Tuesday 21 November 2017

The Green and Economically Successful Solution to the UK Trade Deficit

It is one of the great ironies of this world that the most successful capitalist country of recent times is the communist controlled Peoples' Republic of China. The reason for this is not difficult to see. As Irwin Stelzer said in the Sunday Times (19/11/17), "subsidised Chinese Companies have an immense competitive advantage".

As Jeremy Clarkson was so fond of telling us, China has been making knock off copies of European cars for years. How many people realise that the new MG cars now being sold are made by a Chinese company in China? If a foreign company wants to sell cars in China, they must manufacture them there with a Chinese partner, or pay a 25% duty on imported cars.

And yet China has been a member of the World Trade Organisation since 2001, so presumably what it does is within WTO rules?

It is one of the great mysteries to me that the UK does not do the same thing. A 25% import duty on cars would reduce the number of imports and encourage manufacturers to make the cars in the UK. With all parties committed to facilitate the switch from petrol and diesel to electric cars, now seems an ideal time to introduce the measure and ensure the new factories are built in the UK to service our 60 million+ consumers.

Of course, such a tariff is contrary to EU rules, which are designed to help the multi-national companies to source their goods from low wage economies. With 30,000 lobbyists in Brussels, the multi-nationals have ensured that their economic growth is enshrined in EU law. But the UK has voted to leave the EU, which brings forth a multitude of opportunities to have much greener policies. And there is nothing greener than reducing the number of vehicles and the miles they have to travel to get to the customer.

Thursday 12 October 2017

LIFE AFTER BREXIT - AN ALTERNATIVE TO MOLLY SCOTT CATO MEP's TALE OF DESPAIR

The Sunday of the recent Green Party conference witnessed a further resurgence of "Project Fear" now being resurrected by EU vested interests. In this case it was a speech by Green MEP Molly Scott Cato, who outlined a dystopian future for the UK after Brexit without providing a shred of evidence for her predictions.

So, with the evidence of history behind me, I would like to propose a different view of the UK in the year 2030, an alternative to the doom and gloom predicted by Molly, using the same examples she used, but with a completely different outcome.

The Japanese companies that provided nearly a million jobs since the Tories trashed our manufacturing sector in the 1980s, embraced with open arms the opportunity to work with the National Investment Bank and help manufacture goods and services in the UK after Brexit, rather than import them from low wage economies. Indeed, the "site here to sell here" policy introduced by the Progressive Coalition Government (elected by proportional representation) has meant that the majority of the new electric vehicles sold in the UK are now manufactured in the UK, rather than imported and the number of British manufacturers, particularly of components for renewable energy, has increased. (Vast savings were also made by cancelling the foreign owned Hinkley Point nuclear power station and state investment in offshore wind farms and tidal barrages).

Led by Government owned banks, like RBS and the National Investment Bank, the expertise of the City of London has ensured that banking employment has increased, again with the help of the "site here to sell here" policy which helped to control and localise finance and abolished the right of commercial banks to create artificial debt (positive money). In addition, the aggressive anti-tax avoidance policies introduced after Brexit has outlawed institutions based in countries that actively encouraged tax avoidance like Luxembourg and Ireland and led to a big increase in tax revenues; (also boosted by the introduction of the Robin Hood tax on unnecessary financial transactions across Europe).

As environmentalist Colin Hines described in his book "Progressive Protectionism - taking back control", the UK has re-introduced tariffs, quotas and capital controls, to curb the power of big business to play countries off against each other and threaten to relocate unless the UK bends the knee to open borders and global competition. Similar tactics to those used by China to become the largest manufacturer of goods in the world.

Naturally, leaving the EU as well as the democratisation of the World Trade Organisation (the WTO) has meant that economic growth is no longer the driving force of the UK, but instead a focus on improving the quality of life of its citizens. So free trade deals, like TTIP, like CETA and indeed like the EU single market, are no longer considered necessary.

A Government subsidy to facilitate a switch to more organic vegetable production in the UK, as well as the ability, now that the UK has left the EU, to support agriculture in the developing countries of Africa, has left the UK awash with fresh, healthy vegetables and fruits. Similarly a big increase in animal welfare legislation, banning the factory farming methods so prevalent in the EU as well as banning the use or import of meat adulterated with unnecessary hormones and antibiotics, has led to a big increase in the quality of meat production.

New localism policies have improved prospects for local firms, such as local dairy farms producing milk under higher welfare standards. As a result the health of the nation has never been higher, especially after the big increase in spending on the NHS, paid for in part by the savings made in not having to pay contributions to the EU budget. (There is still debate as to how much that exactly was!)

The un-enforced environmental health standards of the EU, such as for air quality, have been replaced by legally binding UK environmental standards and a big increase in jobs at the Health and Safety Executive.

The border problem between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland was quickly solved by a unification referendum and the abolition of the border, as Ireland was re-united at last. Indeed relations with all European countries has improved as the UK has stopped stealing staff trained in other countries and instead vastly increased its own investment in training, particularly of doctors, nurses and vocational jobs. With the abolition of tuition fees, universities have once again become centres of learning and not just businesses.

So, no Molly, Brexit does not necessarily mean the Tories continuing in power for the next 13 years. Indeed, we can and should replace the unpatriotic Tories, (whose only concern is to help their foreign paymasters in big business) with a patriotic Government that uses Brexit to put the UK, and its people, first.

Leslie Rowe
October 2017

Tuesday 3 October 2017

A1 Upgrade?

So, after years of disruption and millions of pounds spent, how is my journey from Brompton on Swale on the A1 improved? It now takes at least ten minutes longer to get anywhere!

The new link road from Brompton on Swale to Scotch Corner is, and will remain, a disaster. Even when the short dual carriageway section is open, the traffic lights at Scotch Corner will ensure a permanent queue as the Barracks Bank traffic from Skeeby and Richmond collide with those on the new link road.

Once again the Tory Governments, both local and national, have proven themselves to be inept. The story of this A1 upgrade is a classic example. The first build scheme was scrapped at a cost of millions of pounds in the first round of austerity, only to be resurrected two years later at an even higher cost. Throughout, the emphasis has been on improving the experience of through traffic at the expense of local residents. Consequently access roads have been closed and local traffic diverted.

The road itself is months overdue, with the A6136 bridge at Catterick Bridge still not open, a year after it was promised. Again local people are at the back of the queue when it comes to planning. And the road itself, when completed, still dips into valleys so that the problem of flooding on the A1 will remain, despite all the dangerous stagnant pools now lining the road.

Just why anyone, watching the ineptitude shown in the planning of this road, or in the Brexit negotiations or the gradual dismantling of the NHS locally (despite the crocodile tears of the usually absent local MP Rishi Sunak) can still vote for this bunch of clowns called the Conservative Party is beyond me.

Wednesday 2 August 2017

A Green Alternative after Brexit

It was after viewing Paul Mason's "Why it's kicking off everywhere" (Young Vic production broadcast on BBC 2), that I realised why I have become so disillusioned by Green Party and other so-called left wing leaders in recent years.

I remember well the pride I felt as a member of the Green Party, at its support for the newly elected Syriza government in Greece in 2015 and Syriza's fight with the EU over austerity. The shenanigans of Goldman Sachs had been exposed, including its masking of Greece's debt by cross currency swaps, facilitated that country's ill fated adoption of the Euro in 2001.
(Although the EU have never punished Goldman Sachs for this deception, indeed many Eurocrats go on to careers at GS, including the former president of the EU Commission, José Manuel Barosso).
But, as Paul Mason shows in his excellent play, the EU beat the Greeks into submission by closing their banks and threatening them with starvation. Which is why I find the current Green Party leadership's uncritical attitude towards the EU and its "statist oligarchy" (Simon Jenkins) a complete mystery. The Greens exist to promote localism and the devolution of power, yet they refuse to challenge an EU that is about the centralising of power.

A left wing environmentalist and anti-capitalist political movement would surely welcome the UK leaving the EU and striking out on its own? Not to follow the Tory line and negotiate ridiculous trade deals, the dangers of which were laid bare in the debate over TTIP, only then to be meekly accepted by the EU in their Canadian Free Trade deal, CETA. Dangers which would undermine environmental standards (such as imports of chlorinated chickens from the USA) and leave democratically elected governments open to be sued by corporate interests in kangaroo courts (CETA rebranded the politically untenable investor-state dispute settlement system (ISDS) as an “Investment Court System” (ICS)).

Our oldest trade deal, the EU Single market was established in 1992, but has singularly failed to improve our economic position in the world. UK goods exports to the 11 fellow founding members of the Single Market grew over the years 1993-2015 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of just 1.0 per cent. This compares unfavourably with the mean growth rate of the goods exports of Canada, Japan, Singapore and the US and 10 other non-member countries trading with the same 11 founding members under WTO rules, who had a CAGR of 1.93 per cent, which is almost twice as high. It also compares unfavourably with UK goods exports to the 111 countries with which it trades under WTO rules. These have grown over the same 23 years nearly three times faster, at a CAGR of 2.88 per cent. (Source: Michael Burrage, Senior Research Fellow at Civitas).

No, what is needed is a form of the ‘Progressive Protectionism’ proposed by environmentalist Colin Hines in his e-book, ‘Progressive Protectionism – taking back control’. This would involve the UK introducing a set of interrelated and self-reinforcing policy priorities:
. Replacing international trade competition and export dependence with protective safeguards to ensure revitalised local and national economies. These will include the reintroduction of tariffs, quotas, capital controls and the ability to strengthen constraints on the numbers and pace of immigration. Hines describes this as the fundamental "mind wrench" that will do most to curb the present power of big business to play countries off against each other and to threaten to relocate unless countries bow the knee to open borders and global competition.
. Introduce a site-here-to-sell-here policy for manufacturing and services domestically or regionally;
. Control and localise finance such that the majority stays within the UK;
. Control the numbers, rate and ability of new immigrants to stay and work temporarily or permanently;
. Reinforce a minimum wage and outlaw zero hours contracts to stop undermining living standards;
. Introduce fairer and socially positive taxes and resource and pollution taxes and tackle aggressive tax dodging nationally and globally in order to fund social and environmental improvements and help pay for the transition to permanent, sustainable and flourishing local economies. For instance, all businesses that traded in the UK would have to pay corporate taxes in the UK and not be allowed to export profits by imports of over-priced services and goods;
. Increase democratic involvement both politically and economically to ensure the effectiveness and equity of the movement to more diverse local economies;
. Implement a local competition policy to eliminate monopolies, or if inevitable, like in the water industry, to bring them back into Government control, by nationalisation.
. Indeed to renationalise industries, such as the railways, where privatisation has singularly failed.

Although Hines argues this approach on an EU wide basis, the neo-liberal consensus in the EU (directed as usual by Goldman Sachs and other lobbyists) would never allow it. Indeed the strategic plan for the EU, as described in the ‘Five Presidents’ Report’, talked about 'a deepening of the Single Market'.
On 22 June 2015, the Commission described what new powers it wants when it published a key report: ‘Completing Europe’s Economic and Monetary Union’. Dubbed the ‘Five Presidents’ Report’, this document commits the EU to the creation of a ‘genuine Economic Union’, a ‘Financial Union’, a ‘Fiscal Union’ and a ‘Political Union’ by 2025.

However, it could work at a UK level after Brexit, if we were willing to reign in the power of the multi-national corporations and take back our own economy. The UK's massive trade deficit (£70 billion p.a. on average with the EU alone), is not sustainable, even in the short term, as the UK economy goes further and further into debt to fund our massive net import bill. These figures also do not take into account the money sent back by the millions of EU citizens working in the UK. Often a source of cheap labour to undermine wage levels in the UK and negate the UK's need to train its own citizens. Don't believe the lies being told about full employment in the UK. In reality, about 21.5% of British workers are either officially unemployed, inactive, or employed part-time even though they really want full-time work (see http://www.businessinsider.fr/uk/unemployment-in-the-uk-is-now-so-low-its-in-danger-of-exposing-the-lie-used-to-create-the-numbers-2017-7/).
We would need to shift economic policy away from "open markets". In place of that discredited system of global economic governance, the UK would take back control of the scale of capital, goods, services and people entering and leaving our country.

More importantly, it would allow the UK to take the drastic action needed to control pollution and lead the fight against climate change, by being an example for the rest of the world to follow.
One of the greatest criticisms of the position of the Green Party leadership over Europe is that they seem to have forgotten our basic message of replacing a pro-growth consumer society with a society wedded to conserving our environment. We have been told many times that if the world wishes to avoid exceeding the 2°C, then the wealthiest countries have to adopt a de-growth strategy for a limited period. This involves a move away from consumerism and towards social awareness. Replacing fast food and German cars with investment in the NHS, social care and local production.

The goal, as described by Hines, is to allow an economy to rediversify and prosper by maximising local economic activity. Domestic businesses and funding sources would then meet the needs of the majority in society. For instance by Government supported local investment schemes, perhaps by switching Quantitative Easing away from bonds (which just makes the rich richer) and into medium term infrastructure investment.

Or the Green Housing scheme that the then Green Party leader Natalie Bennett singularly managed to fail to explain during the 2015 election campaign. This involves spending seed corn money to build and rent out social housing, then using the rent revenues to facilitate further house building. This and other social investments would help to reduce inequalities and power imbalances, improve social welfare and job security and protect the environment. We could take back power generation by local investment in solar and wind electricity generators, which would also avoid the waste of transmitting power over hundreds of miles (50% of electricity is lost in transmitting it over power lines). It would also bury forever the arguments for allowing foreign interests to build new and ridiculously expensive nuclear power stations.

Across the world people are fighting to be more independent, not less so. They crave democracy and accountability; want to see their identities and cultures live on. The European Union is not new and it is not progressive, "its trail winding back to the Roman Empire" (John King). Britain needs to look to a radically alternative future, in the interests of its citizens and as an example of an alternative economic system for the rest of the world to follow.

Tuesday 28 February 2017

Proposals for Tax Reform after Brexit: VAT

This is the first of a series of proposals from me, to enhance the UK after Brexit. It is NOT Green Party policy, but I would like it to be!
Value Added Tax (VAT) in the UK is a tax on spending with numerous exceptions, which makes it a complicated system.
There is a strong argument for reform of VAT after Brexit, in particular in relation to imports. Currently VAT is charged on some, but by no means on all, imports. However, the VAT charged on imports can be set off against VAT charged on subsequent sales, i.e. it is fully recoverable if you are VAT registered.
After leaving the single market, the UK will be free from EU VAT regulations. My proposal consists of three stages:
1. Reduce the VAT rate to 15% from the current high level of 20%, which would reduce the cost of all purchases, both imported AND UK produced, by about 4%.
2. Put VAT on all imports, most importantly on overseas service and management charges, which are used by offshore companies to avoid UK corporate taxes. VAT would also be imposed on all food imports, including the over-pricing of commodities by multi-nationals, which is also used to avoid taxation, and on meat. This would be a disincentive to the long distance transfer of foodstuffs (and animals)and encourage more local production, upon which VAT would not be charged. It is also likely to reduce meat consumption, in favour of locally produced vegetables.
3. Stop VAT on imports being recoverable. This would undoubtedly increase the cost of imports, but it is likely that:
(a) it would be an incentive to produce more goods and services locally in the UK and reduce the record levels of imports, now running at £582bn a year;
(b) it would be allowable as a business expense, thus being partially mitigated for importers by a reduced corporation tax bill (if they pay their taxes);
(c) competition would encourage importers not to pass on all of the extra costs to their customers, to avoid being priced out of the market;
(d) the extra cost to consumers for imports would encourage people to prefer locally sourced goods and services;
(e) the extra cost to consumers would be more than mitigated by the overall reduction in VAT on ALL their purchases, both imports and locally sourced;
(f) be a major disincentive for tax avoidance using charging for "fictitious" overseas services, such as management costs or over-priced commodities.
(g) it would, at current rates, bring in an additional £80bn+ in revenue to the UK treasury, which could be used to improve the NHS and social care;
(h) it is likely to reduce consumption overall, as part of a "de-growth" economic strategy, which was recommended for economically developed countries,after the 2013 climate change talks in Warsaw.
Such a change would challenge EU rules and would probably flout World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules as well. But it would be in line with the Green Leaves proposal to shun all free trade agreements, like TTIP and CETA.
However, it is also likely that retaliatory action might be taken by other countries, in the form of tariffs on UK exports, but as imports to the UK outweigh exports from the UK, this is something that can be negotiated favourably on a bilateral basis with each country or trading bloc, particularly the EU, whose exports to the UK are already £70bn more than the imports from the UK.

Thursday 15 December 2016

Brexit and the Kindness of Strangers

Once again we have civil servants and politicians telling us we need ten years to negotiate trade deals with the EU before we can have Brexit. This is what Hitler called the big lie, something obviously untrue, but if you keep saying it then people will begin to believe it.
The reality is that we do not need trade deals, as we have our biggest and most profitable trading area right here on our doorstep. It is called the UK.
And the same civil servants and politicians, who oppose Brexit, have spent thirty years actively undermining the UK economy in the name of "free trade". As a result we have an unsustainable trade deficit, which is the biggest challenge facing the UK, not our lack of trade deals.
Earlier in 2016, the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, called it "the kindness of strangers". This is the willingness of foreign banks and institutions to finance the UK's massive trade deficit .
A dangerous and insecure foundation for any economy.
Yet throughout the debates about Brexit and the UK's position in the world, the trade deficit has not been something that any of the political parties or civil servants discussed. Not even the Green Party, despite the fact that it is a major factor in the sustainability of the UK economy.
Greens should be asking: are EU economic policies sustainable, or should we be striving for a more self-sufficient society? This is the big question that I believe the Green Party leadership failed to ask itself before the EU referendum. Will we get a more sustainable society inside or outside the European Union?
If it is about anything, Brexit is about the long term future of the UK economy. We should be thinking about what sort of society we want to be living in for the remainder of the 21st century. The Green Party in particular should be campaigning for a society that is sustainable in the long term.
This is not just an issue of phasing out fossil fuels, to try to avoid the Armageddon of global warming. It is about whether we want to continue consuming the world's resources at the current rate; a rate not sustainable by two earths, not just the one we inhabit. We are constantly being told that we are consumers, but should we not be striving to become conservers?
The EU has and always will be an advocate for big business. The number one goal of the current EU trade commissioner is to expand international trade by taking the EU into TTIP.
Indeed it was written into her remit by the President of the EU commission himself. The biggest and most effective lobbyists in Brussels come from the multinationals. But most of all, the very essence of the EU is about economic growth, no matter what the cost.
This is why, despite the relative ease of doing so, the EU or any one of its member states have never taken effective measures to curb wholesale tax avoidance by multinationals. Indeed, some countries actually style themselves as tax avoidance facilitators, like Ireland as it struggled to get out of its debt crisis and Luxembourg (championed by a Prime Minister who was later to become the President of the EU Commission).
That is why the UK Chancellor's stated big ambition is to have the lowest corporation tax in the EU. It should be to build a sustainable country, with a priority of protecting and serving its citizens.
The EU cares little about the balance of trade between EU countries; its priority is the furtherance of trade for the EU as a whole. This is why we have the desperate economy of Greece co-existing with the massive wealth of Germany. It is also why the unsustainable trade deficit of the UK is entirely down to the imports from the rest of the EU being far more than our exports to the EU.
In the first quarter of 2016, the trade deficit of the UK with the EU reached £24bn (the equivalent of £96bn a year ). If the UK economy is to survive, then any responsible government must plug this trade gap, before the "kindness of strangers" runs out, as it did in Greece.
In 1957, the then prime minister Harold Macmillan ordered the first big post war economic re-appraisal of the UK economy and, after the shock of the Suez crisis, of the UK's role in the world. The conclusions were clear, a post imperial Britain had to have a trade surplus to survive. So Macmillan and his immediate successors focused on supporting British industry, to replace the trade lost as the empire disappeared.
This "export or die" support for British business continued until Thatcher and her acolytes (Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, and Clegg) broke the post-Suez consensus around economic sustainability. Blinded by the pseudo-science of the neo-liberal economics sponsored by the multi-nationals, they allowed our domestic economy to stagnate.
Indeed, since Thatcher there has been little economic growth per capita. That means that what economic growth there has been was largely the result of an increased population due to net immigration and price inflation. (Between 2008 and 2014 the economy declined by 0.2% per individual officially resident in the UK).
What there has been is a steadily increasing trade deficit, as UK industries were either deliberately destroyed (like locomotive manufacture, when the Tories refused to buy any new trains for three years before they privatised the railways) or by their transfer to cheaper parts of the world, including other parts of Europe. Thus we had the unedifying sight of British workers (as in Phillips and Cadburys) training their successors before being put out of work.
With the UK part of the EU, economists thought on an EU level. It did not seem to matter that the UK had a massive trade deficit with the rest of the EU. But when the UK voted for Brexit, the economists suddenly had to view the UK as a stand-alone economy. This slap in the face with the reality of the UK's terrible trade deficit is what caused the drop in the pound, not the democratic decision of the British people to leave the EU.
The biggest challenge of Brexit is how to reduce this trade deficit and re-establish the UK as a sustainable economy. What we need is a healthy dose of Keynesian economics, with public and private investment in manufacturing and much needed public services. The Tory and pseudo-Tory government policies of laissez faire of the last thirty years have failed and is time for a UK Government to manage our economy once again, as even the arch-Tory Macmillan realised sixty years ago.
We need a Government that invests in our future, a sustainable future. This means doing away with tax breaks for oil producers and fracking and replacing them with investment in renewable energy, in home and business insulation and community energy schemes. It means public investment in our NHS, cancelling PFI contracts and stopping the leeching of money to private sector providers in the name of market economics.
It means cancelling the dodgy deals to build obsolete nuclear power stations with money supplied by a communist dictatorship and investing instead in reducing our energy consumption.
It means taxing multi-national businesses in the UK on their profits made in the UK and properly policing by HMRC to eliminate fake management, service and commodity charges charged by holding companies in off-shore tax havens.
It means using quantitative easing to invest in our country, instead of increasing the value of bonds held by the richest 5%.
The problem has always been that much of this direct Government involvement in developing UK industries directly contravenes EU directives. Even the purchase of local produce by local authorities has been shown to fall foul of EU competition rules.
But most of all we need to recognise that with 65 million "consumers" the UK is a massive single market on its own. Because every country in the rest of the EU exports far more into the UK than the UK exports into those countries, the UK market is far more valuable to them than the EU market is to the UK. As mentioned £24bn more in the first quarter of 2016 alone.
With Brexit we have two main opportunities, currently not even being discussed by this failed Tory administration nor indeed by the official opposition.
First to reduce our trade deficit by investing in our own economy to reduce and replace the goods and services purchased from the other countries in the EU.
Secondly, to actively engineer our economy away from a throw-away society towards a society based on providing the goods and services that people actually need, like renewable energy and good health and social care. In Sweden for instance, they are giving tax breaks to people who repair goods rather than throw them away.
It is no coincidence that we have not seen a sustainable economy since we abandoned Keynesian economics and replaced it with 'the world's dumbest idea': the economics of Milton Friedman. So I ask everyone who has the best interests of the UK at heart, please stop looking back to challenge Brexit and instead look forward to a resurgent UK investing in itself and its people once again.

Friday 24 June 2016

A New Green Direction after #Brexit

As the Financial Secretary of Green-Leaves, I naturally applaud the decision of the British people to vote to Leave the EU.

It gives the Green Party an opportunity for a new more radical direction, developing on existing priorities for campaigning. In addition, Cameron's resignation, coupled with the police enquiries into Tory electoral fraud gives us an excellent opportunity to curtail this appalling Tory administration and call for a general election.

Those priorities, I believe, should be, as follows:

1. The UK having addressed the democratic deficit in the EU, our next priority should be to address the democratic deficit in the UK. We should call for immediate discussions on electoral reform to give the people of the UK a more representative voting system. We got this referendum because of internal Tory Party squabbles and a weak Prime Minister who promised the EU referendum in the clear expectation that he would not get a majority in the House of Commons in 2015 and not then have to deliver on that promise. Now literally hoisted on his own petard, the Green Party should take this opportunity to attack the electoral system that got him elected with the support of less than one quarter of the electorate and demand proportional representation.

2. Similarly we should renew our campaign for the abolition of the House of Lords and the creation of a new elected senate.

3. The Green Party in England & Wales should support the demands for a new independence referendum in Scotland and a referendum for a United Ireland.

4. One of my greatest criticisms of the position of the Green Party over Europe is that we seemed to have forgotten our basic message of replacing a pro-growth consumer society with a society wedded to conserving our environment. We have been told many times that if the world wishes to avoid exceeding the 2°C, then the wealthiest countries have to adopt a de-growth strategy for a limited period. We should return to our roots and actively campaign for a de-growth economic policy.

5. That would embrace localism in our procurement policies for schools, hospitals and other public institutions, like the military. Making it a virtue of buying local preferably organic food.

6. Step up our opposition to the creeping privatisation of the NHS, especially now that the Tories will no longer have the excuse of EU neo-liberal policies on procurement.

7. Given the new spirit of rebellion engendered in the EU by the UK's unprecedented rejection of the arguments put forward by international vested interests, I believe TTIP is now dead. Obama has already promised that the UK will be put to the "back of the queue" regarding a free trade agreement and we can carve out a unique position by opposing ALL UK free trade agreements.

8. Point out that leaving the EU does not mean that we have to leave the European Court of Human Rights, which is a separate and older institution. Indeed we can champion the Court in our opposition to Tory attempts to water down our rights.

9. Try to develop an electoral pact with the Corbyn wing of the Labour Party, to increase the possibility of a truly socialist and progressive UK Government, to reverse the Thatcherism and austerity favoured by all successor governments since Thatcher, both Labour and Tory.

In this way we can renew and envigorate the Green Party by following this more radical agenda.