Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

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.  

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The UK might be forgiven for thinking it had two Prime Ministers. George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer and (this is important) First Secretary of State, has already emerged as the power in the first majority Tory Government in five elections. His incisive style, precise purpose and clear explanations are entirely different to the avuncular waffle of the official PM. Cameron never answers a question and is forever ‘doing the right thing.’ But nobody is sure what the thing is, let alone whether it is right.

Osborne’s visit to China is momentous because it shifts the emphasis from quarrelsome Europe to a new dynamic with the world’s second biggest economy, soon to be the biggest. The timing is perfect. China is trying to achieve a shift from an export driven economy to one in which domestic consumption plays a bigger role and where overseas investment, already strong in Asia, extends its global reach. Osborne declared that Britain aimed to become ‘China’s best partner in the West’. He said this at the Shanghai Stock Exchange while announcing that plans are afoot to link the Shanghai and London stock exchanges in an epoch changing development of flexible trading. He had already announced inducements to encourage wide ranging Chinese investment in the UK including nuclear power and railways.

Coming upon the recent thaw, albeit a slow drip, in relations with Moscow to make common cause against IS, there begins to emerge after years of muddle, a coherent strategic direction for the UK. It is to be on good terms with each of the three Superpowers. The US is the military partner, Russia will slowly emerge as the strategic political partner in Europe and the Middle East and China will be the business partner. Among them all the UK will be the only one buddies with all three. So far this may be more by accident than design and the foreign office has an uncanny ability to screw up.

Unfortunately for Osborne all this is not matched by a coherent domestic economic policy, wedded ideologically to cuts, in which bad news is piling up in small doses. Wages up is good. Unemployment up, falling industrial production, a bigger budget deficit than in August 2014 and exports falling are not. Perhaps China will have some suggestions.

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Malcolm Blair-Robinson U.S        

Malcolm Blair-Robinson UK

As the conference seasons gets into its stride, we hear a lot from politicians and commentators about the centre ground of politics.There is a class of politician which sees it not just as the safest place to be, but the point from which all political wisdom flows. They see the right and left wings as extremities to which nutters journey without hope of ever seeing power. And to centrists power is everything.

There is another way of looking at things and one favoured by this blog. This holds that there is no power in the centre at all. It is all in the wings. You cannot have a political centre without wings any more than you can have a town centre without a town. In a capitalist democracy there are two competing engines of power. Capital and labour. For the society to work fairly and for the economy to prosper at all levels, the two must be approximately balanced in terms of the energy they can bring to bear. Either can exercise power, depending on the choice  of voters, but whichever does, is held back from excess by the opposing power of the other.

The Left promotes the interests of labour. By that we mean all those who earn a living in a job vital to the running of a civilized state which can never make them rich. A nurse, a teacher, a bin man, a care worker, a train driver, a power engineer; the list goes on and on.

The Right promotes the interests of capital. Capital includes those with property and wealth but above all represents those whose incomes have no glass ceiling, because what they do has less connection to the public good and more to do with individual achievement. It may involve financial risk and includes the fabled entrepreneurs. They always class themselves as the wealth creators. They are but they are not alone because labour creates by its toil far more, but it shares it out among the many. Capital organises itself so that as much wealth as possible is held in the hands of just a few.

Politicians, good ones, spring from either of these two wings, disciplines or convictions, call them what you will. Dull and uninspiring politicians who come without any conviction, other than the advancement of their own careers to wield power, prefer the centre. That is why they should be left there and ignored.