Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

The terrifying upsurge of violence in the Middle East is shocking.  It is also all too regular an occurrence in a cycle of hatred and discord which seems almost everlasting. Arab and Jew occupy the same region and somehow have to be friends.

Some progress towards this obvious goal has be made recently, but the core problem, the absence of a formally recognised Palestinian state with defined boundaries and secured with a peace treaty with Israel, remains in hopeless disarray. So does the fantasy that some kind of Greater Israel can inclusively absorb and recognise Palestinian  territories and their populations into a harmonious state. The civil unrest in Israel itself is a new dimension which makes things worse not better.

There will and can be no solution until Palestine becomes a recognised state and Israel must be made to accept that. Then both states can be required to become responsible members of the international order and all its institutions. The present mix of Israel in continuous breach of UN resolutions it does not like, hell bent on illegal annexations and evictions of other people’s land which in turn provokes terrorism and violence in a desperate response, is a totally bankrupt political ideology which this country should be robust in condemning.

Instead our Foreign Office shuffles from one platitude to the next in a cowardly avoidance of addressing the real problems. Meanwhile as we wring our hands while ministers waffle catch phrases from platform to platform across the media, civilians on both sides are subjected to  bombings and rocketings which slaughter and terrify without justification by any civilised measure.

As a small child I was under bombardment from the air with missiles, bombs and rockets during WWII. I know what it is like. This should not be happening.

The most remarkable thing about it was that it was delivered by the Queen herself, flawlessly and without any stumbles at the age of 95, having in recent months lost her husband, had a family bust up and been locked down by Covid. No stamina or mental health issues here for sure. Whether you are a fanatical royalist, lukewarm about the monarchy like me or a committed republican, this was gold star.

Now about the content. It was big on aspiration but spare on detail. It dodged the most critical question of social care. The Tories have been in power for eleven years now and have continually promised, fudged and failed to deliver on this central flaw, not only in the welfare state but in the way our society is organised and with what priorities. After Boris promised at the beginning of his tenure on the steps of Downing street that he had a plan to fix it and he would, the vacuous remarks in the Speech, if not untypical of his showman style, were disappointing.

The proposal to sort out  some aspects of our unwritten constitution is on the other hand bold, welcome and right. It seems to be willing to deal with two points. The first is the idiocy of a fixed term parliament linked to a first past the post electoral system with a constitutional fudge which invests enormous power in the person of the monarch but refuses to allow the incumbent to exercise any of it, without the express direction of parliament which, in all matters, is sovereign.

The result was  chaos during the two years of May’s premiership following the loss of her majority in 2017, when parliament thought it could become the executive, but could not agree on any plan it wanted to execute. What should have happened (the Queen was unwilling to intervene,  her grandfather George V would have) is  either a national government or May going back to the country for a specific mandate. Finally Johnson was able to engineer this, but by a procedural manoeuvre rather than exercising the traditional reserve power of all previous prime ministers before the now tarnished Cameron, to ask for and get a dissolution. So restoring that power is very welcome.

The second point is this. You cannot have a Supreme Court making political judgements, as it did twice during the Brexit chaos, without a codified constitution which lays down clearly the rules by which government must govern. Since England, at least, seems incapable of agreeing to such a thing, the only other option is to limit by statute the power of the Supreme Court to rule on issues of  governance. This is, it would appear, the plan and it if is it is good.

Well that is a big and complicated question. With multiple answers. But the rot set in under Tony Blair.  Having triumphed in 1997 he won two more general elections, but lost votes at each until at the fourth, under Brown’s leadership, the loss of votes for Labour since 1997 totalled nearly 5 million.

In the pursuit of power Blair shifted Labour from its working class roots to a left of centre middle class party, which embraced most of the dogma of Thatcherism and did little to correct the terrible imbalances in her economic model. It ignored or took for granted the Labour industrial heartlands north of London  and especially Scotland.

So the working class either stayed at home or voted Lib Dem or later UKIP and SNP. Corbyn in his first general election in 2017 recovered Labour’s lost votes in England and Wales, coming in just short of thirteen million. That compared to Blair’s final 9.5 million, Brown’s rock bottom 8.6 million and Milliband’s 9.3 million, which included a wipe out for Labour in Scotland.

In 2019 Labour dropped back to 10.3 million, which was by no means its worst performance in votes, but it was a disaster in seats. This was due to the famous crumbling red wall. That happened because voters there, having being energised in 2017 by Corbyn’s left wing offer, lost faith in Labour. The seemingly endless and intractable row about anti-Semitism, the muddles and many faceted strands of Labour’s Brexit policy (Kier Starmer directed), the fear that it had become a Remain party and the economic illiteracy of its  spending plans, tipped lifelong Labour areas to turn blue with anger and frustration.

So to blame any individual, even the colourless Starmer, who is deadly against the blustering Boris in the Commons, but becomes invisible in a crowd of three on the campaign trail, is pointless. It is not all bad news. Labour had some good wins, especially in the regional mayor contests, and my have laid the foundation to build a different kind of Labour fit for the modern age, when so much is wrong in the country and crying out to be put right.

First the party has to unite, second build on its strengths and third reconnect with voters in its heartlands, at least as well as it seems to be connecting in Wales and some of the regions. A while back I wrote a little book called Turn Left To Power. The biggest problem for Labour is that it is Boris who has turned left. And he certainly has gained power. He thinks he can keep it. Labour’s mission is to take it back.

The G 7 summit is of foreign ministers, with representatives from guest democracies in attendance, is currently meeting in London. A major item on the agenda is how to respond to and protect from  threats to democracy posed by autocratic powers, namely Russia and China. Unfortunately the stark fact is that the greatest threat to democracy comes not from without, but from within. Put simply, it comes from the multiple structural, social and economic failures of democracy itself.

For far too long it has been a given  that democracy was in itself so pure, that within it anything goes. I am not convinced this was ever true, but it is very not true now. And the problem for the image of democracy is that it shows. No longer is there certainty that the freedom to do as you like and say what you want are the only freedoms of value. No longer is it a given that the democratic state serves the people. There is a growing perception that it serves the elite.

Its economic model favours assets over labour. Often it favours private enterprise over the state, with resulting shortfalls in infrastructure, capability and support. Public services operate under varying degrees of financial restraint and scarce resources. Rewards for the professional classes are generous, often excessive, but for ordinary workers who keep the wheels of modern life turning, their lives are ones of long hours and low reward. Costs of housing,  private childcare and social support are out of control and for those who have to rely on state support, these services are inadequate or non-existent.

The pandemic has exposed many truths lurking thus far unseen. When it comes to the crunch it is not the lawyers and hedge fund managers you need. It is the bin collectors, the healthcare workers, the people who provide light, power and connectivity. When comparison is made between the Covid performance of the world’s largest democracy, India,  with the world’s largest authoritarian regime, China, China wins hands down.

Because of the absence of a written constitution laying out clear rules for government, Boris Johnson has been able to use the almost limitless powers of the prime minister and cabinet to curb freedoms and drive through programmes in the pandemic emergency. After early mistakes and a good deal of incompetence,  the Johnson government is delivering world beating outcomes in both vaccine rollout and emergency financial aid. The more democratic EU has done rather less well.

So rather than blame outsiders for threats to their equilibrium, real though they may be, the G7 and its guests also need to take a long hard look at themselves. They will find much they need to fix.