Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

There is now real opportunity to move forward in the Middle East. This is not because some breakthrough in negotiations has occurred or is in prospect. It is because the established order and balance, which has stood unchanged for decades and which Israel has relied upon to fashion its policy, is now falling away in the phenomenon dubbed the Arab Spring. In reality only in Egypt and Tunisia has something tangible happened and even here we do not quite know what is coming. But nevertheless whether in the Arab kingdoms or dictatorships the people are stirring, the regimes look threatened and in the modern electronic world, brutal crackdowns will produce no lasting respite from the onward march of liberation.

Two things then flow. Israel can no longer be sure of the attitude of its neighbours. It is not quite clear who may be friend and who may be foe. Will Egypt, with a democratic government be more or less tolerant of Israeli obduracy than under Mubarak? If the Assad regime crumbles, what comes after? Israelis are not fools. They know they are constantly provoked and this brings them sympathy. They know also that at times they have been brutal in their response and have behaved badly in many other ways. In a different climate, could they go on like this?

The second thing to flow concerns their ally the US. In order to support the ill-defined opportunities of the Arab spring, the White House and State Department have had to fashion a new approach which, unlike the old Middle East policy which was fixed and predictable, will in future have to be responsive and fluid. Whatever the policy, US influence is now significantly reduced across the region, but without the change now unfolding, its influence would shrink much lower. The impact on Israel of this is seismic. It means that instead of the Jewish lobby in Washington counting for everything and securing all for Israel no matter what, it will count for less and secure little.

This may be the Arab Spring. It is also the autumn of Israeli defiance. From now on, to survive, Israel has to negotiate in a spirit of give and take. The days of waving the Old testament and taking whatever, are over. That is the message from President Obama. That is why he has said talks start at the pre 1967 borders. It is time to go back to the beginning, for it is here that the key will be found to open the door leading to the end. Israel needs to understand that. If it does it will survive and prosper. If it sticks to its old ways, its future becomes very uncertain.

In terms of political significance for the people of these islands, the visit of the Queen and Prince Philip to Ireland is one of the most important and historic of her long reign, perhaps the most significant of all. It is certainly the most overtly political. This could never be just a goodwill trip where the Queen was above politics. For these momentous four days, Her Majesty is politics in Ireland. Her speech to last night’s banquet of almost all who count in Irish public life was without doubt the greatest she has made. There were no platitudes or non- controversial pleasantries. This was a moment of history when her audience sat in pin-drop silence, utterly still, a good few open mouthed. Almost all in the room were speechmakers of some kind. The Queen’s performance gobsmacked them all. At the end they rose to give her a prolonged standing ovation. She deserved that. Every second.

It is not just that it was a calm, perfectly modulated performance, read fluently from pages held in a rock steady hand (who else among us could do that at eighty five?) but it was the conviction in the voice, the sincerity of the tone, the weight of the words. Yes and these were her words. Many had been those who had contributed to the script, but perhaps more than at any other time, Her Majesty knew what needed to be said and said it she did. Her words will echo down the pages of history; they have already stirred  Irish hearts everywhere.

It is true that there could have been more. There could have been an apology. Martin McGuiness could have been there. It is always possible to improve. But politics is the art of the possible and last night the Queen went as far, within the extraordinary sensitivites of the fraught and violent background of centuries of upheaval, as she could. It can today be said of the Monarchy, whose own recent history is not without blemish, that rarely has it served its people better.

We cannot recall anything quite like the astonishing situation surrounding Dominique Strauss-Kahn since the arrest  of Jeremy Thorpe, the then leader of the Liberal Party in the UK, for conspiracy to murder.  Thorpe was tried and acquitted. The court scenes were dramatic as his defence counsel (George Carmen) undermined the prosecution case, but the Not Guilty verdict was not enough to restore Thorpe’s reputation, nor allow him back into public life. He was a national personality, but with modest political clout, leading just a handful of Liberal MPs, who had turned down Heath’s offer of coalition, following the indecisive first election of 1974. The drama which unfolded around him was personally tragic, rather than politically significant.

This cannot be said of Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Not only is this his personal tragedy, whether self inflicted or not, it is a calamity for the Socialist party in France, an upheaval for the IMF and a potential disaster for the Euro. The left has lost its only credible candidate to challenge for the French Presidency next year and the IMF has lost its charismatic and gifted leader at a very critical time indeed. His replacement may well be a candidate, not from Europe, but from the rising economies which hold the cash the IMF needs for its growing list of bailouts. Leadership provided from the Far East may be a lot less focused on Europe. That could be very difficult for the Euro.

For the moment all we have is a brief description of the alleged incident from the DA, which if true, must have been an horrific experience for the unfortunate maid, whose trauma can only be imagined. The list of charges makes grim reading. However we must remember these are accusations; we do not yet know the evidence. Conspiracy theories notwithstanding, we do not know for sure how the accused will plead. We can be sure that if this gets to full trial it will have media coverage wall to wall, coast to coast, night and day, worldwide. It will be a courtroom drama to challenge even the imagination of John Grisham. Unlike a novel, which comes to an ending, this event, whatever the outcome, will rumble on and on. It has the potential to change the course of history. It may already have done so. To begin with, the humiliated France’s attitude to America, always rather lukewarm, has taken a nasty chill.

Following a recent download of Explorer 9, we were unaware that this caused the WordPress Spell Check facility to malfunction. This resulted in two or three posts with an unusual number of typos, until the problem was spotted. These have now been corrected and while the boffins work on the problem, we are using our alternative browser, Google Chrome. That works perfectly. Apologies to all our readers who expect and normally get a better standard of presentation.

There has been a call by the head of the UK Armed Forces for NATO to widen its targets to include civilian infrastructure otherwise ‘Col Gaddafi may hang on to power’. There are several points of contention.

First, under the conventions of the UK Constitution, military officers carry out policy, they do not make it. It is wholly improper for a serving officer to give newspaper interviews openly questioning national policy or to express views on how such policy ought to proceed. This is the responsibility of the Secretary of State for Defence, together with other ministers of defence, all of whom are part of the structure of democratic government. Generals, however senior, are not.

Second, nobody in the world has the legal authority to ‘get rid of Gaddafi’ other than the Libyan people. UNSCR 1973 forbids it. It may have been daft to embark on a half cock war where the only target that mattered was off the list, but that is what has happened. It is also clear that whilst Col. Gaddafi and his family have lost all credibility and control in the east of Libya, in the west, especially among their own tribes, they enjoy, still, significant support. It is absolutely not clear that if he were somehow booted out by NATO, the Libyan Rebels would be able to govern the whole country, organise free elections and prevent the outbreak of another civil war.

Third, as we learned in Iraq, smashing up bridges, power supplies, water and other utilities brings huge suffering to innocent civilians, which is the opposite of the purpose of UNSCR 1973.

Fourth, it is indeed unfortunate that the campaign is in stalemate, without end in sight, no clear goal and no exit strategy. Loud mouthed politicians have, through the demand that Gaddafi has to go as a precondition for anything, made a political solution of two Libyas, power sharing or whatever, impossible. The situation will be made no easier by loud mouthed generals.

In the end, we hope this will be soon, NATO and its political masters will have to get real, enforce a truce and get peace talks started. That is the only thing that will protect civilians, which in turn is the only thing, in this sorry adventure, worth doing.

The West and particularly the US is, with good intentions, doing things that will only make matters worse in the long run in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The current policy is one of containment, whatever else it is dressed up to be. Pakistan is seen as part of the problem to be contained. It is instead part of the solution and without its full participation, there can be no solution.

Pakistan is at the epicentre of the conflict which is essentially a war of vengeance for 9/11. The secondary theme is to prevent terror attacks in the West. Military operations, especially drone strikes, have contributed to reducing the incidence of such attacks but not the risk that they will be attempted. The motivation for the various branches of militias and terrorist groups is the desire to force the West, in particular America, from having a military agenda in both the Middle East and in the combination of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Essentially this means that the West is in the trap facing generals throughout history; the campaign to end the conflict winds up as its cause.

No country has suffered more in this fight than Pakistan itself. Its tribal roots have from inception prevented this nation from establishing the same quality of stable democracy as its neighbour and rival India. Because of this, it has a highly advanced military, which is something of a state within a state and has many times taken power when the democracy has faltered through the temptations of corruption. The army is trusted by the people and seen as its final line of protection from tyranny. Within both the army and the highly effective intelligence service the ISI, there is not one consensus, but several strands of opinion, as to who, in the terrorist battle, is good or bad and how best to deal with them.

All of this is laid bare by the killing of Osama Bin Laden. Evidently the government did not know he was there, though, clearly, some people did. The Americans did not trust the Pakistani authorities sufficiently to tell them what was afoot, yet the military allowed an extraordinary incursion into the country whose borders it is supposed to protect, allowing the Americans to finally avenge their greatest national trauma since Pearl Harbour, 9/11. Pakistan’s government has been damned by the Americans for giving Bin Laden sanctuary, whether on purpose or by mistake does not matter; it is damned by its own people for allowing the Americans in to kill their most wanted man. The Taliban have mobilised revenge attacks on Pakistani security forces which has already cost scores of lives, with more attacks threatened. This is a mess.

What is now needed is to show Pakistan some respect as a sovereign country and to recognise that it and it alone, holds the key to open the door for a lasting accommodation between all the warring factions within its own territory and that of its neighbour, Afghanistan. A condition of that must be the departure of the US and NATO from the region. The last ten or so years have gained no real progress and caused a great deal of mayhem. Time to face the facts. Purged of its ache for revenge by the death of Bin Laden, this may be the moment for the US to open its eyes and see.

This has turned out better than expected for the first quarter of 2011. Germany with 1.5% and France with 1% are both doing best of the bigger economies and better than the UK, which manged just 0.5%. Significantly, very significantly in fact, neither entered the global crisis with a property boom nor excessive consumer debt. This is a good moment to remind ourselves that at one point before the crash the total of British credit card debt was greater than the whole of the rest of Europe put together. It is this millstone, added to mortgage debt on wildly overvalued property assets, which is a much more severe restraint on economic recovery than either the cuts by the government or the national debt. Never before has it been so clear that an economic model was so deeply flawed.

A further and very welcome surprise is growth from Greece of 0.8%, better actually than the UK. Greece has cut to the bone and into it, so growth from there, if sustained, will give the notion that cutting is bad for recovery another bang on the head. Meanwhile the Euro remains relatively strong because of the northern industrial powers driving the recovery, a factor in making life more difficult for the likes of Portugal, Spain and Italy all of whom could do with a weaker currency. It is good for UK exports with our weak pound; of all this is the most convincing reason to keep interest rates low for just a little longer, inflation notwithstanding.

It may seem an odd moment, just after an election or set of elections, to read trends from opinion polls, but nevertheless that is what this blog now proposes to do.

The Lib Dems faced a more calamitous outcome in all the various elections than they could ever have imagined, topped by a landslide against AV. Paradoxically, because of their huge defeat, they are more in the news than ever before. Anything they say or do is news. Publicity is the oxygen of politics. Now is the moment for them to breathe deeply and assert their principles and beliefs. Where they are uncomfortable with Tory proposals for the coalition, they must say so loud and clear. Nick Clegg and Vince Cable have said as much and Lib Dem Lords have shot up the plan to elect police commissioners, not for long, but at least a delay to a silly, un-British and irrelevant reform.

Now to the opinion polls. These mostly show the gap between Tory and Labour closing to two or three points, with Labour currently ahead. This is exactly the prediction of this blog in the event that the referendum was lost. A NO vote was an indication of boredom with three party politics and a willingness for softer Lib Dem voters to return to their natural homes with either of the two main parties. The survival of the Lib Dems as main players now depends on their ability to coax those faint hearts back. To do that they will have to show that the party has bite, relevance and purpose. They will also have to show that it can be trusted. This last requirement is the most difficult. The tuition fees betrayal was the most flagrant breaking of a political promise in the U.K since WWII. How the lib Dems set that right remains to be seen. If they fail it is back to two party politics.

Politicians and economists of every stripe agree that what is needed is growth. Then comes the divide. The broad left want to maintain or more slowly reduce government spending; the broad right want to re-allign the economy away from big state towards private enterprise and cut vigourously to reduce the deficit twice as fast. Each side claims the other is headed for disaster.

The argument is straightforward. If you cut too much too soon the economy does not grow, so up goes the benefit bill and down comes tax revenue. Unfortunately in the context of the UK economy maintaining expenditure means borrowing more. This deals something of a hammer blow to the left argument and allows the right to claim that by cutting more, borrowing is less and the foundation for a sustained recovery is laid.

Both left and right can end up in the same place coming from opposite directions. That is an economy flatlining with stagnant revenues and a rising welfare bill. If they get there they will not stand equal however. The left will be very over borrowed with nowhere to go. The right will be less heavily borrowed and will therefore still have some scope for stimulating growth. That is without doubt the better place to be. That is why the public still supports the cuts.

In the current context Ed Balls is getting quite excited because he sees evidence in forecasts and statistics that the economy is growing hardly at all and certainly less than was predicted. He thinks this proves Labour correct. It does not. What has been achieved thus far is a significant shift of emphasis from state to private, from service to manufacturing, from borrowing to investment, from rising combined public and private debt to falling loan balances; in other words a re-shaping of the economic model on much more sustainable lines. All of that is not only good, but absolutely essential for future sustainable growth.

That it has been set in train without a double dip recession is surprising and welcome. There may now be a case for additional stimulus to fully take advantage of the low pound which favours home manufacturing and exports as our goods become more competitive overseas and imported goods become more expensive at home. There is huge scope. In everyday consumer utilities and electronics we make practically nothing. Who knows of a British light bulb, toothbrush, T.V., dishwasher, phone or tablet?

What may help now is another look at business taxes. Clearly the banks, at whose door most of the blame for the economic wreck and dysfunctional economy can be laid, can expect no relief from whatever vengeance tax is thrown at them. The same cannot be said of the oil industry nor corporation and other business taxes. A reduction or two here might cost a little in the short term, but it would increase revenue in the long term. What matters in the end is revenue volume, not tax rate and it is here that George Osborne needs to cast his eye.

Greece is at a standstill today as angry workers protest at the emasculation of living standards and available jobs. Never before has any country tried so drastic a reduction in GDP. The widespread expectation among economists not in a state of denial, is that Greece will have to default, no matter what. The big matter will be the impact on the balance sheets of banks around the world, but in particular in France and Germany and to a lesser but significant extent, the UK. Further bail outs of banks would then be very much on the cards; even another credit crunch is possible. If Portugal and Ireland lose the political concensus to carry on with their austerity programmes and default as well, a credit crunch is certain.

All of this is happening because the Euro is a currency without a government. This cannot go on. Either those in the zone will have to become a federal union or the euro will have to shrink back to a small number of countries willing to federalise their economic management. Both outcomes are said to be unthinkable. The stark reality is somebody has to start thinking. The mere fact of the crisis and its insoluble nature suggests that the Euro should be judged to be a failure already. Sorting out this mess cannot be put off for much longer.