Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

It is not possible to govern a country in easy times with a party split into two opposing forces so that it is both government and opposition, all sitting round the Cabinet table. Even if they are singing like birds. If times are critical, as they are now, to attempt it and place at risk the national interest, is potentially catastrophic. It is manifestly not ‘what is best for Britain.’

The EU is fed up with the inability of the UK to articulate what kind of Brexit it wants. The Brexit Department is in trouble, with its top man moved out to report directly to May. The economy is slowing while inflation is rising. Industry, commerce and business generally are becoming really agitated at the lack of clarity at the nature of the Brexit for which  they must plan. Mutterings about closing factories and moving plants to the EU are growing louder. Time is running out. Unrest in the public sector is building.

So on Thursday Theresa May must read the riot act to her Cabinet and make it clear that she will sack the Brexiteers if she has to, as they have to the last one, proved muddled, incoherent and incompetent, with not even the slightest idea how to bring their project to fruition without crashing the economy, splitting families and ruining people’s lives. They either fall in line behind her on a new conciliatory approach to the EU, based upon what is possible with the 27 and what is needed to set our country on a path to a sensible Brexit, or they go.

In the Commons there are about 150 ideological Brexiteers living in cuckoo land who think they can deliver on all the lies and falsehoods and wishful thinking they have, without conscience, pedalled fraudulently to the people, and 500 who will back a realistic and sensible Brexit settlement which will save our country. That is May’s majority.

Either she has the courage to put country above party and mobilise that majority to govern, or her government will implode. We will soon know. Time for the Tory quarrel over the decades has finally run out.

On September 4th this Blog posted a piece on North Korea which ended with this:

Unless the United States manages to convince North Korea that the next time it fires a rocket or tests a nuclear bomb it will be attacked and wiped out. If that message sinks home, as in Kennedy at Cuba, talks can deliver an outcome which works for both sides. But so long as the US allows itself to be pushed just a little further down the road of talk and no action, while Kim Jon Un follows one provocation upon another, the road to calamity remains open. The lesson of the Cold War was that in order to prevent it you have to be ready and willing to fight. At a moment’s notice. Loaded and locked was a statement then of fact, not as now, a rhetorical flourish.

Yesterday Trump stunned the United Nations by making it clear that if America had to defend itself or its allies it would in response destroy North Korea. This was exactly the right thing to say. What now matters is whether North Korea believes him. If Pyongyang signals that it does, then America must move swiftly to start talking about a peace settlement for the Korean Peninsular and some kind of guarantee of the continued existence of North Korea. That is now, and always has been, the only rational way forward. China holds the key to many doors in this crisis and it should redouble its efforts to unlock the door to the conference room.

As for Trump’s speech to the UN which was listened to by a stunned and silent audience, this Blog heard good things and bad things. Less abuse of Iran would be welcome, but much of the rest of it needed to be said. There are times when the Citizen President is the most alarming person on the planet, but there are others when he is a breath of fresh air. Yesterday at the UN was one of those.  Let us hope some good will come of it. Because out there is a lot of very bad, much of it getting worse.