Banning private schools, another archaic and foolish idea from Old Labour

You would think that this subject had been settled long ago but it has hit the news again recently with Old Labour recycling some of their 1970s ideas. A motion to abolish private schools and redistribute their assets, backed by John McDonnell and having been agreed upon this conference, will be Labour policy from now on. Unlike some, I do not agree that Mr McDonnell demonstrates a hypocrisy in the argument considering he went to a private school. Indeed, McDonnell, himself, may be a good enough argument to support removing private schools. 

 There are well worn practical arguments - such as the cost and the impact abolishing private schools would have on the state sector. I believe these still stand and have not been sufficiently challenged. But, willing to put a few more nails in the coffin of an idea that intellectually speaking was killed years ago, I will put forward some more arguments (skip to the final two of the four points if short on time).  

Firstly, there’s an underlying principle which underpins the whole argument against public schools: that they simply aren't fair. Now if there is anything worse than an over-emotional and under-defined argument, it is one that is only applied to certain areas. For if being able to buy a better education is bad then there are other areas where this same principle would need to be applied. 

A 2016 article reported that more than a quarter of 11-16 year olds in the state system have been privately tutored at some point. Yet the reaction has not been to ban private tuition but to consider how to increase access. The chair of the Sutton Trust, Sir Peter Lampl said, "no-one wants to limit parents doing their best for their children, but we need to ensure that extra tuition is as widely available as possible. Otherwise, it will continue to widen the attainment gap." This is the discourse we should be having when it comes to private schools rather than a blanket ban campaign. 

Secondly, the fact that many privately educated children going to Oxbridge or Russell Group universities not inherently a bad thing. In fact, there is actually a sort of market mechanism operating beneath it. Private schools are motivated to maintain or improve their brand through sport, notable alumni, appearing charitable and, importantly, sending their students off to the best universities. In order to do this, they try to attract the best students and will be prepared to sacrifice lost fees in order to satisfy their goals in the long run. Scholarships are offered to the best applicants and generous bursaries are offered to ensure that the school can get the best and brightest who will achieve and reflect well on the school. These students' fees are paid for out of endowments, donations by alumni and current fees. Those paying full fees because they are not as high achievers but want to gain access to the brand are thereby subsidising the fees of their disadvantaged but more gifted peers. As a result, a hidden market operates where there is an indirect transfer from the wealthy to the less-wealthy that benefits both parties. 

Thirdly, there are many inequalities within the state sector. In the amusing, if not always properly thought through, documentary “How the middle class ruined Britain”, the presenter-comedian Geoff Norcott talks about how parents seek to play the system to get the best for their children. However, we cannot really blame these parents (who come from across the income spectrum) for trying to get the best for their children. It is clear that a market-based system would be a better way to allocate these resources rather than a socialist-style strategy of who can best exploit the bureaucratic frameworks. 

Finally and most importantly though, there is a better alternative to both the current system of schooling  and also to the Labour plan - school vouchers. In a previous blog post, “A Third Way for Education” a school voucher system is proposed as a far superior alternative to both our current divided system and forced attendance at state schools. It is time that the government realises that it should not have a role in the production of education but only in ensuring its provision. 

It is clear that banning private schools is the wrong reform to this issue and is a massive step in the wrong direction. The state should not be wasting its time in the day to day running of schools. It seems it knows this too, as it has already begun to increase the number of schools run on contract by private companies. However, we urge a better alternative to allow choice and competition to improve standards and reduce division. Abolishing private schools will in reality do little to reduce either of those goals.

The seeming absurdity of a Hayekian welfare state

Or perhaps not so absurd, this is a point that we’ve been making around here or some years now. There’s a difference between a high tax and high redistribution society and one in which government actually tries to do things. The second, once government goes beyond what really must and can only be done by government, doesn’t work well. The first is rather more to taste.

To explain the coexistence of economic freedom and big government, this paper distinguishes between big government in the fiscal sense of requiring high taxes, and big government in the Hayekian sense of requiring knowledge that is difficult to acquire from a central authority. The indicators of government size in measures of economic freedom capture the fiscal size but ignore the Hayekian knowledge problem. Thinking about government size in both the fiscal and Hayekian dimensions suggests the possibility of Hayekian welfare states where trust and state capacity facilitate experimentation and learning, resulting in a public sector that is big in a fiscal sense but not necessarily more vulnerable to the Hayekian knowledge problem. Pensions in Sweden are used as a case to illustrate the empirical relevance of the argument. The new pension system represents big government in a fiscal sense, but by relying on decentralized choice it requires relatively little central knowledge.

It is this which explains why those icy Nordic social democracies do in fact work. They’re not to our taste, we think they’d work better without the tax and redistribution but they do in fact work. But if we look at the usual sources - the Fraser Institute, Heritage Foundation rankings - we find that they’re rather more free market and capitalist than we in the UK are, more so even than the US along many axes. True, they then tax until eyes water but do so in economically efficient ways. Not on capital but upon income and consumption for example.

This all being rather important of course. For there are those who insist we should be more like Sweden. Very well Polly, let us be more like Sweden then. Government might move more money around but it does rather less all the same. On the grounds that government can move money around but we’ve a fair body of evidence showing that government’s not all that good at actually doing anything.

We’d even be willing to discuss the issue in more detail. While we’re not, as above, in favour of the high taxation and redistribution we’d still be interested in at least exploring laissez faire plus tax.

Number Ten's first Prime Minister

On September 22nd, 1735, Sir Robert Walpole, Britain's first Prime Minister (although the title was not used until much later), moved into Number Ten Downing Street (although it did not have that number then). Its famous door (through which it was not then entered) has become an iconic symbol of Britain's democratic government. That famous door was not added until 40 years later, and was made of oak until after the 1991 IRA mortar attack on the building, following which it was replaced by bomb-proof material. The black bricks that surround the door, separated from it by the cream-coloured casing, are in fact yellow underneath. They were turned black, as were nearly all London buildings, by the 19th and 20th Century smog of the coal fires that heated every home and the smoke from industrial chimneys. Since everyone was by then used to seeing them black, when they were cleaned in the 1960s they were painted black.

Walpole, with the support of two successive monarchs, became Britain's longest-serving Prime Minister, with a spell of more than 40 years. The kings valued his ability to deliver majorities in Parliament to have bills passed to become Acts of Parliament. George II was sufficiently grateful that when Downing Street reverted to the Crown, he offered it to Sir Robert. With admirable restraint, Sir Robert declined it as a personal gift, but suggested it be reserved for holders of the office of First Lord of the Treasury, then the Prime Minister's official title, and one today's Prime Ministers still hold. A brass plate beside the door of Number Ten testifies to this.

Walpole was a moderate. When Europe was at war, he preferred Britain to be out of it, and persuaded George II to stay out of the War of the Polish Succession. In 1733 he proclaimed, "There are 50,000 men slain in Europe this year, and not one Englishman." Without the costs of war, Walpole contrived to reduce taxes. The Land Tax went down from 4s in 1721, to 3s in 1728, 2s in 1731, and finally to 1s in 1732. He also established a Sinking Fund to reduce the National Debt.

He was trying gradually to shift the tax burden away from the gentry, who paid the land tax, and onto the merchants and their customers who paid customs and excise taxes. In modern terms he was trying very sensibly to shift the tax burden from stock to flow, but doing it gradually. He pointed out that gentry "squealed like hogs" at the tax burden, whereas merchants were more like sheep, giving up their wool peaceably.

He built up the Whig ascendency, but his low-key avoidance of controversy and his granting of more tolerance to religious dissenters won him support from moderates of both Whig and Tory groups. The historian H T Dickinson, one of my teachers, wrote, "Walpole was one of the greatest politicians in British history. He played a significant role in sustaining the Whig party, safeguarding the Hanoverian succession, and defending the principles of the Glorious Revolution." 

The residence at 10 Downing Street that he occupied is not what it seems. Walpole had the architect William Kent connect two houses, making the Downing Street front one effectively a passage through to the main building behind it. A corridor connects it to the Cabinet Office much further up Whitehall, and there is a tunnel under Whitehall that we're not supposed to know about that connects it to the Defence Ministry. What is now the Cabinet Room was used by Walpole as his study.

In many ways Ten Downing Street resembles the British constitution it safeguards. There is much more to it than the outward appearance might suggest, and it adapts and changes over time to meet the new challenges it is called upon to face. Yet it preserves the outward form, providing reassurance of continuity. It is modest, rather than grandiose, reminding us that the Prime Minister is a person like us, who lives in a house, as we do, rather than some god-like remote dignitary. Its understated presence reminds us, too, that government and Parliament in this country are here to serve the people, not the other way round.

When people move house, a removal van pulls up outside their house. That is, quite rightly, what happens in Ten Downing Street when we change governments.

Carbon abolition misunderstands the entire climate change problem

Talk about entirely missing the point:

It is time to do this for climate change: to make human carbon pollution illegal in every country in the world. It is time for a “carbon abolition” movement, to put an end to emissions.

The justification for this is:

Human-induced climate change is a moral wrong. It involves one group of humans harming others. People of this generation harming those in future generations. People in the developed world harming those in the developing world. Each of us is emitting carbon that is harming those caught in climate-driven superstorms, floods, droughts and conflicts. And there’s the greatest moral wrong of all – the mass extinction event we have triggered that harms all life on Earth.

Yet until recently, climate change has not been argued as a moral issue. Rather, it has been presented as a technocratic problem, a cost-benefit problem, where the costs of action must be weighed against the benefits of avoiding disaster. The debates have been around taxes, jobs, growth and technologies. While such debates are important – there are better and worse ways to tackle the climate crisis – the effect has been decades of inaction, denial and delay. When something is a moral wrong, particularly a deep, systemic moral wrong, we don’t wait around debating the optimal path or policy; we stop it.

Which is to entirely miss the point. Emissions also have benefits. Things like transport, heating, cooking, civilisation itself. Therefore the discussion must revolve around the costs and benefits of emitting and the costs and benefits of not emitting. We need, that is, the optimal level of emissions in order to maximise human utility over time.

You know, exactly the interesting question that the work of William Nordhaus, Nick Stern, Marty Weitzman and every other economist who has ever even glanced at the subject discusses.

If there were no cost to “carbon abolition” then we wouldn’t in fact have a problem in the first place. This demand is worse than merely utopian, it’s simply wrong.

It also rather misses the point that making something illegal doesn’t stop it - we only have to look at drugs policy to see that.

H G Wells - the future seen through fiction

Described as the most important English writer of his age, H G Wells was born on September 21st, 1866, and died in 1946, shortly before his 80th birthday. His international fame is demonstrated by his appearance in the cover of Time magazine on the day before his 60th birthday.

He wrote novels, especially science fiction stories that anticipated the future. He managed to make the impossible seem believable, and his record of prediction is impressive. Writing in the late 19th and very early 20th Centuries, he anticipated space travel, aerial warfare, motor transport that led to commuting and suburban spread, changing sexual mores, world wars, and a “world brain” that held all the information. He even foresaw a federal Europe, but thought the UK would be happier to be involved with the US and the English-speaking dominions.

His science fiction novels included The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), The War of the Worlds (1898), The First Men in the Moon (1901), and later The Shape of Things to Come (1933). The last formed the basis for the spectacular 1936 movie, Things to Come, for which Wells wrote the script. It predicted World War II, but had a group of scientists taking over the world to make it more rational.

This reflected Wells’ own outlook of an idealized socialism. He was at one time a member of the socialist Fabian Society, and twice stood as a Labour Party candidate for the University of London. He interviewed Stalin in Moscow, but mixed his praise with criticism of the USSR’s state violence and suppression of free speech. He wrote extensively on human rights, including The Rights of Man (1940), which was drawn upon heavily in the UN’s 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights.

HG Wells was undoubtedly well-meaning. He genuinely wanted humankind to live in a kinder, cleaner, more rational world. Like many idealistic socialists, he thought other people were like himself, and did not take account of the baser, more self-serving motives that some pursue, and which need mechanisms to control and, if possible, divert to the general good. The market does this to some extend by giving rewards to those who provide goods and services that people value.

His other drawback might have been what F A Hayek called The Fatal Conceit, the supposition that one can think up a better world from scratch, using only the power of reason, rather than building upon and adapting what has been tried and tested over generations. After what we have witnessed, it seems a somewhat naïve belief.

Despite these obvious drawbacks, Wells served to inspire those who yearned for a better world, one whose imperfections were removed, and one from which men and women, now united in common cause, could go out to expand humanity's dominions into the unknown.

The closing lines from Things to Come, thrill us still. Passworthy asks, “Oh, god, is there ever to be any age of happiness? Is there never to be any rest?” And Cabal replies “Rest enough for the individual man—too much, and too soon—and we call it death. But for Man, no rest and no ending. He must go on, conquest beyond conquest. First this little planet with its winds and waves, and then all the laws of mind and matter that restrain him. Then the planets about him and at last out across immensity to the stars. And when he has conquered all the deeps of space and all the mysteries of time, still he will be beginning.”

It's quite an ambition.

The actual problem with the Green New Deal

Both here and in the US there’s this thing called the Green New Deal. A vast and transformative project to, well, actually, to move the world over to an entirely different economic structure. The claimed justification being the need to deal with climate change. Caroline Lucas is to launch the proposal for legislation. There’s a problem with it though:

It’s been more than 10 years in the making, and is the top demand of the youth strikers gathering on Friday for the UK’s largest ever climate protest – which is why Friday is also the first attempt in Britain to put legislation in place to make a Green New Deal a reality for our country. Working with the Labour MP Clive Lewis, I am launching the full version of a Green New Deal bill (formal title, the decarbonisation and economic strategy bill), which sets out a transformative programme driven by the principles of justice and equity. It aims to move our economy away from its harmful dependence on carbon, at the scale and speed demanded by the science, and to build a society that lives within its ecological limits while reversing social and economic inequality.

The problem being that selection of words, justice, equity, social, economic, inequality. None of which have anything to do with climate change of course.

Assume that we do have that technical problem of climate change, as the IPCC avers. The science of how to deal with it is well known. It’s a technical problem with a technical solution, the carbon tax. As we have droned boringly on about for at least the past decade.

There is nothing at all within this solution that requires the following:

and the eradication of inequality

Climate change is being used as an excuse to impose an extremely partial meaning of the words justice, equity, social, economic, inequality. A meaning which very large portions of the population don’t agree with - as evidenced by the fact that no plurality, let alone majority, has ever voted to impose the meanings being used here upon us all.

For that reason, if no other, the proposal must be rejected.

There are, of course, other reasons too. Like the manner in which all of the science of climate change - William Nordhaus, The Stern Review, the IPCC’s own reports and economic models - say that this isn’t even the correct way to deal with climate change itself. The carbon tax is.

We’re in a Rahm Emmanuel world here, never letting a crisis go to waste. The correct response to such manipulations being an Anglo Saxon wave and then going off to do the right thing instead.

A Third Way for Education

Our school system is far from perfect. 

At the moment reform is being dominated by the left. In the upcoming Labour party conference, a motion, backed by John McDonnell, has been tabled to make it Labour policy to abolish all private schools. This is a massive step up from the already radical proposals from the Labour party. At the same time the Conservative party, unironically, have nothing to do but argue for a continuation of the current system. There must be an alternative to both of these suboptimal realities, a ‘third way,’ if you like, and there is – school vouchers.

A purist school voucher system is where the state has no role in the production of education. There is no “state school” or “private school” distinction. All schools are operated by either charities or businesses. The government however gives a ‘voucher’ or an amount of money indexed in some way to fee inflation to guarantee an education. In this system the state still remains 100% committed to a promise to provide education but is no longer involved in the production of education.  

The current system has created a two opposing systems, with private schools (generally) far superior to state schools. You would think it is common sense to try and help those stuck in the inferior system to access the better system. Instead of two blocs always set against each other in public debates, school vouchers would remove "The Berlin Wall " between them (as the New Statesman puts it) and allow a more sustainable and desirable spectrum to emerge. It would create a system that more accurately reflects our modern society that is no longer divided upon binary lines. Indeed, the BBC states how in "countries where privately-managed schools receive higher proportions of public funding, there is less social segregation". A school voucher system could help bring more equality to our system. 

It is important to remember as well that abolishing private schools would still not bring about an equal schooling system. Currently grammar schools, postcode lotteries and disparity from one local authority to another simply masks inequality in a non-market system. Instead of parents having the option to pay more for a better education they are instead forced to play complex games to get their children into the best school. 

There are no complaints of the inequalities that exist within the independent school system. There would still be some who would not pay any more towards fees and thus remain in a school similar to that which they are currently in but most would probably pay more. Importantly, however, they will be able to pay a little for a little improvement rather than fork out the tens of thousands needed to just get into the independent sector.

Another advantage would be that with a national school voucher that is the same amount for everyone there would be an embedded market mechanism to benefit less affluent areas. In poorer areas of the country wages are lower and thus the voucher spending per pupil will go further for each pupil. Furthermore, school vouchers would bring increased efficiencies as both price and non-price competition result in parents and the state getting better value for money. 

As we can see there is a ‘third way’ so to speak between the sub-optimal scenarios of a divisive status quo and a sterile, restrictive socialist proposal. School vouchers can bring about a more diverse education system that reflects our modern society. Putting choice and competition at the heart of our education system will help to deliver the best education for our children. 

A panic started a depression

The panic of 1873 triggered a worldwide recession, starting in the US. On September 20th the New York Stock Exchange suspended trading for the first time, and closed for 10 days. The panic resulted from speculative over-investment in railroads that followed the end of the Civil War. In the five years from 1868 - 1873, some 33,000 miles of track was laid, some resulting from government land grants and subsidies, but mostly funded on borrowed money from the sale of bonds. Vast amount of capital went into railway projects that seemed to offer no immediate or early returns.

By November some 55 railroad companies had folded, and a further 60 went bankrupt within a year. Construction of new track dropped 80 percent, and within two years 18,000 businesses failed. Building stopped, real estate values fell, and profits vanished. In the US the depression was dubbed the “Great Depression” until the crash of 1929, after which it was renamed the “Long Depression.” It lasted until 1878/9.

Its ripples caused an economic depression that lasted longer in Europe. In Britain it began two decades of economic stagnation. Part of it was a consequence on the US Coinage Act of 1873 that had stopped redemption of currency in silver. Part of it was President Lincoln’s printing of paper money to finance the Civil War. But for the most part it was brought about by uninhibited enthusiasm for railroad expansion, the new craze.

A pattern seems to repeat itself in the history of finance. Tulips, the Darien Scheme, the South Sea Bubble, and more recently the dotcom bubble, all seem to involve enthusiastic over-investment followed by a crash and shakeout when panic grips the market and more sober calculation takes over.

Some paint this as a failure of capitalism, but it could be argued that this is part and parcel of how capitalism works. Investment in new ventures that can boost productivity and profit takes place all the time, but at times people are carried away by “animal spirits” and throw caution go the winds in their desire not to miss out on the new big thing. The panic and the collapse redistribute capital, that which is not simply lost, and more balanced judgement leads people to invest more cautiously. Panic and market collapse constitute the ‘error’ part of the trial and error that characterizes how the market progresses and how wealth is gained.

Some economists theorize that the business cycle is part of the process, and a valuable part at that, in that it clears out the deadwood and the marginal, and concentrates resources where they can add value. They suggest that when people such as Alan Greenspan and Gordon Brown try to smooth it, to abolish its downturns, they are doing the economy no favour, but are allowing anomalies to build up to make the ‘bust’ bigger and more damaging when it comes.

Certainly the post-Greenspan crash of 2008 outdid all the smaller downturns that had been previously smoothed added together. And when Gordon Brown, a year before the big Financial Crisis claimed to have abolished boom and bust, he turned out to have been only half right.

George Monbiot falls for a spoof - and is wrong to boot

The advantage of a newspaper over whoever just publishing stuff on the internet is those teams of editors who have a look at stuff before the print button is pushed. Well, sometimes:

The most expensive yacht in the world, costing £3bn, is a preposterous slab of floating bling called History Supreme. It carries 100 tonnes of gold and platinum wrapped around almost every surface, even the anchor.

That’s actually a spoof press release from 2011 rather than an extant boat. Still, at least The Guardian manages to spell its own masthead correctly these days. Most days.

Sadly the credulity doesn’t stop there.

Immense wealth translates automatically into immense environmental impacts, regardless of the intentions of those who possess it. The very wealthy, almost as a matter of definition, are committing ecocide.

The contention is that a billionaire emits more than a non-billionaire. Which would seem to be true. But that’s not the end of it. Imagine that the $5 billion that wasn’t spent on the yacht were instead spread among 5,000 people - that concentration of great wealth were more evenly distributed. We think that 5,000 millionaires are going to emit less than the one billionaire? Or down some orders of magnitude again. $1,000 in wealth for 5 million people will produce fewer emissions than the toys of a billionaire?

There is also this:

Another issue is that wealth limits the perspectives of even the best-intentioned people. This week, Bill Gates argued in an interview with the Financial Times that divesting (ditching stocks) from fossil fuels is a waste of time. It would be better, he claimed, to pour money into disruptive new technologies with lower emissions. Of course we need new technologies. But he has missed the crucial point: in seeking to prevent climate breakdown, what counts is not what you do but what you stop doing. It doesn’t matter how many solar panels you install if you don’t simultaneously shut down coal and gas burners. Unless existing fossil fuel plants are retired before the end of their lives, and all exploration and development of new fossil fuel reserves is cancelled, there is little chance of preventing more than 1.5C of global heating.

For the sake of argument accept that emissions must be stopped and now. What’s the best manner of achieving this? Having the new technology that people preferentially switch to clearly.

Say, just as an example, that the Bill Gates backed mini-nuclear reactors all cost $1 and actually work. We’ve now near unlimited and near free energy. All those fossil fuel plants will close by lunchtime. It is precisely by the new technology outcompeting the old that we gain the switch away from whatever it was that we used to use and do.

Sadly, Monbiot doesn’t grasp these most basic facts. But then we’ve already that evidence of his credulity leading him into error, don’t we?

The Hong Kong transfer treaty

On September 19th, 1984, the UK and China agreed the English and Chinese texts of what came to be known as the Sino-British Joint Declaration. It set out the details of Hong Kong’s status when sovereignty was transferred on 1st July 1997. The Chinese had argued that Hong Kong should simply revert to being Chinese territory when the UK’s lease expired, since the historical treaties that underpinned that lease were acquired under duress. They ruled out any prospect of a continuation of British administration, but in discussions the idea emerged of Hong Kong being a Special Administration Region of the People’s Republic of China, a region with a high degree of self-government, and with the preservation of its lifestyle.

In particular, the document set out that Hong Kong should enjoy a high degree of autonomy, “except for foreign and defence affairs.”

“It shall be allowed to have executive, legislative and independent judicial power, including that of final adjudication. The Basic Law explains that in addition to Chinese, English may also be used in organs of government and that apart from the national flag and national emblem of the PRC the HKSAR may use a regional flag and emblem of its own. It shall maintain the capitalist economic and trade systems previously practised in Hong Kong.”

The UK’s Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, was criticized for reaching an agreement with a Communist government headed by its Paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping, but the truth was that she had limited options. The UK government declared that "the alternative to acceptance of the present agreement is to have no agreement," which to modern ears sounds like “this flawed deal is better than no deal.”

The UK was in no position to resist militarily, and sought to obtain the best deal it could for its Hong Kong subjects. The Chinese, aware that the world was watching, was ready to agree a formula that might one day entice Taiwan to agree to a similar accommodation. Thus the idea of “one nation, two systems” took shape in the Joint Declaration.

Hong Kong, under the benign leadership of its Treasurer, Sir John Cowperthwaite, had gone from being a subsistence economy on a small land lacking resources into becoming a world-class economy with an enviable standard of living, greater than the UK itself enjoyed. It was living evidence that low tax, relatively unfettered, capitalism could generate wealth for a people on a scale previously undreamed of. Its economy was a vital part of China’s own economic progress when it abandoned socialism and allowed capitalism to flourish, so China had every reason to preserve Hong Kong’s economic success.

To strengthen the UK’s hand in the subsequent negotiations, the Adam Smith Institute published in 1989 “A Home for Enterprise,” calling for Hong Kong citizens to be offered the right to settle in the UK if they chose. We rather cheekily suggested that a Scottish island should be made available for them to repeat the success they had made years previously in Hong Kong. The aim was to let the Chinese know that the Hong Kong people had another option if they found Chinese conditions unacceptable

The heavy-handed Chinese attempt to allow extradition to mainland China for trial clearly rides roughshod over the treaty they agreed to, since “independent judicial power, including that of final adjudication” is part of a deal they signed. As the document sets out, "The whole makes up a formal international agreement, legally binding in all its parts. An international agreement of this kind is the highest form of commitment between two sovereign states."

The Hong Kong people naturally protested this flagrant violation of the international treaty, but once again, there is little any outsiders can do other than exert moral pressure. The ASI has renewed its call for British passport holders in Hong Kong to be given the full rights of British citizens, including the right to settle here. If this were to be done, the People’s Republic would denounce it as post-colonialist interference, but it might well make them tread more carefully.