Sustained economic growth can only take place when companies successfully develop new products and exploit new processes. It is easier to succeed in a large market (paradigm example the USA) because there are more customers for whom one does not have to adjust the product - and sometimes the process - to meet more than one regulatory requirement.

One necessary ingredient is capital. From a Marxist analysis, Margaret Thatcher was a huge improvement on her predecessors because she drove through government policies that increased profitability and hence funds available for investment.

Margaret Thatcher did more than that to create conditions for British economic success. She created the Single European Market . If following the reforms of the City under the Thatcher government, the British financial system had evolved towards something similar to the German system (where banks provided both loan and equity finance)
then capital necessary for the growth of medium sized firms to large firms would have been more readily available. If wider share ownership to which she and Nigel Lawson were sympathetic had been promoted with equal vigour to that put into creating the European Single Marker, it would probably have led to changes in corporate ownership structures that made it harder for a predator to seize an emerging success. Although not everything necessary was done, Margaret Thatcher made a huge difference and she came closer than any other recent prime minister to bringing about a step change in the size of British manufacturing companies which would have compelled the exploitation of innovative ideas from the universities and have provided the finance for that exploitation.

Finance Ministers throughout history have looked for the least painful source of revenue. They have also been willing to introduce tax breaks to please powerful interests or their own voters or floating voters.

From time to time, a finance minister has shown great courage in taking steps that he judges necessary - Schacht halted the great German post WW1 hyperinflation; Austen Chamberlain prevented a British hyperinflation; Geoffrey Howe took deeply unpopular steps. (It is of course arguable that at least the two British chancellors went too far).

Maintaining a steady course can be hugely challenging - the most successful of all British chancellors on that score is Neville Chamberlain who gave us a 4 per growth rate year on year after the Great Crash.

Nigel Lawson understood better than almost any the economic implications of tax policy. Auberon Waugh - whom Lawson sacked when he was editor of the Spectator and a man who had a generally low view of politicians - wrote that he bowed down before Nigel Lawson's mighty intellect. Lawson set a 40 per cent rate for capital gains, inheritance and the top rate of income tax, thus eliminating many devices to avoid tax.

A useful move towards Lawsonian fiscal neutrality would be to impose VAT on children's clothes while using the revenues to boost welfare payments to the lowest income families.

One largely ignored but potentially significant consequence of Eating Out will be long term damage to a number of establishments in areas with a market which contains two elements - significant summer tourism but more substantial year round local custom.

In and around Canterbury, some pubs and restaurants – mainly with managers on short term contracts – went all out for the tourist trade. Regulars were turned away or had their Deliveroo orders accepted and then cancelled. Others took good care to ensure that regulars could use their gardens, restaurants and avoided cancelling Deliveroo orders once accepted because some extra tourists had turned up. These enterprises were largely run by long term managers or owner-managers.

I – and I know I am by no means alone – will remember how I was treated. I will in future give my custom to those who treated me well and deny it to those who treated me badly. Others I have spoken to will do the same. In Canterbury – and many other cathedral cities and small towns attracting tourists – boycotting those who behaved badly involves no great hardship; boycotting one Italian restaurant which in particular has good pizzas is no great hardship when there are two others.

Some readers may think that because this loss in business will be a very small proportion of annual turnover and a small proportion of out of season turnover its is trivial and will have no effect. Those readers are wrong.

First, catering shares with many other businesses the 90-10 rule – 90 per cent of the annual profits come from the last ten per cent of the sales. So even a small loss of sales has a marked effect on profitability.

Second, empty pubs and restaurants deter casual customers. If a pub or restaurant alienates its out of season locals – people who call in for a pint while walking the dog or after completing their 10,000 steps a couple of times a week and will go in even if the pub is empty – then those walking by wondering where to eat or have a drink will pass on.

If the Chancellor and Treasury want a more resilient hospitality sector, they need to look at the barriers that those who would become owner-managers of pubs and restaurants face in raising capital. The present Chancellor is not to blame for the mass of regulation that has raised these barriers; but he will be much to blame if he allows the FCA to continue to build barriers in pursuit of “Equivalence” with the EU.

One of the benefits of "secret diplomacy" was that when two countries got into a monumentally stupid position in which both were in danger of ending up badly worse off than they need be it was relatively easy to obey Denis Healey's first law of holes - when in hole, stop digging - and scramble out.

There is a problem over vaccine supply but this is a monumentally stupid argument to have. If the inhabitants of Great Britain want to enjoy the sunny Spanish shore this summer, admire the glories of the Parthenon this autumn, or ski next winter then it is necessary that a very high proportion of the population of the EU and Switzerland are vaccinated.

Although it is out of character, the efforts by the Prime Minister to lower the temperature are putting the national interest before any partisan point scoring over Brexit.

One of the most striking features of Theresa May is what a very decent individual she is. In that respect she is quite different from both her predecessor and her successor.

The Birmingham Party Conference speech in which she denounced the shameful examples of injustice that disfigure our society was in a long Tory tradition. It had echoes not just of Disraeli but also Iain Macleod’s great Party Conference speech where he presented the Conservative party as the Party that would do something about them. This approach incidentally is not anti-free market – anyone who takes the trouble to read Peter Lilley’s speeches and writing rather than just crude headlines will see that his arguments for the beneficial effects of letting markets work are based on the proposition that this is demonstrably the best way to reduce injustice and give people a fair chance in life.

Even Johnson’s most devoted acolytes must acknowledge that he has somewhat difficult relationship with the truth. George Washington could never tell a lie. Lloyd George could never tell the truth. Boris Johnsons seems unable to tell the difference.

This has had consequences. Aquinas argued that truthfulness was essential to human flourishing because social life depends on a degree of mutual trust. The fact that nobody now knows when what Boris Johnson says is true ahs done great damage in dealing with the pandemic. It has also demonstrably damaged Britain’s ability to negotiate successfully to secure our most important interests.

There have been difficult moments with previous US Presidents. LBJ was furious with Alec Home over sale of buses to Cuba. He was unimpressed by Wilson’s refusal openly to commit British forces to Vietnam (I say openly because Royal Marines were involved in training American recruits in jungle warfare under combat conditions). The generally excellent relations (not just Mrs Thatcher but the Queen as well) with President Reagan went through a rough patch over Grenada. However I cannot think of an occasion when a senior adviser to a US President has described the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom as a “Shape-shifter”.

“I do not see how Parliamentary government is possible without party” – Benjamin Disraeli, 3 April 1972 (Speech of the Rt Hon B Disraeli MP at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester; published by the National Union of Conservative and Constitutional Associations, page 5)

Disraeli took from Burke the concept of party as a means of organising opinion to produce a coherent policy for a government. The idea of Parliamentary government was a significant development in the British constitution. The government is the Queen’s government, and the origins of Parliament (or at least the House of Commons) was as a response to resistance to paying taxes which mediaeval monarchs needed to fight wars, usually against the French King. Even today a law is prefaced by the words “Be it enacted by the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in the present Parliament assembled..”

Today’s article reflects the continuing problem of a separation of government and the Commons. Unless there is some mechanism for organising a majority in the Commons behind the government the result is likely to be at best paralysis and at worst (as happened in the seventeenth century) civil war.

“Party” has been the dominant mechanism since the late eighteenth century or perhaps early nineteenth century although there were earlier periods when we can see party at work. Party as Paul rightly observes in this article requires party discipline. Although sticks and carrots form a part of discipline, esprit de corps and shared values play a more important part. The deposition of a leader always puts a party under strain – and can have long lasting consequences. From time to time, an old party will be replaced by a new one – for example, Lord (Robert) Blake argued that the party of Liverpool, Wellington and Peel was destroyed in the smoke and shot of the Corn Law controversy and the party led by Derby and Disraeli was a new party.

When yesterday’s vote becomes the subject of history rather than commentary – and the property of the next generation of writers – it may be simply an example of turmoil from which the Conservative Party recovered, perhaps the smallest of small footnotes in some PhD dissertation. But it may be seen as something different – an episode in the birth pangs of a new party.

The insurance industry remained for many years after the creation of the FCA the Wild West of the city. Bankers in contrast had been controlled by the Bank of England and the Stock Exchange members by the Star Chamber. Clearly some in the insurance industry look forward to a return to happy times. Its customers may regret this.

Many remainers will agree with Sir Keir Starmer – we do not like what has happened, wish it were otherwise, but the government is entitled to support in trying to resolve the mess that the Prime Minister and his sidekick Michael Gove have created.

However we should all recognise how very dangerous it is to implement this all in a single Parliamentary day. Ideally the Bill should have a sunset clause attached to it so that proper consideration can in due course be given to a bill (preferably after extensive consultation) to re-enact what is needed to incorporate the Agreement into the law of England and Scotland.

The present legislation contains Henry VIII clauses that are incompatible with the principle of legal certainty. There may be extensive need for the courts to clarify the meaning of the new statute. This is not caused by judicial interference – it is an inevitable consequence of imprecise and uncertain provisions in a statute.

This gives rise to a particularly grave danger in a state which has two separate legal systems. We had a warning over the Prorogation litigation in 2019. The English courts found that the prorogation was lawful, the Scottish courts that it was unlawful. The United Kingdom Supreme Court ruled in the end that it was unlawful so we did not have a situation in which not just the SNP but a large number of Scots who regard the Act of Union of 1707 as beneficent and wise legislation were affronted by the over-ruling of Scotland’s highest court.

This rushed legislation which is opposed by the Scottish parliament runs the risk of creating a situation in which the SNP could claim that an English government and the English courts had abrogated a key part of the Act of Union. We should not be giving Nicola Sturgeon or her successors any excuse to issue a Unilateral Declaration of Independence or worse still to claim that England had de facto done so.

There are a number of explanations as to why it is obligatory to obey the law per conscientiam as well as per iram. One of these – Aquinas, quoting Isidore – rests on the law being by consent of the people. Dicey managed to combine prescriptive, process theories with consent theories by holding that law required the consent of the Lords and Commons. This rushed legislation gives an opening to argue that the Commons did not really consent to it. This is not just theory – it is history. In 1914, the Conservative and Unionist Party was preparing to encourage the Army to refuse to obey any order to coerce Ulster – Andrew Bonar Law had the full support of they party in declaring that there was no length to which he would not go to protect Ulster. That included incitement to mutiny. Bonar Law and others justified their action on the grounds that the preamble to the Parliament Act had promised a full reform of the Lords and that until this was done, the constitution was in suspense. I do not think it would be difficult to argue that neither Commons nor Lords had really consented to complex legislation passed in a single day. This matters because England is divided – not only did London vote to remain in the EU but the highest remain vote was in the Mosely area of Birmingham, a city that narrowly voted leave. (As a foot note, Mosely was for many years the home of a certain Ken Clarke.)

This is an interesting and I suspect rather accurate analysis.

It ignores two questions.

First, how to manage Northern Ireland? The problem has not gone away as any use of the freedom that the Deal gives us immediately impacts on trade with the Province. Any attempt to alter the Withdrawal Agreement will provoke retaliation from the EU and the US and a major Conservative rebellion over breach of international law.

The alternative is to cast Ulster adrift.

At official level, civil servants are clearly preparing to cast Ulster adrift. Let me offer an example. Financial firms holding client money have to make an online monthly return to the FCA. In this they are required to state in which country a bank used to hold client money is located. A year ago, when you put in Barclays, you put “UK” as the country. If you try that today, the FCA system refuses to allow to submit the return. To submit you have to put in “GB”. The Province is being treated by the FCA as if it were a foreign country.

The big risk is that unionists will resist. They no longer will have the pretty solid support of the Conservative Party. But Ulster Unionist intransigence remains a hard fact. In 1914, it took the form of an armed militia. Since then both sides have relied on terrorism. We on the mainland never fully recognised the scale of the carnage inflicted by the provisional wing of the DUP during the Troubles because the unionist terrorists took care to confine their murderous activities to the island of Ireland. Mr Johnson may have unleashed terrorism once again – and made the Conservative politicians who betrayed Ulster the targets.

The second problem – more a question – is what will he do next? Those who think he will happily retire are idiots. He has told us that his heroes are Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, later Augustus, and Pericles. He may, like both, content himself with grand buildings as his lasting memorial. However it is likely that he will aspire to do far more than that and rebuild the economy, probably on a command basis of that later emulator of Augustus, Mussolini, whose economic model was for many years successfully copied by the French.

I would advise Conservative MPs not to conspire to remove him. There are some who echo the words of Cicero on Octavian – “A most excellent young man, to be praised, promoted and axed.” They would be prudent to remember that it was Cicero who was literally axed – and that Johnson’s favourite film scene is the massacre at the end of Godfather I.

I doubt if Mr Johnson sees things that way. As I commented below, his hero is Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, later known as Augustus, a brutal murdered of his political opponents. One of the was Cicero who made the error of saying of Octavian "A most excellent young man - to be praised, promoted and axed." Octavian was, as we know. praised and promoted, and Cicero was axed - literally.

Mr Johnson does not like those who betray him.