Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

The scenes on BBC’s Panorama programme last night beggar belief. The government is in confusion and the public are outraged. The Care Quality Commission clearly is not doing its job. According to an anonymous insider it no longer even tries. It just ticks boxes as it monitors rather than inspects. This useless body is about to be given new responsibilities to monitor GP Commissioning.

There will never be an end to abuse, human cruelty and exploitation. The responsibility of government is to have in place the means to root out such things before harm is done wherever they happen, but especially in places which care for the vulnerable, paid for by taxpayers. That these special people were so cruelly abused is appalling and a blot upon any civilised community to the point where we all should feel ashamed today. But it gets worse. Cries for help were ignored and none of the relevant authorities would listen to a responsible and senior whistle blower. The BBC did. But for our national broadcaster, nothing would have been done. This is the root of this scandal. Our vast quango state is an expensive, dysfunctional mess, which permits much harm and does little good.

There is a lot of work to be done. Moreover the whole concept of outsourcing welfare functions to companies whose purpose is to make money is beginning to look seriously flawed. Whilst one is shown to be running a den of abuse (are there others?) another cannot pay its rent and appears to be going bust, leaving the frail and elderly with an uncertain future. This is all not good enough. It may be also the tip of a very nasty iceberg.

This senior Lib Dem Cabinet Minister is beginning to look fragile. It is hard to tell if the complaints that are coming in to various authorities about him are genuinely expressed anxieties or part of a vendetta by some injured party. Huhne himself is confident of his innocence, yet inquiries continue. This all has to be sorted out.

The present national circumstances are not those which admit in government Ministers under investigation or distracted by some private personal discord. In times past these things were conducted in private and none was any the wiser, so we do not know who got away with what. With modern on line technology when everyone can find out everything, the private life of public figures has to be blameless, even saintly. This may be a good or bad thing. No matter. It is how it is. It is therefore evident that Chris Huhne may not be able to continue in government for long, unless these accusations can be quickly shown to be mistaken. What then for the coalition?

It may be possible to bring back David Laws, now punished for his wrongdoing, whose talent would be welcome. Yet could Cameron do that so soon, especially as his misbehaviour was over the vexed issue of expenses, about which the public are generally unforgiving? Is it absolutely essential, if Huhne goes, to replace him with a Lib Dem? Could Cameron appoint a Tory, on the grounds that his partners had screwed up twice and he had had enough? Or could the job go to Clegg, so that he had a department to run, rather than the novelty job of Deputy PM which does not exist in our Constitution. Critical in WWII when held by Attlee, holders since including Heseltine, Howe and Prescott have had little relevance other than as a sop for loyalty. Indeed Howe did not play ball. He shattered Margaret Thatcher’s invincible hold on power with a single speech about broken cricket bats.

If anything happens (at present we cannot know the chances, but for Huhne they are not good) one thing is for sure. This coalition is a lot shakier than a year ago. We may be closer to Confidence and Supply than we think.

In the UK these are flat-lining, though in London they are growing again, but this is due to the concentration of financial and service jobs, many with international dimensions, in the capital. In the US they are falling again and the authorities have confirmed there is now a homeprice double dip. Yet American consumer spending is once again on the rise. By and large what happens in America eventually happens here.

This house price correction, which will go on until homes become readily affordable to the people who want to live in them, i.e the average house price by area is not more than three times the average income, is an absolutely indispensable condition for sound economic recovery. It is also necessary to keep deposits high and lending under control, since far too much cash previously ended up in property, when it should have financed business and exports. Such a regime gives rise to claims that young people will never be able to get on the housing ladder. This may not be a bad thing.

It was the Thatcherite Tory party which promoted the notion that everyone should own their own home. The sale of council houses to tenants at a big discount kick started the stampede. The requirement for the proceeds to go to the Treasury and not the local authorities to maintain house building for rent, ensured there was no alternative to ownership, even for those who could not afford it. So everyone had to borrow well beyond their realistic means. This happened in America as well, but not in France and Germany, where the impact of the global crash was a good deal less.

Home ownership is not really the good idea it is said to be as it encourages borrowing, inhibits saving other than in property and significantly hinders flexibility of employment by restricting easy mobility of the workforce. This is not to say that people should not own a home, but rather, they should have a choice and that renting should be a good and secure alternative.

The problem with renting is that too many private landlords are simply speculators, strapped for cash, behind in mortgage payments, giving their tenants a rotten deal. In the past there were large and reliable institutional landlords, including local authorities, who looked after their tenants, gave a square deal and in return enjoyed a good yield on their capital. We need, as a nation, to get back there and this government needs urgently to think up incentives for insurance companies, pension funds and others to build lots of decent homes to rent and to maintain them in pristine order. Not only will that encourage the construction sector, but it will underpin the economic recovery, by creating a more broadly based economy which can stand the cycles and shocks that in the real world will always be there. It will also help the UK to climb out of the peculiar distinction of being, per capita, the most indebted developed nation on earth.

It is easy to feel self righteous when a notorious war criminal is brought to book. It is even easier to feel that smugness which comes from the knowledge that we, as individuals, would never do such things, nor would our country. Sadly that is not wholly true.

It is odd when victorious military commanders talk of the depravity of those they have defeated. There is talk of Rules of War, as if these, like the Highway Code, were a guide to all who fight. There is, of course, the Geneva Convention, yet even the US has breached this when it feels its own national security is best served by doing so. The truth is that each war develops its own rules and, depending on the conflict, the depravity of the rules will vary. This is especially the case with wars with an ethnic or racial dimension as in Bosnia, or all out war like World War Two.

It is now recognised that carpet bombing of residential districts of cities like Hamburg to kill as many as possible, knowing that the majority would be innocent women and children, whose end came in the terror of mass bombardment and consuming fire storms, was wrong and if we had lost the war, would have been judged a War Crime. This is not to suggest our brave air crew, perhaps our fathers or grandfathers, were criminals. They were, after all, carrying out orders. But in a war crimes court, obeying orders is no defence.

This does not mean leading war criminals, like Ratko Mladik, should not be pursued and brought to justice, nor that we should not rejoice when they are. It does mean that we should ponder the fundamental truth that war itself is a crime. For that reason we should only engage in it as a very last resort. The last decade has not been good for our record in those terms. We need to move on to more enlightened times.

There do seem to be some hopeful signs of rebel progress and battle fatigue of the Gaddafi regime. The Colonel remains in power nevertheless and gave the South African President short shrift in his latest peace effort. By boxing themselves in with declarations that Gaddafi must go, the international community whether in the guise of the UN, G8, NATO has guaranteed that he will hang on to the bitter end. This will prolong the conflict. That will harm more civilians.

This blog remains of the view that these military adventures without a direct threat to our own national security, or one so tenuous as to be meaningless, are a bad idea. Libya is no exception. That said and given that there is this refusal to open a political door for Gaddafi to exit to retirement, there is no other course but to step up the NATO campaign to make it easier for the rebels to advance and more difficult for government forces to stop them. If the rebels do get to Tripoli and this is by no means certain, it is unclear how they will be received or what support they have there. Capturing the Libyan capital by fighting from street to street and house to house is a non-starter, if protecting innocent civilians remains any part of the NATO plan.

This is the problem and has been all along. Any escalation overcomes the initial threat but leads to fresh ones and so on ad infinitum. Nevertheless there is a new feeling across the international spectrum that end games are in play. First Osama Bin Laden, then Ratko Mladic, both sought for years. Suddenly Gaddafi looks vulnerable. He may resist NATO, but can he resist the tide of history? If his army begins to doubt him, then the game is up. The Russians, at the G8, offered to mediate a conclusion to his reign. Maybe the end game is theirs to play. If that does not work, there is nothing left but to smash Gaddafi’s army until it refuses to fight for him any longer. That may be, from the air alone, easier said than done.