I recently attended a Fair Trade breakfast in a local church hall to raise awareness of the need to reform the world trade system to reduce the disadvantage at which the poorest countries are placed. Of course, this is a very important agenda: as Enoch Powell once said “the paradox is that we starve the poor by refusing to buy their food from them”.
But why was I invited? Surely not just to add glamour to the occasion, or to sprinkle a little magic? politicians are generally held in contempt by most people, so it can’t have been for that.
Presumably the reason for inviting me was that I might take account of their concerns, even begin to share their evident passion about the plight of the poorest and most vulnerable. And go away fired up sufficiently to actually do something about it in Parliament. Oh, if only I could: I certainly would.
The United Kingdom should be at the very heart of the negotiations driving forward the agenda: we are still one of the world’s greatest trading nations (exporting a higher proportion of our produce per head than any other country); and we are still the 5th largest economy in the world. Yet we have no place in the negotiations at all. We are like spectators at a football match, shouting our advice to the players from the touch lines.
No minister of the crown can any longer make any trading agreement with any other country. Parliament has given that power away. For the purpose of trade, we are now governed by people we do not elect and whom we cannot remove.
The most I might offer to do is to ask the Prime Minister to get on the telephone to Commissioner Mandleson who will negotiate on behalf of the EU. The commissioner will, of course, also be listening representations from German and French politicians with a different outlook and a very different interest. The commissioner is not answerable or accountable to me as an elected member of parliament. I am ashamed of my impotence: I take a generous salary and expenses but cannot effect the change that my voters want.
I told my audience all this. I hoped it made them angry: only when the British people are angry enough will they wake up and be seized with a will to do something about it. |
