Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

Churchill’s words at once spring to mind after the Foreign Office advice to British tourists to flee Tunisia ASAP. There is no doubt that IS, now building up its presence in the collapsed state of Libya, with whom Tunisia shares a porous border, has won a stunning victory. One gunman has all but crippled the Tunisian economy by destroying its vital tourist industry. This blog has never had any confidence in the UK Foreign Office and doubts now the wisdom of this call. Would it not have been better to loan Tunisia a thousand British security forces to make the beaches relatively safe? Clearly the decision to go to such a place would have been taken by tourists who knew and accepted the risks and for families it was a no go area. But for those without ties? And running away?

Tunisia is the only Arab Spring country to appear to make a go of it and deserves better support. Next door Libya, the subject of a very ill advised intervention to topple Gaddafi, has now collapsed altogether. Whatever that dictator’s faults and there were many, his country was an orderly state with good services, with whom other nations could do business. Now we have total chaos, armed gangs at war with each other and people traffickers on an industrial scale dispatching a diaspora of the desperate across the Mediterranean to a discordant EU which is unable to agree what to do with them. Meanwhile IS is establishing a base for its next conquest with little to stand in its way.

This is worse than policy failure. It is a collapse of policy to match the collapse of the outcome of its interventions.

Yesterday this Blog referred to Osborne’s successful seizure of the centre ground which Labour had thought it occupied, but by using policies of the left (ie higher taxes on the better off and lower taxes on the less well off, the ending of the practice of business owners paying themselves in dividends rather than higher salaries to reduce tax,  plus a higher statutory minimum wage, together with a bank levy and denial of higher rate mortgage relief to private landlords). This was a bold move which has wrong footed the whole right wing of the Labour party with its Oxbridge New Labour roots. I also pointed out that Labour remained in possession of a political strongpoint; the reduction of tax credits before the benefit of the new minimum wage is in effect.

Analysis by the IFS reveals that this strongpoint is far stronger and bigger than anyone supposed. 13 million families, no less. Moreover they will always be worse off, even after the minimum wage rise goes live. In other words the poorest and most disadvantaged families are paying the highest price for the Tory cuts. That is where Labour can retrench, re-orientate and build a winning position. There are millions of voters there (reliable working people in ordinary jobs upon whom the functioning of the nation depends, not the sharp elbowed who want to get on now called aspirational) who have deserted Labour in despair, many no longer voting at all. Winning them back will give Labour the keys to Number Ten. But to do that Labour has to reconnect to its roots. It has to move left. If it does not it will lose again and again. If you have a vote in the Labour leadership election, think about that when you use it.