Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

The Budget

It looks as if the scale of cuts will be quite spectacular. This blog remains politically impartial in terms of party, but is in no doubt that the fiscal deficit has to be cut back quickly so that the budget balances, which will still leave us years of debt reduction which may take a generation or more.

Most of the so called boom and prosperity which ended in the crash was a mirage based upon borrowing and asset inflation to the point where even the tax people paid was borrowed. Remember that the total overseas debt of this country and its people is the second highest sum in the world and 450% of GDP or four and a half times the world average. The economy makes far too little real wealth and is totally out of balance. Up to the crash it was based on borrowing, unsustainable asset inflation above true value and shopping, driven by mountainous public expenditure. Such a structure cannot last.

This has all got to be put right. If it means a double dip recession to fix it, it is a price worth paying. The alternative is to bounce through a boom and bust or two, followed by permanent and irreversable decline.  Keynes never said you could borrow your way out of recession if you were already over borrowed and running a deficit even in the preceding boom. What is important is for the cuts to affect those who may feel pain but can take the hit and protect those least well able to manage even now. Whether the government can do this will not be known until George Osborne sits down at the end of his speech in the Commons tomorrow afternoon.

Afghanistan

A sad but inevitable milestone has passed with the news that the total number of service men and women to lose their lives in Afghanistan has reached three hundred. Meanwhile the scale of violence in that tortured country rises.

Another statistic that shows the heroism of our troops, but is very disturbing, is that the proportion of losses as a percentage of our numbers that we suffer, is much higher than that of our American allies. We really have to face reality now, or very soon. This war is utterly pointless and its objectives are unachievable. We cannot afford to be there and it is morally indefensible to waste young lives to no purpose.

The argument that we are somehow going to ‘defeat’ the Taliban is a empty as saying we will defeat tribalism. Whatever the immediate military outcome the Taliban or their successors with another name will be back, with a good proportion of the newly trained ‘security force’ among their number.

Al Qadea can return at any time and can and are operating all over the place anyway. Afghanistan is neither critical to them nor worth their fighting for directly. They are doing fine elsewhere. Counter intelligence and drones is by far the better military method and sorting out the Middle East is the political imperative. Afghanistan is a symptom, not the cause.

This whole foreign/ military policy is completely flawed and cannot work. Almost every thinking person in the world knows this. Except those with the power to end it.