Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

The North Korean missile threat is real. It is not like the political wonderland of Russian election plots or the escapism of fake news. It is about San Francisco or LA being wiped off the map on the whim of an unstable regime in a nuclear missile strike. No American President can sit back and, Pearl Harbour style, let it happen in order to obtain a morally justified reason to react. The threat is real but not immediate. Having nuclear bombs and long range missiles is one thing, or rather two things and North Korea has both. Putting one on top of the other, guiding the combination to the target and bringing the warhead back through the re-entry process to explode at ground target zero, are several more things and there is no evidence  that NK has the capability to do any of them. Yet. But soon they will. So Trump cannot hide behind some diplomatic formula. He has to do something.  But What?

Let us look at the military option first. According to this blog’s research the total and complete defeat of North Korea inside a week, if America uses all its available military assets, is a certainty. However during the battle it is likely that NK artillery and rockets could inflict 300,000 civilian deaths on South Korea, before its capability is destroyed. It is also thought that NK has about a dozen operational nuclear bombs. If it could get one or two of those through, maybe on Japan as well, we are looking at millions of casualties. All to put America First. Suddenly the American victory becomes the biggest disaster in the history of warfare.

So let us think out of the box. North Korea and its leadership knows that it will lose any war. What it craves is to be recognised as a power of which note has to be taken. Sanctions are useless and although they have had a crippling effect on the country’s general development and economic progress, they have not diverted the ambition of Kim Jon Un one iota. Reverse them and it is another matter. Offer the lifting of sanctions, a meeting with Trump, a peace treaty with South Korea, economic aid and a coming in from the cold, in return for first a freeze on further development of the nuclear strike programme, followed by the dismantling of it. Then you may very well find you have a buyer, because that is all Kim Jon Un ever wanted.

It could be said that such a deal would be a blow to American pride and resolve. Many a puffed up chest will heave with anger. But if it saves hundreds of thousands, even millions of lives, it will undoubtedly be recalled as the noblest act in the history of America, giving it a status and authority in the world beyond anything it has thus far known.

And if he does not buy? Then at least America can say it tried everything before it pressed the button.

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Angry Ministers are right to point out to the isolated Chancellor and the obdurate May that whatever the sums say, it is socially and politically impossible in a democracy to impose austerity year upon year in an economic model which means it impacts the many but enriches the few. The facts of the matter are simple. Massive quantitative easing by the Bank of England has flooded the financial sector with cash, inflated assets, allowed bosses and footballers and celebrities to receive obscene rewards, while the people who keep the nation safe, fed, healthy and warm, educate children, care for the elderly and comfort the bereaved have to make do on falling incomes.

Too little tax is now raised to pay the bills and because income tax has been progressively reduced while VAT has risen, the latter impacts most upon the poorest. Thatcher had a basic tax rate of 25% and VAT at 15%. To deal with the injustice now being imposed on public sector workers without more borrowing, will require tax rises and that fact has to be faced. Additionally there must be a significant expansion of the money supply at the base of the economy to reboot growth via major infrastructure and social housing investment. That does not require more borrowing. It should be achieved by Dynamic Quantitative Easing, at least to the level of the QE splurge into the City.  What is good for the rich is even better for the poor.

The Tories are just beginning to stir and understand that the combination of Brexit and austerity could prove fatal for their party. If that spurs them into action very good. This blog cares not a jot what happens to the Tory party, but we are getting ever more angry at this abuse of the people. Like half of May’s Cabinet.

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This blog was highly critical of Theresa May’s invitation to Donald Trump to make a State Visit to the UK, when normally such visits are reserved for the second term as a kind of thank you, as the term heads into its final lap. There are good reasons for this. Not a lot of business happens at State visits, because everything is crowded out by ceremonial, which for such visits is on steroids.

In Trump’s case he is a highly controversial figure about whom a lot of nasty stuff had been said by senior members of the government in the UK, as well as by many special interest groups concerned with racial, gender and sexual equality, climate change and much else, during his campaign to win the White House. So all the more reason to have a business visit or two first, very necessary anyway when a new President takes office, so as to achieve some concrete outcomes and build relationships. Especially with Brexit.

May’s headstrong move when Trump had only been in office for 8 days, we realise now typical of her style of act now and think later, backfired. There were petitions and protests and in the end the President let it be known that he did not wish to come to the UK while the prospect of large scale protests remained real; as we know he is rather thin skinned. I imagine this caution was reinforced when May lost her election gamble. Trump would be loth to waste time with a leader here today and gone tomorrow. Meanwhile her tottering government, riven with splits of every sort and kind across almost its whole agenda, left the visit out of the Queen’s Speech, a protocol marker that it would not happen. For now.

There is rumour that, in a window of spare time between the G20 and his visit to France as guest of honour of the triumphant Macron for the Bastille Day celebrations, Trump is  planning to visit his golf course in Scotland. There is no protocol for Presidents visiting their golf courses in the UK, because there has not been a previous President who owned one. But it seems a flying visit to May for a meeting in Downing Street as an add on to his golf course inspection might take place at 24 hours notice.

But then again it might not happen. This blog could be the victim of fake news.

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Whilst this blog would not oppose any good news for the UK’s blighted fishing industry, it is unclear what this latest proposal from Michael Gove actually means. The convention from which he proposes to withdraw is according to various international legal authorities, no longer in existence because it has been replaced by the EU Common Fisheries Policy. So it is a bit like announcing withdrawal from the League of Nations. Perhaps it is more of the smoke and mirrors drama which the Tory Government thinks adds up to Brexit negotiations. The EU looks on perplexed.

Gove also confirmed it was the policy of his hard Brexit bit of this fractured government, that no deal was better than a bad deal; odd that when no deal is, to rational thinkers, the worst deal of all outcomes. He also said, in a rather slick new look appearance on Andrew Marr, that once we were out we could start trading with other countries outside the EU. But 55% of our trade now is with countries outside the EU. This is because the EU has trade deals with, at my last count, 38 other countries. So the notion that somehow all sorts of new trade opportunities exist for the taking may be another Brexit porky. If we sing a happy song and go over this no deal Brexit cliff, we will not only go WTO with the other 27 EU countries but also the 38 who have struck deals for EU trade. So, that is 65 countries we have to negotiate with, even to stand still.

Wow!

Fortunately in this hung Parliament, with a cross party majority for a soft and sensible Brexit, there is no chance Gove and Co will be put their flights of fancy into effect. There is talk of Commissioners going in to run Kensington and Chelsea. Can they also be sent into Downing Street?

We have had hung parliaments, but not like this. Because this time we have a hung government as well. That is to say the government itself is so split on key issues of austerity and Brexit, that ministers and their aids are publicly briefing against each other. Moreover all of them are briefing against the Prime Minister. To describe this as peculiar would be to understate the case. The only reason that this whole thing does not collapse between lunch and tea is because security has been bought from the DUP; a political party which this blog regards as toxic.

So all sorts of things are going to happen, because power is now with parliament, so whatever the government wants to do, will depend of the House of Commons.  And the House of Commons is split in many different directions, both across party and across issue. On the two key drivers, austerity and Brexit, there is a majority in seats and an even bigger one in votes. End the first and be soft on the second. Neither is official government policy.

Interesting times. Strong and stable government it is not. As for the EU, trying to respond to Brexit and negotiate the least damaging deal for both sides, there is disbelief. This is a very different GB to anything they have seen before. Italy and Greece are finding it hard to control their giggles.