Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

Never mind the detail. The principle is the issue and the principle is right. The NHS has become a process, not a facility. Its function is to treat every patient as an individual, just as any human life is unique, and not only put them right when their health fails, but also to keep them healthy. This can only be done if every person has an individual doctor in charge of them and guiding all their treatment programmes.

This does not happen now. Patients are detached from their GP as soon as they go to hospital as an outpatient or an inpatient. Here they are herded about like a commodity dealt in at a market. What happens to them is as much determined by process and targets as it is by need. Their need.

The exception to this is a serious and life threatening emergency following a trauma, an individual accident or a large scale disaster. Then the normal rules are suspended, clinics abandoned, intensive care mobilised and targets ignored. All the skills and knowledge inherent in the many branches of the medical and nursing professions, flow undiluted to the needy. Miracles are common.

This is the standard that has to apply across the board. Working through GPs can do this. We do not accept  sub- standard airlines, where passenger suffering and mortality is higher than the average. All have to operate to the very highest standard. So ought all parts of the NHS as all times. The culture of take or leave it because it is free and do as you are told because we know best must end.

This is not primarily a reform of logistics. It is a reform of attitude.

The intervention by Bob Ainsworth is timely. The current legal framework is a complete failure and has created exactly the kind of criminal economy which existed in the U.S. during the years of Prohibition, worth £billions annually.  Moreover drug use is more or less out of control and illegal substances can be obtained in every town and neighbourhood and most secondary schools including the private sector and all prisons. If you add all the other criminal activities of which drugs are the capital source, there are many more £billions in play.

The harm to the innocent who become addicted is alarming. The time has come, after no less then fifty years of failure of the current approach, to do something radically different. Bob Ainsworth proposes regulation and control, making the substances legal if sold by licenced authorities. The activity of the drug dealers would continue to be illegal, but they would be priced off the streets anyway. It is time for politicians and the government to show courage, follow Mr Ainsworth’s lead and come up with a plan. If the tabloids shriek, let them. On this they need to grow up.

The Irish Finance Minister has acted promptly to shut down the programme of one his busted banks to pay out millions of euros in staff bonuses, which the management claimed  they were legally obliged to pay. This is exactly what should have happened everywhere including the U.K.

The proposition that to do so would drive all the bankers abroad is propbably wrong. Even if they did go overseas, the problems for the U.K. economy are greatly overstated. Most U.K  banks are technically insolvent, because 75% of all their lending is secured on property and property remains significantly overvalued.

Moreover, by fuelling a property boom which drove up assets way above their worth, the banks were at the heart of our economic crisis. Their focus on an essential commodity, which is what housing is, to the exclusion of business and industry, produced a fatally flawed economic model and saddled both individuals and the country with a mountain of debt. This debt will act as a brake on economic growth for two, maybe even three generations.

The FSA has published new and stricter curbs. What is needed is a tough doctrine like the Irish. No taxpayer support now or in the future if you do not curb your pay. We will let you go bust, you will lose all and if you have been reckless we will put you in gaol. However we rebuild our economy, if it is to last, it will not be on the current culture of what constitutes wise, profitable and socially useful banking. The present model runs huge risks, creates false markets and sucks money from the many to give to the few. It has no moral compass and is financially destructive. It is at the heart of all the cuts, the curbs and the suffering. Time to call its bluff.

The tuition fees saga has revealed fault lines in both parties in the Coalition government.  There is no need to panic, the future still looks good, but it is a  moment to take stock. Things are not as they appear. Let us begin with the Tories.

The Right of the Tory party considers itself the mainstream of the conservative family. It is not. It is a radical wing, which, for its golden age, became mainstream under Margaret Thatcher and also became the majority in the country. This was because socialism and trade union power had over-reached themselves and had run amok in the late seventies. The country was fed up and wanted a fresh start. Thatcher was the right politician in a very particular hour, like Churchill in 1940 and Attlee in 1945. Once that hour passes the public mood changes. Both Attlee and Churchill experienced that. Thatcher was somewhat the author of her own downfall after one of the most successful premierships in British history. The Tory party suffered three election defeats because there was no longer a majority, neither is there yet, for the Right in the UK as a whole. This is why it did not win outright and is in coalition with the Lib Dems.

This is a more interesting combination than at first it appears. The Lib Dem minority  is led by pragmatic, rather than ideological, Liberal Democrats. They are  not from the purist left wing of their party, who prefer the righteous wilderness to the challenge of power. The Tory majority in the coalition is led by the liberal Conservative tendency of Baldwin, Chamberlain, Churchill and Macmillan.  The important fact to note is that from the formation of the National Government in 1931 under Baldwin, which included the National Liberals who had walked away from Lloyd George, this combination of the liberal/conservative centre consensus held power for 27 of the following 33 years.

Looking into the future the question is this. Will the Lib Dems survive as an independent party or mostly disappear, as the old Liberals did, into either the Conservatives or Labour? Looking back into history, the answer should be yes. This time, however, the answer may be no.

If the country votes for the AV voting system, coalition will be the common structure of government thereafter, as it is in so many countries. The Lib Dems will be able to argue, with much truth, that their presence in the current Coalition prevented the Right of the Tories imposing fiendish austerity upon the vulnerable and ensured the adoption of many progressive and innovative policies. They will be also able to argue that they would, if Labour emerged the stronger, put a break on it producing another spending spree and sprawling over-sized state. The Lib Dems may not be the first choice of anybody, but they could be the second choice of almost everybody. In that case they will do very well. Indeed they could enjoy decades of uninterrupted share of government. To make that prospect real, they must now show that they have the stuffing to help govern and are not genetically a protest party which cannot handle power.

The right of the Tories, on the other hand, have to come to terms with the fact that their Thatcher era ascendancy is history, glorious maybe, but history nonetheless. There is no majority in the country for the pure right in the foreseeable political climate. They will have to get used to being on an important wing of their party, not in the cockpit.

There are two versions of the Prince Charles and Camilla incident. One, the traditional one, is that in the way of Royals who will allow nothing to come between them and their duty, the pair set off  for the Royal Variety Performance in the ancient Rolls, a charming relic of a bygone era, took the easy route, ran into a high spirited  demo, were surrounded by baying students, had paint thrown at their car and a window broken, but kept calm throughout. They  pressed on through and arrived unfazed and smiling. They then made sure that everyone at the Palladium had a happy and memorable evening. 

The other version is that they were attacked by an angry mob, there was terror in their eyes and their accompanying Protection Officers were within seconds of drawing their guns and have been congratulated for their restraint by Sir Paul Stevenson.

This second version is seriously exagerated. Not only were the Royals not terrified (startled yes but who would not be), but can anyone imagine the consequences to the government, the police commissioner and the monarchy, if guns had be drawn and three students shot dead in  Regent Street?  It would have been curtains to the lot. If the monarchy did survive and it is the only element which might have, Prince Charles’s expectation to become King would not. As for Britain’s standing in the world as a free and open democracy? Wow.

One of the attractions of an hereditary monarchy is that there is a Royal Family all lined up with a pecking order to the Crown. If one goes down, another steps forward instantly to take over. They are, so to speak, two a penny. This is why they knowingly take risks and keep calm. They are much braver than we give them credit for. We should leave them to get on with it. They know what they are doing.

Something is not right in the crowd control culture of the Metropolitan Police. I sometimes think we have one force for everything in the capital, when in a modern world we need more than one. We do not, for example, expect a GPs to perform heart surgery.

There were clearly disgraceful scenes when troublemakers among the students became violent. There were other shocking scenes where students, tempers inflamed, ran amok tearing flags and daubing statues, not to mention smashing into the Treasury. A policeman was dragged from his horse and injured, quite seriously. Heavy missiles were thrown.

Against this one student was beaten so hard on the head by a police truncheon that he suffered bleeding on the brain, nearly died and was saved by the skill of neurosurgeons. Another disabled protester was twice dragged from his wheelchair, the second time when detached from the body of the protest, in a fashion that most will find shocking. Many other perfectly respectable and rather erudite students have appeared on the media to report unprovoked and random beatings.

From all this it is evident that there are faults on both sides, but the sides are not equal. The police are disciplined restrained and experienced. The protesters are not. They are new to this and they are very emotional. The believe their futures are threatened. Almost all are otherwise decent young people who are the future key players in the life of our country. We must ask why it all got out of hand?

The glib reply of trouble makers and thugs is not enough. Almost every time there is a protest now there are issues about the way it was policed. The Met seems to have lost its touch. The Home Secretary has work to do. She too has to  bring in some timely reforms.

Today is a tense moment in relations between China and the West, because of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo. The issue at the heart of the matter is the pace at which China develops from its old Maoist Communism into a freer more open society. The West believes that democracy is the cure of all evils and that freedom of speech is a prize above all others.

This Blog does not agree with all of this posture. Its very existence is owed to free speech, yet I would gladly trade that right in return for a narrowing by a quantum of the gap between rich and poor in the U.K., the elevation of the underclass to full participation in the economy, the reduction in housing costs so that everybody could afford to live decently without excessive debt, full employment, education free and world class for all from kindergarten to university, an efficient, caring, timely, and world class health service rather than the target riddled, patient unfriendly leviathan we have at present in which patients spend far more time waiting than being treated and so on and so on.

The point I make is that democracy is a means to an end it is not an end in itself. If it cannot deliver, and its record across the world is very uneven, it is just as bad a form of government as those more autocratic regimes it asserts to trump. It is not the best form of government; as Churchill said, it is the least worst.

The Chinese, who are one of the oldest continuous civilisations in the world, take the view that there is a better way which they are gradually developing as each year goes by.  It is a mixture of capitalism and communism, yet is neither one nor the other. The progress made in modernising their country and its economic strides, makes the Chinese government one of the most efficient in the world. It has a way to go yet, but it is getting there at a pace. It is not a democracy, but it governs to rules and with broad consent. Do not suppose it would last for five minutes if even a quarter of its population took to the streets to bring it down.

In the West we need to begin to take on board that our approach of lecturing, demanding, isolating and sanctioning, backed up with actual or threats of military action is  getting nowhere in the modern world and has failed to solve a single problem. Cuba, the Palestinians and Israel, Burma, North Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, all simmer on the brink unresolved. China favours engagement and the building of mutual interests. This is how it has used the West’s markets to build the second largest and cash richest, economy, which will before long overtake the U.S. The transformation since the cultural revolution, with Red Guards running amok reciting from Mao’s Little Red Book are truly remarkable.

In the end the Chinese government will have to allow itself to be open to criticism and to be more accountable, otherwise its increasingly better off and better educated population will grow restive. It will do this in its own way, not to our western model. Just as it looked at the stagnated and collapsing Soviet economy and compared it with the vibrant and working economies led by the U.S. and came up with a hybrid of its own, so China’s version of democracy will be unique. I suspect it will involve democracy and accountability within the communist party, rather than multiple parties.

Meanwhile the Ceremony in Oslo has concluded; the Medal placed on the empty chair that neither the Laureate nor his representative was able to occupy.  One third of the countries invited to send representatives to this prestigious ceremony stayed away, in deference to, if not support of, China. The Nobel Committee is an independent organisation and is free to award its prizes to whomever it judges worthy. If  next time it chooses to award the prize to Julian Assange, it will be interesting to see who stays away then. It is not difficult to be a criminal in one country and a hero in another.

This new development is even more historically interesting than the Wikileaks themselves. It may have the same profound impact as the rise of trade unions in the Victorian era. The U.S. and its allies has deplored Wikileaks activities and rejoices in his arrest, on sex charges prompting an extradition request from Sweden.

This Blog has no idea whether there is linkage here or not. Is this the same as banging up Al Capone for tax evasion which was trivial, when his real crimes were murder and bootlegging which were not? Mr Assange did not steal the data from the U.S. One of its own officials, who in turn was one of the three million who had access to this data was responsible for that. Wikileaks put it on the Internet. A clutch of distinguished and highly respected newspapers round the world are jointly publishing extracts from these disclosures. It may be annoying, it may be harmful, it may be an outrage, but it may not be, indeed it likely is not, a crime. If it is alleged to be, by whom in the chain of disclosure, apart from the original thief?  How can it be proved, under which statute and in what jurisdiction?

Sexual crime may look easier. It is less complicated. A man, two girls, no condoms. It is certainly sordid. There may be evidence, or it may be one word against another or two others. The Swedes insist it has nothing to do with Wikileaks. Very large numbers of people across the world smell a rat. Some of them, not organised in the conventional sense, but loosely based on anonymous volunteers of the moment like a modern terrorist grouping, have decided to work together to interdict against the commercial activities of those who in turn have acted against Wikileaks. They appear to be acquiring the power to close down internet shopping.

The internet has indeed change the world. Very much more than the world knows. If there are not  headaches today in a good number of capitals, there should be. The rules of the game have changed. Not the way capitals direct, but as the people of the world define. This will be very intersting.

There are reports that while a good number of Lib Dem MPs may abstain in the  vote  today on tuition fees, some, maybe many, will vote against. They may include two former party leaders, the Deputy Leader and the President. This unfortunate party shambles is being played out without personal attacks or rancour common in political drama. It is because this is more than a drama. It is an agony. This Blog will now define an honourable and acceptable position.

Members of the Coalition Government, who are also Liberal Democrats, are properly and constitutionally entitled to vote for an increase against their pledge, because their pledge was given as prospective M.Ps. It is not Parliament’s government, under our Constitution it is the Queen’s. Her government looks at the matter, then decides and agrees on policy. Having done so, all its ministers are bound by that decision and have to vote for it if challenged by a Division in Parliament. It is their Constitutional duty. The only way out is to resign from the government.

Members of Parliament have a different role entirely. It is their duty to challenge the Executive. They also have a duty to their constituents and to their supporters to honour what, to gain votes, they promised. Otherwise they become con men and women. Thus those Lib Dem MPs not in government who signed the pledge (which I think is all of them) must vote against. Remember the pledge was to vote against any increase. It was not a pledge which was conditional upon winning the election, nor losing it, nor joining with other parties to form a coalition. Once elected on this promise, no agreement signed with other political parties can supersede that pledge, nor entitle any member not in the government to change their mind.

Under our unwritten constitution these points are open to interpretation. However one point is not. The whole thing depends on people who engage in its various institutions being open and honest and doing what they promise. This is what the agony is about. The pledge should never have been signed. But it was. It must be honoured.

Gordon Brown, former Chancellor whose policies fuelled the Boom and Prime Minister in charge at the Bust, has, in an interview with Robert Peston, made a dramatic and prescient intervention in the Euro crisis. He has said the worst is yet to come and it may be coming as soon as the New Year.

He cites all the structural issues which this Blog has emphasised time and again. He has added a new warning which carries great weight because he has seen figures that many have not, namely that the banks of Europe are sitting on liabilities for which they do not have the capital to support and that this includes the U.K. banks. Anybody who does not sit up and take note, whatever their politics, is a fool.

Many revile Gordon Brown and dismiss him for his many failings and failures. In some ways he is similar to Churchill, whom most dismissed as a hot head and self publicist,  until he took over at the moment we were losing the war. He stopped the rot and when later we won, a grateful nation put it all down to him. They also voted him out of office.

Brown had been the architect of the economic model, based on an expansion of a blueprint bequeathed from Thatcher. When the whole thing began to sway and totter then to fall, he knew what to do, where to go and what to prop up. He is widely seen as the world leader who mobilised everyone to act to stop a crash becoming a meltdown. The problem is that whilst the structure did not fall down altogether it is dangerously flawed and may yet collapse. The key fault now is in the Euro. If that snaps, we will not escape damage. This is what Gordon is talking about. He is in a position to know. This time it behoves us to listen.