The Scottish “Hate Crime” Law Means the Time Has Come to Enact the UK Free Speech Act

Three and a half years ago, the ASI published a position paper and draft law proposing a “UK Free Speech Act” which would, if enacted, forever remove the regulation of nonviolent political discussion from the remit of law enforcement in the United Kingdom.

The censorship provisions of the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 (the "Hate Crime Act"), entering into force this week, are deeply offensive to freedom of expression, and the only way to stop them is to implicitly repeal these new rules with UK-wide protection for freedom of speech.

The Hate Crime Act contains three provisions in particular – “aggravation of offences by prejudice,” “racially aggravated harassment” and “stirring up hatred” – which are, at least as-described, descriptions of the sort of speech that most members of polite society would rightly oppose as a personal, moral matter.

However, if we look at the substance of the language employed by the new laws and its derivation from similar, viewpoint-neutral English rules – in the case of the stirring-up offence and the “racially aggravated harassment” offences,  the “alarm or distress” language from the English Public Order Act 1986, and in the case of the stirring-up offence only, the historic “threatening, abusive, or insulting” language from that same law – we know that these rules have proven capable of extremely overbroad application in England, and these new rules will prove just as terrible, if not more so, if allowed to stand in Scotland.

The position, outlined in a 2020 paper for the ASI, and the applicable English legal rules, remains entirely unchanged. It suffices for present purposes to note that existing English laws, which are nowhere near as intrusive as the new Scottish ones, have already been used in England to, variously: 

·      threaten a schoolboy with prosecution for nonviolently holding up a sign calling the Church of Scientology a dangerous cult;

·      arrest republican protestors in the vicinity of King Charles' coronation for nonviolent picketing;

·      convict a protestor for nonviolently saying David Cameron had “blood on his hands” for cutting disability benefit at an event where the then-PM was speaking;

·      convict protestors against the war in Iraq for nonviolently expressing their points of view in front of soldiers of the British Army returning home from that war;

·      arrest students for nonviolently saying “woof” to a dog;

·      arrest a woman for nonviolently praying silently; and

·      arrest a preacher for nonviolently reading from the Bible, in public, verbatim.

The existing rules should have been repealed years ago, but few UK lawyers, being unaccustomed to an American perspective on free speech jurisprudence and thus unable to see that the frog was starting to boil, seemed to notice very much as the English judiciary lost its way after issuing its landmark, pro-free speech decision of Redmond-Bate [1999] EWHC Admin 733. In a few short years, the English courts went from protecting controversial speech to routinely acquiescing to the criminalization of what, pre-1999 at least, would have been entirely lawful, if somewhat controversial, expression (see: Norwood v DPP [2003] EWHC 1564, and Abdul v. DPP  [2011] EWHC 247). 

The provisions of Article 10 of the European Convention concerning freedom of expression, enshrined in domestic law by the UK Human Rights Act, are little better than window-dressing. They have been of no assistance whatsoever in protecting English speakers of controversial ideas since that law's enactment; indeed, the Human Rights Act may have harmed the cause of free speech in the country by formalising the broad derogations from that right permitted under Article 10(2) which have been abused, time and again, to stifle discourse. 

Put another way, our experience with the English rules, in particular the Public Order Act 1986 but also the Malicious Communications Act 1988, and Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003, is that their application, especially in the last 25 years, has been subjective, unpredictable, inconsistent, politically-motivated, sometimes capricious, and thoroughly chilling to speech.

The Scottish law turbocharges all of these problems by abandoning viewpoint-neutrality and expressly targeting “culture war” issues around questions of identity within the four corners of the statute. This is particularly the case when we look at the “aggravation of offences by prejudice” law, which states that age, disability, national or ethnic origin, sexual orientation, and transgender identity are all to be considered when sentencing people in Scotland for criminal offences. 

The problem with this, of course, is that merely talking about these issues and causing offence is already capable of constituting a public order offence, both in England and substantially equivalent legislation in Scotland, and these provisions were used in both England and Scotland to suppress speech even before the Hate Crime Act entered into force.

Only last month transgender activists sought to have J.K. Rowling arrested there after English prosecutors declined to prosecute her for prior “gender critical” remarks. The Hate Crime Act now requires Scottish judges to take into account Rowling’s motivations when judging her speech, which we think would be fairly described as emanating from the identitarian, and therefore definitionally “prejudicial,” ideology known as second-wave feminism, and would require, in a public order or malicious communications-based prosecution for those feminist remarks, for a Scottish judge to consider a sentencing enhancement.

It makes no sense to criminalise these conversations. Indeed it makes sense to expressly legalise them, given that national politics seems, increasingly, to cluster around identity issues and, in a democratic society, require their open discussion in order for these disputes around the proper ordering of society to be satisfactorily resolved. 

On the gender theory question, in particular, the debate seems to be between, on one side, critical theory-informed intersectional activists who seek to view all power relationships through the lens of what they call immutable characteristics, and on the other, we see a coalition of classical liberals and religiously-minded traditionalists from the usual suspects like the Catholic Church but also newly aggrieved groups such as traditionalist Muslim parents of schoolchildren. As the fact that the Prime Minister himself felt the need to chime in on these matters this week plainly evidences, identity issues, whether we like it or not, now sit squarely at the centre of contemporary UK political discourse. 

We take no view on the merits of either "side" here, because taking a viewpoint does not matter and, in any case, is inadvisable, to the extent anyone here at the Institute plans on ever setting foot in Scotland again. This is because it is now quite unsafe, legally speaking, to take a vigorously-defended public position on these questions in Scotland from any perspective, as long as there is a hearer who is offended enough to file a police report against the hearer's perceived political enemies, or calculating enough to pretend to be so offended. 

To see how the Hate Crime Act potentially cuts in all directions, we need look no further than criminal complaints which have already been made under the new law. See, for example, the fact that Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf, the law's primary advocate and promoter, was immediately reported by the Indian Council of Scotland to the police for thoughtcrime contained in a speech he himself delivered in Scottish Parliament in 2023 as soon as the Hate Crime Act entered into force. Under the new regime, even the First Minister will need to take care not to express those same thoughts in the same manner again.

There are not many reasonable people who wish to live in a country where the first response to any political disagreement is to call for a speaker's arrest. Nonviolent speech should never warrant a violent response. Yet, as was proven on day 1 of this new law, we already see that the Scottish law will be used, and is being used, to call down state-sanctioned violence, namely arrests and imprisonment, to suppress broad swathes of viewpoints from all political quarters. 

To the few back-benchers who are engaged by this pertinent issue: This is the hill to die on. Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, has said he opposes the Scottish law. 

Push the Prime Minister to back up that opposition with decisive action. Permanently abolish political censorship enforced at gunpoint. Enact the UK Free Speech Act.

We almost find ourselves agreeing with Willy Hutton

For he says:

Capitalism must be managed and regulated to work for the common good

Indeed so, indeed so. This bit where we start to disagree:

Of necessity enter the state, much better designed than at present.

Not that we’re going to get this cod Latin right, but the big questions is “Quis Regit?”

Not whether regulation is necessary, that we agree, but who regulates?

That regulation is the function of markets. Capitalism, pure unadorned and unregulated capitalism, would not be a fun time. But we as individuals, we in aggregate as consumers, regulate capitalism. Further, the free part of free markets, the freedom to enter the market as a supplier (or even a capitalist) regulates, through competition, what capitalists may do.

Willy’s answer to “Quis Regit” is Willy and correct thinking people like Willy. Our answer is us, we the people, by our daily actions.

Note that not even Willy thinks the state as it is currently organised can do that regulation. We simply apply that observation to all states, ever. We also have history on our side on that.

Sure, capitalism requires regulating, the people to do that are the people, the method is free markets.

It all sounds terribly sensible, yes, but.......

Rod Liddle tells us about the water companies:

Perhaps, you might ask, with a general election in the offing, we might have opposition parties who will start to put this right? Well, I wouldn’t count on it. You may have heard the usual edentate, spavined gibbering on the issue from the Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey, as well as lectures from a supposedly appalled Labour front bench. But neither of those parties is prepared to do what is morally, economically and practically the only sensible option, which is to take the water companies back into state ownership and restore a sense of priority when it comes to how and where the money should be spent and how much should be charged to households.

The but….being that we used to have exactly that system, politics deciding how much was to be invested in the water companies, politics deciding how much the workers would be paid, politics deciding how much households would be charged and even politics deciding how the resultant profits would be spent.

The result was worse.

No, really - which is why the water companies were privatised. Investment, since then, has risen. Water quality has risen substantially. Prices to consumers - households - have risen by less under the capitalist format to achieve those goals than they would have done under the old politics system.

As we mentioned yesterday, we can also prove this. For the Home Nations have four different management structures. Only England is that regulated but capitalist firms. The performance in England - quality of water in the pipes, quality of water in the environment, prices to households - is better than that in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland with their non- regulated capitalist systems, with their more politically decided systems.

This is all simply factually true. Yea even though the entire country is wholly convinced of the opposite. Another strike against politics as a method of management. That politics, as it is actually done, becomes unmoored from reality and facts.

The English water system is better than it was before privatisation. The English water system, capitalist as it is, has improved more than the other three water systems in the larger polity. This is the evidence being used to reverse the very action that improved the water system in England. This is a proposition that can be tested. Yet no one is doing so - politics just isn’t a good management system.

What are the Weil's Disease numbers for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?

Apparently there’s something wrong with the water system:

Polluted water is causing 60 per cent more hospital admissions than a decade ago, official figures show.

The number of people admitted to hospital for water-borne diseases – including dysentery and Weil’s disease – has increased from 2,085 people in 2010-11 to 3,286 in 2022-23, according to NHS statistics.

OK. Weil’s Disease has been rising in incidence for well over a decade, from 2018:

A deadly infection spread by rats has reached record levels in the number of hospital appointments taken up by people suffering from the illness.

Hospital sessions for people suffering from Weil's disease, which is spread by rats' urine, are three times the level three years ago and are now at unprecedented levels.

We’d like to know why of course. Perhaps more rats, perhaps different rats, perhaps councils aren’t controlling rats. And we are also told that dysentery cases are up - perhaps it’s just more people going to waters where Weil’s and dysentery can be caught?

We’d clearly like to know why this is happening - so we can decide what, if anything, we’re going to do about it.

From the Labour Party:

Labour pledged it would put failing water companies in special measures to force them to “clean up their toxic mess and protect people’s health”.

Ofwat, the regulator, would get powers to block the payment of any bonuses until water bosses had cleaned up the pollution, while water company bosses who oversaw repeated law-breaking would face criminal charges.

Clearly the blame is being placed upon the capitalist nature of the English water companies. For, as The Guardian of all places points out:

Waterborne diseases such as dysentery and Weil’s disease have risen by 60% since 2010 in England, new figures reveal.

OK.

We’d still like to find out what is causing this problem in England. And it’s true that England has capitalist water companies in a manner that the other Home Nations do not - Wales, Scotland and NI have variants of state owned water companies performing the job. The other home nations also have NHS organisations that are separate and thus their own statistics on this matter.

Which does mean that we can test the proposition. It’s possible that there is some, or some set of factors, increasing dysentery and Weil’s in these isles. Hand washing to more rats to greater water sports patrticipation to the capitalist nature of water provision. We’ve also the statistics to be able to at least begin to make the distinction. Compare the rise in infections across the Home Nations’ versions of the NHS to the ownership of the water companies across the Home Nations.

What has actually been done? Noting the rise in incidence in the one country, England, then blaming it upon the one difference in England, that ownership. Without, ever nor at all, actually testing the proposition. Which is, if we are to be very polite about it indeed, not a proof of anything at all other than the ability to project prejudice.

So, why do people urinate in the public information pool in this manner? Because it’s politically convenient to do so. Which is why politics is such a bad way of running anything - decisions are always based upon biased and piss poor information.

Yeah, but no, but yeah, but....

We have no inside knowledge about this claim at all. We do have more general knowledge about the idea of the claim.

Wind farm owners are being investigated by the energy watchdog for alleged market manipulation after they were accused of overcharging consumers by £100m.

Ofgem is to examine claims that renewable energy companies artificially inflated compensation payments given to them for switching off their turbines on windy days when the grid did not need extra capacity.

It has been handed a dossier gathered by analysts at the Renewable Energy Foundation (REF), which suggests wind farm companies could be boosting the price of “virtual energy” they never actually generated.

Nope, no idea as to the truth of that. But yeah, the idea that such a thing might happen?

It’s inevitable in any complex system.

Any Heath Robinson (Rube Goldberg to Americans) scheme to do anything will be gamed. Simply because that’s what humans do - look at the rules, consider the possibilities then do whatever appears to them to be beneficial to their enlightened self-interest. Man wrote a book explaining this 248 years ago, time enough for the idea to sink in.

The answer to which is to not have complex schemes. True, there really are things that need to be done. Say, internalising externalities. Therefore don’t have a complex scheme to achieve that, have a simple scheme to achieve that.

Another way to put this is that bureaucrats designing rules about other peoples’ money are not going to be as eagle-eyed on the gaps in the rules as those playing against the bureaucrats to the benefit of their own wallets. Or, again, rules will be gamed.

KISS is not just an acronym you know, it’s a rule.

Why detailed macroeconomic management doesn't work

This applies both to that archaic idea of precise Keynesian demand management and also the more recent Modern Monetary Theory. They don’t work because:

Official figures have confirmed the UK economy went into recession at the end of last year, after the latest estimate found it had contracted in the last two quarters of 2023.

In a blow to the government’s economic standing, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the economy, measured by gross domestic product (GDP) shrank by 0.3% in the last three months of the year, unrevised from an earlier estimate.

That archaic Keynesianism would suggest that back this time last year - about - the government should have increased the deficit. Spent more - easy enough - or reduced taxation - Hah! - in order to use fiscal policy to boost the economy. MMT has a slightly different prescription, keep printing money until the economy runs hot then tax back the excess money creation causing any inflation.

We’ve now the reliable figures giving us the policy we should have followed a year after whatever it is we should have done. That means that the GDP figures cannot be used as a guide to policy, obviously - we’ve not a time machine to go back and change policy now that we know, do we?

Hayek wins again that is. We simply do not gather information in time and in detail sufficient to be able to manage the economy in any detail.

Yes, obviously, 10% changes in GDP - in either direction - mean action should be taken and we’d have other guides to that happening other than these GDP figures too. But given that Hayek does win again we’ve simply not the information flow to be able to follow that dream of that detailed macroeconomic management.

This leaves us with getting the microeconomics right - incentives and so on - and then seeing what happens. Which is, as we’ve long said, about the only form of economic planning we can do that actually works.

If people lose their jobs to AI they'll do.....something else

A certain error of logic here. We’re being told that we’ll not get richer from AI because AI will destroy jobs. But that’s the wrong way around. We’ll get richer from AI according to how many jobs AI destroys - the more destroyed the richer we shall collectively be.

The aim and purpose of all technological advance is to destroy jobs, after all.

From IPPR:

Almost 8 million UK jobs could be lost to artificial intelligence in a “jobs apocalypse”, according to a report warning that women, younger workers and those on lower wages are at most risk from automation.

How excellent is the correct reaction.

In the worst-case scenario for the second wave of AI, 7.9m jobs could be displaced, the report said, with any gains for the economy from productivity improvements cancelled out with zero growth in GDP within three to five years.

They’re just not getting it in the slightest. Sure, we agree, transitions can be difficult. But the end state of AI destroying 7.9 million jobs will be that we’re all richer by 7.9 million jobs.

A very basic observation about humans is that desires are unlimited. So, if we have more human labour available to tackle more human desires then that’s good - more human desires can be sated by that more human labour.

This is how we got the NHS, universities, ballet and professional sports after all. Back three centuries 90% of us had to spend all of life standing around in muddy fields growing the crops that kept 100% of the population alive. Then someone invented the tractor (as a shorthand for the mechanisation of farming) and we ended up needing only 2% of the population on the land. 88% were then free to go work in the NHS, universities, ballet and professional sports. We are now richer - because of the tractor - by whatever value we put upon the NHS, universities, ballet and professional sports.

We can say the same thing about the Spinning Jenny - the great wealth was that abolition of hundreds and hundreds of hours a year per person of entirely female labour in handspinning - and the washing machine (again, a shorthand for the mechanisation of much domestic labour). Formerly exclusively female and household labour disappeared into the maw of the machines leading to the economic emancipation of women - a very grand increase in human wealth.

AI destroys jobs that are currently done by human labour. That frees up human labour to do other things, sate other human desires for things that can be solved by human labour. Who knows, we might eventually be able to get the NHS to work properly, universities to educate and British sports teams that win something now and again. Ballet, well….

Of course, it’s possible to postulate that human desires are not unlimited. In which case there are no more things to be done with excess human labour - therefore leisure will rise. Given the number of people telling us that working hours should fall - all that 4 day week stuff - this is also an increase in human wealth. On the useful grounds that an increase in leisure with a maintained consumption level is an increase in human wealth.

There is no possible outcome of all that work disappearing into the machines that makes humans worse off. No, really. As Bill Nordhaus has shown. Imagine that all the money from the AI goes to capital, that the tech bros gain all the gains. We end up with:

If capital productivity is rapidly rising (which is the same statement as the robots are eating all our jobs) then yes, it's true, the plutocrats who own the machines end up getting (or, more accurately, asymptotically approach getting) 100% of the output of the economy. But at the same time, and because of this process, wages go up in real terms at 200% a year.

Transitions, ah, yes, transitions. But the end state simply cannot be a bad one. So, let’s do it, right?

Generic Design Assessments

The UK nuclear strategy today is a muddle. After a brief description, this blog suggests what it should be.

The Government claims that it ensures “that any new nuclear power station built in Great Britain meets high standards for:

• safety

• security

• environmental protection

• waste management”

The process is called the Generic Design Assessment (GDA) which is claimed to take four years, though insiders say the average is nearer six. But that is less than half the time taken to approve the National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO) plans to connect up to 86 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind by 2035. If one is building just one nuclear power plant every 20 years, these bureaucratic delays may not matter much, but the new small modular reactor (SMR) technology means, if we are to achieve net zero by 2050, building five a year over the next 20 years. No chance of that unless the bureaucrats mend their ways.

The three stages of the GDA are: “Step 1 (initiation) which can take around 12 months. At its conclusion, ONR will publish a GDA Step 1 Statement setting out its regulatory position at this point. Step 2 (fundamental assessment) can take around 12 months, after which a GDA Step 2 Statement sets out ONR’s regulatory position at this point. Step 3 (detailed assessment) can take around 24 months. ONR will then publish one or both GDA Step 3 Statement and Decision Document.”

If a developer requires a GDA for the building of an SMR at one site only in the UK then the process can be halted after the successful conclusion of Step 2 followed by a Site Licence application. If the deployment of a particular SMR design is envisaged for multiple sites in the UK then Step 3 needs to be successfully concluded.

Although the four issues are supposed to be considered as an integrated whole, they can really be considered as two: safety determined by the Office for Nuclear Regulation and site approval determined by the Environment Agency.  Good progress was made on the former issue by the nuclear regulators in the US, Canada and UK agreeing that safety clearance in any one of the three would be regarded as approval by all three.  

The two-way (and hopefully now three-way) transatlantic agreement to harmonise the licensing process has thus far only tackled the administrative landscape work that occupies much of the first 2 years. There are few safety aspects to Stage 1 which could be reduced to 4 months in all 3 countries if a standardised and transportable approach is agreed. Note that activities covered by the various steps and/or stages of the UK, US and Canadian systems do not match precisely at this stage, and some harmonisation is still required. 

Stage 3 is where the actual design is critically scrutinised and an iterative dialogue with design teams is established. This work can take around 12-18 months depending upon the lineage and degree of novelty in the reactor design. If the applicant has a well-resourced design team that can respond quickly to regulator questions and design modifications, it can proceed quickly. In the case of the AP1000, there were still almost 1,000 issues raised by the ONR that remained (and still remain) unresolved. This is where delays can become significant and where developers may be to blame. Trying to design and license a new reactor on a shoestring budget can result in developers complaining to their shareholders that the regulator is being unreasonable. Institutional shareholders then lobby politicians to influence regulators to be more accommodating of the newcomers.

Terrapower has realised the importance of having an FOAK (First Of A Kind) site under development and adequate financial resources to quickly design, build and commission their first reactor. They are now putting pressure on the US NRC to bring the same urgency to their licensing application. 

There is one other point worth noting. The history of nuclear safety thus far, together with the accidents that have happened, have largely surrounded the use of water/steam as a coolant and transporter of heat energy from the reactor to where it is converted into mechanical and electrical energy. But when it comes to HTGRs and MSRs there is no high temperature and pressurised water in or around the reactor. These advanced SMRs have  much simpler and safer systems and this needs to be reflected in their design processing time.

How should it work? We need to distinguish, as the current system does not, between the traditional gigawatt reactors such as proposed for Sizewell C and small or advanced modular reactors (SMRs) which are rapidly coming onto the market. But more importantly we need to distinguish between an FOAK reactor that has never been licensed before and an NOAK (Nth Of A Kind) reactor for which design approval has already been awarded in either the US or Canada, or indeed another country that meets the UK’s exacting standards for nuclear licensing. With more than 20 SMR designs likely to make it to the licensing and construction stages in the next decade, the US, Canada and the UK can ill-afford to repeat the administrative and technical procedures given the time, staffing and financial constraints that each regulator is experiencing or is likely to experience once these designs are submitted. The US and Canadian regulators are already facing political pressure to speed up SMR design assessments and to be proportional given the size of these reactors when compared to giga scale reactors. The UK is limiting SMRs to a small number deemed most useful for the UK situation. However, adopting this line risks excluding exciting new technologies and applications from both the UK nuclear industry and the nation’s effort to decarbonise industry and power generation.

Of the possible new nuclear plants going through the mill in 2010, it was deemed necessary for their sile locations to be approved by 51 separate quangos. It was all a complete waste of time as in March 2011, Energy Secretary Huhne says Britain may back away from the use of nuclear energy because of safety fears and a potential rise in costs after the Fukushima disaster. No new nuclear plants were approved after  Sizewell B and Hinkley Point B in 1967. In other words, the process had become disapproval, not approval.

Future strategy: NOAK for Nuclear

The UK would be much better off if we abandoned trying to be first of a kind (FOAK) but aimed for Nth (NOAK). The advantages would be:

• The GDA process could be immensely streamlined as the environmental issues could mostly be taken from predecessor countries and, if Canada and/or the US had already given approval, the safety aspects could be eliminated altogether. Instead of starting from scratch, new GDAs should only have to look at environmental issues that differ from GDAs already approved.  For example, if the radioactive elements of SMRs were sited underground, approval of one should automatically apply to another similarly sited. 

• Hinkley Point C is a glaring example of the risks and costs of trying to be first. The French utility EDF, which is developing Hinkley Point C, has reported a cost increase to £33 billion (30% higher than initial estimates) and potential delays in its start date.

• Construction and operating skills would have been developed elsewhere first. A Science Direct paper took NOAK build time to be 6 years versus 10 for FOAK.

• The market would have had time to grow, be competitive and both capital and running costs reduce.

“The average capital cost of SMR NOAK plants currently under development worldwide is approximately $5,130 per kilowatt electric (kWe), which is estimated to be 30% less than FOAK plants. However, it’s essential to note that specific costs can vary based on factors such as design, location, and technology.”

From these comparisons, we should conclude that both for large Giga Watt reactors and SMRs, the UK should abandon its enthusiasm for being the world leader. NOAK is quicker, cheaper and more reliable. Nuclear skills can be the better learned from other countries as well as developing our own. The car industry has proved not just to be a UK success story, but a NOAK success story too.  Nuclear should learn from that. 

That targetted planning with strict conditionality

As we all know there’s a move to demand a new industrial policy. Government - those Rolls Royce minds - should determine what is done in our economy, by whom, how, and thereby gain such glorious results to the benefit of the nation.

Hmm, well, it’s an idea. Is there, though, some method by which we can test this? Before we gain that benefit to the nation or not? As it happens, yes. For the use of land has been nationalised since 1947. That’s when the Town and Country Planning Act did exactly that - centralised and nationalised who may use which piece of land for what to gain such glorious results to the benefit of the nation.

The Resolution Foundation has just told us how that has worked out over the 75 odd years:

If all households in the UK were fully exposed to our housing market, they would have to devote 22 per cent of their spending to housing services, far higher than the OECD average (17 per cent), and the highest level across the developed economies with the solitary exception of Finland.

We pay more than everyone else (except those Finns).

In 2018, for example, the floorspace per person in England was 38m2, compared to 43m2 in France (in 2020) and 46m2 in Germany (in 2017). We have been overtaken by Japan, at 40m2, and have less space per person than households in Taiwan, at 49m2. It is unsurprising that our homes are far smaller than in the US overall given its land mass but, strikingly, English floorspace per person is no bigger than that of residents of the central city district of the New York metropolitan area, who on average enjoy 43m2 of room.

We get less than everyone else, (even than those Finns).

Nationalisation of who may build houses where and in what form has led to more expensive housing of worse quality than places which do not have Rolls Royce minds doing that targetted planning with strict conditionality.

There we are, we’ve had a test of the contention and it’s a monstrously bad one. This is not, of course, a good thing to have happened. But it does have that silver lining of telling us what to do next.

First, and clearly, blow up the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 and successors. Blow it up properly, kablooie. Secondly, and even more obviously, tell those with arguing for targetted planning with strict conditionality where they can stick that idea.

Doing both of those will allow us to gain such glorious results to the benefit of the nation. Or, at least, do no worse than anyone else free of such impositions.

A trade deficit doesn't create debt Mr. Timothy

If we are to have a national conversation about trade, manufacturing, debts, foreigners buying up the country and so on then it would be a good and reasonable idea to get the underlying right first:

Economic theory, and generations of politicians, told us not to worry about leaving manufacturing behind.

We’ve not left manufacturing behind. Manufacturing output is still within a few percent of all time highs. It’s double what it was when St Maggie came to power.

Since we moved to a floating exchange rate, economists and politicians have claimed this does not matter. But the trade deficit is both a product of our problems and a cause. It is a product because we do not make, do or sell enough to the rest of the world. It is a cause because the arising current account deficit leads us to sell assets to foreign investors and build up external debt, which leaves us with less control over our economy, and more exposed to investors’ interests and increases in international interest rates.

Economists are right here. Which, given that we are talking about economics seems appropriate.

Then there is the budget deficit and stock of debt…..In 2024-25 Britain plans to issue a record £271 billion in new gilts, and the strangers upon whom we depend will demand higher yields. They will wonder about inflation – higher in services than goods – and the value of Sterling, and price British debt accordingly.

And here’s it’s necessary to become detailed - in order to show why the economists are right.

There is no connection - none - between the size of the national debt and anything to do with trade. We have a national debt because generations of politicians micturate the wealth of the country up the wall. They continually spend more than we the people are willing to pay in taxes - or more than the politicians are willing to try extracting from us. That’s the cause, the only cause, of the national debt.

The trade defict is indeed balanced - exactly, precisely - by a surplus on the capital account. That’s definitional. But while capital might flow in from foreigners into debt instruments - like gilts - it doesn’t have to. It can purchase assets outright. This then leads to the old Warren Buffett argument about Squanderville. What happens when Johnny Foreigner owns all the capital assets in the country?

The UK trade deficit is - of the order of - £80 billion a year, meaning we need to have that same amount coming in on the capital account. In one recent year the UK produced £1 trillion in new wealth. That’s a 9% rise in total wealth - and we sold 8% of that new wealth to foreigners. Thus at the end of the year foreigners owned less of the national wealth than at the beginning of it.

This does not strike us as being a problem.

Painful things to political arguments, facts are. But we do think that facts are where the arguments should start so let’s try doing that, eh?

Our real contempt is reserved for this argument:

Classical economic theory holds that it does not matter who owns what, nor what is made where. Comparative advantage means countries do what they are good at, and buy what other countries provide. Thus, trade makes us all richer.

But this is not the case. First, governments get in the way.

So the solution to governments getting in the way is that we should have more government getting in the way in order to solve the problem of government getting in the way. We all should be contemptuous of that silliness.