nation first - ditch the religion of free trade

I believe in trade, I believe in free trade where appropriate; but I do not believe in the religion of Free Trade, no matter what the consequences may be to our national standing. The imperative of any government should be the security of our citizens, their prosperity and their freedom. Free Trade policies as pursued today threaten all of these.

In our political climate, it is dangerous heresy to say this: both Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservatives support the orthodoxy that liberal economics was the one way, eventually to be adopted by the world. Only it is not being adopted: the most successful economies, China and Japan, have high tariffs; China does not allow its currency to float free on the exchange markets, they keep it low in order to promote exports and increase their industrial capacity. They are not adopting free trade because they don’t need it; they leave it for us to make it easier for them. True believers in Free Trade say that this is the best of all possible worlds, that it pulls millions out of poverty; they neglect to say that it is impoverishing the western world and putting our people into poverty instead. The economy has boomed over the last 15 years, but it has been accompanied by an unparalled increase in debt; the consumer boom is paid for by borrowing, not by wealth production. See how many companies are being bought by Far Eastern and Middle Eastern funds, many of them, Sovereign Wealth Funds, owned by foreign governments. The western world is strapped for cash; why because we have no commodities and our production is overseas.

In the 19th century USA and Germany pursued policies based on production, not consumption. By the early 20th century, these were the economic powerhouses of the world; Britain, which believed in Free Trade unconditionally was in industrial decline. For all its communism, Stalin succeeded in finishing the industrialisation of the USSR; and it is the constraints imposed on African Governments by the west, which prevent African economies, flooded with goods from outside, from increasing production.

Though not in a particularly healthy state, the best performing western country in terms of balance of payments is Germany, a far cry from the moribund economy characterised by liberal “flat-earth” ideologues at the start of the Iraq War, when neo-con/liberal hubris was at its height. Its export-led recovery from 2005 was based on not anticipated by those who promoted debt in Britain and America.

Free trade at any cost is part of the ideology of western suicide. As we lose our industrial base, we lose our capacity to influence events in the world, as well as our ability to control our own affairs. Without an industrial capacity, we will lose our military capacity as well; a de-industrialised nation cannot defend itself against armies backed by advanced industrial economies. Coupled with the demographic decline caused by low birth rates, this spells disaster for the West.

How have we accepted this? Part of the answer is the facile internationalism that passes for enlightened policy amongst the liberal elites and the left. Before the fall of the Soviet Union, socialism was seen as the means to bring the world together, to eliminate conflict, to encourage all countries to buy into the values of progress and prosperity. With the fall of Communism, those same socialists became capitalists but they kept their internationalist ideology. Now free trade is the way to eliminate national and ethnic conflict; now free trade would redistribute wealth; now free trade would make people abandon their regressive cultures and adopt the ways of the enlightened west.

It hasn’t happened: the west has become more impoverished, a not very creditable role model. The rest of the world ignore us because they see how we are failing.


One of the features of life under new labour has been the increase in inequality – not between the oppressed poor and the rest, as the left would have had us believe; but between the elites and the rest. Investment bankers have made millions and have bought the best houses, outpricing professional families; non-domicile millionaires live in Britain, used our public services, put up house prices, without being taxed. Those who didn’t work get benefits to pay for drugs and idleness; they get a council house; any immigrant who rolls up with a torn-up passport and a family gets a council house too – as well as other benefits. The deserving poor can’t get a council house and they can’t buy a house as well; house prices have gone up while immigrants have driven down wages.

If you are very rich it is OK; if you very poor you get benefits. The people who are suffering are the hard-working ordinary people. They pay for the excesses of the bankers and finance the drugs culture of the underclass. Brown and livingstone say this is OK, as long as they can finance their welfare policies.


solution
We have to pursue policies that benefit our own people. It calls for a major change of strategic direction: abandon unlimited free trade, promote our own industrial base, eliminate the culture of debt, stop taxing the ordinary people, help them have more children. Stop benefits for the underclass and for the elites.