Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

It is absolutely essential for the Western coalition to get the Syrian government’s approval for any direct action against IS on Syrian territory. The Assad regime will give it gladly, since IS is its primary enemy. The time for squeamishness over taking to Assad and refusals to countenance a Syria with his regime in charge has long since gone in a plethora of misreadings and misjudgements. Things have moved on and it is the general consensus that this extremist combination of various branches of Sunni militancy is an evil to be stopped.

The web of so called allies is singular and likely to be ineffective. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States were the original source of IS funds. Turkey is rumoured to buy IS oil. The majority of IS fighters are Saudi. The alternative combination of the West, Iran, Syria, and Russia supported by a general mobilization of Shias and Kurds wherever they are domiciled, would guarantee a swift end to this menace. That would then allow negotiations with moderate Sunnis, who have been sucked in to supporting IS, so that they could have some territory to call their own.

This requires the West to overcome its differences with both Russia and Iran, neither of which pose a real threat and both of which have everything to gain economically from re-integrating sanction free with the global economy. To achieve this requires a broad strategic vision based upon the realities which are, rather than ideological aspirations which are not. In other words no more tribal politics and more statesmanship.

The alternative is to walk into the trap set by IS with its gruesome and cruel beheadings. Their idea is to lure the West into another conflict with opaque loyalties, unrealistic hopes and flawed strategy. This will lead to another Afghanistan, Iraq or Libya. Military intervention followed by insurgency in a self replicating cycle which could last a hundred years.

Each of these books is different and not part of a sequence, but all of them have the common ability to draw you into the story and keep you turning the pages from start to finish. Click on any of the images for my page on Amazon UK and here for Amazon.com

Nobody knows for sure how Scotland will vote on Thursday. Nothing more useful can be said which is likely to affect the outcome. What will prove decisive is the persuasive power of individuals in communities across the country, within towns, villages, street and families. All are engaged. most have decided and the potential turnout looks as if it will be record breaking. On Friday Scotland will know whether it has taken the leap into independence or has won much greater devolution. Either way there will be winners. But in England?

In England there is no voting, nor has it been consulted, nor even properly told. If Scotland votes Yes it will be the biggest blow to English prestige since the loss of the American colonies, which became  the United States. Great Britain, a name coined, not to exude its imperial power, but to proclaim the national unity of the British Isles, will be great no longer. It will be almost entirely England. It will have lost one third of its land mass and ninety per cent of its oil and gas and fifty of its MPs. It will, on the world stage, look like something of a car crash. Its authority will be at the very least dented and its foreign policy in even more complicated knots. If Scotland can vote to leave the UK why cannot Crimea vote to leave Ukraine? Guess where that will come from.

But if, and it could be either tighter or easier than the polls suggest, Scotland votes to stay, England will undergo the biggest constitutional changes since the foundation of its parliamentary democracy. Yet there is no actual constitution. Most of it is based on precedent. But this is unprecedented. Moreover, nerve wracked party leaders from London, fearing the break up of the UK, have rushed north, making all manner of promises about powers and taxation which will have to be honoured, without any electoral mandate to do so. Does England get a say, a referendum of its own to agree to all this stuff? And what about Scottish MPs? Surely they cannot go on voting about what happens in England over devolved issues? Without Scottish MPs both Labour and the Lib Dems are electoral toast in the near term in England. This offers  the prospect of a  Labour government in the UK without a majority in England. In other words a set up where the Government has power in the UK, but the opposition governs in England where most of the population lives.

This fiasco could have been avoided with some care and thought and planning. It is a grotesque failure of the spin based, PR tained, Oxbridge educated political class. If change is needed anywhere, that is where to start. It’s called Clacton.

Each of these books is different and not part of a sequence, but all of them have the common ability to draw you into the story and keep you turning the pages from start to finish. Click on any of the images for my page on Amazon UK and here for Amazon.com

There is passion and pride in the Scottish Referendum campaign, which has caught the attention of the world. This blog can think of no elections, and certainly none in Britain, which promises such a high turnout or such a cliff hanging result. Whenever it seems that the YES campaign is slipping back it surges forward. NO remains ahead but by so little that the grass roots passion of YES might bring it through next Thursday. Everybody is engaged from school children to tycoons. Nobody is any longer neutral except the Queen; that is her official position, but once again we all know that she is passionate about two political entities in the world, the Commonwealth and the Union.

Some remain undecided and some having decided and are wondering whether they might change. Some have voted already by post and wonder if they have made the right choice. The reason for this uncertainty is that neither campaign has really spelt out exactly what it is campaigning for. Of course it is clear in principle that one is for staying and the other is for going, but huge questions remain in the air. The complete absence of any coherent proposals for a currency, other than monetary union which would remove all of Scotland’s financial independence immediately, which is not on offer anyway, but which might  be offered if financial meltdown was in prospect, has spooked business, the markets and anybody who has really thought it through.

On the other hand the failure by NO to explain  what this Devo Max involves exactly is ridiculous. Is not made clear at all, not least because all the main political parties are offering a different version of it. All we have is a timetable for arriving at a conclusion, which is like writing a manifesto not before an election, but after it. So what is happening is that the streets have now taken control of this election and whatever the politicians say from now on will make no difference to the outcome. This is what Salmond is hoping, because he believes the streets will carry him to victory. At this point it is impossible to tell, if that happens, whether he will be remembered as the hero who led Scotland to freedom or the knave who plunged it headlong into the greatest disaster in its history.

What is now clear, and it is shocking, is that neither Edinburgh, nor London has thought the whole thing through, so YES or NO we are in  for a period of post referendum uncertainty. If Salmond wins it will be one thing and if he loses it will be another. And for the rest of the UK? On Friday it will discover whether it has lost one third of its land mass, or whether because of the changes inherent in the promises of all versions of devo max, England faces the biggest constitutional shake-up since the foundation of its democracy. All of it could be good news but a few errors of judgement, and there have been a lot of those already, could turn it into very bad news indeed.

Each of these books is different and not part of a sequence, but all of them have the common ability to draw you into the story and keep you turning the pages from start to finish. Click on any of the images for my page on Amazon UK and here for Amazon.com

The latest polls have shown that the advance of YES is slowing. In a volatile campaign anything can happen any day, but the final outcome depends on a single emotional issue. If Scotland votes with her heart, she will vote YES. If she votes with her head, she will vote NO. If  the answer is NO, Salmond will have failed to achieve his stated goal because he has failed to offer a package which combined head and heart together. The uncertainties of both currency and cost, which cannot be dismissed with clever soundbites about team Westminster and the like, remain unknown and unanswered. The doleful performance of John Swinney on the today programme on BBC Radio 4 this morning confirmed this.

If the answer is YES Salmond will have delivered, but the independence will be nothing like so complete as his supporters expected. This is because the monetary union he advocates, if he gets it, will leave the Scottish economy in the iron grip of the Bank of England and the English Treasury. If he is forced to use sterlingisation, the financial and banking industries in Scotland will have to domicile themselves south, because they must have the backing of a Central Bank to function. His credibility will take a big enough knock for the Scottish Nationalists to risk losing to Labour at the first Scottish general election after independence. Because Scottish Labour will almost certainly be led by Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling. With Danny Alexander, Menzies Campbell, Charles Kennedy and others from the Lib Dems, Labour’s big beasts will no longer sit in Westminster and will arrive in Edinburgh, changing the political landscape of an independent Scotland.

So if YES triumphs in a week’s time there is every prospect that Salmond will not be home and dry, but soon high and dry, either without true independence, or without a proper currency. On the other hand if he loses and it is NO, the lavish devo max offered in panic by the derided team Westminster, will deliver more or less what he wanted in the first place and make him something of a political hero. Politics is a funny business.

Each of these books is different and not part of a sequence, but all of them have the common ability to draw you into the story and keep you turning the pages from start to finish. Click on any of the images for my page on Amazon UK and here for Amazon.com

The unprecedented announcement that the three party leaders are to dash to Scotland today to shore up the NO campaign is a show stopper, not because it may make a difference, but because it shows a degree of panic at the prospect of a  YES win. A feeling reinforced by the irrational spectacle of the Scottish flag aloft over Downing Street.

Whitehall, famed across the world for having a plan for every contingency, has nothing prepared for a YES at all. On Cameron’s orders apparently. So if Scotland goes, nobody knows whether in 2015 there will be Scottish MPs elected until the actual date of separation in 2016, or whether none will be allowed in. In the former case it could mean a Labour government with a majority that only lasts a year. In the latter case it would mean Scotland is governed for a year from Westminster without representation. Neither can be said to be ideal. Or maybe a parliament that is dissolved on separation so that the rest of the UK has to elect a new one? Or extending the current one, already well past its sell by date, for another year?  But if you think that is a mess, see what comes next, if NO wins.

If NO wins Scotland will be given major new powers including tax raising, spending and borrowing as almost all significant domestic policy will devolve to Edinburgh. It will then be necessary to finally confront the anomaly that English MPs cannot vote on devolved issues for Scotland but Scottish MPs can vote for those very issues as they affect England. If that is changed, as it must be, then everybody will vote for the issues over which they have jurisdiction, but not on  devolved issues. This could easily mean that a Labour government loses its majority in London when the Westminster parliament votes on English issues,  which would be the only ones on its agenda for the most part anyway. It could also mean that there would be a different parliamentary majorities for Welsh or NI matters because their jurisdictions are different to devo max Scotland and to each other. Because there is no written constitution and because nobody has thought anything through a NO vote could introduce a period of ungovernable chaos. If things were left as they are with Scottish Labour giving a Milliband government a false majority, democracy would be in ridicule. And of course whereas every other country in the world, bar two, can consult its constitution for guidance, Britain does not have one.

Whatever your ideas for the political map ongoing may have been, forget them. Great Britain is about to leave the road and take to the woods. Thursday week may not be the end, but the beginning. The beginning of confusion at the core of the British state the like of which has not been seen before. Whether the Sots vote YES or whether they vote NO. And nobody saw this coming.

Each of these books is different and not part of a sequence, but all of them have the common ability to draw you into the story and keep you turning the pages from start to finish. Click on any of the images for my page on Amazon UK and here for Amazon.com