Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

The last vestiges of Thatcherism have gone. The cult of the individual is over. Government is a good thing and will intervene to boost business if needed and punish it if it is naughty. Markets not working properly ‘will be repaired’. Monetary policy is not working for ordinary people. Interest rate policy is a fiasco, or words to that effect. Pumping assets has got to stop. She sees the vote for Brexit as a revolution and she is going to lead it. Wow. This blog has been saying these things for years and consequently, having been rather critical of her, thinks Theresa May is wonderful; well okay anyway. I don’t like her attitude to immigrants. And I want to see whether this speech becomes action by her government.

If it does, the impact of all this is potentially as seismic, perhaps more so, than Brexit itself. It is the biggest shift left for the Tory party since 1950, when Churchill decided to embrace  officially  the Welfare State, the nationalized utilities and everything he had previously opposed, because he saw that this was what people wanted and if he was going to be given another opportunity to lead them, he would have to do their bidding. Within a year he was back in Number 10. May has done her sums, she knows her government won the election with fewer votes than Churchill who lost in 1950, and to win again she has to attract support from those 5 million or so working class voters who currently stay at home. Corbyn is headed in the same direction.

The impact on the Tory Right will be like a cup of arsenic drunk at breakfast by mistake. But they are mostly old, nostalgic for the abandoned Thatcher, and shrinking in number. The impact on the the anti-Corbyn New Labour element of the PLP is calamitous. They are out in no man’s land on the wrong side of everything, somewhat to the right of the May government. They are all at risk of losing their seats as some of their  voters, denied a Corbynite to vote for, move left to UKIP if it survives, the news from that quarter is not good, or the reinvigorated left-leaning Lib Dems. Ed Balls will explain what happens next. Their only salvation lies in eating humble pie and following their leader, or crossing the floor and joining May.

At last we are moving back to politics about people, where politicians have visionary powers rather than soundbite skills. Whatever it is people want to do, if it is not for the public good it will not happen. Whichever party is in power. The future suddenly might get brighter.

Even the fact that he never pays Federal Tax, which would have sunk any other presidential candidate, seems not to impact Trump badly, although the polls show Hilary pushing ahead again. Many people hate the Federal government and its taxes, so they agree with Trump when he says he is smart. The difficulty for pollsters and pundits is that this election is not about the presidency; it is about Trump.

People are either voting for him or against him. If they vote against him they will vote for Hilary unless they waste their ballot on some third party no hoper. Hillary has about 25% of potential voters  actually voting for her with enthusiasm. That cannot get her to the White House. Whether she does get back to her old home will depend on whether enough Trump haters want to stop him at any price. Hardly ideal for America whichever way it goes.

The resignation of the newly elected leader Diane James because she cannot gain control,  is a public declaration that the party for UKIP is all but over. It had a purpose and it fulfilled it. It was a platform for Nigel Farage. It achieved its goal. The UK is off out of the EU. Farage retires. Left behind is a collection of quarrelsome discontents who agree about nothing and who are hell bent on a path to self destruction. A huge shift in the political weather with the new interventionist, left moving, Tory party and the 21st century socialism of Corbyn’s Labour, will be for UKIP all but overwhelming. It probably makes no difference whoever is leader now.

Even if Nigel Farage comes back. Again.

The record crash in the value of sterling is greeted with consternation by importers and retailers who import a high volume of the goods they sell. It is also tricky for supermarkets who import so much of our food and eventually all this will feed through in a rising cost of living.

But for manufacturers and exporters, this is the best possible news, reflected in record rises of production reported by the sector. The famous march of the makers which never happened might just be starting. It has been this blog’s stated view for years that sterling is historically overvalued and prevents reshaping of the economy away from debt financed consumption, underpinned by house price inflation, delivering low productivity and higher social inequality.

For new wealth to be distributed evenly through every level of society and in both the public and private sectors, it has to be created. You can make it, build it or pump it from the ground. And because GB has both the second highest overseas debt mountain  and the second highest trade deficit in the world it sure needs to create a lot of new wealth. It must make more of what it consumes and export more overseas. Simply put; import less and export more. More skilled jobs with a future, fewer zero hours contracts surviving day to day.

For that to happen sterling trading in a band form $.95 to $1.25 is a must. It is also an economic revolution and it may have started. Brexit without tears will depend on it.

May did well on Andrew Marr. She was assured and forthright about her ambitions. Of course, like all politicians, on the details she was either opaque or she waffled. The phrases about governing for all the people are the emotional cry of every new Prime Minister since Pitt the Younger. But she did convey the impression that she had a handle on everything and she knew where she was going. This was in the nick of time as people were beginning to wonder about her government ‘without policies’ as Ken Clarke had said (except for Grammar Schools).

We have learned a lot about Brexit, more than she actually intended. There is to be a Great Repeal Bill, in the Queen’s Speech, date not set, and Article 50 will be triggered before the end of March. The Repeal Act as it will become, if passed by both Houses and possibly with input from the Scottish and Welsh Assemblies for complex legal reasons as yet unclear, will transfer the sovereign authority for all European law enshrined in our own, from Brussels to London. It can then be modified where and when needed by parliament. This is all good sense and practical; the May touch. It sends a signal around the world and to every corner of the Kingdom that Brexit will happen and that is that.  There will be places where this will be greeted with glee, but elsewhere with consternation.

We also learned about two May red lines. She is quite clear the the majority of the British people have voted to take back control of our borders enabling us to restrict the influx of EU migrants. She was also satisfied they have voted too for absolute control of our laws by our parliament. There is just no way it will be politically possible for the EU to grant free access to the common market on those terms. Even if in some late night marathon of half demented negotiators suffering sleep deprivation agreed, it would never be ratified by all 27 of the member states and only one has to say no to kill the deal. So although it is not official, it will be a hard Brexit. May has prepared the ground by saying she preferred the term Clean Brexit.

There are two events which could change this. The first is, through a scheduled series of national elections in the EU in 2017, a kind of EU Spring political movement, anti Brussels and admiring of the Brits, takes hold, and the whole byzantine structure begins to topple. Or, since there is no majority in Parliament for Brexit, let alone a hard one, the Great Repeal Bill falls, May calls an election, loses it and is replaced by a government determined to scrap the whole thing. In other words having had fun the first time voting with their hearts, given a second chance the canny Brits vote with their heads. A returned UK would become instantly the most powerful country in a relieved and grateful EU and could inaugurate reforms of its choosing. Free movement et al.

The news that the government is dumping the cruel and costly process of re-examine the validity of claims of those with long term conditions, likely to get worse rather than better, is very good news. Once the diagnosis has been confirmed it is just not right to force the most vulnerable to be endlessly re-tested; not only does it cause real stress to both the sufferer and those who may be helping to care for them or employ them, but it costs the authorities a fortune, which is entirely wasted. I suspect that this will be the first of several announcements during the Tory conference designed to move the Party to what might be called the soft left, crafted to please the shrinking membership, while concealing from them frictions in a  Cabinet  drifting to a hard Brexit.