Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

Today’s argument with the Prison Officers, ending in a government court injunction forcing them back to work, is a symptom of a big storm brewing, which Hammond has to deal with in his long awaited Autumn Statement, in effect his first Budget. The problem, and it is big with multiple focus points, is that after years of austerity and seemingly endless cuts, public services of every sort and kind are beginning to creak and fail. All manner of initiatives in the name of efficiency are afoot, but if the truth be told, which it never is, the initiatives mostly cost more in extended bureaucracy than they save in operating costs.

The prisons are today’s news, usually it is the NHS or care for the elderly, but it can be anything through schools, policing, potholes, mental health; the list is endless and growing.  Corbyn and Brexit are warnings but much worse will come if Hammond does not convincingly ease the pressure and find new money to plug gaps and reinvigorate the public services. Austerity has enabled the higher paid, especially the professional classes and the political establishment, to do rather well these last several years. But the pressure is now really bearing down upon the mass of the people, who have seen their standards fall and their hopes for the future retreat, in the course of a single generation. Everywhere you look there are signs of a big political shock in the making.

May talks endlessly in platitudes sounding not unlike stuff rolled out of Conservative Central Office in the nineteen fifties. But so far her government has done nothing but argue within itself. So, it all hinges on Hammond.

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That is a good question. Because since the June vote and the leisurely pace of the government coming to terms with the complexities of its exit task, for which no preparations whatever had been made, the world has changed almost beyond recognition.  So the environment for the negotiations bears little connection to that which prevailed when their need was triggered.

First let us consider the home front. There is no agreement yet within the government about the specification of what it is they want; hard Brexit with immigration control, no fees and no membership of the free market favoured by some, or softer Brexit which bargains some freedom of movement with some access to the single market, especially for cars and financial services, involving some fees and some oversight by the EU Supreme Court. So far these issues remain unresolved within the cabinet and its structure of committees. There are reports of tempers rising.

In parliament itself there is no majority for Brexit at all, but there is a recognition that the majority decision by the people to leave the EU must be allowed to stand. There is nevertheless a widespread belief that while the voters backed Leave as a principle, they of necessity have left the details to be worked out by their own sovereign parliament. Unfortunately May had other ideas, namely that Article 50, which is irrevocable, could be triggered by her on her own, using the Royal Prerogative. Her intention to rule by decree was subject to legal challenge and the High Court said No , she could not do that, and the triggering must be supported by a parliamentary vote in favour. Stubborn as she is, she has appealed to the Supreme Court and we shall not know until after Christmas whether we live in a full Parliamentary democracy or not.

The faint hearted may think that is quite enough to cope with, especially if you are not sure what you want. Wanting ‘the best deal for the British people’ is as vacuous a platitude as have a nice day. But then along comes Trump, the U.S. President whom everybody said could not happen. He wants to end globalization in its present format, loves Putin, thinks NATO is way past its sell by date, is anti-elitism, ant-establishment  anti-the status quo and wants to reset everything everywhere. As yet details are scant, but they will gradually emerge. Meanwhile May had to wait for her phone call until he had spoken to Uncle Tom Cobley and all, but the first foreign political leader to be invited to talks in New York as the President Elect gets busy on the stuff of forming a government, is, yes I know but it’s true, Nigel Farage. One dare not even imagine the atmosphere in Number Ten when this news came through.

Wow. But it goes on. In the EU Merkel, Hollande, and Renzi are all up for election in 2017, in the midst of our Brexit negotiations. Marine LePen, the Far Right outsider, now looks a credible prospect for winning the French presidency. She loves Trump, Putin and Brexit and is minded to Frexit. As are various fringe anti-EU anti-globalization parties  all across the EU, who either may win or win enough to give Brussels the fright of its life. In other words it is no longer impossible that negotiations will be taking place with an organisation which is itself unravelling and will either have to fully Federalise within a properly democratic structure in which the hated Commission is shut down, or de-centralise to return to its old format of a customs union among friendly states. We may not know exactly what we are withdrawing from nor what we hope to have a future relationship with.

But there is hope. Trump likes Britain. His mother was Scottish. He has property up there. He will be likely to offer us some sort of trade deal to replace the EU. And the Chinese are keen too. So if we can cut  deals with the world number one economy and the world number two, the rest will take care of itself? Maybe. We must hope so. If Hammond abandons austerity and  embarks on a Trump style economic stimulus, the future begins to take shape. If he tinkers at the margin but sticks broadly to the path mapped out by Osborne, then there is another bump in the road ahead. There will have to be a change of government.

Oh, and keep an eye on Nigel Farage.

Every now and again there is a change of political weather. Occasionally there is a seismic shift in the directional thrust of political initiative, which heralds a new diplomatic, political and economic settlement. This is happening now. This blog is happy about that.  We believe a change of direction is called for and indeed essential, because the existing structure is close to collapse.

Globalization has concentrated too much power and wealth in too few hands in a financial system which sucks from the poor to feed the rich. Vast world imbalances of debts and surpluses have developed which cannot be sustained, and trade is being conducted on terms which enrich some but impoverish a multitude. The West’s interventionist foreign policy, post the fall of the Berlin Wall, has bordered on the imbecile and is now delivering chaos in the Middle East, a resurgence of Russian power, the emergence of China as the strategic military power in Asia and the renewed fear that the threat of nuclear war has, after all, not gone away. It is impossible to imagine a worse report.

Yet the thing that has struck me most about the torrent of comment from the great and the good, the wise and the clever, which has flooded the media since Trump’s victory, is that not one of them understands what is happening. They are like rabbits caught mesmerised in the headlights of an onrushing juggernaut, because the common factor with all of them is that one way and another, bar a few things which needed fixing on a fine day, everything was generally okay.

Corbyn, Brexit and Trump are all the same thing. And just like an erupting volcano the last bang is the biggest. Trump plans to shift the direction of America more drastically than any president since Abraham Lincoln. In so doing he has the power to change the world order. His vision is of much more limited globalization which stops domestic industries in the higher currency value West being exported to the lower currency value East. Global free trade is fine, but very much the opposite if it bears down on the base of some national economies until they explode.

Trump sees that and favours a world order of three strategic powers, the US, Russia and China, each with a sphere of influence, of which America is the strongest, but who cooperate for their own and the common good (as they see it). He sees a reduction in confrontation and an increase in cooperation to defeat universal enemies like IS. The future is built more easily and a good deal less expensively, if it is built on a recognition that nations are different, but share common interests which are more important than irreconcilable differences. In short this turns everything the great and the clever thought they knew, on its head. Especially the utterly barmy notion that you can impose successful democracy by outside force. Trump proclaims, correctly, that in the digital world (which is fundamentally different to what has gone before) democracy spreads by good example and has to come from within. It has also to come from broad consensus; a quality entirely absent from vast tracts of the world, which ensures that losers at the polls are willing to be governed by the winners, who in turn govern for all.

Of course Trump said on the stump vile things about women and minorities and wild things about healthcare and climate change. He stoked anger and used it as a propellant to drive his campaign. However he is already rowing back from unsustainable extremes and if he holds his nerve and sticks to his core agenda, he may walk into history as one of the makers of a better destiny for mankind. If he flies off the handle and creates not progress but chaos, as his enemies hope he will, his presidency will implode in impeachment and he will not see even the end of his fist term.

With this dramatic main feature starring Trump, the B movie, Brexit, continues in the making, within a framework of legal challenges and internal arguments of  paralysing intensity. For this reason the relationship between the UK (itself creaking and perhaps dissolving?) and the two economic superpowers, America and China, is critical. And here it is with relief we can report that the signs are that the May government has got that message.

More on that another day.

All along I felt a Trump victory was on the cards because I saw the connection to Brexit and Corbyn. People across the western capitalist system are angry because it has favoured the minority at the expense of the majority. Given a chance to vote against the political, ruling and financial establishments they will do so. But I lacked the courage and although regular visitors to this blog will know that I dropped hints, I did not commit. Perhaps I should have had the courage of my instinct; conviction would be too strong a word.

The Trump victory is a signal that real and profound change is coming. Exactly what that will be is not yet defined, but  Globalization is in for, at the very least, a significant tweak. It is too early to say more than that. There is good news. As we in the UK flounder ever deeper in a Brexit quagmire, we may discover to our surprise, an unlikely  friend who offers from the New World an unexpected helping hand. The  ‘go to the back of the queue‘  days are well and truly over. That must bring some cheer to Downing Street, now under siege from almost every quarter.

It appears too close to call. The scientific evidence, polling, points to a Clinton win and this is what most commentators on both sides of the Atlantic expect. But no one is betting on it. Because the Trump campaign has huge momentum and there are continuous anecdotal reports that those who travel the country encounter more Trump enthusiasm than the Clinton lead in the polls suggests should be there.

We do know that Americans are widely embarrassed by the most extraordinarily abusive and divisive campaign perhaps since the 1850s, with two very different candidates, but both among the most hated ever. Yet here Trump has the edge. Nobody wants Clinton, but people are voting for her, including republicans, to keep Trump out.  Some are voting for Trump to keep Clinton out but most of his support comes from people who believe in him as their champion and agent of change. Whoever wins in the early hours of Wednesday, America will appear to change, yet the truth is that it has changed already. These two unlikely contenders are not the reason for that change but the product of it. Profound change  about what America is and what it stands for. The rest of the world tries nervously to work out what that means.

The referendum was advisory as authorised by Parliament, not mandatory. Parliament insists on being consulted but all parties have agreed to accept the result, so long as Britain and it people in all parts of the Union, do not suffer.

While the 16 million who voted Remain were voting for a clearly defined prospectus, the status quo, Leave voted for an objective, exit the EU, without any specification as to what this would entail in practice. It follows that if Leave meant house prices dropping by two thirds, 6 million unemployed and war with Germany, the outcome of the referendum would have been different. I am being ridiculous to make the point. The absence of any specification of what Leave would entail and the lack of any kind of plan to implement it, or as it now turns out even a clear understanding of the lawful process to follow, makes the referendum peculiarly unbalanced.

The failure of Cameron to keep his promise, stay at his post and send off the letter triggering Article 50 immediately, has created a chain of events and a vacuum of action which has called into question the whole project in its entirety. Formally triumphant Brexiteers are now almost unhinged with anger that Leaving involves adherence to the Law. The parliament whose sovereignty Leave was determined to restore, has become the very sovereignty they now wish to deny. This is not an Executive democracy; it is a representative one and the sovereignty of the people is exercised by them through parliament.

Leaving the EU is a gigantic undertaking with huge consequences, as yet unquantified, which may not all be good and which may in the end impact most cruelly on many who voted for it.  It is not the same as getting up and leaving the restaurant because you don’t like the cooking. There is now confusion about process, objective, outcome and impact. Hard core leavers are both angry and abusive and in some unstable personalities, even violent. But, and this is a big but, they may no longer be in the majority. The latest poll reveals that the majority would, given a second chance, vote Remain. The margin is about the same as the Brexit result only reversed. Clearly to work Brexit has to have a high degree on consensus between both sides, or we face a sundered nation and a broken union.

What a mess.

The May government is in danger of losing its authority as a second of its MPs resigns because of ‘irreconcilable differences’ and a new opinion poll shows 51% now wanting to remain in the EU. There is now a three way constitutional crisis  with the Courts, the Government and Parliament at loggerheads, as described in yesterday’s post and covered wall to wall in every type of media. This opens the prospect of mounting uncertainty of whether Brexit is actually a feasible option and whether it will happen. That thought alarms ardent Brexiteers whose  shrill cries about betrayal begin to echo in the general melee.

If you look back to May 2015 everything was calm and tranquil. Cameron had just won a majority and whether you were a Tory supporter or not, the future looked predictable, as the political argument developed not about whether there would be prosperity but how it should be shared. Since then we have had the disaster of a very badly conducted referendum with both sides making claims and promises which cannot be delivered, while casting fears and hatred unknown in Britain since Fascist times. This brought down the Cameron government, and although its replacement by one lead by May  at first looked better, a string of mistakes now throws that into question.

The complete absence of any coherent plan about how to achieve Brexit, the failure to define what Brexit actually means, the delay of nine months before triggering Article 50, and the notion that an advisory referendum won on a very narrow margin somehow authorises the government to bypass parliament, is not the report of a strong administration, but rather one in utter confusion from which events are spinning out of control.

The first responsibility of government is to provide coherent leadership under the law. The path ahead, as soon as the referendum outcome was known, was clear and straightforward. The referendum was advisory. May should have announced that the government would implement that advice through parliament, which under our constitution (which surely should be written down to make it accessible to everyone) it is through parliament that the people of this country exercise their sovereignty by electing representatives to it. This was why the referendum was advisory not mandatory. Now it was (now being then several months ago) parliament’s job to listen to the government’s proposals about how it wished to trigger Article 50 and to authorise it, making sure in the process that the government did not harbour a plan so unrealistic as to take the country over a cliff.

Those debates will have taken account of the potential damage to the economy, the NI peace process, the Union with Scotland and all the other issues like immigration and sovereignty which were advanced during the campaign. This would all be in public so that it would be clear to all people and all interests what the British government wished to achieve once A50 was triggered. There would follow negotiations with the EU in an informed atmosphere with clear objectives to ease us  forward to a deal. By now we would be well on the way to resolving the problems and exposing the opportunities presented by the greatest political peacetime upheaval since the Reformation, when we broke away from Rome.

Compare that analysis with what is happening and it becomes woefully clear that this government has lost its way. It needs to find it again fast or it will fall.

The High Court has ruled that the government does not have Royal Prerogative Powers to trigger Article 50 to start the Brexit process, without a parliamentary vote authorizing it do to so, not least because it was parliament that authorised our original joining of the Common Market and subsequently ratified successive treaties, which upgraded the original grouping into the modern EU. The Lord Chief Justice ruled that parliament alone is sovereign. In other words, the people elect the parliament and the parliament decides what to do.

The referendum was authorized by parliament, but it was an advisory referendum not a binding one, because it is the basis of the democratic settlement underpinned by the UK’s unwritten constitution, itself a compromise between crown and parliament, that parliament is sovereign. In this case the referendum was advisory to parliament, which authorized it, not to the government which proposed it. Therefore parliament must be consulted both on the process and the outcome. If the government had called the referendum using the royal prerogative it could have argued that it could act outside parliament, but it did not do that. Perhaps that was another Cameron blunder.

So the government has decided to appeal to the Supreme Court. This is madness. If it loses it is arguable that it should resign. Certainly it will be severely damaged and the whole Brexit process will begin to look increasingly uncertain. If it wins it will by doing so cast fundamental questions over the workings of our democracy and the viability of our laws. Because the principle will have been established that the Monarch (i.e. the government using the royal prerogative) can bypass parliament and appeal directly to the people. That will cause uproar. It will also open a Pandora’s box of whether we are in fact a democracy under the law, or a democracy under the whim of whoever is King or Queen.

Surely one would have imagined that America would be borderline ecstatic at the prospect of following the first African American president with the first woman in the White House actually running the country from the Oval office? Yet there is turmoil, claim and counter claim, tens of thousands of emails, the FBI and the whole spellbinding unreality of the 2016 US election.

Why is this? Essentially because the Clintons have never been far from scandal in a long political joint career. Whitewater, the Clinton Foundation, various female staffers at the White House, Huma Abedin and her flash flick husband and above all Hilary’s extraordinary decision, brushed off as careless but in truth surely calculating, to run the world’s most powerful foreign affairs department through a private, rather than government, email server. When you stop and consider it, that is truly odd.

Trump’s misdemeanours are by comparison rather unsophisticated and straightforward, if repellent to many. But at least with Trump you are likely to get what it says on his tin. But the biggest problem of this election is that many serious and patriotic Americans feel Hilary’s tin is a can of worms and they worry.

So should we.