Corbyn's win and the future of politics

The election of Jeremy Corbyn as the new Labour Party leader tells us three things. First, that we have (deservedly) lost faith in the prevailing political class. Second, that the old class-and-age-based party alliances are dead. And third, that things are going to be a lot more interesting (if also a little worrying). First, Corbyn (like Donald Trump in the Republican Party election in the US) did well because he does not follow the accepted norms for politicians. For one thing, he didn't wear a suit in regulation camera-friendly plain colours or, like rival Andy Burnham, blue-grey and the regular white shirt and camera-friendly plain tie too. Indeed, there was speculation that Corbyn's minders had briefly got him to dispose of his undershirt, but this hope was soon dashed. He was neither clean-shaven nor coiffured. Unlike the others he looked like a regular person, in fact – acting his age as a mature person who does not need to dress like a mannequin to be taken seriously, but can be taken seriously on his experience alone.

Maybe that is why he used just two words when the others used ten. He had no need to exert his presence by filling the available airtime, because his presence alone was quite sufficient, and the views he was expressing were so gripping. No need to fill the airways with platitudes when you can simply drop one or two bombshells and enjoy the silence.

The reason why he gripped the debate and garnered the votes was precisely that. Whatever you might think of his positioning, he seems like the sort of person you can have an honest conversation with in the pub, rather than someone who believes nothing and spouts focus-group-tested soundbites at you. Britain, it seems – or at least the Labour side of it – is ready for such straight talking after the porage of the Blair-Cameron era. The fact is that we are fed up with identikit politicians and want leaders who will take firm views on things they believe in – even if we sometimes disagree with them.

Second, with this stance, Corbyn can attract new people to his side of politics, breaking them away from their traditional tribes (as the LibDems tried, but failed to do). Mrs Thatcher, similarly, had strong support in the working-class and Northern areas that were hardly traditional Tory heartland communities. They voted for her, even though they disagreed with much of what she did, because at least she looked like a leader, who knew where she was going, and not as a cipher that could let us drift off down the path to hell if it seemed to be less controversial. And there are a lot of potential things coming up that might split old alliances too – such as Scottish devolution and the EU referendum. The Labour Party in Scotland is dead, but might a more-left UK Labour Party be more willing to do a deal, or be more able to pick up the votes of disgruntled Scots? It all suggests that a Corbyn-led Labour Party (if it can hold together) could well pick up all kinds of new support from new places, and from non-voters who have given up on Westminster government entirely.

Third, all that is going to be interesting. The Labour (or indeed Tory) moderates who try to paint Corbyn as a dangerous nutter will seem as significant as the temperance campaigners who complained that Churchill drank too much.

With any luck the old consensus in which we drift gracefully into more and more public spending and more and more regulation and more and more intrusive legislation over our lives might suffer a shock, as it did in the Thatcher era. It probably won't last long until we are drowned in cross-party porage again, but enjoy it while it lasts, if you enjoy a white-knuckle ride that is.

Nationalising the railways might be popular but perhaps not for the reason people think

Owen Jones tells us that Labour should, to beat the Greens, announce some really popular policy like re-nationalising the railways. And this might well be popular but perhaps not for the reason that people are assuming:

But there are three clear commitments Labour could offer to win over Green defectors. First, renationalise the railways. It would cut through like few other policies, and probably prompt some voters to break out in spontaneous applause. Polling demonstrates a publicly owned railway has near-universal appeal, winning over well-heeled Tory commuters and Ukip voters alike. But it also has a totemic quality about it: a clear demonstration that Labour has taken a decisive stance against the untrammelled market in the era of market failure.

The real complaint, we feel, about the railways is not over who owns and or runs them. It's over the price of them.

It's common enough to see people complaining that UK ticket prices are among the highest in Europe. And they are, as a result of a deliberate political decision. More of the revenue to keep them running comes from ticket prices and less from direct subsidy than in most other countries. And that's the correct decision too. There's Britons who don't use a train from one decade to another: difficult to see why they should be taxed to provide cheaper transport for others.

And that's why nationalisation won't make much difference. Because doing so isn't going to reverse that decision that, by and large, people who use trains are the people who should pay to keep trains running. The only way ticket prices will come down is if the taxpayer gets dunned for it. And why should we?

Another exercise in rewriting economic history

It is just so fun watching people rearranging the historical deckchairs to make sure that their tribe looks good and that the tribe of their opponents can be portrayed as those nasty, 'orrible, people over there. And so it is with this latest from Ha Joon Chang:

First, let’s look at the origins of the deficit. Contrary to the Conservative portrayal of it as a spendthrift party, Labour kept the budget in balance averaged over its first six years in office between 1997 and 2002. Between 2003 and 2007 the deficit rose, but at 3.2% of GDP a year it was manageable.

Quite: in those first few years Blair and Brown held to the spending limits that had been suggested by the previous, outgoing, Tory government. On the basis that if anyone thought they were the spendthrift Labour party of old then they wouldn't get elected. So there was, in there, a period of a public sector surplus. It's only after the second election that they ripped up that idea of fiscal restraint and became that Labour party of old again. So "balance" over the six years is actually a couple of years of Tory policy then spend, spend, spend.

And a deficit of 3.2% a year might be manageable: except of course it wasn't, was it? But more importantly it is a grave violation of the precepts of Keynesian economics to be having a deficit of any sort at that point in the economic cycle. If we are to take Keynesian demand management seriously (we don't, but let us do so arguendo) then yes, there should be fiscal expansion in the slumps. But the counterpart to that is that in the boom there should be restraint: a surplus, not a deficit. This is not to pay off the previous debt, it's not to create the borrowing room to provide the firepower for that next slump. It's because demand management means that you temper the booms as well as the busts. Given that the middle part of the Brown/Blair Terror was in fact the tail end of the longest modern peacetime boom then the public accounts should have been healthily in surplus. In order to temper that boom.

Chang is doing an edit to history here, to show that his tribe is better than the other one. Given the circumstances of the time Labour really were sailor-type drunken loons going on a spree with the nation's chequebook and don't let anybody tell you different.

The mansion tax is theft, a bit at a time

Labour's mansion tax was already starting to unravel even before Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls tried to save it with a few palliatives today. When you have left-wing Labour MP Diane Abbott complaining that the mansion tax would be little more than a tax on Londoners, and when other MPs and candidates nursing slim majorities are worrying that the tax might hit their own voters, and not just rich Tories, you know it's time to throw in the towel.

Strange, is it not, how politicians never ask how they could cut their own spending, but only think about how they can raise taxes from other people. Mr Balls reckons he can raise £1.2bn from the tax, which he says would come in handy for the NHS, he reckons (though the emerging black hole in the NHS budget is much larger than that). How does he know? He says much of the tax would come from foreigners with big houses in London, but does not seem to know how many of them there are. No, as usual, it will be the Great British public who foot most of the bill, and not just the rich. Tens of thousands of homes in London will be caught by it, for example, where the average price in a 'prime area' will probably hit the £2m mansion tax threshold by the time of the 2015 election. And 'prime' includes areas like Battersea and Clapham, not just swanky Kensington and Chelsea.

There are already plenty of taxes on property. Not only is there the council tax, but there is stamp duty when you buy a house and inheritance tax when you give it to your kids. Now the plan is to add another, of perhaps £4,000 a year.

We all know what will happen. The tax will be imposed on properties of £2m, and over the years, thanks to (politician-created) inflation and (politician-created) planning restrictions, the cost of property will rise. More and more properties will be hit by the 'mansion' tax (yes, including broom cupboards in Kensington), just as more and more people now pay the 40% higher rate of income tax, which was originally targeted at the wealthy but is now paid by people like teachers and police officers.

And our tax (and subsidy) system is already highly progressive. Wealthier people pay higher taxes of many kinds, while poorer areas get subsidies through the local government finance system.

The mansion tax is theft, a bit at a time. There will be many people who happen to live in large houses but have little or nothing in the way of income (such as those on pensions) with which to pay the tax. Perhaps the house was their childhood home and they can't face moving. Moving is a strain even for the most robust of us. Ed Balls says, well maybe poorer people could defer the tax until they sell the house or pass it on after their death. But that makes the tax even more complicated - it is going to need a means test and a lot of extra bureaucracy, more lines on the tax form and all the stuff that has already got us in such an overtaxed bureaucratic pickle. This is a tax we could well do without.

Why Miliband is wrong on energy policy

This article was originally published in the Young Fabian’s quarterly magazine, Anticipations (Volume 18, Issue 1 | Autumn 2014). On this we will agree: the corporate monopoly dominating the UK energy market needs to come to an end. Currently, British customers have a total of six firms to choose from in the energy market, all of which offer very limited price distinctions.

And those prices keep going up. Since 2010, gas and electricity rates have risen by three times the rate of inflation (10.2% between 2010-2013). Quite rightly, the Big Six are constantly under attack from very political party in the UK for over-charging customers and raising retail prices, even when wholesale costs fall. With such little competition in the energy market, mega-firms can charge extortionate prices, and customers have no choice but to pay the bill.

Another point of agreement: a change in government regulation is key to breaking up this monopoly. Both Labour and Conservatives acknowledge that government regulations, like Ofgem, aren’t holding the Big Six accountable for what they charge customers. Over the past few years, party leaders have come up with new variants of the Regulatory State to combat the problem. Most recently (and most misguidedly) Ed Miliband has advocated for a government-mandated freeze on energy prices, which would force firms to fix their prices for 20 months, regardless of future changes in market conditions.

Why is this misguided? Let’s put aside Miliband’s refusal to acknowledge the costs that are loaded on to energy companies by the state (ie: requirements to source energy from renewables), which in turn, gets pushed onto the customer and focus on a second, more important point: Miliband’s policy proposals reinforce the energy monopoly.

It’s near impossible to create a market monopoly without help from the ultimate monopoly; that is, competition in the market place is so often drowned out, not by competitors, but by the state.

The energy sector is a prime example of well-intentioned government regulation gone awry. The sector is regulated so heavily, through both onerous compliance requirements and heavy taxation, that it is near impossible for any budding energy firm to compete with the Big Six. In its effort to stop energy firms from over-charging customers, the state has effectively regulated all competitors out of the market, re-enforcing the monopoly it was trying to prevent.

The bureaucratic, slow-moving nature of government bodies means that they are not equipped to understand or anticipate the unpredictability of market prices on energy. The security of energy supplies, complexities of long-term contracts, and real commodity costs are often dismissed by politicians who have made unsustainable, politically motivated promises to voters. Whilst the Big Six have no incentive to bring energy prices down when they can, a Labour prime minister would have no incentive to bring the prices up even when he must.

Britain needs appropriate, scaled back monitoring of the energy market that removes ‘safeguards’ for the Big Six’s market share and introduces healthy competition in the market place. A less-regulated system where consumer choice dictates the real price of energy would see monthly bills drop. But piling price fixation on top of bad regulations will produce a lot of heat and very little light.

£8 minimum wage hype: political trick, economic disaster, moral outrage

Britain’s Labour Party leader Ed Miliband says that a Labour government would boost the national minimum wage to £8 an hour, an increase of about £60 per week, by 2020. He says the UK economy is booming, and the low-paid should get a bigger share of it. Actually, at present rates of growth, the minimum wage will be close to £8 in 2020 anyway, so this is a one of those political sensations that doesn't amount to much. Even so, it is foolhardy now to commit UK businesses to pay any specific figure in 2020, since anything could happen in the meantime.

The minimum wage gets unthinking politicians (and not just Labour leaders) dewy-eyed. 'We can't have people being paid a wage that isn't enough to live on.' 'Businesses should pay their workers more, and take less profit.' 'The minimum wage hasn't killed jobs as the doomsayers say.' You know the story.

In fact, high minimum wages do destroy jobs. in particular, they destroy those starter jobs, the low-paid, temporary jobs that once gave young people their first step on the jobs ladder – pumping petrol (as I did), stacking bags in supermarkets, ushering people to their seats at the flicks. Now those jobs don't exist, because they are not worth the minimum wage (plus all the National Insurance and the burden of workplace regulation that goes with them – a particular burden on small firms). So we have a million young people out of work.

As for profit, try using that argument on anyone running a small business, already weighed down by taxes, rates, and regulation. Often they are getting less than their lowest-paid employees, and working longer hours for it Higher minimum wages mean they can afford to employ fewer people, or provide less generous perks and conditions.

I don't want to live in a country where people can't afford to live on what they take home either. That is why we have a welfare system, to top up the earnings of the lowest paid. We need a negative income tax – above the line, you pay tax, below the line, you get cash benefits – structured so that you are always better off in work than out of it. A paying job, even a low-paid job, is the best welfare system the human mind can devise.

And we must take low-paid people out of tax and national insurance entirely. Then more small firms could afford to take on more low-skilled workers and give them that first step on the jobs ladder.

If we could simply vote ourselves higher pay, why stop at £8? Why not fix the minimum wage at £800 an hour. The answer is obvious. The only people who would be worth that amount to anyone would be a few Premier League footballers, rock stars, investment bankers and high-class hookers. The rest of us would be out of a job.

The minimum wage does no harm to people who are already earning it, though it does them no good either. But it does positive harm to those earning less, or those who cannot get a job at all. The former will be let go, or will have to endure worse conditions; the latter will find it very much harder to get a job. And all that, of course, has already happened.

Why Labour's rent controls will do more harm than good

Now that we have more detail, Labour’s new ‘rent control’ policy is not quite as bad as I'd initially feared. Instead of the old school price ceilings that destroyed parts of New York City, Labour are proposing ‘second-generation rent controls’, which limit the ability of landlords to renegotiate rents during tenancies, and ‘make three-year tenancies the norm’.

The real-world effects of this are likely to be that expected rent increases over the three-year lease will be priced in to the starting rent, so it’s unlikely to actually make anyone better off unless there’s an unexpected increase in rents. If rents fall below expectations, this would hurt tenants.

Since landlords are bound within tenancy agreements, rises in rents are likely to be sharper than they currently are for new tenants. This means that housing mobility is likely to be reduced – tenants locked in to a relatively low rent will find it more costly than they otherwise would to move. This is very important: it looks as if lowered housing mobility causes higher unemployment, because people are less able to move to find new jobs.

Rent controls of any kind are likely to decrease the supply and quality of available housing. ‘Second-generation’ controls are less tight and so less harmful than classical rent controls, but as Hopi Sen has pointed out, the German experience does not seem encouraging. There, rents have risen far more quickly over the past decade than they have in Britain, as new construction has slowed.

There is also evidence to suggest that second-generation rent controls have a similarly negative impact on housing quality as classical rent controls. A 1985 study by the Richmond Fed found that controlled housing units were 7.1% lower in quality in 1974, and 13.5% lower in 1977, pointing to a cumulative negative effect. If classical rent controls are only worse than bombing, second-generation controls may be close to petty vandalism.

One interesting aspect of this announcement is that it may affect supply now, as would-be investors in new housing are discouraged by the prospect of stricter controls on their investment. If the measures are actually brought in – crossing the rent control Rubicon – an expectation of tighter controls may reduce supply even more.

It’s not clear what mechanism Labour is proposing to make three-year tenancies ‘the norm’, but it’s hard to imagine any effective measure that would not end up hurting tenants who want shorter leases. This probably means young people.

As we say virtually every day, the best way to reduce the cost of housing is to build more. Labour’s proposals seem counter-productive, but they’re nothing compared to the harm caused by the planning system.

We recently learned that more of Surrey is covered by golf courses than by houses. Rolling the green belt out even a bit – by, say, a mile outside London – would create space for hundreds of thousands of new homes, relieving pressure on existing housing stock, reducing rents and – a nice bonus – creating lots of jobs and adding a few percentage points on to GDP growth. We can dream.

The progressive approach to immigration looks a lot like the conservative one

In a way, it’s refreshing that Yvette Cooper’s speech on immigration today has identified ‘free market liberals’ as the main advocates of freer immigration policies. There aren’t many of us, though, so we usually have to rely on immigration liberals on the left to win the argument over there for decent reforms to take place. Unfortunately, it looks as if they're losing too.

Cooper’s main claims are that immigration reduces native wages and job opportunities, puts public services under pressure, and low-skilled immigrants are exploited by British firms.

The first two of these claims are basically wrong and the third is a little dubious, as I’ll try to show, but even if they were true they would only justify restricting low-skilled immigration. There is basically no decent economic argument against skilled immigration, and I’m doubtful whether even the most wild-eyed worrier about the cultural ‘Islamicization’ of Britain has Pakistani doctors in mind. But, without any explanation, Cooper says that Labour will keep the cap on skilled immigration (despite her admission that “top businesses are worried they can’t get the high skills they need”). Oh well.

On low-skilled immigration, the main focus of the speech, Cooper suggests that liberals support immigration “as cheap labour to keep wages and inflation low”. Ignoring that this is a straw man worthy of the Wizard of Oz, it’s also untrue. According to the impact assessment published by the Home Office last month, low-skilled immigration has, at most, a minor impact on native wages, which in a flexible labour market like Britain’s is temporary anyway. And on the ludicrous idea that anyone supports immigration to keep inflation low, see Lars Christensen – under inflation targeting, a positive supply shock like immigration will lead to more inflation.

The public services point is old and well-worn, and it hardly needs repeating here that immigrants pay more in tax than they cost in services – a phenomenon which over the next few decades will mean the difference between a national debt of over 180% of GDP (in a zero net migration scenario) and just over 50% (in a >260k/year net migration scenario). Presumably nobody really thinks that more high-skilled immigration would have a negative fiscal effect, but I suppose it’s possible that liberalizing low-skilled immigration a lot could change this. In that case, charge immigrants a fee to reside in the UK or restrict access to public services. There is no problem with immigration to which strict immigration controls are the best solution.

The final point is the one that Cooper focuses on the most, maybe so that the dreary conservative orthodoxy of her policies is less obvious. Undoubtedly, some genuine exploitation does take place – Cooper gives the example of agencies advertising in Poland for jobs that turn out not to exist, virtually forcing the victims into grim jobs that they did not sign up for. It may be that the law needs to be strengthened to punish people who defraud immigrants in this way. But there will be negative consequences too – by raising the risk for legitimate employers of employing immigrants, this kind of law will make it harder for immigrants to get legitimate work. The danger is that, as in the case of the Modern Slavery Bill, laws designed to prevent truly terrible crimes will end up curbing whatever legitimate work the government decides it wants to stop as well.

To be fair, there are two positives in Cooper’s speech: taking students out of the net migration figures would be good for the education sector, and taking refugees out is humane. But the fact is that Labour has accepted the “logic” of the net migration cap, is making no reforms to high-skilled immigration, and is basing low-skilled immigration policy on anecdotes instead of evidence. Liberals beware: the ‘progressive’ approach to immigration is starting to look an awful lot like the conservative one.