During the referendum campaign I concentrated on the economic case for leaving the EU -which I believe will make the UK more prosperous; and on the political case for emancipating our democracy from a foreign jurisdiction run by people who we do not elect and cannot remove.

The received wisdom however, is that the referendum result was largely driven by immigration and the determination to gain control over the flow of EU migrants.
We are now wrestling with the need to honour this demand for immigration control whilst, at the same time, reconciling it with what has become an addiction in some sectors of our economy to a continued flow of migrant labour.

Our determination to have an effective immigration policy which does not do damage our industry, has contributed to the demand for a ‘transition period’ post-Brexit to smooth the process.
Certainty and predictability are important to industry and need to be given proper consideration. We do also need to consider however, that the desire to smooth the transition will also have the effect of prolonging it: The longer that transition, the more we delay the full economic benefits of exiting the EU.

As part of this transition process and to inform our new immigration policy, the Government has commissioned a new study of Industry’s needs for migrant labour. I find it hard to believe that we do not already have this information. In any event, we need to be cautious about such studies. They are very dependent upon the assumptions and models that underlie them, and they can be interpreted to suit a particular point of view rather that add to the sum of knowledge. Furthermore, the capital and infrastructure costs of immigration (the impact on housing, hospitals and schools) are rarely taken into account when measuring the economic impact of immigration.

No matter how smooth we want our transition to be, we need to address over the longer term some key questions about the scale of our reliance on migrant labour:
What is it about our education system that prevents it from equipping our young people with the skills that industry requires?
What is it about our welfare system that ensures that, even in areas where unemployment remains relatively high, low skilled jobs are filled almost exclusively in some industries by migrants?
Why is our largest employer, the NHS, so dependent upon migrant healthcare professionals when half our own applicants for student nursing places are turned down, and students with 4 straight A grades at A level still cannot get a place in medical school?

Until we have resolved these issues we are unlikely to make much headway in reducing immigration irrespective of our discontinued membership of the EU.

Over the last couple of weeks or so, MPs have been deluged with correspondence from their own parliamentary colleagues, as a number of them have sought support to be elected to the Chairmanships of powerful select committees.
There is a select committee for every department of state, and a couple with wider cross-governmental briefs such as the Public Accounts Committee. They exist both to scrutinise government performance, and to consider wider policy issues and strategy.

These chairmanships were, until 2010, essentially a stitch-up by the whips. The division of which party got the chairmanship of which committee was agreed by what is known colloquially as ‘the usual channels’ which means the respective whips offices. Once the chairmanships of the committees were divided up, the whips would simply appoint their own chosen candidate to fill each chairmanship role. This power of patronage was one of the ways in whips exerted party discipline: “keep your nose clean Comrade and follow the party line, and you will be rewarded with the chairmanship of the X select committee”

Things have changed dramatically. The committees are still divided up by the ‘usual channels’ on the basis of a formula which determines how many each party gets. The convention is that the Public Accounts Committee will always be chaired by an opposition MP and that the Treasury Committee will always be chaired by an MP of the governing party. Beyond these two however, there will be a bit of horse trading to determine which Party gets to chair which committee.
Once that division is made, the candidate to chair each committee, is no longer appointed, but has to be elected. So, let’s say that the chairmanship of the Defence Committee has gone to the Conservatives and that the Chairmanship of Home Affairs has gone to Labour. Only Conservatives will be eligible to put themselves forward to chair Defence and only Labour MPs to chair Home Affairs; but every MP has as vote for each committee chairmanship, so the several Conservative MPs seeking to chair the Defence Committee will, in order to win, have to canvass for support among Labour MPs as well as their Conservative colleagues. The winning candidate is the choice of the whole House and not just of a political party.

This democratic process significantly enhances the status and independence of the select committee system. In doing so, it has shifted the balance of power between government and Parliament more towards Parliament, diminishing the influence of both government and opposition whips.

Tony Blair hit the airwaves again: His headline was that the EU would be ready to do a deal on freedom of movement in return for UK remaining. (David Cameron thought so too when he began his negotiations, before we even had the referendum.) When I heard Mr Blair being questioned in detail however, his answers were much more nuanced, it was clear that there was no such deal in prospect.

During the referendum both sides agreed on only one thing: the importance of casting a vote in a once-in-a-generation opportunity to settle the EU question. We settled it and accordingly, Parliament voted to initiate the article 50 process: We are past the point of no return; We will automatically cease to me members of the EU on the second anniversary of our Article 50 letter. There currently is no means of stopping this process. To do so would require new treaty agreements with the EU.
Suppose we did get cold feet however, change our minds, and ask to stay. I have no doubt that we would be welcomed, but at a price. Remember that annual rebate Maggie negotiated, well forget that! Remember all the opt-outs we had from policy areas where we didn’t want to participate, forget them too.

We are leaving the EU, the only questions to be settled are the terms upon which we leave, now the subject of negotiation.

Do not underestimate however, the anger of our political establishment at what has happened and their desperation, even now, to stop it. They still believe that something might turn up. Whatever that ‘something’ might be, the vital ingredient of the strategy is the waiting for it: So, delay is essential.
The loss of the Government’s majority at the election is a gift to those who now seek to delay.

The Governments ‘repeal’ bill is an essentially straightforward measure to ease our exit from the EU. It repeals the 1972 European Communities Act which ensured that, wherever there was a conflict between our own law and EU law, then EU law would prevail. The bill now before Parliament seeks to incorporate exiting EU law into UK law so that on the day we leave the change will be seamless. But it’s a massive task, so the bill grants temporary powers to ministers to amend UK statutes by regulations which have a swifter passage through Parliament. There is nothing new here, it is a tried and tested way of making law.

You will by now have heard the great cry of anguish as politicians pronounce that, notwithstanding their respect for the referendum decision, these powers are too broad, the bill must be thoroughly scrutinised and amended, and so proceeding it will take a very long time to pass, if indeed it passes at all.
If it were not to do so, then our departure from the EU would be attended with confusion and uncertainty. That matters not to the bill’s opponents. They have only one object: endless delay; Delay for as long as it takes for something to turn up.

I had thought that the mobs demonstrating during ‘days of rage’ on our streets were largely made up of Bolsheviks. No doubt many are. Together with the driven ideologues, are the touchingly naïve, who believe that everything can be free and that someone else will pay for it: ‘useful idiots’ as Lenin characterised them.
When I actually found myself caught up in one such demonstration, in effect –and however unwillingly- becoming part of it, the mob reminded me, not so much of the Bolsheviks of 1917, as the sans culottes of 1789, such was their venom and anger. I definitely heard shouts of ‘property is theft’ though I may have imagined the cries of ‘la guillotine’!

When the Greeks invented democracy they never intended that it should apply to everyone. For Aristotle, decision making needed to be reserved for the valentior pars –those with judgement.
This preoccupation has always been evident in our own slow progress towards universal suffrage. There were property qualifications and other provisions to ensure that the vote was restricted to those with a ‘stake’ in the future of the country.

Now that we do have universal suffrage, our preoccupation needs to be -not with the exclusion of those without a stake, but rather to ensure that they do have a stake.
In this respect our retreat from a property-owning democracy should alarm us. A growing proportion of our population are coming into that category described as the ‘just about managing’. Many cannot lay their hands to a spare fifty quid at the end of the month. Rather than savings, so many have mounting debts.

The danger to democracy, and which ancient Greece foresaw, is that those who have nothing, will be prepared to risk everything.
When some new political messiah comes on stage like a rock-star and promising the earth, including the ‘aspiration’ of writing off all your debts, why not take a punt on him, if you have nothing to lose?

The mobs demonstrating in Whitehall, purporting to speak for the survivors of Grenfell tower, the underpaid public sector workers, or whomsoever else, should serve as an warning to those of us who believe in free enterprise, that we need to put the issue of how we extend the benefits that flow from growth and free markets at the very top of our priorities. To too great an extent the description of ‘two nations’ still applies.

I think I’ve been dressing down, and I must raise my game.

I know that we have much bigger fish to fry, and that there are enormous issues facing the nation, but I confess to seething in silence, as the Speaker gave his ruling last week: That now one might as well be naked in the Commons chamber -certainly as far as the neck is concerned.

I know that standards of dress change. There was a time when members would have sat fully hatted and cloaked, which would inappropriate nowadays, and ties, after all, are a relatively recent invention.
As members are elected, and speak as representatives of their constituents, I suppose they must have that right to speak, irrespective of how they have dressed for the occasion.
I do wonder however, how many of these iconoclasts dressed in ‘scruff order’ when they were campaigning for the votes of their constituents.

Are they showing due respect to their constituents by seeking to represent them whilst dressed in a fashion that lowers the tone in our institutions, and the respect in which they are held?
I think that dress codes remain important. Maintaining standards says something important about us. The impression that is created does still count.

It was whilst reflecting on my anger at the Speaker’s ruling that I suddenly recognised my own offence: I have been going to church on Sunday casually dressed, relaxed at not wearing the suit and stiff collars I have had on all the rest of the week. I may have even, on occasion, been in short sleeves. Now, that might be fine in evangelical churches where the liturgy is itself informal, but I am C of E, or -to use the appropriate cricketing metaphor- ‘middle and leg Christianity’. The Chairman of the Parish Council attends and is very properly turned out as one would expect of an English country gentleman. The Choir and Clergy make a tremendous effort, swathed as they are in quantities of haberdashery.

I wonder how much offence have my slack standards given over recent years?
I am resolved to reform, and dress smartly in future, but perhaps not the stiff collar.

(First published 25th June)

Last week it was my privilege to open the ‘Art Dementia New Forest’ exhibition at Forest Arts. Art Dementia run three groups for people suffering from dementia. They meet fortnightly for a couple of hours in Ringwood, Milford on Sea and Lymington.

It was fascinating to meet the artists and discover how therapeutic they find the sessions. The quality of their work was technically impressive, and also beautiful.

Since our ancestors first began to sketch hunting scenes on the cave wall, people have wondered about their purpose in doing so. Was it just pure creativity and self-expression, or was there some other reason?
Throughout the history of art, artists have had differing motivations, from worship, to enlightenment, the desire to inspire, to educate, to make political statements, to shock, even to disgust. Some artists will have had no motive whatsoever, just to let the work of art speak for itself.

Picasso described his paintings as a form of diary: a way of washing the ‘dust of daily life’ from his soul, as he put it. For certain, artists can dip their brush into their own soul, and express what other forms of communication cannot.

If your immortal soul is being crushed by disease, or even just the pace and demands of daily life, art can be the reminder that you still do have one.

(The Ringwood Dementia Art Group meets at the Trinity Centre. Details can be had from Gilda 01425 473777 gildanewsham@aol.com )

I respect Tim Farron, who resigned as Leader of the Liberal Democrats because he could not reconcile that position with his Christian faith, though I am not sure that I fully understand him. In the UK we are accustomed to having political leaders with a Christian faith. Those that are not Christians have been the exception rather than the rule. Furthermore, we Christians tend to disagree just as much as those with no belief. On all the great questions of conscience in my time in Parliament, the Christians have pretty well divided themselves evenly between both the ‘aye’ and ‘no’ lobbies.

The row with which Farron was confronted was driven by the belief, common among journalists, that for Christians, ‘sin’ is principally all about what people get up to in bed. (It really isn’t.)
Mercifully, Farron and the gay sex row was only a footnote in the election. During that long campaign however, it occurred to me that there were much bigger and much more important moral questions. Here is just one of them.

I am profoundly concerned about just how corrupting our ‘transactional’ politics has become. By transaction I mean “vote for me and I’ll give you ‘whatever’.

Before the great Reform Act the transaction was at least open and above board. For example, “vote for me and I’ll pay you a guinea”. The voter having declared his vote in public at the ballot, could then expect the candidate to pay up. Corrupt, depressing, but essentially an honest and transparent transaction. The arrival of the secret ballot however, removed any certainty that the voters have fulfilled their part of the bargain. So instead, politicians still offer all sorts of inducements to voters, but now they are to be paid for with other people’s money.

The voter however, is so often told that whatever is on offer, will be ‘free’ and that others will foot the bill: that the rich will pay for it; or the corporations will pay for it. It has a whiff of the French Revolution about it, but we have become so inured to it that we are blind to the corrupting belief that we deserve to have something for nothing, and for which others ought to pay: At this election some voters were even told that their debts would be written off at the public expense, others were told that breakfast would be free.

When did we lose the sense that we all have responsibilities, and that everyone must make a contribution?
My heart sinks every time when I am on the doorsteps and the voter asks “what are you going to do for us”. Elections should be about the future of our country, not just what you can get.

Some 7 weeks ago in my last contribution to this column – though it seems an age away now – I likened MPs voting for an early election to turkeys voting for Christmas. I said however, that we would have to await the election result to know which MPs were the turkeys. Well, with the Tories having lost seats, and Labour having gained them, we now know the answer.

The Prime Minister’s campaign lacked a strategic object: She set out her aim in Downing Street when she announced the election, saying that it was to secure a position that would enable her to negotiate our departure from the EU from strength. She then published a manifesto however, which failed to sustain that stated aim. It contained 85 pages, offering a range of inducements from free school breakfasts (for which the costs had not been accurately calculated), to a major change to the agreed government policy on funding social care, which was quickly dubbed the ‘dementia tax’. The PM then had to trash her own brand of ‘strong and stable government’ when she carried out a U turn from that manifesto policy.

I was taught at Sandhurst that the first principle of war is the ‘selection of the aim’, and the second principle is the ‘maintenance of the aim’. Applying that to politics, the PM selected and set out her aim quite clearly in her Downing Street briefing at the outset. Her failure was in the maintenance of that aim: the disastrous manifesto distracted attention from her objective.

This was compounded when events intervened in the form of the terrorist outrages, and the PM was not particularly successful at articulating a defence of her policy and achievements on policing during her time as Home Secretary.

In addition to the failure to maintain the aim, the PM’s performances lacked charisma and authenticity. Altogether, it was a dreadful campaign. Yet, more people voted Conservative than have done so since 1992, and the PM secured the highest share of the vote since Mrs Thatcher in 1983.

The triumphalism of Labour needs to be tempered by the fact that, notwithstanding their gains, after 7 years of Conservative austerity and a shockingly bad Conservative election campaign, they are still some 60 seats behind the Conservatives: they didn’t even come close.

When I stated in this column last week that there is sometimes a danger of it being overtaken by events, I did not expect it to be confirmed quite so quickly.

Indeed, I went on to say that we would find that ‘next week things won’t have changed very much’. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

For months I have been telling anyone who would listen, including readers of this column, that there was no possibility of an early election, no matter how much the Prime Minister might need or want one.

I said that the Fixed Term Parliament Act introduced by the coalition government in 2010 (to prevent either of the coalition partners ‘pulling the plug’ on the coalition agreement just when it suited them) meant that the choice on an election date was no longer in the gift of the Prime Minister and could only be changed from the fixed five year term, if two thirds of MPs voted for it.

Given that the Government’s majority is only 17, I concluded that there was no prospect of the required two thirds being achievable. After all, what possible motive could opposition parties have in voting to accommodate the Prime Minister’s choice of early election date?

The rest is history. It begs the question however, if there remains any point in the Fixed Term Parliament Act, given that it has so easily been overcome, and we have in reverted to the status quo ante, where the Prime Minister effectively chooses the election date?

In any event, whatever the election result, a significant number of the 500 or so MPs who voted for the election on June 8th, will end up regretting that they did so. We can’t all have been right!

Parliament has been in recess for Easter so it has been a relatively quiet week for me in the constituency, whilst international events have swept the world from the brink of war over Syria to the brink of war over North Korea.

One of the dangers of writing a column at the beginning of the week for publication in the Forest Journal mid-week, is that occasionally one is overtaken by events. Nevertheless, I feel confident that we will all still be here next week and that things won’t have changed that much, notwithstanding some of the hyperbole in the news headlines suggesting that we at the most dangerous point in international relations since the Cuban missile crisis and that we are approaching the brink of thermo-nuclear Armageddon. I continually remind my constituents and correspondents of General William Slim’s dictum that nothing is ever as bad as it is reported.

Over the bank holiday weekend I’ve managed a bit of gardening and some routine maintenance on my Morris Minor. At no stage have I felt the random urge to go and do something I’ve always wanted to, on the grounds that it may be my last chance before the world ends.

None of this however, should be taken as in any way a denial of the dreadful state that much of the world is in, or as an attempt to trivialise it. North Korea is a ghastly place, much of it a vast prison camp for the half-starved rural population. The slighted evidence of lese-mageste towards the regime will prove fatal to the offenders, their families and any known associates. Profession of Christianity attracts the heaviest of penalties. As Kim Jong-un’s late brother discovered in Thailand recently, the regime’s murderous reach extends well beyond the hermit kingdom’s own borders.

As for Syria, our TV screens tell us all we need to know of the suffering there. I was surprised to hear however, a senior parliamentary colleague in an interview, state that President Assad could have no rational motive in launching a chemical attack at this stage in the war, attracting such international condemnation, when otherwise everything was going his way.

That Assad was indeed responsible, was proved beyond doubt, when he piped-up to insist that the whole incident had been completely faked (despite respected journalist witness accounts, and – even more surprisingly – contradicting the Russian carefully crafted cover story that it was the result of a rebel chemical weapons factory).

To suggest that Assad was without motive, is to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of his regime. The Assads share a great deal in common with the Kim dynasty of North Korea: their purpose is the same; to terrorise their subjects into submission by demonstrating that they will stop at absolutely nothing.

To suggest, as I have, that next week we will still be here and the world won’t have changed very much, is not necessarily a good thing. We should always count our blessings that we can do normal stuff like mow the lawn and wash the car. For so many of our fellow citizens of the world, ordinary every-day life is very different – and we’ve only considered just two of the world’s grizzliest places.

Last week’s:

Gassing of Khan Sheikhoun
After the ghastly scenes from the deployment of sarin nerve agent by the Assad regime in rebel held Idlib, and before the USA response with 59 tomahawk cruise missiles, I received a flurry of emails from constituents demanding that ‘something be done’.

I reply by asking my correspondents to give me a clearer idea of what he or she thinks that ‘something’ ought to be.
We already apply sanctions, asset freezes, and we have withdrawn diplomatic relations. Is there really an appetite to get even more involved in another conflict in that deeply troubled region?
I hope so, but I have not yet detected it.

In my response to the emails I pointed out that the key moment of our failure came in August 2013 when Assad previously used chemical weapons, crossing President Obama’s declared ‘red line’. Instead of taking the threatened punitive action, neither the USA nor the UK did so. Indeed, in Parliament we voted down the Government’s request to take action: we chose explicitly to do nothing. Inaction can have dreadful consequences as the children and parents of Khan Sheikhoun have now discovered.

In 2013 Russia, though involved, had not deployed its own forces to any great extent, so our freedom to respond militarily would have been much greater than it is now, when the risk of a clash with Russia is so much greater. Of course I said that two days before President Trump did take the risk of responding militarily, it is far too soon to tell what the consequences will be.

To be fair, I think our biggest misjudgement came much earlier than August 2013. Our failure was at the very outset of the rebellion in 2011, through our refusal to arm the Free Syrian Army. We supported its objectives but we sent it only medical supplies and radios. The consequence was, as a fighting force, it was completely overtaken by the vastly better armed and financed Islamist militias.

Russia’s initial response to the US military action has to be to condemn it as an ‘act of aggression against a sovereign state contrary to international law’.
This doctrine that sovereign states can act with complete impunity within their own borders goes back to the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia which ended the 30 years war in Europe. Russia may still adhere to it, but the rest of the civilised world has moved on: Chapter VII of the UN Charter allows action to be taken in the interests of international peace and security.

The carnage and suffering in Syria has now lasted longer than the Second World War, and with profound and destabilising consequences for Europe. Something has to be done to bring it to an end –but what?