Malcolm Blair-Robinson's Blog, page 104

Downfall In Downing Street: Buy Now

Set in the mid nineteen nineties, this fast moving thriller lifts the curtain on sex, sleaze and corruption in high places as the long reign of the government totters to an end, following the ousting of the iconic Margaret Thatcher. The novel catches the mood of those times with a host of fictional characters who engage in political intrigue, sex, money laundering and murder, pursued by an Irish investigative journalist and his girlfriend, the daughter of a cabinet minister found dead in a hotel room after bondage sex.

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Austerity: Enlightened Programme or Dangerous Fetish?

The answer is the latter in the case of the UK in 2017. There was a time perhaps in 2010/11 when austerity was good, but without making it part of a plan to re-boot the economy and maintaining it year after year, through one parliament into the next, is mathematically pointless, hugely damaging to the lives of everyone not in the ruling class and causes economic blindness to those who practice it for so long. Thus it is we have a government which does not know how to move forward in any direction, because it and its advisers have entirely lost the economic plot and have no idea what they are doing.

May makes her lofty speeches about those left behind and the message of Brexit, but the root cause of all she talks about, including Brexit, is never ending austerity, causing under funding of almost every public function or service upon which taxpayer’s money is spent. This makes everybody angry. Unions go for strikes, prisoners go for riots, some go for protests, but most go for despair. For a very sad few this is all engulfing and life changing or, even worse, ending. But for most it is a creeping feeling that things are never going to get better. But the anger, like the magma in some long dormant volcano, is building.  If May does not come forward with real plans to enrich people’s life experience in everyday details, that anger is going to burst all over her. And her problem is that there is only one thing which will ease the pressure and she does not have it. Money.

A modern state works best if its two sectors, public and private work in balance and for the common good. There should be every opportunity for the ambitious to forge ahead, provided it is not at the expense of the vast mass who enable the fabric of modern civilization at every level, whose calling is not self enrichment because their jobs can never make them rich, but without whom the lights would go out, the planes crash, the trains fail, the epidemics spread, the floods engulf and the general structure of a modern state would collapse.  The majority who work for the common good should be able to get a square deal which shares in rising standards bought about by economic growth and advancing innovation. And they should be able, because many of them run them,  to rely on efficient public services and utilities which are modern, efficient and caring.

The current economic model looks after the top end of the professional classes really well and celebrities have never had it so good. Most of their money has first to be earned further down the food chain either to pay them fees, ticket sales or subscriptions or from taxation. And this is where it all goes wrong. Because this mass does not earn enough, while the top people earn too much. Moreover the taxation model is a century out of date and utterly fails to deliver the revenue required. It needs restructuring on entirely different principles to spread the burden much wider, so that it delivers higher revenue at lower rates. It is all possible, my book Turn Left to Power explains.

In simple terms the UK does not have a problem of too much expenditure; it is a problem of too little income. Austerity make s the problem worse. That is what May has to deal with.

Apology. I am recovering from a virus and there may be typos in the above. I will edit them out in a day or two when my faculties return to normal.

May: Another Speech: More Hot Air?

Few decent people would find fault with a good deal of May’s speech about her new buzz trend, the Sharing Society. But what happened to Cameron’s Big Society, based presumably on Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society of the post Kennedy era? The common thing about all these societies is that they never happen. Because people are bigger than politicians and are less easily manipulated. They do not just talk about life in difficult places. They live it. Thatcher said there was no such thing as society, but that was perhaps going too far.

Johnson was trying to heal the racial divisions which divide America still, but were even worse in the days of segregation all across the Deep South. Cameron was trying to make his party electable. May is trying, well I am not quite sure and neither is anybody else. There is a lot of worthy talk and a good deal of drift. An action government hers is not, still paralyzed like cowering rabbits in the headlights of this stupid Brexit juggernaut.

Meanwhile crises are building in social care, mental health (yes I know she touched on it but again it was about stuff like roping in teachers to help as if they did not have enough on their plates already) the trains, the tubes, education funding, potholes (the local government people said £12 billion was needed and the government announced an extra £250 million and no that’s not a typo) and as always the NHS. This is now so strapped for cash that the system is in places breaking down altogether. Last week three elderly people died alone and unattended on trolleys in hospital corridors because there were no beds, no staff available and no proper care.

There was a time in this island nation of ours, when people did care about each other (although without a special label), that such news would have erupted into a national outrage of such ferocity that it would certainly have brought down the health minister, if not the government itself. But now it hardly made the news. We are just so used to hearing awful things like that. Why? One word. Every single bad thing leads back to it. Even Brexit.

Austerity.

Read the next post.

It will appear on or after January 10th.

Trump On Russia: This Blog Applauds

For years I have been saying and writing that with the collapse of communism and the Soviet Union, Russia should be accepted by the West and is no longer, and should not be seen as, an enemy. America has consistently refused to accept that notion and has during Obama’s second term  done much to build Russia up into a threat. The supine British Foreign Office has backed this ignorant appraisal. Using it as a basis of making judgement on world affairs since 9/11 has led to the biggest string of intelligence misreadings, military misjudgments and diplomatic blunders in Western history since the fall of Napoleon.  I have often felt that the maintenance of Russia as an ogre on the rampage was critical to avoiding  a wing or two of the Pentagon being made redundant. Anyway now everything has changed. More than that it has been turned on its head. Diplomacy, the military, the works, even the world view.

President Elect Trump has told the whole world via Twitter that anybody who does not see that Russia and the US need to work together to sort the current problems in the world is STUPID. Hear! Hear! Brilliant! I love it! This is going to be a presidency which reshapes the world as we know it. Because Trump is a visionary (with lots of faults over misogyny, groping and other stuff too) who sees up ahead something much better. And there is a chance he will get us all there.

Because he knows that Russia is the largest country in the world which is in many ways an unfathomable enigma, which does not even value many the the jewels of the American psyche, yet has been critical in the defeat of threats to the survival of all the West holds dear in every conflict for more than the last 200 years. Without Russia we would today live in a world shaped by Napoleon or the Kaiser or Hitler or some combination or output of them all. And even the stupid would not have wanted that.

As for the British Foreign Office, I would close it down and turn it into a (Trump?) hotel. I would open a Ministry of External Affairs tasked with looking to the future, informed by, but unshackled to, the past. And with a completely new team down to the doorman. Boris does not even come into my plan. Anyway he is far too busy with his own.

The May Speech: But whose Speech Will It Be?

It is put about by Downing Street spinners that May will be making a Big Speech soon (soon =after the Supreme Court has given its ruling, also soon, but that soon = when they are ready). She will lay out her government’s negotiating ‘stance’ and at last we will know where we are headed. But it is more interesting than at first it sounds. Because there are powerful rumours, not from Downing Street, No 10 anyway, that tell us that ‘substantial parts’ of it are being drafted by Davis the Brexit Secretary and Boris. Ah ha!  So that is what is afoot.

You can read it, the rumour, as the Prime Minister is a listening person who likes to engage the creative talents of senior clever colleagues. Or you can read it that she is a listening person who is having to do as she is told because those very senior colleagues have decided that they have had enough dithering and discord and she either does as they say (and write) or they will walk out of her government and bring the whole thing down.

Liam Fox, the International Trade Secretary, the supposed no 3 in the Brexit Trio, now a Duo, has been sidelined and is not contributing. That is because he talks nonsense and nobody takes him seriously. Even in the government.

No Justification

I am sorry but the latest update of my blog platform from WordPress has omitted the justification option button, causing a more untidy looking blog at the margin. I am sorry about this. Hopefully there will be another update to correct the problem.

Trump And China

The Obama administration did much to restore America’s tarnished overseas reputation post Bush II, but paradoxically was entirely out of its depth trying to resolve international problems, which largely it made worse. Trump has all along demonstrated a more focused understanding and has appointed a cabinet which appears to reflect that. Careful reading of the tea leaves (an English expression for watching the signals for baffled American readers) in Trump Tower indicates that Europe will be left to get on with its problems but will have to dig a lot deeper into its own pocket if it wants US military protection.  Russia will become a partner of mutual interests diplomatically and even militarily to step up the fight against IS, but will be allowed to sort out Syria to its own liking and will be left with its own programme for Eastern Ukraine. Israel will be assured of US backing but will be told with a smile that the price for keeping it is to get its peace act together with the Palestinians, in which it will be allowed a pretty free hand.

The main focus will be on China economically and diplomatically with a proactive agenda and a menu to secure the Trump administration’s continued backing for the sacred One China doctrine. This will include a more evenly balanced trade deal incorporating tariffs and less unfair competition from continuous devaluations of the Yuan,  together with access for American goods in the potentially vast expansion of China’s gradual economic re-balance to home consumption. Militarily Trump will concede some degree of a sphere of influence for China (similar to the reality of Russia) but will seek a joint approach to dealing with the increasing threat from North Korea. Here military action will be firmly on the agenda, including a preemptive surgical nuclear strike with low yield precision weapons which can penetrate any underground factories and silos.

There is absolutely no way Trump will sit on his hands waiting to see if North Korea can actually perfect a rocket and hit America with a nuclear warhead. Trump knows that this is the only real threat to the United States apart from terrorism and he is going to deal with it. He will seek to convince China that he is serious and in turn hope that Beijing will be able to convince Pyongyang. Part of the carrot aspect could be a meeting with the North Korean leader hosted by China.

Western capitals, including London, will have to get used to a very different world view and refocus on diplomacy which moves forward, rather than goes round in circles. It will be challenging, sometimes alarming, but also refreshing.

By the way, where is Boris?

Happy New Year

To all followers of this Blog, my best wishes to achieve your goals and ambitions in 2017. A lot is going to happen in what will be a year of many changes. We have Trump, Brexit, Europe, the Middle East, faltering globalization and the rise of an anti establishment political wave called populism. All of it is new, so there is no reliable basis for prediction or outcome. We can only hope that those who have been passed by in the rising standards of the few will get a better deal and those for whom each day and night is ripped by violence and terror will be granted their yearning for a more peaceful world. Those in public life who have responsibility to deliver these things must redouble their efforts to do better than has been the standard of the more recent past.

Putin Masterclass

Putin will look back on 2016 with some satisfaction. The Syrian cease-fire, little more than a year after Russia engaged itself directly, is an outcome which took the West completely by surprise. It was even excluded from the negotiations, whilst a NATO member, Turkey has turned east, and allied itself with Russia. The awkward moment of the Clinton hacking has been finessed and Obama made to look a fool. His protégé Trump is about to enter the White House; Crimea is securely back in the Russian Federation; Ukraine has gone quiet with the East firmly under ethnic Russian control and Russia is back on the world stage where power is played.

And this is the nub. Yes Russia hacks, although probably not more than many others as most of it can be done by teenagers from their bedrooms. America seems peculiarly vulnerable to hackers, especially the Pentagon which has been hacked from more than one bedroom in the UK. Russia uses its military with some skill to achieve outcomes which, at much lower levels of engaged assets than the West, are much better than equivalent efforts led by America. This leads everybody to get excited about a Russian threat. Aside from the fact that it is the only military with the capacity to destroy the United States, it spends a fraction of the US on defence and is a much weaker military power at all levels.

The real objective in which the Kremlin has committed much thought, is to become an alternative diplomatic power which can get things done and challenge the post cold war dominance of the US, which Moscow sees as a disaster by any measure. Flawed intelligence and miscalculations have led to chaos in the Middle East, migration on an unprecedented scale which has destabilized Europe and threatens the very fabric of the EU, from which GB is withdrawing, and an economic globalization model which has created more disaffection and uncertainty than at any time since the nineteen thirties. Millions thirst for a better way. Brexit and Trump are just the beginning of a new era. An America good at starting wars which never stop may find itself in diplomatic competition with a Russia which can end them. No guessing who will be the popular kid on the global block. That is Trump’s challenge. Of one thing we can be sure. Trump will surprise everyone. Except Putin.

Obama’s Exit: Going Downhill?

There appears to have been a breakdown in the notion of smooth transition of the Presidency in the US that is quite surprising and for which Obama appears more to blame than Trump. The Kerry speech over Israel was pointless from a Secretary of State with his bags packed and should have been made three years ago, when it might have done some good. Made now it gives the Israel is always right lobby the perfect opportunity to hijack Trump. The latest spat with Russia is a glaring mismanagement of a delicate situation which will not achieve anything useful. The issue is not that the emails were hacked and by whom, but that they were written and on a private server to keep them secret from the US disclosure provisions. If some Russian set up hacked them, many would regard their alleged interference as a public service. Obama is claiming that the Democrats have a licence to mislead and conceal and anything done to expose the felony is un-American. But surely the un-American bit is the concealment?

There is more to this. The Democrats have for decades been more anti-Russian than the Republicans. It is doubtful if a Democrat in the White House would have seized the Gorbachev opportunity which led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. There is no doubt that Bush II, whom this blog regards as a disaster, was nevertheless much more adept at dealing with Putin. Obama has, through a series of blunders across the middle east and Ukraine (backing the neo-Fascist Kiev was madness) including sanctions and exclusions, elevated Russia from humble fallen Empire to assertive World Power. Whilst this blog has no problems with that, since I believe a world with a single power is as unsatisfactory as a democracy with one party,  the point is this outcome was the opposite of the Obama intention.

So having been a strong supporter of Obama throughout his term of office and forgiving of his failures, this blog now feels he leaves office a much diminished figure, still the darling of the liberal establishment, but a disappointment to everyone else and outsmarted by a much more astute Putin and likely to be humiliated by an incoming angry Trump. As for the hacked election drama and in spite of the unprecedented campaign of support from the incumbent, the democrats lost fair and square because they had failed in too many areas that affect the people who normally support them. As for Hilary getting more votes, you only need to look at the map. The glittering prosperity of  the highly populated west and east coasts is blue, but most everywhere else, the beating heart of the American dream, turned red. To assert that this is all because of Russian hackers is to confirm that the Democrats have completely lost the plot.

However Trump is left with a problem. The naturally hawkish Republican party appears to back Obama’s expulsions, while Trump rejects Russian intervention, although he appeared at one stage in his campaign to invite it. The American intelligence services have shown themselves, especially over weapons of mass destruction, to be a lot less sure footed handling what we can call political intelligence, rather than terror or espionage assessments. Trump wants to square up to China mostly on trade issues because he has promised to repatriate jobs and that will be a good deal easier if he is able to exploit his hero status in Moscow and mend fences with Putin. So his first day in the Oval Office will test his ability to use the levers of power deftly and with a positive outcome for America. The whole world will be watching (twitter mostly) and so will this blog.