Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

There are two roads open to Brexit. One is the hard model favoured by the hard right of the Tory Party. It is driven by ideology and is willing to pay any price in terms of economic damage and loss of freedoms for what it sees as some Utopian national independence. In an interdependent world this is surely a fantasy, but in the Brexit drama it is an understandable way forward. It may be reckless or economically suicidal, but everybody knows what it is.

Next comes a sensible and practical Brexit. This disconnects GB from the political structures of the EU, but leaves the economic ties largely intact. Likewise the free movement of capital, goods and people carries on with perhaps minor modifications. In other words the lives of politicians change and grow narrower in connection with all things European, but the people and business carry on as usual. This is easy to understand and there is a majority for it both in the country and both Houses of parliament. There will be cost and compromise, but all within reason and within reach of the reasonable.

Unfortunately the disagreements in the Cabinet are so fundamental that there is no consensus on what is required or how to get it. This is the third road, as yet unmade. There is even confusion about the nature of the Brexit negotiations. They are, in the first stage, a complex unpicking of a tightly woven legal structure, where there are obligations which are contractually binding and which must be met and others from which withdrawal is feasible. But the government does not see it that way. Rather it sees a contest like a pub quiz. So it does not want ‘to reveal its hand’.

This means neither the government itself, the country at large, the EU, nor anybody anywhere can fix on what GB actually wants. This is where we are now. In the words of the EU’s lead negotiator, there is a ‘disturbing deadlock’. Maybe this is the crisis before the breakthrough. Or maybe the muddled thinking of our government has driven it into a thicket of its own false hopes.

But believe me, if that is where we are, we cannot hang about there for long. Because it is a thicket in which terrible national misfortune clings.

According to reports on reputable media Trump will make a working visit to the UK in the New Year, which will be part of his proposed tour of European capitals. There will be no pomp or processions, nor staying at the Palace, no address to parliament.  It will be strictly business.

This is in line with protocol for previous presidents. If he makes it to a second term he may get his State Visit towards the end of that term. It is a way of saying thank you to our closest ally. Let us hope there is something to thank him for.

From the beginning it went wrong. Cameron called a referendum and lost it. May came to power and failed to master her brief, arguing and dithering for months before triggering Article 50. When she did so she offered high rhetoric and even loftier aspiration in an initial situation which required fine detail and careful analysis of a legal position which offered little room for manoeuvre. This was because her Cabinet was hopelessly split between hard Brexiteers and Remainers. The negotiations opened and at once stalled. To give herself greater authority to deal with the Brexiteers, she called and election and lost her majority, reducing, not increasing, her authority.

There has followed a litany of mis-steps. Grenfell Tower, Florence falling pretty flat, Boris AWOL, the Conference disaster and various EU slap downs. So now she has thrown caution to the winds and told everybody to  prepare for a very hard Brexit. There is however a problem. There is no majority in the country or Parliament for that. So when it comes to a vote in the Commons the government will be defeated and her disastrous premiership will be over. As will the Tory grip on power. After a generation of faulty navigation it will finally meet its iceberg.

Unless something else happens. In today’s unstable politics anything can.

The problem of the dream of independence for small countries absorbed into larger ones, or nations of people in a region split between two or more countries, is that achieving independence requires a large degree of unanimity if it is to succeed. It needs the backing of the country of which it is a part and it needs a democratic mandate which will be decisive and beyond challenge. That means something in the order of a 70% turnout and a 66% vote for independence. Because unless there is a reasonable degree of unanimity upon the nature and identity of a country, independence will fail.

Only 42% of those entitled to vote did so. 90% said yes to independence. That is 37.8 overall, nowhere near a mandate. Now there have been huge demonstrations against a break away, banks are moving their headquarters out of Catalonia, the EU has said it will not recognise an independent Catalonia and Spain has said if it happens by declaration, it will invoke Article 151 of the Constitution and impose direct rule.

Even if it is declared, independence will not happen. Because to declare it is one thing, but to be recognised to have it is quite another. Without recognition it is worthless. The best way forward is a time for reflection followed by a legally authorised referendum. That will vote No and it will be over.

It is an extraordinary collapse of government authority when almost the only topic of political conversation is the survival of the prime minister. So having said most of what was useful in yesterday’s post, here are just a few more thoughts.

Talk of leadership challenges and stalking horses are rubbish. For years now the Tory party operates under rules quite different to the Thatcher era. Nobody can challenge the leader. If 15% of Tory MPs write to the chairman of the 1922 Committee asking for a vote of confidence in the leader, it will be held, but not for any other reason.

If  May won she would carry on. If she lost she would resign as prime minister. She would not be entitled to stand for the leadership again and only on her resignation could nominations open for a successor. Through a knock out process of voting among MPs, the field is reduced to two, at which point the party membership get the chance to make the final choice. It is a cumbersome system in opposition. In government, in the midst of the Brexit mess of stalled negotiations and unbridgeable gaps amounting almost to a national emergency, which it could shortly become with deteriorating economic prospects, three months of hustings  is just not a runner. Neither is another leader elected unopposed.

If May goes, her government falls with her. Either there will be a general election or the Queen will send for Corbyn. There will be turmoil in the markets, although much of the uncertainty is already factored in, so it will be contained. Much more significant is the prospect that Brexit will collapse. That is why the Brexiteers, having plotted May’s downfall for months, are now trawling the studios praising her to the skies. If she is a real leader she will take the opportunity to sack the lot of them from her cabinet. She has a big cross party majority in the Commons for a sensible Brexit or none at all.

Like all end games, their length is uncertain until the end is reached. But this government is now spiraling out of control. Markets, the EU, business and the most hard pressed generation since WWII, let down by the most unfair economic model in modern history, are all walking away from a complete shambles of governance.  It is not just May, although it is hard to recall a bigger disaster for the Tories than their choice of leader to navigate through Brexit and out of austerity. It is not just Cabinet disunity, although that is on such a scale that it is producing a paralysis of action and an avalanche of waffle.

It is a faltering economy, what the Financial Times calls a bloodbath in the public finances, stalled negotiations with a mishandled Brussels, uncertainty over what sort of Brexit is coming , tens of thousands of families living in temporary accommodation, rising prices and pressure through lack of funding in all public services, including health, education, public housing and social care. Above all there is now the powerful whiff of putrefaction in Whitehall as confusion reigns in one ministry after another and the authority of the government finally rots down in the rising political heat.

It is impossible not to feel sympathy for the hapless May as she struggled through a coughing fit, a prank and bits dropping off the decor, to deliver her speech; all of it a metaphor for her imploding administration.

What rubbish she talks! There is all this stuff about creating some kind of Utopia from her imagination, while either ignoring her own promises, or allowing her ministers to pursue policies which make her recurring dreams impossible to achieve. This is in part because the economic model has failed and partly because she has no understanding of either economics or foreign affairs.  Then we have to put up with these trailers for blockbuster productions, which turn out to be no more than short cartoons of Tom and Gerry.

Today we woke up to news that there was to be a grand revival of council house building. But the reality is that a measly £2 billion is to be applied by 2021. This is absurd. Harold Macmillan promised and built over 300,000 council house each year. May is aiming for 25,000 over four years.

We have a housing crisis based on two factors. One is a shortage of affordable housing and the other is excessive price and rental inflation. To deal with these you build up to 2 million council houses and you introduce rent controls and security of tenure for tenants. But what the prime minister’s government does is to pump another £10 billion into subsidising house purchase, which will push prices higher, and £20 billion per year into subsidising excessive rents charged by private landlords. And why? Because landlords all vote Tory.

So have sympathy for her coughing (was she choking on her words?) but once again understand that what was delivered was another of her set piece speeches, which  turn out to be full of belief and empty of reality.

As an object lesson in how not to do things the Spanish government’s handling of its Catalonia problem is hard to beat. At the same time we have to remind ourselves that Spain is a relatively new democracy without the longevity and experience of the opportunities and limitations of the form of government described by Churchill as ‘the least worst’.

Whilst extolling the virtues of democratic government, the political establishment of Spain still contains many who secretly lack confidence in its reliability. So instead of allowing a legally approved independence referendum, which would undoubtedly have ended in defeat for the separatists who were then in the minority, the government took legal action, which it then enforced with gratuitous police violence reminiscent of the Franco era. This has converted a question about the future to a crisis about the present. It has made a unilateral declaration of independence a real and present danger. The next few days will determine Spain’s immediate destiny.

The world is more than familiar with the problems which occur when a separate nation of people are denied an independent national homeland to call their own and to govern independently. Unilateral declarations of independence, however, very rarely end well. We must hope it does not come to that.

The Bank of England, having recently said interest rates would not go up, is now saying they might. Yes well!

The B of E’s record is mixed. On many issues relating to faults in the financial structure laid bare by the crash, good progress has been made. But the political decision to vary interest rates has proved too controversial for it to act. There is no such thing as the finite economy or the perfect model. It is all a matter of priorities and preferences. The only certainty is that there are winners and losers.

Under the pre-Thatcher post war model, a socialist consensus supported by the two main parties, standards for ordinary people continuously rose, while the rich struggled, if that is the right word, with the burdens of ultra high taxes and aggressive industrial relations. Under the post-Thatcher model, in which markets and central bankers have been put into the driving seat,  government is left to tinker with distribution of the outcome, while not able to influence the outcome itself. So the rich have become first super rich, then mega rich, then uber rich, while everyone else struggles.

Instead of benefiting from low interest rates, with low payments on affordable mortgages, they have vast, near unaffordable, mortgages on over inflated properties. While the Bank talks about keeping rates low, property prices go on rising. So the people who borrow on the money markets to lend are protected, while their customers, the ordinary folk in suburbia, are forced to pay more and more because property prices have no restraint and go up and up.

Well it is all going to end in tears. Lots of them.