Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

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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I saw about thirty minutes of the opening event in the hustings to choose a new Labour leader from the line-up of four. The first thing to say is that whoever is chosen will be most likely up against Boris in 2020. If not it will be May or Osborne. All of these are big hitters. Boris is a political mega star, celebrity and national treasure all in one. So the winner will have to measure up.

My impression, and of course this can easily change as one gets to know these people through the progression of the campaign, is that Burnham means well but is too lightweight in personna to win votes in the south and Reeves is too far to the right. With her why not get the real thing and vote Tory? So that leaves Cooper, who came across as a much more engaging and connected personality than I had previously thought, with a sharp political instinct, who may become the front runner. And Corbin. He was powerful, focussed, answered the questions actually put in plain words which were to the point and got the most applause. Watch him.

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    Malcolm Blair-Robinson U.S        

    Malcolm Blair-Robinson U.K.

A month ago this blog was confident that when the vote finally comes, the UK will vote to remain part of the EU. Now I am not so sure. The reason for these doubts which I know are shared by many, is that several things are going wrong in Europe at once, which give an impression of muddled vision, weak governance, lack of strategic planning and a failure of common purpose.

The key areas are the fiasco of Greece, the failure to agree a common policy to receive desperate migrants, most of whom are fleeing conflicts and persecutions fanned by policies supported by or originating from Europe, indigestion from too much eastward expansion creating an over diverse Union with widely differing aspirations and values between North and South, West and East leading to drift and division and finally the problem of the UK and its future relationship.

All of these things could be solved by a strategic view, a logical and practical plan based on fact not fancy, sound governance and a common purpose. But none of this is in evidence at all anywhere except in Germany and its view is not shared by very many of the other nations in an enterprise which not long ago seemed forever, but so much of European history, looks increasingly here today and gone tomorrow. It is not too late to get a grip, but the time when it will be is not that far down the track.

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Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy and right hand man, flew to Scotland on a mysterious peace mission in 1941, which has never been convincingly explained, to meet unidentified politicians who wanted to end the war. The truth has been covered up for generations because to reveal it would somehow undermine the honour and constitutional fabric of the United Kingdom. Who was plotting against Churchill? What were the peace terms on offer? What happened to Hess? Was he killed in the War? Was the prisoner in Spandau a double?
There are many questions to which in the modern day one man, Saul Benedict has all the answers, because his parents were players in the drama involving Churchill, Hitler, leading politicians and an important Royal. Saul is an author and declares his intention to write a book to reveal all, but he is shot dead, apparently accidentally by a poacher. But was it an accident? Rick Coleman an investigative journalist determines to find out and in doing so to uncover the mystery.
Taking place in the modern day but with flashback chapters which gradually unfold the hidden secrets, the novel is a fast moving and compelling read based on the family knowledge of the author whose parents had connections to both Hess and Hitler and to British Intelligence.

Set in the mid nineteen nineties, this fast moving thriller lifts the curtain on sex, sleaze and corruption in high places as the long reign of the government totters to an end, following the ousting of the iconic Margaret Thatcher. The novel catches the mood of those times with a host of fictional characters who engage in political intrigue, sex, money laundering and murder, pursued by an Irish investigative journalist and his girlfriend, the daughter of a cabinet minister found dead in a hotel room after bondage sex.

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As crunch moment draws ever closer, tempers are fraying both in Greece and all across the eurozone. This could signal the final shouting match which proves agreement is near, or it could demonstrate that agreement is now impossible. There is however a change in the political dynamics of the corners into which Germany and Greece are boxed. The loss of tens of billions German  Euros will be hard for Merkel to explain to her taxpayers if Greece defaults and national bankruptcy was not what Tsipras promised his voters. This may just be enough to force both to cut a deal.

The trouble is the deal will be just that. It is unlikely to last and the crisis will return, so in some ways it might be better all round to bite the bullet and accept reality. This is that Greece is bust big time, it should never have been allowed into the Euro in the first place and having let it join it should never have been allowed to borrow so much. Because there was nobody in charge of this ungoverned currency and because the system of governance in Euroland generally suffers from an acute deficit of democratic legitimacy, one thing led to another with nobody calling the shots. When shots finally began to be called they all came from Berlin, which set out such strictures of fiscal puritanism that none of the measures which might have helped were applied in time.

What is now left if the day is to be saved and not just deferred, is a write off of 75% of Greece’s debt and a quantitative easing programme to reboot the Greek economy. The process would keep Greece in  the euro and a side effect will be to devalue it. That would help re-energise the whole euro economic zone. Germany will never agree, so the alternative is for Greece to default and re-issue the drachma with the IMF supporting, together with the World Bank, the financial reconstruction of the Greek economy. Germany will not like that a lot either. What must not happen is a marginal haircut and tinkering around with repayment dates coupled with more loans. That will not work and to attempt it would be just plain silly.

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    Malcolm Blair-Robinson U.S        

    Malcolm Blair-Robinson U.K.

This blog is among those who feel that Ed Milliband should have remained leader during the navel gazing period of introspection which follows political defeats. Once the analysis was complete and the party had an idea where it is headed, it is easier to find the right leader. As it is the line up of candidates, with the possible exception of Jeremy Corbyn, is one many will find a vintage ensemble of the instantly forgettable. Moreover in lamenting its defeat few in the Labour party understand why it happened. We will now explore this. Some things are clear, though not to Labour.

Defeat came not from a failure to proclaim aspiration, admire entrepreneurs or have a love in with business. It came because Labour has ceased to promote the interests of the mass of the working people; by this I mean all those whose income is derived from working for others and whose salaries and wages have a glass ceiling, otherwise costs are out of control, but without whose contribution there is a collapse of civilised and commercial society. All these people depend on someone to speak for them and promote their interests, so that they get a fair cut of the cake. This is their bargain with their country. They will keep it running so that the ambitious can aspire, entrepreneurs can risk their all, and big business can compete in a global market.

The source of the defeat was not the Conservatives, who gained barely any new votes and for whom less than a quarter of those eligible voted. It came from the SNP in Scotland in a spectacular electoral massacre and from Plaid Cymru in Wales by syphoning off working class votes from Labour. But in England the blow came from UKIP. Because whereas blue UKIP supporters went back to the Tories in fear of a Labour victory when Cameron promised both a referendum and all sorts of tough action over immigration, red UKIP supporters stayed with Farage. This was in part because Labour was vague about its intentions over both issues, but more because there was a feeling that Labour had turned its back on the working class. This has been an increasing strand made clear by a look at historic figures. The following are the Labour totals for the last six elections.

1992 Kinnock        11.5 m

1997 Blair               13.5m

2001 Blair              10.7 m

2005 Blair                9.5m

2010 Brown             8.6m

2015 Milliband         9.3m

It is easy to see that from the point of Blair’s first landslide Labour’s total votes fell at each subsequent election, although he won two more before Brown’s defeat. It can also be seen that the second highest Labour vote after Blair’s 1997 landslide is Kinnock’s 1992 defeat. 2015 is the first time the Labour vote has gone up in five elections, and that is in spite of disaster in Scotland and losses in Wales. To me this says that as soon as the working class saw the true colours of New Labour in government, large numbers stopped voting.

This is borne out by the turnout. It had traditionally been in the mid to high 70s. In the first Blair re-election it fell off a cliff to 59% and since then it has struggled back to 65%. So the figures suggest the hesitant shift to the left by Ed Milliband was a small step in the right direction. What Labour needs to do to win is not to chase after people who will only vote for them in exasperation if the Tories have made a complete horlicks of their own mission, but to reconnect to the millions who have turned away from politics and democracy because it does nothing for them. That means moving left.

Between 1945 and 1979 the centre moved steadily to the left. Between 1983 and 2015 it has been drifting to the right. But with the gap between rich and poor growing ever wider and productivity at record lows, with numbing financial pressures building up in public services, including health, education and defence, there is a sea change in the air. The centre is ready to move again to the left. Labour now has the opportunity to find a leader who will start the process in England which the SNP have pioneered in Scotland.

The challenge facing Labour is significant. The next election will be fought against a Tory party most likely lead by the charismatic Russian speaking Boris with his populist style, against a backdrop of cash strapped public services and an even bigger gap between rich and poor. Even if the budget is balanced and that is a very big if, the annual cost of the debt mountain will be almost the biggest drain on the national income and the trade deficit will continue to be huge. The economy will still be driven by house price inflation and consumption and it will not have been rebalanced in favour of manufacturing and exports. Productivity will still be low and the skills shortage will be growing. Infrastructure renewal will be close to crisis.

To meet that challenge Labour will have to offer a good deal more than a few macro policies to appeal on the doorstep. It will have to present a new vision of a different society in which the power of the establishment shrinks as the power of the people grows, through economic reform, modernization of democratic institutions and how and where they work, rebuilding the country’s industrial base, its infrastructure and its affordable housing stock to rent (two million of those), its health and social care and the harmony of its multi-cultural society. It will have to have a robust policy about energy generation and distribution and a much less fragmented approach to education. The list of injustices to iron out will be long and growing longer.

So the next Labour leader must have a big vision and be a big hitter. Whoever it is must recognise the era of New Labour has failed the nation and is over. And one more thing. There must be planning for a worst case scenario that by the next general election in 2020 Britain will have left the EU and as a consequence Scotland will have left the UK. We hope not but it may happen.

The latest meeting to resolve the Greek crisis has ended without agreement. The rhetoric is now building to prepare the world for a Greek default. Talk of a state of ‘Emergency’ by the ECB should Greece pull the plug reveals that at last the better part of a continent in denial has woken up to where it is headed. Whether anything can now be done is becoming ever more doubtful, not least because both the Greeks and the Germans have backed themselves into domestic political corners which allow neither any further room for compromise. A marginal concession here or there would not be enough. Another fudge is possible, though whether the markets would accept it is another matter. Yet it could be true that the markets have already moved on and that the big damage would be political rather than financial. It may not be long before we find out.

The worst thing for the euro would be for the Greeks to leave it, go back to the drachma and then recover and prosper. Maybe fear of that will make Germany blink.