The most popular pre-order book at present is the autobiography of Aleksander, the cartoon meerkat from those comparison site ads. His catchphrase is : SIMPLE!
This is probably too simple a thought but there does seem, with the news that the UK's contribution to the EU is to INCREASE while everything else is being cut, to be a more widespread questioning of the usefulness of EU membership. Undoubtedly, further revelations of the profligacy of the EU's bloated bureaucracy will follow and further shift public opinion against continuing UK membership of the EU.
In terms of welfare reform, the rhetoric is to 'make work pay'. So far, the coalition has been weak on specifics. They avoid specifying detail but that seems to be because they have not thought it through themselves. They have also failed to think through the implementation issues arising from their broad policy objectives. Will work be made to pay by increasing the minimum wage? That would be a no. Will benefit levels fall below minimum wage levels? Yes. Will benefits be time-limited? Yes. Will benefits be means-tested? Almost certainly, yes. But will any of these measures create the jobs for people to move to as they come off benefits? That is a different category of question. It's not about pushing people out of one system [the benefits system]; it's about providing places for them within a different system [employment].
How that will be achieved is, at best, vague. Ian Duncan Smith seems to presume that the private sector will fill the jobs gap. I am not even going to touch on the massive task of preparing the long-term benefit-dependent for useful work. That is yet another enormous challenge. I am just considering the potential for job creation during this parliament. What IDS has set out is how people will be moved out of benefits. Will there be employment destinations for them?
So, what has any of this got to do with Europe? Do you remember all those jobs Gordon Brown was so proud of having created? That was until it was established that 98.5% of them had gone to migrant labour. IDS and his colleagues talk about the global economy in terms of international trade. What they seem to have ignored is the European context for the job market. IDS can do all he likes to bring benefit levels and minimum wage into the 'appropriate' balance. That is a UK specific matter. A fruit farmer in Kent said that it was now more than 20 years since her apples were picked by English workers. Now the pickers are from Romania, Poland, Spain. One Polish worker in the UK told me that she could never foresee any economic future where it was to her financial advantage to return home. Are all of these migrant workers about to walk away from jobs they have uprooted themselves to get? They will stay as long as Britain's EU membership entitles them to stay.
In the international politico-economic forum it appears that the EU is preoccupied with the health of the Euro, a currency unrelated to Britain's economic recovery. If the EU is too expensive, not focussed on UK needs, destructive to UK industries [particularly fishing], and adversely influencing the UK job market, then maybe the radical option is to withdraw from membership. 'Think the unthinkable', they say.
If we withdraw from the EU, we would save £ 6.5bn every year in contributions and release the jobs needed for those moving on from benefits. As Aleksandr might say, SIMPLE!
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