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.

Download £2.08    Paperback £8.99

KINDLE OR PAPERBACK     UK    US

If we have learned one thing since May 2015, it is that the Tory party post Thatcher cannot govern on its own. Having led a perfectly respectable and rather effective coalition government for five years, Cameron has managed to  blunder out of Europe, threaten the Union, create economic uncertainty which will fester and grow and gone back on his promises to continue to lead the country, even if Yes to Brexit, and invoke Article 50 immediately. All because he had a Tory Party majority for the first time since Major. Including Major the Tories have had five leaders since Thatcher. All have failed one way or another. All were men. Time for another woman?

As for Boris, there are no words. His bid to become prime minister, of which his cynical decision to lead the Leave campaign was a price both this nation and all Europe has now to pay, will be long recalled as one of the most spectacular political car wrecks in history. Only yesterday, yes yesterday, the Tories sat  in the Commons at PMQs, laughing smugly at the turmoil which Labour had brought upon itself. Well today it is all changed. This Tory government, with its lying, treacherous, Old Etonian core, has become the laughing stock of the world.

The Parliamentary Labour Party cannot easily be forgiven for provoking a leadership crisis at a moment when the country is convulsed by political, social, economic and international forces beyond its previous experience and traditions. The PLP has done so and thus put itself in conflict with the majority of the members of the Labour party in the country as well as the Trade Unions. Angela Eagle, its apparent candidate to succeed Jeremy Corbyn, whom almost all of them voted against and whom they have been plotting to rid themselves, is  a feisty Commons performer. She is said to be left of that desert of political ideas and initiative known as the centre.

This is all because they say Corbyn is not a leader. Well he certainly lacks the first qualification of modern British politics; he is not a liar. And it is precisely because he is not one of these ghastly ‘leaders’ who have collectively led their country to the brink of chaos and certainly into the most unequal economic settlement since WWII, that he has unprecedented public support. The PLP should ask itself if it is actually worth leading and if it can say yes to that (another porky?) it must back Angela to win. But to do that she will need to show the membership than she can cap the achievements of the leader she will be trying to depose.

Though rubbished by the PLP, it is quite an impressive list. Corbyn has brought many tens of thousands of new members into the party making Labour bigger than all the other parties in the country put together. He has won both by-elections since he became leader with much larger Labour votes than expected. He did very much better than expected (and wished for by the PLP) in the spring local elections, with Labour winning both mayoral and local elections said to be at risk, with an increase in the Labour vote across the country approaching 4% over May 2015, while the Tory vote fell by 3%. He has brought people back to Labour who long ago walked away and has shifted the political conversation from the place where Labour cannot win to the place where victory waits for the asking.

If Angela can do better than that, she could be worth a try. But if the party is torn apart in the process or if the renewed membership walks away, it will be the last thing the PLP ever does. There is a lot of bad judgement in the fetid Westminster air at the moment, so for once second thoughts might prove the difference between survival and disaster. Winning is for later. May 2020 is the date. The Parliament Act of 2011 rules out anything earlier.

Turn Left To Power is an explosive dissertation in book form offering a fundamental redirection for Labour’s return to power, with bold ideas for a new economic and social settlement, including economic and taxation reform, restoration of responsibility in government and a renewal of democracy. Full of detailed information, hard facts and the results of thorough research and deep thinking, the narrative will grip you like a thriller and open your eyes to a brighter, fairer future in a mere 25000 words. The ideas are relevant whether Brexit goes In or Out. Frank and at a times brutal, Turn Left To Power offers a collection of fundamental reforms which amount to a political revolution which can propel Labour back to government in 2020.

Check it out now. Paperback £4.99   Kindle £1.99     AMAZON UK

As dreadful reports of anti-immigrant and racist abuse begin to come in, supported by truly shocking videos taken on phones and shown on the social media, it seems right to lambaste the entire political class for its self interest, half truths, broken promises and outright lies which have underpinned the most squalid political campaign ever conducted in the UK in the history of our democracy. The country has been left divided and angry, the political parties have been themselves convulsed and just at the moment when leadership is needed they are too introspective with their own spiteful quarrels to provide it.

They gorge on the politics of Westminster, entirely detached from the people they were elected and are paid to represent, who in turn are left to cope as best they can with an economic model now out of control, which favours the few at the expense of the many. Their promises to re-balance this preposterous asset inflating juggernaut have proved empty, because they are clueless, greedy and actually they do not for the most part care. And when it comes to a measured and coherent approach as to how to navigate Brexit, their inadequacy and ineptitude is total.

Except in Scotland.

Well, there will be consequences.

There has been a big bounce in the market as the shock of Brexit wears off. There will be more plunges of course because the real uncertainties of what the impact will be on the UK’s economy remain. Additionally there is political confusion and deep divisions in the country itself of a kind unknown in modern times. All the chickens set free in the Thatcher consensus economic model are now coming home to roost. Even the EU is shaken and talk of a change of direction for globalisation is now widespread because it does not work well enough for ordinary working people, i.e the majority. So there is a little clarity in any sphere, an unknown set of circumstances for all who trade the market now. It will not be a bull market, but it may not be a bear either. More a static market with bounces up and down.

Then there is Scotland. It is now acting with political independence and there is a very real prospect of it leaving the Union and taking its oil with it. Two land borders with EU countries, Ireland and Scotland could provoke a serious emigration of business to the more convenient environment for trade. Moving from London to Frankfurt is one thing but to Edinburgh is a much lesser thing.

Finally the only bright light is  the fall in the value of the pound. Every point above $1.30 diminishes the chance of any easy way through a very dark wood with many ogres lurking.

Turn Left To Power is an explosive dissertation in book form offering a fundamental redirection for Labour’s return to power, with bold ideas for a new economic and social settlement, including economic and taxation reform, restoration of responsibility in government and a renewal of democracy. Full of detailed information, hard facts and the results of thorough research and deep thinking, the narrative will grip you like a thriller and open your eyes to a brighter, fairer future in a mere 25000 words. The ideas are relevant whether Brexit goes In or Out. Frank and at a times brutal, Turn Left To Power offers a collection of fundamental reforms which amount to a political revolution which can propel Labour back to government in 2020.

Check it out now. Paperback £4.99   Kindle £1.99     AMAZON UK

Things in politics can become chaotic, but like the financial markets today, can steady and settle at a new norm. But every now and then both run out of control and go over the cliff. This is what is happening to Labour now.

There are at present two prospects open. A war between the parliamentary party and the party members which the members will win, keeping Corbyn as leader, giving birth to a much more left wing party than we have seen since 1945, which will then go on a re-selection binge and change the character of the parliamentary party with one rooted in communities across the land and detached from the establishment, and especially the Westminster establishment. This new socialist political force will be too embryonic to win any snap election if the Five Year Parliament legislation is repealed on the election of a new Prime Minster and will lose seats, but at the next it will win a landslide. Just as at the end of WWII the people kicked out Churchill whose party had both taken them into the war and won it, they will decide to back Labour for the programme of rebuilding a fairer society after Brexit is complete. And it will be a landslide because when England decides to change, it does it fast. I say England because by then Scotland will be going or gone.

Or Corbyn will be sacrificed for some unifying leader of whom few have previously heard, who will promote a policy of all things to everyone form the dear old centre ground. In that event UKIP will move in a seize the high ground of the left, just as the SNP have in Scotland and Labour will lose every election which comes along as far as the eye can see.

There may be a third possibility, but at the moment this blog cannot see it.

The Cabinet meets today and so it should. This busted government is still in office and needs to come up with a plan. The busted opposition with bits flying everywhere has to be put back into some kind of order. This is no time for a vacuum of leadership and political chaos.

Once again Osborne is in evidence and gave an assured performance at the Treasury before the market opened this morning. The point that the financial system was robust enough, with support measures in place and in action, to withstand the Brexit shock is valid and a lot of midnight oil has been burned behind the scenes to assure jittery markets. This is potentially worse, if things run out of control, than the crash of 2008, but not as instantly cataclysmic. Osborne’s statement that Banks are ten times stronger than at the start of the crash is hardly reassuring since at the start of the crash some were bust several times over. Ten times stronger than mega bust is quite weak, hence the midnight oil.

His statement that Britain’s economy is strong is open to interpretation, and one with which this blog profoundly disagrees. An economy based on house price inflation and shopping funded by borrowing is socially destructive, because it sucks resources from the industrial heartlands and pumps them into capital to buy more assets, which inflate. The result is a widening gap between those who do well on the merry-go-round and those who either cannot get on or fall off, leading to pockets of deprivation and exclusion which the lucky ignore. Eventually there is a political explosion. In our case it was the vote for Brexit.