Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

This has always been a sensitive issue for labour. I have never understood why. Of course constituency parties must have a chance to select their candidate before each general election and there is nothing repressive or left wing about the notion. It is democracy. Becoming an MP is not a job for life. Sometimes it turns out to be, but that in itself is wrong. It is this Blog’s view that re-selection of candidates by every political party before each election should be mandatory by law and that no member of the House of Commons should serve more than three terms.  If and when the Lords are elected similar rules should apply.

Being a parliamentarian is not a profession, it is a public service. For the system to work well, it needs a constant input of fresh ideas. Experience of politics in counter productive and causes time to be spent on business of interest to politicians, which too often leaves the people cold. What is needed is experience of life. Life out there and for real. Not in the Westminster village.

Without going into the technicalities of why the US authorities have issued such a punitive tariff against the Canadian plane maker and its Belfast factory, it is important to make a general point about trading with the United States.

In spite of the Special Relationship with America and notwithstanding the enormous inter-connection between UK and US businesses and investors and the fact that we are both the largest foreign investors and employers in each other’s countries, we have never had a comprehensive trade deal together. The reason is that regulations, business practices and investment controls are very different in each country to the point where the gaps are unbridgeable. It has thus been the practice for both countries to expand the reach of their businesses by setting up subsidiaries in each other’s homeland, subject to compliance of all local rules.

When you compare the venomous attempt to bring a competitor of Boeing to its knees, with the sunny prospect of a tariff free trade deal with America to  replace some of the losses of Brexit, you see just how unrealistic an aspiration that is. If free trade were practical between the UK and US, we would have organised it a century ago.