Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

Israel

Full marks to David Milliband, the Foreign Secretary for his  condemnation of the Israeli Government and his expulsion of one of its senior diplomats from the U.K. Rarely do we hear such robust talk from the FCO and very good news this is. I have long advocated a much tougher line with Israel both in my book and in this blog and I am very glad to see it happening not only here but across the Atlantic also.

There can be no prospect of peace or even negotiations with current Israeli foreign policy and if it has to be isolated to come to its senses so be it. It is useless for it to whine that it is an ally in the Middle East. For some time now it has done more harm than good. It needs to change its direction. The prize of peace is priceless for all who suffer in the current stand-off and enmity. For Israel it is the most priceless of all. It cannot be, nor will it be, on its terms alone.

Obama and Healthcare

The passage of the Healthcare Bill is a triumph for the President. It shows he can do deals to get things done in the ultra balanced U.S. legislative machine. It achieves, at last, what every other modern democracy has (and a good many not so democratic);  a universal healthcare programme for its people. America has arrived, but once again America is last.

I have been struck, listening to the extraordinary oratory of some of the opponents, by the link these passionate speakers make between the absence of healthcare and the preservation of freedom. This is same the argument, almost word for word, which was used by the proponents of slavery in the Civil War era, that its abolition would challenge the cause of freedom upon which the nation had been founded. Every other civilsed country had by this point abolished slavery.

This argument is as incomprehensible in Europe, so much more advanced and civilised than Americans will admit, now, as it was in 1861. What it says is that true freedom cannot sustain unless it allows not only the rise of every citizen in freedom. It must also permit the fall. Furthermore it must permit the fortunate to pass by and ignore the suffering of the halt, the lame and the enslaved.

Beneath that muddled vision lies a fundamental belief. It is that Government has no power to direct what individual people do in their lives. It does not matter whether it is slavery, healthcare, religion or segregation.  This was what the Civil War was about. The Confederate States believed they had the right to decide for themselves. Washington could not decide for them. There were many, perhaps a majority even, Confederates opposed to slavery, but the right to decide for themselves was the overriding principle for which they fought and died.

This belief in the limit of the power of Washington over the local power of each State on all domestic issues, not only still pervades American political thinking, but it is on the ascendancy. Ironically the Confederate political philosophy is now the dominant theme of the Republican Party,  yet this political party was founded to challenge it and was the instrument which conquered it in the war. Conversely the liberal  notion of the responsibility of Central Government to right injustice has become the battle cry of the Democratic Party. There is no difference in the political  philosophy of these two great iconic figures, Lincoln and Obama. Yet Lincoln was the Republican for the Union and Obama is the Democrat, the party of the defeated Confederacy.

Obama’s challenge on the world stage is to promote a much more healing approach to America’s involvement in World Affairs, so as to make friends and bring settlement to strife torn regions. At home things are different. It is to keep alive the dream of his hero, Lincoln, that the Whole of the United States is greater than the Sum of its Parts. If Obama takes a beating mid-term and certainly if he is beaten in 2012, it will show that Lincoln’s dream has faded and it was, in the end, the Confederacy that would offer the Constitutional interpretation which was closest to the American political heart.

It is also worth recording that it was the Confederacy’s ineptitude at defining the effect of  its domestic policies on international opinion, which was the principle reason that assured its failure. The are tricky parallels here, too.

Sleaze

Back to square one it seams. All that stuff about cleaning up politics after the sleaze scandals of the Major government seems to have been forgotten. We have got to put a stop to this. Selling influence on policy is corruption pure and simple. Frightened party leaders promise new laws to clamp down on this political spivdom. They had better do it. Of course, it should not be necessary. There should be sufficient inherent honesty in the make up of those we send to represent us, for them to behave properly without the need for legal sanction. As it is, what is needed is something similar to insider dealing laws which now curb cheating in the City. In my book I make the case for transferring the power base of MPs from Westminster to their Constituencies. (Readers of this blog might like to go to  2010 A Blueprint For Change Part 3 Chap. 21 for details).

There  is another disturbing issue to worry voters. Reports tell of huge wealth being accumulated by Tony Blair since leaving office. There is a tradition of Prime Ministers retiring and doing well financially out of writing and lectures. Churchill and Thatcher were in much demand.  Macmillan, Home, Wilson and Callaghan wrote and spoke a bit. Heath remained politically active and muttering  almost to the end of his life, but wrote rather well on hobbies such as sailing and music.  Major pops up here and there after a successful autobiography. 

Blair is coining it in right left and centre. I suppose if people want to pay him for a moment of his passing time and the gem of one of his messianic thoughts, bully for him. When one compares the activity of this religious devotee with that of, for example Bob Geldorf, something does not look right. When one learns that he is being paid very large sums to advise an oil company about business prospects in Iraq something looks very, very, wrong. Wicked even.

Latest Polls

There seems to be something of a stalemate. Labour holds  its own in the low thirties. The Tories  in the upper thirties are ahead, but not far enough to break clear and win a majority. The average position is very similar to the beginning of March. It looks as if noises off,  Ashcroft, Unite etc, can have a short blip effect, but have little lasting impact. There is still a feeling around that nobody is sure what the Tories would actually do if they won. Few people trust Labour to tell the whole truth in next week’s Budget.

This makes one set of figures rather interesting. In job approval ratings, Brown is at -28, Cameron is at +10, but, and this could a big but and get bigger, Nick Clegg is at + 20. Coming on top of a report that Vince Cable has had a briefing with the Treasury mandarins about his economic policy, it is clear that a Hung Parliament is being prepared for. It may very well be that Nick and Vince  will have a bigger part to play than people expect.

Militant Unions

No doubt the calculation was that if they were going to bankroll the near bankrupt Labour Party so that it could fight the election, the unions, as a reward for their largess, could become more assertive. This is a catastrophic mistake. Voters in middle England are angry and distrustful of politicians, they hate the greedy bankers, but above all they hate and fear in equal measure militant trade unions. They have no sympathy whatever with cabin staff, whom they regard as overpaid and over privileged, they know  BA is going bust if it does not reform. As for the railway union and its continuous militancy, every time Bob Crow says a word a bucket full of extra Tory votes is assured in the commuter belts, not just around London , but around all the major cities. Losing marginals here means the end of the Labour Government.

Frantic Ministers know this. Exhortations, condemnations and phone calls fly. Cameron has been handed an astounding opportunity to pull well ahead into a comfortable majority. So long as he can avoid policy muddles and keep Ashcroft locked away, the road to Number Ten  is now wide open.

An intersting footnote which gives credence to the idea that this union shambles is an orchestrated plan, was the appearance before that Commons Select Committee the other day of  Baroness Dean, claiming that Ashcroft had not carried out his undertakings to the the Scrutiny Committee for titles and honours, of which she is a member. Baroness Dean is none other than the Brenda Dean who led the newspaper print unions to spectacular defeat in the Battle of Wapping, which broke the power of those unions and changed newspaper production forever. She is this time a minor player, but in what may prove for Labour and even bigger disaster.

There is another footnote too. Lord Ashcroft is, as Michael Ashcroft, a veteran of the Asset Stripping days of the late sixties and early seventies. Doyens of that reviled breed were very close to Ted Heath. His dreams and his government ended in bitterness, defeat and tears. Cameron and Hague need to reflect on that. 

Meanwhile  the Trades Unions need to understand that in the modern world, which is so very different to times past, strkes are to industrial relations as linchings are to justice. They no longer have a place and they cannot achieve their pupose. Civilised society now walks a better path.

Sacking Social Workers

I know when people fail in their jobs it is right for them to move on, but I am not comfortable with the whole business of blaming social workers when these terrible child deaths occur.

Those who follow all my projects will know that I have campaigned for root and branch change in this whole system of assessing, responding to and resolving the legal issues of vulnerable children. The present set up is unwieldy and unfair to the social workers involved and will fail time and again. It also fails when the issue of child wrongdoing escalates into child crime. I wonder how many more reports will be written, how many more children will die and how many more social workers will be blamed before some government of whatever make up, sees a better way forward. I am ready to help and I have a map.

But who am I?

Just an outsider. An elderly dad who watched his daughter die because in her case the system was over zealous, over the top and driven by medics who were wrong. It is not the usual kind of qualification expected of experts, but believe me, it is a qualification none the less.

Ashcroft Again

After a very good day yesterday and many opportunities popping up for them through Labour’s difficulties and the forthcoming Budget what is the news from the Tory camp?

More Ashcroft disclosures!  This time putting Hague on the spot. I am not sure how much voters care any more about Ashcroft, but the media love it and while this stuff is flying about nothing else gets through.

There is just one single message for the Tory High Command.

Get a grip!

Labour Prangs

Yesterday was bad for Labour. At first it looked good with better than expected unemployment figures. Then came PMQ and the overstated expenditure figures on defence to add to the problems of the BA strike. By the end of the day Cameron had reclaimed the initiative. This was a much better performance with much better aim than recent Tory efforts.

The defense issue is something of pile up for the Labour campaign. It is nothing like as bad as it seems, but unfortunately in a General Election how it seems is bad. This is because the troops fighting  first  Iraq and now in Afghanistan have been given hero status by the ordinary people of this country who turn out in huge numbers to mourn for each and every soldier who makes that doleful homecoming through the silent streets of Wooten Basset. Never in our history has there been a comparable spontaneous demonstration by the people for their fallen, one by one, as they fall.

There are many reasons. At the  core of this common grieving is enormous respect. In the age of ferrel youths, knifings, binge drinking and greedy bankers, these young people, highly disciplined, supremely motivated and very brave, daily risk their lives for us. It does not matter whether we believe the war is just or should be fought at all. They, on the front line do believe it. They believe that we are in danger and are willing to go all the way to save each other and to save us. In an age where so many cherished values appear to have gone, where even our leaders cannot be trusted  over their expenses, where politicians never tell the truth, where family breakdown is everywhere, these young people show what is best in all of us. Politicians make us feel tainted. These brave young people show us what it is to be clean.

Moreover they lack helicopters and fighting vehicles and other essential items. Yes these gaps are being filled bit by bit, but how many lives could have been saved? The Generals say it is all down to money. Gordon kept saying he gave them more and more. Now he discovers, we all discover, that is not true. Oh dear. Oh dear.

In military terms this blog continues to blame the Generals and the Ministry of Defense. This is not a matter of money or for the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Vast sums of money were squandered on internal incompetence by a Ministry which has all but lost control of its accounting and despite being given over £17 billion extra and above the defence budget for Iraq and Afghanistan, most of it for the Army. The Generals did not have a war plan prepared, they did not organise procurement of the right equipment and as inquests have shown, at times did not even organise proper training. To emphasise this, it is worth noting that the Admirals have recently taken delivery of the first of the Type 45 Daring class destroyers, described as an air defense system so advanced it is the best in the world and scares the Americans because they have nothing to match it. Yet the Generals could not get beyond a Safari car as a weapons platform, organise some helicopters or kit out their troops.

However that is a military argument. Gordon’s problem is that the prang is a political one. It upsets the core Labour vote, the Sun and the Mirror readers. Often it is their children who arrive at Wooten Basset. Or if they survive, return to live in substandard accommodation which is an utter an absolute disgrace. All down to money. All down to Gordon.

Public Sector Pay

Most of the people who work in the public sector are modestly paid relative to the rest of the economy, although in recent times their incomes have risen faster than the private sector. However there are some, quite a few, who now earn a lot. In fact too much. This was brought home to me when my council tax bill arrived yesterday. It had gone up, of course. Talking to someone in the know I discovered the chief executive of the council (an urban centre with a large rural surround) is paid over £200,000 a year. This is utterly absurd. The argument that you will not get the best people without lavishing them with rewards from public taxes paid by those with a fraction of such an income, is complete, absolute, utter and unmitigated nonsense. 

Public service is not, never has been and never should become a road to big money. By its nature you should not earn a lot more than the average of the people you serve. The fact that excessive pay does not buy competence is evidenced by the never ending screw ups in every department of government both national and local. Many argue there has never before been such a level of public  management incompetence. Legions of regulators and quangos  have to be added to the bill to keep a check, driving up costs more and more.

Moreover it suggests that money value is the only measure by which human worth can be judged, when in fact it is the least worthy. We need a sharp change of perspective of what our national values are and what the purpose of public service is. Those in their masses who serve us daily for a fair wage are in no doubt; it is their bosses who have gone way over the top.

Gordon Brown’s freeze on top public sector pay (mandarins, generals, judges GPs etc) was a welcome sign of change in the wind. A cap on future local government officers’ earnings at £100,oo0 p.a and an immediate 20% pay cut on all currently earning more would be even better. Include Health Trust mangers as well.

The Economy

This is not just the key issue of the General Election. It is the key issue affecting most voter’s lives. It is time to have a look at the problems. This blog offers a different perspective to most mainstream economic commentary.

In the narrow sense the problem is that there is too little economic activity to generate the tax revenue the Government needs to meet its expenditure. The argument is that if it cuts spending to the level of income, it will trigger a worse economic downturn. This is true but not as absolute as its advocates proclaim. Nevertheless majority opinion supported the bold fiscal stimuli, started by Brown and Darling in the U.K. and copied world wide. This is acknowledged to have stopped the recession becoming a depression. Now all the discussion is about the huge levels of Government borrowing, because if you maintain or increase expenditure without the income or savings to pay for it, you have to borrow. So we have borrowed. Bigger than ever before.

There will have to be cuts. Unfortunately we are in the middle of a General Election campaign (the election should have been held by now, the Queen should not have opened a new session of parliament last November, it was against the national interest) and no party is willing to come clean with a clear menu of, if given the chance, of how much it would cut, where and by when. They all fear electoral failure if voters  find their own lifestyle will be dumbed as a consequence. This is not a good situation for the country to be in, especially if no party has a majority after polling day. The problems are much more deep seated than we dare to acknowledge and this blog will now bring them into the open. 

I have previously highlighted the structural problem of our economic model sucking money from the poorest and distributing it to the richest. I have also said we must make more of what we consume, earn more of what we spend and save more of what we earn. The size of Government must be cut, because it consumes far too much, and the resources and people must be redeployed in wealth and job creating economic activity. By wealth I mean real, new creations, not asset inflation or electronic money. I have said that stability of financial institutions must be restored by returning to a yield based valuation of assets, rather than the on the day market value, which has come to common use today. Long term savings and pension funds must offer guarantees and security to savers, rather than as at present, transfer the risk to their customers to bear. I have also promoted a much simpler and fairer income tax system,which at the same time provides Government with a universally flexible and adjustable tool of fiscal management. (See my book  2010 A Blueprint For Change Part 1 Chaps 6-8). I have urged that money borrowed by government must be invested in the country’s infrastructure creating new employment an an enhanced national asset base. It must not be spent on excess government which drains wealth and leaves the nation creaking and impoverished.

That is quite a list. There is, however, an underlying problem which must be addressed before any lasting and effective solution to our economic condition can be secured. It is this. From 1945 until 1979 we had operated with an economy which carried a very heavy tax burden designed to deliver the comprehensive level of public services enshrined in the Welfare State. The tax burden became excessive. The Welfare State became inefficient. The Economy became uncompetitive. The response was to cut taxes significantly, leave services more or less in place but seek to efficiencies. Like all public policy, some bits worked better than others. What was lasting and to a certain level, corrosive, was a culture change. The public expects  better and better public services and lower and lower taxes. There is never any proper attempt to analyse and present an easy reference between tax levels and service levels. Thus the public now look at each separately and demand opposing standards which cannot be fulfilled. Politicians shy away in ambiguity, knowing that the specifics will cost votes. The outcome is a fudge which cannot work. Labour talks of better services to its core voters, but for other votes has to keep a lid on taxes. The Conservatives soothe their bedrock with the notion of tax cuts and efficiency, but have to offer improvements in services to stand any chance of getting elected. Thus neither is able to deliver to the level of promises, both fail to save enough when in government and end up borrowing too much.

To sort this out we have to relate the quality and volume of service (and of government) to what people are willing to pay in tax without becoming disincentivised. It may be the culture is for less tax but more insurance. Health insurance, unemployment insurance, sickness insurance, for instance. It may be people are happy to pay more tax for better schools, cleaner hospitals, free care for the elderly, shorter waiting times and better equipped troops. This balance has to be struck, not just on paper, but in the public psyche. At the moment the public is largely in ignorance, while the politicians are largely in denial. With borrowing at levels which are  unsustainable, some may say out of control, with a potential interest and repayment burden which could become unbearable, this will have to sorted very soon.

We need political concensus and strong government. Let us hope we get it.