Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

Euro Slide

As Ireland grapples with a political crisis as well as what is currently a banking crisis with a vengeance, triggering a request for Euro aid, the currency slide goes on and the pressure on Spain and Portugal mounts. There is a touch of gloating in Britain, especially on the Right, that we are not embroiled because we are not in the Euro and our banks are not as toxic. True for the first and maybe for the second.

But, but it is not as straightforward as that. This crisis is not fundamentally about the Euro, although the weakness of the idea of a currency without a government is being fully exposed. This is a crisis about debt, the size of it and whether it can ever be repaid. If the contagion spreads, we may not have the immunity we imagine. Moreover a falling Euro makes our exports in our primary market, Europe, more expensive and hots up competition from Europe in our new and developing markets in Asia and South America.

All in all the portents are sobering. This is no moment to gloat. It is time to reflect and prepare.

Vince Cable in Russia

This Blog has always seen Russia in a better light than the moribund foreign policy of New Labour. Yes the Russian  ideas of democracy and ours are not the same. Yes, there were atrocities under the Soviets and cruelties under the Tsars. Yes, there are historic difficulties about the bizarre murder of the Russian ex-pat and spies (on both sides). There was the Cold War. There are also substantial numbers of Brits who originated in Russia and whose families fled pogroms and persecution and who have an abiding suspicion of the Russian Bear.

Yet it is also true that we would not have defeated Napoleon, the Kaiser or Hitler without Russian help. Our ally in all three wars their losses for the common interest of our joint cause were horrific. In WWII they took on the mass of the German army and defeated it. Russia and Britain sit at opposite ends of Europe, like bookends; we each engage in Europe, but also like to keep our distance.

There is no doubt that  the national interest of both countries will be served by coming closer together and that economically we need each other; especially we need the business opportunities of the modernisation of the antiquated Russian infrastructure to aid our own economic recovery. Europe depends on Russian oil and gas, especially the gas. Russia is critical to European advancement and security and is actually a real component of European life in a way that America is not.

This is why Vince Cable’s visit to Russia, heading up our largest trade delegation ever to go there, is so very welcome in itself and as a sign that we really are developing a foreign policy in the British national interest. We should rejoice that the sterile, prescriptive and abrasive approach, which got nowhere, everywhere, of the Milliband D. foreign office is over. We lament the wasted years of its supremacy.