Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

Just short of fifty Labour MPs voted against the welfare cuts while the rest, some apparently with heavy hearts etc, abstained as directed by the pro-tem leadership. Labour is in a bit of a crisis, but it is quite different to the crisis which commentators think they see. Labour’s problem is that most of its leadership and most of the contenders for Leader are New Labour adherents, who have not seen that New Labour is dead and gone. The Tory party under Osborne’s direction has moved to the left and occupied the left of centre ground which New Labour called home. NL could do this because Thatcher had led a major shift of the centre to the right.

As this blog has been continuously pointing out since the election, Labour lost not because Milliband had moved it too far left, but because he had not moved it far enough. The calamity in Scotland, which may be permanent, was because Labour was seen as Thatcher Light and pro austerity. About 3 million of Farage’s votes were working class, which should have gone to Labour.

Once the people who had been brought up to consider Labour their champion saw what Tony Blair’s government was really like, they stopped voting. After the first landslide in 1997 Labour’s vote fell in 2001, 2005 and 2010. Inspite of the Scottish massacre its vote picked up for the first time in 2015 under leftie Milliband who distanced himself from New Labour. The biggest Labour vote, apart from Blair’s 1997 landslide when the Tories were abandoned, was for Neil Kinnock in 1992. After 1997 Labour won by attracting left leaning Tories, but they have now gone back to their roots in the Tory party.

Opinion polls are not being published at the moment while they investigate their debacle in May, but one leaked poll indicates Labour is close to the Tories, because the perception is  that Labour is marching to the left. That is why Corbyn is now out ahead and why he may well win. If he does the Tories will have the giggles and assume victory in 2020 is assured. In reality they can expect a drubbing.

The Thatcher era is well and truly over, not just in the UK but all across Europe. Whatever out of touch politicians say and do, the masses have had enough of austerity, inefficient and expensive privatised utilities, the rich getting ever richer at the expense of the poor and the dominance of capital over labour now greater than at any time since the early days of the industrial revolution.

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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We now know why Harriet Harman did not put herself forward as a leadership contender. She lacks the punch a leader must have. All this business about not being an opposition which opposes everything is rubbish.There are some issues like national security which require a cross party consensus but on matters of general legislation and especially on an issue as socially important as welfare cuts it is the duty of the Opposition to oppose and amend. That is why it is called Her Majesty’s Opposition and why the leader gets paid for the job.

So now there is a big row within Labour about her decision to abstain in the vote on the welfare cuts. Quite right too. There is a lot wrong with that Bill and it is Labour’s duty to point that out.

The language used by Cameron in his TV interview in the US was no doubt designed for the local audience but it makes little sense. It is not possible to destroy IS any more than it is possible to destroy Christianity. What can be done is to contain it so that gradually it withers into a more amenable structure, concerned with its own survival and less focussed on threatening the world beyond its borders. It has redrawn the Sykes Picot map and and much of that may be beyond recall, but the regional mayhem needs to reduce. Armed force can help containment to give space for a political solution, but it cannot produce a solution on its own. We have learned that lesson and have had to do so several times. Now that we are working more closely with Shia Iran the prospects look more favourable.

There is absolutely no point in extending some random bombing campaign without it being backed by a full strategic overview, a clear set of objectives and an exemplary tactical plan, finished off with a clear exit mission. None of this exists in the minds of any of the politicians and in very few of the military. The assertion by the former head of the Army on TV that we should go onto a ‘war footing’ is just silly. We have had enough of these wars that go nowhere. Before the military gives advice to the government it will have to get real.

There are signs emerging that the new Liberal leader, Tim Farron, is something of a religious fundamentalist. Some of his evasive answers have failed to dispel this impression. You can be a fundamentalist and still be a conservative or you can still be a socialist, but you cannot be a liberal. That is just not possible. Either Mr Farron makes it very clear and beyond doubt that he does not regard being gay as a sin or else his leadership of the Liberal party is for all practical purposes over.

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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Since virtually everybody is agreed that the current bailout plan cannot work for Greece, let us review the practical options in a realistic way.

1 Staying in the euro  This will require a 75% write down of all Greek debt (for creditors a grade one haircut) and printing enough Euros to re-boot the Greek economy, about e20 billion should be enough to ignite recovery and growth. Germany will never agree to any of this. So it is a non runner. The Germans are themselves thrifty and careful with money and debt write offs are anathema. They have an irrational fear of printing money which inhibits the proper functioning of the euro currency. Britain printed £375 billion to get its economy moving again after the crash and the US printed about $2 trillion. Both the $ and the £ devalued but have now recovered and the two economies are now growing well.

2 Semi-detaching from the euro A common sense alternative to crashing out altogether would be to allow the Greek Euro to float downwards within a wide enough margin to kick-start a devaluation led recovery. This would be achieved by allowing the Greek Central Bank to print about Ge50 billion, but with the ECB standing backstop to intervene if the floated Greek currency dropped below 60% of the value of the German controlled main euro. There would still be a grade one haircut of existing debt, but there would be no more borrowing. At a point somewhere  in the future it might rejoin. On the face of it Germany would say no, but if you listen carefully to the whispers now circulating in the German political and financial establishment, the position could be about to change.

3 Leaving the euro for good  This would involve a total write-off of all Greek debt, the reintroduction of the drachma and the intervention of the IMF. Greece would need a loan of about $50 billion to buy gold to back the new currency to give it a worth of about 50% of the current euro. The losses to Euroland would be substantial and it would be seen as a humiliation of Germany and a euro car crash generally. On the other hand it might be the best for Greece which could remain in the outer circle of the EU which Britain is presently marking out for itself. Greeks and Germans are good at mixing on holiday, but as economic partners they are a fiasco.

It is unlikely that wise enough councils will prevail to adopt any solutions in the shape of the above. Whatever happens next will therefore not be good.

This Blog has been outspoken in its criticism of Germany and with good cause. Now it is time to be blunt with the Greeks. You are demanding of your government both an end to austerity, while at the same time you insist on staying in the Euro. You can have one or the other but you cannot have both.

The latest bailout saga is widely regarded by most commentators with a head for figures and almost every economist there is, as well as the ECB and the IMF, as unworkable and certain to fail. These stark assessments are now so powerful that even the Germans are beginning to have second thoughts about the way ahead. Negotiations are about to begin for a new bailout for the medium term. Germany will eventually have to bow to the international pressure and allow a significant write down/ extension to Greek debt, but it is now quite possible the price will be a controlled Greek exit.

The plain fact is that for whatever reason, Germany now controls the Euro. If the Eurozone pools more sovereignty in order to crate a more credible governance structure for this blighted currency, it will be to a German plan which will increase German power. Greece can never meet the reform standards set by Germany without destroying the soul of the cradle of civilisation. Greeks are as they are because that is what Greece is. By the same token Germans are Germans. The two economic, social and cultural patterns cannot be reconciled. They are complementary in many ways, but only at arms length.

Greeks must therefore prepare to become like Britain, which has its own currency but is willing to trade.The alternative is for Greeks to become, in effect, Germans. It may not look like that now, but that is where it is headed.

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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The election of Tim Farron as leader of the Lib Dems barely made the news and is hardly a headline, given the massacre of the party at the general election. Yet perversely it has added thousands of new members since then and found itself a very different kind of leader. A barnstorming Lancashire christian leaning left is a new experience for the Liberals and may have a greater impact on future politics than most observers expect. Farron is far to the left of Clegg in both style and thought and his election signals a shift leftwards of his party.

Meanwhile the Labour party, looking somewhat rudderless and muddled since the election, is torn. Most of its leadership is on the right, whereas the centre has moved to the left, not just in the UK but all across Europe. Osborne has put his tanks on Labour’s lawn and flustered its leadership and many of its MPs. Yet its voters have moved left. Labour actually increased its vote in May for the first time since 1997. Milliband was not too far left but not left enough, since Labour’s defeat lay in too many of its potential supporters staying at home and too many others voting for UKIP. News that Jeremy Corbyn is ahead in private polls on the likely next Labour leader confirms this.

It will be something of an earthquake if Corbyn wins. People will hark back to Michael Foot, but they will be wrong. Foot was a brilliant scholar and idealist with little practical understanding of realpolitik. Corbyn is nearer to Harold Wilson, who was of the left, but well tuned to the public mood and political possibilities. Most likely the Labour establishment will throw its weight behind one of the other three candidates and Corbyn will lose.

This will leave Labour under Tory occupation and its core vote wide open to an appeal from the left. A Farron led Liberal party might well make deep inroads. The Liberals could bounce back much more dramatically than anyone expects.