Before the Home Office, his career consisted mainly of working for the Conservative Party as a researcher and he now writes for The Daily Telegraph. His experience of industry and commerce is practically zero.
Timothy’s latest column, without a trace of self-awareness, is titled: Our economic model is bust. Being a services superpower is not enough.
He is absolutely right of course, but I assume in 2016 he must have either thought Brexit would help in that endeavour or being a services superpower would actually be 'enough' as he puts it. The only other explanation is that he has changed his mind more recently following a dose of harsh reality.
After detaching us from the EU on a platform of expanding Britain’s global trade reach he says: “Geopolitical competition has prompted national and regional protectionism and a new wave of industrial strategies.” Well, it's a bit late now, when we've removed ourselves from the world's premier trading block, to start getting worried about protectionism. We are on our own.
He pronounces globalisation dead and that "the balance of the economy matters. Goods can indeed be exported around the world, but services are protected by governments through hidden protectionism, and language barriers apply more to services than to goods."
So, manufacturing suddenly matters. And the reduction in goods exported is troubling him to the extent that it's increasing Britain's trade deficit, something he says is "both a product of our problems and a cause."
It's a problem because "we do not make, do or sell enough to the rest of the world" and the trade balance issue forces us to "sell assets to foreign investors and build up external debt." He means foreigners taking over our industries and the chancellor relying on the 'kindness of strangers' to fund our spending.
This has been going on for decades, certainly the best part of a century, but Mr Timothy has only just noticed. His remedy is simple - or simply stated anyway:
"We need a serious strategy to reindustrialise, increase private and public investment, improve manufacturing output, narrow the trade deficit and rebalance the economy."
Crikey, I'm sure we can do all that in a week or two. I wonder why nobody thought of it before?
The problem for him is that Brexit was sold as the answer to our problems. The EU was supposed to have been responsible for holding us back, for gumming up Britain's manufacturing and trade with a lot of petty and stupid regulations. Quitting the bloc was to be the solution to our lamentable productivity levels.
Germany (and France, Holland, Belgium, and Italy as well as others) do "make and sell enough to the rest of the world" while inside the single market. You would think he might have noticed details like that. Germany has a huge trade surplus, for example. If Britain did the same we would never have quit the single market or the customs union. In fact, we would be extremely grateful to have a 500 million consumer market with a level playing field to which our goods could be exported without any barriers.
Being a member of the EU hasn't hindered any of the other 27 and in most cases (Ireland and Poland are models) it has been an absolute boon. The average Pole is likely to be wealthier than the average Briton by 2023 and Ireland overtook us years ago.
Yes, we do need to reindustrialise, increase private and public investment, improve manufacturing output, narrow the trade deficit and rebalance the economy. The problem is that Brexit, which Timothy enthusiastically supported, has made all those things far more difficult.
He actually says this is all feasible because global transport costs are rising and we apparently have "technology that brings production closer to customers" whatever that means. Plus we have Brexit which "challenges the logic of comparative advantage."
Comparative advantage is the idea that you make and export what you're good at and import the things you are either not good at or can't make at all. Brexit only challenges this because it's made both importing from our nearest supplier and exporting to our biggest market, far more difficult.
It's much easier for the EU to turn away from globalization, simply because it is a far larger and far more self-sufficient market. Britain can't do the same, at least not easily or quickly or without consistent policies that all parties can agree on and which can survive an election, and probably not at all.
And finally a day before Timothy's piece Daniel Hannan had his own article: Moral arguments over the state pension are irrelevant. There is no money
What a pity he didn't include that in his 2016 article and video setting out the sunlit uplands of 2025 in post-Brexit Britain. It wouldn't have looked too good on the side of a bus, would it?
