Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

Here are FREE downloads of three of my most popular thrillers. U.S PT +midnight to -midnight Tuesday 22 March. GMT 9 am Tuesday- 8.59 am Wednesday. Click links at end of each synopsis.

Lise Bauer is born in Africa in 1906, brought to England by her parents from where she is expelled with them in 1914, because her father is an East Prussian. They settle in America and become Americans, but return to Europe in the 1920’s. Here Lise is involved in the rise of the Nazi party, marries one of Hitler’s closest associates and later has a relationship with Hitler himself, before divorcing her husband and marrying an English friend of Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess. She settles again in England with the consent of the security services and she and her husband establish a cell to act as a secret communication channel between Hitler and Churchill at the critical period of WWII.
The novel offers a new view of Hitler’s sexual relationships, a plot to overthrow Churchill and the flight to Scotland by Rudolf Hess. Using historical characters often portrayed in a new light, this fictional account challenges the accepted view of recorded history. It leaves readers wondering why they were they never told about the double lives and events shrouded in secrecy.   UK         US

Dr. Rachael Benedict is an American historian and a best-selling author. She has a British connection through her estranged father Saul, an English thriller writer. Saul, whose parents were of Anglo-German origin, has spent much of his life plotting to expose secrets from World War Two, which are so sensitive they have been subject to an extensive cover-up lasting seventy years. As the time approaches for him to make his move to expose duplicity, murder and lies at the heart of the British State, he seeks Rachael’s help. This provokes a killing spree as parts of the security services of both Britain and the United States become engaged in the drama, with one side determined to get the secrets out and the other determined to keep them hidden.
Set equally in the United States and Britain, the narrative grips from the first page, transporting the reader to the heart of government both in Washington and London and on into the darkest corners of the secret states on each side of the Atlantic. Rachael battles forward to unearth the truth both from intrigues of the Nazi era, but also within her own family, surviving three attempts on her life, before finally achieving her goal. Not only does she expose the truth from history and from her own roots, she has to delve deep into her own emotions to find the truth about herself.  UK      US

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. Downfall 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.  U

The news coming out of Belgium is appalling. A coordinated attack causing mass murder and injury where those in the firing line are both innocent and unaware. Everyone is at risk. Nobody is safe. Belgium is paying a high price for its success in capturing the Paris attackers and although it is the Headquarters of the EU and NATO, as one of Europe’s smaller nations, it is now hard pressed. For now one can do no more than support the Belgian people in their trauma, grieve for the dead and pray for the recovery of the injured, many of whom are in a critical state. Stricken families must have all the support they can be given.

But later on we have to  ask questions about the strategic posture of the West and where it is leading us. The warning at the very start that the more you attack terrorists the more the violence grows is proving frighteningly true. There is no military solution with terrorism. In the end somebody will have to start talking.

As Osborne goes to the Commons to explain himself and paste together the wreck of his budget, it is important to remind ourselves of what this is all about.

When the Coalition was formed in 2010 economists were divided over the best way forward. Some believed that at all costs the economy must continue to grow and to borrow to maintain public services and investment in infrastructure was necessary to expand it  enough to raise income and close the gap between tax and expenditure. Others insisted that cutting expenditure was the way forward. Reducing the size of government and cutting welfare dependency would cut out the deficit within a parliament. Osborne chose that cuts road. Nobody was sure who was right. This blog backed Osborne.

Well that was wrong. Because here we are into the second parliament still running a deficit as tax receipts are consistently too weak to cover expenses. All public services are short of money and some, like social care and healthcare are in trouble. The poorest in society have been hardest hit. Austerity is never ending, forecasts are wrong, targets are missed, productivity is low, the march of the makers rebalancing the economy never crossed the start line and, this is the key, the inherited national debt of £900 million is now past £1.5 trillion. Yet all the fundamental problems remain unsolved.

Time is up George. If your boss has not got the guts to fire you, you should have the decency to walk. Bullington club and all that. You know, the honour thing.

Here are FREE downloads of three of my most popular thrillers. U.S PT +midnight to -midnight Tuesday 22 March. GMT 9 am Tuesday- 8.59 am Wednesday. Click links at end of each synopsis.

Lise Bauer is born in Africa in 1906, brought to England by her parents from where she is expelled with them in 1914, because her father is an East Prussian. They settle in America and become Americans, but return to Europe in the 1920’s. Here Lise is involved in the rise of the Nazi party, marries one of Hitler’s closest associates and later has a relationship with Hitler himself, before divorcing her husband and marrying an English friend of Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess. She settles again in England with the consent of the security services and she and her husband establish a cell to act as a secret communication channel between Hitler and Churchill at the critical period of WWII.
The novel offers a new view of Hitler’s sexual relationships, a plot to overthrow Churchill and the flight to Scotland by Rudolf Hess. Using historical characters often portrayed in a new light, this fictional account challenges the accepted view of recorded history. It leaves readers wondering why they were they never told about the double lives and events shrouded in secrecy.   UK         US

Dr. Rachael Benedict is an American historian and a best-selling author. She has a British connection through her estranged father Saul, an English thriller writer. Saul, whose parents were of Anglo-German origin, has spent much of his life plotting to expose secrets from World War Two, which are so sensitive they have been subject to an extensive cover-up lasting seventy years. As the time approaches for him to make his move to expose duplicity, murder and lies at the heart of the British State, he seeks Rachael’s help. This provokes a killing spree as parts of the security services of both Britain and the United States become engaged in the drama, with one side determined to get the secrets out and the other determined to keep them hidden.
Set equally in the United States and Britain, the narrative grips from the first page, transporting the reader to the heart of government both in Washington and London and on into the darkest corners of the secret states on each side of the Atlantic. Rachael battles forward to unearth the truth both from intrigues of the Nazi era, but also within her own family, surviving three attempts on her life, before finally achieving her goal. Not only does she expose the truth from history and from her own roots, she has to delve deep into her own emotions to find the truth about herself.  UK      US

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. Downfall 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.  UK      US

The collapse of the Government’s financial platform and the civil war now going on in the Tory party, rent asunder by almost everything, requires a new Chancellor to stop the rot. That is unlikely to happen because Cameron is fighting on two fronts. He has a public relations calamity over the budget and its aftermath and a chunk of his cabinet campaigning for Brexit. A government split is one thing but one bust into pieces is quite another. He cannot sack Osborne for dumping him in this reeking ordure of a budget, because Cameron needs his neighbour’s support for Remain. Unfortunately Osborne’s blessing may now be toxic and undermine the Remain campaign. Nobody has a clue which of his figures to believe, what are facts in his rhetoric and which bits he is making up.

The real danger is however more worrying. This blog warned at the beginning that referenda are notorious for becoming a vote about something other than the question on the ballot paper, most commonly a verdict on the government. If that happens in the midst of this Tory mayhem and voters turn on the two old Etonians and vote to Leave, Remain might lose quite badly. It would be better to get rid of Osborne now. Shelf life is short in politics and by June Osborne could be but a vague memory.

Very occasionally there is a political earthquake when a minister resigns out of the blue and in so doing undermines the whole platform upon which the government has been built. Such an earthquake occurred yesterday. The budget, widely accepted as smoke and mirrors and rubbished by economists as full of wishful thinking and flawed assumptions, is undermined at its very core; tax cuts for the better off and business and benefit cuts for the disabled.

We were told we were all in it together and to ensure a strong economy it had to be done. Not only does it turn out that neither is true, it is revealed that the man in charge of the benefit reforms, Iain Duncan Smith, is so fed up with Osborne that he has walked away. Nobody seems to have seen him reaching for his coat and his announcement came as the biggest political shock in living memory.

For Osborne this is a fatal political blow. His days as Chancellor are numbered because nobody anywhere has any confidence left in his plan or his prophesies. Trust in his leadership of the Treasury is gurgling down the plughole with increasing velocity. He is no longer a serious contender for the Tory leadership as he has become a toxic brand. For the Tory party to choose him to lead them into the next election would be to emulate the charge of the Gadarene Swine.

And Cameron? Well he is boss of these people and their policies and Osborne is his number two. The Prime Minister is damaged badly, his government is now split on two fronts, both austerity and Brexit, and what is going to happen next only a fool can tell. But something will. Be sure of that.

Osborne as Chancellor is a busted flush. He has come too often to the dispatch box with forecasts which he cannot achieve and catch phrases which are cheered on the day only to become silly later. Yesterday he revealed that the £27 billion or whatever the figure was which he pulled out of the hat in November enabling giveaways and earning feel good cheers from Tory benches, has now become a deficit overshoot of over £50 billion requiring new cuts. In the firing line are the disabled and the vulnerable. Meanwhile tax cuts for the better off and corporations who never pay their fair share are offered as an economic stimulus. But tax cuts on their own never act as a stimulus. They have to come hand in hand with real investment in the economy by the government to create the economic expansion which ensures that although the rates fall, the revenue rises. With growth forecasts going downwards tax cuts will simply reduce revenue.

Like his forecasts, this chancellor’s infrastructure projects are re-announced several times and rarely actually begin. Little bits of cash are released for studies and consultations but the earth movers and bulldozers remain in the depot. The brutal facts are that the economy has not been rebalanced, exports are falling, manufacturing is in decline, a consumer led expansion is beginning to fizzle out as debt levels reach records, after six years of wild promises and idiotic guesses the budget is still in deficit, austerity still rules and the national debt he inherited of £900 million, is now £1.5 trillion and going up still. Any decent Prime Minister would send for the author of such failure and declare that time was up.  But Cameron dare not touch this thorn in his side, because the chancellor in turn wishes to move from Number Eleven Downing Street to Number Ten. Ah yes!

Have we not been here before?

If confidence and rhetoric were elements of GDP the UK would be flying high on Osborne’s Treasury regime. But at first sight today the chronic difficulty of over estimating growth and tax receipts and the under-estimate of costs of essential expenses remain problems unresolved. So, as predicted, his previous forecasts have again been proved wrong. Beyond that this blog has a policy of not commentating on Osborne’s budgets straight away. In takes a few days for the devil to emerge from the detail and for key figures to unravel.

There is no more difficult role than the Leader of the Opposition jumping up and replying to the Chancellor’s speech, without the ability to prepare any more than an outline in advance. For that reason few historically are worth remembering. Corbyn’s effort today was surprisingly robust and detailed. It will have done him no harm and while it will most likely not be remembered, it certainly won’t be remembered because he fluffed it. He actually did rather well.

For the West with its catastrophic record of foreign policy failures, especially in the Middle East and Afghanistan, the Russian engagement in Syria and now the surprise partial withdrawal is an object lesson to watch. Russia has had bases in Syria more or less since the end of WWII and when it looked on the cards that the Assad regime might crumble, opening the way for an Islamic State takeover, Russia decided to intervene directly rather than to just support Assad. Within six  months there has been a fundamental change in the dynamics of the war. Russia benefits from continuity of government in which three key players have worked together, surrounded by very competent staff, over  the years since Yeltsin; Putin, Lavrov and Medvedev.

First came the military intervention which turned the tide in favour of the regime and put pressure on the moderate opposition to begin talks. Next the talks are set up and a cease fire is agreed which holds better than expected under Russian supervision. Finally the surprise end to the air campaign and withdrawal of some forces, to encourage the talks to get under way. Within these actions lie certain key objectives. One is to make certain that the Syrian state does not collapse like Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan. This is important to secure the long standing Russian military foothold in the Mediterranean. The second is to warn Assad that if he digs his heels in too deep, Russia is willing to dump him. It already has a list of possible successors from within the regime.  The third is to reassert Russia as a player on the world stage in its own right after years of marginalisation by the West, which Russia accuses of a string of misjudgements and failures to learn lessons.

Russian caution in bombing Islamic State, in spite of the downing of the Russian airliner, is partly to avoid IS moving north into Chechnya and partly to leave a potent threat to Assad in place to stop him thinking he can manage alone. It has learned its own lessons from the abortive Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the ability of groups like the Mojahedin and Al-Qaeda to morph and move. But all this is designed to further its goal to become a voice on the world stage once more. Not in the Soviet ambition of world domination which it knows is a mirage of the past, but as a modern player which demonstrates that the USA is not the only kid on the block of whom note has to be taken.

The only cloud in the sky for the two front runners was over Trump with the loss to John Kasich, the no hope challenger who won his home state where he is governor. Clinton swept the board. Sanders battles on but it would take extraordinary events for him now to come through. Trump took Florida, until recently a cert for Rubio as his home state. In doing so he kicked glamorous establishment hope for stopping Trump out of the race. Missouri is too close to call between Trump and Cruz and also between Sanders and Clinton. Both underdogs need the win to keep going with credibility rather than bravado. On the face of it it looks a Clinton cert for the Democrats and an unstoppable Trump for the Republicans.

Yet there looms the brooding shadow of the Republican establishment, aged and out of touch with both its members and the country, who may just fix a brokered convention which does in the end stop Trump with a late night deal forged in smoke filled rooms by overwrought fixers who manage to shoe in a compromise whom nobody hates, a steady pair of hands that nobody really wants. If that happens they will have asserted their authority and got their fix, but the Presidency will be dead out of reach. Clinton will walk it.