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.

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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.