backseatpolicy.bsky.social
Various policy musings from someone with far too little experience to justify their confidence, with an emphasis on systems and culture. All views represent opinions rather than advice.
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Also, being told that I am considered a trade nerd by Sam Lowe has made my day
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The US right now:
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Certainly that’s always been my read on what POSIWID is meant to communicate at least.
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I’d argue it also plays into a wider attitude of “focus on what it is you are actually trying to do, rather than fixating on too much on specifics of form (or on the flip side, excessively vague principles that you then debate the ‘true meaning of)”.
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TLDR: The reason why the UK has historically been so successful is that it is the ultimate viable system - able to immediately identify when systems are failing to adapt to their environment and modify/bypass them as needed.
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It also explains an awful lot about a lot of things, such as the frustrations the UK and other UK-inspired countries (like Norway and Sweden) has with the EU, the relative efficiency of Common Law countries over Civil Law, and the UK’s historic success at systems building compared to everyone else.
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However more widely, once you notice this, you begin to see it everywhere in the UK - be it in the constitution, the obsession with conventions, in the constitutional monarchy system and in common law.
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Despite having used money laundering as an example, I have no idea if this is how regulation is actually done (by the sounds of your piece, it seems like it’s a bit closer to European traditions than UK ones).
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The downside of this is that it relies on both parties acting in reasonably good faith (the ‘good chaps theory of government’), and while for the most part I’d say it does happen in the UK, it’s a bit more difficult in places with worse political culture.
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In this way, the UK reliance on convention is essentially the ultimate variety amplifier - it enables it to respond to any situation exactly how it is, rather than having to construct some magic all purpose model that somehow pre-empts every situation.
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Thus, you get a middle ground between the demands of the regulator (ability to crack down on bad behaviour freely), and the regulated (a decent set of guidelines on how to behave and the knowledge that you will be treated fairly when the rigid system is inevitably flawed).
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It can then use the results of this to feed back into strongly advisory, but non-absolute forms of guidance (eg precedents in common law). That way you organically build up your systems in response to the environment and feedback loops, rather than rigid rulebooks.
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Thus, rather than trying to create some explicit regulatory bridge between the two, it instead relies on the fact that (as you say) most of the time both of them have the same purpose, and uses that as the engine for resolving the differences between compliance and enforcement.
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Rather than sitting and going through a checklist and b*llocking people for doing x, it instead settles on a broad principle (eg money laundering is bad), and then sits down, has an honest conversation between parties, and decides from there what was actually reasonable.
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The key problem you seem to be orbiting around is that it is almost impossible to precisely articulate what is or isn’t okay without either creating holes in the regulation or inflicting undue burdens on the regulated. However, the joy of the traditional UK system is that it doesn’t need to do this.
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One thing that often stands out about the UK is the extent to which it relies on conventions, be it the unwritten constitution or the system of common law. Many commentators present this as a flaw that needs to be rectified, but I’d argue that it instead acts as the ultimate variety amplifier.
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Since it has an export map on the OEC website I think!
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Can highly recommend Tradle as well: games.oec.world/en/tradle/
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“My uncertainty meter beats your memecoin. That’ll be $6mn in tariff reparations please”.
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Only if you call the resulting securities ‘Top Trumps’.
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We’ve had this debate before but there is no reason why the US finance industry should oppose making services concessions to the UK, a country with cheaper labour costs and already tight links with the US, and with a new President ready to crack skulls in the ‘establishment’.
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To be fair nobody else has a 65 million strong advanced economy with no major goods industries. If anyone can do it, the UK can.
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What else is there to do on EU services exports? The much more sensible thing is to focus on India and the US where further gains can be made there.
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This is essentially a more aggravated version of what happened under Sunak, who likely similarly suffered from having to suddenly become a performer when they should have just kept him in the Treasury where he was good at it.
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When this inevitably runs out of material, she is then forced to fall back on her own unique personal beliefs, leading to this weird gibberish of generic conservatives angles and peculiar individual beliefs.
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Problem is, since the defeat, the few competent managers her ditched the party, meaning she’s stuck with inept ones who don’t read reports, push culture wars without nuance etc.
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Calling it now: Badenoch (like Sunak) is autistic, hence some of her more contentious comments that whilst potentially justified show all the political nous of a wet sock. This means party HQ is having to significantly stage manage her in ways she doesn’t fully understand, hence the baffling angles.
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Rejoining the Customs Union would essentially entail the UK giving up the prospect of an independent trade policy for the sole purpose of not having to fill out a few forms on goods, which given we are a services economy is a *terrible* idea.
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Going to have to strongly disagree here - ROO forms are a pain in the arse, but they aren’t *that much* of a pain in the arse to effectively squander an independent trade policy for. You don’t pay tariffs on services.
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You’re kidding right? Rejoining the Customs Union is an incredibly bad idea for the UK: backseatpolicycritic.substack.com/p/uk-customs...
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(Not least because many LGBTQ+ will want to be supervillains too!)
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Even worse though is that fact they are clearly trying to dress this up in LGBTQ+ adjacent branding. Far from helping these people, all this means is that they will be forced to shoulder the blame for a rebrand they themselves didn’t want.
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Given such a line was an aspiration to many (myself included), this is understandingly going to make quite a lot of people quite upset that a treasured aspiration is now being taken away from them.
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Had the rebrand occurred in a company like Kia, nobody would have batted an eyelid. However, the fact that it is happening in Jaguar comes with the implication that the old line of cars, designed to make you feel like a suave supervillain, will be retired.
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I wasn’t aware this was a competition. If you have problems with my analysis I’d be interested to hear it - personally I feel industrial strategy is an enormously underrated field, and fail to see how any viable one for the UK would be anything other than undermined by the EU.
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In that case I would appreciate hearing more on your thoughts and advice on this as the significant differences in reporting quality of the UK vs Europe on hours worked, homelessness etc is something I am looking to investigate further?
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Is there any world here where this isn’t just shooting themselves in the foot over youth mobility? Starmer isn’t likely to go ahead with it *anyway*, let alone with this ridiculous spoiler request.
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ie, trade didn’t kill American manufacturing, but it did prevent its revival.
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Given the quality of American financial institutions and innovation, there’s reason to believe that even in cases of recessions, American manufacturing should have recovered and re-fulfilled the gaps. That it didn’t would be attributed to trade
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There’s increasingly a growing number of us: backseatpolicycritic.substack.com/p/uk-compara... (FWIW, I can respect you for much less pathologically pro-EU than your colleagues at the FT).
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backofmind.substack.com/p/things-you...
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The reason for the high insulated wire exports is the same as the Marshall Islands and Liberia’s high shipping exports. Wiremaking companies are registered within these places but aren’t actually exporting from them - it just shows up that way in the stats.