Ross Clark

Was there ever a more pathetic piece of political posturing than the attempt by New York mayor Bill de Blasio to sue five oil companies, including BP and Shell, for the cost of building £14.8bn ($20bn) worth of sea defences to protect vulnerable parts of the city? To add to his virtue-signalling, de Blasio has also announced that the city’s pension funds will seek to divest from the shares of oil companies. One should never under-estimate the ability of the courts, whether in the US or elsewhere, to come up with perverse judgements but it ought to be pretty improbable that New York could win the case.

The Spectator, in association with Tate & Lyle Sugars, brought together MPs, representatives from Tate & Lyle, the Fairtrade Foundation and the Australian High Commissioner to discuss the future of the UK sugar sector following Brexit. This is a report of the discussion which followed. The sugar industry is an interesting case study for the opportunities as well as the challenges which could result from Britain’s departure from the EU. At present, 50 to 60 per cent of the sugar consumed in Britain comes from sugar beet grown and processed in this country. The industry has been subsidised since before Britain joined the EU and subsidy has continued under EU membership (not directly but via farm subsidies).

As the Brexit ‘war cabinet’ meets this morning to discuss what future trading relationship Britain would like with the EU there is a grim inevitability about the next few months. We know what we want – free trade with the EU, in services as well as goods, as well as free trade with the rest of the world. The EU, as it has made clear in recent days, has other ideas. Its plan is to allow us a Canada-style deal – a free trade deal in goods but not services, something which will be completely unacceptable to Britain, with our financial services-dominated economy. Moreover, it is going to try to impose punitive tariffs on British imports wherever it feels that UK regulation is unhelpful to EU industries.

This morning has brought predictable outrage about Tory ‘traitors’. The Prime Minister has been undermined, Guy Verhofstadt has had his fun describing it as a ‘good day for democracy’. The government has been reduced to damage-limitation, suggesting that last night’s defeat – which means that Parliament will now have the final say on a Brexit deal – won’t derail its plans. That is true. Allowing Parliament the final judgement on the deal almost certainly won’t alter the outcome: Britain will leave the EU on 29 March 2019 with whatever deal the government is able to cut with Michel Barnier and his team.

I didn’t think I would ever see myself write this, but I think Nick Clegg is right: we need a second referendum on the EU. I come to this conclusion not because – like some Remainers seem to do – I think 52 per cent of the British population are too thick to make decisions affecting the future of the country and need to be made to vote again so that they can come up with the correct answer. I have come to it because it is the only way that Theresa May and her government are going to survive the next 15 months. As is clear from polls at the weekend there is a lot of public anger, as well as disquiet on the Tory backbenches, at the size of the £40 billion leaving bill.

There is a simple lesson the government needs to learn from Alan Milburn’s resignation as social mobility czar: employ a GOAT at your peril. A ‘GOAT’  – the acronym derives from Gordon Brown’s phrase ‘Government Of All Talents – is a figure appointed to a government job, either as a minister or an adviser, even though he or she has a political persuasion. Presumably, what was going through David Cameron’s mind in 2012 when he appointed Milburn to the job driving Tory social mobility policy was that it would make his government look broad-minded and caring. That was, after all, what Cameron was all about – he was above all else a one-man PR operation to ‘detoxify’, as he saw it, the Conservative brand.

Government figures today show a sharp fall in net migration – 230,000 over the year to June, compared with 336,000 in the previous 12 months. If it keeps falling at that rate for another 18 months, Theresa May will have fulfilled David Cameron’s rash promise to reduce net migration to tens of thousands – if that, indeed, is an achievement worth trumpeting. For many it isn’t. The fall has reignited claims that the NHS, business and other employers are suffering a Brexit-induced drought of qualified staff, as EU workers desert ‘xenophobic’ Britain and are not replaced.

The female leader of a prominent European country fails to win a majority in an election and then struggles to form a coalition. Meanwhile, her government limps from crisis to crisis and finally negotiations break down, leading to another general election just weeks later. Not Theresa May, obviously, because she had little difficulty in forming a workable coalition with the DUP. But it is the situation in Germany where today Angela Merkel said that she has given up on trying to create a workable government with the Free Democratic Party, the Christian Social Union and the Greens. There will now almost inevitably have to be another general election, with Angela Merkel – rather than Theresa May – likely to be out on her ear by Christmas.

I don’t hold much faith in forecasts by the IMF. They have been so wrong in the past as to be worthless. A week before referendum day in 2016, for example, the IMF predicted that a Leave vote would take 5.5 per cent off UK GDP by 2019, tipping us into recession in 2017. We’re still waiting. However, it is interesting to note that if the Remain lobby does want to continue quoting IMF forecasts at us, there is an inconvenient little statement in its latest World Economic Outlook, published today. It claims that in the event of a ‘disruptive Brexit’ – i.e.

Buried in yesterday’s drama over Priti Patel was the news that train drivers represented by Aslef have voted to end their industrial action on Southern Rail by accepting a pay deal which will give them a 28.5 per cent rise over five years. It will take their basic pay – for a four day week – to £63,000. With overtime, some could find themselves dragged into Jeremy Corbyn’s supertax bracket, aimed at those earning more than £80,000. It won’t even mean the end of the misery on Southern Rail, because the Rail, Maritime and Transport Union (RMT), which has also been striking, has not accepted a deal. Wasn’t this sort of thing – unions holding railways to ransom for outrageous pay demands – supposed to be ended by privatisation?