It has become a popular question to ask those who recommend welcoming more migrants to the UK for whatever good reason if they will open up one of their spare rooms at home to provide accommodation. I guess it can make good tv to see the responder hunt for some plausible reason why they themselves would not take such action.

It is however a diversion from the big issues that underlie the problem. It is  no  solution to a refugee family to find cramped accommodation in someone else’s home. It is  not even a good long term answer for a single economic migrant, as they too need some independence and opportunity to cease to be single if they wish. The British dream is to own your own home with your own front door and with reasonable freedom over how you organise it and what you do in it. The British reality for most  with no capital and lower incomes is to rent a property which also affords the independence of your own front door, independent kitchen and bathroom facilities and sufficient sleeping accommodation.

We are  not looking to downgrade expectations, or to seek to place more families  in permanent accommodation where they need to share kitchens and bathrooms or lack the space they need to sleep and live in their homes.

Given this we need also to accept there are limits to how much accommodation we can provide and therefore to how many migrants it is possible to accept in any given year. Whilst housing is the main constraint, we also need to think about the provision of other public services. There are limits in the shorter term to how many school places are available, how much NHS capacity there is, how much roadspace and how much water and electricity can be delivered from the existing wires and pipes. When Wokingham was experiencing really fast growth some years ago there were problems getting the water and power system to catch up with rocketing demand. It was one of the arguments I was able to use to move us down then  from a fast growth area.

In order to get housing  supply and demand into better balance we do need to consider the pace of increases in demand as well as supply. Government tends to look at net migration figures, but in any individual place it may be the gross figure that matters, as people leaving the country do not necessarily free up both the number and location of properties needed for the new people arriving.

The weakness  President Biden demonstrated in the Middle East over Afghanistan was unfortunate. It should not be repeated elsewhere.  The President wanted to be closer to allies  but has instead upset them by his unilateral and unwise decision. That is all the more reason for him now to draw closer in other places where alliances are important.

In Korea the USA still maintains a substantial military presence to support the South Korean forces. North Korea with its erratic autocrat in charge needs to know that the USA continues with her long term commitment to support the South. So  does China need to understand that trying to control her wayward neighbouring state.

President Biden has in the past made clear he will support Taiwan. He will need to do so again, and be ready to respond to any further tests of resolve from Chinese naval vessels and planes coming close to the island. NATO as a whole is engaged, with naval vessels from other NATO countries assisting the USA in keeping open international waters in the South China Sea.

In eastern Europe NATO has forces in the Baltic Republics as a reminder to Russia that they have chosen to be allies of the West. US rapid reaction forces are an important part of the NATO support.

The world has just got even more dangerous with the collapse of the Afghan government and the release of prisoners from Afghan jails. Counter terrorism is a daily task for many years, not something democratic countries can get bored with or pretend the need  has gone away. There are regular challenges to western defences by conventional weapons and  by many cyber probes and assaults. Some come from rogue states or from terrorist groups. Some are tolerated if not directed  by large states that the West has to do business with. This requires clear leadership, defining lines of conduct and imposing sanctions or responding as needed where lines are crossed. After Afghanistan President Biden will have to be tougher and clearer to avoid more disasters elsewhere. UK diplomacy could help rebuild trust between the USA and the allies, assuming President Biden recognises the need to reassert US leadership against violent and unacceptable conduct.

I have written a piece requested by  Conservative Home which they published  today on the shortage of truck drivers.

www.conservativehome.com

The UK has kept something  close to a two party system in General elections. Labour and Conservative have alternated in power based on their ability or lack of it to improve living  standards and preside over a successful economy. Labour’s bankrupting  of the UK and trip to the IMF to borrow in the mid 1978s led to them being out of office for 18 years. The Conservatives adoption of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism and the predictable inflation and recession that caused led to Conservatives being out of office for 13 years. Labour’s boom and bust and banking crash of 2008  has so far led to them being out of office for 11 years.

I know some contributors here want a new or third party to emerge. The Social Democrats tried that in the 1980s and failed after a few by election successes. The Lib Dems are always positioning  themselves as a potential new force but have never made it to first or second place in a General election and cannot truthfully claim to be new. The Referendum party, UKIP and the Brexit party  tried it mainly around an important single issue but only ever won one seat in a General election between them. As I always advised here, if you wanted a referendum and then wanted Brexit done they had to be achieved with Conservative MP votes in the Commons.  In Scotland the SNP has demonstrated that in the first past the post Westminster elections they have been able to break through into first place, displacing Labour, because they have made their  constitutional issue more salient than economic management for the UK as whole.

On the continent there was the same alternation between Social Democrats and Christian Democrats in office in the last century. This century in all the main EU countries the big two have lost support with new populist parties emerging. It is true they have different voting systems which can assist splintering of the  vote, but they had these same systems in the last century when Christian Democrats and Social Democrats were each  likely to get around 40 % of the vote and to dominate coalitions with smaller parties formed by the winner.

This seems to have occurred because electors realise that unlike in  the UK the once dominant  parties can no longer guarantee or mess up the economy  in the same way because they do not have the powers. EU control of interest rates, money and credit, state borrowing and some taxes changes things a lot. Elections are fought on other matters more.

The decline of the Christian Democrats has been speeded by EU policies. The lower tax greater freedom part of the conservative  vote has been alienated  by the compromises needed to accept a large and growing EU budget, independent collective EU borrowing, huge transfers at zero interest from surplus to deficit countries through the European Central  Bank, and a regulatory colossus laying down detailed controls over many aspects of life. The conservative impulse has as a  result been driven into newer parties of a more Eurosceptic tone. They are normally defeated  by a coming together of all the other parties that are broadly pro EU to prevent any Eurosceptic movement gaining power again, as Syriza briefly did in Greece before its leaders gave in. In some cases as in France this has occurred in the second round of an election. In other cases as in current Italy it comes by excluding the Eurosceptic party from any post election coalition.

The BBC and Channel 4 always go to town over any US Presidential election, and  provide comment about US Congressional  mid terms. Any error or politically incorrect comment by a Republican is played up, and suitable  bon mots by Democrats are reported. There is even sometimes commentary designed to produce a little balance.

When it comes to a pivotal and important European General election there is usually a deafening silence. In a month’s time Germany goes to the polls to choose a replacement Chancellor for Mrs Merkel. Voters will also be invited to pass judgement on how green electors want policy to be, how much more power the EU should enjoy, and how prudent the budget of the EU’s largest economy should be. Given the media’s enthusiasm for all things EU the lack of interest in all this is noteworthy.

Many  people in the UK have not even  heard the names of the 3 main challengers to take over as Chancellor. Armin Laschet is the new leader of Merkel’s CDU party (sort of Conservative). Annalena Baerbock is the chosen Chancellor candidate for the Greens. Olaf Scholz is the leader of the SDP (Labour like).

The election has been through three  phases so far. It began with a surge for the Greens when they announced their fresh new candidate for Chancellor who briefly went into first place in the polls. It swung back to the CDU . In the last few days the lagging SPD has had a strong run and pulled level with the CDU in joint first.

The Greens have fallen back into third thanks to claims that Ms Baerbock’s CV had elements of fiction in it and that her book had borrowed material from elsewhere without credits. More importantly Green  policies of raising fuel taxes and subsidising cycling are going down badly. The CDU has lost traction partly thanks to Mr L:aschet’s unfortunate joke cracking as a backdrop to the German President speaking about the deaths of people in the recent floods. Mr Scholz has picked up support by avoiding such disasters.

There have been some continuities in the polls. The polls have always said the 3 main parties remain very unpopular, struggling to get much above 20% each. The polls have always said the 3 Chancellor candidates are unpopular, with more than half the voters often preferring none of the top 3. They have also said that the most talked about possible coalitions, CDU/Green/Free Democrats  (Jamaica) and SDP/Free Democrats/Green (Traffic light) are more unpopular than any of the top three parties! The polls regularly give the Eurosceptic AFD 9-11% so they will definitely have no role to play in a future German government as none of the pro EU parties want them in a coalition.

The green arguments are especially important. Mr Laschet as current head of the government of Rhineland Palatinate has to defend the decision to allow the loss of six more settlements and a major expansion of the strip mine for lignite at Garzweiler. The CDU/SPD coalition federal government led by Merkel has just agreed that Germany will continue to mine coal and burn it for electricity until 2038. This means Germany will not make much of a contribution to COP26 and the climate change pledges, refusing to match the UK by ending electricity from coal early. German electors seem worried by the lignite expansion but not enough to make the SPD less popular. They seem even more worried by the Greens wish to use taxes and subsidies to change things faster. There are also important differences over taxes, spending levels, borrowing and the size of the EU budget. I will keep you posted.