Category Archives: Economic

Britain, Economic, Government, Politics, Russia, Society

UK measures and sanctions on Russia still leaves us vulnerable

BRITAINopinion-1

IN measured but uncompromising language, Theresa May handled herself extremely well in the House of Commons this week as she outlined the Government’s response to Vladimir Putin’s use of a lethal nerve and chemical agent on British soil. The Prime Minister’s rhetoric was equal to the profound seriousness of the occasion.

Her resolute demeanour and command of her brief – no doubt learned from her long experience of security matters at the Home Office – put to shame Jeremy Corbyn’s efforts to defend the Russian state and his attempt to score petty political point scoring.

In a new low for British politics, the Labour leader parroted the Kremlin line, suggesting it was unfair to blame Putin without first sending him scientific samples of the toxin in the Salisbury attack.

To his discredit, too, Mr Corbyn even appeared to pin part of the blame on budget cuts to the British diplomatic service.

Corbyn’s response to this grotesque violation of international law and British sovereignty – in which scores of our citizens were put at risk of agonising death – was: “It is essential to maintain robust dialogue with Russia.”

Who would honestly believe dialogue would bring to heel a former KGB officer who exults in presenting himself at stopping at nothing to eradicate his country’s enemies?

Even the SNP in Scotland, never a party solid on defence – incoherent on NATO and divisive over Trident – have grasped the gravity of the situation.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said: “It is very clear that Russia cannot be permitted to unlawfully kill or attempt to kill people on the streets of the UK with impunity.”

The SNP’s party’s Westminster leader Ian Blackford assured the Commons that his party backed the Government and that “a robust response to the use of terror on our streets” was required.

However, we must be realistic. On their own, the measures outlined by the Prime Minister are high unlikely to shake Putin out of his contempt for the international order.

 

YES, Mrs May’s approach is a start. Her expulsion of 23 Russian diplomats identified as spies, the most radical such measure for more than 30 years, should seriously undermine Russia’s intelligence network. These expulsions were always going to be met with a tit-for-tat response.

Other sanctions – including the freezing of Russian state assets deemed a threat, the suspension of high-level contacts and increased security checks on private flights, customs and freight – also sends a signal that Britain will not let state-sponsored gangsterism flourish with impunity.

The truth, though, is that Mrs May held back from other measures that could have inflicted serious harm on the Russian economy.

The reasons for such caution are clear. One is that Britain depends on Russia for 20 per cent of our gas, leaving us desperately vulnerable to punitive Russian reprisals.

Another is that BP, our biggest company, has a vast holding in Russia’s biggest oil company, while the City launders billions in the country’s dirty cash.

And politicians have run down our Armed Forces, spending only £36billion a year on defence. Putin, with a defence budget of £44-50billion – and has an army ten times the size of ours – will feel safe to sneer.

Yet, Russia’s economy is only two-thirds the size of ours. We could be doing much more to match Putin’s military strength.

As for energy security, wasn’t it criminally irresponsible to allow last year’s closure of Britain’s biggest gas storage facility, leaving our reserves at today’s perilously low levels?

Given our vulnerability, the sanctions may have gone as far as Britain could go alone without the international effort needed by straining every sinew to secure.

There is one gesture that could signify abhorrence of the Salisbury atrocity. Whilst it is welcomed that no government minister or member of the Royal family will attend the World Cup in Russia this summer, wouldn’t a boycott by the England team and other countries who are equally infuriated ram home the message more powerfully?

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China, Economic, Government, Politics, Society

Essay: The West can no longer be complacent with China

CHINA

WHEN Xi Jinping was a child, his father – then, a high-ranking government minister – fell out of favour with the founder of the People’s Republic, Chairman Mao.

As part of his family’s humiliation, Xi, as an eight-year-old, was paraded on a school stage in a metal dunce’s cap. The audience raised their arms and shouted, “Down with Xi Jinping!” Even Xi’s mother was forced to join in the chanting.

Later, Xi was sent to be “reformed” in an impoverished, rural commune.

Earlier this week, in an extraordinary reversal of fate, that humiliated schoolboy was affirmed as the most powerful man in China since Mao when the People’s Congress in Beijing rubber-stamped a constitutional amendment. In effect, it abolishes the legal limit of two terms on China’s presidency. Xi is now the country’s leader in perpetuity – or as some might have it, dictator.

With cunning ruthlessness, he worked his way through the ranks of the party that treated his family so abhorrently, from local to national politics, and saw off rivals while establishing political and popular support with his war on corruption. And as a former peasant who toiled hard labour in the fields, his “man of the people” credentials have done him no harm.

He has already decreed that his own name and ideas are written into the nation’s constitution, as “Xi Jinping Thought” – an honour he shares only with Mao. We in the complacent West would do well to wake up to the vaulting ambition of the leader of the world’s most populous state. The lingering question now is whether power will go to his head.

We have become used to expansionist threats and sabre-rattling from countries such as Russia and North Korea, but we don’t really expect it from China, which is traditionally insular and inward-looking. It is, after all, the country that built a Great Wall around its borders to keep out foreign influences.

Xi is intent, however, on reversing that centuries-old trend. China has established itself as a global player in trade, is massively expanding its military and now wants global political influence to match. In some ways, this can benefit the West. For example, Xi has put pressure on North Korea’s unstable leader, Kim Jong-un, to halt his erratic missile tests and even to roll back Pyongyang’s nuclear programme. Donald Trump’s boastful remarks recently of a diplomatic breakthrough (with arms talks to come), would have been impossible without Xi’s influence.

If the world becomes a safer place in the short-term as a result of this new willingness on China’s part to play the role of a global power-broker, we should all sigh a sense of huge relief. But as this week’s declaration reveals, Xi isn’t interested in the short-term. His plans are for the much longer-term. He certainly has had several opportunities to get the measure of Trump: First at a meeting last April in Florida at the President’s Mar-a-Lago resort, later at the G20 talks in Hamburg, and then again when the two met in Beijing last November. Whilst they did seem to hit it off on strategic issues, the relationship between them is a strange one. Neither will feel comfortable in a partnership of equals.

President Trump has already asserted his independence by announcing serious trade restrictions on Chinese steel and other imports. Yet, China is not only a major trading partner of the US, but a colossal underwriter of American debt. The government in Washington could not function without borrowing hundreds of billions, financed largely by Chinese loans. If China withdraws that support, in direct retribution for Trump’s trade blockade, what will happen to the US economy?

And, if Xi stops applying pressure on North Korea, what happens to Trump’s much vaunted peace talks? The Chinese President has manoeuvred himself, not just into one commanding position, but into a whole array of them.

It is not only America that is suddenly uncomfortably aware of Chinese strength. India, too, is eyeing its immense neighbour with unease after Xi sent China’s new navy into the Indian Ocean. This none-too-subtle display was prompted by a dispute over international policies concerning the Maldives. China, which has committed huge investment into developing its naval fleet, knows the world will take notice of a fleet of modern battleships. Meanwhile, across Eurasia, Xi has been the driving force for a new Silk Road linking China’s factories to Western Europe via Putin’s Russia, making Moscow the willing junior partner of Beijing.

All this confirms Xi Jinping as the most powerful and ambitious man in Chinese politics since the death of Chairman Mao more than 40 years ago – with one significant difference. Mao wanted to break completely with China’s cultural past – the hallmark of the bourgeoise – Xi has a different strategy and wants to celebrate it.

XI is determined to restore the country’s links to its heritage and arts by fostering a new creed of nationalism in place of Communism. Chinese artworks and treasures, which were scattered to the winds during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, are being brought back from the West by Chinese multimillionaires who see themselves as nationalist champions. Xi’s own wife, Peng Liyuan, a singer who entertained the troops after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, is at the forefront of this movement.

From the arts to geopolitics, trade wars to nuclear peace talks, Xi seems to have thought of everything. His carefully constructed powerbase may have one weak point: If he is president for life, then the ambitions of the country’s rising stars below him could be thwarted. That would risk political stagnation and infighting.

But for now, the West cannot risk complacency, especially now that China is controlled by the Thoughts of President Xi. If Mao gave China independence, and former leader Deng Xiaoping rebuilt the economy, then Xi is dedicated to making it a force to be reckoned with once more.

 

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Britain, Economic, Government, Politics, Society

Britain’s bright future

BREXIT

IT was twenty-five years ago to the day, on September 16, 1992, when Britain crashed out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) – the prelude to the euro. John Major’s government was humiliated, the pound was devalued overnight by 15 per cent and most economists predicted a protracted slump.

Yet, what happened? The lower pound led to a surge in exports and just three years later the economy was booming.

Following the Brexit result, a similar devaluation of pound sterling has happened and all the indicators are that it’s having the same effect, with figures published over the last few days showing that exports have risen by 9 per cent in the last year.

Despite this, not a day goes by that the BBC, Financial Times or Confederation of British Industry don’t paint an apocalyptic picture of Britain’s future outside the EU. These organisations are constantly talking this country down at the very time it’s crucial we should be showing unity.

For people like Sir James Dyson, arguably Britain’s greatest living entrepreneur, and for many other dynamic business leaders, Brexit is not a problem. It’s a massive opportunity.

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