Samizdata

The Daily Telegraph, perhaps not surprisingly as this is not a flattering story for the current government, points out that official figures show that almost 2 million Britons have left the UK since 1997. However one tries to spin this, such an outflow of people is not exactly a ringing endorsement of government policy, although there has always been and I hope will remain a steady two-way flow of people to and from this island, if only as an expression of the understandable desire of people to live in new places, to strike out to make a new life and so forth. Naturally, much of the media focus will be on the reasons why people are leaving. This is well-trodden ground already (crime, tax, weather, cost of living, etc).

One factor that struck me was that 1.58 million foreigners resident in the UK left during the 1997-2006/7 period, which suggests that while millions of foreigners come to the country, many of them do not choose to stay for more than a few years. What counts of course is the net trend. During the period, 3.9 million people came to the UK, with 500,000 arriving in 2006 alone. The pace of inflow – and possibly outflow – seems to be speeding up.

As I learned on a previous posting about immigration and emigration, there is a tendency – even among generally liberal people – to treat the movement of people from A to B as a utilitarian calculus, to work out if the net benefit or harm of human migration can be computed into a neat, hard number. Rarely does one hear the question addressed in terms of the freedom of a person to move to another place more to their liking so long as they respect the rights and property of whomever they choose to make their new neighbours, do not violate the laws of a host country, etc. Instead, the point is asked, “How does the arrival or departure of people to and from this nation benefit or harm me?” The question has no easy answer. For some low-paid indigenous workers, the sudden arrival of foreigners will put downward pressure on wages in the short run, but add new sources of consumer demand in the medium and long run. An exodus of entrepreneurs, meanwhile, reduces the “national pie”: but should any classical liberal worthy of that name care about the collective wealth held within a given geographical area? The UK is not a company – which has a defined end, like making cars – but an association of hopefully free persons pursuing their own ends within the boundaries of certain laws. I think it is sometimes worth stepping back to reflect on the fact that in this globalised age, millions of people are taking advantage of the ability to find the place to live that most suits them and their families and achieve their ambitions. I happen to think this is mostly a good thing, whatever caveats one can throw in about welfare, the pace of cultural assimilation and the like.

Here is an article by the journalist and parliamentary sketch-writer, Edward Pearce, that is well worth a read.

Anatole Kaletsky is usually good value for his economic analysis. In a pretty scathing column today about the collapse of Brown’s political reputation since becoming Prime Minister last year, Kaletsky tries to contrast Brown the bumbling PM with Brown the masterful Chancellor of the Exchequer. He writes:

Indeed, he was probably the most successful chancellor in modern history, notwithstanding his muddled tax reforms, his badly timed gold sales and the fatal damage he allowed the regulators and courts to inflict on Britain’s pension funds. Mr Brown made the right decisions on monetary policy and the Bank of England. He kept Britain out of the euro. He reduced capital gains and corporation tax more radically than any Tory chancellor and he resisted populist demands to squeeze the rich.

Oh please. Sorry to rain on the parade here, but remember that in the early part of the current decade, Brown subtly shifted the way in which the BoE measures inflation. Without going into a lot of technical detail, he allowed the central bank to pursue a less stringent inflation target, and allowed it to loosen the strings of monetary policy. We are now – arguably – suffering some of the effects. Also – and it is frankly incredible that Kaletsky does not mention this – Brown has presided over a massive increase in the size of public spending and borrowing. During the supposedly fat years, the state of the public finances has actually got worse when it should have done the opposite. Hardly the mark of a good, prudent finance minister. The public sector payroll – no doubt expected to vote Labour – has swollen by up to 1 million since 1997, according to some estimates. That is a collossal increase and a large dead weight on the economy. Again, this burden is weighing more heavily on the economy now that the international environment has become more difficult.

By doing the British economy no serious harm during his long tenure at the Treasury, Mr Brown earned a distinction unique among postwar chancellors, with the possible exception of Kenneth Clarke.

Well, compared to some of the massive errors made by previous Labour and Tory chancellors, it is true that Brown’s record has been quite reasonable, but Kaletsky ignores the substantial shift in the size and cost of government since becoming Chancellor; that amounts to “serious harm” and detracts badly from his record.

Do not misunderstand me. It is not necessary to believe that every move made by Brown has been bad and it is also important to realise that in the globalised financial markets of today, there is only so much – thank goodness – that a finance minister can do. But as we have seen from the continued flight of entrepreneurs and businesses from Britain, from the tax increases, from the poor productivity gains in the UK, and so forth, Brown has been a mediocre custodian of the economy at best. And even his prize achievement, the independent Bank of England, looks less impressive now after the BoE was unable to act swiftly, as it could in the past, over the Northern Rock fiasco.