Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

To help Labour activists these two handbooks are offered on FREE DOWNLOAD from 0800 BST Thursday May 18th for three days.

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. The ideas are relevant whether Brexit goes hard or soft. 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. Published in 2016 and circulated to the Labour leadership, Turn Left To Power was a trailblazer for the manifesto.

Click image to download FREE

 Labour Can Win is an abridged version of my dissertation Turn Left to Power. The Labour Manifesto for the General Election on June 8th contains proposals which echo many of the principles which I set out, giving Labour the opportunity to spring a historic surprise on June 8th. If you want a Labour victory, this is a must read. It will give you ideas and inspiration to drive you forward. A message of hope over fear in under 100 pages.

Click image to download FREE

We have had Labour’s offering, which is a courageous swing to the left, changing the nature of the political conversation and not only putting clear blue water between Labour and Tory, but an ideological ocean. At last we are back to a left and a right, which makes for much healthier politics, more constructive opposition as well as better focused government. Voters have a real choice to make and nobody needs to feel abandoned or left out. This blog’s mantra, as regulars are beginning to learn, is that you campaign from left or right but because you must govern for all, either side in victory is pulled towards the centre ground. If you campaign from the centre, you do so in a void, tinkering with trivia. With a sigh voters declare ‘they are all the same’ and lose interest.

Since their formation the Liberal Democrats have managed to attract in good times 6.6 million votes (2010). Many of these came from Labour voters fed up with abandonment by New Labour, the effect of this was mainly north of the Home Counties, and from Tory voters who leaned further left than the post Thatcher Tory party, which had rather lost its way. These gave Lib Dem victories in the South and West. There is also a traditional liberal following in Wales and Scotland.

However in 2015 they suffered catastrophic losses, 49 seats, leaving them right back at square one on the same level as their predecessor, the historically glorious but marginalized Liberal party. There were three reasons for this. The first was that Tory voters went back to their own party because, as the Lib Dems had been in coalition with them, they might as well vote for the real thing anyway. Labour supporters, dismayed that their left of centre refuge from New Labour had joined with the Tories, voted UKIP instead. Finally the young vote on which they had in the past relied, outraged at the flagrant breaking of the pledge not to increase tuition fees, walked away, many vowing never to return.

So the Lib Dem planners have had a challenge to come up with a distinctive offer, which can be heard above the clamour of the contest between the big two. They have done that. There is some candy on their stall which will appeal here and there, but the cake is the promise of a second referendum, which will offer the chance to vote on the final outcome of the Brexit negotiations, including the option of abandoning Brexit altogether. This gives them a message to hammer home across media and doorstep, soundbite and meeting which is distinctive and different.

It also takes shrewd account of the fact that of the millions who voted Brexit, a high proportion were not voting about Brexit, but about having their voice heard and cutting immigration. But all the millions who voted Remain did so because they believe in the EU, take pride in their EU citizenship and their sovereignty democratically expressed in voting for members of the European parliament. There was no sub text or grievance message and very large numbers of them are aghast at the wild lurch into nowhere that their country is taking. It may well be the the Lib Dems offer to them a voting option that many will find attractive. If that happens it will not propel the Lib Dems to power, but it could swing the election.

But above all it offers to the British people a clear three way choice unseen in decades. Let us hope many more turn out to exercise it.

An idea to stimulate economic growth without further government borrowing. Written in plain English and very easy to follow, this is the only really fresh approach out there to the intractable problems of the UK economy, and it is just beginning to be noticed in important places. Download 99p Paperback £2.99  CLICK IMAGE TO BUY

The state of the UK economy is such, and has been such for years, that growth is not going to happen on any meaningful scale without a significant boost. The complete failure of both the Tory led coalition and the Tory government, to hit any of their financial targets and to achieve their promised re-balancing of the economy underscores this. The GDP is too small for the growing population and has to expand significantly to create a wide enough tax base to deliver the required income to pay for all the public services properly.

Tax increases on the better off and corporations will certainly produce revenue in the short term, as will borrowing to invest. Investing in public housing, infrastructure, energy, broadband and so on are critical to economic growth and it is the refusal of the present model to borrow for investment that is the reason for the failure to grow the economy at a decent level thus far. Austerity lasting longer than eighteen months is a trap which inhibits growth and sucks resources from the bottom to the top, enabling the rich to grow richer at the expense of the poor.

But borrowing alone will not be enough. The financial sector, including both the post crash and post Brexit injections, has enjoyed £435 billion of printed money known as quantitative easing. If Labour wins power, either alone or in coalition with other anti austerity soft Brexit parties, it will have to pump the same amount into the base of the economy to re-boot it. This needs to be direct or via a national investment bank and must be in the form of investment rather than loans. I call it dynamic quantitative easing.

Labour Can Win is an abridged version of my dissertation Turn Left to Power. The Labour Manifesto for the General Election on June 8th contains proposals which echo many of the principles which I have set out in an easy read format. Labour now has the chance to spring an historic surprise on June 8th. If you want a Labour victory, this is a must read. It will give you ideas and inspiration to drive you forward. A message of hope over fear in under 100 pages.

Click image to buy. Just 99p for download £4.50 for paperback

Everything is possible. Never has a party and a leadership suffered from such a negative media coverage, for which the New Labour element of the parliamentary Labour party have much to answer for. You cannot rubbish your own leader for months on end, then expect everyone else not to follow suit when an election is called. At least if there is a massacre they will be the first to fall. However it is not over, the mountain is climbable, though to do so would make history on the style of 1945. So go and make history!

There are some pointers. Everywhere Corbyn goes he is greeted by large and enthusiastic crowds. He is clearly enjoying campaigning and is having the time of his life. May relies on rent-a-crowd  supporters, is awkward when questioned and mostly looks haggard and ill at ease, unless mouthing her favourite platitudes. The polls are constantly moving ever so slowly towards Labour, but the gap is still wide. The unknown element, and this is the ground where Labour is strongest, is the fifteen million who have given up voting. A good five million of those would vote Labour and if this ground breaking manifesto, ridiculed by every section of the establishment, from economists, throughout the media, think tanks and of course the Tory electoral machine, catches attention on the doorstep, then all bets are off.

Because whatever the cries of the high and the mighty, the wise and the good, their system is failing the many and if the many vote, Labour can win. So turnout is the key.  Labour must keep calm, work hard, persuade the young to vote, re-energise the Labour supporters Blair lost and June 8 can still be your day. Big Ask but the reward could be the biggest prize in UK electoral history.

Trump has now tweeted that he shared terrorist information with the Russians and he was quite entitled to do so, more especially because it concerned IS. Russia has already lost a planeload of holidaymakers to an IS missile so, as they are US allies in that conflict, it was the right thing to do. I have learned that the President has the absolute right to do as he likes on matters of national security. He can classify and declassify as he chooses, so this was all a storm in a tea cup brewed in Washington and stirred by the New York Times.

It is up to the politicians,  their staffers and press corps in Washington to now get behind the office of their President, whether they like him or not, whether he follows protocol or not. They are a democracy and the people elected him. So either Washington gets a grip of itself or, instead of a seat of government, it will look like a pantomime. It is one thing to oppose as in democratic opposition, but it is another to obsess, undermine, and obstruct. Because it is in the end not Trump who is demeaned but America itself.

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. The ideas are relevant whether Brexit goes hard or soft. 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. Published in 2016 and circulated to the Labour leadership, Turn Left To Power was a trailblazer for the manifesto.

Click image to buy Paperback £4.99   Kindle £1.99  

 Labour Can Win is an abridged version of my dissertation Turn Left to Power. The Labour Manifesto for the General Election on June 8th contains proposals which echo many of the principles which I set out, giving Labour the opportunity to spring a historic surprise on June 8th. If you want a Labour victory, this is a must read. It will give you ideas and inspiration to drive you forward. A message of hope over fear in under 100 pages.

Click image to buy. Just 99p for download £4.50 for paperback

Washington is now embroiled in arguments as to whether Trump inadvertently said something revealing top secret intelligence, when talking to the Russian foreign minister and the Russian ambassador during what seems to have been a productive meeting in the Oval office, designed to improve American-Russian relations generally and cooperation in fighting IS in particular. Whilst denials have been issued, what is being denied and what is being alleged are mis-matched so the suspicion lingers. Coming on top of all the fuss about the Comey sacking and the seemingly unending investigation into the Trump campaign’s links to Russian officials, this has now reached such a level of noise that it is starting to drown out the management of real issues.

I suspect that in America the judgment is more or less split on party lines. Trump supporters see everything is good and those who oppose him think he is erratic, muddled and unsuitable. The problem for America is that all this is beginning to impact on America’s influence  worldwide. The international community is not used to an unstable presidency, which is how the Trump administration is beginning to appear. Whether the appearance is true or false, in today’s world appearance counts for almost everything. It is of course correct that Trump is not a politician, but a businessman, who has been elected  because people have become fed up with politicians. Too much of politics is a detached spectator sport and too little of it addresses the issues which affect everyday lives. Nevertheless the reason the people chose a non-politician is that they thought he would do better.

There are signs, especially with China, that Trump’s preference for building understanding with strong leaders and doing deals is a lot more more effective than the conditional, prescriptive approach nation to nation, block to block, favoured by his predecessors since 9/11. His use of targeted executive orders, while there have been some high profile failures, have already begun to make a real difference in key areas. The markets seem happy.  But all this will come to nothing if scandal, rumour, innuendo and suspicion run amok in Washington. There needs to be in the White House a blend between the new broom approach and a better ability to pull the levers of power to allow smooth forward travel. At the moment the wagon is in the ditch as often as on the trail.

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. The ideas are relevant whether Brexit goes hard or soft. 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. Published in 2016 and circulated to the Labour leadership, Turn Left To Power was a trailblazer for the manifesto.

Click image to buy Paperback £4.99   Kindle £1.99