I have just finished reading Boris Johnson’s book about Churchill. I had to get through it as my brother bought it for me for Christmas and has asked me about it on a regular basis. My first impression was that, given the time it must have taken to research and write, Sadiq Khan’s jibe that, according to City Hall staff, Mayor Johnson checked out 2 years ago was an underestimate. But it didn’t take long to come to the view that the book told you as much, if not more, about Johnson than it did about the great wartime PM. His assessment of Churchill seems to be that he was an egotistical, shameless political opportunist who could be forgiven because he was a great patriot, was kind to the lower orders who had the pleasure to serve him and had a paternalistic attitude to the working classes in general, God bless them. It seemed to me that Johnson was keen to form a view of Churchill that enabled him to justify his own monstrous ego-driven, principle-free ambition. Was the whole enterprise a subconscious quest for absolution, I wonder. I have to concede that it was an entertaining read, which has been Johnson’s saving grace. The public seem to gloss over an awful lot if you are not boring. You get a long way in some professions, and politics would appear to be one of them, if you come across as a bit of a music hall turn. It’s in jobs that demand a degree of proven competence where the consequences of getting things wrong can be disastrous, like medicine and engineering, for example, that people find it hard to rise to the top on the basis of personality and show-boating alone.
Johnson suggests that Churchill was driven by three core beliefs. First, that the British Empire was the greatest the world had ever seen. Second, that he, Churchill, was the greatest man in the Empire. The third, which logically follows, is that he was the greatest man in the history of the world. Likewise with Johnson I fear. How else can one explain the story, which surely must be true, that Johnson had two articles ready to publish, one supporting Brexit and one supporting Remain, when the gun went to signal the start of the EU referendum campaign? How can we understand how someone could make such an important decision simply based on what was most likely to ensure that they became the next leader of the Tory party and Prime Minister? I suspect Johnson’s calculation was that the Tory party are Brexiteers at heart, that win or lose the referendum (and I think Johnson personally would prefer a vote to stay) then Cameron’s position will be untenable and he will therefore resign and the party will pick a leading Leave campaigner to replace him. I think that once Gove made his decision to come out for Brexit, Johnson realised he had no choice but to go with him. He just couldn’t let such a rival get away from him. It’s interesting that, during the campaign, Theresa May, who is on the side of Remain and who many were touting as a candidate for the leadership, has sunk without trace.
One of the key issues that the debate over ‘should we stay or should be go’ is argued has been migration. Many on the Remain side have pointed to how the NHS relies on immigrants to function. The numbers are very large and include skilled nurses and doctors, not just support staff. But it is not just the NHS. Other public services employ foreign nationals. I recently visited one of our schools in Lewisham that takes children with very serious disabilities. It was a real inspiration to spend some time in this special school that Ofsted had judged to be Outstanding. When I went around the classes I noticed that every other class teacher I met was a foreign national, as was the lady running the hydro therapy pool. It is hard to imagine how London, in particular, could continue to function without migrant labour, much of it highly skilled and experienced.
This brings me on to a point that I haven’t seen talked about much in this debate. This is that without immigration the insipid, spluttering growth that Osbornomics has delivered since 2010 would have all but fizzled out altogether. Whilst UK GDP has grown to be above its pre-crisis peak, helped by the inclusion of estimates for the black and sex economies, the same can’t be said for per capita GDP (see chart below).
So what has been driving growth is not increasing labour productivity but population growth, that is, more workers in the job market. I haven’t been able to get definitive figures on how much of this population growth is due to migration and how much is due to more native borns coming into or returning to the job market, but I think it is fair to assume that it must be a high percentage. This is because we know that the employment rate amongst migrants is higher than for native borns and that, given our ageing population, a lot of native borns will be leaving the job market every year.
The other issue on which the debate has concentrated has been how much we would save if we Brexited. Thankfully the claim that it would be £350m a week and that we could invest it all in the NHS has been comprehensively eviscerated. Those who were gleefully making it have had to accept that to do this they would have to cease all support to farmers. It seems to have been quietly dropped in favour of the claim that the net UK contribution to the EU is around £8bn-£10bn a year, so if we left we could use this to benefit ourselves rather than foreigners in far off lands of whom we know nothing and about whom we care even less. This net contribution amounts to around £128 per person. What is not getting much attention is that Norway, a country often cited as an example of what a Brexited UK could look like, has to pay £106 per person to the EU and it is not even a member. For this, they get the benefits of ‘free’ trade but have to accept the free movement of people, that is, immigration, and they do not get a say in setting the rules. I think it is safe to say that the idea that we can leave the EU, get all our money back, negotiate a trade deal with the EU that is better than the one we have currently and pay nothing for it, whilst negotiating our own trade deals with the US, China and every other emerging economy we can think of, is being over-optimistic.
It seems to me that one of the things uniting those who are strongly in favour of the UK leaving the EU, is that they hold, perhaps as Churchill did, a romanticised view of Britain that is rooted in the past. I am tempted to say that they are the kind of people who harbour a sneaking admiration for Toad of Toad Hall rather than seeing him as a figure of fun. What Johnson’s book on Churchill does make clear is that whilst being sentimental and highly emotional, this did not prevent him from being a realist. He clearly saw that Britain’s power and status in the world was diminishing. This led him to be internationalist in his outlook. For him, this meant attaching the UK as closely as possible to the USA. Britain is going to continue to become less and less important as other emerging economies catch us up and, in many cases, overtake us. Surely the correct response to this is to continue to be internationalist and progressive. For our time, this must mean that we remain a part of an organisation which is on our doorstep, is our biggest market and, like us, is committed to liberal democracy and social inclusion.
