Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

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The conversation has begun for an EU referendum. Whether it is a good or bad idea is no longer the issue. It is going to happen and all sides everywhere accept that fact. So does this Blog. The important thing now is to hold meaningful negotiations about realistic concerns and to hold the vote as soon as possible. Business never invests in doubt. At stake are jobs, the future of the economy and the maintenance of the Union of nations in the British Isles. So it is big.

This Blog is emotionally committed to staying in the EU. To me it is not about trade and certainly not about tiresome regulations. It is about peace between France, Germany and Great Britain, united in a common purpose for the first time in a thousand years after centuries of blood letting and organised murder, referred to in polite circles as sacrifice. It is about universal democracy across a continent and being a citizen of a grouping unequalled since the Roman Empire. It is about my German cousins no longer being my enemy. It is about the death of my eighteen year uncle on the Somme in 1916 and the void of his life and his descendents who would be part of my family today. It is about all those deaths in one war leading directly to another.

If the people of this country would like an upgrade in the style of their membership I will go along with it, but I will still vote to stay even if they vote to go. There is just one cloud on the horizon and it, and it alone, might cause me to vote to go. It is not about immigration or human rights or free movement. It is about Russia and the eastward march of the EU.

Russia has come to Europe’s rescue three times since the onset of the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon. She is a complex country, the largest on the planet, which borders both Europe and Asia. She has been the traditional protector of the Slavic people from assault by Europe from the west and the Ottomans from the south. It holds China from expanding north. Between Russia and Europe there are a number of states from the Baltic eastwards which have connections to Europe but also to Russia. A buffer area where cultures and ethnicities meet and mingle. For them to be brought into Europe requires Russia to come with them.

I have for long advocated that Russia join both the EU and NATO. Integration would soften Russia’s behavioural trends and internal structures. Exclusion will harden everything. I do not approve of the eastward march of the EU into the buffer area nor do I think that NATO has any business there if its diplomacy is based on excluding Russia. If this policy is not revised it will lead to the ruin of Europe. Already the EU’s economy is stalled and so long as sanctions are being applied to Russia, it is unlikely to prosper. There are 25 million unemployed in the EU now and unless it sorts out its economy it will suffer great instability. Russia provides an enormous opportunity for business at  every level and lively trade and commerce with her is worth millions of EU jobs.

This for me is a red line. I might vote to leave if I see that Europe is hell bent on a path to its own disadvantage, even its own destruction. It has after all been there before. The idea of the EU is to prevent that happening again, not to bring it about.

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Of course the Bank Of England should be making contingency plans for action in the event that Britain votes to leave the EU and these should include a proper assessment of the effects on jobs and the economy generally. There is no need for any of this to be secret and it would be in the public interest for most of the findings to be published. It would not be crossing a political line to reveal the findings even if they may affect the way people vote; to withhold the findings would also potentially affect voting. The Bank of England does not do politics, but it does do financial and economic information and it must do them over the EU referendum.

All these instructions to shroud the process in waffle are ridiculous, even childish. As for the leak itself, how is it possible to ‘accidentally send’ a copy of an internal document to a newspaper? And to the Guardian? Come off it. We are not that stupid.

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       Malcolm Blair-Robinson U.S        

       Malcolm Blair-Robinson U.K.

The Tory Party is about Power. It is and always has been the party of the establishment, the aristocracy, the well to do, old money, big business, capital and the accumulation and expansion of personal wealth. All those interests are best served by exercising power; in other words by governing.

The Labour Party, a key element of the Labour  Movement, is about Mission. When the public mood chimes with its mission it wins. Mostly electors are happy to let the establishment party rule, so Labour’s mission has to be clear and appealing for it to win. It won for the first time convincingly in 1945, when it completely changed the social and economic structure of the country in what amounted to a revolution. It won again hesitantly in 1964 and convincingly in 1966. Its last big win was in 1997. All these winning sequences have been after long periods of Tory government building a desire for change. Labour did not win this time because in England electors were willing to stay with the Tories a while longer and Labour’s mission has been lost in trendy Islington. That loss of mission identity is critical in analysing this latest defeat and recovering it is essential to the survival of the Labour party.

The story is in the figures. Blair won his landslide in 1997 with over 13 million votes. That was the last time the working class voted en masse for Labour. When it became clear that New Labour was a caring edition of Thatcher’s Tories, the ordinary voter turned away. Blair’s second landslide was achieved with a turnout which fell off a cliff, down from 71.4% to 59.2%. He also had nearly three million fewer votes. He still had a landslide because disillusioned Tories backed him. But the working class felt betrayed. And Labour’s vote fell again in 2005 and again in 2010.

So New Labour won one general election in 1997 and when the masses saw its pink Tory colours they walked away. This culminated in the complete replacement of  moribund Scottish Labour by the SNP, possibly irreversible for a generation, and many working class votes going to UKIP. The figures tell the story. Labour’s vote fell election by election under the New Labour flag, in 2001, 2005 and 2010. It rose again for the first time in 18 years in 2015. Pay attention to that. The much maligned Ed Milliband shifted away from New Labour towards the left.

Now the call of the Blairites and their acolytes is to move back to the centre and cosy up to business. If you want Labour to revive and govern again do not heed it. That is the Tory road. For Labour it is the road to ruin.

An idea to stimulate economic growth without further government borrowing. Written in plain English and very easy to follow, this is the only really fresh approach out there to the intractable problems of the UK economy, and it is just beginning to be noticed in important places. Buy! Download only .99p Paperback £2.99

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Most people now agree that there may be insuperable obstacles to a single currency shared among economies of widely varying dynamics where a single value for all simply will not work. This is why the Euro continues to have problems with Greece. However you slice it, there is no possibility that Greeks will become Germans in their outlook towards money, its value and its purpose. The Greek economy is now in such a state of collapse that medical supplies are dwindling, people are going hungry, money is all but run out and still Germany demands more sacrifice. Her co-eurolanders nod awkwardly in the background, too scared to differ. Sadly Britain’s disengagement with Europe over many years means that there is no counter-balance to German  enthusiasm for its own view.

The Greek people are among the most engaging on earth and their contribution to the advance of civilisation since classical times is without the dark chapters of some other European states, one in particular. It is time to view the Greek crisis for real as it is, and not through the wishful prism of how it ought to be. The Greek state needs a financial re-boot with a tranche of new money, which is printed, not borrowed. Either it stays in the euro and the ECB is authorized to print the cash and re-stock Greece’s coffers so that the economy can again begin to grow, or Greece goes back to the drachma and prints its own. There is no other solution. More loans, re-cycling existing ones or anything to do with borrowing from anybody is simply idiotic.

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       Malcolm Blair-Robinson U.S        

       Malcolm Blair-Robinson U.K.

While the Tories bask in the warm glow of victory, the defeated parties are embroiled in a tasteless orgy of disunity and turmoil. Only the Lib Dems are maintaining a dignified silence as they prepare to choose their new leader.

None has been more riveting to the news media than UKIP. The latest is the demise of its two best known voices, other than Nigel Farage. They, like their leader, are still there, but with a diminished status. Following his three day long resignation, Nigel is not just the man but also the band. The edginess surrounding the disparate gang of eurosceptic little Englanders who people the inner core of the most interesting electoral phenomenon for may years, is driven by fear.

For long they have made the weather and have been backed by the strident right wing tabloids and tabloid crossovers, the chorus of which has been that the Brits are itching to exit. Just name the day of the referendum and we will be off. It is now beginning to dawn that the big silent majority who have not even bothered with the debate are waking up. They are unphased by nationalism but engaged in the national interest. As they mobilise and muster and present a convincing case of how Britain would be making itself a hostage to fortune in an ever more uncertain world if we left the EU, a new unwelcome vision has appeared on the UKIP horizon. It is that the nation will vote Yes to stay in the EU and UKIP will be over. No wonder there is a lot of catfighting.