Why I've voted to leave the European Union

The EU referendum is the biggest question British voters (myself included) will have to wrestle with in a generation. General elections come and go, but deciding on our EU membership transcends the electoral cycle and normal political allegiances. As a postal voter in New Zealand I've already voted 'Leave', so I thought it’d be helpful to explain why I think membership of the European Union is bad for Britain.

Both sides have have used 'facts' to underline their positions – but in both instances 'facts' are often tosh. The Treasury's claims that households will be poorer if Britain doesn't vote to remain in the EU are nonsense: back in 2010 the Treasury 'predicted' the Government would be in surplus by now, yet here we are after six year of Conservative government still very much in the red. Likewise, Britain pays £350 million a week to Brussels, but it does get some of that back in return investment – the real figure is more like £180 million a week (still an enormous amount of money).

You can use 'facts' to make the case for a vote each way – little wonder people are sick of politicians!

So for me the referendum debate isn't a game of Top Trumps. There isn't an EU referendum statistic that beats another stat, but there are parallels that resonate – and this is what I've based my vote on. The big issues that swayed me are as follows:

1) Accountability – This is one of #VoteLeave's big arguments: the European Commission is responsible for setting a decent chunk of British law (around 30%, depending on who you listen to) yet of the 28 Commissioners only five have any commercial experience – the rest are career politicians, academics, lawyers, and so on. As someone who enjoys election campaigns the idea of people making the rules without being answerable to the country appals me (and yes, I support reform of the House of Lords). The European Parliament is merely an advisory body, and besides – no-one knows what Members of the European Parliament do. Can you even name your MEPs?

Oh – and there’s the small problem of the EU failing to sign off its accounts for almost two decades. It’s estimated that over £5 billion of the annual EU’s budget is lost to fraud. If this was the record of an elected government the politicians would be out of office – but the EU Commissioners are appointed, so they aren’t exactly sweating on this.

2) Eurozone integration – It's clear that the Eurozone will need to consolidate if the Euro is to be viable in the coming decades. Britain – outside the Eurozone – won't be part of this, so regardless of whether we vote 'In' or 'Leave' we'll be on the periphery of the next phase of the EU. Second class European citizens, yet still paying in more than we get out. If the referendum is won by ‘Remain’ then polling suggests it will be by a tiny margin, with debate in the UK and with our European partners dominated in the years ahead by a sense that almost half the population wants out. Let’s pull off the plaster and start building a new relationship with the Eurozone countries, and let them take the necessary steps towards integration that are desperately needed to get their economies back into real growth.

3) Trade – Britain is tied to the EU when negotiating trade agreements. The 'Remain' camp say the EU's size helps during trade negotiations, but this isn't true. As a half-New Zealander I've seen how successive governments in Wellington have been able to secure trade deals with the world's major economies. Smaller is better – which explains why New Zealand has secured trade deals with China, the US, Japan and almost all the major economies in Asia. The larger the block, the more vested interests there are to slow down trade talks – and Europe’s arms are regularly tied by French farmers, Romanian leather manufacturers, and so on. The EU trumpets its deals with Mexico and South Korea (New Zealand has also signed deals with these countries) but on a global level they are small fry. Where is the EU trade deal with China? The US? Brazil? These crucial agreements won’t be signed anytime soon, and that’s a real financial loss for the British economy. 

Put simply, the EU is millstone for the UK's global trade ambitions – disastrous given that we're in the era of the container ship and digital trade.

New Zealand's Free Trade Agreements (2016)

4) Less government – The EU's enormous bureaucratic machine is well known to Britain. 10,000 people working for the EU in Brussels take home more pay than David Cameron. And when all the member states were tightening their belts in recent years it was a major struggle to get the EU to reign in its spending. Totally out of touch – so a vote to leave the EU frees Britain from this awful culture of waste.

5) An outward looking Britain – I’d argue that Britain is the most globally engaged European country. I remember organising a fundraiser at one my local curry houses in Tooting – I'd managed to get a junior minister along, and the owner of the restaurant grabbed him by the lapels and told him the government was stopping him from bringing in the talented chefs he wanted to help his business thrive, while the Italian restaurant up the road had no such barriers to contend with. “How is this fair?” the restaurant owner asked.

Likewise James Dyson wants to bring the best engineers to help make his amazing vacuum cleaners – but the Government's clampdown on non-EU migrants makes this impossible. Not cool. I want Britain to be open to the brightest and best in the world, and I simply note that New Zealand (where my family is from) has a net immigration level three times higher than the UK, yet people are relatively comfortable with this because they know the government has the ultimate say on the numbers, and can match skills to the needs of the labour force. 

Blanket freedom of movement has seen wages stagnate, and zero hours contracts are being promoted under EU Flexible Labour Market rules. Millions of Britons are being undercut by workers who are happy to share rooms and send their pay packets home to to their families in countries where the cost of living is substantially lower. High levels of immigration have also pushed up the cost of housing, both in terms of rent, and the overall cost of property – and put enormous pressure to build on yet more of the British countryside.

Migrants should be celebrated, but the EU's open-door freedom of movement means this often isn't the case.

The perceived lack of control on immigration is utterly toxic for politics in the UK – particularly when politicians shut down anyone who disagrees by calling them ‘bigoted’. But it’s also toxic for anyone coming to the UK and bringing their skills to help make the country a better place to be.

As a sovereign nation Britain can adopt an immigration policy in line with the population's wishes. Current polling suggests freedom of movement agreements with countries like New Zealand, Australia and Canada would be popular, but we could extend these to Poland, the Netherlands, and so on – if that was judged to be in Britain's interest.

6) Progressive values – The 'In' camp suggest Brexit will lead to a bonfire of worker's rights, and so on. This simply isn't true – important UK legislation like the Equal Pay Act came into force before Britain joined the (then) EEC, and British values are based on 800 years of common law, Magna Carta, parliamentary democracy, and so on. At the risk of pointing out the obvious, Britain was one of a handful of European countries during the early 1940s that remained open and tolerant, while much of Europe was up in flames. All of which predated the EU. The Labour Leave campaign has a lot to say about how the EU is bad news for the progressive agenda. 

A Brexit vote won't suddenly turn the country into a Nigel Farage theme park. Blighty will still be home to generous, tolerant people who want a country that's open to the world. New Zealand is a modern, progressive country – and we’ve done this without being EU members. What is so inherently wrong in Britain that you need to be in the EU to remain ‘decent’? It’s a nonsense argument.

7) Security – Supposedly the crowning triumph of the European Union is a lack of war on the Continent since 1945. This is nonsense, of course – it is NATO that has secured peace since 1945, and regardless of next Thursday's vote the UK will still be one of its leading members. Britain will also remain in the ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence network – it’s the most powerful intelligence organisation in the world (with the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand). Our European partners rely on intelligence we pass onto them, so any suggestion that we may be punished if we leave the EU is utterly ridiculous.

Field Marshal Guthrie’s recent endorsement of the Leave campaign pointed to the importance of building relationships with reliable allies that are willing to act. Lord Guthrie felt German attitudes to Croatia during the 1990s Balkan crisis created a sort of paralysis that led to the unnecessary loss of thousands of lives. “To get 28 people sitting round a table being decisive is very, very difficult. If you have a European Army, you will find that lots of those taking part will see it as a way of getting a seat at the top table as cheaply as they possibly can. Then they can actually do less, and the equipment programmes and the size of the forces suffer. When it comes to leading, you want a very clear chain of command, capable of making quick decisions.”

The 'EU gives us peace' argument also overlooks the war currently raging between Russia and the Ukraine. The latter would love to join the EU, but this is impossible given its corrupt public sector is wholly incapable of administering government in a manner acceptable to EU members. Ukraine remains outside the EU, and won't be joining for a generation. The EU in its current form is focused on government, rather than trade, and that's deeply destabilising for countries around Europe's periphery that are decades away from having the sort of administration capabilities that would enable them to join the EU. Greece's government is barely able to administer EU law – and look where they are now.

The Times (Feb 3rd, 2016)

8) EU reform is impossible – Brussels desperately needs to drive a genuine reform agenda, given that the Euro has destroyed the Greek economy (it hasn't been great for Spain or Italy either) and with the far right currently surging upwards in the polls across Germany, Austria, Poland, and so on. These are fully-blown fascist parties, by the way, the likes of which we haven't seen in the UK – yet.

But David Cameron's failure to secure meaningful concessions demonstrated just how incapable of reform the EU, and the idea that by staying in Europe we'll bring about change is naive. Besides, what do you think the EU will look like in two decades time? Will it even exist? Will Greece have finally been booted out? Will the 'passport free' Schengen Zone have been wound up? And will the Eurozone have integrated its tax system to try and make the single currency work? A vote to remain in Europe is a huge political gamble, but all the more so when the EU's leadership has demonstrated time after time its unwillingness to cast a critical eye on itself.

So that's why I've voted to leave the EU.

I'm optimistic about Britain's future – there's not a smidgeon of 'Little Englander' in me – and a vote to leave the EU will mean a Britain that is more progressive, tolerant, and prosperous than at the moment. If the likes of Dyson and JCB want Britain out of the EU, then I’ll listen to them any day over the faceless bankers and career politicians like George Osborne. It won’t be an easy transition, but likewise it won’t be the disaster some on the ‘In’ camp have suggested. Leaving the EU is a decision that will benefit Britain and Europe for decades to come – and will allow us to re-engage with the world.

Please Vote Leave on Thursday.

First published on my Facebook page on June 19th, 2016

Some thoughts on New Zealand’s flag referenda

When I was little my godmother gave me a book about flags. The cool kids were into Dungeons and Dragons (look who's laughing now!) but I loved reading about how Old Glory got its 50 stars, and how the Soviets and Left had adopted blood red as their colour. Some of the best flags were the simplest, especially France’s Tricolour, but I felt sorry for kids in Brazil trying to draw their flag’s complicated depiction of the stars, which also includes the Southern Cross. Nepal’s double triangle-shaped pennant just seemed weird – and definitely not a proper flag, to my eight year old eyes.

The shared history of nations also means many countries have similar designs: Norway, Sweden, Denmark and the other Nordic countries all seem to have conquered each other at various times, but today are happy with flags that many foreigners struggle to tell apart – a similarity that also reflects their common values of progressive democratic society, and strong relationships between their people and governments. The flags of the six nations and one autonomous region are on the right – can you identify them all?

I’ve really enjoyed the debate about changing New Zealand’s flag. I think the government got the process terribly wrong – a committee stacked with Olympic medal winners and rugby players manifestly didn’t understand the complexities of visual communication, and it was little surprise that the shortlisted designs looked very similar to some of the kit they’d worn when representing the country on the sports pitch. My favourite moment was when an academic from Massey University explained that the population ‘struggled with abstract designs’ and reassured us that ‘the best national flags featured two colours and one symbol’. Try telling that to an American, Frenchman or Brit.

There were some good flag designs in the long list, and I’d have been torn had Red Peak made the final referendum, but Aaron Dustin's design came a distant third in the shortlist ballot. New Zealanders wanted 'familiar' and voted for designs that incorporated the silver fern, which is a pity because Red Peak’s success was built on the idea that a flag design had to have a story, rather than just replicating a symbol and running it up a pole. So one of the worthwhile parts of the debate has been coming to understand what I like about New Zealand’s flag – I suspect most of us haven’t really thought about out national flag in any great detail until the referenda kicked off.

New Zealand’s current flag is based on a 19th Century British colonial template, but looking at it with fresh eyes I see a powerful symbol of the relationship between the Crown and Maori, with the Union flag in the top left, and the stars on the right representing taonga guaranteed under the Treaty of Waitangi many generations ago. The colour range is also pleasing – again, something Red Peak got right, yet a real weakness of the proposed Kyle Lockwood alternative with its lurid blue set against black.

But it’s the message of our existing flag that makes me passionate about keeping it as our national emblem. Partnership is an inherent component of modern New Zealand – the era of grievance settlement is drawing to a close, and Maori and Pakeha are building a country where we recognise our rights and responsibilities because we have come to terms with our history. None of the finalists came close to New Zealand’s current flag in communicating that to me, and while my interpretation of the flag is very different to that which my grandfather would have had, it remains a symbol that has bound our nation together for generations.

So I’ll be voting to keep the current flag. It is a pity the referendum has been portrayed as a $26 million pet project of the Prime Minister, and even more so that people might choose to vote along party lines. But that is their decision – it’ll be a generation before they have the same chance again. I agree ours is similar to the Australian flag, but as a country we’re pretty similar too. Same head of state, same legal system, same frigates, and so on. We’re just better at rugby than them. Besides, count your lucky stars you’re not Norwegian, or Icelandic, or whichever one it is that has the yellow cross on the blue background!

#BalhamOrTooting – a consultation exercise

www.BalhamOrTooting.org.uk
(see bottom of this post for the full website)

Crossrail 2 is the next of London's infrastructure megaprojects – it's a new underground railway line that will run north/south across the city, and relieve the Northern line and railways running though Clapham Junction. It'll take nearly 20 years to deliver, with the first trains estimated to be running around 2030. But it will transform large parts of London – including my patch, Wandsworth, which despite being in Zones 2 & 3 has poor connections into Central London (and partly explains why we have such high levels of cyclists).

The new line has included a station at Tooting Broadway since the route was initially put out to consultation in 2013. A station in Tooting makes a lot of sense as it's at the bottom of the Northern Line, and the area is ripe for regeneration: improving transport connections will unlock new housing.

My friend Dan Watkins – the Conservative candidate in the 2015 General Election – has led a strong campaign to put Tooting on the Crossrail 2 map, so when we found out last month that Transport for London was considering moving the station to Balham we decided to launch a campaign to engage the local population and see if there was support for a campaign to keep the dream of Crossrail 2 at Tooting Broadway alive.

Normally the Wandsworth modus operandi would be to do a combination of door-to-door petitions and email out a link to a Survey Monkey site. This time I suggested we did something different, so my friend Ben Guerin (an ace web developer) got to work on building a website aimed at raising awareness that there was a choice between the Balham and Tooting routes. I designed the graphics and finessed the text. We haven't spent any money on social media advertising.

First social media graphic

Second social media graphic

TfL produced a great map for the consultation

I also designed a leaflet that was delivered to all homes within walking distance of the stations – and at early morning raids on our local tube stations. The effort to get tens of thousands of leaflets delivered in the space of a week was immense – so well done Dan and team on the ground.

DL-sized leaflet

Dan's dodgy photography – something I can't do from the other side of the world!

And of course Dan followed up with local residents who signed the petition.



The results have shown strong support for the station at Tooting Broadway – which is unsurprising given that Balham is a lot more gentrified, and two stops closer to Central London on the Northern Line. Tooting will have to endure a more intrusive construction phase, but the benefits are much, much greater.

What I did find interesting is how support for Tooting Broadway extended in the areas close to Balham station – I used to live in the Heaver Estate area and would walk to Balham if I was catching the tube into town. A station at Tooting Broadway will see some people from Balham and Tooting Bec travel southwards, so perhaps these results are not that surprising after all.

Here's the infographic I produced which summarised the results. I also produced a version for social media (this required slightly different formatting). I love data – so laying this out was a real treat.



The campaign also helped raise the profile of Dan's work in the community, particularly around Tooting Broadway, where Labour has been historically strongest. I was surprised that local MP Sadiq Khan was so slow off the mark – after all, it's a crucial issue for the future of Tooting. Others noticed this too...

We're thrilled with the results, with a substantial majority of the 2500 people signing the survey living in Tooting. It's helped engage people with Crossrail 2's more detailed consultation – having filled out a number of these I know they're usually the domain of the more determined. And that's the point about politics, right? Yes we need politicians to champion causes, but change happens when whole communities are engaged and mobilised.

Tooting responses

Here's the full website:

The full website (background image stretched to render entire length of page)

David Cameron and the Pope as bosom eurobuddies? I didn’t see that one coming.

Did you miss the big speech on Europe? Fresh from pushing his followers towards a more liberal line on gay rights, it was David Cam – actually it was Pope Francis who made the most telling intervention on the future of the EU, warning MEPs in Strasbourg that the European project was ‘no longer fertile and vibrant’ and ‘slowly losing its own soul’.

He is right. Millions of British small businesses already know that the EU’s appetite for regulation is denting their competitive advantage – Brussels-approved oven gloves being the most recent example of a regulatory mindset that is at odds with the founding vision of creating wealth and security through trade between nations. Everyone in business has their own examples of how Europe’s bureaucrats have given them the benefit of their limited wisdom: vacuum-cleaner manufacturer James Dyson is critical of ‘sustainability legislation that rewards sustained mediocrity and waste’ and is taking the European Commission to court over its latest efficiency regulations. I know who I’d trust to make decent domestic products – and it isn’t Jean-Claude Juncker.

That the European Commission is so blind to the realities of commerce is hardly surprising. Only a handful of the 28 commissioners have any meaningful commercial experience running the sorts of businesses that ultimately pay their bills. The vast majority come from the law, academia and professional political careers, which perhaps explains their surprise that an unexpected bill for £1.7bn might piss off the unfortunate people having to cough up the readies. Likewise a shortfall to the tune of €259bn would prompt a fairly robust internal efficiency drive in the business world.

There is an arrogant culture of command economics, and you know we’re in deep trouble when the Commission President says ‘If Europe invests more, Europe will be more prosperous and create more jobs – it’s as simple as that’. Pope Francis’s description of the ‘bureaucratic technicalities’ of the EU’s institutions is spot on.

Over to the other speech on Europe: David Cameron was very good. Immigration is a big concern for people – I certainly found that canvassing back before the last general election. The UK’s system for redistributing wealth does throw up some clear incentives to up sticks from countries less well off than the UK. But remember that freedom of movement can also equate to asset stripping of nations, and in the past decade we’ve undoubtedly benefitted from harvesting some of the brightest, most laborious and entrepreneurial people from the EU’s newest members – and what their home country has gained in remittances, it has certainly lost in people with energy and innovation to drive their domestic economies forward. Tighter immigration controls may well be more palatable to scrapping tax credits for migrants (which I worry risks creating an underclass of migrants living on very, very little) but the depth of EU reform needed to restore controls over movement might require divine intervention.

So the battle to shape the future of the EU was laid out by two very different voices. One rooted in pragmatic politics, with a tougher line on immigration pitching to Labour’s blue collar voters as much as it is aimed at neutering, if not shooting, Nigel Farage’s fox. But it was the man from the Vatican whose critique resonated strongest with me, given the immense challenge of reforming the EU in the face of inertia from beneficiary states, not to mention the 23,000 people employed in Brussels’ ivory towers. Cardinal Bergoglio’s career was built on humble service and fiscal discipline with the Church’s resources, which sounds like something that the lawyers and professors of the Commission should be up for. But David Cameron and the Pope as bosom eurobuddies? I didn’t see that one coming.

First published by Platform 10 on December 8th, 2014

Buying sex shouldn't be criminalised: some thoughts on New Zealand's experience

Every so often our politicians declare that ‘it’s time to prosecute men for buying sex’; most recently with Caroline Spelman’s call for men to make their views clearer about prostitution. I’m one of few men who’ll own up to visiting brothels and spending time with call girls. Alas – for those getting hot under the collar with anticipation – my time spent cruising red light zones was strictly professional: I spent most of 2008 photographing sex workers in New Zealand for my dissertation, which documented how the country’s decriminalisation of sex work in 2003 had changed the industry.

New Zealand’s prostitution law reform sidestepped passing judgment on the ethics of prostitution, focusing simply on improving ‘the welfare and occupational health and safety of sex workers’. This might sound bureaucratic, but women in the sex industry are now protected by society, rather than marginalised from it. I remember the case of a bloke who’d pulled his condom off when he was in a brothel. The $400 fine the courts served him seemed paltry; but his name was published when the local newspapers covered the case. He was the bad person, rather than the ‘woman of ill repute’ he’d been visiting, which seemed pretty reasonable to me.

From 'The New Professionals' (Matthew Plummer)

My experience from the dozens I met in the industry was that sex work is remarkably mundane, and the stories I heard about the (mostly) men who paid for sex were pretty humdrum: widowers, couples who’d stopped having sex, and so on. But I can’t remember meeting sex workers who expressly disliked their job. Many were comfortable – even proud – of what they did for a living, with the main complaint being that decriminalisation had seen a slump in their earnings. This (I was told by an MP who debated the 2003 legislation) came down to basic economics, with price being a product of supply and demand. And on that basis criminalising the purchase of sex would be a nasty double whammy for prostitutes, as not only would they be at the mercy of clients on the wrong side of the law, but it would also drive down earnings: hardly the way to look after vulnerable people.

Of course the press loves running stories of women brought to the UK and forced into sex work; trafficked victims in heels and lipstick make for far more exciting copy than cases of domestic servitude or forced agricultural work. The English Collective of Prostitutes has done a comprehensive rebuttal of the girls-trafficked-into-prostitution misconception which is worth reading, and various estimates on the numbers of women being trafficked to Britain to work as prostitutes have proved to be wildly inaccurate. This doesn’t surprise me; statistics gathered by the police in New Zealand in the aftermath of the 2003 decriminalisation showed the numbers of active sex workers had been overstated by a factor of ten. The murky legal and social status of the profession makes gathering hard data almost impossible, and I can’t imagine that things are any different over here. Far better to bring it out of the shadows, with taxes paid and health and safety regulations enforced, rather than creating a needlessly dangerous underworld and wasting valuable police resources.

First published by Coffee House on May 16th, 2014

How to win Eurovision: trust the market, not the suits

Cezar singing It's My Life (Eurovision)

There was a wonderful moment a couple of months ago when I realised just how awfully monolithic the BBC can be. The news had emerged (in a manner not too dissimilar to announcements from Moscow) that some apparatchik at Auntie had chosen Molly Smitten-Downes to represent the UK at this year's Eurovision song contest. In finest TASS Report style the cameras cut to dear old Molly singing what I rapidly realised was a truly terrible dirge. I don't want to bag her too much because Molly is taking one for the team, but her song manages to get people stop waving and cheering within the first 18 seconds – fatal for a big arena contest like Eurovision.

So Britain – a country that leads European thinking in the power of the free markets to drive quality – remains curiously statist in our Eurovision choices, with Molly just another hapless foot-soldier sent to the front. Those of you who have seen Enemy at the Gates will recall the scene where the Soviet soldiers advancing on the Germans are told to fight on with the weapons of their fallen comrades, and I can almost hear Molly's stage handler on the big night giving her that same sort of encouragement. It's a naff song that just blathers on about 'children of the universe' and 'power to the people'. Compare this with Cezar, last years' act from Romania: his song It's My Life left no-one in doubt that a bloke doing a gothic Transylvanian falsetto act really was having the time of his life. It was bonkers, brilliant and so obviously not a bureaucrat's pet choice.

Of course we know the markets are very good at picking winners, and proof of this is Sweden's Melodifestivalen, a national talent contest with the public and judges combining their votes through several televised heats, and an epic final in one of the country's major cities. I was living in Stockholm when the 2006 contest was on, and the primetime show (with a sell out live audience of 16,000) was charmingly quirky – and had some really good music. Sweden's mass public involvement in selecting its Eurovison entries has produced nine top-five finishes in the past 15 years – and two overall winners. Last year's entry Robin Stjernberg was really good. But in that time Britain has had two acts make the top-ten, and with three coming rock bottom. The BBC has resurrected Bonnie Tyler, dispatched novelty acts like Daz Sampson and seen Jemini collect a comprehensive nul points wooden spoon.

A winning Eurovision song needs support from people across the European Broadcasting Union – indeed you can usually hear the better songs playing in bars and clubs across the Continent over the summer. Conversely our artists have the press mentioning some play time on Radio Two. Smitten-Downes acknowledges that 'good music breaks through' Europe's cultural barriers, but sadly her song isn't at that level, and she'll be lucky to make it into the top ten acts in tonight's contest. Sweden, on the other hand, are hot favourites to win – yet again. It is time to put trust in the people, rather than a faceless suit in Broadcasting House.

POSTSCRIPT – Sweden finished 3rd and the UK came 17th in the 2014 contest.

First published by Bright Blue on May 10th, 2014

The Ryanair Generation knows the EU needs reform

Reading David Cameron's Telegraph piece on his vision for a reformed European Union found me reflecting on a conversation I had a decade ago with my friend Paul. I'd been in New Zealand for the past five years and was in the final throes of packing up to move back to London. Paul was – with the help of a lot of beer – telling me what a whale of a time I was about to have.

“Europe's changed, mate,” he explained. “You can fly anywhere for a tenner. A flight to Zagreb costs less than a train ticket to Manchester. Girls, parties, culture – it'll all be on your doorstep once you're back in London.”

He was right. At the drop of a hat Michael O'Leary and Stelios did more for European integration than decades of Brussels edicts could ever have hoped for. If you're under the age of 40 you're part of the Ryanair Generation – with workmates from Poland, Hungarian girlfriends (or boyfriends), stag weekends in Prague and summers spent on the Adriatic coast.

So on the face of it Cameron's 2017 referendum isn't a big deal for us: we're more concerned about finding work, getting qualifications, the cost of transport, buying houses and falling in love. 'Banging on about Europe' isn’t on the radar.

But our international outlook also means we know just how unrealistic the whole notion of 'ever closer union' is, given our first-hand experience of the huge cultural diversity across the Continent. This sits uncomfortably with a sense that our destiny lies with Europe. The current Ukraine-Russia crisis is the perfect illustration of this dilemma. British sympathies are overwhelmingly with the pro-West faction in Ukraine, and whatever is left of Ukraine after Putin has dissected the country will be desperate to join the EU, which – given Kiev's current predicament – is entirely understandable.

The genesis of the European project lies in the formation of the European Coal and Steel Community in the aftermath of World War Two, which aimed to build security through trade. Six decades on from this the Ryanair Generation's natural instinct would normally be to welcome Ukrainian accession with open arms. Yet this is obviously not going to happen given the unitary design of today's EU, with its high barriers to entry. Ukraine is even more corrupt than Russia and its economy is smaller than Romania's, despite having double the population. Ukraine in the EU would be an administrative catastrophe, with a bonanza of passports for sale from dodgy officials, and destructive brain-drain of the country's brightest and best heading west to secure better wages and better life prospects.

As things stand full EU membership is an unrealistic dream for Ukraine, which is a pretty damning verdict on the introspective political cadre in Brussels. David Cameron's agenda for reforms has the potential to get the EU heading in a more sustainable direction, which as anyone living in Lviv or Kiev knows can't happen soon enough. The Ryanair Generation wishes him well.

First published by Bright Blue on April 7th, 2014

Has local government in London left cycling in the wrong lane?

A couple of months ago I wrote to the Crown Estate about its bike-unfriendly redevelopment of London’s Haymarket area, and was rather surprised when their London team offered to meet me and set out Crown’s cycling credentials. I was encouraged to see the company's new Central London developments have fabulous facilities for bike commuters, with showers, lockers, and ramps that allow you to ride straight into the basement parking space.

The past decade has seen an explosion in two-wheeled travel across the capital, while car use has declined. Recent data shows that cyclists make up to two thirds of traffic on certain parts of London’s roads. This is hardly unexpected, given the cost of tube travel and packed conditions. So Crown knows that letting its buildings means accommodating the rocketing numbers of people who ride to work.

But, as we discussed the Haymarket redevelopment over coffee, I realised that the challenge facing Crown is that while car use is falling, budget freezes mean parking revenue has become much more important to the balance sheets of London’s inner city authorities. This is problematic for new cycling infrastructure, as installing bike lanes comes at the expense of income-generating street parking.

Catering for cars might superficially help local authorities’ coffers, but a string of studies have shown that bike lanes, locking points, etc. give huge boosts to local businesses: New York City’s recent flagship bike lane on 8th and 9th Avenues led to local shops enjoying a 49% increase in sales. Saving the £1,216 cost of a Zone 2 annual travelcard frees up money to spend in the local economy, and gets people off our overcrowded tubes and trains during rush hour.

None of this washes with Westminster City Council (Crown’s local authority counterpart). The council would be hauled in front of the Competition Commission if its parking business model was the product of anything other than geography – incidentally only a third of Westminster’s households have access to a car. Sadly, as things stand, it’s difficult enough trying to find somewhere to lock up a bike before going shopping in the West End, wasting valuable time that could be spent in the shops and cafes that pay the council’s rates.

The recent spate of cyclist deaths on London’s roads is, obviously, terrible news. But I fear that the cycle lobby’s focus on fixing the Mayor’s flagship Cycle Superhighways misses a deeper problem: how we get the various tiers of local government to confront the sustained change in our transport use. The private sector manifestly gets where the market is at, as was clear when I saw Crown’s magnificent cycling facilities. Unfortunately, our politicians are stuck making rational decisions based on the perverse incentives of the city’s disjointed government structure. With London’s population gaining an extra 600,000 by 2020, this muddled approach is clearly unsustainable. Bold decisions are required.

First published by Coffee House on November 19th, 2013

In praise of red tape

Two small stories made the news last month. The first was a report by Ipsos MORI for the Royal Institute of British Architects, which found that many of the UK’s new-build homes are poorly designed, with chaotic living spaces for the families that the large housebuilders seduced into buying them. Complaints abounded of homes without internal storage for everyday things like vacuum cleaners, and rooms fitted with the legal minimum number of power sockets, despite this being the age of the iPad and countless other electronic gadgets. Ipsos MORI’s Ben Page was damning about the quality of the homes being built in the UK, stating that the report ‘shows just how cramped and poorly planned much of our housing is today, and the extraordinary lengths people go to cope with it.’ RIBA rightly pointed out that our building regulations are in desperate need of modernisation.

The second story concerned the latest in the Coalition’s ongoing efforts to address the UK’s housing shortage. You can debate whether this is because of the banks’ lending policies, the Labour government’s immigration policy, raw material costs, etc. ad finitum: the simple reality is that we need more homes. The government announced that a new body has been tasked with looking at how housing standards could be simplified, and aims to tackle what (then Housing Minister) Grant Shapps dubbed the ‘alphabet soup’ that is the building code. Which sounds like the positive action we want from politicians, until you realise that it isn’t a bonfire of regulations that is needed, but the somewhat more painstaking job of tightening and fine-tuning our minimum standards for the new wave of homebuilding that the Government wants to unleash.

None of this is news to our leaders. Back in 2007 the Shadow Cabinet was presented with the far-sighted 'Blueprint for a Green Economy', which recognised that ‘building control and planning systems should be more closely integrated as they are in fact two sides of the same coin’. The demands we place on our living spaces haven’t changed much since then, and it is worth considering that the current offering from the building industry isn’t exactly popular. Currently only one in four home buyers would consider a new-build property, so clearly something isn’t right, as consumers generally prefer new things. If the government merely decides to axe energy efficiency requirements and other quality of life regulations in an effort to get house building going at the lowest possible price, they will be making a bad situation a whole lot worse. Why should the striving classes who will have to live in these new properties face needlessly high heating bills and cowboy home design? I prefer to be optimistic though: there is now a golden opportunity to ensure that new homes are built with sustainable systems like rainwater harvesting, which offers a return on investment well before the halfway point in a 25 year mortgage and reduces the need for costly utilities infrastructure in years to come.

I mention this episode merely because the War On Red Tape™ is back in full swing this week, with the announcement that the planning appeals process is to be streamlined. The PM is 'getting a grip' on the issue, and the government’s narrative sets the frustrated developers who wish to drive the nation’s growth forward against the Nimbyism and regulatory fat that is clogging up the economy. Cutting regulations makes for a good sound bite, and shows politicians as battling the morass of building paperwork that stands in the way of the slow march to economic recovery.

Except this simply isn’t true. Ignore the fallacy that home-building delivers economic growth (it does, but only in the very short term, with the main beneficiaries being the shareholders of the large housebuilding companies, the farmers keen to cash in and flog their productive lands, and the migrant EU workforce needed to deliver the boom in construction). Appealing planning decisions is incredibly important to sustainable, harmonious communities.

For example, Conservative Wandsworth (my local authority) is an exemplar council: its reputation for competence regularly sees wards that vote Labour at general elections returning a full complement of Tory councillors at the local elections. Wandsworth has campaigned tirelessly against a 1,200 home development located well beyond reasonable walking distance to our local railway stations, with the local road network already desperately congested, as anyone who has battled their way down Trinity Road knows only too well. The appeals process has allowed Wandsworth Council to whittle down the ambitions of the developer to less disastrous levels, and highlights the importance of letting communities put their case and balancing the steamroller effect of the big developers’ deep pockets. Often projects are improved as designs are scrutinised, with the final blueprints gaining far greater acceptance from all sections of society – and surely this is a good thing?

There is also a broader, more philosophical point. We Conservatives believe in the power of the individual and society, not the blunt tools wielded by the big state, which is fortunate as the number of applications for judicial review in planning cases has dropped since 2006 – the rocketing 11,000 applications figure mentioned by the PM in his speech driven by immigration, that other political bête noire. Cherrypicking statistics belies the reality, and writing in Monday’s Guardian, Sir Jeffrey Jowell QC hailed the evolution of British administrative law since 1945 as a major achievement, and one that is in fine health today. Compare this to the confidence in our political system, which many of the public feel increasingly estranged from.

So here lies the danger. How much more alienated will the ‘little people’ far removed from Westminster or even just their local town hall feel when the government has lengthened the odds in their fight against the ruthless calculations of the circling developers? Regulation might feel like a brake on our economy, but it is the price we pay for people believing that they are part of an inclusive society. The general public’s simmering fury over the fast tax practices of Amazon, Starbucks, and other big businesses is a warning that politicians can ill afford to ignore.

First published by Platform 10 on November 22nd, 2012

Bicycles: a very Conservative way of getting from A to B

This summer has seen a transformation in the fortunes of the humble bicycle. Names like Wiggins, Hoy and Trott are now part of Britain’s sporting pantheon, and have inspired us mortals to pump up our bike tyres and take to the roads. But away from the hype around getting our children more involved in school sport, cycling has an important part to play in securing the sporting and social legacy of the Games.

Riding a bike is fun (and good exercise to boot), and by getting people out of cars, buses and trains we can reduce the need for expensive increases in public transport and road capacity: Transport for London’s Boris Bikes are run at a profit, unlike tube and bus tickets, which are heavily subsidised. Indeed, the bike is the ultimate Conservative way of getting from A to B: it offers complete freedom, and the user bears almost all the costs of riding!

Making our roads safer for cyclists also carries a useful electoral dividend, with the rise of transport poverty an increasingly pressing issue. UK roads are twice as dangerous for cyclists when compared to Germany, which in part explains why in Britain the simple act of hopping on a bike to get around is largely the preserve of affluent, young caucasian men. Ensuring our streets are a more appealing prospect for bikes is something that will play well with the sorts of voters we need to connect with – women, people on low incomes, etc.

The Department of Transport’s work with local authorities to promote 20mph limits in residential areas is a step in the right direction, but there is much more we can do. I think there are two inexpensive measures the Government can take that would be a massive step towards encouraging people onto their bikes in a safer road environment.

1) Simplify complex design standards. At the moment there is no overall idea of what constitutes design best practice when creating safer streets for bicycling. The Highways Agency addresses it in several publications, regional authorities have their own guidance, and local councils also have best practice documents – with no requirement for any of these to be followed. This seems incredibly inefficient, and unsurprisingly the internet is awash with photos of poorly implemented bike lanes that are at best a waste of time and paint. Instead, we should create a single document that local authorities must adhere to. Cyclists want better infrastructure, and having a unified, clear sense of what this entails would be an important step – and much more cost-effective.

2) Put the onus on drivers. Three quarters of car/bike accidents in London are attributable to drivers failing to look properly, yet in practise the law remains heavily weighted against vulnerable cyclists. Directing the CPS to increase prosecutions of careless driving seems a little heavy handed. Why not simply insist that drivers have to prove they were not at fault in civil cases, rather than the current situation where cyclists (who are to blame for only 26% of accidents) have to graft away to get redress? This balance of liability is common across the Continent, where it encourages responsible biking – a common gripe of the British motorist.

The cycling safety debate will come increasingly to the fore as fuel and ticket prices rise in the coming years. There is a huge opportunity for us, particularly given that Labour’s recently announced cycling policy fails to address the structural challenges inherent in making our roads more bicycle friendly. Offering cyclists reasonable legal protection and simplifying the spider’s web of design parameters addresses the core safety issues, and would be important steps in the right direction at little cost to the Exchequer. And it would also be a positive message to sell on the doorstep to the sort of people we need to win over in 2015!

First published by Platform 10 on August 23rd, 2012

A building weakened by red tape

"I was inside the main hall when the quake hit. As the building's tower came down, the noise and dust was unbelievable. The bottles, plates and glasses were like shrapnel flying all over the place. The three chefs were preparing a lobster bisque, which went all over the floor but missed them, as did a pan of hot fat. They came out through the dust looking like ghosts. We didn't have the composure to stop and grab our wallets and car keys - we just bolted."

Alan Slade

Octagon Live owner Alan Slade was short on sentiment as he looked back at the ruined building he'd narrowly escaped from, with his concern entirely focused on ensuring his staff were all out.

After the previous September 4 quake he'd had funny mannequins attached to the emergency scaffolding that had shored up the stone walls.

"I just remember looking at one of the mannequin's legs sticking out of the rubble and I just felt sick - my joke had backfired on me."

In retrospect, it was an unusual holiday purchase. Alan Slade, owner of a thriving wedding business in Australia, was visiting Christchurch when he heard the Trinity Congregational Church on the corner of Manchester and Worcester streets was for sale.

"We owned a number of churches in Australia, but when we saw the Trinity building we couldn't believe that such a precious icon of Christchurch would be for sale," says Slade. "It was a treasure: the interior was unmatched, and the ceiling was the jewel in the crown."

He admits that buying the building was a weak moment. "My wife says it was bought by a guy with a big heart and very little brain."

The church was designed by Benjamin Mountfort, the architect behind Christ Church Cathedral and the Provincial Council buildings. What followed was a 13-year renovation that transformed the site into Octagon Live, Slade's quirky vision for a restaurant with live music performances. Mountfort's vision of "beauty though a lack of ornamentation" was preserved.

"The building's H1 historical registration meant that everything we did needed consent, which took forever. The roof had a lot of water damage: repairing that with matching timbers was a long job. We even restored the dilapidated 1871 London organ to superb recording condition. Finance held us up, as things always cost more than you'd expect, but it was worth it."

The restaurant opened in 2006 and, after a quiet first year, business grew rapidly, with a strong following built on the restaurant's food and live music.

"By the third year we were second on TripAdvisor.com's list of recommended restaurants in New Zealand. In the season before the earthquakes we were booked out every day of the week," says Slade.

With four music schools in Christchurch, the restaurant was also instrumental in nurturing young talent.

"Learning to perform for an audience - rather than at them - is a critical skill. Where else in town can you learn that? We were strongly recommended by some of the teachers, and we always had a long queue of musicians hoping to work with us."

The building's acoustics garnered rave reviews, with pianist David Helfgott stopping by every six months to play.

Behind this success was an ongoing tension over heritage issues with the city council and the Historic Places Trust.

"When you take on a building like this, you do it with your heart, not your head. You are as keen to protect it as anyone. You don't want to cut corners, and preserving the building's integrity is vital. But the Historical Places Trust suspects every owner of deviousness."

The September earthquake hit Octagon Live hard, with more than $600,000 required to rescue the building. "We were allowed to take emergency action to build a frame to hold up the tower, but the retrospective consent ended up costing $8000 - for something I'd done to save the building."

The restaurant was closed for only two months, with the local community pitching in. The Boxing Day earthquake caused yet more damage.

Even though it was the building industry's traditional holiday period, Slade had 11 workers and two cranes onsite repairing the damage the day after, and the restaurant was open a day later, with the public enjoying the mannequins that adorned the temporary braces holding up the exterior walls.

Trinity Congressional Church was significantly strengthened in 1975, explains Slade.

"The engineers at the time strongly suggested earthquake proofing the tower by temporarily removing the roof, which would have meant some damage to the wooden shutters. They were over-ruled by the Historic Places Trust.

"Just recently, the engineer from the 1975 assessment told me that the tower was severely compromised, and warned that it was unsafe. Now it has come down as predicted. We were incredibly lucky no-one was underneath it at 12.51pm, but it was the conservative attitude of the conservation movement and the Historic Places Trust that caused the danger in the first place."

Slade believes this attitude in the heritage preservation industry amplified the consequences of the Christchurch earthquake.

"Maintaining our old buildings is incredibly important, but the heritage framework in this country has worked against keeping buildings in good condition. Spirit-sapping bureaucracy stands in the way of routine jobs like replacing weak stones. Even repairing roof tiles requires consent, and the damage that three weeks' rain can do while that is processed can be enormous. Many of Christchurch's treasured buildings are now in a pile, and the narrow-mindedness of the conservationists in the council and the Historic Places Trust played a substantial part in that. Sadly they will probably never be held accountable."

With thoughts turning to rebuilding the city, Slade is confident that Octagon Live will be a key part of the new city. The structure is considered saveable by engineers and the organ should be fine.

"I do think this is the time for us to radically change our approach to protecting our heritage," he says.

"I'd be very sad if we have to replicate our old tower stone by stone. The earthquake is a tremendous opportunity to be bold and adopt modern technology - the guts of the Cathedral Spire could be made from carbon fibre, for example. It is better to preserve elements of our heritage safely, rather than taking risks to keep whole structures. But we hold on to the essence of Christchurch, and I think the new desire for a low-rise city will allow our heritage buildings to dominate once again."

At the moment, issues are tied up with the inability to access the CBD.

"My chef's knives are stuck in the restaurant's kitchen. It's a simple thing and it sounds pathetic, but it's important to him. I can't access my payroll details. We don't know how long we'll be kept out of the centre of town for. They're talking about Christmas - heavens, I'd be expecting to have my building restored and my business running by then."

First published by The Press on March 12th, 2011