Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

It is now widely understood that Boris is the most left wing Tory prime minister since Harold Macmillan. He was telling everyone who would listen off stage at the party conference that the economic model of the last 40 years had failed. For ‘economic model’ read Thatcherism. Or perhaps the literal interpretations of Thatcherism which have formed the bedrock of Tory faith for nearly two generations.

Unfortunately Boris is not about detail. Fortunately Rishi Sunak, his chancellor, is. A lot of details, especially feel good items, have been either briefed or leaked over the last several days, as the tradition of absolute secrecy concerning the contents of the chancellor’s red box have been more or less abandoned. But these have been things which apparently will happen. So far we do not know how they are going to happen. How they can be afforded and who will pay, what will be borrowed and how much will be printed.

Before any judgment can be offered about the future of Boris and his plan to transform the economy for the better, we need to have some answers to these many questions. In detail.

Hopefully tomorrow we will get them.

Even I, who had never met him and disagreed profoundly with his political views on many issues, will forever recall the shock of the moment when my phone pinged a news alert last Friday, telling of the stabbing to death of Sir David Amess. I recalled at once the moment in the 1992 general election campaign when the holding of his then Basildon  seat for the Tories signalled the end of Labour’s expectation that by the morning Kinnock would have led it back to power. So the shock and grief to his family, his friends and his colleagues cannot even be imagined. And of course the national wound of the murder of Jo Cox five years ago was at once reopened.

The Amess family, extraordinarily dignified and forgiving in their grief, have led calls for a kinder more conciliatory tone in the conduct of the business of politics. There is a widespread feeling that the tone is wrong and hate is now a legitimate part of how we go about public life. There is a nostalgia for more restrained and united times. Unfortunately the angry words we everywhere hear and see are the symptom of something, not the cause.

That something is a widespread experience of a perceived failure of the political class to deliver on its promises. For the first time for many decades the rising generation is predicted to be worse off than those who came before. The gap between rich and poor is getting wider with each passing year. Covid revealed real differences in life expectancy and chances between ordinary people and the professional classes. Public services are everywhere stretched to breaking point. Food banks have record  numbers of users.

There has been a chronic failure to deliver, from Brexit ‘freedom’ to climate change action. There is a feeling that nothing works as it should and that things will get worse. The public is utterly fed up with broken  political promises, which vastly outnumber the few which are kept.

When Nye Bevan described the Tories as vermin, nobody imagined that MPs’ lives where at risk. Because then, whatever the language, the standard of living was rising and life chances were improving by the day. There was anger, but it was used as a driver to build better times.

It is not just the political language that needs to change now. It is the integrity of the political offer. It has to subject its language to the truth test and deliver the promises for which voters in good faith cast their ballots.

This blog will correct widespread misunderstandings about the ownership of money, especially at the heart of government.  Thatcher stated that the state had no money, it was the people’s money. She was completely wrong. That is why her economic model is now collapsing.

Money is a measure. It is issued by, belongs to and always remains, the property of the state. The state is greater than the individual. Witness the ungoverned spaces across the middle east, many parts of Africa and parts of Asia and all can see how critical a functioning state is to the welfare and life quality of everyone. The state comes first as a structure. The individual can and should have great freedom, within the state, of how to live and what to choose and, in a democracy, determines who shall be in charge and with what programme.

Therefore there is no such thing as Taxpayers’ Money.  It belongs, all of it, to the state. The state keeps as much as is needed to provide the protection, services, infrastructure, health and security individuals need either for personal or business needs. The rest may be kept by individuals to use as they wish within the law. It is for the state to determine how much it needs to do its job and the individual can retain for business or personal use, the remainder.

I realise that if you belong to a right wing think tank or studied politics at certain of our famous universities, this little piece may  make you want to throw up. But as the coming days and weeks unfold, you will begin to see what I mean.

The Party Conference Season is drawing to a close amid an extraordinary time of anxiety and distrust. Politicians are regarded with suspicion because they talk up but deliver down.

Many shortages exist and are increasing all across the economy, affecting everyday life for everybody and every sector.  In this febrile atmosphere the Prime Minister rubbishes the entire economic model which has been the bedrock of the Tory party’s  philosophy  since Margaret Thatcher gained the leadership in 1975. So ingrained has it become that few are old enough to have had adult engagement with the Keynesian model which dominated before. Even Blair/ Brown only tinkered at the margins but did little to depart from the basic ideas.

The big centrepiece idea is that command economies do not work and that the market leading and supply and demand responding, is the only pure economic theory upon which free people can rely. The market as driver, the balance of supply and demand as regulator. The Tory party, or better said, the Boris government is now moving towards an interventionist model where the state sets conditions and everyone has to change to meet them. Brexit is obvious as the biggest game changer, but it is turning out to be a much bigger game than anybody expected, especially its promoters.

Added to that there are multiple crises building , including the out of control energy market, inflation, rising interest rates, distribution bottlenecks, labour shortages; the list grows longer every day. Boris’s speech, which wowed his party’s conference, has been almost universally ridiculed as scant on detail about how he is going to achieve his lofty ambition to change the whole broken economic model. Perhaps the biggest potential crisis of all is the mounting fear that the government does not understand what it is trying to do, nor have a clue how to do it.

Older folk remember the Winter of Discontent. Unless Boris and Co get a grip, the winter coming could be one of very real hardship and suffering for very many people.