Malcolm Blair-Robinson's Blog

2025: Now Or Never

The government is forever talking about growth and reform, much as previous governments have done in recent times, yet somehow there is a growing scepticism that it will fare any better. Or if better only at the margin. Right across the spectrum of public administration and national utilities there is a sense of late or non delivery.

Starmer knows this. But he does not know quite what to do. So there is a suggestion that the civil service must stop ‘managing decline’ and a plea to regulators and watchdogs to come up with good ideas.

The best idea would be to close them all down. We have created a byzantine muddle of regulars, watchdogs and forecasters, all with statutory functions, which makes it impossible to govern.  The country is stagnating and has had flatlining growth more or less for the whole of this century. Productivity per head is lower than all competitors and partners. Huge Departments of State preside over the greatest accumulation of non-delivery and under performance in our history.

Government has to take back control and own outcomes. Smaller Ministries with responsibility to deliver in short order, with  ministers’ heads on the block for failure, with nobody and nothing to hind behind or blame. During the war we had a Ministry of Aircraft Production when we needed planes, a Ministry of Food to make sure we had enough to eat, to name but two.

It is very nearly too late to put this right, the culture of safety first and minimising risk is suffocating the country. Process trumps outcome at every level. Due process is a holy grail.

Well its time to come alive and get real.

Starmer’s Visions: Deliver or Disappoint

There is a bit of a blitz this weekend from the Downing Street machine talking up the government’s determination to fulfil its mandate to reform and renew our country.

Nobody doubts the good intentions. But the public, according to opinion polls, the majority, are now wondering whether Starmer can deliver. Neither does anyone doubt the energy and commitment of the prime minister, who is constantly visible at key news points across the world, talking up the UK ‘s engagement and leadership in all the major issues of the day. Wars, trade, climate change are all firmly in his grip.

But he has one big challenge that overrides all the others and drowns out all the fine words. The UK,  especially England, is in a process of continuous decline. Its institutions, its system of government, its economic model, its ability to pay its way, its understanding of what money is and who is supposed to control it are all in varying states of decay and disfunction. Until that is understood the grandest of designs will do no better  than tinker at the margins. This is not just a government problem. It is one in which we all share.

You can tell these frightening truths are beginning to dawn. Nobody now feels confident about the future. The verities upon which we have built our lives are crumbling. They are crumbling because they are flawed. There is a future and it can be golden. Not for a few but for all. We will have to work at it.

And we need to start soon.

A Tougher Labour Begins To Reveal Itself: But Is It Vulnerable?

Initially it seemed to most people, certainly to me, that the new government was on the right track, but because Labour  had been out of power for 14 years, it was politically rather clumsy and insensitive. The national insurance rise, the fuel allowance, the farmers and their death duties all came across as attacking the vulnerable who had voted for them. Attacking the innocent to protect the guilty. And, of course, to calm the markets.

The Prime Minister, in his Mail On Sunday article today declares a crackdown on benefit cheats and abusers and also people, many of them judging by the benefits bill, who could work if they made an effort, but prefer not to. He chose to use this aggressive right Sunday paper as his platform. Their readers will love it.

When you put the harsh budget, the ruthless crackdown with tough custodial sentences for rioters without previous convictions, champing at the bit for Ukraine to fire Storm Shadows into Russia, promising to respect the ICC and arrest Netanyahu if he shows up here and a whole lot of reforming legislation in the pipeline, it shows a new incarnation of Labour which many old style socialists will feel is more right than left.

Starmer himself is everywhere to be heard and seen and is mostly regarded as a big improvement on the string of incompetents marking the last few years of unstable Tory government. Yet his approval rating has crashed big time. This could be because his style is more of an energetic national manager, rather than an inspiring national leader.

Of course Labour is safe because of its huge Commons majority. It is also vulnerable because this is based on 34% of the national vote. In other words only a third of voters actually voted for it. Our archaic first past the post voting system operating now with  multiple parties, makes the UK one of the very few truly democratic countries in the world where such a distorted electoral outcome is possible.

The government talks about a ten year programme to put the country back on its feet. But people who have been living for too long in an era of decline and decay want much quicker results than that. Especially the rising under forty generation that helped give Labour its victory. If tangible improvements in all the key areas are not there for everyone to see within four years, this  government will find itself out on its ear.

2010 A Blueprint for Change Link

2010 A Blueprint For Change: Amazon.co.uk: Blair-Robinson, Malcolm: 9781845493912: Books

Ukraine Missile War. The Killing Must Stop

Not only is there now an exchange of missiles between Russia and Ukraine, but also a war of words about them and what might come next.

This is a moment to step back and take stock. As regular readers know I have been against this war from the very beginning, because  the end would never justify the lives which it would cost.  Moreover I have always said this is a war among Russians in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

It is not an attack upon NATO or the West. It is a direct consequence of a failure to engage with Russia and draw her into the European family, of which she is a critical part, after the end of the Cold War. I have written extensively about this elsewhere, in particular in my 2009 book 2010 a Blueprint for Change . So I will say no more now.

I have also refuted from the beginning this notion that Russia started the fight. It was Ukraine that allowed mass demonstrations of west leaning parties to overthrow the east leaning democratically elected president. When the  ethnic Russian speaking eastern provinces took fright at what was happening in Kiev and declared themselves independent, the Ukraine Army was sent in.

This led to Russian volunteers arriving to help what they saw as their fellow countrymen. We know the rest. As for Crimea. This has been Russian from the dawn of modern history. If you want to argue that Russia illegally annexed it, I would argue that the illegal bit was Khrushchev gifting it to Ukraine (he was Ukrainian) to mark his seventieth birthday. At the time Ukraine was, like Russia, a part of the Soviet Union. But it was certainly not in the birthday gift box.

But whatever the arguments of the past, we are here now and we have to stop the killing, fix a peace and give the rising generation of both countries a future free of the threat of death on the battlefield. There are several possible compromises and nobody is going to be completely satisfied. But it can be done. Best to start with a fundamental that surely everyone agrees on.

Life is better than death.

Labour And The Farmers

Labour has made a mess of its farming inheritance tax idea. It is has backfired badly. At a time when the major priority should be to maximise home production of foods of all kinds, there should be a coherent plan to do so, with an enthused and re-energised farming community on side. Instead, the small farmers especially, feel under attack and threatened.

When looked at in detail the proposals are less onerous and better thought out than the headlines and anger which surrounds them. The IHT rate is half the normal level and in many cases the threshold will be £3 million. The payments can be spread over ten years if needed.

But there are wider considerations which do require serious reform and which must be tackled. There is all the difference between land in continuous agricultural production by active farmers and vast land banks held by billionaires to avoid inheritance tax.

While nobody wants to protect the billionaires, who should indeed pay inheritance tax on all their assets, everybody wants to help hard working farmers give us  food security in a modern eco framework. An agricultural development plan is urgently needed which enables farmers to make a good living.

The introduction of proper production quotas for genuine farmers and farming families in exchange for benefits and subsides  would be a big step forward. Too much of their livelihood is in the hands of the big supermarkets whose methods are often exploitative and nasty and end up by killing off production rather than increasing it.

Starmer and Reeves need to get a grip of this.

Welby and the C of E.

Welby was right to resign as Archbishop. Nobody could possibly support his earlier decision to stay on or believe his assertions he did not know years ago exactly what Smyth was up to and what went on in those youth camps when he, Welby, was present.

Unfortunately this latest drama in the public life of our creaking establishment follows a familiar theme. Gross injustice or abuse, denial, prioritise reputational damage over truth. Lack of timely support for victims.

Then a long winded public enquiry so that   ‘nothing like it ever never happens again.’

But of course it does. Again. And again. All the Christian churches have a serious, significant and ongoing problem with both historical and current abuse. It spills over into their public schools and into their affiliated charities and institutions. The Roman Catholics are as bad if not worse.

It is perhaps a very good moment to detach the Church of England from the State. It has abused its privileged status once too often. We now live in a modern world with a different set of values. Care, love and responsibility trump reputational damage every time. There is a new faith too. Faith in truth above lies.

Labour, Trump and the Changes to Come.

The election of Trump, not by some quirk of electoral college distribution, but with a popular vote majority, 312 EC votes, the Senate and likely the House, was unforeseen by everyone and a political earthquake for the West.

Last time Trump’s Presidency began in chaos with no plan and very little understanding of how Federal government worked in the US. This time there is a plan and an army of specially trained new staff to run each of the major departments of state according to  trending ideas of right wing populist nationalism for which his country voted with such enthusiasm.

The plan is to dismantle the American Empire, withdraw behind tariffs and trade barriers, become once again isolationist and stop paying for Europe’s defence. He will do a deal with Putin to end the Ukraine war and at some point, while giving Israel an apparent free hand, he will surround it with red lines.

He likes dictators and strongmen and will do deals with them in the interests of his new American dream and everyone else will have to like it or lump it. He will make America great again, but on his terms and to his image. And that is what the voters have mandated him to do. In the end it will be more measured and nuanced, that is Trump’s style, but the principles will remain. Clearly the impact on the dollar, as well as the diplomatic crises which would follow the headlong implementation of every promise made by Trump in the election campaign, would be severe.

But to the West, which for far too long has regarded America as its paymaster and protector, it will be a tsunami of change  for which it is unprepared, politically, economically and militarily. Adjustments to economic models and foreign policy will have to be made to accommodate the reality of Trump and the uncertainties of his style of isolationism and raw power. America first is the slogan. Trump first is the fact. He would say there is no difference.

For Labour, unsettled by aspects of Downing Street’s administration, the Reeves budget and the slaughter in Gaza, this is all a bit overwhelming. But it is not all bad news. Because very little of the status quo is working properly  at any level and an  audit of everything could reveal the greatest opportunities for growth and prosperity for the UK since the end of WW2.

But that is beyond the scope of this blog and to explain I will need to settle down to producing at the very least a dissertation, maybe even a book. I am not sure I want to. I will think about it.

Trump’s Earthquake: A Before and After Moment

Nobody saw it coming, least of all Donald Trump. But an extraordinary coalition of Americans united to give him the very kind of power that he so admires in dictators. He has the Electoral College, the Popular Vote, the House, the Senate and the Supreme Court all with majorities in his favour. The world is now gripped with anxiety about what powers he will use and to what end.

Let us pause a moment and ask ourselves the question, which shocked Democrats will be asking for sure. Why? The answer is simple. People are fed up with governments which promise and don’t deliver, who seem remote from the realities of life which include falling living standards for ordinary people and general dysfunction within many aspects of public services and  institutions. Yet taxes are high and expenditure vast.

They live in economies run by central bankers funding markets with limitless resources which seem always to end up in the pockets of the few rather than the many. Crime, organised by international gangs, is a constant threat, while unnecessary wars rage out of control.  Trump promises to put a stop to all of it. No wonder he won big.

We know what he says he is going to do, but with Trump what he actually does is often a bit different. But he will certainly change everything on the dusty political map of what we call the West. He will end the era where America  always has your back and always pays the bills.

I have to say, although  rather frightening, that is for all us Europeans a very good thing.

Budget 2024: So Will it Work?

No. Or to soften that short dismissal, not as the government would have hoped either short or long term. And it will be very difficult for the Labour party in the country to explain. But there was good stuff, buried in the noise around fuel payments and death duties on farmland.

There was for the first time for over a decade an absolute commitment to growing the real economy, in other words building new wealth rather than inflating fixed assets. There was also a frank recognition that the public services were on the brink, along with much of the crumbling infrastructure, all starved of investment for the entire period of Tory rule.

But there was absolutely no recognition that the economic model was blown, so that tinkering with book keeping and setting up more golden rules will have no lasting effect. The tax hikes will do little to produce extra money because they will lead to contraction rather than growth as the OBR forecasts now confirm. For the record 1. something or less  p.a. does not count as growth on this blog and bumping along the flatline will never balance the books.

Initially the markets showed signs of taking fright. They have settled down but are watching nervously. Meanwhile the money the the government will have to fork out to pay for its borrowing is going up not down. And its borrowing ambitions are eye watering still for its day to day expenses, even if you forgive as urgently needed the investment segment of it.

Politically the budget has been bad for Labour in the short term and boosted Tory morale as they elect a new leader. There is no doubt in voter’s minds that the Tories made the mess. What they are now nervously waiting  to see is whether Labour has made it worse. The next year will make or break the Starmer government. It may have a super majority in parliament, but that was brilliantly built on 35% of the total votes cast. A tiny negative swing would lose them 200 seats. A vast army of frightened backbenchers is no firm base from which to govern. As the Tories discovered.