Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

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

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.