Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

The Queen’s Speech

This was one of the worst for years. I am strictly non partisan, I have not yet decided how to vote, but I am beginning to despair of New Labour. Their achievements are more limited than they would proclaim, but they are enduring. Peace in Northern Ireland, devolution for Scotland and Wales, restoring local government in London headed by the Mayor, broadening educational practice with Academies, Faith and Foundation schools, all this is  imaginative and worthwhile.

The failure list is too long even to start. There is however a  thread which is constricting the very breath out of the whole New Labour project.  It is the assumption that every single facet of life can be dealt with by a new law and that these new laws can intrude into every nook and cranny of the nation’s business. 

The latest batch are more of the same, the most ludicrous of which is the half baked notion that you can enshrine that every school will be required by law to give a decent standard of education. Is it not already the case  that this is the aim of every school and a matter of certainty that some will be better than others? What on earth is putting the obvious on the statute book going to achieve other than more cash for lawyers ( paid by taxpayers in legal aid) and frightened teachers practicing defensive teaching in case some smart Alec decides to sue?

Then there is to be another law requiring the government to halve the preposterous public deficit in four years.  Why does it not just get on and do it? It is utterly ludicrous to bring in laws binding the government which can cancel them at will. These people think we are all fools.

It is a wonder they did not announce a Bill making it  law that night must follow day. Maybe next time.

Then maybe not.

China and the U.S

Obama has a tricky hand to play. He must show his domestic audience that he is tough on human rights whilst depending on loans from China to stop America going bust.Some years back, approaching thirty, I wrote that China was the power of the future. People smirked, knowing they had read the ramblings of a fool.

Though a much older civilisation than our Western model with a quite different culture to our Hollywood inspired celebrity-worship, it is less advanced in modern technology and social structures. But it is catching up fast, as it is in military hardware. When its economic power and its military might reach a certain point, if America tries to throw its weight, China will challenge. Unlike the now defunct Soviet Union which was always an economic house of cards, China will be the world’s economic mega power.

The United States will then have this simple choice. Either accept gracefully its hour has passed and set to work sorting out its own consumption gluttony, debt and social issues and plan for the fact that when next Yosemite erupts it will wipe out half its population in a single bang, or opt for confrontation. This it will lose.

Brown’s Plans for Exit

Maybe a conference is a good idea. Unfortunately conferences have a bad record for solving problems, but in the end, short of conquest, people have to talk to get a solution.

Afghanistan, with its epic history and its unique poppy based economy requires all who meddle there to recognise one simple fact of life, whether they like it or not. The Taliban is built around Afghan tribal culture and the warlord tradition and no settlement is possible with out its stamp of approval. They now have the initiative and they will not let go. NATO is utterly unable to raise the million plus troops necessary to impose a settlement by force and keep it in place. If we exit snubbing the Taliban thay will hang Karzai and his corrupt henchmen and take over as soon as we are gone. They did it to Najibullah. Their predecessors the Mujahidin brought the Russians to exactly the position we are in now, before they set off home.

Money is the key. If we can help them set up an economy which can bring prosperity with a crop other than poppies, that and that alone will gradually ease the Afghans out of a medieval mindset into modern times. An intersting footnote is that the Columbian drug barons and the Taliban depend, like Al Capone before them with liquour,on thier product being illegal and subject to criminal black  marketing and distribution. Making all drugs legal but controlled, would do more to sort this out than anything else. Unfortunatley the  failure to see the lack of connection between illegality and reducing consumption is intellectually a gap too wide for the legislators to bridge.

I remember my father telling me how when he visited New York on business during Prohibiton, that friends had fixed him membership of an illegal bar so that he would not be thisty. He always felt safe there because it was mostly full of New York cops.

State Opening

Very good to see The Independent and Nick Clegg now oppose this too. They are coming at it from a different angle but with the same conclusion. In the present circumstances this extravagant ceremony is a national embarrassment.

Little of the legislation announced will have time to get through before the election. The whole thing is a cynical abuse of power from which ordinary people are left unprotected by the weaknesses an inaccessibility of our Unwritten Constitution.

Those Expenses

John Bercow gave a convincing performance on the Andrew Marr Show this morning. He promises there will be no backsliding on Kelly. He has also assured the Editor of the Telegraph that he did not spend all that money on his new Palace of Westminster apartment. Whether the paper will be convinced remains to be seen.

I was very critical of the Speaker yesterday.  Maybe he should have another chance.

Mr & Mrs Speaker

I really find this hard to believe but it is apparently true. Up to £45000 of taxpayers’ money is to be spent,  much of it at Sally Bercow’s request , on tarting up the Speaker’s flat to make it homely for this curious couple and their children.  It is difficult to believe that this reforming Speaker is so utterly insensitive to public anger over the expenses scandal or the suffering brought about by the recession, that he happily allows this squandering of public resourses, which even the officials cautioned against.

Parliament is all but running amok. Something needs to be done to put a stop to this cynical, corrupt and rotten assembly.  If we had a Constitution it would be a whole lot easier. A few of them are honest and decent and they will survive. The rest will live on solely as names on a grimy list of one of the most contemptible parliaments in our history.

Iraq

Disturbing news has come to light of possible further significant abuse of Iraqis by British forces. This is very worrying. A proper enquiry is needed. We take huge pride as a nation in the heroism and honour of our armed forces. We need an enquiry to resolve all this. There are allegations of systemic problems going through command chains into the MOD. This must be sorted out. The MOD has a bad record of wasting huge amounts of taxpayer’s money in botched procurements, sending troops into battle missing vital equipment and now this. The MOD is beginning to look like a bad Ministry. Perhaps we were better off when we had an Admiralty, Air Ministry and War Office. That structure brought us through WWII to victory. Smaller units, better managed with a clearer mission may suit our national character better. Trying to copy the Pentagon could be a mistake. The Americans are different. They like big. They spend a lot more money too. But they get a bigger bang per buck.

The Palestinians

Mahmoud Abbas has announced that he will not stand again to lead the Palestinian Authority as he is utterly fed up with the lack of any concessions from Israel and its unwillingness to halt its settlement policy, condemned even by president Obama.The future of the Palestinian Authority is uncertain. Hamas, having won the last elections but whose government was driven into Gaza after a mini civil war, remains holed up and unwilling, in that shattered coastal strip.

The latest thinking is that the Palestinians will wait no longer and next year will set up a State and declare themselves independent. Good for them. They must have proper institutions of government and administration to help their struggling population. Even if the rest of the world does not recognise the new State (many countries will) it will no longer be credibly able to pretend it is not there. It will also give the Palestinians hope and pride.

Israel was  a post WWII achievement by the traumatised and oppressed Jewish people, which gave hope to all the world. Its politicians were giants upon the world stage and its generals were heroes.  What a complete and utter tragedy it is, that is has used such a worthy foundation to turn itself into a vindictive and provocative zealot, pursuing policies which cannot possibly succeed, which are in many parts unjust, which grotesquely prolong the sufferings of their neighbours and which condemn their own population to live forever in fear.

It is not in the mountains of Pakistan, nor in the wild majesty of Afghanistan that the threat to our security lies. Those places may be the nursery of terrorism, but conception occurs in that cauldron of suffering and injustice on the shores of the eastern Mediterranean.

 More on Afghanistan

We hear a lot about training up the Afghan army to take over ‘security’ and then we can all go home. The ineptitude of the policy staggers. First the ‘democratic’ government in Kabul is utterly rotten, its institutions an arm of the unlawful state within the state. Second the so called Afghan army is no more reliable than the one left behind by the Russians which caved in to the Taliban within months of the Russian departure. Third, the mantra that our security in these islands depends upon fighting an ineffectual war which cannot be won in this tribal country, with its unique culture, unconqured down through the centuries, is rubbish.

Knowing all this, even if they are too caught up in their own spin or listening too intently to Generals sunk  in way above their heads, politicians who continue to order our brave young people into harms way, almost daily costing lives, have blood on their hands. It will not wash off.

Glasgow North East

Labour will be relieved. Their victory was expected, but we have become used to upsets. There wasn’t one and the Government will take comfort from that. Gordon Brown’s position is strengthened. The Conservatives, who hardly count in Scotland did badly, but the Lib Dems, who do, did a lot worse. The Nationalists did not pull off a miracle, but  the burdens of office reduce their grip on the miraculous.  

The one fact which should send a shiver into every corner of the democratic institutions of our nation is the turnout. 32.97%. Even for a by-election this is dire. Put the other way round 67.03% of the people with the right to vote turned their backs. A victory for Labour perhaps. A defeat for democracy certainly.