Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

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To stand for election as leader of the Conservative Party was a mistake because Theresa May has neither the imagination nor flexibility for successful leadership in times of division and change.

She tried to build a coalition between two opposing views within the Tory party, when she should have been building a coalition for a sensible Brexit across the House of Commons from like minded MPs from all parties. This would have given her a substantial majority.

She failed to understand, like many others, that the Union would not survive, in the long term, a hard Brexit. First Northern Ireland will link up with the the Republic of Ireland to preserve the Peace Agreement and to remain in the EU, which is what the majority  in NI voted for . Later Scotland will peel off to join the EU. Spain has declared Scotland will be welcome.

She also failed to see that to preserve the Union and avoid acute social and economic disruption in the short to medium term, the ‘clean break’ notion of Brexit was undeliverable.  Both require the UK remaining in the Customs Union and the Single Market.

She called an election and lost it.

May then made the big mistake of inviting the DUP, a Leave party, out off step with Northern Ireland which voted remain, to be the partners to prop up her government which, because of her other mistakes, was now fatally split on the key issue of the day. During the critical months of negotiation this gave the hard Brexiteers too strong a hand, which when they finally played it, turned out to be much weaker than they thought at every level. This finally showed her attempts to appease them not only futile, but unnecessary.

The outcome of this string of leadership mis-steps is political chaos and a national crisis. May believes she can tough it out, even suffer the loss of the vote for her deal tomorrow, and somehow find a way through to deliver a workable Brexit which will satisfy everybody. That could turn out to be one of the most remarkable ‘leadership from the edge’ success stories ever,  or her biggest mistake of all.

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The shocking fact that this country has more people in prison than any other democracy in Europe is one which has disturbed many people for a long time. Rory Stewart, the prisons minister, is now proposing a consultation on eliminating short term sentences of six months or less, because statistics show them to be a launch pad for continuous re-offending.

This is a very positive move and one can only hope that the government has the capability to consult and act in a timely fashion. But it is not just about short sentences. It is about restoring the whole fabric of the criminal justice system, hacked into by searing cuts under the austerity programme.

Sufficient prison staff, a proper training and rehabilitation programme, enough police officers especially neighbourhood foot patrols, sufficient resources generally for a real attack upon the drugs and gang culture, are just a few on a long list of essentials for a twenty first century response to modern crime at all levels.

The latest concessions from the Work and Pensions Secretary to reduce the hardship of Universal Credit on the most vulnerable and needy is very welcome, but it cannot gloss over the fact that this a complicated and confusing benefit which will never work properly in practice. It may be clever, it may be intellectually elegant and it could even be brilliant in theory. But the nature of people in crisis, many of whom have various limitations of access and understanding, added to the administrative limitations of the public service machine, as we see time and again, means that it is not workable in the universal application for which it was designed.

Labour have promised to close it down. Since they are not in power but the Tories are, it falls to the government to eat humble pie put a stop to a flagship which after eight years, is still not fit to put to sea. Meanwhile the outrage of  dependency on food banks, a dependency which rockets in areas where U.C. is rolled out, is a shocking commentary upon the inequalities which lie behind rising public anger, of which Brexit and the trouble it is causing, is the most obvious, but not the only, symptom.

The vote on May’s deal is set for Tuesday. It represents a climatic moment in a story of political confusion arising from the biggest failure of governance in GB’s peacetime history. But it will not end there because if the vote is lost absolutely nobody anywhere knows what will happen next, taking uncertainty about this country’s future to an undreamed of level. And if the vote is won, it only means that we are leaving in an orderly fashion, i.e. with our bags packed and furniture neatly stacked in a van, but still no idea where we are eventually going to live because years of negotiations over just about everything still lie ahead.

A gobsmacked world looks on aghast as the one country with a default off orderly and decisive government, home of the Mother of Parliaments, product of over a thousand years of evolution of a unique and flexible constitution adaptable to the times, has imploded into ungovernable confusion over the major political choice it democratically made. This is made worse by the spectacle of the EU, which GB has chosen to leave, made up of not one country but twenty seven, standing resolute and united upon its response to the national self-harm unfolding on its borders in its neighbour.  A neighbour who time and again has answered the call of duty to rescue Europe from its own quarrels and fights and played a major role in shaping the very Union it has now decided to abandon.

At the heart of this disaster is one political party, the Tories, split on Europe for decades, which called a referendum without understanding what Brexit actually entailed, lost it, continued in government after a change of leader, who called an election and lost that, but carried on to deliver the current turmoil, which even even in the febrile politics of Greece or Italy would be too embarrassing to allow.

Yet here it just goes on and on.

Trump has become his own worst enemy. His mid-east policy, especially in regard to Syria and Saudi Arabia, is a mess. In recent days Pompeo and Bolton have been in the region saying opposite things. Turkey is furious that Trump appears to be back peddling on his Syria withdrawal announcement, anger made worse by the Bolton request for Turkey to protect the Kurdish militias which rightly or wrongly, Ankara regard as terrorists and have done for decades.

Meanwhile China and Russia have cemented their positions in their own spheres of interest and China now holds the keys to ending the trade war Trump started, and the ongoing dialogue with North Korea over its nuclear programme. Europe has given up on Trump and now regards his presidency as something to put up with and manage as best it can, while increasingly ignoring the Trump White House.

And then there is the Wall. This blog is not going to argue the case one way or another. It is worth observing that the majority of Americans are against it, the wall and affordable healthcare were the issues that propelled the Democrats to their major victory in the House, of all the terrorist suspects detained by the US in 2018, only about a half a dozen came from Mexico, 90% of all illicit drugs entering America come through legal points of entry and the nine minute broadcast from the White House yesterday was a bravura performance in the black art of Fake News.

Trump’s poll ratings are falling and the Republican party itself is now becoming de-stabilized by a chaotic White House and a wild card incumbent. Trump may yet surprise and recover. He has done so before. Now everything hinges on the economy. If that falters he might even fail to get the Republican Nomination to run in 2020. He would probably run anyway as a spoiler. The rest you can work out.