Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

Readers know this blog is opposed to Brexit on political grounds. I like the idea of a united Europe, I think it is the greatest political achievement since the fall of the Roman Empire, I am proud of my European citizenship and I love being able to come, go, buy, sell, live wherever and as I please. I think anybody who wants to change this is bonkers, but when of 17 million of my fellow Brits voted to leave, I accepted the outcome and hoped that everything would, as I expected it to, work out okay, even if not to my choice and the other 16 million plus who voted like me to stay.

What has followed is the biggest collapse of competence by any government in our rich history as a democracy. And it is not just the government at fault. The entire political class is now a seething cauldron of discord, sniping and abuse, with not a workable idea, nor a common thread between the lot of them, or if that is too harsh, most of them. Now there are just six months left to go. But as this blog has asked time and again, to what?

Here is a snippet. The cabinet met last Thursday to go over its latest no deal preparations. There were various briefings as well as the publication of the latest Notices or Advice Notes or whatever they are. The bits about driving licences, passports, roaming charges and general silly annoyances to a settled life routine that not a single leave voter had given one moment’s thought to, grabbed the headlines. But the real news was hidden.

Among the cabinet briefers was the governor of the Bank of England who was smuggled in and out through the back door, who laid out potential financial consequences at least in the short term, of a no deal Brexit. This reinforced other warnings from lawyers, scientists, medics and of course business and industry. The notion that house values would fall by a third or more was like a stake driven into the Tory heart. The reason that there was little said after the meeting was that the cabinet was then, and still is, in a state of shock. Finally it had tasted reality. Such was the acid flavour, Leavers and Remainers alike around that long table of blown up egos and bad tempered discord, were united in one overriding truth. Voters would never swallow it.

This may be a turning point. We must wait and see.

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The railways have never been so popular, not because the franchise holders run a wonderful service, but because they are the fastest and most convenient way for people to travel mostly longer distances, or for commuting. The track system is already publicly owned, but although the rest of it is let out in franchise contracts, the government retains responsibility for the delivery of the service. Which is now falling apart. Not unlike the government.

Labour is right to say enough is enough and that under their party in government, the whole thing will be taken back into public ownership. One can only hope that soon they will be given an opportunity to put this promise into effect.

There has been widespread incredulity, derision even, of the halting, stilted and peculiar interview on RT with the alleged GRU agents involved in the Salisbury poisoning. This blog is not proposing to embroil itself in this. The evidence, including micro traces of Novichok in their hotel room, plus CCTV footage which contradicts their innocent tourist claims, is conclusive.

Yet there are questions. The GRU is one of the most sophisticated military intelligence agencies in the world and it seems extraordinary that such highly trained personnel would act with such abandon, almost waving at the CCTV as they go by, when engaged in a covert assassination mission. Or that such people would chuck the unused poison in a dustbin or park. And yes, how did they get it through customs? And  if the highest authorities in the Kremlin were involved, surely they did not expect such a shambolic response to their orders, which let us remember, failed completely to kill the targets. It was an innocent and vulnerable civilian who died, not a traitorous double agent.

There is a lot about this story which we do not know and maybe never will. Two things are clear, aside from the damage to the Salisbury economy, the use of weaponized nerve agents by a foreign power of British soil and the death of an innocent citizen, politically it has not been unhelpful to  May.  But to Putin, allegedly the author of the project, it has been an absolute disaster. That fact alone poses yet more questions.

It is hard to think of a time in the last two centuries when the British people have been so completely let down by the entire political class.  It does not matter whether you voted for or against Brexit. Having voted and decided the issue everybody on all sides expected the decision to be put into effect with the minimum fuss and in timely fashion. Just look what has happened. For the first nine months, nothing. Then uncertainty, wishful thinking, ideology, pipe dreams, balderdash, everything you can think of until here we are, less than two hundred days away and still we don’t know. Away from what exactly? We don’t know that either.

In truth what was promised to voters was never there. What is there turns out to be so complicated and multi dimensional, that nobody, no group, no party can agree on any single detail. So they have fallen back on fighting each other. It is not party against party. Labour has divisions for sure, but to some extent they have the luxury of opposition so it is permissible. But the Tory party leads the government and it is not just split. It is busting apart in all directions. Meanwhile Boris, who fancies himself as Tory PM in waiting, the vulgar one of several, is lost in a swamp of his own making to do with suicide vests.

The latest is that the hard core Tory Brexiteers, led by the peculiar old Etonian who does not do nappies, having trailed the publication of its Brexit plan, has pulled it, because it cannot agree the contents.

Wow!

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Once again this self absorbed narcissist has launched a broadside upon the government he was once a part of and now wants to take over. Once again it contained a tasteless headline grab.Those who have any direct knowledge of suicide bombings are appalled, as we all should be.

Once again there are no specific plans which stand any chance of getting through Europe or the Commons. We all remember the Red Bus with its big lie painted on the side. That is the best way to think of Boris. Publicity at any price. A vulgar showman and a stranger to truth. Do not be fooled it is about you, your future and the future of your children. It is all about him.

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Chuka Ummuna is a polished and erudite communicator. He is a powerful politician. He is slightly left of centre. But he is not a socialist and he should not be in the Labour Party. He is, in fact, a left wing Tory. He wants Corbyn to call off ‘the dogs’. But dogs only bark at strangers in their midst.

There is really no such actual place as the centre unless there is a left and right. After the huge social revolution begun in 1945 and led by Labour, the centre shifted to the left and with it, after its shock defeat by Attlee, Churchill’s Conservative party. Eden, Macmillan, Home and Heath stayed there in a consensus which saw a huge rise in the standards of living of all the sub professional and working classes, as well as massive improvements in health, housing and education. Then came Thatcher.

For sound political reasons she swam with a tide of anxiety about the drift downwards in the competitive position of British manufacturing and appalling industrial relations, by far the worst in Europe. The state had become unwieldy and business people spent more time arguing with unions than innovating and investing. She took several steps to the right and the centre followed her. Blair scampered after her legacy and governed from what he called the centre, in reality it was Thatcher’s consensus, and in the process he and Gordon Brown lost the support over four elections  of nearly 40% of Labour votes. On top of that all the worst features of market driven asset inflating capitalism flowered, leaving the most distorted economic model for many generations. Hardly surprisingly the tide has now changed. It flows strongly to the left.

Labour has returned to its founding purpose, discovered its true heritage, once again become the party of the socialist tradition and the dominant party of the left. Rightly it believes in democracy and most of its members want to have an opportunity to choose their parliamentary candidates; understandable as the party is not of the Establishment, is the voice of the people and invested with a strong democratic ideal. The fact that Chuka Umunna and some of his colleagues equate this to being harassed by ‘dogs’ shows that the Labour party is no place for them and they should leave it as soon as possible.

Tony Blair has come forward to make one of his big interventions, which excite Westminster but which the country largely ignores. This is because the myth of Tony Blair was busted long ago. But this time he argues that it may never be possible to recover the ‘Labour Party’ from Corbyn, who poses an existential threat from his leadership. This is such nonsense.

Under Tony Blair’s New Labour  regime he won his first election with 13.5 million votes in 1997. In 2001 another victory with 10.4 million. Then a further win in 2005 with 9.5 million. Finally Brown lost in 2010 with 8.6 million. You can see that the New Labour experiment saw a hemorrhage of Labour voters , most of whom stayed at home. Labour won elections because the Lib Dems polled well and the moderate right split its vote between them and the Tories, making victory for either impossible.

But make no mistake. New Labour was a disaster and  the traditional  working class and the young abandoned it. Corbyn has won them back. In 2017 he polled 12.8 million votes. Moreover he now heads the largest political party in Europe with over 600,000 full members and with additional registered supporters, 800,000. This is more than all the other political parties in all parts of the UK put together.

Yes Tony, your hybrid type of Labour is gone. You kept alive all the unworkable nostrums of Thatcherism and prolonged an era when the rich became richer and the poor became poorer and as the gap between them grew, there matured the worst possible kind of economic model. One where the rich become richer at the expense of the poor.

It’s over Tony. Time to shut up.