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.

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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.

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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.