Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

Eurozone

The waters are, once again, getting choppy.There is not yet a storm, but some on the Euro ship are beginning to feel a touch queasy. The U.K does not have to worry because it is not in the Euro. Well no, but that is not all the story.

To grapple successfully with its own budget deficit and rising debt mountain, Britain has to achieve a huge shift from the public sector, which accounts for over half its GDP; a figure which is an unsustainable burden on the rest of the economy and which will eventually drive it into decline. To achieve this requirement, and it is a requirement, the public sector has to shrink and the private sector grow. Much of this growth will come from exports, a badly neglected area of the economy and many if not most of these will be to the Eurozone. If the countires in it are skint or the Euro is sinking, our goods are difficult to sell and our recovery may shudder to a halt.

Have dealt a wrecking blow to the so called Pigs (Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain) nervous markets may begin to worry about the U.K, whose budget deficit is the largest in the G20 and whose toatal indebtedness is the second largest in the whole world and nearly five times the world average.

So if we are not feeling queazy about choppy Euro waters, perhaps we should be.

Lord Falconer and the Constitution.

Lord Falconer is a distinguished legal mind and an authority on the Constitution. He was responsible for enabling the very significant constitutional reform giving the country the Ministry of Justice and the Supreme Court. He now wishes to delay the passage through the Lords, and therefore the implementation, of the Constitutional Reform Bill.

This Bill, like so much other modern legislation, is  somewhere between a bodge and a fudge constructed to the lowest common denominator of politicians who are fundamentally in disagreement on the issue. It has, however, been passed by the Commons and for all its imperfections will make our democracy a good deal fairer and better than it is. It is therefore to be applauded. Delay would be a mistake. The people must be given the opportunity to have their say in a Referendum on an improved voting system.

In fact as Lord Falconer and everyone in Westminster knows, there is absolutely no constitutional need for a referendum and this disgraceful and expensive ploy was devised as a sop to the Tory right wing, which hopes the referendum will be lost. There is no reason whatever why the AV voting reform could not simply pass through Parliament like every other reform of the voting system or the constitution thus far in the history of England. Indeed like the Supreme Court.

This is why we need to establish a written Constitution like every other country in the world, save only ourselves, Israel and new Zealand. When it written down for all to see and understand, it cannot be made up, manipulated and generally tinkered with by those who are supposed to defend it. The Constitution should not be the property of the Monarch, Parliament or the Establishment. It is, and in our case must become, the property of the People.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the Chandlers and Freedom.

At a time when news tends to be both disturbing and complicated, the simple and happy release of not one, but three famous captives over the weekend was very heart warming. It was a curious coincidence of timing that both Aung San Suu Kyi and Ron and Rachael Chandler regained their freedom over the same weekend. Both cases are, of course very different. The Burmese political leader had spent three quarters of the last twenty years under house arrest, but well treated, while the Chandlers had been held against their will for a year in a country not on their itinerary, in very poor and at times brutal conditions. This yachting couple were unknown until their capture. Aung San Suu Kyi is one of the most famous women in the world with almost a Mandela aura.

Neither situation is clear cut, nor the drama ended. The Chandlers have huge personal re-adjustments to make and are indebted to friends and family for the ransom which freed them. We all need to ask why it is in the modern age with all the naval force and technology available, an innocent couple cannot cruise in their yacht without fear of capture by pirates on the high sees. A whole regional economy of a failed state is now funded to the tune of $150 million a year by piracy. This has got to be put a stop to and the guilty economy set on a better path. Not enough is being done about this by the international community, especially by NATO, bogged down in Afghanistan in what is now officially accepted as a futile war, while ships and citizens of its members are captured an held to ransom on the ocean.

In Burma, for once, things look more hopeful. Aung San Suu Kyi has put out an olive branch to the generals and greeted, but not inflamed, her supporters. A reconciliation on the lines of South Africa may just be possible. In the West we must help and encourage, but avoid being too shrill about democratic freedom, whilst ignoring the condition of the people it is designed to improve. Democracy is everything to the West, but we need to understand that it is nothing if you are ground to poverty, hunger and disease under its yoke. The mess in Iraq shows that democracy may be the beginning but it is certainly not the end. In South Africa poverty, lawlessness and aids show just how challenging achieving the right end can be.