The BNP want to bring back all British industry back under British ownership (source) and raise new taxes on companies that make use of outsourced labour (source).
The BNP believe that foreigner companies and workers are a threat to the British economy, undercutting our wages and putting our workers out of job. Without foreign competition, the BNP believe, the white working classes would still have well paid, secure jobs.
It’s easy to blame foreigners for any problems with British economy, and the BNP are past masters at xenophobic scapegoating. Whenever British companies are bought or jobs outsourced, it’s easy to fall back on reactionary nostalgia, but the truth is that the outside world is far more an opportunity for Britain than a threat:
- There isn’t a fixed number of jobs. It’s an economic fallacy to believe that there’s a set list of jobs in an economy, a zero sum game where every job gained is another lost. When technology removes one job in an economy, we (eventually) find something else useful for that person to do. We no longer need chimney sweepers in our economy, but that doesn’t mean there’s a load of unemployed chimney sweeps hanging around the job centre. Outsourcing is just another source of technology, a way of getting more done with less resources.
- Outsourcing allows us to be more efficient. Outsourcing basic tasks allows us to focus on where our comparative advantage lies. The BNP understand that themselves: they could have hand coded a website for their party, but instead they used a standard Wordpress install (started by a Texan). Doing so allows them to spend more time on their comparative advantage, promulgating ludicrous nationalist propaganda.
- Buying back foreign companies would bankrupt Britain. The BNP’s last general election manifesto claimed that “since we are not egalitarian socialists, it is not our intention to run around expropriating existing businesses”. But if we put this together with the idea that all “British industry [should be] back under British ownership” then it seems their only option is to buy out all the foreign investment in Britain. The cost of this would be enormous, easily in the hundreds of billions, and far beyond what the Treasury can afford.
- A tax on outsourcing would send many companies bust. If the companies can’t afford to pay British wages, slapping an extra tax on them wouldn’t help. The end result is likely to either be their shutting down altogether, or moving the company headquarters to a different country, beyond where a BNP exchequer could reach them. The end result is that such a tax is likely to lose jobs as save them
- A tax on outsourcing wouldn’t work. Neither is it clear what exactly the distinction between outsourcing labour and buying in a product from abroad is. Every time we buy any product or service from aboard, whether it be a car or a search engine, we’re making use of foreign labour. If company can’t outsource part of its operations, then it will simply split into two, and buy in what it used to do in house.
- Foreign companies keep British competitive. The BNP are right to claim that in the real world free markets aren’t always perfectly competitive. Big companies don’t always offer as low prices or high quality as they could – but this problem only gets much, much worse when those same companies are protected behind trade barriers. Think of the old BT, when you had to wait months to get a phone line installed. The competition of international firms helps ensure that our domestic companies do what they should, and serve British consumers as well as they can.
- Foreign companies spread new ideas. Upcoming countries such as India and China have benefitted enormously from the physical capital and institutions that Western companies have invested in their countries. But the same process exists in Britain too. We all benefit from picking up foreign expertise, ideas and innovations, learning from Germany efficiency or American risk taking. As the woeful performance of some British companies shows, we certainly don’t know it all yet. Foreign companies help to increase productivity, and in turn growth and our standard of living.
- Foreign investment is a two way street. Although sales such as Cadbury’s make the news, for the last thirty years Britain has bought more foreign assets than have foreigners have bought ours. Companies as diverse as Tesco and BP have branches all over the world. These foreign investments have sent back profits and real wealth to the country.
- The global marketplace gives us enormous opportunities. With China and India’s economies taking off, there are suddenly another two billion people present in the world economy. The BNP frames that as two billion rivals to the British workforce; it’s more helpful to think of it as two billion new customers the British workforce can sell to.
