrawal will be complex, and it will require hard work, serious work, and detailed work. And it means we need a Prime Minister who is a tough negotiator, and ready to do the job from day one'. Yet she is not a tough negotiator. Her opening stance signals a willingness to give in. The EU will take her to the cleaners. Theresa May tries to emphasize her toughness in her speech. For example she boasts 'I was told I couldn’t deport Abu Qatada, but I flew to Jordan and negotiated the treaty that got him out of Britain for good'. This might sound very fine, but what about all the rest of the extremists and criminal immigrants? Many of them have been getting British passports, courtesy of Theresa May.


On immigration Theresa May has been ineffective. She has highlighted the consequences when immigration is too high, but has done nothing about it. She talks and drops hints, but does nothing. Net immigration is at an all-time high and still soaring. Then there is illegal immigration. Immigrants come tumbling out of the back of lorries, have stormed the Channel Tunnel and are now even getting in to Britain by boats. This is her responsibility. She has not stood up to people smugglers, she has allowed them to take over control of Britain's borders.


As if that is not bad enough, we have the spectacle of jihadists sneaking off to join ISIS, so that they can live under extreme Islamist theories; where they can murder, rape, indulge in paedophilia, crucify, behead, enslave captured women, and glory in their barbarity. And if they grow bored with all this, then they can slip back into Britain to resume their previous life as a victim of a racist society. Then there are those jihadists who intend to commit terrorist and barbaric acts.

We need someone far tougher than Theresa May. She is a Remainer. She spent the referendum campaign in hiding. She does not understand what is required or how angry the public are with the fudging, spin and lies that are being presented to them by the ruling class. She is too politically correct and too enamoured with the EU to govern properly.