Mark Corner's Blog

This is a blog I had for the LSE on Jan 19th. It discusses the approaches to devolution which have attempted to hold the UK together as a 'multinational state' and suggests that the UK could be much more effectively held together if it adopted a structure which made it more like a mini-EU.

Not exactly a message that will be music to the ears of Brexiteers, but still. It is extraordinary how all the books and blogs around in 2016 proclaiming that Brexit means the end of the EU have been superseded by books and blogs suggesting that it's much more likely to mean the end of the UK.

The LSE blog can be found below:

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpo...

The book which I published a few weeks on the issue is called A Tale of Two Unions. See https://www.transcript-publishing.com... The book seeks to contrast the European Union with the UK union of 'nations'.

Marco Polo and Food Reserves

Marco Polo (1254-1324) was a Venetian merchant who travelled through much of Asia in the late thirteenth century. As with any tale from history, there are those who are sceptical about the veracity of his stories and even about whether he went to China at all (he doesn’t mention the Great Wall, the sceptics complain). However, most scholars agree that he did go. Monetary systems and waterways were of more significance for his interest in how the realm was run than Great Walls. Kublai Khan, the story goes, took a shine to Marco Polo and made him his emissary, responding favourably to a Westerner modest enough to want to learn from others rather than to explain why ‘West means best’.
Book II Chapter 27 of the Travels of Marco Polo talks about the way Kublai Khan dealt with food shortages.
OF THE RELIEF AFFORDED BY THE EMPEROR TO ALL THE PROVINCES OF HIS EMPIRE IN TIMES OF DEARTH OR MORTALITY OF CATTLE
The Great Khan sends every year his commissioners to ascertain whether any of his subjects have suffered in their crops from unfavourable weather, from storms of wind or violent rains, or by locusts, worms, or any other plague; and in such cases he not only refrains from exacting the usual tribute of that year, but furnishes them from his granaries with so much corn as is necessary for their subsistence, as well as for sowing their land.
With this view, in times of great plenty, he causes large purchases to be made of such kinds of grain as are most serviceable to them, which is stored in granaries provided for the purpose in the several provinces, and managed with such care as to ensure its keeping for three or four years without damage. It is his command, that these granaries be always kept full, in order to provide against times of scarcity; and when, in such seasons, he disposes of the grain for money, he requires for four measures no more than the purchaser would pay for one measure in the market.
The Great Khan had a system similar to that which we propose. He had buffer stocks in the form of granaries, which he replenished in times of plenty when prices were low. He released grain from the granaries in times of shortage when prices were high. He does not quite do what we recommend, which is release the additional supplies onto the market, thereby bringing the price down by the natural workings of supply and demand. Instead, he sells at a price which is deliberately kept low. But in essence it is precisely what we would recommend, a sustainable system where food stocks are built up in times of plenty and released in times of scarcity, thereby ironing out the natural price volatility that can inflict damage on both producers (if prices are too low) and consumers (if they are too high).

Though Marco Polo was willing to learn from Kublai Khan, a lot of those who manage organisations dedicated to dealing with food insecurity and famine in the modern day won’t even consider buffer stocks. They don’t seem able to learn a lesson from Asia. They face a mental blockage when they even contemplate the idea – perhaps a Great Wall?

For more information about food reserves and buffer stocks, see the NGO website www.action-for-food-reserves.org

Political parties need distinctive policies. The Lib Dems had them in the 2005 election, with their own policy in foreign affairs (opposing military intervention in Iraq) and their own policy at home (supporting modest tax increases to pay for public services, something Labour had run away from ever since it lost the 1992 election).

Five years later, the Lib Dems went into Coalition government. That wasn’t a mistake in itself, but Nick Clegg did not insist upon one of the three ‘great posts’ – Chancellor, Home Office or Foreign Office. Compare the moment when Germany’s Greens went into coalition with the Social Democrats. Joschka Fischer became the Foreign Minister and had a clear impact on German foreign policy. As Deputy Prime Minister, Clegg may have had the effect of modifying government policy and making it less ‘excessive’ – like other deputies before him (Whitelaw? Prescott?) - but having a general watering-down effect on government policy does not mean giving it a distinctive flavour. Fischer was able to make a policy area his own (up to a point) and the Greens didn’t suffer too much electorally as a consequence. Clegg, despite some achievements, was not associated with a specifically Liberal vision and was punished heavily in 2015.

Since then, the Lib Dems have found it difficult to find a distinctive policy. When it comes to environmental policies, they risk being seen as Green-lite, when it comes to caring and welfare they are in danger of seeming Labour-lite and their distinctive stance on the EU has been at least partly overtaken by events. So where can their distinctive contribution come from?

Start from Liberal strengths. They lie at the local level. Lib Dems have always supported local issues and remain well represented in local government. This is not parochialism – people care about these things. But a really effective local politics links up with national issues. People may think it is just a question of campaigning to keep a bus service running or a post office open. They forget that local concerns have to be integrated into national strategies.

Take the UK picture as a whole. Many in Scotland think it can only manage its affairs effectively through independence. One way to counter this is to make sure that English regions, alongside Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, can maintain their distinctive identity through the institutions of the British Union. Regions and nations should be represented in a second chamber at Westminster purged of peers, just as the German regions are represented in its second chamber, the Bundesrat. People may not want ‘yet more tiers of government’, but they will support better use of those that exist already.

I lived a lot of my life in Devon and Cornwall. Traditionally, the Liberals had many MPs there, not least because they were associated with giving the Westcountry a distinctive voice. That perspective has gone. It can be won back by campaigning to structure things nationally so that local interests are at the heart of government. That might help the Lib Dems to recover their distinctive voice, not only in the Westcountry but in all parts of the country.

This book is now six years old and obviously needs updating in the light of events during the last six years, not least BREXIT.

I don't want to go into all the arguments about this seemingly never-ending issue, save to say that I increasingly feel that there are two unions involved here, both with virtues yet both flawed, a European Union and a British Union (even the BBC quite happily refers to the 'four nations' of the UK now). The EU27 and the UK4 confront each other but also confront their own problems, trying to develop adequate structures to maintain themselves. The relationship between the UK and the EU in the 2020s may well be a story of two unions, not one, each of which has to struggle to survive in their current form.