Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

At times of stress the public at large, whether they vote or not, look to politicians for leadership. Especially from the government. The opposition is often split because the party out of power can indulge itself, the more so now that the possibility of being caught by a snap election is made remote, with the move to five year parliaments. Governments are not supposed to split, but if they do, prime ministers are in turn expected  to rid the cabinet of rebels.

But now things are different. The Tory party has been split over Europe since the prime of Thatcher. It crashed out under Major the split was so bad, and it has never healed. Cameron thought up the idea of an official referendum (of which the renegotiations are window dressing) in the belief it would unite the party for the general election. The ruse worked but in a peculiar fashion. It was a unity which was glued by the knowledge that it could split again later. Later is now.

Most commentators and historians agree that the vote to remain or leave is of historic importance. It is therefore unfortunate that the only way which the Tory party, which is in majority government, can hold together is to campaign for both yes and no. That is like a civil war in which one army under one commander fights on both sides. When the fight is over the wounds will run deep. Meanwhile the voting public looking for leadership, will find none and will have to choose between the prejudice of one side over the hopes of another. The opposition shows more unity on the issue of Europe, which it supports, than on most other issues, but even here there are some who want to leave.

Unfortunately that is not all. Corbyn struggles to lead a parliamentary party which did not want him, yet he is backed by the largest membership of any political party in the UK, who do. Over the holiday period and just after, Labour made the news with a blizzard of resignations of shadow ministers of whom nobody outside Westminster had ever heard, none of whom a few days later, after the light of publicity is switched off, can be recalled to mind.

So when the referendum is over, assuming that the country does not lose its mind and vote to leave, action to restore order will be called for. Far from welcoming back those ministers who campaigned for no, the prime minister should fire them all. At the same time Corbyn should not only fire New Labour die-hards from his shadow cabinet, but he should also withdraw the whip from them. Whatever may be the froth and fury of the hour, both leaders will have a firm base from which to build, Farage will have some useful scraps to harvest and Osborne will have some potential recruits from the old Thatcherite wing of the busted flush still calling itself New Labour.

Of course if the country votes to leave it is chaos for everybody.

The junior doctors’ strike is over for the moment as the row with the government runs on in the form of talks which may or may not get somewhere. Wherever they do get, even if it solves the dispute, is essentially the wrong place. This blog has said over and over, you cannot have an infinite service on a finite budget. The NHS is chronically underfunded at a time when demand and costs are rising. It has run by an overlapping structure of supervisory quangos, breathing down the necks of confused managers, trying to run a fragmented bureaucracy spinning out of control, through a command system with so many fingers in the pie or on the button that while it does not crash, neither does it deliver a timely healthcare programme. In an emergency it works, but for routines stuff, some of it life threatening, people are kept waiting weeks in a cruel system organised round the principle of waiting and delay.

To set the show back on the road envisaged by its founders requires 24/7 working 365 days per year. This would involve three 8 hour shifts for everybody, never more, operations at night and the elimination of waiting lists. It will also require a funding system that recognises the true cost has to be paid and that taxes will have to go up to meet it. If the public will not accept that, then the whole thing should be cut back to work within a finite budget and people who can afford it will have to pay for their treatment. The problem for politicians is that the public will not pay the higher taxes, but demand the  universal free service. At least some savings could be made by abolishing the quangos, commissioning boards, foundation trusts et al and by returning to a rational management structure that derives its form from common sense, not Alice in Wonderland.

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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Iran and Saudi Arabia have broken off diplomatic relations and are conducting a proxy Shia/Sunni civil war in Yemen. Iraq has a government with only limited authority, depending upon support from the US coalition helping its forces to drive back IS from its deep foothold in Sunni areas. These forces contain both Sunni and Shia militias. In Syria, Russia is helping Assad push back opposition forces, but they are recapturing rubble from which most of the population has fled. In spite of the vaunted power of the RAF contribution about which so much emotion flowed through the House of Commons, IS remains stubbornly entrenched. Relations between Turkey and Russia are at a low because of the downing of a Russian fighter jet and because Turkey hates Assad and may be turning a blind eye to IS oil contraband. All over the middle east there are wars, wars within wars, enemies among allies and governments saying one thing and doing another.

If this were not enough it is now clear that even if IS is losing ground in Iraq, it is gaining it in Libya, where there are two governments and scores of bandit militias and no functioning state. Cameron says little about his project to get rid of Gaddafi, which is as bad in outcome as Blair and Saddam Hussein. Meanwhile the corrupt and disunited government in Afghanistan is losing ground to the Taliban, who it turns out are against IS. So are they now friends?

It is difficult to recall a greater mess in international affairs, so much of which is of our own making. The project began as a means to make us safe and set the Arab people free. It has done neither. What is has done is bring misery to millions. It is a blot upon the pages of history which will be very hard to erase.

Cameron will pay a price for allowing Euro sceptic ministers to vote against him if and when he calls the referendum to endorse whatever deal he strikes with the EU. It is one thing for Corbyn in opposition to allow dissent in the shadow cabinet, but it is quite another for the prime minister to put up with disunity in the real one. People expect the government to lead; that is what they pay for. One which cannot make up its mind on an issue as profound as whether to walk out of the EU will never recover its authority. Labour never regained its composure after Wilson let the cabinet go its own way at the last referendum. Cameron will have the same problem. He can only avoid it by reshuffling his cabinet after he gets whatever deal he can and before he calls the referendum. It is imperative that he goes to the country with his government behind him. All of them.

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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.  

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There were lurid prophesies about a revenge reshuffle which were clearly exaggerated and, as is his style, the Labour leader took his time sounding out and deciding.  In the end the changes were a refinement of the previous line up, not a root and branch reconstruction. The Tories had their usual laugh and loads of hostile briefings were put about by anti-Corbyn Labour MPs. One of the arguments was that because Corbyn was himself a serial rebel, he must tolerate rebellion in his team. That argument is plain silly.

Corbyn was indeed a serial rebel over three decades, but from the back benches. He was never in the shadow cabinet. He was a rebel, but now he is the Leader with a huge mandate and swelling membership, he is the main stream. Those who are opposed to his policies are the rebels and can rebel all they like, but , like the Leader they love to hate, from the back benches. A few, having had a bit of a telling off, remain in the shadow cabinet for now, but if they go on briefing and muttering against the party’s choice of leader, not for long. Post May elections at the latest.

One of the reasons Benn survived was the fact, now plain, that the bomb Syria vote was militarily pointless. There have been fewer than a handful of RAF sorties, with little practical effect and far short of the military impact those emotional Commons speeches wound everybody up to expect. So Benn gained acclamation opposing his leader and supporting the government at the price of an error of judgement. For an opposition politician that is not, in the long run, good.

There is a report that the Polish government will offer Cameron a deal that in exchange for migrant benefit concessions from Poland, Britain should send troops there and support the setting up of NATO bases in that country.

This blog has been opposed to NATO’s eastward expansion following the end of the Cold War and considers the Polish proposal absolutely out of order. Poland has spent centuries quarrelling with its neighbours and a condition of its membership of the EU should have been that it learned to live with them. Putting NATO bases on Russia’s border would ensure the start of a new cold war and would cripple the EU economy. It is high time narrow self interest in Europe gave way to strategic thinking, which recognises that needling Russia brings no benefit to anyone. Russia, whether people like it or not, is a natural strategic partner to Europe, has helped rescue her from tyranny on three previous occasions, the most notable being the worst of all, the Nazis.

The rest of the world has learned to accept Germany is no longer  Nazi, and it has to get the message that Russia is no longer Soviet. Failure to get that message will cost Europe dear. Cameron must tell Warsaw that he is not interested in their grubby little trade.

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.

KINDLE OR PAPERBACK     UK    US

The New Year honours list has caused controversy because of awards to civil servants who appear from their career records to be undeserving and especially because of the knighthood given to the Tory election guru who directed for the party the successful campaign in May 2015. This was seen by many as divisive and negative and reliant upon the politics of fear. Whatever your view on the matter, there is no room for doubt on the substance. Politics is an occupation, it is over egging to call it a profession, which is so discredited, that almost the entire political class is seen as evasive, dishonest, self interested and incompetent. Fifteen million registered votes do not bother to actually vote.

The honours list is becoming tarnished with wear and tear, not least because it is run by the political establishment which clearly favours its own and rewards civil servants for toadyism more than for brilliance. There is now the whiff of sleaze beginning to waft around; a modern edition of the disease which did so much to kill the Major government and keep the Tories out of majority power for nearly twenty years. It is time to take stock because there are some very real heroines and heroes of out time who are on the list, and it is wrong that their honours should suffer devaluation because of the tawdry rewards of people who have done more harm than good.