I watch a Dutch TV quiz called twee voor tweelf on Friday evenings. With Dutch sub-titles on I can follow pretty well. This evening I learned the Dutch have a law which obliges companies with 50 or more employees to have a workers council. This council has various rights ..

.. including the right to be consulted on certain matters.

As a result of this flagrant socialism & recognition that employees have rights & may also have something to contribute to decision making, Dutch society is on the verge of breakdown, as you would expect. Not.

..

..

Several things interest me about this:

• it shows EU member states have wide margins to frame their own employment law, something I already knew. Almost all English & Welsh employment law is home made.

• the Netherlands is one of Europe’s more prosperous countries ..

.. with per capita income about 20% higher than the UK & slightly higher than Germany.

• it’s obviously a civilised & reasonable thing to regard the workforce as an integral part of any enterprise.

Of course, The Netherlands & the UK are different. The former occupies ..

.. a key location in Europe with fertile soil, natural harbours & links both to the hinterland & the sea, while the UK has large post-industrial regions in long term decline.

Workers’ councils won’t fix that. What will? Only investment & as British capital either doesn’t ..

.. exist or isn’t interested in British workers, it has to be inward investment, like Nissan or Honda. That’s just the way it is.

Except there is another way & that’s to accept (as people like Patel & Raab believe) British workers are layabouts, give up on them & treat them ..

.. shit. Cut their benefits, expand the gig economy, make housing less secure & reduce them to servitude. There’s a lot of money still to be made from sheer exploitation. This is the ERG model, made impossible by EU membership.

There’s also socialism of course but the UK ..

.. swims in capitalist waters. Bond markets & potential investors will run a mile from socialist models of ownership & production & that assumes a level playing field, which socialist countries don’t get.

So, boring & unexciting as it may seem, Dutch-style centrism & ..

.. pragmatism is the way. Subtract his crazy war hunger & peculiar attraction to gambling, Blair was setting the optimal course for the UK. We’re on the wrong one now.