QE for the bankers failed, time for something else

 

 

After the 2007-08 global financial sector insolvency crisis the Bank of England began creating money via a process called quantitative easing (QE) in an attempt to prop up the UK economy. This 'new money' was distributed to the private banks that caused the financial sector meltdown in the first place. If the purpose of this exercise was to stimulate an economic recovery it was an abject failure (the UK suffered the slowest post-crisis recovery in economic history), but if the process was intended to further enrich the wealthiest people in society it was a roaring success.

How QE for the bankers failed

It's absolutely clear that the original £375 billion tranche of quantitative easing cash from the Bank of England benefited the wealthy minority. This isn't just my opinion, the Bank of England openly admitted that at least 40% of the benefit of their quantitative easing programmes went to the wealthiest 5% of households.

Anyone who understands basic macroeconomics will know why the accumulation of the majority of 'new money' by the wealthiest minority is a poor economic outcome. The super-rich are very much more likely to hoard any additional wealth they receive than the poor and ordinary. Ordinary people are much more likely to create economic demand by going out and spending it.

 

If monetary policy results in a ten figure windfall for the super-rich minority then the majority of it is likely to end up re-inflating the property market, re-inflating the stock market or getting stuffed in secretive offshore tax-havens.

If further enriching the wealthiest minority and re-establishing the economic conditions that existed before the 2007-08 meltdown were the objective then QE for the bankers was highly successful. If the objective was to stimulate any kind of economic recovery QE for the bankers was an  absolutely appalling waste of £375 billion.

 

Alternative forms of QE

 

If the benefits of 'new money' are distributed in different ways then the economic benefits could be much better. There are two main ways in which quantitative easing can be used differently in order to avoid the situation where the majority of the 'new money' ends up inflating unsustainable asset bubbles or stuffed into tax-havens.

 
Direct Quantitative Easing

 

Instead of creating 'new money' and distributing it to the private banks to do whatever they like with it, Direct QE cuts out the middle man and directs the 'new money' towards economically beneficial projects.

There are plenty ways a government intent on creating prosperity could use Direct QE cash to stimulate the economy and make the UK an attractive place to do business. High speed broadband for every home and business in the UK, improvements to our dilapidated public transport infrastructure, investment in the education system, science and R&D, pro-active health policies to keep the UK workforce in better condition, investment in renewable energy projects and energy-saving technologies ...

 

This quote from the respected economics professor Robert Skidelsky makes the case for Direct QE.

"The only way to ensure that 'new money' is put into circulation is to have the government spend it. The government would borrow the money directly from the central bank and use it to build houses, renew transport systems, invest in energy-saving technologies, and so forth. Sadly, any such monetary financing of public deficits is for the moment taboo. It is contrary to European Union regulations – and is opposed by all who regard post-crash governments' fiscal difficulties as an opportunity to shrink the role of the state." [source]

Skidelsky is making the case that if the central bank is going to magic money out of nowhere via quantitative easing, it would be better given to the government to invest in infrastructure projects and services (creating jobs and economic demand in the process).

 

'Helicopter money'

 

The other form of QE that would likely be far better for the economy than simply handing out 'new money' to the bankers who caused the economic crisis in the first place is nicknamed 'helicopter money'.

The idea of 'helicopter money' QE is that the central bank should distribute an equal share of the 'new money' that they create to each citizen. For example, if the Bank of England creates £65 billion in quantitative easing money, then each citizen in the UK should get a citizen's dividend of around £1,000 each.

Some people might try to argue that giving an equal share of 'new money' to every person is some kind of communist lunacy, however a citizen's divedend form of QE is actually quite a free market policy in comparison to QE for the bankers (handing control over the distribution of 'new money' to an elite group of establishment insiders). In fact the nickname 'helicopter money' was popularised by the right-wing ideologue Milton Friedman.

Reforming EU policy

 

As Skidelsky pointed out in the quote above the current policy of the EU blocks the European Central Bank or the central banks of other member states (like the Bank of England) from using Direct QE to fund infrastructure projects and stimulate economic demand. As far as the EU is concerned it's only acceptable to create 'new money' if it is distributed to the banks so that it can be used to benefit the wealthy minority at the expense of everyone else.

The solution to this problem would be for the UK government to demand that EU law be changed to allow quantitative easing money to be used in ways that benefit the whole economy, rather than exclusively benefiting the wealthiest minority. However the obvious problem is that the UK government is a Tory one with no interest in doing anything but serving the interests of the wealthiest minority, (serving the interests of their wealthy backers is the central ideology of the Tory party). It's obviously an utterly ludicrous fantasy to imagine a Conservative government lobbying the EU for them to overturn a monetary policy that exclusively benefits the rich at the expense of wider society and the economy as a whole.

Tory slash-the-state fanaticism

 

Another point that Skidelsky raised in the above quote is the way that many (including the Tory government) "regard post-crash governments' fiscal difficulties as an opportunity to shrink the role of the state". It's refreshing to see an economist admit that this is what the Tories are up to.

There's no way that the Tories would ever adopt a policy of Direct QE because using the state to administer an economic recovery where the private sector banks had manifestly failed would be a massive refutation of their core ideology that (despite all of the evidence to the contrary) the private sector is always more efficient than the state.

It's astonishing that such a huge number of people fell for the Tory austerity con. Even when they first started with their absurd "we must cut our way to growth" propaganda campaign it was obviously complete gibberish, but after six years of it, it's now absolutely clear that the austerity narrative is nothing more than a smokescreen to cover up the same old Tory policies of distributing as many state assets as possible to the private sector and the transference of wealth from the majority to the wealthiest minority.

As long as the UK is governed by a bunch of ideologically driven right-wing fanatics we'll be stuck with their economically toxic austerity dogma and the idea of the UK government administering a direct stimulus led recovery will remain a complete fantasy.

Corbynomics

 

The mainstream press have done such a consistent job of attacking and belttling Jeremy Corbyn that very few people actually understand what his economic policies are. For every column inch written about Corbyn's plans for the economy there's doubtless been hundreds of inches of absolute drivel written about how he's scruffy, too old, too left-wing, didn't sing the national anthem, didn't bow deeply enough at the Cenotaph ...

One of the most absurd and oft-repeated criticism is that Corbyn would take us back to the 1970s when what he is actually proposing is the use of Direct QE to fund infrastructure projects, which is clearly a modern progressive policy, albeit one that is based on a wealth of evidence from economic history rather than pure ideology like Tory austerity.

The Skidelsky quote above is actually a glowing commendation of Labour Party economic policy and a blatant swipe at Tory ideological austerity. Of course right-wing austerity fetishists will resort to the age old tactic of trying to smear their critics as lunatics, however with Skidelsky it's a bit of a problem given that he's is a former House of Lords Treasury spokesman for the Tory party! It's  obviously a little bit difficult for Tory tribalists to smear someone as just a "loony leftie" when they're a respected economics professor and former Tory party treasury spokesperson.

Blairite Shills

One of the most dispiriting things of all when Jeremy Corbyn announced his Direct QE policy was the way that a number of Blairites in the Labour Party joined in with the Tory chorus of disapproval, even going as far as calling Direct QE "economically illiterate".

Some of the worst offenders were Yvette Cooper (wife of Ed Balls, the architect of Labour's disastrous 2015 austerity-lite election campaign) and Chris Leslie (Ed Balls replacement as shadow chancellor).

It was utterly bizarre to see so-called Labour Party politicians furiously attacking Direct QE (a policy of stimulating the economy by improving infrastructure and creating jobs) and defending the failed policy of QE for the bankers (a strategy that resulted in a massive bonanza for the super-rich minority and pretty much nothing good for anyone else).

It just goes to show how much work Jeremy Corbyn has got to do to turn the Labour Party into a genuinely progressive party when so many Labour MPs so clearly favour the interests of the extremely rich over traditional Labour values like social justice, jobs and prosperity for all.

Conclusion

On the positive side it's great to see Skidelsky talking a bit of economic sense. After six years of economically toxic austerity gibberish it's about time more economists stood up and proposed alternatives like Direct QE.

If the Bank of England is going to use quantitative easing to create more 'new money' then it will need influential economists like Skidelsky arguing against a repetition of the failed QE for the bankers experiment.

On the negative side the UK political establishment looks to be stuck with a bunch of ideologically driven right-wing fanatics for the forseeable future, and as long as economic policy is dictated by hard-right economic ideology, the concept of the UK benefiting from any kind investment led recovery is a complete pipe dream.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR

The fracking = lower energy bills myth

In the wake of the decision by Tory dominated North Yorkshire County Council to approve a fracking licence just a few miles south of the North York Moors national park, the fracking apologists have been out in force to try to defend the decision to completely ignore the massive 131:1 scale of opposition to the plans.

One of the favourite tactics of the fracking apologist is to pretend that there is some kind of correlation between fracking and lower domestic energy bills. In this article I'm going to explain how this argument is not only wrong, but actually completely backwards.

Evidence-free assertions

The claims that the introduction of fracking rigs in the English countryside would bring down domestic energy bills is a classic evidence-free assertion. Fracking enthusiasts just seem to take it as an article of faith that fracking would reduce domestic energy bills in the UK. It's like some kind of unquestionable religious to these people.

If you see anyone making these claims it's a good tactic to ask them to direct you to a peer reviewed scientific study detailing a link between fracking and low energy prices in the UK domestic energy market. They won't be able to do so because no such study exists. They'll just continue repeating the claim on the basis that it's true because they want it to be true.

The UK is not the US

 

Evidence of devastating environmental damage in the US and "cut and run" tactics from unscrupulous US fracking companies who abandon their fracking rigs for the taxpayer to clean up is shrugged off by fracking enthusiasts with the excuse that those things happened in the US and it will all somehow all be different in the UK. However, when it comes to their stories about fracking leading to lower energy prices, they immediately point to the fall in domestic gas prices in the US as if it represents compelling and unquestionable evidence.

It would be easy to dismiss such tactics as "wanting to have their cake and eat it" because it is about as clear an example as possible, but there are some specific reasons that direct comparisons between the US and UK dometic gas markets are desperately misleading.

The early 21st Century fracking boom in the US did lead to a fall in domestic gas prices in the US, but their gas industry was not set up for the mass export/import of gas, so the majority of additional supplies remained within the US market, which created a glut which drove down the price of gas. Not only is the US gas market not set up for mass exportation, there are also laws to disincentivise US firms from exporting energy.

The UK gas industry is very different. The UK gas market is much more interconnected with other countries. If gas production rose in the UK, then domestic prices would be unlikely to fall far because the UK gas market is nowhere near as closed as the US market. In order to significantly reduce domestic gas prices, the UK would need to begin extracting a vast enough quantity of shale gas to impact the entire European gas market. Anyone who thinks that is likely to happen any time soon clearly has no idea whatever about the scale of Russian gas exports to the European market. In 2015 Gazprom (the Russian state gas monopoly) exported 159.4 billion cubic metres of gas to the European market. Third Energy are reluctant to disclose their projections for how much gas they are planning to extract from the KM8 fracking zone, but it's fair to asume that it's going to be an absolutely tiny drop in the ocean compared to the production of the North Sea gas industry, let alone the scale of Russian gas exports to the European market.

Anyone who tries to point to the fall in gas prices in the US as evidence that UK gas prices would also fall is doing nothing but displaying their ignorance of the structural differences between the US and UK energy markets.

 

Ignoring externalities

 

Even if we allow the entirely unproven assertion that fracking will produce lower UK domestic energy bills to stand, there's still the issue of externalities to consider.

If fracking does shave a few pennies off our domestic energy bills, what will be the hidden/unconsidered costs? 

One of the most obvious potential costs that is excluded from the "lower energy bills" claims is the potential cost to the taxpayer of attempting to repair fracking related environmental degridation (in 2013 the Tories exempted the fracking industry from liability insurance). If fracking causes environmental degridation it will either be permanent (an environmental externality), or the taxpayer will have to foot the bill (a taxpayer subsidy that is excluded from the calculation).

Then there's the cost of George Osborne handing the fracking industry a vast tax break in order to make the industry seem even remotely viable. If lower energy prices come at the cost of the taxpayer propping up an unviable industry with huge tax breaks (lost tax revenues), that's clearly an example of giving with one hand and taking away with the other.

Another potential cost is the environmental harm from continued reliance on the burning of fossil fuels to meet our domestic energy demands. Instead of handing vast tax breaks to the fracking industry, surely a more environmentally sustainable strategy would to invest more in things like renewable energy, increased energy efficiency and research into technology like clean fusion reactors?

Another set of costs that has been excluded from the optimistic and unsubstantiated "lower energy bills" claims of the pro-fracking brigade are the costs to the local community. If roads need to be widened to cope with increased traffic, local taxpayers will pay the cost. If property prices fall because of the gigantic fracking rigs in the area, the local community will pay the cost. If the fracking process ends up damaging or destroying the land, the local community will pay the cost.

One of the classic ways of making a bad deal look like a good deal is to cut out all of the extrnalities such as social harms, environmental degredation and economic costs borne by the taxpayer. If these costs are taken into consideration, an even bigger heap of salt needs to be piled on top of unsubstantiated claims that fracking will cause domestic energy bills to fall.

Fracking depends on high energy prices

  

It's already established that claims that fracking will cause UK energy bills to fall are not based on anything remotely resembling peer reviewed scientific studies. It's also clear that such claims are worthless if they involve the exclusion of externalities like social and environmental costs, and economic costs that are carried by the taxpayer. However the most damning criticism of all is that the whole claim is completely backwards. There's no evidence to prove that fracking in the UK would cause energy bills to fall, but if energy bills do fall significantly, then fracking becomes an economically unviable method of energy extraction.

Fracking won't cause lower energy bills because the whole industry is relient upon high energy prices to survive.

The reason fracking relies on high energy prices is that it generates very low rates of Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROEI) meaning that the margins are an awful lot slimmer tan traditional forms of fossil fuel extraction like oil and natural gas.

The ever improving EROEI ratings for renewable technologies such as solar, wind and wave power also point to difficult times ahead for the fracking industry (unless the Tory government decide to prop fracking up with even more tax breaks and subsidies whilst directly attacking the renewable energy sector).

A look at the way fracking companies across the US "cut and run" when energy prices fell leaving a trail of envirnmental degridation in their wake is direct evidence that the fracking industry is highly dependent upon high energy prices. If falling energy prices caused such chaos in the US fracking business that left Exxon's Chief Executive complaining that they were "losing our shirts" and Total's boss decying extraordinary losses in Texas with claims that Fracking "doesn't work" and that there's "no point in investing where there is no profitability" - then what on earth makes fracking enthusiasts think that the UK fracking business would be exempt from the consequences of the low energy prices they claim that it would cause?

 

Tory energy market price-fixing

Fracking enthusiasts need not be too worried that falling energy prices will derail their beloved industry though, because the Tories have signed up to a vast energy price-fixing deal to bribe the French state into building a nuclear reactor at Hinkley Point C by paying them double the market rate for electricity for 35 years. A crackpot scam to artificially inflate energy prices like the Tory price-fixing deal with the French is a surefire way of making the horribly inefficient shale gas fracking industry look financially viable.

 

Conclusions

 

Environmental destruction in Wyoming after fracking

companies "cut and run" leaving the US taxpayer to

pick up the bill.

Even after the US propped up the shale gas fracking industry with vast tax breaks and woefully inadequate liability insurance rates, the fracking business in the US has imploded due to falling energy prices, leaving an environmental catastrophe in its wake.

The Tories are utterly determined not to learn any lessons from this debacle in the US, deciding to throw vast subsidies and tax breaks around in order to promote fracking in the UK. It's absolutely clear that a large number of Tory politicians have investments in the fracking business, so it's no wonder they're doing everything in their power to promote an industry that is only viable if energy prices remain high.

If deliberately puncturing the growth of the UK sustainable energy sector; signing completely unjustifiable 35 year price-fixing deals with the French to keep UK domestic energy prices as high as posible; giving fracking companies vast tax advantages over other fossil fuel sources, bribing local councils into allowing fracking to go ahead in their areas; exempting fracking companies from covering their own clean-up costs; riding roughshod over the concerns of local communites where fracking is going to be imposed; and spreading completely back-to-front myths about fracking lowering energy prices - is what it takes for the Tories to support the fracking industry, then so be it. David Cameron and his Tory chums have made it absolutely clear that they're "going  all out for shale".

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR

Fracking in Ryedale, a guide to Tory style "democracy".

On Monday the 23rd of May 2016 the Tory dominated planning committee of North Yorkshire County Council voted to approve fracking in the village of Kirby Misperton in Ryedale despite a massive groundswell of public opposition to the plans.

The Council received 4,735 objections to the application by Third Energy to begin fracking in Ryedale and only 36 letters of support, but the Council decided to ignore the concerns of the local community in order to turn the scenic village into the first testing ground for the fracking business since fracking tests on the Fylde coast in 2011 were found to be the probable cause of local earthquakes.

North Yorkshire is a stunningly beautiful area, but it suffers from a chronic infestation of Tory voters. Perhaps all of the locals who voted Tory in local and general elections imagined that the unelected Tory peer David Howell was referring to some other part of the north when he declared that "there are large and uninhabited and desolate areas, certainly in part of the North East where there's plenty of room for fracking, well away from anybody's residence"? Maybe they thought that fracking rigs would be imposed on lowly Labour voting "scum" in places like Sunderland or Middlesbrough, not in a scenic Tory village that lies just a few miles south of the North York Moors national park?

Economic concerns

There are plenty of legitimate environmental concern over the fracking business, ranging from land and groundwater pollution to earthquakes, however some of the biggest concerns are economic in nature.

One huge concern is that fracking is only economically viable if energy prices remain high. Even with George Osborne's extraordinary tax breaks for fracking companies, if energy prices fall, it ends up costing more to extract shale gas than it can be sold for. This is the case because fracking has a very low level of Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROEI), meaning the margins are very fine indeed.

Another really big concerns is the way that the Tories exempted fracking companies from paying liability insurance to cover the cost of cleaning up fracking sites should the companies go bust. This means that if fracking causes some kind of environmental disaster the company responsable can just "cut and run" leaving the taxpayer to cover the entire cost of cleaning up their mess.

It's remarkable that the Tories decided to give the fracking industry such a huge incentive to set up small shell companies that can be abandoned if they end up creating a costly fracking mess, especially given the situation in Wyoming where hundreds of fracking wells were simply abandoned by their operators who chose to disappear into bankruptcy rather than clean up their mess. When gas prices were high these companies were happy to extract shale gas, but when prices fell they chose to forfiet their $50,000 per fracking well liability bonds and leave the entire mess for the US taxpayer to clean up.

The fact that US fracking companies chose to cut their losses when the bonds were $50,000 suggests that the figure was way too low, but instead of setting the UK bonds at a higher rate to prevent the kind of "cut and run" environmental catastrophe suffered in Wyoming, the Tories decided that fracking companies in the UK should pay no bonds whatever!

Third Energy

The Company that was granted the licence to begin fracking in Ryedale looks an awful lot like the kind of small shell Company that would cut and run if their fracking tests caused any kind of expensive environmental damage. The main company is called Third Energy Holdings Ltd and is based in Portland House in Westminster and have  capital holdings of just £21.4 million. However they have established three subsidiaries based at the same address in North Yorkshire; Third Energy UK Gas Ltd, Third Energy Onshore Ltd, and Third Energy Trading Ltd. The fracking licence has been given to Third Energy Onshore Ltd, so no doubt that entity will be folded up and abandoned if  their operations end up causing costly environmental damage.

It is interesting to note that Barclays Bank are investors in Third Energy and have also made individual donations to a number of Tory party MPs. This is hardly an isolated case of conflicts of interest between the Tory party and the Fracking industry.

Tory promises

Before the 2010 General Election David Cameron made a huge fanfare of signing a "Contract with the Electorate" that promised to "give communities the power to take charge of the local planning system". It eventually became clear that the Tories were going to break pretty much every single clause in their so-called contract, so they simply deleted it from their website and relied on the mainstream press to not bother mentioning it at all in the run-up to the 2015 General Election.

Apparrently this Tory commitment to give communities the power to take charge of the local planning system involves completely ignoring a 131:1 scale of opposition to the plans to frack in Ryedale, and swearing to use central government powers to over-rule local councils that decide not to fast-track approvals for fracking rigs in their communities.

So much for Tory promises eh?

Conclusion

The potential environmental impact doesn't matter. The economic frailty of the fracking industry doesn't matter. The fact that fracking companies don't have to pay liability insurance in case of economic problems or environmental damage doesn't matter. The huge 131:1 local opposition to the plans doesn't matter. The conflicts of interest between numerous Tory politicians and the fracking industry don't matter.

All that matters is that the Tories want to allow their mates to use North Yorkshire as a testing site for fracking, and they're determined to have their way, even if it means exposing their contractual promise to empower local communities as the absolute bullshit that anyone with any sense saw it as from the very beginning.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR

Why did Boris Johnson bury that damning air pollution report?

  
In 2013 the consultancy firm Aether completed a report for the Greater London Authority on the state of air pollution in London and submitted it to Boris Johnson's administration who then sat on it for two and a half years until his successor Sadiq Khan uncovered it shortly after taking office.

The Analysing Air Pollution in London report contained an awful lot of damning information about the state of pollution in London, including the fact that 433 London primary schools were located in areas where levels of the toxic pollutant Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) exceeded European Union pollution limits.

Nitrogen Oxides

Nitrogen Oxides are toxic pollutants that most often come from road pollution, especially from diesel engines. Other sources of Nitrogen Oxides include electricity generation and industry.

Nitrogen Oxides are proven to trigger asthma, coughing, skin irritation, aggravate bronchitis and pneumonia. Repeated exposure can cause permanent damage to the lungs and reduced lung capacity. It is estimated that Nitrogen Oxide pollution causes thousands of premature deaths per year in London alone.

Nitrogen Oxides are also linked with the formation of ozone which occurs when Nitrogen Oxides and volatile organic compounds react in the presence of heat and sunlight. Children, the elderly, people with lung diseases such as asthma, and people who work or exercise outside are at risk for adverse effects from ozone, including reduction in lung function, respiratory illnesses and respiratory-related hospital admissions.

Poverty

Some of the most shocking findings in the report were the disparities in pollution levels between poor areas and wealthy areas. 83% of the schools with illegally high levels of Nitrogen Oxide pollution were classified as "deprived" (40%+ children on free school meals). Meanwhile less than 20% of the schools located in areas below the pollution limit were classified as "deprived".

This means that over 80% of the schools suffering illegal levels of pollution were in poor areas, and over 80% of the schools with acceptable air standards were in rich areas.

The research also showed that over half of the very poorest areas of London suffered illegal levels of pollution, while the illegal pollution rate was just 1% of the very richest areas of London.

Why did it get buried?

Nobody but the most rabidly right-wing sociopath could try to claim that it's perfectly acceptable that tens of thousands of primary school children, mainly from poor and ordinary backgrounds, are being poisoned with health destroying pollutants.

Once the information that this is the case in London would have reached the public domain it would have meant that Boris Johnson would have had to either take the incredibly unpopular stance of doing nothing about the inequality on the grounds that the affected primary school children should have had the good sense to be born into richer families, or actually try to do something about the problem.

Boris Johnson and the Tories clearly didn't want to do anything about the appalling inequality between levels of air pollution in poorer parts of London and richer areas, but neither did they want to be seen to be doing nothing. Hence the logical course of action from a self-serving Tory perspective was to bury the report so that the public had much less evidence on which to base their demands for action.

Cherry-picking the good bits

The decision not to publish the report was clearly a political one because despite deciding to not bother publishing the full report, Boris Johnson's team were happy to cherry-pick and publicise some of the positive conclusions in the report, whilst completely ignoring the bits highlighting the severe inequality in exposure to air pollution.

The director of the company that produced the report Katie King said that "The crux of the report was about understanding the inequalities of air pollution, so they chose not to make public the findings regarding inequality ...The information that they did take from the report was the positive, that exposure was predicted to fall in the future".

There's no way that the decision to cherry-pick the best bits of a scientific report, whilst completely ignoring the negative parts can be seen as anything other than a display of the worst kind of cynical political opportunism.

Conclusion

I really do pity people who are so lacking in political insight that they can't see Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson as the ruthlessly self-serving political careerist that he so clearly is, rather than the harmless foppish buffoon he pretends to be. In 1951 (13 years before BoJo was even born) Bertrand Russell warned of the dangers of politicians like him when he said "our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature has made them".

Boris Johnson is a man so lacking in principle that he refused to answer the charge that he wrote two completely different versions of his famous Telegraph article, one opposing the EU and one supporting it, then chose the one that he thought would be best for his own political ambitions.

He's so lacking in basic human morality that he buried a report into the toxic environments suffered by tens of thousands of primary school children because to publish it would have negatively impacted his own career, yet had his team cherry-pick good bits out of the report to make him look good.

The reason Boris Johnson failed to publish the damning report into air pollution levels in London schools is obvious. It's that he's one of the worst examples of the ruthlessly self-serving over-privileged Tory careerist type. It's just a damned shame that so many people fall for his foppery act and allow themselves to forget who he actually is, and what he actually represents.
 
 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR

Project Fear vs Project Fear

The EU referendum debate is an incredibly important one, the outcome of which will decide the entire socio-economic future of the UK. It doesn't matter which side you're on, or whether you haven't made up your mind yet, it's clearly a decision that is going to have huge social and economic repercussions.

The problem of course is that both sides of the debate are engaging in desperate and pathetic fearmongering tactics in order to try to frighten people over to their side of the argument.

The Brexit camp have combined utterly dishonest fearmongering tactics and pathetic Third Reich comparisons with an abject failure to spell out anything resembling a coherent economic strategy for what a post-Brexit economy would actually look like. Meanwhile senior figures on the "Bremain" side of the debate have taken to fearmongering about economic Armageddon should the British public vote to leave the EU. No doubt Gordon Brown will soon be wheeled out to scare pensioners into believing that Brexit would cost them their pensions, just like he scared the overwhelming majority of Scottish pensioners into shooting down a Scottish independence movement that was actually supported by the majority of working age voters.

How did it come to this?

Anyone who followed the Scottish independence referendum will have seen how the Unionist camp beat the hope and optimism of the Yes campaign with their "Project Fear" tactics. In fact the director of Better Together Blair McDougall openly admitted that the Unionists could have lost the Scottish independence referendum without having resorted to such desperate fearmongering tactics.

The victory of "Project Fear" in Scotland made it completely inevitable that the EU referendum debate would turn into a desperate fearmongering competition replete with spurious Hitler analogies and terrifying forecasts of economic doom from both sides of the debate.

Tories on both sides

If the success of "Project Fear" in Scotland didn't make a fearmongering arms race completely inevitable, the presence of senior Tories on both sides of the debate certainly did.

Fearmongering rhetoric is the favourite tactic of the Tory party. If they're not still harking on about the 1970s or blaming Labour for the 2007-08 global financial sector insolvency crisis, they're running a filthy BNP style muck-slinging, Islamophobic divide and conquer campaign to get their latest Eton posh-boy installed as Mayor of London.

Any debate that has foul-minded people like David Cameron, Theresa May and George Osborne on one side and horrifically right-wing zealots like Michael Gove, Boris Johnson and Iain Duncan Smith on the other is clearly going to end up getting messy.

With self-serving and fundamentally dishonest Tories on both sides of the debate, the degeneration of the argument into a sub-Tabloid level fearmongering farce was completely inevitable.

Driving people away from the debate

Over the last few weeks by far the most common request from people who follow the Another Angry Voice Facebook page has been for some relatively unbiased, fact-based analysis of the EU debate.

There are clearly an awful lot of people who would actually like to make their minds up about the EU based on facts and evidence, but they're being driven away from the debate in droves by the heavily biased fearmongering propaganda being pumped out by both sides.

Totally unbiased coverage is impossible

I can't promise to give a completely unbiased angle because I believe that quitting the EU when the Brexiters have completely failed to come up with anything resembling a coherent economic strategy for what a post-Brexit UK would actually look like would be a spectacularly reckless move. Brexit under such conditions would empower the hard-right fringe of the Tory party, and with no actual blueprint for what they plan to do, it would give them free rein to do whatever the hell they want.

I strongly believe that it would be a classic case of "out of the frying pan, into the fire" to bail out of an EU that is riddled with right-wing economic dogma, but in the process hand even more political power to fringe right-wing Tories who are much more fanatical pushers of hard-right economic dogma than the EU institutions.

I'm not a big fan of the EU, but if your boat has a few holes in it, it's generally a good idea to first attempt to repair the holes and bail out the water, rather than immediately abandoning ship and trying to swim to some mystical fantasy island that doesn't even appear on any maps.

Even though I have my opinions and admit them openly, I'm certainly not going to allow my commentary to descend into the utterly pathetic fearmongering seen from both sides of the debate so far. If you ever see me comparing the EU to the Third Reich or uncritically repeating projections of doom sourced from the very financial institutions that failed to even project the biggest financial crisis since the Wall Street Crash, then feel free to call me out on it.

Who benefits the most from this farce?

I'm of the opinion that a low turnout in the EU referendum would strongly favour the Brexit camp, and that the lamentably low standard of debate so far is making a lower turnout very much more likely. If people end up believing that both sides are feeding them inaccurate fearmongering propaganda, they're more likely to just abstain.

The head of Leave.EU Arron Banks has admitted that Brexit depends on a low turnout. He told a gathering of policy experts at the (extremely right-wing) Cato Institute that "If turnout is low, we win. If it’s high, we lose, our strategy is to bore the electorate into submission, and it’s working."

Driving fair-minded people away from the debate through the use of fearmongering tactics plays right into the hands of fanatically right-wing Brexiters like Arron Banks. People like him don't just know that a low turnout is necessary for them to get what they want, they openly admit that they're depending on it.

Conclusion

Trying to form an objective view on the EU referendum debate is very difficult because all economic projections are riddled with uncertainty. One thing you can be sure of is that anyone who tries to present economic projections as if they're facts, rather than theoretical outcomes based on fallible economic models, is not to be trusted. Without looking at the underlying assumptions built into the economic model that generated the predictions, the numbers are pretty much meaningless.

Another much more obvious thing you can be sure of, is that anyone who tries to compare the peaceful and co-operative structure of the EU to Hitler's militarist Nazi empire building is using desperately low smear tactics, and should be completely ignored.

It's becoming more and more obvious that really strong arguments from either side of the EU referendum debate are pretty damned rare in comparison to the sheer volume of fearmongering propaganda. Admittedly this is quite a dispiriting conclusion, but a good starting point for dealing with this situation is the adoption of the policy that it's a good idea to apply your critical thinking skills to pretty much everything anyone tries to convince you to believe, whether it's about the EU referendum or not.
       
 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR