Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

Two things happened today which are really telling.

The first was a hastily convened meeting  in Downing Street attended by representatives of British business and leading EU business leaders, who read the riot act to ministers about the muddle of the Brexit negotiations and the fact that not a single thing was yet agreed, making the future for trade and business dangerously uncertain.

Flustered ministers promised that things were happening. Whether they are or not remains to be seen. This inept government, unique in British history for its inability to govern coherently, either cannot tell the difference between the generalities of a speech, ie Florence, and the specifics of the offers needed to advance towards a deal. Or it cannot agree among its ranks what those specifics should be. The clear message now coming loud and clear to the hapless cabinet mired in argument, plotting and scandal is this. Time is running out.

The second and even more telling is the announcement within the past hour that parliament will be given a vote on the final terms of whatever deal is agreed with the EU, before it can come into force. Parliament will have the power to reject a deal for which there is no majority. That means hard Brexit is out.  If that is all the government has finally to offer, Brexit is over.

This Blog fully endorses Bob Geldof’s action in returning his Freedom to Dublin in protest at the conduct of his fellow freeman, Aung San Suu Kyi. The fact that this peace Ikon stands silent while her military conduct ethnic cleansing on a massive scale, reveals just have mistaken the world has been in ascribing near sainthood to this ruthless, self-centered politician, about whom I held the gravest suspicions from the beginning of her projection onto the world stage. There were moments when I felt that perhaps I had judged her too harshly. Those moments are gone.

All over the world her honours are being cancelled and withdrawn and rightly so. At one level her acquiescence to these atrocities is almost more shocking to the many world figures, who for long worshiped at her feet, than the atrocities themselves. Nevertheless this dreadful military campaign leading to an unprecedented diaspora, has created a humanitarian crisis in which the world at large, once again, will have to come forward and pick up the pieces. Her pieces.