Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

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

This Blog has some sympathy for central bankers generally. They are non-political yet they have to carry out political orders and deal with financial consequences of political mistakes and miscalculations. Most of them know that the current structure of free market globalization is failing ordinary people and is therefore in decline. In the UK, in spite of promises by Osborne to re-balance the economy and declarations by Cameron who does not have much grasp of economics that he has, Osborne has not in fact succeeded. This is because the ever forecasting Chancellor has taken the soft option and rebuilt the shattered Brown model economic settlement with its reliance on house price inflation, cheap imports and  high personal borrowing almost exactly as it was before, although with rather stronger, but not invulnerable, banks.

After Brexit we are still in the throes of a political crisis without a functioning government except for emergencies and an opposition which has gone mad. Financial mayhem, tasted in the first few hours, has been averted by the timely interventions of Mark Carney; apparently the Bank of England was the only government institution to consider the prospect of Brexit and get together a plan. Even the Brexiteers have not bothered, let alone the Remain core of the government. His warnings that there is a slowdown coming, which there is little that he and his colleagues can do about, is timely. He also warned that personal and household debt is dangerously high. It demonstrates the perverse idiocy of the current economic model, that the only thing he can do to help is to making bank lending easier.

The good news is that the pound is now down to near $1.31. Every point it falls, it makes the way through this mess easier, and every point it rises it makes that way more difficult. But either way you need to have a plan.

Jeremy Corbyn has the overwhelming backing of  Labour Party members and is winning back the millions of votes lost to Labour since it abandoned the working classes and re-invented itself as a Social Democratic party of the centre left. When the Tories were undetectable it gained power and held onto it, but when the Tories recovered their equilibrium, they lost it and will not get it back. Because to get power back the Tories had to move to the left and the two parties now occupy the same space.

The Labour Party is the political arm of the Labour movement, The other arm is the Trade Unions. The purpose of the whole idea is to protect and advance the standards of living and future prospects of all those who work for the benefit of the economy in industry, commerce, services, education, health and whose earnings can never make them rich but upon whom the functions of a civilised state depend. The Labour Movement and Labour party members are engaged in this notion of brotherhood and purpose for the common good of all. They are a political movement rooted in the country at large.

The Parliamentary Labour Party has become a party detached from the country and rooted in Westminster. It smokes a daily dose from the pipe of power and lusts after it for its own sake. It spouts the nostrum, to justify its addiction, that without power you cannot help people. You can take this as a self evident truth, or, as the Blog prefers, dismiss it at cynical drivel. Because power for power’s sake is like a journey without a compass or a destination. The party membership in the country know where they want to go, there are more of them than all the other parties put together, and they chose by an overwhelming mandate from a wide choice of options just the person to take them there.

If the PLP successfully engineers a means to dump him, it will be the last big  thing it ever does.

QE in various forms is now very much part of the economic conversation, especially in connection with recent market turmoil. Dynamic Quantitative Easing (also called Peoples Quantitative Easing) remains under government, not bank, control and targets specific investment projects without borrowing, interest or repayments. It can reboot the economy, boost manufacturing and exports and enable sustained growth of real national wealth shared by all, rather than just asset inflation which is the downside of ordinary QE. If you want to find out more you can enjoy a lucid explanation of the original idea from the link below.

Download .99p  Paperback £2.99