Churchill talks of a United States of Europe.

Once upon a time, the worlds people were governed only by local kingdoms at their most organised. Then came a european invention - the nation state - a political paradigm shift. And the world then had a stark choice as a consequence of the invention of the Nationstate:

Form a nation state or be ruled by another nation state. And that swept the world.
Then again, Europe did it again with the EU - a sort of supranational republic without any direct historic comparison.
And again the big political movement in the world is to either be ruled by a suprnational block. or join one. The EU is an example, ASEAN, and south america's Mercosur have replicated the EU model. Meanwhile nations states which did not join are left sitting by the fax machine, knowing that they must comply with whatever trade laws the big players pass, and to do so without a negotiation option.
Perhaps britain could chart an alternative path, but that would be extremely radical and strange.

Alternative to Trident

Resilience before Revenge

I invite readers of this blog to consider an alternative to replacement of trident. It may be possible to change our strategic direction in such a way as to safely put Britain back on top. As we all know, Trident missiles are housed ready to fire on submarines which swim silently in the oceans, hopefully undetectable so that they cannot be taken out prior to a massive attack against our United Kingdom.

The thought is that against a rational enemy. Massive retaliation should prevent an attack in the first place. We may not always face rational enemies; with nuclear proliferation the chance of miscalculation grows. And yet still, our only option in the event of a nuclear attack is revenge.

We die knowing that as Britain dies, several million citizens overseas of anothers power, will also. This would seem unsatisfactory to many - yet unilateral disarmament doesn't address the strategic reason why we have the revenge weapon system in the first place. Mutually Assured Destruction has a logic to it that seems to have worked over the decades. 

So as an alternative to nuclear disarmament or MAD, how about another direction? Resilience over Revenge achieved through the colonisation of the solar system.

The cost of a space station is thought to be similar to the cost of an interplanetary spaceship which is similar to the cost of a nuclear submarine. We could reduce Britains vulnerability to a nuclear attack by ensuring British society survives in some form in colonies in our solar system.

For comparable cost, the UK could leap frog other space faring nations.

Abandon nuclear submarine program.

Will gain the UK huge political capital in the fight against nuclear proliferation

(move current nuclear deterrent to air launched cruise missiles, so there is at least some MAD option remaining during this transition)

Begin building interplanetary spaceships in orbit. Probably using ESA launchers initially, eventually our own.

Our aim would be to build self sufficient colonies across interplanetary space. 

That first aim would be costly, but so is replacing Trident.

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In the future

Britain would should gain benefits from space exploration. With colonies already positioned, exploiting resources of our solar system would put Britain in the lead again. We might consider the dark side of Mercury as a place to mine uranium which is in very short supply despite what the nuclear lobby says or to take a look at asteroids:

http://science.howstuffworks.com/asteroid-mining1.htm

One of these asteroids, according to Lewis, would contain 30 million tons of nickel, 1.5 million tons of metal cobalt and 7,500 tons of platinum. The platinum alone would have a value of more than $150 billion!

eventual exploitation of the solar system would more than pay for this program. And we have the money now to push it, since we apparently have the resources to plough into a replacement for Trident.

Thoughts on how we might counter negative political and social economic trends

Part 1 - Inflation is a symptom, not the cause of problems
A number of people on twitter have expressed surprise at my assertion that a pro-inflation policy might be the way forward for Britain.

People worry about hyper inflation, and the UK's experience of it. Seeing inflation as the enemy. To these people inflation is what causes living standards to fall as purchasing power relative to the price of goods rapidly collapses.

Consider a medical analogy. Soldiers who suffered limb loss in Vietnam suffered greater fatality rates than British soldiers who suffered comparable traumatic injuries in the Falklands war. A key difference was that US soldiers got rapid helicopter evacuation where the traditional medical view prevailed - If blood pressure falls, raise blood pressure... ...and if blood was not available, they would use plasma to return the vitals as near to normal as possible.
   British soldiers in contrast had suffered many hours in the field in shock - But the loss of blood pressure, the natural shock response actually saves life by preventing excessive blood loss - artificially raising the blood pressure with plasma can kill despite the vitals returning to normal.
   As another example, mice given drugs to suppress fever when they are sick with flu like symptoms die. Sometimes treating the  symptoms does real damage and slows down or prevents recovery.

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The UK has had the bottom fall out of its economy. Inflation has risen and some advocate fixing the inflation problem with monetarist dogmatic blunt instrument of raised interest rates. Raising interest rates would further retard investment which is needed to raise production capacity in order to pay our way in the world.
   Countering UK inflation with high interest rates would therefore prolong our nations agony. We need pro-longed low interest rates and high inflation to boost investment - increases in domestic production will be the key to reducing inflation in the future. Inflation has mainly been driven by rising import costs and an inability of the UK domestic economy to adapt as £ falls.

Higher interest rates would do nothing to resolve our fundamental problem, a huge trade imbalance. In fact, it would be the equivalent of injecting huge amounts of plasma into a body with a missing limb. Low Inflation may seem 'healthy' but the rest of the body would be dying faster than it can recover.

Inflation may not be universally pleasant but it is a necesary part of the correction to our economy following the 3 decades of ultra-capitalism.