Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

The 2017 Budget is approaching. Having done next to nothing useful with his Autumn Statement, Hammond has to come up with some firm policies and clear thinking. The time for silly forecasts which are never right is past. As are tiny sums spread over five years to bridge a funding gap. No longer is being the fastest growing economy in the G7 good enough if it means 2% or thereabouts annual growth.

This is because the Treasury has a chronic income shortfall and expenditure is already cut to the point where critical public services are at risk and malfunctioning at pressure points. What is needed is substantial and significant economic growth. This requires a government stimulus in three areas; infrastructure, public rental housing and home production of the stuff we at present import to consume. The last of these is the driver of growth and will be achieved by the private sector mostly with its own money, the first two are the enablers and must be funded entirely by the government, either by borrowing, or printing, or both. Sterling must remain very competitive. Tax concessions can be used as an incentive to kick start the regeneration of home produced goods, as can access to cheap start up funds via a national investment bank. This post is not the place for detail, which is available elsewhere, but it does outline the economic priorities.

The aim is simple. There must be enough revenue to pay properly for essential services like health, education, social care and prisons. If unwelcome rates of high taxation are to be avoided, the solution must lie in economic expansion. Consistent growth of 4%-5% per year for some years is the only way out of austerity, poor living standards, terrible productivity and lower expectations. No matter what the terms of Brexit. And it must be led by cutting imports and replacing the shortfall with home production. In other words the biggest export success of the post Thatcher era has been exporting jobs. Decent skilled jobs to offer a future to a loyal workforce. Those jobs have to be repatriated and our economy, based on consumption, has to consume what we make and grow to a much, much greater extent than is now the case.  Exports will take care of themselves, not least because the low pound and regeneration of industrial capacity across a wide range of goods, will present a much more diverse offer to overseas markets.

What Hammond has to do when he waves his red box on the steps of Number 11 and then holds forth in the Commons on his Big Day, is to inaugurate economic revival. Nothing less.

Turn Left To Power is a dissertation in book form offering a fundamental redirection for Labour, 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, the narrative will grip you like a thriller and open your eyes to a brighter, fairer future in a mere 25000 words. Frank and at a times brutal, Turn Left To Power offers what amounts to a political revolution. 

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The future of the May government does not depend on Brexit, or Trump or Trident, although a big crisis in any of those areas could bring it down. But if it survives until its sell by date, May 2020, it will stand or fall on its record over public services. Its political narrative will be that we have a strong economy, the fastest growing in the G7 and only the Tories can be relied upon to deliver future prosperity.

Yet there is a crisis brewing, or in some cases spilling over, in social care, the NHS, education, flood prevention, children’s services and mental health care, in which, however you express it and whatever efficiency savings are made, there is not enough money being provided by central government to properly fund modern day demand. In other essential pillars of a civilized society such as public transport, especially railways, prisons and offender management, the police service, the energy market, public utilities and affordable housing, there is an awful lot of talk and has been for ages, but very little outcome.

If the government goes to the country with the majority of these problems unresolved, or with a sticking plaster fix to carry it through the election campaign, it will be defeated. It will not matter if Brexit is a success, trade deals with the US, Turkey and China flourish and the top ends of society are coining it in.

Churchill won the war and lost the subsequent election spectacularly, because he and his party thought victory was everything that mattered. The country thought that what mattered was the quality of life in the new era of peace and that Labour had the better plan.  May too will lose after a Brexit triumph, which leaves hospitals in crisis, trains overcrowded and late, students in debt and housing costs in orbit.

Provided Labour has a plan. A dynamic plan for a complete reboot of the economic model and a complete reconstruction of the taxation process, so that both bring hope and opportunity to all those abused areas of neglect and under funding which cause so much difficulty in the lives of ordinary people.

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This post will try to predict what Trump’s America will be like for the rest of the world. It is not about whether you are for or against this new man in the White House. It is about the fact that he is there.

First of all Trump sees himself as a national leader with a very high profile who has been sent to Washington by the people to rule. Not to preside. Therefore he will be like no other in several generations. Already the rest of the world has stopped talking about America or the United States, when talking about international relations or geo-politics. Now everyone says ‘Trump’. Just as many say Putin, when they mean Russia. Or in the past Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini or Franco. But it does not mean Trump is bad, although he is without doubt a very unpopular figure outside America at the moment, but that could change, or even get worse. For quite a while everyone said Mandela when they meant South Africa and he was universally admired, almost worshiped. What it does mean is that Trump’s view or intention is the only one that matters.

Here it gets interesting, because the American constitution is organised to shape federal government in the form of consensus, over which the elected leader presides. He or she will be able to govern according to the consensus but if the occupant of the White House cannot lead consensus, not much is going to happen. Trump does not do consensus. But he talks direct to the people. Every morning when he wakes up he picks up his phone and tweets.

He says what is on his mind, what he wants to do for the people, and, this is critical, who is getting in the way. The people no longer listen to the media or hear the views of other politicians. They just look at their phones. He then gets dressed and goes off to sign his favourite instrument of government, the Executive Order. This sounds rather exciting and indeed it is. All of it is done on video live, so people can see the spectacular Trump signature being applied to folio after folio. He looks at the camera and says a few words of explanation. What people hear is not actually said but they pick up the nuance straight away. I am doing this for you. To keep you safe. To get your job back. To cut your taxes. To protect your values. To make America great. Again.

Unfortunately America’s machine of government does not work like that. The Executive Orders can judder to a halt when challenged in the Courts and border walls cannot be built without cash, which has to come from Congress. So it remains to be seen what is actually achieved by this new style of politics inside America. Outside America’s borders it is a different story.

Here the president, also Commander-In-Chief of a military juggernaut so enormous as to be bigger than all the rest of the world put together, can do much as he likes. He likes nation states, by-lateral trade deals, strong borders, torture, Brexit and Putin. He does not like Iran, climate change reduction measures, treaties which do not put America first, trading blocks, military alliances that America pays for, ISIS and  what he calls bad dudes. So it hardly surprising that in Europe many a well oiled political palm is turning a touch sweaty with anxiety.

There are only two capitals enjoying the moment. One is Moscow, where there is hope that a more reasoned and balanced relationship can be struck with Trump. The other is London. Having abandoned through Brexit its traditional role as America’s gateway to Europe, without a twinge of conscience and with undisguised glee, the old Imperial capital is setting itself up as Europe’s gateway to America. That is what holding hands and the State Visit are all about.

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Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy and right hand man, flew to Scotland on a mysterious peace mission in 1941, which has never been convincingly explained, to meet unidentified politicians who wanted to end the war. The truth has been covered up for generations because to reveal it would somehow undermine the honour and constitutional fabric of the United Kingdom. Who was plotting against Churchill? What were the peace terms on offer? What happened to Hess? Was he killed in the War? Was the prisoner in Spandau a double?  Rick Coleman, an investigative journalist, determines to find out. First he finds himself entangled with a randy nurse. A page turner to the end!

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The authority for the prime minister to go ahead and trigger Article 50 is now approved by a big parliamentary majority from MPs, most of whom actually campaigned in the referendum for Remain. But the accepted political reality is that although MPs have the right to vote according to their own judgement and not according to the wishes of their constituents and in spite of the fact that the referendum was advisory not mandatory, it would cause a constitutional crisis to go against the wishes of the people. This argument is accepted by this blog with very grave reservations. These include the fact that nobody was able to explain, or even understood, what Brexit would involve at the time of the vote and almost every warning or promise made during the campaign is either since shown to be misplaced or undeliverable. Moreover not everybody voted for Brexit.

Over sixteen million voted against it. This is not a trifling number and their interests must be protected by robust adversarial arguments because that is how our democracy works. There is a voting process and a debating process. To engage in the debating process is not to become an enemy of the people; it is to point out where things may not work as hoped and to offer a different solution. As things now stand we a headed for a hard Brexit. This is beginning to mean that we shall have to get close to Trump and Erdorgan for starters, who are probably the least favoured national leaders by the majority of Brits.

Very different to Auntie Merkel and the bumbling Hollande. Personally I see advantages is strong and assertive national leaders, but I recognise there is much about Trump that frightens even the stout hearted and arresting  multitudes in response to a badly executed coup attempt and having the largest number of journalists in prison in the world are Erdorgan achievements which repel many.  We must hope that everything works out and that those who have for so long wanted to detach from Europe (if we leave the EU that is what we do) will not learn to rue the day they finally achieved their mistaken ambition.

Meanwhile, we live in a parliamentary democracy, the Supreme Court has underscored what this means, which is that parliament is sovereign and it has to approve whatever is coming our way. That will involve both Aye’s to the right and No’s to the left. That is how our country works.

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Rachael battles forward to unearth the truth from intrigues of the past, but also within her own family, surviving three attempts on her life, before finally achieving her goal. Not only does she expose the truth from history and from her own roots, she has to delve deep into her own emotions to find the truth about herself.

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This Blog was, like most of the rest of the world, incensed by the the arbitrary travel ban, as the previous post explains, for two main reasons. Its implementation was incompetent, nobody seemed to be able to agree what it meant, and hundreds of travelers were caught mid-journey by the apparent invalidation of legal documents and visas. Embassies gave conflicting advice, much of which turned out to be wrong. This caused unnecessary distress to vulnerable people in violation of every principle for which the United States was believed to stand. Second, if the object was to make America safer, it will almost certainly have the opposite effect. That view is shared by almost every government and agency outside the United States, with any experience of fighting and resisting terrorism. This is not a good way to run a country, even if it is only your eighth day of trying.

The dust is now beginning to settle and most caught up in the chaos have  been able to complete their journeys. Of course many more will now have to change their aspirations, because entry to America is going to get a whole lot more difficult, but everyone accepts that it is up to the US to decide what its immigration policy is, and even if it closes its doors entirely, it is entitled to do so. The shambles of the travel ban was more about how to do it than what to do, even if most thought the project misguided.

Here we saw the Achilles heel of this new kind of administration. Within it there are some extremely able people with powerful strategic brains and a focus on a different path forward leading to a better deal for all Americans. But there is also a small band of red-necks driven by prejudice and ideologies, which will be destructive unless restrained. Trump must keep them under tight control, allowing them to contribute but not to implement. They were the ones who landed him in the travel ban mess.

Where this blog supports Trump is on the bigger picture of the need to  re-balance an economy so that it benefits what America calls its middle class, abandoned by what is now reviled as the liberal elite, where real poverty is beginning once more to emerge when the essentials of civilized life like main water become unaffordable.  I have argued for a long time the very positions which Trump’s economic team are now proclaiming regarding currency manipulation and the need to repatriate jobs for skilled workers, together with the recent assertion that the euro is actually the Deutschmark devalued to Germany’s advantage over both its neighbours and the US. I have for long said the same things about NATO and the need for the US to disengage from Europe, which should retake control of its own destiny and protect its own interests. I wholeheartedly support a serious attempt to reach a proper understanding with Russia.

The world is going to have to live with a new dynamic.  For seventy years America has told the free world what it must do. In return America has picked up the tab for its defence and economic growth. So everyone else was able to get on with their day, knowing that rich Uncle Sam would always see there was food on the table and enemies were repelled. Up till the end of the Cold War this made sense. After that the notion of the US as the world policeman has gone very badly wrong.

But now the election of Trump marks a sea change in the way not just Trump himself, but millions of Americans think. America will now do what it wants in its own interests, which will be interpreted as what goes on inside Americas borders, not from some vision of global meddling. Making America great again is not about empire; it is about the homeland, glitzy in some parts, but rotting in others, What the rest of the world does in response is up to it. That is what freedom now means.

But with freedom comes responsibility. Responsibility for ones own destiny. So if the EU wants to bust apart, let it. It is a new age of sovereign countries, controlled borders, balanced currencies and productive work. Trade blocks and tax havens are out. Picking fights which require the spilling of American blood are the past, not the future. We must learn  to live with it. That may not be as bad as it sounds.

There is another lesson for the world to take in. Whilst America is the most inventive and innovative country in the world it is socially very conservative and old fashioned. Old social values trump (sorry) new ones. This has always been the case. It has its good side but also its dark side. Of course there are great American liberal thinkers and movements which inspire the like minded across the world. This Blog identifies with those traditions and could never support the alternative. But it is the conservative tradition which dominates the American heartlands and, for the time being, it also governs. We have to get used to that too.