Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

Sadly it is true that the outlines of thoughts, rather than a fully fledged plan, underpin a change of attitude from the May government towards a more interventionist approach to business. But there is nothing concrete and no evidence that more than small change will be on offer to kick start any programme to re-industrialize what was once the greatest industrial power on earth..

What is needed is this. Our problem is more to do with imports than exports. We have created a consumer economy based on acquisition and renewal of a range of items connected to lifestyle, information technology, entertainment and transport. We also spend a lot on services, including eating out. Our problem is all the hardware is imported. Even with cars, where we make a lot and export most of them, the success is offset by importing over 70% of the cars we actually buy for our own use.

So any industrial strategy has to repatriate the capacity to home produce a much higher percentage of the products consumers buy. This will involve gearing up the skills base of a workforce well behind our competitors and the building and tooling of factories initially to manufacture under licence and later to once again home grow our own ideas. Foreign manufacturers will have to be temped to open production facilities here and home start ups must have access to investment (not borrowing) to get them going. Huge infrastructure renewal has to be put in place now, as well as housing for rent and buy at a price ratio no higher than 3x a single income and 2.5 x joint incomes.

Probably the government would agree with most of this but will shrink from coming up with meaningful cash. However you try to configure the project, it cannot happen without printing at least as much money as has already been printed for the City, £425 billion thus far, to be  pumped into the base of the economy as direct investment without involving loans. You can play around with all the maths you want, argue all the economic theories in modern circulation, pour all the professional scorn you can muster onto an amateur, but believe you me, this is the only route out of an economy driven by house price inflation, shopping and record personal borrowing, yet still, after seven years, fettered by crippling austerity and a chronic inability to balance the books. That is where economic orthodoxy has got us.

Time for something new.

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The government lost its appeal to the Supreme Court as most legal opinion expected, but it was a good judgement. It has established a modern interpretation of where executive power ends and parliamentary sovereignty begins. This was by an 8/3 majority, which is a good thing because it demonstrates to those who claimed there would be a fix (ridiculous but claimed by many) that there was real debate among the judges, and not just a rubber stamp for the obvious. By unanimous verdict the Court ruled that the devolved assemblies do not have to be separately consulted over Article 50. That was pretty obvious because the home nations are all represented at Westminster and can make their case there.

Now we have to see how the government responds. We have to see also how Labour responds. If the government gets it wrong it could suffer delays to its Brexit timetable. If Labour gets it wrong it will suffer humiliating defeats in its two upcoming by-elections. That could spell the end for Corbyn and trigger more infighting in the parliamentary party, which would test the voters’ patience to the very limit. It might also inspire Momentum to seize control of the Corbyn revolution to become something more than just an activist group.

The plus out of it all is that parliament will become interesting again. That must be good.

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There is some very fishy about this  report of a Trident missile going off course on test, while at the same time the submarine and crew, recommissioning after a refit, are passed A1. Evidently it was all hushed up and angry Labour is demanding explanations of why this was held back from disclosure during the Trident renewal debate. Either May was not told or she is not telling. Certainly she refused to answer Andrew Marr’s probing, Michael Howard style, on TV yesterday. Various former Naval high rankers have suggested that there is no reason not to accept a misfire and to hush it up is to create greater eventual disclosure than would have been the case with a routine announcement at the time. After all, things do go wrong. Yes, but with Trident?

Trident is a very well established and tested system. It is possible that some malfunction occurred and the government decided to play politics of unusual naivete in thinking that it could hush it up for fear of losing the commons vote. But that was never in doubt as there is a large built in cross party majority for the deterrent renewal. So what else? Suppose it was hacked? Not by an enemy (this is a bit sophisticated for a teenager) but by us. From an Astute class submarine several hundred miles away, testing a new missile defence capability involving the disruption of the guidance system via jamming or hacking. This is right up there with modern defence planning. So maybe the reason we heard nothing was because the test was a success.

Having heard the evasive responses to probing in the House Of Commons today by the Secretary of Defence,  few can now believe that this was a misfire. Exactly what it was is not entirely clear, but it is not that unclear either. It was a cyber warfare test.

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There has not been an inaugural address like it. The first I remember watching on TV was JFK. I was impressed, especially the notion that he was the first western leader born ‘this century’, now the last century. Up till then everybody had been born in the nineteenth century. Since Kennedy nobody has said anything much. Safe, worthy, uplifting, unifying, optimistic, yes, but always according to the brand image of the peaceful transfer of power. Until Friday. Wow! The stunned faces of the phalanx of former Presidents said it all. The political certainties and expectations in every capital across the world imploded, except for three. Moscow, Jerusalem and London, for different reasons.

Moscow expected something new, Israel breathed a sigh of relief that it again has a friend in the White House. The UK was entertained by the drama but heartened because the unspeakable ogre whom it reviled, turns out to be our new Best Friend. And as Churchill said (I am quoting him a lot at the moment) a friend in need is a friend indeed. Britain, going over the cliff with hard Brexit, finds Trump is a fan. He too plans to go it alone in defiance of everything you can think of, so he likes the only other capital is the western world which does not have a clothes peg on its nose (any longer) even at the mention of his name.

There will be loads more about all this as times goes on, but for now lets us take a quick peak at our local political dynamic. Trump thinks NATO is obsolete and is minded to stop funding it and he does not care if the EU unravels. I am pro EU as you know, but I have always, since the end of the cold war, objected to the way it has regarded America as the guard who not only guarantees its security, but pays for most of it.

This is unfair on America and very bad for Europe. It is also poor strategy because Europe has no incentive to work out what its post Soviet relationship should be with Russia, which offers almost limitless opportunities for trade for the EU and supplies even now most of its gas to power its heat and lights. The EU economy stagnates because of its own stupid sanctions and  because America’s phobias over Russia dictate a policy fundamentally opposed to European interests. Moreover a Europe in an alliance with Russia would act as a buffer between America and the country it seems to fear most. Instead Europe is a potential flash point.

Furthermore the EU economy is a big as America’s and it is more than capable of paying for its own protection. Both France and Britain are nuclear powers with submarine based deterrence 24/7. By not paying, the EU has felt free to expand ever eastwards without giving a thought what impact that may have on Russian fears, or the cost of the consequences. Likewise NATO, run by the likes of Norway, with under equipped obsolete token forces, except from the US to the tune of 70%, aided by the UK and France, upon whom it relies for its military punch.

As for the EU unraveling, there is a strong chance that it will and I would very much regret that. But if the reason is Brexit and Trump proving too much, then it was never really there in the first place. We shall see. Everything now depends, EU wise, on Berlin, Paris and Rome. All face elections. All have a lot of angry voters looking for disruptive change. Those voters now have inspiration and a new confidence in their cause. All options are open.

Meanwhile, as predicted by this blog, Britain is again turning to the New World when vexed by the Old. May becomes the first foreign leader to meet the new President. She arrives at the White House on Friday. Brussels is left wondering not only about Britain, but about itself.

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St.John Whilloe is the black sheep member of a wealthy legal family, whose firm of solicitors looks after the affairs of many of the top families in the country. He is consulted by a young woman who claims to be frightened by her husband. Things are not as they seem and St.John finds himself drawn into a complex web of intrigue and murder. He is soon in a race against time to solve a mystery with roots in a tortured family history, with sinister paranormal undertones.

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An English village slumbers on the Surrey/Sussex borders, but the pastoral exterior hides a number of nightmare secrets. The return of a young man, Philip, after a long absence stirs memories of the horrific murder of his mother and uncle years earlier and of an ancient curse delivered upon the family in Napoleonic times. The villagers’ unease grows as Philip embarks upon an affair with the local farmer’s daughter, and a series of mysterious deaths follows in his wake. Soon anxiety turns to fear as they sense evil in their midst. Could Philip be in league with the Devil? Set in the 1920s and full of authentic period detail, this is a tale which will haunt readers long after the last page has been turned.                             US        UK 

Never since the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln has so much in the free world hinged upon the intentions of one man coming fresh to the Presidency. Freedom then was a very different concept to freedom now, but Lincoln set in train a change of direction for the United States which broadened the notion of what freedom meant and ultimately projected America to leadership of the free world. But Lincoln’s mission was achieved at enormous cost.

Now Donald Trump, the outlandish candidate who should not be chosen, would not be nominated and could not run and when all those predictions failed, would lose big and drag the Republican party down with him, is about to take the oath of office as the 45th President of the United States. He has not only won the Presidency, but he has delivered the rare victorious combination of Republican control of both the House and the Senate. Never in history has so much political commentary from so many seasoned pundits proved so wrong.

So now nobody dares predict what comes next. This blog believes there will be disruptive change and a new perspective both at home and abroad. At what cost we cannot tell, nor whether that cost will be justified by outcomes which reach out to those who have been left behind, as well as ease  tensions in a world where so much needs to be calmed. One can only hope that this billionaire’s ability to make a profit will attend him in politics as it has in business. We know he will leave the world and his country in a different place. The test is whether it will be a better one.

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Lise Bauer is born in Africa in 1906, brought to England by her parents from where she is expelled with them in 1914, because her father is an East Prussian. They settle in America and become Americans, but return to Europe in the 1920’s. Here Lise is involved in the rise of the Nazi party, marries one of Hitler’s closest associates and later has a relationship with Hitler himself, before divorcing her husband and marrying an English friend of Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess. She settles again in England with the consent of the security services and she and her husband establish a cell to act as a secret communication channel between Hitler and Churchill at the critical period of WWII. The novel offers a new view of Hitler’s sexual relationships, a plot to overthrow Churchill and the flight to Scotland by Rudolf Hess. Using historical characters often portrayed in a new light, this dramatic account challenges the accepted view of recorded history.