Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

Three Cheers for Vince.

At last somebody has said it and now the burning issue eating at our national fabric is out in the open. Vince with eloquence, humour and deadly aim, has made clear the flaw in unfettered capitalism is now recognised. This is not a cry for socialism, we all know that also goes wrong. But what went wrong with our capitalism was the belief that it and its markets could do no wrong and could always be relied on to deliver for everybody.

The current model of capitalism, the engine of the financial disaster, is like a glutton out of control. It is socially destructive and dependent on debt. The cost of its failures will cripple the economy for years. The cuts required will cause much pain, made necessary not just to reduce the deficit, but to pay the cost of accumulated borrowing. It is critical that we have a root and branch review of the financial model to sustain us into the future. It will be capitalist, but it should not be uncontrolled, without a moral compass or a social conscience.

Vince brought the Lib Dem conference to life. He has also set a new agenda. He is in tune with public opinion. Watch Labour next week.

Cuts and Politics

The Lib Dems have kicked off the debate among the political parties as the conference season gets under way. The Unions had a go last week. Unfortunately the argument is becoming narrow and polarised. First comes the question when?

When is now. A record level of government borrowing for August of £16 billion underscores the scale of the crisis. Of this a staggering £4 billion was paid interest on debt. That is £4 billion in one month, doubled in just one year and rising. Every month the accumulated debt grows bigger and the interest payments mount. There is no argument for delay, because of the rising cost. Cut and cut now.

The next is the argument that the poorest and most vulnerable will be hard hit. There is no need for that at all. There a huge swathes of public activity which do little if anything for the poor and the vulnerable. There are nearly 10,000 public servants earning more than the Prime Minister. They are neither poor, nor vulnerable and either they or their pay should be cut. 

There are quangos and regulators running ludicrous bureaucracies which can be slimmed down and which will work better. There is such a degree of over management in the NHS that they are now engaged on managing themselves and each other. There is a defence posture geared to offence which gets stuck in foreign wars which can be lost but not won. We can cut a good deal there. There is a Chief of Defence Staff being paid nearly a third of a million pounds per year. This is utterly obscene. There are well off people receiving benfits they cannot possibly need.

The argument should not be about when or how much. The argument should be about what. The poor and the vulnerable and the needy, to coin a buz phrase, should be ring fenced.

Gay Rights in the U.S.

The Senate is debating an amendment to the law to allow openly gay people to serve legally in U.S Forces. Passions are aroused on all sides. There is talk of filibusters so that the bill runs out of time and falls.

Once again this reveals the other side of the coin of the nation which has done so much to promote the cause of freedom and has shed so much blood to advance that cause. In its freedom lies the freedom to be prejudiced, backward and blinkered, yet also to be acceptable and respectable. Constantly throughout history America has managed to be both in the vanguard of enlightenment and yet at the same time behind the curve.

The last civilised country to end slavery, it is promoted as the nation which, in a tragic civil war abolished it for everybody. It fought the Nazis and the Japanese with all Black regiments, as its armed forces were segregated until the 1950’s. In a country with no established church it appears easy to set up your own and proclaim wicked prejudice as eternal truth.

In the race for the Senate in Delaware the Republican candidate, anointed by Sarah Palin, is discovered now to have dabbled in witchcraft alongside her quirky Christian fundamentalism. In Europe today, often derided by the U.S. Right as ‘old’ and out of date, these folk would stand no chance. Most of the time they would be outside the law. The law to protect every citizen from discrimination and to prevent incitement to prejudice and hatred against minorities on the grounds of sex, orientation, age, colour or religion.

The Army

There are reports in the media that the Army is getting nervous that the Defence Review will cut its cloth more than the other two services. I hope it does. This is not an army country.

Today, in addition to celebrations with the Pope, this nation celebrates what is now seen as one of the greatest strategic victories of all time and many historians now believe the decisive battle of WWII. The Battle of Britain. This was won by young men in the skies above us in the R.A.F. But it was not just the pilots, decisive though their valour was; it was also the ground operators, the technicians , the scientists and the engineers, the women in the factories, the firemen and the medics; it was the indomitable spirit of the ordinary people. All came together in this titanic struggle because the Army, with its French and other allies had lost, spectacularly, the crucial land battle on the continent.

Hitler had to get control of the sky to cross the channel. He also had to get control of the sea. Before him stood the RAF and the Royal Navy. The combination was overwhelming. Britain would not make peace, because she knew, inspite of the faint hearts in government, the Tory party, the aristocracy, parts of the Royal Family and in the Army, that overall she was too tough a nut to crack. This blew Hitler’s strategic plan. He turned, too early, on Russia. Failure at the channel coast cost him the war.

There was no doubt that the German Army could defeat the British Army, which was tactically obsolete, under equipped and badly lead. It had among the finest troops in the world, but as we saw in the string of defeats to follow in the Mediterranean, North Africa and the Far East, their courage alone was not enough against a resourceful, intelligent, modern, but often numerically inferior, enemy. Both Germany and Japan inflicted defeat after defeat until Montgomery appeared in 1942.

Had it been up to the Army we would have lost WWII within eighteen months. It was the other two services that held the line and gave us time. The nature of this island, its culture and its people requires a light, small specialist army, mostly home based, with special forces available to infiltrate and destroy terrorist cells. It needs to be able to aid the civil power in time of emergency. The security of our island homeland rests with the Royal Navy and the RAF. These are the front line of defence. They are the shell which makes our nut too hard to crack. 

The Army needs to be brought home and cut back. It must stop waisting the lives of its brave young men on wars that can never be won and should never be fought. The Foreign Office needs to wake up to the fact that invading sovereign states, never a good idea, is well beyond its reach. It too needs to feel the pinch of deep cuts.

Nick Clegg

The Lib Dems are gathering for their annual conference; the first of the main parties to do so. The timing is unfortunate to the extent that the new Labour leader is not to be known until the following week. This will determine the nature of Labour over the next few years. As the smallest of the big parties the nature of the other two bigger parties is important to Liberal Democrats. Or is it?

Certainly a party without a leader is hard to define. Will Labour move left under Ed or stay centrist under David? To the Lib Dems, does it matter? Not as much as some commentators and many Lib Dems think. When Nick Clegg walks before them in Liverpool, he will be delivering what every other leader since Lloyd George has failed to do. Government.

Yes, they will need to rub their eyes. They lost a few seats at the General Election, but Nick has done what no other member of the heirachy would have got near to doing. He has put five of them into the Cabinet and swung the Tory party from the path of the hard nosed right, back to its liberal left. The nature of the coalition government is nothing like the blueprint of the immediate past. It goes right back to Macmillan, Churchill and Chamberlain. Thatcherism is a memory, wistful to some. Liberal Conservatism is back. This changes the nature of the political game.

It has happened because of Nick. It has also happened because David Cameron is at heart and was brought up in the tradition of Liberal Conservatism. There is probably no difference in the political philosophy of Nick and David; such as we see, is because each leads a party to which respect has to be paid. For the Liberal Democrats this is an historic moment to savour. They must be careful not to throw it away. If they do it will not return.

Labour and the Millibands

Today the Times comes out in favour of David and against Ed. It prefers David’s more moderate interpretation of Centre Left and reckons he will win elections more easily. He also has better judgement internationally and would be tougher on Iran. I profoundly disagree. The story of the foreign office under his leadership is one of stagnation and failure. He is too ready to accept the Blair theory of just war. There have been times in history when we have been well served by war mongers. There have been times when we have not. The Blair years prove the point.

Ed, by contrast, sees the  role of Labour as the party of the Left and sees an essential role in a balanced democracy of left wing ideology as a challenge to vested interests and public apathy. He tells us the vulnerable need a champion and he is right. An opposition led by Ed would be a force to be reckoned with and a cohesive focus for those in need.

It is true that Labour under Ed would not easily win a general election, when the electorate is in little mood for radical change. David might. But his brand of Social Democracy produces government of very poor quality as we know only too well, so we do not want that kind of victory. Ed will win when the country is ready. When it is he will offer a government not of spin and fake reforms, but a more radical programme for social advancement, which like Attlee’s in 1945, will endure.

Credible Deterrent

The Chief of the Defence Staff (shortly to retire) has said that if you cannot afford Trident it is better to have nothing. His argument is that anything less will not deter and no deterrent is better than a weak one. It sounds good but it is rubbish.

In many ways Trident is no longer credible because of its sheer power. Frying continents in one strike is a Cold War doctrine. Current and developing threats are rather different. A more flexible, less drastic, Hiroshima level weapons system based on cruise missiles from the A Class submarines may actually be better. All this needs to be carefully evaluated. We need a deterrent certainly, but like the battleship, a more sophisticated requirement may be making Trident obsolete. 

What is needed is considered analysis, not emotive declarations. Once again I emphasise the need for the effective defence of these islands, come what may. The anniversary of the Battle of Britain which hinged upon two outstanding fighters, an advanced radar warning system and a few very brave and very young men, reminds us that the secret of our security relies on our being too hard a nut to crack. We must translate that into modern arms.

Back to the Church of England

The somewhat controversial visit of the Pope highlights the role of religion in culture and society. Too often the discussions revolve around unhappy issues where the churches have fallen short. In this melting pot the relationship between Rome and Canterbury becomes confused and detached from history.

The Roman Catholic Church was devloped  on the framework of the falling Roman Empire over whose territory it spread the Gospel and developed a culture and civilisation founded on clergy rather than soldiers. It was an an age when scholarship, writing, teaching and the moral code was under the final control of the Pope in Rome, rather than with the King of whichever country. With Martin Luther came the birth of the Protestant revolution.

At the time of the Reformation politics and religion were virtually one and the same. In choosing the Protestant cause, England finally asserted its independence from Rome which had held sway over it, off and on, since the landing of Julius Caesar. In our unwritten Constitution the Church of England is the guarantor of spiritual and cultural independence.

Unlike Roman Catholicism, the Church of England champions an evolving interpretation of the Christian Faith, based upon mankind’s own evolution and understanding of the mysteries of science and life. Thus married clergy, divorce, abortion, women priests, gay bishops all in time find their place within the fabric of the Church and the society it represents. There are debates and difficulties but in an essentially democratic structure, these issues play out.

Rome is the antithesis of this idea. It is an autocracy, based on a finite interpretation of the Christian Faith, unmoved by the evolution of knowledge, fixed in its own law, demanding its own discipline. Its will must be imposed regardless of the consequences in human suffering, as in, for example, condoms in Africa. There is a sharp divergence between what the Roman church teaches and what the Faith is supposed to represent.

In this context the Pope’s description of our country’s championing of equality of sexes, races, sexual orientation and faiths as aggressive secularism (this was the coded message to what his close advisor and friend calls a third world country) these words may not, after the glow of hospitality has faded, prove to have been well chosen.

They do underline why this country is not and never will become Roman Catholic and they confirm that union between Rome and Canterbury can never happen until the Vatican walks into the modern world.

Defence Review.

Anxiety is building up among some MPs and military brass that cuts will be imposed impeding our forces’ ability to maintain current operations.

This is the whole idea. Or it should be. This country can afford to defend itself and its vital interests with the most advanced modern weapons sufficient to deter or destroy any aggressor. What it cannot afford is to project global military power to coerce sovereign states or to bombard or invade them to make them follow our bidding. Not only does our military need to have that power scaled back, but the Foreign Office must come up with a global policy based on what is right, as well as realistic and reasonable, for Britain. Plainly much of what has gone on in the last ten years was not.

Governor’s Speech to TUC

Mervyn King made a brave speech today and came clean with the Trade Unions that the crash was not the fault of their members. This endorsement should be warmly appreciated by all those union bosses not blinkered by a political agenda in danger of neutering their collective power. The public will back a union campaign to call on the government to protect the vulnerable and for the cuts to be fair.

If the militants push the TUC into a political confrontation with the Coalition which is more about power and less about the reality that even under Labour cuts were scheduled and must happen no matter what, they will lose their public sympathy. Right across the economy households are paying down debt and saving more than for nearly a generation. The people themselves know you cannot go on borrowing more and more without it costing more and more. The Unions need to remember that.