Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

First we had the Euro crisis. Then came the Migrant problem. Now we have the Refugee crisis. The common feature of all of them is that the EU cannot come up with a workable solution. With the Euro they opted for kicking the can down the road. With the refugees, because of the unprecedented numbers, one by one countries with good intentions are being forced to shut their borders. Every commentator at the various crossings describes dreadful scenes of panic and dismay and uses the same word to describe events. Shambles.

There are two underlying causes. The first is the calamity of a foreign policy, mainly driven by the US and the UK, with which the EU mostly went along. The second is the fact, so often emphasised by this Blog, that you cannot have a currency without a government. Well it turns out you cannot have a Union either. Whatever the outcome of the UK’s negotiations over its relationship with Europe, the EU must address the fact that its complex and multi-headed structure of governance is fine for a sunny day, but if the weather changes to darker skies, it is not fit for purpose.

Meanwhile the multitudes continue to flood towards what they suppose is peace, freedom and opportunity. Can the EU deliver on its promise?

The current ideas of the new shadow chancellor to pump money into the base of the economy are welcome, although not quite right.  If you want to find out how it should work you can download a lucid explanation of the original idea from the links below.

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Two former foreign secretaries were yesterday exonerated by the authority which supposedly upholds parliamentary standards, over allegations that they misbehaved offering to sell lobbying services to bogus companies for thousands of pounds per day in a joint sting organised by Channel 4 and the  Daily Telegraph. They were told they had done nothing which broke parliamentary rules. Really? Well if that is the case most people will feel that with rules which permit this kind of caper, parliament itself is broken.

To add insult to the injury of  astonished voters, the regulator blamed the broadcaster and the newspaper. It is like a repeat of Hutton. No wonder Corbyn got a landslide.

There is something deeply disturbing about this fence that Hungary has put up. It is distressing to watch images of the anguished faces of desperate people as they see their route to freedom barred by an arrogant interpretation of a set of EU rules drafted without any comprehension of the kind of crisis now unfolding. Creating a bottleneck of this kind, backed by a new set of its own laws passed in a rush, in defiance of EU principles and some interpretations of international law  does Hungary no favours at all. Laws bereft of humanity are a throwback to an ugly past.

I recall the Hungarian uprising of 1956 put down by Soviet tanks, when many who had managed to escape before the Red Army intervened, arrived at the port of Dover to seek sanctuary in Britain. They received a warm welcome and were received, among others, by my mother in her official capacity as a Red Cross volunteer. She was on duty because of her fluency in German, the common language of most of the refugees.  It seems rather sad that a country which has suffered the trauma of flight from repression and war should be so heartless when destiny swings the onus of welcome towards it. Now that it is a member of the EU it should behave like one.

We are now watching a situation entirely without precedent. A new voting process designed by a political party to extend its reach and appeal has done just that. It has expanded its membership way ahead of all the other political parties at Westminster put together with over 500,000 members and supporters. Of those over 250,000 voted for their new leader Jeremy Corbyn, giving him a landslide victory of 60% of the votes cast in the first ballot. He has a mandate from his party greater than any other leader and received more votes than the other three candidates put together  by a country mile. So what is the problem?

The problem is the death throes of New Labour. Because although it has little support among the membership and failed dismally in the general election, with a wipe out in Scotland, most of Labour’s MPs adhere to its centre left brand of Thatcherism. Indeed out of the 232 MPs Corbyn now leads, fewer than 20 (possibly no more than a dozen) voted for him. A substantial number of them have policy and ideological positions much closer to Cameron than to Corbyn. Nobody knows if this can work or if it can, how?

These thoughts may help. First New Labour is done. It is too close to the modern left of centre Tory party over economics, austerity, foreign policy and ideology. If you want that you might as well vote for the real thing. This is why it cannot win a general election again and why it is dangerous for the Union, because it will never win back the seats it has lost in Scotland. And the Scots will break away from an austerity driven Tory England if they get a second chance. Looking at it dispassionately it might be simplest if the group of MPs who cannot support what Corbyn stands for join Cameron. They would then represent the left of the Tory party which politically is where they are. In 2020 they would face Labour candidates selected to represent the return of Labour to its roots. These pink Tories might win or they might be wiped out.

Looking back into history we can find the 1935 election results interesting. The Labour party fell apart in 1930 after its leader, Ramsay MacDonald, remained Prime Minister of a National Government comprised mainly of Conservatives. By the 1935 general election, Clement Attlee, leader of the Labour MPs who refused to join the enterprise, managed to get 52 seats. The Liberals totalled 35 and the Tories romped home with 473. Attlee had to rebuild his party in parliament almost from scratch. At the next general election in 1945 (Britain suspended its democracy for the duration of the war) his patience paid off. Attlee won 393 seats giving him a majority of 146, enabling him to inaugurate the biggest political and social changes in modern times. His legacy lasted till Thatcher. So if his MPs cause too much trouble, Corbyn may have to set about rebuilding the party. He would have the overwhelming backing of the membership and the Trade Unions. That last point is important. They have the money.

Interestingly Churchill did not have the backing of the Conservative party when he became Prime Minister in 1940 and did not become its leader until after Chamberlain’s death. When he stood up to give his first Commons speech as PM, he was cheered by Labour but his own party remained largely silent behind him. That thought should cheer Corbyn on.

Evidently the political cabinet of the Tory party almost collectively wet itself it laughed so much at the thought of Jeremy Corbyn as Leader of the Opposition. It was of course thinking back to Michael Foot. Like everybody else and especially the sulking troops of New Labour, unable to take in what has happened to them. But the Tories should think not of Foot, but of Thatcher, and her ghost should strike fear into the hearts of them all. This is why.

In 1983 socialism had overplayed its hand and was failing, all across the world. Foot offered even more socialism. Thatcher turned the clock back to pre-war values of challenging the unions through very high unemployment, reducing taxes, rolling back the state, selling off all the nationalised industries (an act Tory grandee Harold Macmillan described as selling off the family silver), selling off the nation’s stock of social housing ( much of it built by Macmillan) and inaugurating the era of the sharp elbowed and the primacy of the individual, with the declaration that there was ‘no such thing as society’. She became unstoppable. Had she put such a programme to the people twenty years earlier the Tories would have lost every seat. But she understood that the political weather had changed. The Attlee Consensus, which had shaped British politics since 1945, was over.

The reason nobody took Corbyn seriously and the reason he has won by a landslide in every section of the Labour party electoral register, not just the new supporters, is that he has tapped into something we can again call a change of political weather. The Thatcher consensus, out of which the centre left politics of New Labour was born, is over. The inequalities, the austerity, the debt, the wars, the food banks, the billionaires, the housing shortage and much else has brought what started as a breath of fresh air, to a dank and suffocating depression. Like all political weathers, change is what is needed now. People crave a new dawn. Like all new weathers that dawn will bring a new interpretation of an old theme. New Labour is now in the same place as Foot’s Old Labour, wrongly dressed because they do not see the weather has changed. If Corbyn delivers a modernised Left, as Thatcher delivered a modernised Right, like her he will be unstoppable. From a Tory Downing Street as May 2020 looms, will that still be funny?

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This blog is pleased to have been one of the first to point out that Labour lost the general election because it was not far enough to the left. Various posts have put arguments and statistics before you to demonstrate the reasoning, endorsed by the landslide victory of Jeremy Corbyn. Today is historic because it marks a change of the political conversation. For too long Opposition from either side has been arguments about degree, or detail or definition. But there has been no challenge to the Thatcher consensus which demonised the role of the state, idolised the power of the markets and accepted the economic model based on asset inflation and debt, rather than tangible wealth creation and real investment. This sucked resources from the base of the economy to its peak, creating exceptional prosperity for the few and grinding down the standard of living for the many.

While the top of the economy was awash with cash, the base was starved of money, impacting employment among the young, wages and services. Hardly a peep came from New Labour about any of the fundamentals since it was the joint architect of this distorted and unfair economic model, because within its boundaries lay the lure of power. And to gain that power New Labour abandoned it roots and the very people the Labour Movement was founded to protect. Tony Blair, probably the most discredited politician in British political history if judged in political terms and not through scandal, derided the notion of a Corbyn victory, telling those who might vote for him to get a heart transplant.

Labour did not need to do that, because by voting in Corbyn it has found its soul. That will lead it to power.

Britain has agreed to take 20,000 refugees over the next five years. Germany is expecting to welcome 40,000 this weekend.

Britain can ague that it takes more EU migrants than any other country in the EU, that its population is growing faster than Germany’s and that it gives more aid to refugees in Syria and surrounding countries than the whole of the EU put together. All of which is true, but as things stand at the moment, that is not the point. The point is these multitudes are on the move because of the policies pursued by the West which have destroyed the fabric of life in their homelands. Britain has been at the forefront of the foreign and military policies which have brought about this spectacular disaster. So maybe not as many a Germany but better than the tiny drop in the ocean of human distress which thus far we have on offer.

Already? It is clear that a failure of the government to listen to genuine worries about its ability to use its authority to skew the EU referendum campaign caused a pretty handsome defeat in the Commons last night. Things are not going well for this new Tory government. It is much less sure footed than its Coalition predecessor. Out of step with public opinion over the migrant crisis, defeated over the so called purdah issue, very poor figures from manufacturing, immigration numbers in orbit by comparison with repeated promises to reduce the flow, China’s economy slowing.

Then comes news of the drone strike. Apparently legal advice sanctioned it, but we were told the same thing over the Iraq war. If it is indeed the case that a terrorist attack was being planned and directed by the target, then maybe we should all feel grateful that the PM had the courage to act.

Yet there is disquiet. This blog had no idea our citizens could be killed on the orders of the Prime Minister. I thought we did not do that sort of thing. Does there not have to be a trial? Proof of a crime? He can hardly have been about to commit a terrorist act in the UK if he was in Syria at the time he was killed. We are not at war with Syria. Was it enough that Islamic State believes itself at war with us? Parliament must have a say in this. The UN Charter is one thing but our laws and customs are something else and they cannot be cast aside under the Royal Prerogative without very good reason. We need to agree what those reasons are. Bumping people off, fellow citizens to boot, is not Britain’s style. Imagine the shrieks from Downing Street and the Foreign Office if one of Putin’s drones did exactly the same thing.