Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

Labour is advancing in the polls beyond anything seen for years because at last it is attracting back its core working class vote. But it is also attracting huge numbers of young people, many of whom are well educated and successful movers and shakers, who live in the hear and now, see what is wrong with our country and have no time whatever for wild Tory finger pointing at attitudes and people from thirty years ago. I also have evidence that a surprising number are from the privileged few. In other words a coming together of classes and social cultures in a common mission for all.

Opinion polls all show the gap between the Tories and Labour narrowing, but some still show a healthy lead for May, while the latest shows the gap all but closed. There is a reason for this. Some polls are using a model weighted to reflect the demographic turnout in 2015, when very large numbers of young voters did not bother to vote. Where the gap has closed the model reflects the belief that a much higher percentage of young people in the age group 18-35 will vote, denying May the power to speak for Britain and setting our country on a new and better path. So if you too want to live in a country of hope, progress and fair shares and liberate us all from the sterile mantra of endless austerity, make sure you get out and cast your vote on Thursday.

I was born when Neville Chamberlain was Prime Minister, so I cannot claim to be young.  But it is your future I want to assure and so I will be voting with you. I have lived under fifteen prime ministers, but this current one is by far the worst.

Let’s do it.

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US mayors have backed Sadiq Khan as he leads London in the aftermath of Saturday’s terrorist attack while being criticised on Twitter by Donald Trump.

The US Conference of Mayors, which represents leaders of more than 1,400 cities, said it stood “united with Mayor Sadiq Khan of London and the people of London” following the attack.

They said of Mr Khan: “He has risen above this crisis of death and destruction, as mayors continue to do, to alleviate fear, to bring comfort to his people of London and to give support to the first responders who continue to protect, defend and provide emergency care to his people of London.

“Thank you, Mayor Khan, for your leadership during this crisis.”

Very well said. This blog has been broadly supportive of Trump, recognising the very real issues challenging the American heartlands which he is trying to address and the urgent need to reset international relations into a more productive cycle, where things get better not worse. Trump clearly faces enemies from without and within, yet one is tempted to reach the conclusion that through some peculiar flaws of personality, he is himself his own worst enemy by far. Many Americans now feel he is their own worst enemy too, but this blog is too much outside the US to engage in essentially a partisan debate. Nevertheless there is a real risk that things will begin to  run out of the control of what is reported to be the most divided and fractious White House in anybody’s memory.

To halt the slide Trump needs to grasp that the first rule underpinning the authority of a President of the United States, is that the incumbent has to behave like one.