Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

You have to admire May. Even this bog which regards her government as perhaps the worst in our modern democratic history. She struggles forward with endless platitudes, laced with proposals which cannot work, are unacceptable to the EU and which her Cabinet, fighting each other so hard every meeting is said to be a pitched battle, cannot agree on.  And if they eventually agree a fudge, the Commons will vote it down.

The latest is that we will pretend to leave but actually stay. It is wrapped up in loads of fudgey words, but that is what it means. It could be the best idea yet. The Brexiteers are really worried. That is a very good sign.

Set in the mid nineteen nineties, this fast moving thriller lifts the curtain on sex, sleaze and corruption in high places as the long reign of the government totters to an end, following the ousting of the iconic Margaret Thatcher. Downfall In Downing Street catches the mood of those times with a host of fictional characters who engage in political intrigue, sex, money laundering and murder, pursued by an Irish investigative journalist and his girlfriend, the daughter of a cabinet minister found dead in a hotel room after bondage sex.

CLICK IMAGE FOR DETAILS

CLICK HERE FOR U.S.and Amazon.com

The appointment of John Bolton to the post of National Security Adviser to the President was a mistake. Granted he is a conservative hawk in line with the direction of Trump’s thinking, but when it comes to active participation in diplomacy and international affairs, he is a wrecking ball. Unlike the new Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, whose views are mostly similar to Bolton’s and who is possessed of diplomatic skills to enable him to achieve his aims, Bolton is a loud mouth who is utterly clueless about what is in anybody else’s mind but his own. His does more harm than good in government, which is why Bush II had to get rid of him.

After  the triumph of Pompeo’s talks with Kim Jon Un which first produced the agreement, date and place for a meeting, with  all kinds of unilateral moves by NK to ease tensions,  followed by the release of three imprisoned Americans, regarded by Trump as a break through only he, the greatest President ever, could achieve, we have the whole North Korea scenario in the air because Bolton goes on TV to talk about a  Libya style deal with Pyongyang. Clever. Gaddafi, as everyone knows, ended up dead in a ditch.

So Kim Jon Un starts cancelling stuff. Trump needs this meeting to go ahead. If it fails to get off the ground he will look a fool. Moreover after the breakdown with his European allies over Iran and Jerusalem, he has already spent a lot of diplomatic capital. People are waiting to see the returns.

Trump takes pride in the fact that he keeps his campaign promises. This is an important attraction to US voters fed up with electing somebody who then does not deliver as expected. So it should come as no surprise that with a hate filled castigation of the Islamic Republic which governs Iran, he yesterday scrapped the deal. This blog supports the deal and believes building upon it is the best way forward, but if you hate the deal and are glad America has walked away that’s fine, because the deal’s flaws and merits are not the subject of this post.

Two things are significant. Trump, in the style of 1930s dictators in Europe, has torn up a treaty which America had signed. Bang goes a huge slice of instinctive trust and bang goes a diplomatic standard which has prevailed since the destruction of Nazi Germany. I do not care whether Americans are really the goodies and I do not care whether something better may come later. I care that the signature of a world power on a dotted line has to be binding and trustworthy. That view is shared by very many Americans and all the rest of the world.

Next we come to the unsavory element of bullying allies. We are told that companies and countries who do business with Iran will face punitive sanctions. That is fine if it affects only US Companies. But it is so not fine at all if it affects British, French and German companies. Which brings us to the third and final point.

Once American leadership in Europe was acknowledged, nurtured and taken for granted. Now Europe has turned its back on American leadership. It recognizes America as a player and even more a problem under Trump. But Europeans are prepared to go their own way and defy Washington. On this Iran issue the EU, including Britain France and Germany, stand four square with Russia and China. That may not be in America’s long term interests. But the isolationist lobby goading Trump could not care less. They are happy so long as they can keep their guns.

The government is rapidly losing control of its own agenda for Brexit. The EU negotiators are perplexed as they wait for a proposal from the UK which at least stands a chance of gaining approval from the 26 countries remaining in the Union. So far there has been aspiration and platitudes but absolutely no workable plan. The Customs Partnership, with the UK collecting and refunding tariffs on behalf of the EU is absurd. The bureaucracy, this government’s weakest suit, think Windrush, Universal Credit, Breast Cancer Screening, is daunting and the scope for chaos eye popping. The alternative of open borders relying on ‘technology’ is just playground boasting.

Nobody knew at the beginning of Brexit what it meant. Absolutely none of the ardent Brexiteers had a clue. But now we do know and it is perfectly simple. Either we stay in both the customs union and the single market ( a customs union is either exactly the same or not available at all) as the only way to protect jobs, savings, business and our general living standards and expectations for the future. Or we leave without a deal. The borders close, if not ours, certainly theirs and our economy is crippled for a generation. The idea that we will be able to do ‘trade deals with other countries’ is ridiculous. Through the EU we not only have barrier free access to, movement in, employment, domicile and capital wherever we want in the world’s largest market, but we also have highly preferential trade deals with over 50 countries, including free trade with Canada and Japan. The proposition that if we scrap all that and start again we are going to be better off is fundamentally unhinged.

Labour has danced gracefully around awkward arguments while they flew through the political firmament, giving priority to jobs and living standards. That is not longer enough. It is not enough for the younger generation who have thrown their weight to the left and powered the Corbyn advance. Now the Labour leadership has to come off the fence and join the battle. It must declare that the only way forward is to remain in the single market and the customs union and that any alternative threatens more or less everything we value and hold dear. Failure to do that will be a body blow for the Corbyn dream. The high tide of hope will ebb. The future prospects for all will be grim.

This is Labour’s moment in history.

Oh Jeremy Corbyn!

Seize it!

There is a good deal of nonsense being talked about the local elections. So here are some simple truths to put your thinking straight.

First, referring to where political parties are supposed to be at this time in the political cycle is the stuff of the out of date, out of touch and out of time. Those politics have gone. Now we have politics of the moment driven, not by politicians but by opinion on the street, expressed through all forms of social media as everybody shares with everybody else what they think, not what politicians, who are hated, say. When you here some pundit telling you that such and such a person is a bad politician, you know you are looking at a winner. Because the clever politicians are not trusted, they are regarded as unprincipled liars who never deliver.

Yesterday the Tories avoided a meltdown because of the collapse of the UKIP vote, but they suffered some spectacular defeats at the hands of the Lib Dems, who are the clear winners in the contest, winning 75 seats net and four councils. Sir Vince Cable now poses a major threat to May all across the Remain voting South and South East, making a Tory general election victory well nigh impossible.

Corbyn, according to the right wing not really Labour at all  Chuka Umunna, should set up an inquiry to find out why Labour did not ‘win’. In fact Labour is now neck and neck with the Tories in actual votes for the first time in nearly a decade, and had a net gain of 77 seats. Yes they did not fulfill their widest dreams, Wandsworth, Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea? But they won a lot of seats. And yes they failed in Barnet because of their antisemitism issue, but they had a very sold performance right across the country and especially in Remain voting areas.

The Tories think that they won. They had a net loss of 33 seats. These are the same people who thought negotiating Brexit would be a doddle.

A house divided against itself cannot stand. This is one of Lincoln’s enduring sayings. Lincoln and Churchill are perhaps the most often quoted politicians, because they said complicated things simply and promoted challenges  which had to be faced. Our present class of politicians talk nonsense most of the time. They have a phobia about confronting reality. There are a few exceptions. Jeremy Corbyn and Ken Clarke. Vince Cable too perhaps.

The days of the May government are shortening. It is divided on the key issue of the day, Brexit, the negotiations for which are, on all the major sticking points, no further forward than on day one. Within this division there is open warfare between Downing Street advisers who struggle to protect the beleaguered May and ministers in the cabinet who have constitutional responsibility for policy which the advisers, using the prime minister’s authority, seek to usurp. That was Thatcher’s road to ruin and it could well be May’s.

All the solutions put forward by the UK which avoid remaining in the customs union and the single market are either unworkable or unacceptable to the EU. In Ireland a solution which puts the EU border in the Irish Sea will bring down the UK government as the DUP would refuse to vote for it in a confidence motion. Any solution which imposes any sort of border between Ireland and Ulster will collapse any otherwise agreed Brexit deal, as it will be vetoed by the Republic, fully supported by all 26 EU states, the Commission and Council of Ministers. The no deal consequence of that scenario will be vetoed by Parliament. The Lords have already rejected it and there is no majority in the Commons for a suicidal cliff edge leap.

So May and the cabinet are boxed in on all sides. Festering around them are Windrush, NHS funding, Universal Credit, cuts in policing, collapsing court cases because of evidence non-disclosure and a multitude of other pressing aspects of daily life.  Balancing the government’s daily budget has been achieved on the pattern of a poor family which can either afford fuel or food, but not both. Soon the cold and the hungry will unite with the exasperated just managing and those doing well but who fear that soon even they could suffer. And a Brexit deal will have to be signed.

Then it will all be over for the Tory government full stop and the Tory party for a generation.

The intelligence coup declared by the Israeli prime minister is very unimpressive, because all of this evidence was known to exist, had been inspected and was one of the drivers for the nuclear deal Mr. Netanyahu is trying to destroy. If these documents are really a revelation upon which the hinge of history swings, what are they doing in a dusty out of town warehouse? The only person to take this seriously might be President Trump, but even he has some pretty tough advisers who will push back on this material being used as an excuse to pull out of the deal.

The UK government is right to point out the weaknesses of this dramatic presentation and to continue to support the agreement signed by the six parties including the US. The foreign office minister with responsibility for the Middle East, Alistair Burt, made a very wise and reasoned explanation of the government’s position, which this blog supports, on the Today programme this morning.

As readers will know this blog supports Israel’s right to exist and is pro Jewish, but vehemently opposes the Israeli government’s settlement policies, its treatment of the Palestinians and its illegal annexations of other peoples land and property. I support a two state solution and would follow the example of the House of Commons and recognize Palestine as a legitimate state and member of the family of nations.